About the Work:

This text, written by Olsen in the form of a script for video-essay, was presented as a final for their Feminist Theory class in 2020. Combining satire of popular Youtube trends of the time with sardonic wit and and well-researched analysis, this paper submits a meta-analysis of the creation, content, cultural and critical response to the 2009 horror-comedy Jennifer’s Body through a feminist lens. Dissecting various gender and race-related tropes throughout horror cinema history, Olsen offers analysis and critique of how the film deconstructs and subverts these tropes to create a unique and genre-defining film and why this led to the film being a critical and commercial flop at the time of its release, only to be re-examined a decade later by critical theorists and movie-goers alike.

This piece demonstrates Olsen’s knowledge of feminist and queer theory and the ability to apply these to film and media studies, but also their adeptness as a scriptwriter to capture and subvert tropes common to the form of media they are playing within.