Egan 1

“Hell is a Teenage Girl”: Monstrous [Im]Perfection in Contemporary Horror

Caitlin Egan

California State University, San Marcos

Egan 2

Table of Contents Abstract ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3

Dedication ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 4

Introduction …………………………………………………………………………..………….. 6

Chapter I: Perverse Obsession & Monstrous in “So Perfect” ………….………….. 26

Chapter II: Mean Girls & in Jennifer’s Body ……………………………….……….. 41

Chapter III: Mean Girls & Final Girls: Constructed Monstrous Identities in The Last Final Girl

…58

Conclusion: Extensions & Different Angles to Examine the Monstrous Mean Girl …………....74

Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………………… 80

Egan 3

Abstract

This thesis examines the monstrous female characters and horror in Stephen

Graham Jones’ , “So Perfect,” his novel The Last Final Girl, and the film

Jennifer’s Body. In particular, this thesis aims at defining a subgenre, the high school mean girl narrative, that fuses the conventions of American Gothic, horror, and high school narratives. The

“mean girl” character type is exaggerated and becomes monstrous. The monstrosity in these texts critiques the social pressure that adolescent girls face to adhere to an unattainable physical

“ideal,” image, or reputation. The desire to achieve the unattainable results in monstrous identities. This thesis also explores the conventions of the slasher subgenre of horror as it pertains to the monstrous mean girl narrative. The final text discussed, Jones’ The Last Final

Girl provides a critique of social pressures in a slightly different way than the other texts discussed. In “So Perfect” and Jennifer’s Body, the monstrous mean girls obsess over the perfect body, but in The Last Final Girl, Lindsay obsesses over the perfect “final girl” identity. In addition to literary analysis of the three target texts, this thesis also provides an overview of horror, American Gothic, and theory.

Egan 4

Dedication

First and foremost, thank you Rebecca Lush, my thesis chair, for helping me push my limits and for being an all-around great role model. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with me and being just as excited about my topic as I am. I could not have finished on time without your encouragement. Thank you to my thesis committee, Mark Wallace and Yuan Yuan for sharing your knowledge and dedication to the topic. To my family, mom, dad, grandma, and my dog brothers Cody and Duke, for supporting me and feeding me during my highest times of stress. To Stephen Sly, my partner in crime, thank you for always believing in me and pushing me to be my best. To my second family, Ed, Kathy, and Penny, for giving me a place to sleep and write while my house was under construction. To all my friends for being understanding and supportive while I disappeared for two years, especially Morgan, Todd, Martina, Mike, Paige,

Nick, Dana, and Natalie. Your friendship means the world to me and I couldn’t have accomplished this without you in my life. To the partners at Starbucks Encinitas Town Center for helping me stay grounded and letting me vent my frustrations. Thank you for giving me a positive change of pace and making me smile when I was almost too overwhelmed to function.

Thank you to Susan Hause and Rachel Sato at Our Lady of Grace School for working with me and encouraging me even though I couldn’t always be around. Thank you Tanya Nakamoto for forcing me to watch Jennifer’s Body in 2011 because “it’s a really good movie!” I owe a thank you to all the music that pumped me up, inspired me, and kept me grounded as I worked through this milestone. The music I listen to played a huge part in inspiring my graduate writing, including The Flatliners’ Dead Language and Division of Spoils, Streetlight Manifesto’s The

Hands That Thieve, and Frank Turner’s “Photosynthesis.” I still strive to be as poetic as my favorite musicians and songwriters. In the words of The Lawrence Arms, “I fell for the beat, but

Egan 5

I stay down for the noise.” The noise kept me pushing through. To Catherine Cucinella, my professor, mentor, and friend, for always reminding me why I’m doing what I’m doing. Thank you for your constant passion and encouragement. To my wonderful cohort of strong, badass women, the most fabulous flamboyance of flamingos, Becky, Joyce, Kristin, Mari, and Rachelle.

Going through this program with you was an absolute joy. I am forever grateful for the friendship and kind spirit of our group. To everyone listed, and to those in my life who are not mentioned, thank you for being part of one of the greatest adventures of my life.

Egan 6

Introduction

U.S. American society has an obsession with female perfection, and this obsession takes its toll on adolescents in particular. High school narratives often focus on the unnatural and harmful acts teenage girls perform to try and achieve an “ideal” physical identity. These literary and film narratives often depict “perfect” popular girls and “uncool” girls trying to fit in to a standard established by society. The lengths that young women go through to reach this standard are monstrous, and the horror genre provides a place to expose and exaggerate this social construct as physically monstrous. The monstrous female characters in the Hollywood film Jennifer’s

Body, Stephen Graham Jones’ short story “So Perfect,” and his slasher novel The Last Final Girl critique the unnatural, monstrous nature of society’s expectations of young female perfection. In

“So Perfect,” main characters Tammy and Brianne’s desire for physical perfection becomes monstrous as they go to repulsive lengths to achieve thin bodies, ultimately destroying their humanity. In Jennifer’s Body, the popular and gorgeous Jennifer becomes demonic after a sacrifice to the devil goes wrong. As she seduces and eats the young men at her high school, it is easy to see Jennifer’s “body,” or Jennifer’s monstrous half seeking revenge against those who objectify her. However, I will be arguing that Jennifer’s monstrous body exposes the monstrosity of social myths about female beauty and perfection. In The Last Final Girl, the story’s “mean girl,” Lindsay, orchestrates a slasher rampage known as the Billie Jean killings just to maintain her status as a ’s “final girl” and homecoming queen. Lindsay brings her obsession with the horror genre and outward appearance to life, leading to horrific consequences.

My approach to examining monstrous female bodies in horror differs from earlier horror readings of women’s bodies as freakish or monstrous regardless of beauty because the monsters I

Egan 7 am working with are the “ideal,” popular, and desirable female characters. All three texts take place in a high school setting and follow a similar monstrous “mean girl” narrative structure. The monster in this case is not the misunderstood goth with black lipstick and facial piercings, but rather the most popular girl in school; the girl every guy wants and other girls envy. These texts do not portray as monstrous, they portray obsession with appearance and manipulation to conform to the idealized notion of perfection as monstrous.

The Monstrous Mean Girl Narrative

The “mean girl” narrative appears frequently in recent teenage films that critique high school social hierarchy and centers on a female student seeking revenge against a school’s popular mean girl, or clique who ridicules the rest of the student body. These films turn high school into anthropological studies, portraying each clique as though it is an entirely different culture. The “mean girl” clique tends to believe itself to be so influential that all other cliques desire to be like them. The most prominent and influential of these films to date is Mean Girls

(2004). The story is familiar and predictable: there’s a new and mysterious student in town, Cady, and fascinated by her unique background, mean girl queen of the “Plastics” clique, Regina

George takes Cady under her wing and transforms her into the meanest of the mean girls. Cady has ulterior motives. She befriends , an outcast and former junior high best friend of

Regina George. Janis’ vengeful hate for Regina rubs off on Cady, and the two of them discover ways to sabotage Regina’s reputation.

The film that paved the way for Mean Girls and first established the narrative pattern is arguably Heathers (1988). It portrays the 1980s version of the anthropological high school setting, similar to that of Mean Girls. The popular clique has a title, the “Heathers,” named for

Egan 8 the fact that three of its four members share the name Heather. Its newest member, Veronica is fed up with the Heathers after she has a falling out with the alpha, Heather Chandler. Veronica and her new boyfriend J.D. orchestrate a series of murderous pranks. Their plan is to seek revenge by putting the popular students who have taken advantage of Veronica into humiliating situations. Each time, their plans backfire and they end up murdering the students. In order to cover their tracks, Veronica and J.D. stage the crime scenes as suicide attempts, and because of the popularity of the murdered students, suicide becomes the newest trend.

I argue that all three texts I examine in this thesis fall into a new and emerging subcategory of horror—a hybrid genre that blends horror with the teenage mean girl narrative style to create what I am calling the monstrous mean girl high school narrative. The monstrous mean girl narrative is an emerging horror narrative phenomenon and is not limited to just the primary texts of my thesis. For example, ’s campy horror series Queens (2015-present) makes use of the mean girl formula as well. This narrative style portrays the mean girl as monstrous (and sometimes goes so far as to make her physically grotesque), documents her popularity and manipulation of other students, follows her eventual demise, and shows the monstrous rise of the girl seeking revenge against her who many times takes the original mean girl’s place. In the classic mean girl films mentioned, the girls never become physically monstrous; they remain human. I argue Jennifer’s Body and “So Perfect” take this style to the next level by portraying them as physically monstrous, and The Last Final Girl plays with the narrative style and horror tropes to expose the monstrosity of the manipulation that characterizes the mean girl.

All three texts are contemporary with limited specific critical scholarship. Because of how recent they are, the bulk of my research focuses on the scholarly trends previously discussed in

Egan 9 relation to the horror and gothic genres and conversations about female monsters. More specifically, I contextualize “So Perfect,” The Last Final Girl, and Jennifer’s Body within discussions of horror, American Gothic, the monstrous, and gender studies. Jennifer’s Body is written by and directed by , starring as Jennifer and

Amanda Seyfried as Needy. It is a horror comedy released in 2009 by Twentieth Century Fox.

The film received mixed reviews, mostly mediocre, due to the fact that “It’s not scary enough but… it’s pretty funny,” (Guillen). I argue that the humor in Jennifer’s Body adds to the social commentary I am focusing on by creating a campy parody of a high school mean girl. Stephen

Graham Jones’ The Faster Redder Road, the collection of short stories in which “So Perfect” is currently published, is a new collection released in 2015, and there is little critical reception of this specific short story thus far. “So Perfect” originally appeared in Jones’ collection The Ones

That Got Away in 2010. The Last Final Girl is a meta-slasher novel published in 2012. A critical essay that focuses on the novel appears in the newly published collection of critical essays, The

Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion, published in 2016. This essay will be discussed in Chapter Three. For my discussion on this novel and “So Perfect,” I use Jones’ own essays regarding the horror and slasher genres.

The Gothic: Monsters and the Uncanny

The field of gothic scholarship provides a useful starting point for my consideration of the horror texts “So Perfect,” The Last Final Girl, and Jennifer’s Body because the two genres, gothic and horror, are closely linked. The uncanny is especially apt for theorizing and analyzing monsters and monstrosity. Jones’ fiction fits into the genre of American Gothic as his stories capture many of the characteristics outlined by gothic scholars, while also addressing issues

Egan 10 unique to U.S. American society.

Most gothic scholarship acknowledges the importance of Sigmund Freud’s The Uncanny, in which Freud defines the meaning of “uncanny” as evoking fear and dread in both characters and readers. According to Freud, the uncanny is “that species of the frightening that goes back to what was once well known and familiar” (Freud 124). In other words, Freud’s definition of the uncanny implies it is that which makes what was once familiar, unfamiliar and strangely different. He uses the German words “heimlich” and “unheimlich,” which translate into English as “homely,” and “unhomely” to explain his concept. “Homely,” according to Freud, is that which makes the home comforting and familiar, while “unhomely” is that which disrupts the familiarity of the home. Freud insists the closest English words whose definitions mean the same as “unheimlich” are “uncanny” and “eerie.” (124). To Freud, if something is “uncanny,” something familiar has changed causing it to become unsettling. There is something slightly off about something that was once familiar.

Stephen Graham Jones alludes to this concept in his discussion with Review

(Vandermeer) of horror as unsettling. Jones indicates that horror should provoke a feeling of uncanniness in the reader. Stephen T. Asma uses Freud’s concepts in his book, On Monsters, to argue that monsters are personifications of the unheimlich who “stand for what endangers one’s sense of security, stability, integrity, well-being, health and meaning” (Asma 188). The uncanny monster is probably best exemplified in the form of the doppelgänger; Asma asserts that people are disturbed by doppelgängers because another version of the self expresses the desire to extend one’s life, and this desire “manifests in the form of a about another you” (189). Asma finds renewed and contemporary interests in the uncanny due to the rise of virtual humans, such as digital avatars and realistic video game characters, which have created new ways for humans

Egan 11 to feel strangely unhomely. Almost-human is creepier and more unsettling than a cartoonish exaggeration of a human; the category of “almost-human” will be a key reference point for my consideration of seemingly human “mean girl” character types. Asma states, “monsters can act as symbolic projections of all these frustrations rolled into one beast” (191). Asma also explains that Sartre redefined hell as “other people.” Jennifer’s Body alludes to this idea in the opening narrative as Needy describes hell as “a teenage girl” (Kusama), the phrase I use as the title of this work.

American Gothic in particular is useful for my critique because the three horror texts I am exploring are rooted in a contemporary U.S. American context. Each text critiques U.S.

American adolescent anxieties blown out of proportion by monsters. Gregory Pepetone builds on

Freud’s ideas to define what it means for a work of literature to be American Gothic. In his book,

Gothic Perspectives on the American Experience, Pepetone explains that “archetypes from

Gothic mythology will be invoked as a shorthand for social and political forces that are unleashed when the individualistic and civic ideals that constitute the authentic American dream are sacrificed with other agendas” (Pepetone 1). In other words, American Gothic utilizes gothic figures and monsters to express anxieties about U.S. American culture.

Monstrosity: Human Monsters and the Question of the “Other”

Stephen Graham Jones and Karyn Kusama use female monster characters in their works of horror, so in order to contextualize the contemporary characters I analyze, exploring different monstrous concepts lays the foundation for my discussion of the monstrous. Jeffrey Cohen indicates that in recent years, monsters are a significant part of American culture. In his “Seven

Theses” on monster culture, found in his Monster Culture collection of essays, Cohen explains

Egan 12 that “the monstrous body is pure culture” (Cohen 4), meaning a monster is a particular culture’s fears personified and portrayed as a physical being. This calls to mind Pepetone’s assertion that gothic figures and monsters are used to portray anxieties about particular aspects of culture. Most other horror scholars’ definitions of monsters go hand in hand with Cohen’s statement that “the monster is difference made flesh… for the most part, monstrous difference tends to be cultural, political, racial, economic or sexual” (5). The monster, therefore, represents the cultural Other, or in a broader sense, cultural difference. According to Cohen, Asma, and Noël Carroll, defining monstrosity is a complicated endeavor because it is relative to the individual and to culture. I argue that the monstrosity in “So Perfect,” The Last Final Girl, and Jennifer’s Body represents a shift in the monster-as-other tradition by portraying the “it girls” as the monsters. Rather than the monster being a marginalized figure, the monster is the most desirable and popular female.

Carroll, Cohen, and Asma each lay out numerous monstrous concepts that apply to monsters of horror across the board, but not all concepts apply to all monsters. One of the most important aspects of the monstrous that applies to the female monsters I focus on is that they

“refuse categorization” (Cohen 6). Noël Carroll spends much time on this concept, and believes horror reveals the chilling anxiety that results when things that cross the boundaries of “the deep categories of a culture’s conceptual scheme are impure” (Carroll 32). Carroll asserts that monsters are impure if they are categorically interstitial, contradictory, incomplete, or formless.

Monsters are not classifiable according to our recognizable cultural standards, so they are othered. They are indescribable and inconceivable. Horrific monsters are a mixture of what is socially expected to be distinct.

Carroll explains two categories of monsters that I will be working with: fusion and fission.

Both types blur the lines of distinction. Fusion monsters are creatures that “transgress categorical

Egan 13 distinctions such as inside/outside, living/dead, insect/human, flesh/medicine, and so on … they unite attributes held to be categorically distinct” (Carroll 43). In the horrific wedding scene in

“So Perfect,” I argue how Tammy and Brianne’s monstrosity fits into this category as they become human and insect. Jennifer is a fission monster, a character who switches back and forth from monster to human. In a fission monster, “contradictory elements are … distributed over different identities” (46). Carroll uses the example of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide to explain his fission concept. Jennifer becomes demonic, but her demon side is only visible when she feeds.

Otherwise, she passes as human. Both of Carroll’s figures fit into Freud’s definition of uncanny because they create unfamiliarity. These figures are not quite human, and transgress what we understand as human boundaries. Pepetone explains that “America’s Gothic imagination is best understood as an attempt to expose and confront our own repressed contradictions” (Pepetone

20). American Gothic uses these monsters to expose personal and existential anxieties toward the contradictions that arise in American culture. In this case, the anxieties are toward outward female perfection and beauty.

Stephen T. Asma expands the definition of monster to incorporate human figures who act in inhumane ways, which provides a context for the monstrosity in “So Perfect” and The Last

Final Girl. His expansion of the definition applies to this story because he argues monsters can be people who do horrific things to others while still appearing human. Tammy and Brianne appear human through most of the text as they ridicule classmates. It is not until their ultimate demise at the end, starting with the wedding scene and building up to the basement scene when they give up physical humanity. Last Final’s Lindsay is human throughout the story, but is exposed as the mastermind of the slasher rampage, a monstrous unique to the horror slasher genre. Tammy and Brianne’s, and Lindsay’s monstrosity is not explicit like Jennifer’s. It is made

Egan 14 clear in the film that Jennifer transforms into a demon. Asma goes into several concepts of

“monstrous,” indicating that the word is a flexible, multi-use concept, but concludes that it is a moral, biological, and theological term. He breaks the term down into categories. The first is being “inhuman.” He refers to brutal torturers who have “by their horrific actions, abdicated their humanity” (Asma 8). Humanity can be corrupted, thus driving monstrous actions, and it follows that everyone has the potential to become monstrous in this sense. I fit the monstrosity in “So

Perfect” and The Last Final Girl into this corrupted, “inhuman” category.

Next, Asma discusses the “unthinkable,” or the breakdown of intelligibility as monstrous.

The absence of rationality is scary. Monsters are therefore matters of perception. He explains that

“monsters are demonized by people who stand to benefit from the derogatory labeling… monsters are ‘constructed’ to serve as scapegoats” (Asma 10). A general example of Asma’s assertion is the misunderstood othered character. To Asma, monsters are social constructs based on fear. Asma indicates that based on the Latin word monstrum, which derives from the root monere (to warn), allows people to think of the monster as an omen which makes the monster a figure who is immediately symbolic. People conceptually map inhuman qualities onto a person deemed “monstrous.” In the texts I analyze, the monsters are not traditional Others. Their own self-image separates them from the rest of the student body and they other themselves. They become Others because of their social status as the “perfect” or “ideal” version of the adolescent female.

The monstrous can also take on a sexual role, and in Jennifer’s Body, Jennifer uses her sexuality to lure male victims. In his discussion of modern horror films, Asma points out that the moral of many horror films is that sexual sin leads to death. This tradition is found in Jennifer’s

Body as Jennifer uses sexual desire to seduce the young men who become her meals, and also

Egan 15 initiates intimacy with Needy, who destroys her. Asma says it boils down to “erotically charged young folks experiment with sexuality, libido rises, and sexual ecstasy is replaced with a violent climax of blood and death” (Asma 195). Sexuality therefore becomes monstrous. “So Perfect,” challenges this tradition. The murdered character meets an untimely death due to the ridicule she receives from her monstrous classmates, not because of sexuality. Asma touches on the theory that too much sexual repression “causes neurotic individuals and societies, so horror films come to the rescue to release the pent-up pressures” (196). According to this theory, horror films allow people to scream and release anxiety in a cathartic manner, and they have a therapeutic effect.

Asma also explains what he refers to as a more “hardcore” Freudian argument of horror. In every civilization, “emerging adolescent sexuality is always fraught with intense repression pressures,” therefore the genre of “torture porn,” or horror films in which young people are brutally punished for being sexually active and curious, is just a catharsis of “build-up adolescent sexual energy”

(202). This subgenre can be categorized alongside the horror , the genre The Last

Final Girl plays with. A discussion of the slasher tradition will be covered at length in Chapter

Three.

Since I am using both the gothic and horror genres, Ashley Craig Lancaster puts the monstrous Other in the context of American Gothic, which helps to explain how the monsters in

Jennifer’s Body, “So Perfect,” and The Last Final Girl raise questions as to who is othered. In her essay “The Evolving Gothic Monster,” Lancaster claims, “American Gothicism shares [a] goal of exposing the Other and society's condemnation of this subset of outsiders” (Lancaster

133). By transforming the human Other into something monstrous, Lancaster claims that

American Gothic exposes, and in many cases critiques society’s condemnation of the Other. She goes on to explain that “by representing the human other, American Gothicism denies readers the

Egan 16 opportunity to dismiss these outsiders entirely” (133). American Gothic forces its readers to acknowledge not only the presence of the Other, but also invites readers to critique the treatment of the Other. Because the Other is often transformed into a monster, the gothic writer often provokes the reader to decide whether the work promotes the othering or criticizes it. Jennifer’s

Body provokes the same question. It could be argued that the film promotes Jennifer’s otherness by turning the mean girl monstrous, but it could also criticize Jennifer as a strong female seeking revenge. I will be arguing in favor of the first assertion that Jennifer is othered as the mean girl.

Jennifer as monster critiques the category of the mean girl, a trope that is not typically perceived as Other.

Body Image & Sexuality: Women as Monsters

In addition to monstrosity, it is important to note the role of female body image in literature and contemporary U.S. culture because all three texts deal with female monsters that represent the cultural “ideal” of beauty. It is no secret that women are objectified in mainstream media and

U.S. culture. People are forced to see it every day, even if they try not to. Beautiful women are plastered all over billboards along the freeway, large advertisements on buildings, in magazines, and all over media. The fact that these advertisements portray unnatural and unrealistic perfection is also not a new concept. Countless scholars have examined the portrayal of women in works of literature, but for this thesis, I will only touch on a few most relevant for my target primary texts and genre.

The idealized body image and heteronormative feminine beauty generates monstrosity in

“So Perfect,” The Last Final Girl, and Jennifer’s Body. This monstrosity also relates to issues of sexuality and agency specifically explored in feminist readings of young adult fiction. In her

Egan 17 essay, “Pleasure, Pain, and the Power of Being Thin,” Beth Younger analyzes several young adult novels that reference teen body image and weight as they correspond to the particular character’s sexuality. She asserts that “young adult fiction reflects anxiety about female bodies”

(Younger 45), and in the texts I explore, body anxiety becomes monstrous. Younger claims that the female “protagonists derive their power from their looks; they are in control, powerful, responsible, and ultra-thin” (46). Jennifer, Tammy, Brianne, and Lindsay are all popular, young, and thin, and I agree with Younger’s assertion that such characters derive their power from knowing they possess the “perfect” body, or the “cultural ideal of ultra-thinness [that is] a necessary component to self-confidence” (49). Younger believes the notion that “female power, sexual and otherwise, is connected to a thin, lean body” (52) is a common theme among young adult novels with female protagonists. I argue that what Younger deems the “unrealistic standard of beauty” (Younger 54) manifests as the monstrous in my target texts. This monstrous standard of beauty changes the dynamics of the discussion about female power.

Laura Mulvey’s argument in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is important in looking at Jennifer’s Body and The Last Final Girl because these texts use the voyeuristic camera lens to address the sexual objectification of female characters. However, the texts also complicate Mulvey’s claims about women as victims of a surveilling and sexualizing gaze by giving agency to the non-monstrous female protagonists who have to spy in order to survive.

Mulvey describes the woman as an “alien presence” (Mulvey 33). The woman is objectified, and the way women are framed in the cinematic lens mimics the voyeuristic heterosexual .

The female has no agency, but rather, her mere objectified existence acts as the force that drives the development of the male protagonist. The horror works I examine defy the typical voyeurism by giving agency to the female non-monstrous characters. However, Jones’ narration style in The

Egan 18

Last Final Girl turns the reader into a voyeur, thus complicating Mulvey’s idea of the gaze.

Although the monstrous female is still controlled by her monstrosity, in Jennifer’s Body, Needy,

Jennifer’s best friend, takes it upon herself to destroy the demonic Jennifer, and proceeds to destroy the men who created the demon.

Carol J. Clover provides an extensive discussion of gender in the horror film in her book

Men, Women and Chainsaws. Clover explains the conventions of horror films through a gender conscious lens. She states, “the functions of monster and are far more frequently represented by males and the function of victim far more garnished by females” (Clover 12). It is not difficult to notice this tradition in the films Clover discusses. Clover examines several films in which the monster is male and his victims are female, pointing to several trends that characterize the monster and victim tropes. The monsters are typically men, but they either possess female qualities or sexual confusion. Clover argues that “to the extent that the monster is constructed as feminine, the horror film thus expresses female desire only to show how monstrous it is” (47). The horror works I discuss challenge these traditions. It is not female sexual desire that is monstrous in these texts. I argue that it is their manipulation and obsessive drive for perfection that is monstrous. Clover also covers the slasher genre extensively, and coins the term “final girl,” laying out the trope. Her discussion of final girls is crucial for a discussion on The Last Final Girl, and will be examined at length in Chapter Three.

The concept of the abject runs through Jennifer’s Body and “So Perfect” as repulsive bodily fluids seep through and overcome the monstrous characters. In An Essay on Abjection,

Julia Kristeva establishes the horror of the abject, which, as she explains, reminds people of their humanity. She explains that “refuse and corpses show [her] what [she] permanently thrust[s] aside in order to live. These body fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly

Egan 19 and with difficulty, on the part of death. There, [she is] at the border of [her] condition as a living being” (Kristeva 3). In “So Perfect,” the “body fluid” Kristeva refers to leads Tammy and

Brianne down a monstrous path, and in Jennifer’s Body, it is the first indication that Jennifer is no longer human. The abject in these two texts aids in establishing the monstrous identities.

Kristeva’s abject is also useful in discussing monsters. In addition to repulsive abject bodies, the concept is expanded to cover “what disturbs identity, system, order” (4). A monster, therefore is abject by definition because it disturbs order. In ’s The Monstrous Feminine, she explains that “all human societies have a conception of the monstrous-feminine, of what it is about woman that is shocking, terrifying, abject” (Creed 1). According to Creed, societies see woman herself as abject, and therefore terrifying and monstrous because of the monstrous- feminine’s original construction “within/by a patriarchal and phallocentric ideology1” (2). The monstrous-feminine has also been generally discussed “as part of male monstrosity” (3). In The

Last Final Girl, Lindsay engages in monstrous actions typically performed by male slashers, and part of the final girl trope is that she is not entirely feminine and possesses male qualities.

However, I will be focusing on how the monstrosity in these texts is ultimately caused by social constructs that call for young females to be “perfect.”

Monstrous Desire and the Grotesque

A monster’s grotesque nature, in part makes it horrifying, but the primary texts in this thesis utilize the grotesque in a different way. I argue that the desire for unattainable beauty standards results in a grotesque identity, thus proving the standards themselves to be grotesque and monstrous. The characters’ desire for the unattainable transforms into grotesque behavior,

1 Creed discusses monsters of Greek mythology, the Medusa in particular. According to Freud, “the Medusa’s head takes the place of a representation of the female genitals” (Creed 2), and the myth is a narrative about the difference between male and female sexuality. Female sexuality is seen as monstrous.

Egan 20 but not always a grotesque appearance. The exception is Lindsay in The Last Final Girl, who does not display a visually grotesque appearance. Tammy and Brianne become horrifically consumed by ticks, Brianne mutilates her intestines, and Jennifer’s demonic body is complete with yellow and black inhuman eyes and an abnormally large mouth with monstrously sharp teeth. The presence of blood also defines the grotesque bodies in these texts. Tammy and

Brianne are covered in their own blood that the parasitic ticks steal from them, and Jennifer is covered in the blood of her devoured victims. In both cases, the grotesque appearance is the direct result of attempting to achieve an unnatural and impossibly “perfect” appearance. Tammy and Brianne hope to be dangerously thin, and Jennifer consumes humans to stay beautiful. The desire for the unattainable beauty standard transforms into the desire for the abject and grotesque.

Diablo Cody & Jennifer’s Body

Jennifer’s Body (2009) is teen horror comedy directed by Karyn Kusama that was not quite as successful as it was expected to be. Writer Diablo Cody (her most notable film is Juno) expressed her desire to present “a story about female empowerment in a genre that is frequently male dominated” (Laycock 1). In his review of the film in the Journal of Religion and Film,

Joseph Laycock points out several different lenses through which the film can be analyzed. One is the feminist point of view in which “the film presents several interesting twists on popular conceptions of the demonic and its relationship to the feminine” (1). In his view, the film makes it unclear whether or not Jennifer becomes more evil after her transformation because she was already the high school “mean girl.” The second is the religious lens where Laycock’s opinions seem to resonate most. He claims that the demonic element of Jennifer’s monstrosity exposes an anxiety about the satanic. The band members are evil and obsessed with fame, but I would argue

Egan 21 that the band is not satanic. In the film flashback to the creation of the demon, the members show incompetence with the rituals to transform Jennifer, which is why their plan backfires. The members will do anything to be famous, and the option they choose happens to be a satanic ritual.

While Laycock focuses on the demonic and satanic anxieties represented in the film, I read the band’s fixation on fame as analogous to the social pressures of perfection and notoriety as symbolized by the socially acceptable and idealized beauty of Jennifer’s human female body.

Fame and perfection should be examined as the truly monstrous factors in addition to what

Laycock has covered regarding demonism and the satanic.

In an interview with Midnites for Maniacs, Diablo Cody stated her goal of creating a feminist horror movie. She is critical of the fact that “women aren’t allowed to be anti-heroes” in the horror genre and “aren’t allowed to be as complicated as men” (Guillen). Cody’s frustration with women’s roles in the horror genre is reflected through Jennifer’s monstrosity and Needy’s complicated identity.

A.O. Scott and Michelle Orange choose to explore the film through a feminist lens, as will I. In Scott’s review of the film, he explains that it “take[s] up a theme shared by slasher films and teenage comedies — that queasy, panicky fascination with female sexuality that we all know and sublimate — and turn[s] it inside out” (Scott). His use of the phrase “inside out” to explain how the shift in the female-as-victim horror tradition holds more meaning when applied to the discussion of the monstrous body. In Chapter Two, I will argue that Jennifer’s monstrous

“mean girl” identity and the monstrous vision of physical perfection is turned “inside out” and physically exposed as her demonic body. Scott also draws attention to the fact that Jennifer is always an object, whether it be the object of lust or the object of demonic vengeance. I argue that

Jennifer’s role as object both as a monster and as a female exposes her lack of agency. The

Egan 22 female with agency in Jennifer’s Body is Needy, who kills the monster and those responsible for

Jennifer’s transformation.

Michelle Orange situates the film among the greater horror/slasher tradition, calling attention to Clover’s assertion that in slasher films, women viewers’ only option is to identify with the female victim-hero. In Jennifer’s Body, Cody and Kusama present the audience with

Needy and Jennifer, both strong female characters who together “present a portrait of female identity in flux” (Orange.) Combined, the monstrous, vengeful Jennifer and the down-to-earth

Needy create a spectrum of female identity driven by expectations of perfection.

Stephen Graham Jones

Jones is a prominent figure of contemporary and offers a great deal of insight on writing in the genre. In an interview with The Denver Magazine, he explains what to him, makes something scary. He asserts, “Something is scary if it seems both possible and likely. The more real you make your werewolf, and the more you put your reader in its possible victim pool, the scarier that werewolf is” (Watson). For a work of fiction to be scary, its events must seem possible. Jones does this in his own stories, depicting average people who stumble into horrific circumstances. He does not place his characters in a mythical setting that immediately alludes to fantasy, but rather uses a world that mirrors the world of the reader and adds a horrifying twist.

The monstrous in The Last Final Girl, Jennifer’s Body and “So Perfect” creates the horrifying twist in the mean girl narrative. In “So Perfect,” this horrifying twist is the monstrous identity that is brought about by obsession with physical appearance. Jones adds to his discussion of fiction in an interview with Weird Fiction. He explains that to him, the purpose of “weird fiction” or horror is to “unsettle” the reader, but to also to “make the world bigger than you ever thought

Egan 23 it was, or could be” (Vandermeer). With his depictions of average characters experiencing monstrous transformations, “So Perfect” succeeds in making the world bigger than the reader

“ever thought it could be.” Jones insists on making horror seem real, and in doing so, he creates a believable world in which the monstrosities he depicts can be the reality. The characters in The

Last Final Girl take this idea literally, and turn real life into a horror film, expanding their world to include the fictitious.

In addition to being a horror writer, Jones is also a Native American writer; Jones is

Blackfeet. His earlier novel, The Fast Red Road is described as “self-consciously, in-your-face

Indian” (Kinsella 24). The selections that I am discussing however are less so. In her author profile of Jones, Bridgett Kinsella explains how Jones does not want to be “pigeonholed” as just a Native American writer. He goes into more detail about his Native American influence in an interview with Horror Novel Reviews. He explains how his Blackfeet identity influences him the way any other identity would:

I guess [being Native American influences me] in the same way being from Texas or

being a guy or a dad or a husband does. Just, stuff that’s who I am, that I don’t even have

to think about. It doesn’t give me an agenda or a checklist or a mission, though. My

mission’s always just to tell the best story I can, then sell it, get it out into the world.

(Wisniewski)

Jones therefore writes about what he knows, and his purpose for writing, as he explains, is to write the best story. He indicates that he does not deliberately write with a particular agenda other than creating the best story possible. According to Stratton, “all of the stories he writes and shares emerge out of and draw significance from just such a Native understanding of the world” (Stratton 11). Jones’ Nativeness is part of his identity and his worldview, and I would

Egan 24 argue that all writers’ bring their identities and worldviews into their writing. Although Jones does not want to be identified as just a Native American writer, it is impossible to set aside this element of his storytelling. Native identities do play a role in my discussion of The Last Final

Girl and “So Perfect,” but I focus on how Jones has a way of relating to the greater human experience through his horror.

Overview

There isn’t one cohesive definition of “monster,” as the definition varies among texts and contexts. However, monsters are generally ugly, unreasonable, unnatural, overwhelmingly powerful, evil, and misunderstood. This brings me to wonder, is there a fear of imperfection or perfection? The texts I explore portray a fear of perfection, which is different from previous horror works that use the strange, misunderstood, imperfect Other as the monster. To conclude,

Asma explains how one of the greatest human fears is the loss of freewill. Jennifer, Brianne,

Tammy, and Lindsay all have an obsession with various kinds of female perfection that strips them from their free will and they become “possessed” by the monstrous notion of perfection. In the chapters that follow, I discuss how the monstrous identities in “So Perfect,” Jennifer’s Body, and The Last Final Girl embody the theories of monstrosity and femininity I have laid out, and how they utilize the mean girl narrative in order to expose the dangerous nature of U.S. culture’s view of female embodiment and social roles.

My exploration of monstrous female bodies develops across the next three chapters. First, I examine Stephen Graham Jones’ “So Perfect.” In this chapter, I read Tammy and Brianne as monsters a la the mean girl narrative pattern and consider how their monstrosity is a critique of

U.S. American culture’s obsession with young female sexuality and outward perfection. Chapter

Egan 25

Two focuses on Jennifer’s Body where I explain how the film parodies the same obsession with young female sexuality and outward perfection as “So Perfect.” Although it is common to interpret the film as utilizing a female demon to seek revenge on men, I interpret Jennifer’s demonic side as a critique of perfection. I explain the importance of the film being titled

Jennifer’s “Body,” how Jennifer’s “frenemy,” Needy, who kills the demon and becomes demonic herself comes into play, and how Jennifer’s monstrosity is defined by her appearance.

The final chapter explores Jones’ meta-slasher novel The Last Final Girl. In this chapter, I argue that Lindsay’s obsession with being the “perfect” final girl parallels the trend of U.S. American teenage girls’ obsessions with and categorizations. As she brings a fantasy world to life, she constructs a horror that allows a place for her false identity. This chapter ties in the ideas of beauty, perfection, and obsession discussed in the earlier chapters.

Egan 26

I Perverse Obsession & Monstrous Mean Girls in “So Perfect”

The monstrous female characters in Stephen Graham Jones’ horror fiction critique the unnatural, monstrous nature of society’s expectations of female perfection. In his short story, “So

Perfect,” Tammy and Brianne’s desire for physical perfection becomes monstrous as they go to repulsive lengths to achieve thin bodies, ultimately destroying their humanity. Jones’ teenage female characters are obsessed with being “perfect” or “ideal” versions of young female stereotypes. Jones’ short story uses the high school “mean girl” and adds a monstrously horrifying twist to this narrative style, exposing the monstrosity of obsession with female perfection. The mean girl narrative documents the rise and fall of a high school mean girl who torments her classmates, but is still adored for being “perfect.” “So Perfect” pushes this narrative style to the extreme by portraying the mean girl as physically monstrous. Jones’ text does not portray femininity as monstrous, as is seen in previous horror works such as Teeth and Carrie.

Instead, it portrays obsession with appearance and manipulation to conform to the idealized notion of perfection as monstrous.

In “So Perfect,” gothic perversion and obsession join forces, driving the characters to their human demise, and allowing a monster within to rise to power. In this short story, Jones’ horror portrays the development of the un-human side of characters who go to perverse lengths to establish an image of how they want to be seen by others. The result is an identity that fuses monster and human creating fusion figures, as established by Carroll. Their obsession with social image drives them to achieve their goal in the most perverse way. A comparison of Jones’s characters to the concept of the perverse established in Edgar Allen Poe’s “Imp of the Perverse” highlights the gothic character structure and development used by Jones. The perverse obsession with social image and reputation subsumes the many humanizing qualities of Tammy and

Egan 27

Brianne and makes way for a monstrous identity to rise in its place, thus reveals how socially idealized images of perfection and social expectation are truly monstrous and can be detrimental to the self. Jones plays with the conventional gothic monster, and the mean girl narrative, revealing the monstrous nature of cultural expectation.

The introduction to The Faster Redder Road provides insight for how to examine the short stories in the collection. Theodore Van Alst makes a point to explain that “finally, when [he] read these stories, unless [he’s] told otherwise, all of the characters are Indian. But best of all, very best of all, they’re incidentally Indian” (Van Alst xiv). In the stories within this collection,

Jones does not explain any character’s Native identity; it is assumed. “So Perfect,” however, is an exception. Jones has a way of describing appearance to indicate racial difference and in this story, the othered character, Joy, is made fun of in part because of her tan skin. Although the skin color of Tammy and Brianne is not specified, the fact that Joy’s tan skin plays a role in her ridicule indicates her racial difference. Jones’ ability to write Native characters without having to explain their Native identity is part of Jones’ skill in moving “across boundaries” (Van Alst xv).

In addition, he crosses narrative boundaries in a complex way in “So Perfect” by turning a teenage mean girl narrative into a perverse gothic monster tale.

Gothic and Horror Conventions

The field of American Gothic scholarship provides a useful starting point for my consideration of “So Perfect” because of its focus on U.S. American anxieties. Jones’ fiction as a whole fits into the genre of American Gothic, as his stories capture many of the characteristics outlined by gothic scholars, while also addressing issues unique to U.S. American society and even more specially Native American issues. The monstrosity in “So Perfect” represents a shift

Egan 28 in the monster-as-Other tradition by portraying the “it girls” as the monsters. Rather than the monster being a marginalized figure, the monster is the most desirable and popular female.

Since I am using both the gothic and horror genres, Ashley Craig Lancaster puts the monstrous Other in the context of American Gothic, which helps to explain how the monsters in

“So Perfect” raise questions as to who is othered. In her essay “The Evolving Gothic Monster,”

Lancaster claims, “American Gothicism shares [a] goal of exposing the Other and society's condemnation of this subset of outsiders” (Lancaster 133). By transforming the human Other into something monstrous, Lancaster claims that American Gothic exposes, and in many cases critiques society’s condemnation of the Other. She goes on to explain that “by representing the human Other, American Gothicism denies readers the opportunity to dismiss these outsiders entirely” (133). American Gothic forces its readers to acknowledge not only the presence of the

Other, but also invites readers to critique the treatment of the Other. Because the Other is often transformed into a monster, the Gothic writer often provokes the reader to decide whether the work promotes the Othering or criticizes it. For “So Perfect” in particular, my analysis supports the notion that mean-girl-as-Other indicates an uncanny not-so-human quality to the trope.

“So Perfect” pushes narrative boundaries by refusing to portray its main characters as victims. Although Tammy and Brianne adhere to the social construct, they choose this monstrous path by giving up their free will and succumbing to the constructed ideal physical image. Carol

Clover and Barbara Creed both analyze the role of the female victim in their discussions of women in the horror genre. Clover states, “the functions of monster and hero are far more frequently represented by males and the function of victim far more garnished by females”

(Clover 12). Jones inverts these roles. In “So Perfect,” the monsters are entirely female, and men play minor roles in the story. Clover does discuss female monsters, arguing that “to the extent

Egan 29 that the monster is constructed as feminine, the horror film thus expresses female desire only to show how monstrous it is” (47). It is not female sexual desire that is monstrous in this text, but rather, the manipulation and obsessive drive for perfection that is monstrous. This obsessive drive for the ideal is a form of desire, but the desire is not driven by femaleness. It is driven by the social construct of female perfection.

I will attempt to contribute a new addition to how we look at female monsters of the gothic and horror genres in my discussion of all three target texts; that is, looking at the monstrosity of constructed female identities. Barbara Creed points out that “very little …work has discussed the representation of woman-as-monster. Instead, emphasis has been on woman as victim of the

(mainly male) monster” (Creed 1). Tammy and Brianne are never victims; they are always the instigators. They know how to manipulate teenage boys, and they manipulate (and ultimately kill) the othered female student, Joy. Part of their monstrosity comes from the fact that they find a perverse pleasure in this manipulation of others.

Carroll, Cohen, and Asma each lay out numerous monstrous concepts that apply to monsters of horror across the board, but not all concepts apply to all monsters. One of the most important aspects of the monstrous that applies to Tammy and Brianne is that they “refuse categorization” (Cohen 6). Carroll also spends much time on this concept, and believes horror reveals the chilling anxiety that things that cross the boundaries of “the deep categories of a culture’s conceptual scheme are impure” (Carroll 32). Carroll asserts that monsters are impure if they are categorically interstitial, contradictory, incomplete, or formless. Monsters are not classifiable according to our recognizable cultural standards, so they are othered. They are indescribable and inconceivable. Horrific monsters are a mixture of what is normally distinct.

Tammy and Brianne become this mixture. They perform inhuman acts as they consume products

Egan 30 not meant for humans in order to construct an impossible “ideal” image. While they do fall into the category of “mean girl,” they break its boundaries by engaging in perverse and monstrous acts.

One of American Gothic’s most notable writers, Edgar Allen Poe outlines the gothic concept of “the perverse” in his short story, “The Imp of the Perverse.” In the story, the murderous narrator describes how perversion makes particular unthinkable actions irresistible.

He explains that the spirit of the perverse prompts individuals to act for the very reason he or she should not, and this particular act “with certain minds, under certain circumstances… becomes absolutely irresistible” (Poe 403). A perverse action, therefore is done for the very reasons one should not perform this action. Poe uses the image of an imp, a small devilish being or spirit. The

“imp” of the perverse, therefore is the driving force of perversion that prompts the individual to act in perverse ways. There must be a particular circumstance that causes the imp of the perverse to prompt the individual. In Jones’ “So Perfect,” obsession is the circumstance that Poe attributes to the cause of perversion. The characters become obsessed with a particular act or image that seems normal at first. Tammy and Brianne are obsessed with attention and their looks. While this obsession is not necessarily healthy, it is quite common among adolescents. The characters however let these obsessions control them, and the obsession takes them down a disturbingly perverse path of human self-destruction. As the human self is destroyed, the monstrous identity takes form.

Kristeva links the perverse with the abject; thus explaining the monstrosity of Tammy and Brianne’s actions. She argues that “the abject is perverse because it neither gives up nor assumes a prohibition, a rule, or a law; but turns them aside, misleads, corrupts, uses them, takes advantage of them, the better to deny them” (Kristeva 15). The abject is perverse because it

Egan 31 corrupts norms, making them uncanny. As Brianne finds a perverse joy in her stomach mutilation, she corrupts her body in a way that is unthinkable and deadly.

The monstrous identities that Tammy and Brianne create are in part monstrous due to their abjectness. Anne Williams builds on the ideas of Gothic conventions as she discusses Julia

Kristeva’s concept of abjection as it fits into the genre, and I argue that this concept helps to define Tammy and Brianne’s monstrosity. Kristeva asserts that to truly discover oneself, one must know the abject parts of the self, this being one's insides, or repulsive parts. One must distinguish the inside from the outside. Williams’ interpretation of Kristeva states that the conventional aspects of gothic horror, such as blood, decay and dead bodies “echo the abject”

(Williams 75). This is the most dramatic abjection, and “serves as a sign of violence and murderous passions” (75). I would conclude that in the case of “So Perfect,” the discovery of the abject body instills an identity crisis that adds to Tammy and Brianne’s monstrous transformation. In the scene when Brianne cuts into herself, she manipulates her abject parts and therefore rediscovers them. If, according to Kristeva one must discover and distinguish oneself from the abject parts, Brianne is doing the opposite. Rather than distinguishing the inside from the outside, she is changing the inside in order to effect the image on the outside. She is reverting back to what Kristeva refers to as the infantile stage before the self is discovered, and I argue that because of this, she is attempting to recreate a new monstrous identity.

Monstrous Idealization Leads to Monstrous Identities

Tammy and Brianne are seventeen-year-old high school bridesmaids obsessed with being thin. After Brianne’s father loses thirteen pounds due to accidental consumption of tick repellant, the friends discover their way of achieving the “perfect” body. They begin consuming the tick

Egan 32 repellent, which causes them to vomit profusely, and just as they hoped, they each lose weight.

After a bridesmaid is kicked out of the bridal party, the girls choose Joy, the school’s outcast to be the replacement. They have ulterior motives for Joy, who has a different skin color and body type, and find a perverse thrill in ridiculing her. They convince her to lose weight the same way they have, with the tick repellant, but plan to give her a larger dose with red food coloring just in time for her to appear to explode during the wedding. This plan backfires when Joy takes a larger dose too soon, and their prank happens for real, killing Joy. Too focused on themselves, Tammy and Brianne continue to prepare for the wedding, where Joy’s memory is inescapable, and the girls’ monstrosity becomes evident as they become horrifically covered in ticks and blood. After the traumatizing event, Brianne finds out she is pregnant and miscarries, ultimately upset over the fact that her body will reabsorb the miscarriage. Brianne’s final monstrously perverse act is when she is in the basement, joyfully mutilating her intestines in hopes to never gain weight again.

Tammy and Brianne are the “mean girl” type, but this type develops into a monstrous version of the mean girl. In the opening paragraphs of the short story, the narrator draws the reader’s attention to the type of “killers” that star in this narrative. The narrator says, “As for

Tammy and Brianne, you’ve seen them before, at the malls and department stores” (Jones “So

Perfect” 37). It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the Tammy and Brianne “type,” the high school girls who hang out at the mall and care too much about their appearance. This is not to say that all characters who fit these qualities are “mean girls,” but the fact that Jones immediately establishes Tammy and Brianne as “killers” and a type that “you’ve seen before” indicates that they are just typical girls who hang out at a mall, with a horrifying twist. By also establishing them as killers in the first line of the story, the reader is to assume that they are the

Egan 33 story’s monsters. Tammy and Brianne desperately want to be the center of attention and desire, so they obsessively consume tick repellant in order to achieve a perfectly thin body. It becomes a drug for them. The result is extreme illness for weeks, but the girls find pleasure in their perilous vomiting. The logical mind would find this repulsive, however, the spirit of Poe’s perverse is evident in Tammy and Brianne’s decisions because the sicker and more abject they become, the more they cannot resist. The girls’ humanity is then questioned and challenged when their obsession is taken to an even more perverse extreme as Brianne finds joy in physically mutilating her intestines.

The transformation of Tammy and Brianne into monsters is a process, with several different forces driving their monstrosity. The first step in their monstrous transformation is the perverse treatment of their human bodies. When readers are first introduced to the girls, they are introduced to a few “typical conversations” (37) in which Tammy asks Brianne what she had for lunch:

“Just coffee.”

“You’re lying. It had whipped cream on it.”

“Pig.”

“Slut.” (38)

This is the first indication we get that they have an obsession with appearance. Tammy criticizes

Brianne’s body by accusing her of having whipped cream with her coffee, the only substance

Brianne has consumed for the day. It is then confirmed that they have an obsession with body image when Tammy “makes a production of cinching the belt in over and over again, like it won’t get small enough for her” (41). Jones establishes the characters as image-driven teenagers with obsessive personalities. They are also abusive to one another by using derogatory language

Egan 34 to promote their obsession with appearance. As they call each other “pig” and “slut,” they ridicule each other in order to show that they are currently far from perfect, and need to continue to harm their own bodies to achieve their desired image.

It is after they discover Brianne’s dad’s profuse weight loss due to tick repellant poisoning when the abject and monstrous nature of their obsession starts to form. They take single doses of the tick repellant, vomit their “excess” weight, and repeat. Tammy’s physical humanity starts to deteriorate when her self-inflicted poor health causes her “fingernail to break off while washing her hair and the blood from her scalp seeps down over her face. The only reason she realizes it’s blood, even, is that its gritty. And she’s throwing up again, and more”

(45). As Tammy’s fingernail breaks off and blood runs down her face, her outer appearance is decaying. The more she tries to look perfect, the more abject she becomes. Her fingernail breaks off, exposing her blood, and she throws up “more.” The monstrosity inside of her begins to seep through as her repulsive human fluids continue to show more and more.

Another force that leads to their monstrosity is their torturous acts toward their Native

American2 classmate, Joy. Their torture and manipulation of Joy makes her the othered character in this story, but the behavior of Tammy and Brianne is what is monstrous. Joy’s difference dominates Tammy and Brianne’s discussion. Joy is introduced at the very beginning of the story in a “typical Tammy/Brianne conversation” (37). As Tammy and Brianne are introduced, their first conversation is about Joy:

“And did you see her name tag?”

“Don’t even start.”

“Like I would be using somebody else’s credit card though? Please.”

2 Tammy discusses Joy’s tan skin color as a good contrast to the bride’s maid dress (50). Although Van Alst sees all characters in this collection as Native, the fact that Tammy draws attention to Joy’s “tan” skin color indicates that Joy’s skin color is different from Tammy’s.

Egan 35

“Shh, shh. She might be listening. Her dad’s got to be in prison or something, right? To

let her work at a register like that?” … The girl they’re talking about here is Joy Kane,

known in the halls of Danforth as “Candy Cane” because of the red-and-white stockings

she wears every day. Her job is adding tax to purchases of her classmates, and checking

identification. And her father isn’t in prison; he’s dead. (37)

This conversation occurs on the first page of the story as Tammy and Brianne are shopping. Joy is the cashier, and the girls ridicule her for her job situation. It is evident in Jones’ narrative description of Joy’s employment that she is of a lower socioeconomic status than Tammy and

Brianne. It is assumed that Tammy and Brianne are privileged enough to not have to work. What is portrayed in this first conversation is that as much as they dislike Joy, she is still the center of their attention.

Tammy and Brianne’s monstrous treatment of Joy manifests when they attempt to take advantage of and humiliate her by asking her to be a bridesmaid in the wedding. This attempt ultimately kills Joy. They begin by telling Joy she must change her body by losing an impossible amount of weight in order to fit into the dress, be in the wedding, and receive male attention. In other words, she must change her outward appearance to adhere to the dominant culture’s “ideal.”

They explain to her that she “just need[s] to slim down a bit… by Saturday… ten pounds” (48).

They proceed to convince Joy that in order to slim down as quickly and effectively as they did, she should use the same method, tick repellant. Joy must use an inhuman and dangerous method to achieve the preferred image. However, Tammy and Brianne lie about what it really is, telling her it is “just some diet stuff…We stole it from her mom. She got it in Greece or somewhere”

(51). By lying to Joy about the “diet stuff,” they trick her into accepting their destructive behavior. The monstrous desired outcome of this lie is revealed when the narrator explains:

Egan 36

The punch line of the joke is supposed to be giving Joy enough antacids or something the

day of the wedding that she stops throwing up, and then give her another just before the

ceremony. Only that last tablet is something else. Red food dye, maybe, so it looks like

she’s dying, turning inside out at the altar. It’s going to be perfect. (51)

Jones alludes to the story’s title by tying in “it’s going to be perfect” at the end of this description.

The idea of “perfection” has multiple layers in addition to outward appearance. Tammy and

Brianne are also constructing the “perfect” scene of monstrous ridicule. By turning Joy “inside out,” Tammy and Brianne make a final attempt to other her. If she is turned inside out, she is no longer human in the normal sense. They attempt to turn her into something repulsive, something monstrous in the physical sense, something abject. Their plan however goes awry and Joy’s fictitious death becomes actual death. If we refer back to the definition of “monstrous” as inhumanly or outrageously evil or wrong, Tammy and Brianne’s destructive actions toward Joy are monstrous. Their actions are outrageously evil and wrong in the sense that they treat Joy as if she is less than human. Since it is implied that Joy possesses a different skin color than Tammy and Brianne, their treatment of her indicates that they do not believe she can fit their beauty standards because of her racial identity. By making it seem as though she is dying a violent death, they attempt to take away her humanity.

Traditionally, as established by Carroll, Asma, and Cohen, the monster of horror and gothic is the cultural Other, but “So Perfect” switches the role portraying the mean girls as monsters. In “So Perfect,” the cultural Other is Joy, but Joy is not the monster. The monsters in this story are popular, white suburban “it” girls. They ridicule the Other, and eventually manipulate her into crossing the border and sharing their desire to be thin. Tammy and Brianne eventually kill Joy after giving her too much tick repellant, but after her death, her memory still

Egan 37 haunts the girls. She is ghosted, but does not develop a monstrous identity like Tammy and

Brianne. Their othering of Joy fails because Joy comes back to haunt them throughout the rest of the story. Even during Joy’s sickening final moments, “it infects the classroom, the hall, and even the nurse when she gets there” (53). What “infects” the school is the essence of Joy’s death.

Tammy and Brianne’s influence could be seen as a virus, and once Joy caught that virus, it resulted in her gruesome death, proving this virus to be monstrous. As Joy is sitting in class, she begins to literally explode when “her throat isn’t big enough to turn her inside out [and] it starts seeping from the corners of her eyes too, and her nose” (53). She did not die quietly, but rather so violently that there was no escaping it, and it was all Tammy and Brianne’s doing. As she dies,

Joy fills the school, and metaphorically, everyone in it. Later at the wedding, the ghosted Joy is again inescapable. As Tammy looks out into the audience, she sees:

… On their lapels, they’re all wearing black - ribbons? For Joy. Of course. The bitch. She

can’t even let Tammy and Brianne have this one day… Tammy closed her eyes. Joy

again. The boots are the same “In Honor” … Tammy grits her teeth, smiles past it, then,

when it’s time to rotate forty degrees over to witness this travesty, she sees a flash of red-

and-white stripes somewhere in the pews… She’s dead, though, Joy. Dead dead dead. (56)

As Tammy “grits her teeth,” it is evident that she is disgusted by the fact that Joy, although dead, is still eating up the attention. The wedding guests and wedding party all pay tribute to Joy in some way and these reminders of her death haunt her murderers. The narrator repeats the word

“dead” as if Tammy hopes that by telling herself Joy is dead, Joy’s memory will disappear as well. Joy, the cultural Other is not the monster in this case. The monstrous Tammy and Brianne are not culturally marginalized figures, but rather, the cultural “ideal.” Through this unique portrayal of monstrous identity, an anxiety toward cultural expectations is evident. If the gothic

Egan 38 monster is the cultural and human Other, Jones plays with this gothic element, using it to expose anxieties toward unrealistic social expectations, rather than cultural difference. What becomes terrifying is not the cultural Other, but rather the obsession within the dominant culture with body image and reputation that Tammy and Brianne take to an inhuman extreme. The image they are obsessed with is an ultra-thin body.

Tammy and Brianne’s monstrosity can be explained in part with a comparison to Asma’s discussion of monsters as human figures who act in inhumane ways. Humanity can be corrupted, thus driving monstrous actions, and it follows that everyone has the potential to become monstrous in this sense. He argues monsters can be people who do horrific things while still appearing human, and Tammy and Brianne appear human through most of the text as they ridicule classmates. This idea of monstrous human figures also applies to the high school mean girl trope, because she performs hideous social acts while still appearing to be the ideal female.

The monstrous identities in Tammy and Brianne become visible at the horrific and humiliating wedding in which the girls are bridesmaids. As the girls show bitter irritation toward the ever presence of Joy, something physically monstrous arises in both of them. Tammy “sees something shiny and brown grope out from under the left strap of Brianne’s dress. A tick, its body impossibly flat … one of those pregnant ticks, bursting. The grittiness in the blood, the tick’s blood, had been - it had been baby ticks” (56). The horror of seeing the tiny monsters escape Brianne’s body causes Tammy to feel sick to her stomach and she “… loses the rest all over the back of Brianne’s peach dress, and it’s red… but then the blood still coating her teeth… it’s gritty” (56-57). The reader has a vivid, horrific image of blood and insects escaping the bodies of two teenage girls. It is evident that these insects had been feeding on their bodies for

Egan 39 some time, and their obsessions with both their outward appearance and Joy distracted them from noticing the ticks.

Tammy becomes what Carroll defines as a “fusion monster,” in this scene. This monster category blurs the lines of cultural and physical distinction as the monster becomes a fusion of what is normally distinct. Tammy becomes a fusion of human and insect due to her perverse obsession. While on the altar, Tammy discovers that under her tongue, “lined there like pigs at a trough are the engorged bodies of nine ticks. And they’re bigger …like grapes, or cherry tomatoes, or plums… Tammy pulls on the first one until it pops, flooding her mouth with blood”

(57). The ticks manifest inside Tammy’s body, feeding on her. They have become part of her.

And these ticks aren’t just ticks, they are monstrously large ticks, as though Tammy’s monstrosity has transferred into her ticks. Her obsession backfires in the most horrific way. This image of Tammy builds on the monstrosity of the wedding scene. While the description of

Brianne instills the image of a monstrous human body, the image of Tammy instills the image of the monstrous tick. These “bigger” ticks can be classified alongside Carroll’s concept of monstrous magnification. A tick is typically the size of a sesame seed and increases in size the longer it is latched on to its host. These ticks however are the size of “plums,” monstrously large.

These ticks secretly invade, and cause Tammy and Brianne’s bodies to become monstrous hosts.

The substance they consume to achieve the perfect body is meant to repel the insect that eventually overcomes their insides. Monstrosity therefore is inevitable if one performs inhuman actions to achieve an impossible outcome.

The final action that drives the physical monstrous transformation is when Brianne mutilates her own insides. Brianne finds out she had a miscarriage and her body would absorb the excess fluids. Brianne, rather than expressing concern for the fact that she miscarried a child,

Egan 40 is mortified by the thought that the miscarriage would cause her to take in more calories than she allows herself. She asks the doctor,

“How many calories is that, do you think?” When nobody answers she decides it must be

a lot, a truly unmanageable amount, so, later that week, locked in the basement, hunched

over with an art knife, she does the procedure herself, and then decides that she might just

want to shorten those intestines too, maybe even loop them together front to back, so

they’re a closed system. (58)

Brianne’s perverse obsession with body image has consumed her, causing her to irrationally think her miscarriage is too many calories, and drives her to transform her insides into something un-human. By looping her intestines together so “they’re a closed system,”

Brianne would no longer have a human digestive system. In doing this monstrous act, Brianne ultimately destroys her humanity. As Jones portrays the identity of Tammy and Brianne as monstrous, he is pushing the mean girl narrative to the next level. In other prominent mean girl films, such as the iconic Mean Girls, Regina George, the meanest of the “plastic” clique and

Cady Heron both take a perverse pleasure in the manipulation of others for their benefit, but they do not cross the monstrous boundary. By the end, humanity is restored and the girls are civil with one another once again. In “So Perfect,” humanity is never restored in Tammy and Brianne, but is ultimately stripped from their identities. If their ultimate goal was to be “so perfect,” what is to be said about their monstrosity? In this short story, there is no such thing as perfection. The harder Tammy and Brianne try to fit into the constructed idea of the perfect female body, the less human they become.

Egan 41

II Mean Girls and Monsters in Jennifer’s Body

Teen cult films more often than not receive little scholarly attention. Jennifer’s Body

(2009) is one of those films. Despite being considered a flop at the box office, Diablo Cody and

Karyn Kusama’s 2009 horror comedy deserves scholarly attention as a feminist film that not only switches the traditional gender roles of female victims and male monsters, but also exposes and critiques the monstrous obsession with female physical perfection present in modern day U.S.

American culture. Along with Stephen Graham Jones’ “So Perfect” and The Last Final Girl,

Jennifer’s Body pushes narrative boundaries and plays with genre in order to create an exaggerated and campy portrayal of the horrific standards to which women are expected to adhere.

The monstrous female in Jennifer’s Body critiques the unnatural, monstrous nature of society’s expectations of physical female beauty. In the film, the popular and gorgeous Jennifer becomes demonic after a sacrifice to the devil goes wrong. As she seduces and devours the young men at her high school, it is easy to see Jennifer’s “body,” or Jennifer’s monstrous half as seeking revenge against those who objectify her, but my interpretation of the text focuses on what her monstrous half represents. Jennifer’s monstrous body exposes the monstrosity of social myths about beauty and perfection. Like my interpretation of “So Perfect,” my approach to examining monstrous female bodies in Jennifer’s Body differs from earlier interpretations of horror films’ representation of women’s bodies as freakish or monstrous regardless of beauty because Jennifer, like Tammy and Brianne, is the “ideal,” popular, and desirable female character. This text takes place in a high school setting, and the monster is not the misunderstood goth with black lipstick and facial piercings (although, Jennifer does eat a young man who possesses these qualities), but rather the most popular girl in school; the girl every guy wants and

Egan 42 other girls envy. Jennifer’s Body does not portray femininity or women themselves as inherently monstrous; it portrays social obsession with appearance and the manipulation of others who do not conform to the idealized notion of perfection as monstrous—in short, the systemic sexism of heteronormative patriarchy is the monster and the character type of the “mean girl” symbolizes and satirizes this social mechanism.

American Gothic and Questions of the Other

There is little specific critical scholarship about Jennifer’s Body. Aside from various reviews and articles in popular newspapers and magazines, the bulk of my research focuses on the scholarly trends previously discussed in relation to the horror and gothic genres and conversations about female monsters, as discussed in the introduction. Jennifer’s Body, written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, starring Megan Fox as Jennifer and Amanda

Seyfried as Needy is a horror comedy released in 2009 by Twentieth Century Fox. The film received mixed reviews, most of them mediocre (a 5.1/10 from ), and Cody understands why. In an interview with Midnites for Maniacs, Cody addresses the strangeness of the film. She explains, “It’s a weird movie and there are a lot of people who aren’t necessarily going to be loving it” (Guillen). Cody embraces the quirkiness of her film, and understands that

“what you ultimately see in the movie…is a neutered version of what we had originally planned.

It’s not scary enough but… it’s pretty funny” (Guillen). The humor in Jennifer’s Body adds to the critique of social standards by creating a horrific parody of a high school mean girl. If one examines this film as just a teenage horror date film, one will miss the film’s greater implications.

Admittedly, I was under the assumption that Jennifer’s Body would be just another irritating teenage film with Megan Fox as the love interest. I was wrong. I find it incredibly complex with

Egan 43 its pop culture references and dialogue, and although this chapter focuses mainly on female monstrosity, the film as a whole provides commentary on other social constructs, such as fame and greed. A few years after the film was released, I found a new interest in why Fox’s character was both humorously and horrifically portrayed as a monstrous “perfect” high school girl, and this interest drove me to study the film at length. I disliked Megan Fox, and after a close viewing of the film, I realized that’s part of the point. Megan Fox the actress represents the perfection of

Hollywood figures, and this film literally turns her into a monster.

A renewed and contemporary interest in the uncanny is apt for examining this contemporary work. Asma discusses that the rise of virtual humans, such as digital avatars and realistic video game characters, have created new ways for us to feel strangely unhomely.

Almost-human is creepier and more unsettling than a cartoonish exaggeration of a human; the category of “almost-human” will be a key reference point for my consideration of the seemingly human Jennifer. Asma also explains that Sartre redefined hell as “other people.” Needy, on the other hand, describes hell as “a teenage girl” (Kusama), indicating that the monster in this film is not the “Other,” but rather, the teenage Jennifer. Although classified as a horror comedy,

Jennifer’s Body modernizes American Gothic as pop culture gothic is weaved into the mean girl narrative through subtle nods to punk3 and gothic music, and “emo”4 culture.

Horrific monsters are a mixture of what is normally distinct, and Jennifer’s monstrosity mixes human and demon. Referring back to Carroll’s monster categories, Jennifer is a fission monster, a character who switches back and forth from monster to human, where the

“contradictory elements are … distributed over different identities” (Carroll 46). Carroll uses the

3 Nods to punk music include the “sticker toilet” inside Melody Lane that advertises the punk bands The Unseen and Time Again, a Four Year Strong poster in Chip’s bedroom, and Screeching Weasel’s cover of “I Can See Clearly” playing in Colin’s car while driving to meet Jennifer. 4 “Emo” refers to the adolescent subculture that emerged in the 2000s that popularized and normalized exaggerated teen angst. This subculture had its own genre, fashion, and artistic style.

Egan 44 example of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide to explain his fission concept. Jennifer becomes demonic, but her demon side is only visible when she feeds. Otherwise, she passes as human. The fact that she passes as human, or rather, the human manifestation of the ideal female body, indicates

Jennifer’s uncanny identity. Carroll’s monster figure creates unfamiliarity because of its mixture of difference. Jennifer, however is unfamiliar even before her monstrous transformation. Her objectification is foreign to Needy, who does not give in to Jennifer’s pressure to adhere to sexualized beauty standards. Recalling Pepetone’s American Gothic, the genre uses these monsters to expose personal and existential anxieties toward the contradictions that arise in

American culture. In Jennifer’s Body, the anxieties are toward what it takes to be popular in an

American high school setting.

The monstrous can also take on a sexual role, and in Jennifer’s Body, Jennifer uses her sexuality to lure male victims. In his discussion of modern horror films, Asma points out that the moral of many horror films is that sexual sin leads to death. One interpretation of Jennifer’s

Body could argue that the film shares this moral because Jennifer uses sexual desire to seduce the young men who become her meals, and also initiates intimacy with Needy, who destroys her. I am offering a different interpretation, that Jennifer uses her sexuality as a source of power.

Jennifer uses her sexuality to lure her male victims, and devours them once they give in. In slasher films, sexually active teenagers are usually the first victims, but Jennifer switches the role.

Rather than preying on other sexually active teens, which is typical in slasher films, she forces herself onto her own victims to give them what she assumes they desire, then consumes their flesh to make her beautiful.

Jennifer’s Body centers on American teenage anxieties, which puts the film into the

American Gothic genre. As stated by Lancaster, “American Gothicism shares [a] goal of

Egan 45 exposing the Other and society's condemnation of this subset of outsiders” (Lancaster 133). Like

“So Perfect,” Jennifer’s Body raises questions about who is othered because the film’s monster is a figure who is guilty of othering. In the American Gothic genre, the Other is often transformed into a monster, provoking the reader to decide whether the work promotes or criticizes the othering. Jennifer’s Body provokes the same question. It could be argued that the film promotes

Jennifer as an Other by turning the mean girl monstrous, but it could also criticize Jennifer’s othered position as a strong female seeking revenge. I argue in favor of the first assertion that

Jennifer is othered because of her social status as the monstrous mean girl. Jennifer is monstrous because of her treatment and othering of all students who do not live up to her standards. Since she puts everyone else into an inferior category, she separates and others herself, hence inflicting her own monstrosity.

Objectivity and Desire

Jennifer’s monstrous body is the manifestation of her othered “perfect” identity. Julia

Kristeva’s concept of the abject comes into play in a closer look of what Jennifer’s monstrous side represents. Jennifer’s identity is turned inside out once she becomes visually monstrous.

Jennifer has always been “high school evil” (Kusama), but as her demon side manifests, high school evil becomes truly evil. Jennifer becomes an abject monster. As her identity is turned inside out, Jennifer’s monstrosity is exposed and she becomes the epitome of a monstrous mean girl.

Jennifer is constantly portrayed as an object of desire, and Laura Mulvey’s assertion that the female on screen is an object of sexual desire, is important in looking at Jennifer’s Body. The text also defies this same claim by giving agency to the non-monstrous female protagonist.

Egan 46

Although the monstrous female is still controlled by her monstrosity, in Jennifer’s Body, Needy,

Jennifer’s best friend, takes it upon herself to destroy the demonic Jennifer, and proceeds to destroy the men who created the demon.

Jennifer as Camp

The humor in Kusama’s film comes from its campiness. In her essay, “Notes on Camp,”

Susan Sontag explains that “the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration” (Sontag 1). In the horror genre, Camp is the exaggeration of horror tropes that often expose themselves as absurd. While Camp is usually attributed to over exaggerated horror parodies such as the Scary Movie franchise and The Final Girls (2014), Jennifer’s Body can be seen as Camp through its monstrous exaggeration of Jennifer as a high school mean girl. Part of the downfall to the film’s ratings was the complaint that Jennifer’s Body wasn’t scary enough. I argue that this is due to its conscious campiness. Diablo Cody wrote a film meant to be humorous, and the goofy slang and over-the-top outfits don’t just add comic relief to the horror, they exaggerate the absurdity of the mean girl. For example, while at school after Jennifer has fed on a young man, she is wearing an over-the-top pink and red outfit covered with hearts, complete with large heart earrings and bright sparkly lip gloss. This is ironic because Jennifer consumes human hearts, and she is wearing them all over her body, as if she is flaunting her monstrosity. Jennifer literally wears her monstrous identity on her body, and her campy outfit aids in exposing the monstrosity.

Monstrous Mean Girls “Under the Influence of Teenage Hormones”

Egan 47

This monstrous mean girl narrative follows Needy’s journey of discovering and dealing with her best friend Jennifer’s monstrosity. After a rock band’s satanic sacrifice goes wrong,

Jennifer is transformed into a demon, and proceeds to devour her male classmates to stay beautiful. Needy, under the influence of the alluring Jennifer immediately knows that Jennifer has become truly evil. Needy is the only one who knows about Jennifer’s monstrosity, and is therefore the only one who can kill her. Once she does, Jennifer bites her shoulder transferring the demonic to Needy, who in turn develops monstrous qualities.

The first scene of the film is ambiguous with representing who the film’s monster is, foreshadowing the possibility that evil may take different forms. Jennifer’s Body opens with a voyeuristic shot of Jennifer with subtly blood-stained teeth on her bed chewing on her own hair, with Needy out the window in a gray hoodie vengefully looking in. “Hell is a teenage girl”

(Kusama), the audience hears from Needy, the witty, asylum-bound narrator. This is the beginning of Jennifer’s final death scene later in the film. Right away, viewers are unsure of who the film’s monster is, because this voyeuristic shot leads the audience to believe that Jennifer is the victim, and Needy is some sort of slasher, eyeing her next victim. One might conclude that the film’s monster is Needy because she is shown in an asylum attacking one of the workers, and there is no indication of evil in Jennifer. This ambiguity at the start of the film indicates that

Needy will also experience a monstrous downfall, which is ultimately caused by her obsession with Jennifer.

The film portrays Needy and Jennifer’s friendship as monstrous, which becomes the basis for seeing Jennifer’s mean girl persona as horrific. The first shot of both Needy and Jennifer together is at a high school pep rally where Needy admits that “people found it hard to believe that a babe like Jennifer would associate with a dork like [her]” (Kusama). Jennifer is a

Egan 48 cheerleader and Needy sits by herself on a bench, and both innocently wave at each other during the rally. Throughout the film, the girl’s difference is reiterated by several characters, including

Needy’s boyfriend Chip who constantly questions their toxic relationship. Jennifer’s monstrous mean girl identity seeps through within the next five minutes of the film when the girls playfully shove each other, but Jennifer has the last shove, banging Needy into the wall. This is Jennifer’s world, and Needy has to follow the rules.

Furthermore, Jennifer is the “ideal” female in relation to her best friend. Needy and

Jennifer seem to understand their differences early on in the film. In the first scene of verbal interaction between the two friends, Jennifer convinces Needy to see a rock band from the city called Low Shoulder at Devil’s Kettle’s only bar, Melody Lane. Intent on seducing the band’s lead singer, Jennifer gives Needy a disapproving once-over, and tells her to “wear something cute, okay?” (Kusama). Needy follows, explaining that, “wearing something cute meant something very specific in Jennifer speak. It meant that [Needy] couldn’t look like a total zero, but [she] couldn’t upstage [Jennifer] either. [She] could expose [her] stomach, but never [her] cleavage. Tits were [Jennifer’s] trademark” (Kusama). Although Needy’s narrator expresses this,

Needy at this point in the film denies Jennifer’s manipulation and defends her behavior when

Chip expresses concern, “you always do what Jennifer tells you to do…you don’t have anything in common,” (Kusama) he tells her. Needy responds without any specific “things in common,” except that she can physically sense Jennifer’s presence. By the end of the film however, Needy and Jennifer share a demonic identity and are forever linked. Part of the demon lives in Needy after Jennifer bites her. Needy and Jennifer’s relationship is almost taboo in the realm of teen films. A common trend in teen films and television shows is for the “normal” main character to

Egan 49 have an ex-best friend turned popular bully.5 This film defies that formula as the two remain best friends despite Jennifer’s manipulative toxicity until Jennifer’s monstrosity totally consumes her identity and Needy kills her out of revenge for killing Chip.

Jennifer’s character is a materialistic, monstrous mean girl who is constantly objectified, but also objectifies herself. She is sexually confident, but her sexualized and objectified body defines her. She even has a framed picture of herself on her dresser next to the mirror, as if to remind herself how perfect she is. When her monstrous side shows itself to Needy in the flesh, she devours raw meat in the fridge while horrifically smiling. Kusama explains in the film’s commentary that she believes “that smile is how girls are sometimes so complacent in their objectification” (Kusama). This can be understood through Jennifer’s eyes. She looks at Needy not with fear or desire, but with a devious contentment. Jennifer is not only complacent in her objectification, but in her monstrosity as well.

Jennifer’s monstrous identity is defined by her appearance. As Needy tries to inform Chip as to what happens when Jennifer feeds and when she is hungry, she makes a point to describe the difference in Jennifer’s appearance. Needy explains, “She’s eating boys! They like, make her really pretty and glowy, and her hair looks amazing. And then when she’s hungry she’s weak, and cranky, and ugly, I mean like, ugly for her” (Kusama). Needy mentions nothing about boys making Jennifer powerful or strong, just beautiful. Her strength as a monster is entirely defined by her appearance. To be strong is to have amazing hair, and to be weak is to have hair that is, to use Jennifer’s words, “dull and lifeless” (Kusama). Jennifer only uses her monstrosity for her own looks.

5 Examples include Lizzie and Kate in Disney’s series Lizzie McGuire, Janis and Regina in Mean Girls (2004), and Anna and Stacey in Freaky Friday (2004).

Egan 50

Jennifer values herself as a sexual object. Early on in the film when the girls arrive at

Melody Lane, it is clear that Jennifer feels she has power over the male sex. Jennifer tells Needy,

“they’re just boys, morsels, don’t you know that? We have all the power. These are like smart bumps, point them in the right direction and shit gets real” (Kusama). Jennifer refers to breasts as

“smart bumps,” indicating that sexualized body parts are what hold female power. Jennifer’s actions prove that she believes her sole purpose is to look good for the opposite sex. Kusama expands this idea saying, “part of what makes her monstrous is she is totally thoughtless”

(Kusama). Kusama sheds light on the fact that it is scary to see a character who is so objectified and thoughtless.

The horrifying aspect of Jennifer’s thoughtlessness is that she gives up part of her humanity in order to be perceived in a certain way. Part of what defines humanity is the ability to think and use reason, but Jennifer forgoes civil conversation and replaces it with thoughtless attitude. For example, Jennifer follows Low Shoulder into their van after Melody Lane burns down and rudely shuts Needy down when she tries to rescue her from the questionable situation.

Intent on impressing the band, Jennifer wants to go into their “really cool van” (Kusama) and doesn’t acknowledge the carnage of Melody Lane. Most would agree that following strangers into a van is never the safest option, but Jennifer doesn’t care. This is her chance to be with the band, just like she wanted. As Needy rationally tells her no, Jennifer interrupts telling her to

“shut up” (Kusama). Jennifer’s thoughtlessness is evident in this scene as she refuses to listen to her best friend, and willingly ends up in a dangerous situation that eventually results in her monstrous transformation.

As the film progresses and Jennifer’s demonic side consumes her, her treatment of Needy becomes increasingly monstrous and Jennifer begins to other herself. The morning after the

Egan 51

Melody Lane massacre when Jennifer arrives at school looking like she just walked out of a photo shoot, Needy questions how she could be so happy after the tragedy the night before.

Jennifer snaps at Needy, not answering her question but asking another, “what’s wrong with you?

Besides the obvious surface flaws” (Kusama). This is the first instance of Jennifer directly insulting Needy. Jennifer refuses to acknowledge anything said about the massacre, and focuses on pushing Needy beneath her. By insulting Needy, Jennifer attempts to other her. However, she still clings to Needy, so the othering doesn’t work. Instead, Jennifer’s treatment of Needy results in the othering of herself because she deliberately tries to separate herself from Needy.

Jennifer separates herself from the “normal girls,” and thus Others herself. The first time

Jennifer is weak and hungry, she explains, “I feel like boo boo. My skin is breaking out, my hair is dull and lifeless, it’s like I’m one of the normal girls” (Kusama). Feeling like “boo boo” to

Jennifer has everything to do with how she looks. She describes her appearance just like any other “normal” girl would. She experiences human flaws, and her complacency begins to deteriorate. She is complacent in her objectification only when her appearance separates her from the normal girls. She no longer has perfect hair or skin, but looks “normal,” which to her isn’t good enough. Jennifer is miserable not because she is hungry, but because her perfect appearance is flawed.

Constructed Male Identities

Jennifer’s monstrosity lies in her manipulation of the innocent, and the vicious cannibalistic attacks on unsuspecting boys further establishes her monstrosity. None of these high school boys had ulterior motives in their interactions with Jennifer, yet her physical monstrosity only surfaces when she devours them. Jennifer forces seduction without giving them

Egan 52 a chance to stop it. When discussing the boys in the film’s commentary, Kusama tells Cody,

“you didn’t write boys who were deserving of punishment. They’re just clueless” (Kusama).

Kusama is referring to the teenage boy characters who are just that – teenage boys, nothing more.

Contrary to other mean girl films where the high school boys are popular football players played by actors who are ten years older than their characters, Jennifer’s Body’s boys are realistic to the film’s era. Chip is a band kid with posters all over his room. Colin is an emo-goth who likes The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and the athletes who swoon over Jennifer do it in a way that shows no hidden agenda of disrespect. None of these boys violate or disrespect Jennifer, but have an innocent attraction toward her. She proceeds to manipulate and prey on them for fun.

Her first kill is Jonas, a star football player in mourning over his best friend who was killed in the

Melody Lane disaster. She finds him alone and grieving in the woods, seduces and briefly pleasures him, then devours him, enjoying every second of it. He did not seek her out or show any interest in her sexually before she came on to him. She takes it upon herself to use her body to essentially put him in the state of vulnerability she needs to consume his body. Her second kill is Colin, who she verbally emasculates when she tells Needy that her “dick is bigger than his”

(Kusama). Later, in the scene when she lures and devours him, she begins by first intimidating him sexually, then breaking his bones. “I need you frightened…I need you hopeless” (Kusama) she says to him. He has done nothing to her to deserve the sense of hopelessness she inflicts upon him. Ahmet is an innocent bystander who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Jennifer only implies that she ate him. Finally, Chip is killed by Jennifer in front of

Needy, but not eaten. Is Jennifer, then, taking on a misogynistic role of sexual abuser? If we look at the film this way, it could be argued that Jennifer’s monstrosity exposes a cultural double

Egan 53 standard. When a man acts this way toward women, it is expected. When a woman acts this way, she is monstrous.

The backstories provided in the Jennifer’s Body graphic novel contribute to the film’s overarching theme of criticizing constructed gender identities by portraying their struggle to fit into the of “male.” The idea of impressing Jennifer drives the perverse decisions the characters make just to appeal to her. The constructed identity Jennifer’s monster takes on provokes the formation of constructed male identities. The Jennifer’s Body graphic novel, released in 2009 alongside the film, provides back stories to the devoured male characters that prove that they are struggling with maleness, another culturally constructed identity. Written by

Rick Spears, the graphic novel documents the backstories of Jennifer’s victims: Jonas, Colin,

Ahmet, and Chip. Readers experience the story through their eyes. Thus far, my interpretation of

Jennifer’s Body is that it portrays the constructed, idealized female identity as monstrous. The graphic novel follows suit, showing the consequences of constructed, idealized male identities.

All four of Jennifer’s “meals” are struggling with maleness, which makes them vulnerable and appealing to Jennifer’s monstrous appetite. Jonas, Jennifer’s first documented kill in the film and graphic novel, is obsessed with his masculine appearance, and is drawn injecting steroids into his rear. He even goes to the extreme of using a graduated cylinder he stole from the biology lab to measure the mass of his testicles. Colin, the misunderstood emo-goth who asks Jennifer out on a date feels so intimidated by the beauty of Jennifer that he struggles to communicate with her.

Ahmet is an exchange student from India, and as Cody explains in the film’s commentary,

“Ahmed from India is a commentary of American xenophobia” (Cody). The graphic novel expands this idea and links it to his manhood. In the locker room, the other teenage boys notice he is uncircumcised and viciously ridicule him for not fitting “into the Judeo/Christian practice

Egan 54 of genital mutilation” (Spears). Finally, Needy’s boyfriend Chip’s backstory seems a bit far- fetched from the film, as he is addicted to video games and masturbation, but nevertheless, his male sexuality is also called into question as he struggles to keep his libido under control.

Needy’s Monstrous Obsession

Needy’s obsession with Jennifer contributes to the film’s critique of the culture of female perfection because Jennifer’s image relies on Needy’s unconditional friendship. Needy is always watching Jennifer; it’s never the other way around. As Kusama states in the commentary, “It’s always about Jennifer for Needy” (Kusama). Jennifer is the object of Needy’s existence, and the more monstrous she becomes, the more obsessed Needy becomes. Needy knows Jennifer is evil, and researches in the occult section of the school library to uncover exactly what Jennifer has become. She figures out that Jennifer experienced demonic transference,6 and the only way to defeat the demon is stabbing it in the heart. As she does this, Jennifer bites her, transferring the demon to Needy. Her obsession with Jennifer and Jennifer’s demon ultimately leads to Needy’s monstrous identity that murders the band and levitates in the padded room in the final scene.

Jennifer becomes so toxic that her monstrosity literally transfers to Needy via demonic bite. The monster does not die. Although Needy killed Jennifer’s monster and the original source (Low

Shoulder), the monster lives. The extended life of the demon represents the fact that these monstrous social expectations are still present. The demon of the perfectly constructed female identity remains.

Needy embodies many characteristics of the slasher film final girl, and the film plays with this trope to once again reinforce the monstrosity of female expectation. According to

6 According to Needy’s explanation in the film, demonic transference occurs when a satanic virgin sacrifice is conducted without using an actual virgin. Instead of the sacrificed woman dying, she becomes a demon. This demon can then be transferred from her onto another person via bite.

Egan 55

Clover, the final girl is the one who “alone looks death in the face” and is “watchful to the point of paranoia” (Clover 39). Although she is not a token final girl like The Last Final Girl’s

Lindsay, she can be placed into this category, as she is the only one who defeats the monstrous

Jennifer. However, the monster’s powers transfer over to her rather than being obliterated along with Jennifer’s body. Part of Jennifer’s monster lives inside Needy, and we see her own monster in both opening and closing scenes of the film. Although she is not a “mean girl,” the film depicts her rise and fall, or her monstrous growth and human demise. One of the first things

Needy’s asylum narration reveals is that “after the killings began, [she] started to feel … loose around the edges or something” (Kusama). This is coming from Needy, The Kicker, wearing an orange suit. The Needy in this scene is vicious, violent, and vengeful. This Needy curses. This is the Needy post-Jennifer, the demonic Needy possessed by Jennifer’s monster. Needy has not become Jennifer in the sense that she is the ideal high school popular girl. Instead, the fact that the monster lives within Needy shows that her obsession with the ideal popular girl has made her monstrous as well. Since Needy ends up in an asylum and the film does not show her returning to school, she does not turn into a high school mean girl, but she does violently ridicule the workers at the facility. This monstrosity of perfection seeps through the ideal figure into the figure that is both obsessed with and used by the patriarchal heteronormative ideal.

Monstrosity and Fame

The monstrosity of perfection is also evident as fake Satanists, Low Shoulder represent yet another monstrous imperfection that drives young people’s actions: fame and material success. In the film’s commentary, Kusama and Cody discuss how when Needy and Jennifer see the band for the first time, it is as though the members are from another world, and they have

Egan 56

“this unspeakable power” (Cody). Jennifer is mesmerized by the band, almost as though in a trance they create for her, and she hardly reacts to the burning Melody Lane but just stares back at the band. plays the lead singer of the indie band who will do anything it takes to be famous. In Jennifer’s flashback scene where she explains to Needy how she became a demon,

Brody’s character tells Jennifer, “do you know how hard it is to make it as an indie band these days? We’re all cute, and if we don’t get on Letterman, or some retarded soundtrack, we’re screwed. Satan is our only hope” (Kusama). The fact that there are so many indie bands trying to do the exact same thing shows that Low Shoulder is attempting to fit into the constructed indie band mold, but skip the hard work that goes with making it. Low Shoulder fits a type, and because the band is not one-of-a-kind, and can’t make it on its own, it needs the help of Satan.

The band is portrayed as monstrous because it will also go to perverse lengths to achieve the perfect status of fame.

Jennifer as Tragic

Although she is a monstrous and evil character, Jennifer Check is also a tragic figure. She represents the monstrosity of the obsession with female perfection, and does not get the chance to break free of it. Her complacency and objectivity ultimately causes her to lose her free will to the social construct of perfection. In the scene when Jennifer is slowly getting ready for the dance, covering her tiresome face with makeup, we notice a framed photo of herself on her dresser. Kusama comments that “it’s tragic that the girl who is identified by her surface is losing her surface…she never had the chance to find anything else for herself” (Kusama). Jennifer was defined by her surface before her demonic transformation. Since she feeds to not only sustain but to increase her beauty, she is further defined by her outward appearance after her transformation.

Egan 57

She lives a life of extremes: when she is hungry, she feels ugly, and when she is full, she feels like she is “having the best day since Jesus invented the calendar” (Kusama). She has a skewed sense of normalcy. Jennifer’s normal is everybody else’s version of perfect, and Jennifer’s ugly is like the “normal girls.” This notion mirrors what young women are made to believe in

Hollywood films, mainstream media, and advertisements. Television shows, print ads, and magazines are full of Jennifer’s who make unrealistic expectations of outward appearance seem normal.

Egan 58

III Mean Girls & Final Girls: Constructed Monstrous Identities in The Last Final Girl

Stephen Graham Jones’ horror fiction portrays teenage female characters as obsessed with being “perfect” or “ideal” versions of young female stereotypes. In his novel The Last Final

Girl, obsession with a perfect “final girl” identity drives Lindsay to her human demise, paving the way for the monstrous identity within to rise to power. Jones’ meta-horror novel uses the high school “mean girl” and the “final girl” trope to play on the narrative styles of both the slasher film and the high school mean girl film, exposing the monstrosity of obsession with female perfection. The Last Final Girl character Lindsay’s obsession with being the “perfect” final girl results in her monstrous identity as it critiques the trend of constructing identities to fit stereotypes. In Lindsay’s case, she tries to construct an archetypal identity only found in fiction, but achieves an inauthentic version of it. Her monstrosity can serve as a warning against attempting to construct an identity that fits a particular stereotype.

Genre and the Slasher Tradition

The field of horror scholarship provides a background and context for my discussion of the final girl trope. Jones’ novel contributes a new critique by incorporating the ideas of inauthenticity and constructed identities. The horror slasher genre has been documented, dissected, and critiqued by horror scholars including Clover, Asma, and Carroll. Carroll’s distinction between what he calls “art-horror” and natural horror is key in analyzing the meta- narrative of The Last Final Girl. Carroll distinguishes art horror as the “cross-art, cross-media genre” that evokes “a certain kind of…emotional state” (Carroll 13-15). Natural horror, on the other hand, is not a genre, but a description of horrible, real life events. Jones blurs these distinctions through his meta-narrative style, turning art-horror into natural horror for the

Egan 59 characters. Asma touches on the slasher as well in On Monsters, presenting conflicting viewpoints as to the genre’s purpose. He discusses a conservative viewpoint which states that

“horror narratives remind us of our betrayal of morality and reinforce a timeless ethic of sexual moderation (Asma 196). Contrary to this viewpoint, the genre “allows us the opportunity to scream and release anxiety in a cathartic manner [to have] a therapeutic effect” (197). Jones proves in his style that neither viewpoint is necessarily the case for all of horror slashers. This novel crosses narrative boundaries, blurring the lines between audience and character as the story is told as though it is being narrated frame by frame by a film audience.

The narrator adds in camera angles and points of view to indicate what the audience should be focusing on. It utilizes a genre typically relegated to the medium of film, the script treatment text, and turns it into a postmodern meta-novel.

Stephen Graham Jones is not only a fan, but also an expert on the horror slasher genre.

Before The Last Final Girl was published, Jones released two articles that discussed the “state of the slasher” with Pop Matters. In his first “State of the Slasher Address” published in 2008 as a response to the failure of the Prom Night remake (2008), Jones concludes that “more important than all the individual conventions, is the essential dynamic of punishment, that cycle of justice grinding these kids to bone meal. The idea, the certainty, that what you did, even what you’re doing right now, it’s going to come back around to get you” (Jones “State of the Slasher

Address”). Part of the slasher formula has been to warn so-called immoral teens against their deeds, and to glorify the final girl, who does not engage. To Jones, this is the most important trope that makes a slasher a slasher. He states that the victims are “excessive teens who in a sense ‘deserve’ to die movie deaths—kids who, by their very excessiveness, make us root for the killer” (Jones). An important characteristic of the slasher, according to Jones is to make sure the

Egan 60 victims are not sympathetic, that their presence will not be missed by the “good” teens with whom the audience identifies. Referring back to Prom Night, Jones identifies the shift in genre expectations:

What’s happened is that, instead of a cycle of justice juggernauting through some high

school, ripping off facades and cutting right down to the heart of what matters, what we

have is a killer juggernauting through some high school with no reason to be doing so…

in the golden age, the slasher—the Jasons, the Freddies—all seemed to be some

amalgamation of guilt, maybe even a specifically American brand of guilt, what’s scariest

now to the target audience is the meaninglessness of all this violence; that anyone can be

a victim, and for no reason at all. (Jones “State of the Slasher Address”)

Jones alludes to the idea that the modern-day target audience for teen slashers has seen real-life murderous rampages, and the formulaic slasher film won’t cut it for them. They don’t want to

“root for the killer” to give the toxic victims what they deserve, because in their world, art-horror has become real life horror. Schools have drills to prepare for the event of a murderer stepping on campus seeking a body count. I would go so far to say that the target audience has become desensitized, and the “golden age” of slashers doesn’t seem as horrifying. This idea of a shift in genre is present in The Last Final Girl, as Jones’ characters experience real life horror as though it is art-horror. He complicates the genre as his characters explain the tropes and expectations, and the story playing with the tropes. In this novel, I have identified another anxiety present within the target audience: the anxiety that comes from caring too much about image and reputation. It is this anxiety that causes Lindsay to orchestrate the Billie Jean murders.

For Jones, the horror genre matters as something more than just a teenage date night movie. In his essay “I Was A Genre Before Genre Was Cool” written for Fantasy Matters, he

Egan 61 argues in favor of the importance of horror as a genre that not only reaches people, but is also a platform for engagement and critical thinking. He uses the analogy of high school outcasts versus popular kids to compare horror with the literary cannon, which is fitting for this discussion about mean girls and The Last Final Girl. If genre lit, as Jones calls it, is “usually hiding out in the bathroom, passing a single cigarette around, waiting for the day when this is all over and they can start their real lives” (Jones, “I Was A Genre”), then this novel favors that character, Izzy, the “suspiciously ethnic” (Jones Last Final 62) ultimate final girl who sneaks cigarettes during school. This metaphor can shed light on the fact that Jones’ horror in particular is aware of its genre, and knows how to use it. Izzy is the manifestation of genre lit, and her time to shine is in a novel that turns real life into genre.

The unique narrative style Jones uses in The Last Final Girl contributes to the idea that the contemporary horror genre itself is the ideal place to provide social critique geared towards young people. Rebecca M. Lush discusses the metatextuality of the novel in her essay “Cause the

Lie Becomes the Truth.” The gothic and horror genres create a space to expose and contemplate human anxieties, and I will add that The Last Final Girl exposes the anxiety of obsession with constructing the “perfect” social identity. The previous scholarly conversation about the novel focus on other kinds of identity anxieties, such as race and gender. Lush explains that Jones’ approach to the horror slasher genre “shows the importance of this type of fiction…partly because it performs important cultural work in a format that is accessible and widely consumed”

(Lush 312). The cultural work she refers to is how Jones uses the social and cultural constructs from previous horror films in order to challenge the genre’s established racial and gendered stereotypes. In the past, the standard horror narrative included a male killer and female victims.

According to Lush, “by emphasizing the constructed nature of the ‘lie [that] becomes the truth’

Egan 62

(Jackson), Jones cleverly undermines the power of cultural constructs” (318). Throughout my work thus far, I have argued that the monster of the monstrous mean girl narrative is the construct itself, the drive to fit into a perfectly constructed identity, made visible. Jones’ horror plays with and turns the table on social constructs, diminishing their power and exposing them as monstrous.

Part of the metatextuality of The Last Final Girl is the role of the narrator, who peers in on the happenings of the Danfurth High School students using the conventions of the script treatment text. Language such as “POV,” “aerial view,” and “camera zooms in on…” gives the novel a voyeuristic feel thus replicates on the page the voyeurism long discussed by scholars of the horror film. Laura Mulvey’s argument of the woman as an “alien presence” (Mulvey 33) in her essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” is important in looking at The Last Final Girl because Mulvey claims voyeurism informed by the heterosexual male gaze leads to a lack of agency for the female character. To Mulvey, the female has no agency, but rather, her mere objectified existence acts as the force that drives the development of the male protagonist.

Jones’s novel addresses the tension between voyeurism and agency and presents an inversion.

Contrary to Mulvey, Lindsay orchestrates the voyeuristic view so that she is the final girl, the center of the audience’s attention. Rather than a male character or a camera lens that occupies the position of the heterosexual male gaze, the novel shows a young woman controlling the audience’s gaze of other women and of men. Although monstrous, she has agency to shift not only the figurative audience’s attention, but the attention of the town as well. When Lindsay returns to school after time off for recovery, she gives a speech to the student body. She tells the cheering crowd, “please, the focus isn’t on me” (Jones Last Final 24), but the focus is entirely on

Egan 63 her. The more she tries to seem selfless, the more selfish she actually is. Lindsay therefore invites the voyeuristic gaze as she manipulates the crowd into admiring her.

Perhaps the most influential piece of critical scholarship for the slasher genre is Carol

Clover’s extensive documentation and analysis of the final girl trope. She outlines the repetitious qualities of the final girl character as she occurs in the majority of slasher horror films. Clover coins the term “final girl,” and her chapter on final girls acts almost as a how-to when writing a final girl character. She draws on the trends found in most slasher films produced in the 1980’s when outlining the usual characteristics of the trope. The characteristics laid out by Clover contribute to the construction of the final girl character type that influences Lindsay’s identity in

The Last Final Girl. According to her, the final girl is:

The one who encounters the mutilated bodies of her friends and perceives the full extent

of the preceding horror and of her own peril; who is chased, cornered, wounded; whom

we see scream, stagger, fall, rise, and scream again… she alone looks death in the face,

but she alone also finds the strength either to stay the killer long enough to be rescued, or

to kill him herself. (Clover 35)

The final girl could generally be seen as the main character, and is the final survivor. She is the one the film focuses on, the center of the audience’s attention, and for the horror-obsessed characters in The Last Final Girl, this is the ideal role. Clover identifies the characteristics that are present in most slasher films that classify a character as a final girl. The final girl is “not fully feminine” (40) and possesses boyish qualities, such as her gender neutral name, her “smartness, gravity, competence in mechanical and other practical matters” (40), and her “sexual reluctance”

(40). In Last Final, Lindsay’s “sexual reluctance” is proven to be false, while Izzy, the ultimate final girl admits to her virginity. Throughout the novel, both Izzy and Lindsay are ultra-

Egan 64 conscious of all these qualities; Lindsay, in order to make herself seem like a final girl, and Izzy, to be one step ahead of the Lindsay.

What is unique about The Last Final Girl and the other texts I have situated within the monstrous mean girl narrative is their perverse obsession with outward appearance and perception. In Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters, J. Halberstam argues that in postmodern horror, the surface, or appearance is monstrous. Comparing the Victorian gothic monster to the postmodern Buffalo Bill of Silence of the Lambs, Halberstam states:

Where the monsters of the nineteenth century metaphorized modern subjectivity as a

balancing act between inside/outside, female/male, body/mind, native/foreign, proletarian

/aristocrat, monstrosity in postmodern horror films finds its place in what Baudrillard has

called the obscenity of ‘immediate visibility’ and what Linda Williams has dubbed ‘the

frenzy of the visible.' The immediate visibility of a Buffalo Bill, the way in which he

makes the surface itself monstrous transforms the cavernous monstrosity of Jekyll/Hyde,

Dorian Gray, or Dracula into a beast who is all body and no soul. (Halberstam 1)

The defining factor of the postmodern monster of horror is appearance. The outward visibility, and the way the monster is perceived by both its victims and the audience is horrific. Lindsay’s appearance is not monstrous; she remains visually human throughout the novel. However, the monstrosity lies within her desire to appear to be a final girl, and her obsession of being perceived a certain way by her peers. Like Halberstam argues, Lindsay’s monstrosity shifts away from the balancing act of hybridity that defines Carroll’s monsters. Lindsay attempts to construct her identity to fit into the final girl mold, to be visible as a final girl. During Lindsay and Izzy’s fight scene with Billie Jean, Lindsay skillfully releases a stable of horses just as Billie Jean walks toward them, “That’s how a final girl does it,” (Jones Last Final 186). Lindsay takes pride in and

Egan 65 flaunts her status. Shortly after when Izzy exposes Lindsay as the mastermind, Lindsay explains to her that “you’ve got to get the sympathy on your side before you get all violent. Then anything you do, it’s justified” (Jones Last Final 189). Lindsay explains to Izzy what it takes to be a final girl, as if she has perfected the trope. Lindsay’s monstrosity therefore lies in the actions she takes to portray a false identity and to appear as an expert in the stereotype.

In the past, femininity and the female herself has been deemed monstrous. As Barbara

Creed tackles what she has called “the monstrous feminine,” she points out that “very little …work has discussed the representation of woman-as-monster. Instead, emphasis has been on woman as victim of the (mainly male) monster” (Creed 1). The gender of the monster is complicated in The Last Final Girl. While Lindsay orchestrates the rampage, she uses men to carry out the murders wearing a Michael Jackson mask. She refers to this mask as a “Billie Jean” mask, ignorant to the fact that Billie Jean is actually “the girl” in Michael Jackson’s song “Billie

Jean.” The murderer is then called Billie Jean, a female name. Although Michael Jackson is male, and the mask is actually of his face rather than the subject of his song, the monster is called by a female name, indicating the monster’s female identity. This instills a sense of confusion about who the monster actually is. The pronoun “he” is used by the characters when discussing Billie

Jean, and the person behind the mask is always a male. However, the person orchestrating the murders and manipulating the person behind the mask is Lindsay. The mask itself, being called by the wrong name, complicates the slasher’s identity.

Heathers: Teen Angst, Body Counts, and Slashers

The teen gothic Heathers (1988) sets the premise of the monstrous mean girl narrative, and provides a blatant critique of the social construct that is U.S. American high school culture of the 1980s. Although the film does not fall into the category of “horror,” it borrows

Egan 66 from the American Gothic genre to create a perverse and uncanny high school setting, complete with monstrous actions being driven by social anxieties. The film depicts a clique of popular girls who all share the name Heather, except for the group’s outcast and protagonist, Veronica.

Fed up with the Heathers, Veronica and her boyfriend J.D. orchestrate a series of murderous pranks. Their plan is to seek revenge by putting the popular students who have taken advantage of Veronica into humiliating situations. Each time, their plans backfire and they end up murdering the students. In order to cover their tracks, Veronica and J.D. stage the crime scenes as suicide attempts. Perversely happy that these students are now out of their lives, Veronica and

J.D. are disgusted by the fact that suicide has made the students more popular than they were when they were alive, and suicide now seems like the “cool” thing to do. While flipping through channels on T.V., they can’t escape news reports on Heather Chandler’s “suicide.” Fed up, J.D. exclaims, “Heather Chandler’s more popular than ever now” (Lehmann). They find that instead of ridding the school of the venomous popular mean girl, Heather’s legacy remains, and her

“suicide” becomes an inspiration for other students seeking attention.

The Gothic concept of the uncanny is present in Veronica’s character. While trying to find her true self as separate from the Heathers clique, her identity instead becomes murderous and monstrous. She no longer knows what she wants. She finds a perverse joy in the fact that the main Heather is dead, but is conflicted because the monstrous side of her identity has now become evident. Lindsay is in a similar situation, only her perverse joy comes from her own popular status after she survives what the less popular girls don’t. Lindsay also tries to find her true self as separate from the rest, but her “true” self is a fictitious identity that in the end, cannot be constructed. Veronica does not try to construct an identity. Her identity is subsumed by the

Heathers clique, and then by J.D., until she ultimately saves the school from his suicide mission.

Egan 67

Her identity is uncanny when influenced by the Heathers and J.D., but finally establishes herself toward the end when she puts on Heather Chandler’s red bow, a symbol of status, and claims her power.

Like The Last Final Girl, Heathers plays with the genre to expose gothic anxieties.

Drawing on Jones’ assertion that the most notable characteristic of a slasher film from the golden age is that the victims seemingly get what they deserved, it could be argued that Heathers borrows from the slasher genre as well. The film depicts J.D. the murderer set on cleaning the school of image-obsessed popular students, immoral victims, and Veronica, the final girl who cleverly saves herself from being a victim, and ultimately kills J.D.

Heathers’ influence on The Last Final Girl is evident in the novel’s epigraph as it establishes the dark yet humorous tone, as well as the perverse teenage murders caused by identity anxieties. Readers encounter the iconic line spoken by Veronica, “Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit has a body count” (Lehman). The concept of “teen angst,” or teenage anxiety is almost always prevalent in mean girl narratives. Readers are reminded of Heathers’ dark humor, indicating that the novel they are about to read revolves around teen angst gone awry. Just as

Veronica’s angst and discontent leads to her actions, Lindsay’s teenage drive to achieve her final girl identity drives her monstrous actions. Lindsay is a teenage girl, trying to construct an identity, but this identity has a body count. In order to become who she wants to be, she has to kill, or rather, orchestrate killings. Her obsession leads to murder, just like Veronica’s. Both

Lindsay’s and Veronica’s obsessions are driven by an anxiety toward identity. In Veronica’s case, the Heather’s clique forces her to be and act in a way that doesn’t quite fit who she is, and

Lindsay desperately wants to be perceived as a final girl.

Egan 68

Constructed Monstrous Identities and Stereotypes in The Last Final Girl

The Last Final Girl documents final girl wannabe Lindsay’s attempt to become the perfect slasher film’s final girl, while horror obsessed Izzy and Brittany use their knowledge of horror films and tropes to figure out and stop the Billie Jean slasher. Lindsay’s obsession with her own final girl identity causes her to orchestrate the Billie Jean murders in order to keep her final girl status, but Izzy, the ultimate final girl, is one step ahead and exposes Lindsay’s false final girl identity. Lindsay doesn’t fit the perfect final girl character type, but Izzy does. The fictitious horror slasher narrative comes to life, and the story is told through the eyes of an audience watching the events on a screen.

Final girl Lindsay is the “mean girl” figure of The Last Final Girl. While the novel is a horror slasher story, it is also a mean girl narrative as it tracks the rise and fall of an image obsessed teenage girl who torments other students. She is obsessed with being a final girl and orchestrates a monstrous slasher rampage that she hopes will lead to her continued status as final girl and homecoming queen. Lindsay strategically tries to embody the characteristics of the

“perfect” slasher film’s final girl, laid out by Clover. Her monstrous identity rises as she is exposed as the ring-leader of the “Billie Jean” killing spree. She is so obsessed with being the final girl character that she goes to extreme and monstrous lengths to achieve this goal. Although she does not physically transform into something visually monstrous, her obsession with being a final girl leads her to partake in monstrous acts, and she dies in the same fashion a monstrous slasher dies at the hands of the true final girl, Izzy. Lindsay’s obsession is not with the perfect body, like Tammy and Brianne in “So Perfect.” Instead, she is obsessed with being the perfect horror film’s final girl, and by definition, this status comes with the death of her friends.

Egan 69

Lindsay, Izzy, and Brittany all share an obsession with bringing art-horror to life, which drives the plot of the story. Carroll differentiates between art-horror and horrific events because art-horror induces an emotion specific to the genre. Lindsay creates a situation that is specific to art-horror: a slasher rampage that makes it possible for a final girl identity to exist. In doing so, she attempts to construct an identity that is also specific to art-horror, an identity that only exists within the slasher genre. Izzy and Brittany now have a chance to live their obsession and use their knowledge to figure out Billie Jean’s next move. The only character to come out of the situation alive is Izzy, the ultimate final girl who was able to use her obsession to her advantage.

The difference between Lindsay’s and Izzy’s obsessions is that Lindsay uses it to change herself, and create a fictitious identity. Lindsay is consumed by two obsessions: horror and image, and combined, she becomes a genre personified. Lindsay becomes a hybrid final girl and monster, while Izzy remains grounded and does not have the same obsession with image. Yes, Izzy is the ultimate final girl, but only because she has to protect herself from monstrous Lindsay. Lindsay creates the situation to make her seem like a final girl, while Izzy is forced into a situation where she must really fight for survival.

Izzy uses her obsession with slashers to expose Lindsay for breaking the final girl “rules” and not adequately fitting the stereotype, which also points to the absurdity of the trope. Izzy actually ends up meeting the final girl requirements without trying, while Lindsay lies to make it seem as though she meets them. In fact, both girls hide the deciding factor of their final girl status: virginity. Sidney, the final girl from Scream (1996) debunked this requirement that was evident in the “golden age” of slasher films and documented by Clover, but Lindsay and Izzy choose to focus their obsessions on the golden age that established the final girl trope.

Egan 70

Although Izzy and Lindsay share a similar obsession with the horror genre, Izzy teams up with Brittany to use their obsession with horror to expose Lindsay as a false final girl and true killer. Izzy’s obsession leads to her survival, while Lindsay’s leads to her death. As horror- obsessed Izzy and Brittany try to figure out the true identity of the Billie Jean killer, Izzy’s instinct points to Lindsay. Izzy says, “she knows the genre better than she lets on… and she learned from it, like I did. She knows she’s still the perfect target, the source of imaginary revenge…she’s setting it up so she’s the final girl of all the final girls…the queen of the final girls” (Jones Last Final 107-109). In this scene, Izzy exposes Lindsay’s final girl obsession. The final girl is the ultimate victim-hero, and Lindsay’s obsession causes her to act out a dangerous fantasy in which she finds a perverse pleasure not only in being the slasher’s target, but in being the only one who survives. She forces her own victimization, and because of this, her final girl identity is both artificial and monstrous. While Lindsay isn’t the person performing the murders, she manipulates situations that will result in her fight for survival, and the death of her friends.

She wants to be the “queen” of the final girls, the ultimate final girl, an identity constructed solely for the purpose of what Carroll has identified as art-horror. Lindsay orchestrates a series of events that mimic a slasher film, and attempts to be the “real life” manifestation of the final girl trope laid out by Clover. She ultimately fails, proving her final girl identity to be false.

Lindsay’s false final girl identity is revealed in the last fight scene of the novel as Izzy fights Lindsay who fights Billie Jean. It is a battle for final girl status, and Izzy defeats the monstrous Lindsay. While the three are battling each other in the barn, Izzy gains control and whispers to Lindsay, “virgins are the only ones who can do it, and guess what I am?” (192-193).

Although the virginity requirement of the final girl was debunked in Scream, according to

Clover’s final girl criteria, she must be a virgin to survive, and Lindsay is not. As Izzy thrusts the

Egan 71 machete through Lindsay’s chest, she says to her, “welcome to the Golden Age, bitch,” (193) just before Lindsay’s “rag doll of a body” (193) topples through the floor of the barn. As Izzy welcomes her to the “golden age” of slasher films, she disregards Lindsay’s artificial final girl identity and puts her in the category of monster. Izzy uses her knowledge of horror to figure out what Lindsay really is in respect to the world of the slasher film. Lindsay’s dead body is described as though it is no longer human but rather an object. Her:

Rag doll of a body…fall[s] through the sky for hours, it seems like, finally slam[s] down

not on a pipe or in a plow or on a hood, and not into the spinning blades of the helicopter

parked there for some reason, but just onto the ground at Dante’s feet, crunching into it

head first and permanent, her body folding into itself like a slinky. (193)

While this type of description is necessary for the shock and gore of the horror genre, the fact that it is Lindsay’s body being described, the self-proclaimed final girl who is now reduced to a lifeless rag doll, shows her ultimate human demise. Lindsay is now a lifeless toy, not a human.

Shortly before the battle, as Izzy figures out Lindsay’s plan, she tells Lindsay, “people aren’t objects, they’re not devices. People are people” (189). In her final moments, Lindsay’s body becomes an object, a rag doll, a slinky. This last image of Lindsay is not human. As she is exposed as a monster, her body is referred to as a slinky, a plastic toy. As her constructed final girl identity is revealed as false, her monstrosity is exposed when Izzy fights and kills her just as a final girl would fight and kill the slasher. Her monstrous identity becomes valid as her death causes her to lose her humanity, just as monster would in the “golden age.” Lindsay proves that trying to fit a constructed, fictional identity is not plausible because the path to achieving this goal ultimately leads to monstrosity.

Egan 72

Lindsay’s fake final girl identity possesses monstrous qualities, and her perverse quest to become a final girl makes her monstrosity inevitable. She shares similar qualities with three of

Jeffrey Cohen’s “Seven Theses on Monster Culture.” First, Cohen argues that “the monster’s body is pure culture…the monster’s body quite literally incorporates fear, desire, anxiety, and fantasy” (Cohen 4). Lindsay embodies all of these aspects. She is feared as the mastermind of the murders, she is sexually desirable and is filled with the desire to become a real life final girl, she puts on a mask of anxiety as the perceived target of the slasher, and finally, turns a fantasy genre into real life horror. Cohen also states that “the monster is difference made flesh” (7), meaning, the monster is the cultural, political, racial, or sexual Other. According to Clover’s final girl description, the final girl is always different from the rest, she is othered. Clover observes that the final girl is always “the Girl Scout, the book worm, the mechanic. Unlike her girlfriends, she is not sexuality active” (Clover 39). In other words, the final girl is clearly different from her friends, and this difference allows her to survive. Lindsay, attempting to adhere to this difference, embodies Cohen’s assertion of monstrous difference. Final girls and monsters are both Other, thus, they share similar qualities. Lindsay performs inauthentic otherness by constructing her identity to fit an othered stereotype. Finally, Cohen believes that “the monster polices the borders of the possible [and] stands as a warning against exploration of its uncertain demesnes” (13). The

“demesne” in this case is the attempt to construct a fictitious identity. Lindsay’s monstrosity serves as a warning against constructing an identity that perfectly adheres to unrealistic qualities and expectations.

Jones’ high school monsters aren’t the characters themselves, but rather the social construct of something “perfect.” In The Last Final Girl, the final girl trope can be used as a stand-in for the greater issue of young females feeling like they need to fit into the box society

Egan 73 has created for them. Lindsay’s monstrous actions prove that she would, and did everything she could to be perceived a certain way. The perverse lengths in which she went to create her final girl identity parallel the actions Tammy and Brianne performed in order to achieve their ideal appearance. There are subtle connections between these two texts: the name of the school is

Danfurth, and the othered character, Joy, in “So Perfect” shares the last name of Kane with

Mandy, a murdered member of Lindsay’s homecoming court. In fact, a remembrance photo of

Mandy in Last Final has “a nicely folded pair of red and white tights” (157) next to it. Joy was known for her red and white “candy cane” stockings. Although the setting is different in the two texts, Jones creates a fictional high school world in which the female main characters possess unhealthy, monstrous obsessions with the way others perceive them.

Egan 74

Conclusion: Extensions & Different Angles to Examine the Monstrous Mean Girl

The monstrous identities in teen-centered horror texts expose the adolescent anxiety toward fitting into gendered stereotypes and physical ideals. Stories that fall into the mean girl narrative style that I have established address these same anxieties, but the horror genre provides a place to exaggerate and portray them as monstrously damaging. “So Perfect,” Jennifer’s Body, and The Last Final Girl incorporate uniquely American, and uniquely adolescent female struggles. Tammy, Brianne, Jennifer, and Lindsay are not to blame for their monstrosity. They happen to be the vessels of the monstrous social construct that tells young females to look and act a certain way. Asma reminds us that the root of monster is monstrum, an omen. The monstrous mean girls in these texts can serve as a warning against selling one’s soul to the social construct of perfection.

The notion of perfection is not a new concept in the American Gothic genre. The gothic canonical text, ’s “The Birthmark” addresses an anxiety toward perfecting the female image as well. In this text, scientist Alymer pressures his new wife to remove the birthmark that disrupts her almost perfect face. He insists on constructing his own ideal version of her, and his unnatural obsession ultimately kills her. The constructed, ideal physical image in this case is proven to be inhuman. In addition, Jones’ “Welcome to the Reptile House,” found in

The Faster Redder Road along with “So Perfect” addresses an anxiety toward obsession with perfecting oneself as well. I juxtaposed both Jones’ texts in a previous paper in which I discussed the perverse pleasure in destroying one’s humanity to achieve false perfection. In “Welcome to the Reptile House,” protagonist Jamie becomes so obsessed with building the perfect tattoo portfolio that he unknowingly puts a horrific tattoo on a vampire, who vengefully transforms

Jamie into a vampire to punish him for taking his obsession too far. Monstrous (im)perfection is

Egan 75 therefore not unique to the monstrous mean girl narrative, but can be examined among the greater American Gothic and horror genres.

“So Perfect,” Jennifer’s Body, and The Last Final Girl all switch the traditional roles of the beautiful and the grotesque. In previous gothic and horror works, the grotesque is monstrous, and the beautiful is victimized. Throughout this thesis, I have established that the beautiful becomes monstrous and in “So Perfect” and Jennifer’s Body, physically grotesque as well. The desire to either be viewed as unrealistically beautiful or possess an impossible, constructed identity transforms into the desire to be monstrous. Tammy, Brianne, Jennifer, and Lindsay all perversely enjoy their monstrosity because of the satisfaction they feel when they achieve the unattainable beauty standard or constructed identity, but in the end, their unattainable achievements deteriorate. Monstrosity takes over, proving the unattainable social constructs to be monstrously damaging to the human.

Teenage Monsters and Fearsome Sexualities

The monstrous “ideal” represents a type of gender oppression discussed by Clover,

Mulvey, and Creed that U.S. American society has not yet overcome. To Creed, the “monstrous- feminine” represents a fear of female sexuality, and although I argue that the monstrosity in “So

Perfect,” Jennifer’s Body, and The Last Final Girl is the social construct of young female standards and stereotypes, it could also be argued that these texts prove there is still an anxiety toward female sexuality. Monstrous Tammy, Brianne, Jennifer, and Lindsay are all confident, sexually active teenage girls who have control over their sexual bodies, and their sexuality plays a part in their monstrous transformation.

Egan 76

Monstrosity in the form of sexual agency can be examined from multiple angles. Setting the horror genre aside and looking through a lens of the adolescent narrative, the issue of sexual bodies in these texts can be seen as a critique of a peer-driven expectation to be sexually active.

A common issue in coming-of-age narratives is the question of whether or not to lose one’s virginity, and the consequences the decision will have on social status. Adolescent females are criticized both for being virgins and for being sexually active. She is either a prude or a slut, the

Madonna/whore double standard that has been plaguing U.S. American society for ages. In mean girl narratives, the mean girl bully often ridicules other female students based on their virginity.7

This type of ridicule contributes to the monstrosity of the monstrous mean girl. Although no one torments students about their virginity in these texts, the fact that each monster is sexually active contributes to the monstrous beauty expectations. Sexual activity is lumped in with the desire to have the perfect body, and therefore becomes an expectation rather than a choice.

The Last Final Girl and Metahorror

Jones’ meta slasher The Last Final Girl can also be discussed among the larger metahorror genre, in which the story is aware of its own genre, or rather, “horror movies making statements on horror movies” (Brehmer). What is unique about The Last Final Girl in particular is that it is not only a novel making a statement on the slasher film as a whole, but its characters also play with genre as they attempt to construct a real life horror movie. The metahorror subgenre has its own history and contributions to the greater horror genre, and The Last Final

Girl uses and experiments with past metahorror conventions. Horror has been “commenting on previous horror since the very beginning” (Brehmer) because many of its monsters are

7 In Mean Girls (2004), Regina George refers to a student in the burn book as a virgin in an attempt to demean her. In Clueless (1995), Ty calls Char a “virgin with no friends” with an accusatory tone during a fight.

Egan 77 reincarnations of the same monsters that appeared in the past. For example, Nat Brehmer brings up the Dracula character, who “will make a callback to a previous version or make some kind of tongue-in-cheek reference or remark” (Brehmer) in every version. Many new versions of a particular monster are self-aware of the assumptions surrounding them based on previous portrayals of the same archetype. Lindsay constructs her final girl identity based on previous incarnations of the archetype, and is so aware of her trope that she doesn’t acknowledge that it can evolve. In his essay “Metahorror,” Nicholas de Villiers discusses the horror audience’s desire and appreciation for the formula of horror narratives. Metahorror films such as the Scream franchise and Cabin in the Woods (2011) show an overt consciousness of the formula and “wink at the audience,” (de Villiers 366) who is familiar with it. Cabin in the Woods, for example, which is the most recent and arguably the last acclaimed metahorror film to date, depicts a corporation that utilizes the slasher formula and final girl trope to conduct sacrifices that keep ancient gods at bay. Throughout the film, the corporation in charge discusses which horror character type each teenager plays and places bets on what will happen next based on the slasher formula.

I would argue that part of the appeal of metahorror is that it shows how genres aren’t stagnant and can morph into hybrids, like the hybrid monstrous mean girl narrative. The Rocky

Horror Picture Show for example is arguably the first metahorror text (Brehmer) that fuses horror, , and musical theater. The Last Final Girl does not occupy a stagnant genre, but multiple hybrids including the monstrous mean girl and the slasher novel. As I touched on in chapter III, the constructed monstrous identities in The Last Final Girl push the boundaries of genre not just through Jones’ meta storytelling, but also through the characters’ obsessions with the horror genre. Although I chose to focus on the construction of monstrous identities

Egan 78 throughout this thesis, a further study of The Last Final Girl within the specific metahorror genre could expose how the meta elements contribute to the social critiques present in the novel.

An Extended Discussion of Jennifer’s Body’s Low Shoulder

I touched on the male roles in Jennifer’s Body, but the monstrosity of the band, Low

Shoulder needs to be acknowledged and can be further discussed because their monstrosity manifests in Jennifer’s demonic transformation. Jennifer is the monstrous mean girl of the text, but not the only monster. On a spectrum of Asma’s definition of human monstrosity, I would argue that Low Shoulder’s inhuman and torturous actions toward Jennifer put them higher on the monster scale than pre-demon Jennifer. The band occupies a space of privilege,8 which makes it easier for the members to perform inhuman, torturous actions in order to artificially achieve fame.

While Jennifer sees them as “morsels” whom she believes she can manipulate, they do the same to her, but in a monstrously perverse way. Jennifer sees them, or the lead singer as the ultimate achievement and believes she has enough sexual power to win him over. She objectifies both him, and herself, but the band objectifies her as well. Her confidence however, is what gets her into the monstrous situation. Low Shoulder knowingly preys on an underage girl, makes uninformed assumptions about her sexuality, and uses her body not for sexual pleasure, but for the advancement of their own social status. Jennifer was “high school evil” before the sacrifice, but Low Shoulder’s monstrous treatment of her body establishes her grotesque monstrous appearance.

8 They are male, white, and it is implied that they come from a higher socioeconomic status than that of Devil’s Kettle’s residents.

Egan 79

Mean Girls, Final Girls and Monsters: Final Remarks

The texts examined in this thesis display a unique and contemporary view of monstrosity in U.S. American society. Celebrity culture and social media, along with increased body shaming and computer-generated images of perfect bodies, have plagued adolescent and young adult women in the U.S. for decades. Although young people are told time and again that the images they see are misleading, the desire and expectation to look like the constructed body image doesn’t disappear. The visual representation of the perfect body is unnatural, and inhuman; it is monstrous. Tammy, Brianne, Jennifer, and Lindsay all fall victim to the monstrous social construct, and the monstrosity is reflected in their desire for the unattainable.

Egan 80

Bibliography

Asma, Stephen T. On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears. Oxford

University Press, 2009. Print.

Brehmer, Nat. “A Brief History of Meta Horror.” Wicked Horror, 1 May, 2016,

http://wickedhorror.com/features/editorials/a-brief-history-of-meta-horror/.

The Cabin in the Woods. Directed by . Performances by Kristen Connolly, Chris

Hemsworth, and Anna Hutchinson. Lionsgate, 2012.

Carroll, Noël. The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart. Routledge,

1990. Print.

Clover, Carol J. Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film.

Princeton University Press, 1992. Print.

Clueless. Directed by . Performances by Alicia Silverstone, Brittany Murphy,

and Paul Rudd. , 1995.

Cody, Diablo and Karyn Kusama. “Jennifer’s Body Commentary.” Jennifer’s Body, directed by

Karyn Kusama, written by Diablo Cody. Twentieth Century Fox. 2009.

Cohen, Jeffrey J. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. University of

Minnesota Press, 1996. Print.

The Craft. Directed by Andrew Flemming, performances by , Fairuza Balk, and

Neve Campbell, Columbia Pictures. 1996.

Creed, Barbara. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, , Psychoanalysis. Routledge, 1993.

Print. de Villiers, Nicholas. “Metahorror: Sequels, ‘The Rules’, and the Metareferential Turn in

Contemporary Horror Cinema.” Studies in Intermediality (SIM), 5: Metareferential Turn

Egan 81

in Contemporary Arts and Media: Forms, Functions, Attempts at Explanation, vol. 1,

June 2011, pp. 357-377. ProQuest Ebrary,

http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.csusm.edu/lib/csusm/detail.action?docID=10483632/.

Freud, Sigmund. “The Uncanny.” The Uncanny, translated by David McLintock, Penguin Group,

2003, pp 123-162. Print.

Guillen, Michael. “Diablo Cody on Jennifer’s Body (2009).” Screenarchy, 22 June, 2010,

http://screenanarchy.com/2010/06/midnites-for-maniacs-diablo-cody-on-jennifers-body-

2009.html/.

Haggerty, George E. “Introduction: Gothic Fiction and Affective Form.”

Gothic Fiction/Gothic Form. Pennsylvania State University, 1989, pp. 1-14. Print.

Halberstam, Judith. Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters. Duke

University Press, 1995. Print.

Heathers. Directed by Michael Lehmann. Performances by Wynona Ryder, Christian Slater,

and Shannen Doherty, New World Pictures. 1988.

Jawbreaker. Directed by Darren Stein. Performances by Rose McGowan, Rebecca Gayheart, and

Julie Benz, Crossroads Films. 1999.

Jennifer’s Body. Directed by Kusama, written by Diablo Cody, performances by Megan

Fox and , Twentieth Century Fox, 2009.

“Jennifer’s Body.” Rotten Tomatoes. RottenTomatoes.com,

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/jennifers_body/.

Jones, Stephen Graham. “I Was Genre When Genre Wasn’t Cool.” Fantasy Matters. 2011,

http://base.fantasy-matters.com/node/211/.

---. “The Kind of Murder Happy Characters We Have Here.” Pop Matters, Oct. 2008,

Egan 82

http://www.popmatters.com/feature/the-kind-of-murder-happy-characters-we-have-here/.

---. “So Perfect.” The Faster Redder Road, edited by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. University of

New Mexico Press, 2015 pp. 37-59. Print.

---. The Last Final Girl. The Lazy Fascist Press, 2012. Print.

---. “State of the Slasher Address.” Pop Matters. 16 April, 2008.

http://www.popmatters.com/feature/state-of-the-slasher-address/.

---. “Welcome to the Reptile House.” The Faster Redder Road, edited by Theodore C. Van Alst

Jr. University of New Mexico Press, 2015 pp. 285-299. Print.

Kinsella, Bridget. "Unfettered Imagination: Stephen Graham Jones." Publishers Weekly vol. 259,

no. 19, May 2012, pp. 24. ProQuest, doi: 10.1209/6787

Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, translated by Leon S. Roudiez.

Columbia University Press, 1982. Print.

Lancaster, Ashley Craig. "From Frankenstein's Monster To Lester Ballard: The Evolving Gothic

Monster." Midwest Quarterly: A Journal Of Contemporary Thought, vol. 49, no. 2, Winter

2008 pp 32-148. Academic Search Premier,

http://ezproxy.csusm.edu/login?url=https://search-

ebscohostcom.ezproxy.csusm.edu/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=aph&AN=28628154&site=ehost-live/.

Laycock, Joseph. “Jennifer’s Body.” Journal of Religion and Film vol. 13, no. 2 Oct. 2009, pp.

1-4. Digital Commons, http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=1498&context=jrf/.

Lizardi, Ryan. “Re-Imagining Hegemony and Misogyny in the Contemporary Horror Remake.”

Journal of Popular Film and Television, Fall 2010, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 113-121. Academic

Egan 83

Search Premier, http://ezproxy.csusm.edu/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-

com.ezproxy.csusm.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=53843762&site=ehost-live/.

Lush, Rebecca M. “‘Cause the Lie Becomes the Truth’: Dead Celebrities and Horror Archetypes

in The Last Final Girl and Bake Off.” The Fictions of Stephen Graham

Jones: A Critical Companion, edited by Billy J. Stratton, University of New Mexico Press,

2016, pp 305-326. Print.

Mean Girls. Directed by . Performances by , Rachel McAdams, and

Tina Fey, Paramount Pictures. 2004.

Mittman, Asa Simon. “The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies.” The Ashgate Research

Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Asa Simon Mittman, Ashgate, 2012,

pp 1-14. Print.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” 1989. Jstor.

https://biblio.csusm.edu/sites/default/files/reserves/Visual%20Pleasure%20and%

20Narrative%20Cinema.pdf/.

Orange, Michelle. “Taking Back the Knife: Girls Gone Gory.” . 3 Sept,

2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/movies/06oran.html/.

Pepetone, Gregory G. “Introduction: Preliminary Issues.” Gothic Perspectives on the American

Experience. Peter Lang Publishing, 2003, pp. 1-23. Print.

Poe, Edgar Allen. “The Imp of the Perverse.” The Selected Writings of Edgar Allen Poe, edited

by G.R. Thompson. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2004, pp. 402-406. Print.

Radway, Janice. “Girl Zine Networks, Underground Itineraries, and Riot Grrrl History: Making

Sense of the Struggle for New Social Forms in the 1990s and Beyond.” Journal of

American Studies vol. 50, no.1, Feb. 2016, pp. 1–31, doi: 10.1017/S0021875815002625

Egan 84

The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Directed by Jim Sharman, Performances by Tim Curry, Susan

Sarandon, and Barry Bostwick. 20th Century Fox, 1975.

Scott, A.O.. “Hell Is Other People, Especially the Popular Girl.” The New York Times. 17 Sept,

2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/movies/18jennifer.html?_r=0/.

Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” Monoskop. 1964,

https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Sontag_Susan_1964_Notes_on_Camp.pdf/.

Spears, Rick. Jennifer’s Body. BOOM! Studios, 2009. Print.

Stephen Graham Jones. Demon Theory, 2017, www.demontheory.net/.

Stratton, Billy J. “Come for the Icing, Stay for the Cake.” The Fictions of Stephen Graham

Jones: A Critical Companion, edited by Billy J. Stratton, University of New Mexico Press,

2016, pp 1-13. Print.

Tremblay, Paul. Afterword. The Fictions of Stephen Graham Jones: A Critical Companion,

edited by Billy J. Stratton, University of New Mexico Press, 2016, pp 357-358. Print.

VanderMeer, Jeff. “Interview: Stephen Graham Jones on .” Weird Fiction Review.

16 Jan. 2012, http://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/01/interview-stephen-graham-jones-on-

the-weird/.

Van Alst, Theodore Jr. Introduction. The Faster Redder Road: The Best UnAmerican Stories of

Stephen Graham Jones, edited by Theodore Van Alst Jr, University of New

Mexico Press, 2015, pp xiii-xix. Print.

Watson, Lara Herrington. “Scare Tactics.” The Denver Magazine. Oct. 2013. Web.

Williams, Anne. Art of Darkness : A Poetics of Gothic. University of

Chicago Press, 1995. ProQuest Ebrary,

http://site.ebrary.com.ezproxy.csusm.edu/lib/csusm/detail.action?docID=10286148/.

Egan 85

Wisniewski, John. “John Wisniewski and Stephen Graham Jones Talk Terror and Cinematic

Influence.” Horror Novel Reviews. 24 Sep, 2013,

https://horrornovelreviews.com/2013/09/24/interview-john-wisniewski-and-author-

stephen-graham-jones-talk-terror-and-cinematic-influence/.

Younger, Beth. “Pleasure, Pain, and the Power of Being Thin: Female Sexuality in Young Adult

Literature.” NSWA Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, Summer 2003, pp. 45-56 Jstor,

www.jstor.org/stable/4316970/.

Zilberman, Alan. “Still Very, 25 Years Later: The Bleak Genius of Heathers.” The Atlantic, 31

March, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/03/still-very-25-

years-later-the-bleak-genius-of-em-heathers-em/359828/.