Where Have All the Feminists Gone?

In Hole's rough and tumble song Courtney Love croons, "And I know it, I can't feel it / Well, I know it enough to believe it." If only Love was meditating on the inexplicable paradox of Diablo Cody's female protagonists in her new film Jennifer's Body, where we want to believe Cody thinks her characters are strong, but never quite feel it. Jennifer's Body stars Megan Fox, the title character, and Amanda Seyfried, nicknamed "Needy"; these two characters are meant to pass as more interesting, more intriguing, and more 'womanly' than their small-town classmates. We saw this same so-called alternative character in Diablo Cody's debut Juno, a pre-packaged indie film that suggested Juno was more complicated then most teenage girls because she knew Patti Smith had put out the the record "Horses" and talked on a hamburger shaped telephone.

But where Juno appropriately mentioned Smith, faintly identifying what Evelyn McDonnell writes about in Mama Rama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids, & Rock 'n' Roll, "'Love is a ring, the telephone / Love is an angel, disguised as lust / Here in our bed until the morning comes.' Smith sang how a lonely teenage girl felt, wanting to be loved and fucked," Jennifer's Body fails to identify the paradox of the vulnerability and the insatiable appetites of high school girls. Yes, Jennifer is suddenly transformed into a man-eating demon, but Megan Fox is too busy seducing to ever play her dinner scenes for laughs.

Jennifer talks candidly about her sex life, courageously marches up to a city band and introduces herself, and then seduces the bartender to buy the lead singer drinks, but what initially appears to be a rebel, soon dissolves into an insecure girl who, after a mysterious fire burns down the bar, passively agrees to ride in the band's van; despite Needy's pleas, the blackout windows, and the band's Greenday, creepy disposition, Jennifer allows herself to become a victim, now fitting Camille Paglia's definition of "pampered, white middle-class girls [with] infantile personalities, emotionally, and intellectually underdeveloped."

The weak female characters aside, Jennifer's Body fails at providing enough salaciousness. Director Karyn Kusama shies away from the gore, the humor, and simply tantalizes us with a scant few sexual scenes that are so tame they could belong in the High School Musical series. For all her tattoos and talk, Cody has simply written a fluff piece that holds together like Michael Bay movie. As Le Tigre sings, I'm ready for a feminist sweepstakes, not just on my CD player, but on my DVD one as well.