Megan Fox: “The Hollywood of my day was a misogynistic hell” | Culture

It was one of the most successful horror films of recent times M3GAN (2022), a story about artificial intelligence in the form of a child’s doll that has developed murderous tendencies. It’s not hard to imagine someone in the office thinking it would be funny to take the movie’s title and cast 38-year-old Megan Fox as the M3GAN robot. September 13 Servility A science fiction thriller with erotic overtones was released in American cinemas, in which the actress gained fame Transformers (2007) plays the role of a cyborg nanny, recruited by his father to temporarily replace his hospitalized wife and take care of the house. As you can easily guess, the situation quickly turns into: The hand that rocks the cradle (1992), in which a robot tries at all costs to take control over the family and her husband’s feelings.

While the Bulgaria-US co-production is unlikely to be the platform that brings Fox back to the A-list – in the US, the film went directly to the online rental market, without a theatrical release – Servility is the actress’s latest attempt to relaunch her career with a more action-oriented profile, after years in which she barely made headlines outside of her occasional relationship with singer Machine Gun Kelly. Last year, she took part in her first high-budget film in a decade, titled Expenditures4blewhere she played Jason Statham’s partner, she pulled some punches and stood out in a cast full of ’80s action stars. Similarly, in 2021, when the world was still in semi-lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, she received surprisingly good reviews for Until deatha survival thriller, also shot in Bulgaria, which premiered simultaneously in cinemas and on streaming platforms. IN Servilityre-teams with the same director, SK Dale.

Ironically, her new film will share bills with Transformers Onethe latest installment (this time in animated form) of the long-running series that made Fox famous in Hollywood. Her high-profile dismissal from the saga marked, among other things, the end of the period of her greatest popularity after she compared director Michael Bay to Hitler – and Napoleon – in a 2009 interview with The Telegraph Wonderland warehouse while Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen was still shown in cinemas.

“He wants to be like Hitler on his sets and he actually succeeds. He’s a nightmare to work with, but when you take him off set and he’s not in director mode, I really like his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. And it’s nice to watch him. In real life he is defenseless and fragile, but on set he becomes a tyrant,” she said.

Bay did not cast Fox in the third film two years later, although he stated that he was not angry with her and attributed the decision to exclude her to executive producer Steven Spielberg. To put the conflict aside, Bay gave her the role of reporter April O’Neil in these two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the films he produced in 2014 and 2016 were poorly received.

Fox, a mother of three children ages 11, 10 and eight with fellow actor Brian Austin Green (with whom she uses a non-binary parenting method), Fox grew up in an evangelical family with a stepfather who she says was verbally, mentally and emotionally abusive. She made her film debut with supporting roles in the Olsen Twins and Lindsay Lohan, and previously TransformersWhen she was still a minor, she first met Bay as an uncredited extra Bad Boys II (2003), in a scene taking place in a strip club. “They said, ‘You know, Michael, she’s 15, so you can’t sit her at the bar and she can’t have a drink in her hand,’ so his solution to that problem was to offer to dance under the waterfall and I’ll get wet,” the actress told Jimmy Kimmel on 2009.

With the rise of the #MeToo movement, statements like these – to which Kimmel couldn’t come up with anything better than an awkward joke: “Well, that’s really a microcosm of how all of our minds work” – and the constant sexualization of Fox suffered during this period ( especially in men’s magazines) was re-examined and led to a different perspective on the actress’s career. In any case, Fox has not publicly released any harassment stories. “Even in the face of the #MeToo movement and everyone telling stories — and you can bet I probably have a lot of them, which I do — I haven’t spoken out for a lot of reasons,” she said. New York Times. “I just didn’t think, given the way I was received by people and feminists, that I would be a sympathetic victim.”

It cannot be said that after the newer films with the participation of the actress Ninja Turtlesincluding those vilified Zeroville (2019), dir. James Franco, or Midnight in Switchgrass (2021), has gained a devoted audience. On an artistic level, Fox has generated greater interest in her 2023 collection of poems during this period Pretty boys are poisonousand the revelations that came out of it: from the abusive relationship in which she admitted to suffering with an unspecified person, to the words of love and heartbreak she dedicated to Machine Gun Kelly. On television, she appeared in a comedy series New girl in 2016-2017 and created a documentary series, Legends of the Lost (2018), based on her interest in archaeological mysteries and theories regarding ancient alien civilizations (Fox has also spoken publicly on astrology and energy).

However, one Fox film that has become increasingly talked about and gained recognition over the years is a horror film Jennifer’s body (2009), the failure of which at the time of publication was linked to the subsequent financial disaster Jonah Hex (2010), a DC comic book adaptation, was seen in Hollywood as the actress’s swan song. In this film, the actress played a high school student who, as a result of a failed Satanic ritual, begins to prey on men attracted by her charms. The promotion paradoxically focused on Fox’s figure, which directly distorted the topic it covered. Victoria Santamaría Ibor, research professor at the University of Zaragoza and author of the book I Eat Boys: The Monstrous Femininity in “Jennifer’s Body” (2022) explains to EL PAÍS that the film “is now respected by many not only as a cult film in horror cinema, but also as a feminist film ahead of its time”, which is a symbol that there has indeed been a change in opinion’s perception of its star public as a result of the #MeToo movement.

In the case of Santamaría, director Karyn Kusama and screenwriter Diablo Cody used the film’s image of the star as a “sexually active woman” to justify their discourse: “Jennifer’s body exaggerates the image of Megan Fox as a sex symbol and distorts it to the point that it becomes monstrous. The film’s tone is ironic towards the image of Fox, an actress who is only interested in Hollywood’s sexuality. Instead of being a sexual object for men, Jennifer (played by Fox) treats men as objects of consumption. Her sexuality is directly linked to her monstrosity: she is an insatiable woman who consumes boys like cosmetic products.

The scientist recalls that the actress “was ridiculed as a result of her statements about how uncomfortable she felt Transformers” and that “many of her statements position her as someone who says what she thinks, no matter how disrespectful or controversial it may be. She is not a perfect victim and has never tried to be,” she adds, noting that she “has always felt rejected by society and little effort has been made to understand her.”

In recent interviews, Fox has also expressed pride in the belated recognition Jennifer’s bodywhich she consistently defended, and in the way the film referenced her fame. “I think for at least the first decade of my career, I was generally perceived as a shallow succubus, if that makes any sense,” she said. Washington Post. in 2021. “I was so lost and trying to understand how I could feel value or find purpose in this horrible, patriarchal, misogynistic hell that was Hollywood at the time. Because I’ve already spoken out against it and everyone, including other women, has reacted very negatively to me for it.”

The article, in which the actress also stated that she felt connected to Joan of Arc and “all persecuted women in history,” spoke of Fox’s “renaissance” after Until death. Such a prediction is still far from being fulfilled, but 15 years will pass Jennifer’s bodythose who enjoyed this cannibal version of the performer can at least find solace in theaters by watching her robot in Servility weakening one or two people.

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