Jennifer 39;s Body Guitar Tab

[Kum Verna]

Butin the end, the film works. And a major reason it works is not on screen for very long. Because the fake band in the film that sets off all the mayhem, Low Shoulder, is a perfect piece of writing5.

The fact that the band is so non-threatening and frankly uninteresting is essential to the story, because it underscores how women like Jennifer are consumed not by some monolithic, all-powerful cabal, but by average assholes13. A lesser film would have really played up the Satanism aspect and made the band either incredibly successful already and merely maintaining their legendary status with a fresh sacrifice, or leeringly corrupt, true believers in evil who delight in inflicting pain. In fact, Cody has admitted she initially conceived of the band as total sleazeballs, Motley Crue on steroids, only to realize that would be a mistake14.

For all its cleverness, this film still leans in hard on that most awful of tropes: Hot Person Made Unattractive via Glasses. As a man who has worn glasses since he was 10, I can attest that wearing glasses has exactly zero impact on your attractiveness, or so my Mom always told me.

One of the best, subtle things about the script is how absolutely disinterested Low Shoulder is in having sex with Megan Fox. Combined with the very Sexy Fox-focused marketing of the film, this is absolute genius.

The film flirts with the fascinating phenomenon of bonding with a mediocre band at live shows and imbuing their mediocre work with unearned emotional resonance. If you spent time going to club shows as a youngster like I did, this part of the film felt incredibly realistic. I have vibed to many awful bands simply because I had a fun time at their shows. Ten years later you fire up that favorite song and you stop it after thirty seconds and question your sanity.

Screenwriter Diablo Cody experienced one of the fastest cases of backlash ever recorded. Her debut script, 2007\u2019s Juno, won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and put her on the map in a major way1. But Cody\u2019s hyper-cool style rankled (er, I may have contributed to the rankling) and just two years later her second produced film script, Jennifer\u2019s Body, was almost doomed to be shat upon as a result2. Cody\u2019s self-consciously cool dialogue in the early going of Juno is just so easy to hate and mock, you can easily miss the fact that it exits the film pretty quickly, and the majority of the movie is actually a lot of fun3.

Jennifer\u2019s Body, on the other hand, has its own problems. Which is not to say that it\u2019s a bad movie\u2014not at all, actually. It\u2019s an underrated gem, and I encourage you to check it out. But it\u2019s not a totally successful film; while its themes exploring how men abuse and consume young women and succeed as a result are powerful (especially due to the inversion Cody crafts, where the female victims use their own abused bodies to exact revenge) there is, once again, a little too much eagerness on Cody\u2019s part to be cool, to let everyone know she knows how smart she is4.

If you\u2019ve forgotten the plot of Jennifer\u2019s Body, here\u2019s a spoilery recap: Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) is the Hot High School Girl \u00DCbermensch, and her bestie from childhood is the mousy Anita \u201CNeedy\u201D Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried). As portrayed by Fox, Jennifer is an impossibly hot teenager6 whose relationship with Needy is a bit strained as they\u2019ve gone down different paths in school7. One night Jennifer persuades Needy to go see an up-and-coming indie rock band, Low Shoulder, at a local bar. The band preys on Jennifer\u2014who is, after all, a fairly naive kid, a child\u2014and persuades her to get in their van with them after a fire breaks out at the bar. Instead of classic groupie sexual assault, however, Low Shoulder has something different in mind: They\u2019re going to sacrifice Jennifer, who they presume to be a virgin, to Satan in order to get rich and famous8.

What they don\u2019t know, however, is that Jennifer isn\u2019t a virgin. Their deal with the devil goes through\u2014but instead of dying, Jennifer is possessed by a demonic force, granting her perfect beauty, resilient health (she heals instantly as long as she\u2019s fed recently), and supernatural powers\u2014as long as she feeds on human souls. Luckily, Jennifer is the Hot High School Girl \u00DCbermensch, so luring men to their doom is pretty easy for her9.

There\u2019s a lot of rich stuff to unpack here. There\u2019s the implication that women are only valued by society when they\u2019re virginal, prompting this heartbreaking line from a terrified Jennifer\u2014who is, let\u2019s not forget, a 17-year-old girl\u2014\u201CYes. Yes, I'm a virgin. I'm a virgin. I've never even done sex. I don't even know how. So, you guys should find somebody. Who does. Know how.\u201D What\u2019s so heartbreaking about this line is that Jennifer assumes the band wants an experienced girl, because she doesn\u2019t yet understand that the male-dominated world is terrified of women of experience, and much prefers naive virgins they can gaslight and manipulate with impunity. There\u2019s also the implication that sexual experience literally turns women monstrous and the way the abuse and trauma Jennifer suffers prompts her to become a predator herself10. All of these aspects of the story are interesting, but what\u2019s really interesting is Low Shoulder and their utter, absolute mediocrity.

Low Shoulder is a band that is clearly, obviously mediocre11. Made up of mediocre white men, with a lead singer portrayed by Adam Brody, who has made a career of playing mediocre white men12. What\u2019s terrific about them is how small and grimy their desires are. These guys don\u2019t want to make the greatest record of all time. They don\u2019t aspire to writing a guitar riff that will displace \u201CBlack Dog\u201D in rock history, they don\u2019t care about composing a concept album that will change music forever. As noted, they don\u2019t even want to sleep with groupies. All Low Shoulder wants is a platinum album and a private jet.

The way Low Shoulder approach making a deal with the devil is just so petulant it lands Cody\u2019s real point with incredible finesse. These guys don\u2019t believe in good or evil, they have no moral code at all. They simply believe they deserve more, and they\u2019ve been denied. As a result, they are free to do anything that grants them their rightful status. If that means selling their souls and torturing and murdering a child, so be it. Because they deserve it.

This, of course, is the mindset of millions of mediocre people around the world, a great many of them white and male. This mindset tells them that it doesn\u2019t matter how many people suffer, because a great injustice has been done to them and that justifies any reaction, no matter how loathsome or violent. If Low Shoulder had been cool at all, even the slightest bit cool, it would have undermined the point, which is kind of an anti-superhero concept: The worst shit that happens, this movie says, isn\u2019t done by supervillains. It\u2019s done by below-average assholes like the guys in Low Shoulder.

Plus, people delight in taking people down after they\u2019ve been crowned \u201Ccool\u201D or \u201Cbrilliant,\u201D something I know \u2026 almost nothing about, since no one has ever considered me cool or brilliant. Excuse me, I need to be alone for a moment.

I\u2019d love someone to write the gender-flipped version with some nerdy geek in the main role, following his increasingly despairing attempts to lure women into his grasp as he gets progressively weaker. We could base his wardrobe on my high school photos.

There was a time when my commitment to accuracy would have required me to figure out how to include the umlauts in Motley Crue. That time is long gone. The Age of Lazy Jeff is in Ascendance, and y\u2019all are lucky I (sometimes) remember to spellcheck this.

Jennifer specializes in writing articles, blogs, product descriptions, and web pages. She particularly enjoys writing about spirituality, parenting, kids, and home living. With a passion to learn, she eagerly researches any topic as she writes content that matches the client's requested tone. She's also skilled at adding keywords naturally and inserting relevant links and images.

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