Getting all Girly on You

So I'm pretty excited about Diablo Cody's new flick.  Firstly, I loved Juno.  It was a little indie-by-numbers, but it was refreshing to see a female lead with the strength to express her individuality.  And Ellen Page was magical: that girl can dead-pan like nobody's business!

What?

Also, I think Diablo Cody is a rather interesting woman.  She's been a BUST covergirl (love!) and still has the ovaries to call herself a feminist, so when the sites started buzzing with talk of her upcoming 'comedy horror film', I was intrugued.  Was it going to be feminist?  Was it going to go where socially responsible Buffy won't allow herself?  I could already taste the buttered popcorn...


But "Jennifer's Body" never got a theatrical release in Australia.  You'll be relieved to know I made a big batch of popcorn anyway (mmm... popcorn), but why?  What was wrong with it?  I mean, if you were on Family Feud and asked to list the features that would make a successful teen movie, you could do worse than suggesting:

1.  Cheerleaders?  Check.

A whole bunch of emo gore?  Check.

Some almost nudity?  Check.

And a splash of lesbianism?  Why not!

Oh yeah.  And Hollywood's Finest:

I wish! Wrong Oscar.  I mean this:

Yet the film was commercially disappointing.  Box-office analyst Jeff Bock blames the the R-rating and a lack of marketing, but I think it runs deeper than that.  I mean, most horror audiences would have been relatively comfortable with the plot: Unrepentant Lead Seduces and Destroys Vulnerable School Kids until the Hero puts a Stop to it.  Gasp!  Nothing unusual here (see: every horror film ever made).  I think the problem was that the lead was female.  And the hero was female.

And there's nothing scary about that!

Sadly, audiences will happily sit back and snack on popcorn while watching torture-porn ("Saw", "The Human Caterpillar", "Hostel"); indeed these films have become massively successful.  But a sexy cheerleader who butchers boys and jokes that "my dick is bigger than his" has people shifting uncomfortably in their seats.  And when the hero rushes in to save the handsome boy in distress - wearing a completely hilarious and deeply awesome princess dress, no less:

...stomachs were turned.   Now I'm not saying it was the greatest film on earth.  I think Diablo had some interesting ideas and two hypnotically beautiful actresses.  But after she created some lovely colour-saturated vingettes (like the one above) and some snappy one-liners ("How are you going to get alcohol?"  "I'm just going to play Hello Titty with the bartender"), she didn't quite know what to do with herself.  She claims to have aimed the film at women, but with the foxy Megan pouting and pouring herself all over the screen, it really seemed like more of a dick flick.  And teaming up with "Girlfight" director Karyn Kusma suggested she intended to make a kickass flick empowering to women, but many feminists just weren't feeling it.  Indeed, Cody, claims she wasn't really feeling it herself: "This was a challenge from start to finish because it was really hard to establish the tone".

Personally, I felt that there was so much girl-on-girl crime, casual sexism and normative 'female victim' tropes it seemed like I had wandered into the wrong film.  This was just a standard-issue horrror movie, and - wait a second - I don't like horror movies!  Maybe I should stick with scriptwriters I can trust to write strong female leads, like Joss Whedon and Alan Ball (who prove you don't need boobs to be a feminist).  Speaking of "True Blood", notice any similarities?

Yeah.  Li'l bit!

But Diablo ain't done yet.  There were some great things about her second flick (like this quote: "PMS isn't real!  It was invented by the boy-run media to make us seem like we're crazy!"), and given a little more structure she may yet come good.  And when I saw the movie poster, I was back on the Cody Wagon all over again.

Too cute!  Too reminiscent of my groaning pre-teen bookshelf!  And apparently it's about a 30-something returning to her home town (cue pealing bell arppegios).  I'm in.  And I'm inspired to revisit the books of my childhood.  Far from feminist, the Wakefield twins dominated my tween imagination and as such I will not hear a bad word about them!  I loved them both immoderately and never could choose which twin I was most like...  It's like Elizabeth and Jessica are both in me still, warring for supremacy on a daily basis.  They are the twinned self, the split psyche, and I'm pretty sure that was what Francine Pascal was aiming for, and what made her series so wildly successful.

 That and the red Spyder Fiat they drove.