Classic Gothic vs. New Gothic: Carmilla / Jennifer's Body

The Use of Sexuality in Carmilla and Jennifer’s Body

Carmilla from Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla and Jennifer from Diablo Cody’s movie, Jennifer’s Body share many similarities. Physically, both are so attractive that their beauty entrances both sexes and the two girls use their looks to manipulate and overpower the people around them. Most importantly, Carmilla and Jennifer are both supernatural creatures that feed off other humans for sustenance. The two girls also each have a best friend (Laura for Carmilla and Needy for Jennifer) who narrates their respective story in retrospect. The two relationships began in childhood and involved the exchange of blood, which is physically and sexually binding. These homoerotic tendencies continue throughout the two friendships, although Sheridan LeFanu and Diablo Cody use these intimate friendships for different purposes. While LeFanu aims for the relationship between Carmilla and Laura to seem genuine and characteristic of feminine friendships of the time, Diablo Cody deliberately sets out to titillate her audience with Jennifer and Needy’s borderline lesbian relationship. The result is an earnest attempt to gain the audience’s trust through creating a close, feminine friendship in Carmilla, while Jennifer’s Body provides sarcastic fan service through gore and hints of lesbianism.

Carmilla and Jennifer use their physical attractiveness in similar ways to influence others. Carmilla inspires awe with her beauty, which keeps Laura, Laura’s father and the maids from suspecting Carmilla of being evil. By using Carmilla’s attractiveness to create feelings of trust in Laura, LeFanu causes his readers to overlook their suspicions of Carmilla as well. Although modern audiences see Carmilla and Laura’s intimate friendship as somewhat homosexual, original audiences probably saw their relationship as genuine and close. Carmilla’s beauty allows her to gain Laura’s trust and causes her to overlook the strange, reluctant attraction she feels around Carmilla: “The sense of attraction immensely prevailed. She interested and won me, she was so beautiful and indescribably engaging” (LeFanu, Ch. 3). Despite Carmilla’s curious and sudden arrival, the maids and Laura’s governess only comment on Carmilla’s physical features, saying, “I like her extremely…she is, I think, the prettiest create I ever saw…so gentle and nice” (LeFanu, Ch. 3). LeFanu uses the importance of first impressions to Carmilla’s advantage, using her beauty to help Laura and her servants overlook her odd habits and mysterious past.

While Carmilla evoked feelings of trust with her beauty, Jennifer uses her attractiveness as a means to create feelings of lust in her victims. Since her victims are usually female, it is more important for Carmilla to develop a friendship with them rather than to provoke sexual attraction. Jennifer, however, preys on boys for the majority of Jennifer’s Body and only needs sexual appeal to draw them under her influence. Even before she turns into a succubus, Jennifer realizes that she can use her sexuality to manipulate boys, explaining to Needy, “They’re just boys, morsels. We have the power don’t you know that? These things [grabbing Needy’s breasts] are like smart bumps. You point them in the right direction and shit gets real” (Jennifer’s Body). She uses this method of manipulation during the bar scene, telling Needy she will play “hello titty” with the bartender to get drinks even though she is underage. Once Jennifer changes into a succubus, she continues to use her body to ensnare boys for nourishment. Her second victim, the football team’s captain, immediately stops mourning the death of his best friend when Jennifer seductively asks him to follow her into the woods. Once they are in the forest, a congregation of forest animals encircles them both, but the football player is too entranced with Jennifer’s sexuality to give the excited animals a second thought. He continues to ignore the warning signs surrounding him, especially when Jennifer starts to give him a hand job. This distraction gives Jennifer the chance to tear open the captain’s chest and devour him. Instead of developing trust to overcome her victims’ suspicions of danger, Jennifer uses her body and sexual implications to make her victims forget their uneasy feelings.

Later in the movie, Jennifer agrees to a date with a boy named Colin, telling him to come to her house instead of meeting at the movie theater. When Colin arrives at the address Jennifer text messages him, the disrepair of the house alarms him, but he goes inside anyway. Once inside, Colin realizes that the half-finished house is obviously not Jennifer’s real home. He continues to wait for Jennifer because of the possibility of sex, ignoring the fact that there is no television, or even electricity in the house. Similar to the method she used on the football captain, Jennifer slinks out from the dark and begins to unzip Colin’s pants. Just as he settles into the idea of having sex, however, Jennifer breaks his arm and begins to rip through his chest. Jennifer even uses her sexual appeal to initiate a make out session with Needy, causing her to forget that she just saw Jennifer on the side of a road in bloody clothes on her drive home from her boyfriend’s house.

Both Carmilla and Jennifer’s Body contain implications of lesbianism between the two main female characters. Both Laura and Needy develop seemingly sexual fascinations with Carmilla and Jennifer, respectively. Laura frequently comments on feeling a mixture between repulsion and love around Carmilla, explaining “I experienced as strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust” (LeFanu, Ch. 4). In turn, Carmilla repeatedly appears possessive over Laura, telling her, “you are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever” (LeFanu, Ch. 4). Although Laura finds these comments strange, she cannot help but trust Carmilla and feel that the “fondness” Carmilla shows her was only a sign that she wanted to be close friends (LeFanu, Ch. 3).

In Jennifer’s Body, Needy shows a similar fascination with Jennifer, causing her schoolmates to call Needy “lesbi-gay,” although Needy insists that the two are just best friends. Needy and Jennifer both behave in ways that seem overly intimate, especially for two girls in their late teens. One example is when Needy yells at Jennifer to get out of her bed, only to have Jennifer remind her in a slightly seductive manner that the two “always share beds when [they] have slumber parties” (Jennifer’s Body). Jennifer proceeds to kiss Needy and at first Needy seems alarmed, but quickly reciprocates the kissing. After some time Needy realizes what she is doing and exclaims, “What the fuck is happening?!” which, in much more explicit terms, is similar to reactions Laura has towards her attraction to Carmilla. Both Needy and Jennifer are extremely possessive over each other and become jealous when the other shows more attention to boys. When Needy turns down Jennifer’s invitation to hang out after school in favor of a date with her boyfriend, Jennifer becomes sulky and exes out Needy with her finger. Needy eventually caves to Jennifer’s pouting, causing her boyfriend to remark that she spends more time with Jennifer than she does with him. Needy also displays feelings of jealousy later that night by telling a band’s lead singer (whom Jennifer is trying to seduce) that Jennifer is a virgin, in hopes of making her seem inexperienced, and therefore unattractive.

Both Carmilla and Jennifer are fully aware of the effect their sexuality and beauty has on others, which LeFanu and Cody use to achieve different effects on the audience. LeFanu uses Carmilla’s looks to trick readers, along with Laura, into trusting Carmilla and ignoring her curious habits and mood swings. Cody, however, employs Jennifer’s sexuality to entice both sexes, causing her victims to forget self-preservation and only act on their sexual instincts. Although fan service is abundant in Jennifer’s Body, Cody also gives a sense of tongue in cheek sarcasm that gives Jennifer’s sexuality a deeper meaning that touches on the mystery surrounding female anatomy and relationships. In the end, however, both girls achieve the same results with their physical beauty – a meal of human blood that sustains their bodies and evil powers.

Works Cited

Jennifer’s Body. Prod. Diablo Cody. Dir. Karyn Kusama, Fox Atomic. Perf. Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody. DVD. Fox Atomic. 2009.

LeFanu, Sheridan. Carmilla. www.sff.net. 8 March, 2010.
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Laura: Mia Wasikowska