Know Your Song Girls: Jenny

TrojanWire is proud to present Know Your Song Girls — a salute to the women who, since 1968, have made up the greatest cheerleading squad in the history of collegiate athletics. A group that’s been called a “national treasure” and “God’s gift to the sidelines” — the world-famous University of Southern California Song Girls.

Photo Credit: Paul Goldberg, USC Song Girls official site

Jenny is a senior originally hailing from Long Grove, Illinois. She’s majoring in business, with a minor in cinema-television (an illustrious path followed by at least one of TrojanWire’s writing staff) and says her favorite movies include Sunset Boulevard, Casablanca, Forest Gump, and….Crash. Assuming she’s talking about the Academy Award-winning schlockfest (and not the movie of the same name where James Spader and Holly Hunter like to have sex after car crashes), we’re really going to struggle to not hold that against her.

Photo Credits: Movie Poster: Unknown; Jenny: Timothy of Murrieta/USCFOOTBALLFAN.COM

Paul Haggis’s Academy Award-winning exercise in painfully trite stereotypes set against the backdrop of Los Angeles ranks way up the list of the all-time most overrated films ever released. A few quick reviews sum up its merits (or lack thereof) better than we ever could:

So what kind of a movie is Crash? A frustrating movie: full of heart and devoid of life; crudely manipulative when it tries hardest to be subtle; and profoundly complacent in spite of its intention to unsettle and disturb. — A.O. Scott, New York Times

Photo Credit: Timothy of Murrieta/USCFOOTBALLFAN.COM

These interlocking stories don’t move along as swiftly or as urgently as they should, and much of the dialogue thumps along on square wheels. — Stephanie Zacharek, Salon.com

The result is a hybrid of “Falling Down” and “Short Cuts” without the iconic central character of the former or the latter’s clear-eyed humanism. — Mark Mohan, Portland Oregonian

Photo Credit: Timothy of Murrieta/USCFOOTBALLFAN.COM

It might even have been a landmark film about race relations had its aura of blunt realism not been dispelled by a toxic cloud of dramaturgical pixie dust. — David Edelstein, Slate

It’s too bad that the movie induces eyeball-rolling almost as much as it does armrest-clutching. — Glenn Kenny, Premiere

Photo Credit: Timothy of Murrieta/USCFOOTBALLFAN.COM

So what does all of this have to do with Jenny, beyond us trashing one of her favorite films?

Well, when you take a serious look at what an unwatchable mess of a film Crash was, you actually find a perfect expression of Jenny’s Song Girl skills in its inverse. For the past two seasons, Jenny has brought the perfect blend of ebullience and subtlety — the sort of deft touch lacking in many cheerleaders — to her role as a white sweater-clad mistress of the Trojan sidelines. A wholly original, innovative leader of the Song Girl squad, Jenny is TRULY deserving of recognition and praise who, upon repeat viewings, does NOT make you want to gouge out your eyes with shards of broken glass. Like we said — the polar opposite of Paul Haggis’s film.

The Oscar for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Song Girling goes to Jenny.

Photo Credits: Timothy of Murrieta/USCFOOTBALLFAN.COM, BEATSC.com