Both Harmony Korine and Karyn Kusama are popular for displaying sexuality amongst teenagers and being unapologetic for doing so. In Kusama’s Jennifer’s Body both of the female leads can be seen engaging in sex.[1] Similarly, in Korine’s Spring Breakers, the girls are very clearly sexually active even before their fateful meeting with Alien.[2] It can be easy to forget that the girls in these movies are in high school or college, making most of them under the age of twenty. But many directors, and writers alike, chose to highlight the sexual nature of these young woman to mirror the increasingly over sexualised society that children are growing up in. The female characters in both films could be described as being dangerous on varying levels, whether it be their brain that acts as a threat, their sexuality or in the case of Kusama’s film, the actual body is a weapon.
The women in Jennifer’s Body are represented as growing increasingly more dangerous as the film builds to the climax – a fight to the death between our two female protagonists. Amanda Seyfried plays timid, smart Needy who embodies the qualities of a typical ‘best friend’. She is loyal, despite differences and is protective, despite the danger associated with the friendship. Needy is challenged by her best friend Jennifer after a mistake involving a virginal sacrifice. Jennifer becomes increasingly more possessive and blood thirsty and as she quenches that thirst, her body becomes stronger and she becomes somewhat indestructible. She uses her seemingly perfect body to lure her prey before devouring them. Kusama, producers and casting director Mindy Marin, selected popular actress at the time Megan Fox to star as Jennifer. This was due to the overwhelming response that Fox got for her movie Transformers, however this response was not about her acting but rather focused on the actresses ‘perfect’ looks.[3] Even Needy, a girl written as awkward and homely, is played by stunning Hollywood actress, Amanda Seyfried. Both girls’ strengths are tested with some insisting that despite her demise, Jennifer won the final battle because Needy, bitten in battle, contracted some of the ‘evil’ essence inside of her best friend. The film displays gradual increases in danger levels and the accusation of power over time.
This is in comparison to Spring Breakers, where from the very beginning of the film, at least three of the girls are very willing to be violent and aggressive. From the outset of the film, character Brittany seems to have a strange obsession with guns and makes the symbol for one with her hands. This foreshadows the role that guns later play in the film. The girls are all open about their illegal activities and have no shame or regret until they are arrested. It could be noted that the arrival of Alien was the beginning of the groups downfall when in actual fact, the way they conducted themselves and the risks that they take from the beginning suggest that had it not been Alien it could have easily been someone else. The dangers that the Spring Breakers encountered were more realistic as they included drugs, alcohol and gangs. These are very real in comparison to Jennifer’s Body’s satanic sacrifices and boy eating teenage girls. However this can be explained by one film representing a symbolic journey and the other being an exaggerated truth.
The symbolism within both films is very apparent however, the metaphors conceived in the final scenes of Jennifer’s Body are perhaps a little more controversial. The scenes are highly suggestive and metaphorically similar to the ‘postfeminist media representation: women who embrace violence as a refusal of victimhood.’[4] Needy escapes the mental institution at the end of the film and hunts down the band that initially sacrificed her friend, causing the ripple effect of damage and pain in her life. She chooses to embrace the powers she inherits and decides to use them to gain revenge. This ‘power feminism’ wave is common amongst women who have experienced abuse and refuse to be seen as the weaker individual therefore they can themselves become aggressive and abusive, starting a destructive cycle of abuse.[5]
This adoption of violence in an attempt to better their lives is also seen in Spring Breakers. By the end of the film, only two of the girls remain and despite watching their ‘leader’ shot down in front of them, they continue on their killing spree to the sound of a voiceover where they can be heard promising to ‘be better’ now. If anything, this final scene showed the girls killing in an attempt to assert their own power to each other and to prove that they are capable of even the darkest behaviours, after all they never took anything away from the scene. They never took money, jewels or drugs. Out of the senseless violence, emerges two better people? Korine never lets us know what happens to the girls once they get home, but it’s unlikely the two go on to do great things just because they were able to senselessly murder.
This adoption of violence in an attempt to better their lives is also seen in Spring Breakers. By the end of the film, only two of the girls remain and despite watching their ‘leader’ shot down in front of them, they continue on their killing spree to the sound of a voiceover where they can be heard promising to ‘be better’ now. If anything, this final scene showed the girls killing in an attempt to assert their own power to each other and to prove that they are capable of even the darkest behaviours, after all they never took anything away from the scene. They never took money, jewels or drugs. Out of the senseless violence, emerges two better people? Korine never lets us know what happens to the girls once they get home, but it’s unlikely the two go on to do great things just because they were able to senselessly murder.
Interestingly Korine casts his own wife to play one of the spring breakers who is in a bikini for 90% of the film. The film mirrors the recent over sexualisation of young girls in society. Popular culture tends to show the western world as being ‘a society that is “postfeminist” and situates girls and “women” as liberated and empowered’ when we prematurely sexualise our young girls and teach them to value the materialistic and shallow values of a pre-second wave society.[6] Spring Breakers visually reminds us of how semi-nudity and scanty clothing is now acceptable for young girls. Bikinis and other provocative small items of clothing are considered more than just beach wear. In the opening sequence of the film, an explicit montage of half-naked women shows breasts and asses but not a single shot of a man displaying his genitals. From the very beginning of the film we assume that women are objects to be played with and ogled at. And even during emotional and poignant moments of dialogue within the film, the girls are still dressed in bikinis which works to belittle the words they say. An important aspect that Korine may have employed in order to show the difference between how far we think we have come and how far we actually have developed in relation to equality and viewing women equally.
Jennifer’s Body deals with virginity and the ‘first time’ in terms of sexual activity. Rather than displaying the female body as candidly as in Korine’s film, Kusama takes a more conservative approach whilst still making sure to emphasise the allure of a young woman’s body. This is due to the characters in this film being a lot younger than those in Spring Breakers. The catalyst for the entire story stems from Jennifer being wrongly identified as a virgin. This was because one of the band members insisted that girls who dress ‘slutty’ are hiding the fact that they are still a virgin – as if it is something to be ashamed of. They sacrifice Jennifer and because she was not a virgin she didn’t die and instead came back to life as a succubus. The viewer also sees the awkward first sexual encounter between Needy and Chip and how the two are overly concerned with making it ‘perfect’. Virginity and ‘losing it’ has become an obsessive aspect of young girl’s life in the last decade in particular. This is down to the average age of ‘first timers’ gradually getting lower and the increasing pressure for a girl to be admired from a younger age. Jennifer’s Body was written by Diablo Cody, a self-confessed Feminist, who is no stranger to writing about the first time between teenagers. Her first feature film, Juno, centred on a teenage girl who falls pregnant.[7] She was her friends ‘first’ sexual partner and the film follows the feelings that can develop or intensify once sex is involved.
Whether it be a symbolic journey or a more realistic interpretation, both Kusama and Korine work to depict what it means to be a woman in the 21st century with the dangers and pressures that it poses. Both directors embrace Feminist issues and works towards highlighting them in a non-threatening way that can appeal to even the most unwilling viewer. Whilst both films discussed were not critically acclaimed, they stand as interesting works that can be dissected and explored in relation to each other and to other films within the Women’s Cinema genre. They depict strong, independent women who find themselves in positions that are beneath themselves mentally. Both Kusama and Korine successfully created films that were designed to show the changing view of women in society, and were uncredited for doing so. The harsh reality of how our young women are growing up is being shown to us on film but many choose to ignore such characters and forget that what we see on screen is often simply a reflection of our own society.
[1] Jennifer’s Body, dir. by Karyn Kusama (20th Century Fox, 2009)
[2] Spring Breakers, dir. by Harmony Korine (A24, 2013)
[3] Transformers, dir. by Michael Bay (Paramount
Pictures, 2007)
[4] Martin Fradley, ‘Hell is a Teenage Girl?:
Postfeminism and Contemporary Teen Horror’ in Postfeminism and Contemporary Hollywood Cinema, ed. by. Joel Gwynne
and Nadine Muller (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 214
[5] Mary M. Talbot, ‘Strange Bedfellows: Feminism in
Advertising’ in All the World and Her
Husband: Women in Twentieth-Century Consumer Culture, ed. by. Maggie
Andrews and Mary M Talbot (London, UK: Margaret R Andrews and Mary M Talbot,
2000), p. 182
[6] Jessica Ringrose, Postfeminist
Education: Girls and the Sexual Politics of Schooling (Oxon, MD: Routledge,
2013), p. 42
[7] Juno, dir. by Jason Reitman (Fox Searchlight
Pictures, 2007)
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