Screening Scarlett Johansson: Gender, Genre, Stardom [1st ed. 2019] 978-3-030-33195-5, 978-3-030-33196-2

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxiii
Why Scarlett Johansson? (Kirsten Stevens, Janice Loreck, Whitney Monaghan)....Pages 1-21
Young Scarlett Johansson and the Liminal Perspective (Whitney Monaghan)....Pages 23-40
Blank Stares and Blonde Hair: Performing Scarlett Johansson (Kirsten Stevens)....Pages 41-61
“Certain Only of What She Didn’t Want”: Scarlett Johansson’s American Outsiders in Woody Allen’s Match Point, Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Edward Lamberti)....Pages 63-79
“Who Do You Want Me to Be?” Scarlett Johansson, Black Widow and Shifting Identity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Chris Davies)....Pages 81-98
On the Off-Screen Voice: Falling in Love with Her (Troy Michael Bordun)....Pages 99-120
Scarlett Johansson Falling Down: Memes, Photography and Celebrity Personas (Daniel Palmer, Kate Warren)....Pages 121-144
Remapping Femininity: Johansson’s Alien Transnationalism in Under the Skin (Fulvia Massimi)....Pages 145-163
Man, Meat and Bêtes-Machines: Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin (Janice Loreck)....Pages 165-182
“What We Do Defines Us”: ScarJo as War Machine (William Brown, David H. Fleming)....Pages 183-202
The Alien Whiteness of Scarlett Johansson (Sean Redmond)....Pages 203-219
Back Matter ....Pages 221-227

Citation preview

Screening Scarlett Johansson Gender, Genre, Stardom Edited by Janice Loreck Whitney Monaghan · Kirsten Stevens

Screening Scarlett Johansson

Janice Loreck · Whitney Monaghan · Kirsten Stevens Editors

Screening Scarlett Johansson Gender, Genre, Stardom

Editors Janice Loreck Screen Arts and Cultural Studies Curtin University Bentley, WA, Australia

Whitney Monaghan Film and Screen Studies Monash University Caulfield, VIC, Australia

Kirsten Stevens Culture and Communication University of Melbourne Parkville, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-33195-5 ISBN 978-3-030-33196-2  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: MARKA/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

Ingénue, sex symbol, cyborg, muse: American actor Scarlett Johansson has many incarnations. She is, by several measures, one of the most successful performers working in Hollywood today. Her career began over twenty years ago when she took a small role in North (Rob Reiner, 1994), and she has been a consistent screen presence ever since. In July 2016, Johansson was named the highest-grossing actor of all time in North America (Robehmed 2016), beating several high-profile male stars. This was a considerable feat given that only a small number of women stars can open a film on their status alone (Hollinger 2006, 55). Johansson has also achieved renown as a superlatively beautiful and desirable individual, a feature that has been a central part of her image for over a decade. Since 2005, Johansson has frequently topped “sexiest woman alive” polls in men’s magazines such as Maxim, Esquire, GQ, Playboy, FHM and Men’s Health. Johansson is thus extraordinarily successful in her stardom. Elena Gorfinkel (2016) calls her “the sex symbol of our precarious times.” This assessment rings true: the decade following the millennium saw no other Hollywood actress positioned as an object of desire more than Johansson. Screening Scarlett Johansson began its life at the Deletion-Deviation science fiction symposium held at Deakin University in Melbourne in February 2015. This event was dedicated to exploring science fiction and the “pleasure gained from its fictive forms, and the perversions of facts and flesh within its speculative futures” (Hancock 2015). At that time, Johansson was appearing in a rush of science fiction films, specifically as v

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an artificial intelligence in Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), an alien in Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) and chemically augmented human in Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014). She was therefore an exciting star to consider in relation to the genre, and our panel at the symposium, entitled “Crowning the New Sci-fi Queen: The Films of Scarlett Johansson,” featured three accounts of Johansson’s roles in these films. Whitney Monaghan offered insight into the opacity of Johansson’s star image, exploring the perversion of her early indie-darling and sex symbol personas within her recent films; Kirsten Stevens examined the threat of the non-reproductive female within Johansson’s sci-fi roles; and Janice Loreck examined how Johansson’s character in Under the Skin evoked anxieties about humanity and industry in intensive farming practices. A lively discussion followed, but it did not entirely satiate our desire to interrogate Johansson’s stardom. On closer inspection, it appeared to us that Johansson was more than an emergent star of science fiction or, indeed, a young actress who fulfilled the role of sexiest woman alive for the post-millennium decade. While her science fiction roles made her more visible—more conspicuous as an image that could be appropriated for different genres—we realised that she had always “been there.” Johansson is a consistent presence and a figure of central, and growing, importance in contemporary Hollywood. It is easy to focus on the label of “sexiest woman alive” when discussing Johansson, yet what appears on closer inspection is a persona that is rich, surprisingly diverse, and characterised by paradox and dichotomy. Johansson’s work stretches across popular cinema and independent film milieus. She has appeared in action films (The Island [Michael Bay, 2005]; The Avengers [Joss Whedon, 2010]), period dramas (Girl with a Pearl Earring [Peter Webber, 2003]; The Other Boleyn Girl [Justin Chadwick, 2008]) and comedies (Rough Night [Lucia Aniello, 2017]). She has taken roles as American flâneuse and tourist in Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008), as well as parts in blockbusters like the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) Avengers franchise. Lastly, before Johansson was a woman deemed the sexiest alive, she was a girl. At age nine, Johansson made her film debut as a wholesome child in North, which she followed with more significant roles as a runaway in Manny & Lo (Lisa Krueger, 1996) and a wounded thirteen-year-old in The Horse Whisperer (Robert Redford, 1998). Overviewed in this way, Johansson’s career reveals a shifting, multifaceted identity that has many incarnations. Her persona

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is a phenomenon of simultaneous sex-goddess warmth in texts like The Island and Vicky Cristina Barcelona—undoubtedly a dominant narrative that frames her image—and cyborg coldness in Under the Skin and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017). She performs fresh-faced youth in early works such as Girl with a Pearl Earring, which contrasts against (and converses with) the knowing maturity of femmes fatales in The Avengers and Lucy. Johansson comes into greater relief the more roles she plays—as Sophia Nguyen (2014) writes, “[t]o watch Johansson perform remoteness is to suddenly realize that she had performed intimacy.” With this comes the awareness that her persona is not stable, but instead self-referential, self-negating and thus paradoxical. Screening Scarlett Johansson investigates Johansson’s stardom to understand her complex persona more fully. That said, there is an additional case for launching an analysis of her as a female film star. Celebrity studies has reached what Elena D’Amelio (2013) calls “the post-Dyer years”; rather than focusing solely on the kind of classical stars that Richard Dyer examined in his foundational work—such as Marilyn Monroe or Judy Garland—various kinds of celebrity are now ascendant as objects of study, including reality television stars like Kim Kardashian (Sastre 2014), video bloggers such as Charlie McDonnell (Smith 2014) and “lifestyle experts” like British chef Jamie Oliver (Lewis 2008). As Su Holmes and Sean Redmond explain, celebrity is “a broad category” which refers to fame in all its manifestations (2010, 4). The diversification of star studies into celebrity studies has meant that objects of enquiry other than professional Hollywood performers are rightly under investigation. Celebrity and celebrity culture are now the objects of analysis rather than just film actors. However, film stars are by no means an extinct or irrelevant category of celebrity. The advent of “post-Dyer” celebrity studies does not indicate a “post film star” culture. A critical study of Johansson is also warranted because recent extended studies of female film stardom attend predominantly to stars of yesteryear: examples include Vivien Leigh: Actress and Icon (Dorney and Gale, 2017); Growing Up with Audrey Hepburn: Text, Audience, Resonance (Moseley, 2002); Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom (McLean, 2004); Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption (Cashmore, 2016); and Brigitte Bardot (Vincendeau, 2013) and Brigitte Bardot: The Life, The Legend, The Movies (Vincendeau, 2014). Such historical analyses are valuable for the way in which they complete our knowledge of how stardom develops

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and evolves historically, yet it is striking how seldom scholars devote fulllength studies to female stars under seventy years of age: Pam Cook’s Nicole Kidman (2012) and Ann Davies’s Penélope Cruz (2014) are two exceptions. The focus on stars of earlier generations is understandable. Such an approach circumvents the need for scholarly reconsideration that a working actor might generate as they progress in their careers. Yet we note that such challenges do not affect the publication of books on the works of contemporary directors, for instance. Moreover, the tendency to reserve extended studies for stars whose acting careers are effectively “over” has consequences for the field, reinforcing the notion that film stardom is a phenomenon of the past. The presence and power of Johansson’s stardom in the contemporary media landscape indicate that it is not.1 Studying Johansson provides an excellent opportunity to maintain (and update) understandings of film stardom as it operates here and now. The chapters herein approach Johansson as both text and sign. They deploy Johansson’s persona as a discursive conduit, a phenomenon that facilitates an analysis of gender, sexuality, celebrity and subjectivity. We consider a range of Johansson’s film works as part of this project, from her early roles as a child actor to more recent performances in Hollywood blockbusters such as the Avengers franchise. A diversity of texts factor into our study, yet Johansson’s later films such as Under the Skin and Ghost in the Shell prove central due to their reflexive use of Johansson’s persona and the insights they yield about her celebrity. Precedence is also given throughout this volume to Johansson’s film performances. While Johansson’s place as a contemporary celebrity exists in parallel to and often exceeds her film roles, this volume is first and foremost interested in addressing Johansson as film star. In making this distinction, we align with Sabrina Qiong Yu’s observation that “film stardom is a distinct type of stardom… [with] its own sets of research questions and priorities” (2017, 13–14). In exploring how Johansson acts as a catalyst and focus point for discussions of gender, genre and contemporary female film stardom, this book prioritises an engagement with her film texts above extensive engagement with the more extra-textual 1Star studies has also moved to fill a significant blind spot around celebrity and ethnicity, race and nationality, considering actors from national cinemas other than the United States. Collections on Indian, Latin, East Asian and European films stars, as well as transnational stars, have resulted (D’Amelio 2013).

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material that shape celebrity culture. Although Johansson’s off-screen and extra-filmic work, as well as the way her image has circulated beyond her films and through fan texts, factors into many of the chapters in this volume, and substantially in the chapter by Daniel Palmer and Kate Warren, the overwhelming focus of this volume rests with Johansson’s films. The first chapter of this collection provides an overview of Johansson’s career, setting the scene for this volume and highlighting the importance her films have had in shaping her stardom. It traces how her image emerged and evolved through key career turning points, from her early roles as a child actress in Manny & Lo and The Horse Whisperer, to sex symbol status in adulthood, to her recent reflexive turn as a ­science fiction performer in Her, Lucy, Under the Skin and Ghost in the Shell. Whitney Monaghan explores the early period in Johansson’s career in her chapter “Young Scarlett Johansson and the Liminal Perspective.” While Johansson gained notoriety as a starlet in her late teenage years, she began her acting career at age eight. Reflecting upon Johansson’s film roles from 1996 to 2001, Monaghan reads Johansson’s emergent star persona through theories of child stardom and the framework of “liminality.” Drawing on analyses of Manny & Lo, The Horse Whisperer, An American Rhapsody (Éva Gárdos, 2001), Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2001), Monaghan highlights how Johansson’s roles present liminal perspectives to destabilise dominant representations of girlhood on screen. Through her analysis, Monaghan argues that this liminality, established in Johansson’s early career, contributes to the understanding of Johansson as a contemporary star. Progressing from Johansson’s early years, Kirsten Stevens’ chapter, “Blank Stares and Blonde Hair: Performing Scarlett Johansson,” looks to elements of Johansson’s performance across her body of work. Described as an actor who “oozes” on screen—not one to “fiz” but rather always “slightly behind the beat” (Cousins 2016, 15)—Johansson’s performance is marked by a distinct relationship to time and space within the frame. This chapter engages with current turns in the analysis of acting, screen performance and stardom to consider what marks Johansson out as an actor. Looking across her body of work both within and outside of film, including her supporting roles, Hollywood breakthroughs, independent films, as well as her music videos and advertising work, this

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chapter charts Johansson’s style in performance as a distinctive element of her stardom. Edward Lamberti’s contribution “‘Certain Only of What She Didn’t Want’: Scarlett Johansson’s American Outsiders in Woody Allen’s Match Point, Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona” focuses on Johansson’s three roles in Allen’s films. Johansson’s work with Allen proved to be an important and formative stage of her career as a young actress. Lamberti contends that these films provide a vital opportunity to consider Johansson’s abilities not merely as a celebrity in the making, but as an actor and performer. The chapter focuses specifically on how Johansson’s youth and femininity combine to fulfil the trope of the American traveller in Europe, undergoing formative experiences in the “old world.” Chris Davies’ chapter “‘Who Do You Want Me to Be?’ Scarlett Johansson, Black Widow and Shifting Identity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe” attends to Johansson’s place in popular cinema and mainstream screen culture. Davies explores Johansson’s role as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). As the first female superhero in this otherwise male-dominated franchise, Johansson’s character has a significant presence in the MCU. Interrogating Johansson’s appearance in this role, Davies parallels Johansson’s career trajectory with Romanoff’s narrative journey. In doing so, he illustrates how both Johansson and Romanoff have been associated with the figure of the femme fatale but have actively shifted their identity to become action heroines. Analysing the impact of this shift with regard to Johansson’s star persona, Davies explores how Johansson converges the sexual allure of the femme fatale with the agency of the action star to redefine her stardom. Troy Michael Bordun’s chapter moves away from the visually alluring to take up an analysis of stars-as-sounds. In “On the Off-Screen voice: Falling in Love with Her,” Bordun reflects on the ways in which the play on Johansson as star and as voice in the film is essential to the perceived romantic authenticity at the heart of the film. Exploring the place of sound within classic narrative form and realism, Bordun takes up Spike Jonze’s Her as a film that at once complicates but ultimately reasserts established relationships of sound to image within narrative cinema. Within this discourse, Bordun further implicates the Star, exploring how iconicity forms through the perception of embodied attributes—even when a visible or physical body is withheld.

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From voice to image, Daniel Palmer and Kate Warren’s chapter explores the place of celebrity in online visual culture. “Scarlett Johansson Falling Down: Memes, Photography and Celebrity Personas” hones in on single image of Johansson falling over while filming a scene in Under the Skin. As Palmer and Warren highlight, this image provides significant insight into celebrity culture in the era of digital malleability and social media shareability as it was promptly transformed into the viral meme “Scarlett Johansson falling down” and shared widely online. Through analysis of this meme and its rapid proliferation, Palmer and Warren explore the relation between contemporary celebrity culture and online photosharing practices. They highlight the central role of photography and online image-based sharing practices in producing and critiquing celebrity personas. Fulvia Massimi’s contribution “Remapping Femininity: Johansson’s Alien Transnationalism in Under the Skin” considers Johansson’s casting in Jonathan Glazer’s art film, which was conspicuously set and released in the period close to the Scottish independence referendum of 2014. Massimi examines Johansson’s performance and stardom in the context of Scottish national cinema more broadly, which has long gendered Scotland as a masculine realm. Massimi considers how Johansson’s casting as a feminine wanderer exposes uncertainties in Scottish cinema about the national character at a crucial historical moment. Moreover, the chapter argues that the mobilisation of Johansson’s stardom in Under the Skin illuminates the transnational deployments and possibilities of stardom more generally in relation to art, film production and national cinemas. In “Man, Meat and Bêtes-machines: Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin,” Janice Loreck takes a different approach to the meanings initiated by Johansson in Under the Skin. At first glance, Johansson’s status as a global sex symbol makes her a fitting choice to play the role of a predatory alien seductress. However, Loreck argues that Johansson’s fame and body also facilitate the film’s exploration of the materiality of personhood—whether humans consist of body or mind. Conducting a close analysis of the film’s narrative and mise-en-scène—and Johansson’s vital place within them—Loreck considers how Johansson’s much-desired body becomes the focal point for the film’s anxiety about the mind/ body split and humanity’s corporeal vulnerability. In “‘What We Do Defines Us’: ScarJo as War Machine,” William Brown and David H. Fleming investigate how Johansson’s image works

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to signify who counts as human, inhuman and posthuman in the science fiction worlds in which she appears. Brown and Fleming consider a range of texts that associate Johansson with technology—including The Island, Under the Skin and Her—but focus chiefly on the live-action film of cult manga Ghost in the Shell. Brown and Fleming consider how Johansson’s image is deployed to promote violence, white supremacy and violent dehumanisation of others in this text. Finally, looking to her recent science fiction works Sean Redmond’s chapter, “The Alien Whiteness of Scarlett Johansson,” examines Johansson’s at times problematic position as racialised star. Taking up a discourse of idealised whiteness in conjunction with star theory, Redmond frames Johansson as at once “unattainably immaculate” and “essentially non-reproductive.” Both intensely desired as perfected female form and yet rendered unobtainable and sterile through idolatry, Redmond frames white female stardom as a privileged yet restrictive state. Locating Johansson within such a construction of stardom, Redmond looks to how her idealised white star image as resolved through her roles in Her, Under the Skin and Ghost in the Shell is simultaneously recognisable and alienating within these texts. As idealised white star, Johansson traverses the cinematic universe, moving with privileged access into roles, spaces and intimacies laid open for her. Yet as an unobtainable and non-reproductive idol, Johansson is also alienating, an embodiment of the loneliness, fragmentation and isolation that plagues contemporary (white) social existence. Caulfield, Australia Parkville, Australia Bentley, Australia

Whitney Monaghan Kirsten Stevens Janice Loreck

Works Cited Cashmore, Ellis. 2016. Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption. New York: Bloomsbury. Cook, Pam. 2012. Nicole Kidman. Basingstoke: BFI, Palgrave Macmillan. Cousins, Mark. 2016. “A Study in Scarlett.” Sight and Sound, 26 (10): 15. D’Amelio, Elena. 2013. “Stardom.” Oxford Bibliographies in Cinema and Media Studies, edited by Krin Gabbard, January 28. http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/obo/page/cinema-and-media-studies. Davies, Ann. 2014. Penélope Cruz. Basingstoke: BFI, Palgrave Macmillan.

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Dorney, Kate, and Maggie B. Gale (eds.). 2018. Vivien Leigh: Actress and Icon. Manchester: Manchester UP. Gorfinkel, Elena. 2016. “Sex, Sensation and Nonhuman Interiority in Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-GorfinkelSkin/index.html. Hancock, Grady. 2015. “Episode 9: Deletion|Deviation.” Deletion, May 4. http:// www.deletionscifi.org/episodes/episode-9/episode-9-deletiondeviation/. Hollinger, Karen. 2006. The Actress: Hollywood Acting and the Female Star. New York: Routledge. Holmes, Su, and Sean Redmond. 2010. “A Journal in Celebrity Studies.” Celebrity Studies 1 (1): 1–10. Lewis, Tania. 2008. Smart Living: Lifestyle Media and Popular Expertise. New York: Peter Lang. McLean, Adrienne L. 2004. Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom. New Brunswick: Rutgers UP. Moseley, Rachel. 2002. Growing Up with Audrey Hepburn: Text, Audience, Resonance. Manchester: Manchester UP. Nguyen, Sophia. 2014. “The Posthuman Scar-Jo.” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 12. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/posthuman-scar-jo/#!. Robehmed, Natalie. 2016. “Scarlett Johansson Is The Top-Grossing Actor of 2016.” Forbes, December 27. https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2016/12/27/scarlett-johansson-is-the-top-grossing-actor-of-2016/#5f39 e14f1433. Sastre, Alexandra. 2014. “Hottentot in the Age of Reality TV: Sexuality, Race, and Kim Kardashian’s Visible Body”. Celebrity Studies 5 (1–2): 123–37. Smith, Daniel. 2014. “Charlie Is so ‘English’-Like: Nationality and the Branded Celebrity Person in the Age of YouTube.” Celebrity Studies 5 (3): 256–74. Vincendeau, Ginette. 2013. Brigitte Bardot. Basingstoke: BFI, Palgrave Macmillan. ———. 2014. Brigitte Bardot, The Life, The Legend, The Movies. London: Carlton. Yu, Sabrina Qiong. 2017. “Introduction: Performing Stardom: Star Studies in Transformation and Expansion.” In Revisiting Star Studies: Cultures, Themes and Methods, edited by S. Yu and G. Austin, 1–22. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all of our contributors for their ideas, perseverance and input throughout the creation of this book. We acknowledge the organisers of the Deletion-Deviation: The Perversions of Science Fiction symposium, where we were first inspired to undertake an extended project on Scarlett Johansson. We also thank the editors at Science Fiction Film and Television journal and the authors who contributed to our dossier: “Stardom and sf: A symposium on the sf films of Scarlett Johansson” (2018), where many of the ideas leading to this volume were further developed. The guidance and enthusiasm of the team at Palgrave Macmillan were also instrumental in shepherding this volume to publication. Our appreciation especially goes to all the people who provided instrumental advice on specific sections of this book, with special mention to Tim Laurie, Teresa Rizzo, Claire Perkins, Belinda Glynn and Belinda Smaill for their feedback and insight. We would also like to extend our gratitude to our friends and colleagues who have endured endless conversations about Scarlett Johansson and who have supported and advised us throughout the writing process: Kerreen Ely-Harper, Christina Lee, Thomas Loreck, Lyn Loreck, Bronwyn Stevens, Sian Mitchell, Hayley Summers, Isabella McNeill and Hannah McCann.

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Contents

1

Why Scarlett Johansson? 1 Kirsten Stevens, Janice Loreck and Whitney Monaghan

2

Young Scarlett Johansson and the Liminal Perspective 23 Whitney Monaghan

3

Blank Stares and Blonde Hair: Performing Scarlett Johansson 41 Kirsten Stevens

4

“Certain Only of What She Didn’t Want”: Scarlett Johansson’s American Outsiders in Woody Allen’s Match Point, Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona 63 Edward Lamberti

5

“Who Do You Want Me to Be?” Scarlett Johansson, Black Widow and Shifting Identity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe 81 Chris Davies

6

On the Off-Screen Voice: Falling in Love with Her 99 Troy Michael Bordun

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7

Scarlett Johansson Falling Down: Memes, Photography and Celebrity Personas 121 Daniel Palmer and Kate Warren

8

Remapping Femininity: Johansson’s Alien Transnationalism in Under the Skin 145 Fulvia Massimi

9

Man, Meat and Bêtes-Machines: Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin 165 Janice Loreck

10 “What We Do Defines Us”: ScarJo as War Machine 183 William Brown and David H. Fleming 11 The Alien Whiteness of Scarlett Johansson 203 Sean Redmond Filmography 221 Index 223

Notes

on

Contributors

Troy Michael Bordun is a contract instructor in Art History at Concordia University, English and Film Studies at Bishop’s University and Sociology and Cultural Studies at Trent University. His recent work can be found in Celebrity Studies and Porn Studies, among other journals. He has forthcoming chapters in ReFocus: The Films of Carlos Reygadas and Screening #TimesUp: Exploring Rape Culture in Hollywood Film and a forthcoming article in Mise-en-scène. William Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton, London. He is the author of Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age (2013) and, with Dina Iordanova and Leshu Torchin, of Moving People, Moving Images: Cinema and Trafficking in the New Europe (2010). Chris Davies is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. He is the author of Blockbusters and the Ancient World: Allegory and Warfare in Contemporary Hollywood (Bloomsbury, 2019), and his research interests include history on film, principally the ancient world, westerns and war films, as well as sci-fi and comic book movies. He currently works as a Senior Compliance Officer at the British Board of Film Classification. His views are his own and do not reflect those of the BBFC.

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David H. Fleming is a Senior Lecturer in the Communication, Media and Culture division at the University of Stirling, Scotland, and his research interests gravitate around the intersectionalities between cinema, philosophy and technology. He is the author of Unbecoming Cinema (2017) and the co-author of Kinoteuthis Infernalis, or Squid Cinema from Hell with William Brown (forthcoming), and Chinese Urban Shinema with Simon Harrison (forthcoming). He has also published widely in interdisciplinary journals including SubStance, Film-Philosophy, Deleuze Studies, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, Social Semiotics and edited collections such as Posthumanisms Through Deleuze (forthcoming) and Deleuze and Film (2012). Edward Lamberti teaches film at King’s College London and also works at the British Board of Film Classification. He is the editor of Behind the Scenes at the BBFC: Film Classification from the Silver Screen to the Digital Age (2012) and the author of Performing Ethics through Film Style: Levinas with the Dardenne Brothers, Barbet Schroeder and Paul Schrader (2019). Janice Loreck  teaches in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University. Her research focuses on representations of women and film violence in global art cinema. She is the author of Violent Women in Contemporary Cinema (2016) and is Festival Coordinator for the Melbourne Women in Film Festival. Her recent writings have also appeared in Australian Humanities Review, Science Fiction Film and Television Studies and Feminist Media Studies. Fulvia Massimi teaches in the Humanities Department at Vanier College in Montreal. She holds a PhD in Film and Moving Image Studies from Concordia University. Her research focuses on local and global understandings of gender and nationhood in the cinemas of Québec, Flanders and Scotland. Her work appears in Synoptique: An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies (2016), Trespassing Journal (2018), The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Cinema (2019) and ReFocus: The Films of Xavier Dolan (2019). Whitney Monaghan  is an Assistant Lecturer in Film and Screen Studies at Monash University. She has a background in screen, media and cultural studies, and her research examines queer and youth representation on screen. She is the author of the book Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: Not ‘Just a Phase’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and

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co-author of Queer Theory Now: From Foundations to Futures (Red Globe Press, 2019) with Hannah McCann. She is the founding editor of Peephole Journal, an online magazine devoted to creative screen criticism, and Festival Coordinator at the Melbourne Women in Film Festival. Daniel Palmer is Professor and Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the School of Art at RMIT University, Melbourne. His books include Photography and Collaboration: From Conceptual Art to Crowdsourcing (Bloomsbury, 2017); Digital Light (Open Humanities Press, 2015), edited with Sean Cubitt and Nathaniel Tkacz; The Culture of Photography in Public Space (Intellect, 2015), edited with Anne Marsh and Melissa Miles; Twelve Australian Photo Artists (Piper Press, 2009), co-authored with Blair French; and Photogenic (Centre for Contemporary Photography, 2005). Sean Redmond is an Associate Professor in Screen and Design at Deakin University, Australia. He has published ten books, including A Companion to Celebrity (2015), The AFI Film Reader: Endangering Science Fiction Film (2015) and Celebrity and the Media (2014). With Su Holmes, he edits the journal Celebrity Studies, shortlisted for best new academic journal in 2011. Kirsten Stevens is Lecturer in Arts and Cultural Management at the University of Melbourne and has a background in film and screen studies, popular culture and media and communications. Author of the book, Australian Film Festivals: Audience, Place and Exhibition Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), her research engages with media industries in national screen contexts, reception studies, media exhibition and distribution, and issues of gender in the cultural industries. She is vice president of Senses of Cinema journal and deputy director of the Melbourne Women in Film Festival. Kate Warren is a Lecturer in Art History and Curatorship at the Australian National University. She is an art historian, writer and ­curator, with expertise in modern & contemporary Australian and international art and cinema. She received her PhD in Art History from Monash University in 2016, and her research interests cover film, photography, video & new media art, creative research practices and arts writing & criticism. She publishes extensively in publications including Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art, emaj: Online Journal of Art, Senses of Cinema, Persona Studies, History of Photography, Discipline, and Objektiv.

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She has curated exhibitions for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art and Channels Video Art Festival, and she is also co-editor of Peephole Journal, an online journal dedicated to creative film criticism.

List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Scarlett Johansson’s blank stare in the final frames of “Falling Down” music video. Video still, “Falling Down” music video (Bennett Miller 2008) Fig. 7.1 Scarlett Johansson trips on a Glasgow street, 2012, unknown photographer (Source Reddit) Fig. 7.2 Selected examples of the Scarlett Johansson Falling Down meme, in order: Johansson as DJ (Source Know Your Meme), with “Sad Keanu” (Source Says.com), as walrus (Source Sad and Useless), riding a dolphin (Source Know Your Meme), playing bongos (Source Know Your Meme), and dancing “Thriller” (Source Know Your Meme) Fig. 8.1 Female-as-nation, film still Under the Skin (2013) Fig. 8.2 Fusion with nature, film still Under the Skin (2013)

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CHAPTER 1

Why Scarlett Johansson? Kirsten Stevens, Janice Loreck and Whitney Monaghan

In his introduction to the BFI’s Star Studies: A Critical Guide, Martin Shingler suggests, “One of the most persistent questions asked about stardom is why some film actors become stars and not others” (2012, 3). Yet we might also pose another question—why do some stars become the focus of scholarly and popular writing on their stardom and not others? What qualities do some stars possess, in their saleability, their enduring appeal or their engagement with processes of commodification, that make them worthy of the type of close scrutiny that sustains articles and book-length examinations? In developing Screening Scarlett Johansson, these questions have been unavoidable. What about this actress, whose career—while spanning more than two decades—is far from complete, makes her ready and fitting to be the focus of a book? Of all the actresses who currently populate the films of Hollywood and world cinema, or adorn the pages of magazines

K. Stevens (B) Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] J. Loreck Screen Arts and Cultural Studies, Curtin University, Bentley, WA, Australia W. Monaghan Film and Screen Studies, Monash University, Caulfield, VIC, Australia © The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_1

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promoting perfumes, fashion brands or simply themselves, what makes this one distinctive? In short, why a book on Scarlett Johansson? There are many reasons to single out Johansson for special attention within the growing collection of studies devoted to contemporary stars and stardom. Johansson sits among a number of female stars who have transitioned from child actor to adult star since the 1990s. Alongside the likes of Natalie Portman, Kirsten Dunst, Kristen Stewart and Emma Stone, Johansson has emerged over the past two decades to an increasingly central role within Hollywood filmmaking, franchise cinema and global celebrity culture. While a case could be made for an exploration of many of these women, however, there are qualities to Johansson that stand her apart from this company. Unlike the majority of these actresses, she has not won an Academy Award. Instead, she has achieved fame and acclaim in other ways. Much of Johansson’s celebrity rests in her popular appeal as a hyperfeminine beauty and global glamour star. Moreover, much of this notoriety has come, as Dyer (1986) suggests it does for all stars, from the diverse, multimedia and intertextual star images of Johansson that have circulated beyond her on-screen roles. After topping a poll run in Esquire in 2006, Johansson has regularly featured in “sexiest woman alive” lists in men’s magazines such as Maxim, GQ, Playboy, FHM and Men’s Health, including achieving the perhaps dubious honour of becoming in 2013 the first woman to have achieved top spot twice on the Esquire chart. The popularity and fascination with Johansson’s body and beauty have not only captivated male fans, however. Numerous brand endorsements have also secured her place in the pages of women’s magazines. She has worked as a model and spokeswoman for several fashion and cosmetic brands, including Calvin Klein fragrance, Louis Vuitton fashion, L’Oréal hair products and Dolce & Gabbana perfumes and cosmetics. Such endorsements shore up Johansson’s image, building on her sexualised persona and place within the popular imagining of contemporary Hollywood stardom. Yet it was in 2016 that Johansson’s popularity found a more material measure, with Forbes naming her the year’s top-grossing star due to the $1.2 billion USD brought in by the films in which she starred (Robehmed 2016). Although such popular appeal offers a reason why this star might be singled out for a closer look, there is more to Johansson than her status as a sexy, bankable actress. Johansson’s films and her actions off-screen move within and beyond this popular image in ways that distinguish her as a star worthy of closer scrutiny. Johansson’s long and varied career demonstrates

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she is an actor capable of change, and it is precisely this changeable quality—and the performances it fosters—that drives this book. Beyond her place as popular Hollywood starlet, Johansson’s career has also framed her as a child actress, a darling of American independent cinema, a leading lady within global art house productions, and more recently as the recognisably female face of contemporary science fiction and action franchise cinema. Her ability to move through and across genres and institutional modes with an ease and visibility possessed by few other contemporary actresses marks her as a figure worthy of some consideration. Her body of work, moreover, provides a fertile ground to interrogate not only what contemporary stardom, and female stardom particularly, looks like, but also to see how an examination of the work of a single actor might foster new critical approaches to explorations of gender, genre and stardom in the twenty-first century. It is on this fertile ground that this book sits. If Johansson has charted a career through a multitude of roles that play to and subvert cultural norms around her recognisable femininity, several of her roles have also worked to highlight her tendency to play up such transformations. Johansson has, with somewhat astonishing regularity, embraced characters that are themselves in transition. Whether playing ingénue or cyborg, Johansson is frequently cast as women who wander, experiencing coming of age or identity crises. She plays American flâneuses in Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008); characters that investigate the boundaries of their humanity and non-humanity in The Island (Michael Bay, 2005), Her (Spike Jonze, 2013) and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017); and femmes fatales burdened by their own performances of seduction in Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) and Avengers franchise. As Johansson (2017) remarks: perhaps subconsciously I’ve chosen characters who are on some existential quest, perhaps it’s some reflection of my own journey … These characters all have that struggle and brush up against themselves time and again until they break through and are sitting as women in their own skin.

Whilst Johansson has a large body of work in which she does not play such characters (turns in Hail, Caesar! [Joel and Ethan Coen, 2016] and Rough Night [Lucia Aniello, 2017] indicate her skill in comedic roles, for example), it is a conspicuous feature of her career that her persona should be so regularly mobilised to portray femininity in transition.

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Johansson’s decision to take on such characters has a pragmatic element. Roles as ingénues and cyborgs have allowed her to participate in several milieus of cinema culture at various points in her career, performing as both a starlet of independent films as well as a mainstream science fiction performer. Yet it is nonetheless intriguing that Johansson should be the actor who is emblematic of unstable personhood and feminine identity crisis. She is the contemporary go-to actress for Hollywood’s own feminine archetype; blonde-haired and green-eyed, Johansson’s appearance recalls 1950s sex icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Admirers routinely make hyperbolic claims about her femininity—calling her “gilded to behold” (Lane 2014) and “sexually overwhelming” (Allen qtd. in Hill 2007)—as well as comically redundant declarations: “She looks like a woman. She exudes womanness ” (Jacobs 2006). Despite this characterisation of Johansson as femininity embodied, she has nevertheless become representative of women in flux. This chapter gives an overview of Johansson’s career as a way of mapping out her persona and its vicissitudes. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, Johansson’s critical interest is extensive, her persona opening up numerous pathways for discussions of child performance, the eroticisation of violence, white supremacy, national versus transnational cinema, and the human and animal divide. The purpose of this opening chapter, then, is to offer an overview of Johansson’s career to precede and complement these contributions, as well as to give a unifying perspective on her image. We therefore examine Johansson’s early career as a child actress, her positioning as a star of American independent cinema, her fame as an object of heterosexual male desire, and her recent turn towards self-parody in science fiction cinema. In providing this overview, we trace the development of—and productive contradictions within—Johansson’s image. We consider how Johansson has evolved in paradoxical ways throughout her twenty year career to become representative of Hollywood’s iteration of the perfect woman, yet, at the same time, a star of feminine transformation and instability.

Early Roles and Rising Stardom As with all stars, Johansson’s persona consists of a lived biography. Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born in 1984 in New York City to parents Melanie Sloan and Karsten Johansson. She has three siblings—an older sister and brother, Vanessa and Adrian, as well as a twin brother, Hunter. The Johansson and Sloan families had ties to the film industry long before Scarlett

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began acting: her mother was a film producer, and her paternal grandfather worked in Danish film and television. As noted in a recent profile of Johansson on PBS’s ancestry show Finding Your Roots (2012–), her background is of Eastern European Jewish, Danish and Swedish descent. Her mother’s ancestors immigrated to America from what is now Poland, and she holds dual American and Danish citizenship. In interviews, Johansson regularly mentions that her ambition to become a performer began at an early age. For instance, she describes her time on the set of her first film North (Rob Reiner, 1994) as natural and comfortable: “for some reason, I just knew what to do, instinctively. It was like, I don’t know … fate” (qtd. in Bhattacharya 2004). Success was not immediate, however. When Johansson first attempted to enter into acting via the world of commercials, casting agents found that her deep voice was not typically childlike. However, this quality became her asset when she started regular work. Johansson won an important role as a teenage runaway in the independent film Manny & Lo (Lisa Krueger, 1996); she then played the part of a girl recovering from a riding accident in The Horse Whisperer (Robert Redford, 1998). At the time, director Robert Redford was said to have praised the maturity of Johansson’s persona by describing her as “13 going on 30” (qtd. in Billson 2013).1 Alongside these roles, Johansson continued to perform in children’s films such as Home Alone 3 (Raja Gosnell, 1997) and My Brother the Pig (Erik Fleming, 1999). Johansson’s career gained momentum again in her late teenage years when she was cast in two acclaimed films: Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), and the cult comic book adaptation Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001). Despite her successful performances, however, it was not until, at eighteen years of age, when she starred in Girl with a Pearl Earring (Peter Webber, 2003) and Lost in Translation, that Johansson’s position as star was secured. At the time, director Sofia Coppola noted, “[t]here’s something deep about her. She makes you feel like she has been around the world” (qtd. in Bhattacharya 2004). A sense of maturity beyond her years—contrasted against her evident youth and beauty—became Johansson’s hallmark and asset as a young star.

1 Redford’s comment is widely repeated in accounts of Johansson’s career (for example in Vernon [2003], Bhattacharya [2004], Severgnini [2010], Schaefer [2012], and Billson [2013]). However, we were unable to locate the original source of the quote after extensive searching. Through sheer repetition, however, the quote has now become an entrenched part of Johansson’s narrative.

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Since her breakout in the early 2000s, Johansson has worked consistently in both independent and commercial cinema. The development of her image via her film roles evaded any kind of neat teleology: she was cast as wandering ingénues, teenagers, comediennes and alluring young women. For instance, Lost in Translation and (four years later) Vicky Cristina Barcelona framed Johansson as a modern-day flâneuse reminiscent of the wandering “free spirits” of European art cinema; they also, simultaneously, played on her appeal as an emerging icon of female sexuality and desirability. At the same time, however, Johansson also performed conventional teen characters in the hybrid comedy-horror Eight Legged Freaks (Ellory Elkayem, 2002) and The Perfect Score (Brian Robbins, 2004), which follows a group of teenagers stealing results for their high school exams. Johansson also began a career relatively early as an action star in The Island and Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010). Johansson’s choice of roles over the early part of her career thus saw her developing as both a recognisable mainstream performer and an alternative “indie” ingénue and collaborator to figures like Coppola and Allen. This trajectory raises exciting questions regarding Johansson’s framing and development as a star. As Paul McDonald argues, the star status awarded to actors working within the independent cinema sphere must be distinguished from actors whose recognisable body of work exists more within the mainstream and popular cinemas (1998). While on the one hand this distinction exists in terms of a star’s (and their performances’) visibility—the more niche market for independent titles means stars such as Chloë Sevigny and Parker Posey, for instance, have never gained the universal recognition for their film work a career in the mainstream may have afforded—the distinction of star images forged in independent and art house films also rests on the potential semantic complications that their roles often raise. While Johansson’s early career maintained a link to Hollywood, her more active participation in art house and independent films through the early and mid-2000s problematises a simple reading of her evolution as a purely mainstream star. In its early formation, Johansson’s stardom existed within the peripheral space of the indie spheres—specifically, what Geoff King (2009) names the ‘Indiewood’ milieu of cinema.2 Johansson’s work in independent film was 2 King defines Indiewood as “an area in which Hollywood and the independent sector merge or overlap” (2009, 1). Such films emerged in the North American film industry in the 1990s and 2000s and are typically the products of specialty-oriented and niche studios, both

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relatively short and encompassed only her late teens and early twenties. Unlike other stars of American independent cinema, such as Sevigny and Posey, Johansson transitioned out of the sector to take more mainstream roles. Her indie work formed a significant milestone, however, insofar as it won her visibility and fashioned her image as an intelligent, modern young performer. Ghost World, The Man Who Wasn’t There and Lost in Translation were each critically-acclaimed films3 and Johansson’s performances attracted praise in each. In 2003, she won the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for Lost in Translation, and was nominated in the same category for Girl with a Pearl Earring ; she was also nominated for Golden Globe Awards for both films. Johansson’s early association with independent cinema also connected her to an attitude and disposition that characterised American independent cinema at the time—one of irony and wit.4 As a star of independent films, Johansson was thus mobilised as more than a young beauty—she was positioned as a self-aware and intelligent actress. Indeed, this combination proved central to her performance in Lost in Translation in particular. As Lucy Bolton observes in her analysis of the film: Johansson’s star persona has been constructed around the image of an oldfashioned femininity, clothing and makeup, and offers itself as a mimetic text when adopted by a modern, intelligent, assertive woman with a deep, resonant voice and sardonic opinions. (2011, 119–120)

Directors who worked with Johansson at this time similarly insisted upon her sophistication in ways that integrated with the indie ethos. Zwigoff independent (such as the now-defunct Miramax and Weinstein Company) and subsidiaries of major studios (such as Fox Searchlight and Focus Features). King argues that Indiewood films draw stylistic and aesthetic characteristics from both independent and mainstream cinema: examples include American Beauty (Sam Mendes, 1999), Lost in Translation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004), to name a few. 3 Awards for Ghost World include Independent Spirit Awards for Daniel Clowes and Terry Zwigoff’s screenplay, as well as Steve Buscemi’s performance in the film; Girl with a Pearl Earring was nominated for multiple BAFTA Awards (including Best Actress, Best British Film and Best Adapted Screenplay); Lost in Translation was nominated for numerous awards in North America and Britain, with its most prestigious win being the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. 4 For a discussion of the significance of irony in American independent cinema of the 1990s, see Sconce (2002).

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notes that “Scarlett at age 15 had the poise of someone much older” (qtd. in Hoffman 2017). Joel Coen notes her self-confidence: “I think we were all a little intimidated by Scarlett” (qtd. in Jacobs 2006). Indeed, comments on Johansson’s wit and intelligence continued to surface in profiles of her; A. J. Jacobs describes her as “so preternaturally confident and selfpossessed, you feel as if she could be, at any moment, inwardly rolling her eyes at your dorkiness” (2006); Woody Allen describes Johansson as “wittier” than himself (qtd. in Hill 2007). Johansson’s ascent to fame as a child actress and through the independent sector thus paved the way for a particular inflection of her persona; Johansson was not only a promising talent and beautiful ingénue, but a thoroughly modern one too.

Sexiest Woman Alive: Johansson’s Body at Work While her stardom was forged as much around her wit as her appearance, the facet that has come to most dominate Johansson’s negotiated star image is her physicality and its associated sexualised appeal. Since achieving fame in her late teens, Johansson’s star image has centred on her reputation as a superlatively attractive and desirable celebrity. Alongside her numerous accolades as “sexiest woman alive” mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, Johansson’s star image has been shaped by a range of onand off-screen roles and critical reception that have worked to foreground her ‘sex symbol text’. As Will Scheibel (2013, 5) argues with reference to the enduring construction of Marilyn Monroe as a sex icon, “The term ‘sex symbol text’ refers to the ways in which various mass-produced media texts… together manufacture and manage a celebrity image that derives its dominant meaning and affect from sex.” For Johansson, her sex symbol text derives from a combination of sources: her on-screen roles as alluring but unobtainable object of desire; her modelling and brand endorsement work for the likes of Dolce & Gabbana; her noted physiology: green eyes, blonde hair, curvaceous body, distinctive lips, “luminescent skin,” throaty voice; her retro-star appeal; and the continual centring of her sex appeal within critical discourse. All of these combine to align Johansson’s star image first and foremost with her physicality and heteronormative sexualised desirability. First among the sources that create Johansson’s sex symbol text are her films. Several performances establish the importance of her body and sex appeal as defining features of her image. She is regularly centred within the frame as someone to be looked at and lusted after. As the maid Griet in

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Girl with a Pearl Earring , Johansson is located squarely as the object of the gaze. In the retelling of the composition of Johannes Vermeer’s famous painting, the girl Griet captures the eye of Vermeer (Colin Firth), becoming muse and model for the artist. Within the frame of the film and its story, then, Johansson as actress becomes the focus of all gazes—the camera, the painter and our own as audience. In The Island, Johansson’s body is again on display—this time as the clone replacement for a starlet within the film’s science fiction future. As Jordan Two Delta, Johansson is first and foremost a body, farmed to provide a back-up for her “real-world” template Sarah Jordan, whose fame, like that of Johansson herself, centres on her looks and desirability as confirmed through her regular appearance within men’s magazines. Across roles as mistress, lover and adulterer in each of Match Point (Woody Allen, 2005), The Black Dahlia (Brian De Palma, 2006), The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006), The Other Boleyn Girl (Justin Chadwick, 2008), Vicky Christina Barcelona, and He’s Just Not That Into You (Ken Kwapis, 2009), the desirability of Johansson’s characters become their key attribute, as well as often their downfall. This aspect of Johansson’s stardom is perhaps most prominent in Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Don Jon (2013), in which Johansson’s entire characterisation as Barbara rests on her appeal as ‘most beautiful woman’ and most desirable of sex objects. If Johansson’s typecasting as the desired woman dominates many of her on-screen roles, it is the continued prominence of her desirability in her critical reception that cements her sex symbol status. Writing in 2007, Melena Ryzik notes that it is “impossible to pick up a story about the 22-year-old actress without reading about her va-va voom figure, her rosebud lips, her luminescent skin and so on and so on.” As indicated by Ryzik’s impatience with her own excessive account—“and so on and so on”—Johansson’s desirability is a dominating theme in discourse about her. Accounts, such as Mark Cousins’ 2016 “A Study in Scarlett” for Sight and Sound (15), dwell on her lips, her eyebrows and her stature, while various articles (see Jacobs 2006), surveys and gossip rags have awarded her best breasts (In Touch Magazine 2006), most kissable lips (anon. survey 2006; Daily Mail, T. McDonald 2018), and best bottom (British poll 2006). In focusing on her physical attributes, the press, like her on-screen roles, regularly connect Johansson to sexualised desire, and in so doing cast her in the mould of the archetypal Hollywood sex symbol. Indeed, Johansson’s reception echoes that of other sex icons in this way. In writing on Marilyn Monroe’s experience with the press, Scheibel (2013, 7) similarly observed, “The

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vast majority of this journalistic fascination yielded writing that treated her almost exclusively as physical fodder for sexual appetites.” However, similarities between Johansson’s “sex symbol text” and that of Monroe move beyond the implicit similarities between the journalistic reception of the two stars, with many reporters moving to draw more direct parallels. In a 2017 profile for Playboy, Amanda Petrusich observes: “Johansson is compared often and aptly to Marilyn Monroe: The fact of her body seems to supersede everything else.” As Richard Dyer writes (1986, 20), Monroe’s image was “overwhelmingly and relentlessly constructed in terms of sexuality,” to the point where her name and image became a shorthand for the very concept of sex: “Monroe = sexuality.” A similar formulation can be applied to Johansson, although it is not exclusively Monroe to whom Johansson’s image aligns. As Liz Hoggard writes: “With her hourglass figure and seductively throaty voice, Johansson has the unmistakable aura of an old-fashioned Hollywood bombshell.” Rather than Monroe, for Logan Hill the association is Brigitte Bardot, with his 2007 profile of the actress entitled “And God Created Scarlett,” referring unmistakably to Bardot’s breakout film And God Created Woman (Roger Vadim, 1956). In a profile for Esquire, A. J. Jacobs writes that Johansson has “an aloof, studio-era, Rita Hayworth vibe,” while for Cousins (2016, 15). Johansson is in parts Clara Bow, Brigitte Bardot, Carole Lombard, and Marilyn Monroe, but also Gary Cooper and Tom Hardy. Although evoking different screen icons, what these accounts share is a fascination with Johansson’s physicality and desirability. Moreover, they not only stress the centrality that Johansson’s body and sex appeal hold to her star image, but they do so by aligning her with a nostalgic construction of the Hollywood sex symbol and blonde bombshell—a theme that has ultimately been taken up in Johansson’s films as well, with roles in Hitchcock (Sacha Gervasi, 2012) and Hail, Caesar!. With this retro feminine appeal dominating media characterisations of Johansson, her star image is firmly linked to her sex symbol text.

Beyond the Screen: Private Life and Politics If Johansson’s on-screen roles have produced a fragmented and complicated star image, her opacity in her personal life has worked to add further layers to this. As with all stars, Johansson’s image can be understood, as Christine Gledhill suggests (1991, 214–215), as a negotiation of her multiple and at times contradictory star attributes. As Gledhill (1991, 215)

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argues, this image results from a combination of the star’s visible roles, their persona—formed of public appearances and carefully curated details of private lives—and the mixture of these that are taken up by fans, within discourse and which resonate with the culture at large. The star image is then one that is reflective of not only what is known about the star, but also what is made relevant within cultures of reception and consumption. For Johansson, this aspect of her stardom highlights contradictions in the way she has been constructed. If Johansson’s films and critical reception have focused on her visibility—on her looks and the evolution of her film roles—then her persona, as that curated and controlled aspect of her image, has also worked to conceal her as a real person. Johansson has developed a tightly-controlled image that does not promote her as an accessible star. In interviews Johansson routinely mixes candid statements—such as her opinions on monogamy5 and Planned Parenthood—with a reticence to share personal information. As John Travolta noted in an interview with the star in 2005 (Johansson 93), “after being in the spotlight so much lately, she’s still strikingly open. Just don’t ask her about whom she’s dating…” Likewise, Johansson noted in 2011 (Female First), “I am protective of my private life. I don’t think that if you are in the public eye your life is public.” This protectiveness and inaccessibility extend beyond her interviews and publicity, with Johansson abstaining from social media—a somewhat radical move in the current era of connectivity. Yet, as with other stars before her such as Nicole Kidman (Cook 2012, 9) and Elizabeth Taylor (Smith 2012, 6–7), or indeed Rita Hayworth—to whom Johansson has been compared—it is precisely what is unknown and unknowable about Johansson that provides a source of fascination with the star and drives, as John Ellis (1982) suggests, the fan’s need to consume more of her star texts. If our access to Johansson’s private life is restricted, this is not to suggest that Johansson has been able to avoid completely the gossip, rumour and scandal that help to shape and condition contemporary stardom. Her romantic connections have inevitably been fodder for gossip magazines and media outlets, with certain themes regularly emerging in accounts her

5 Johansson has repeatedly courted press attention for her thoughts on the “unnaturalness” of monogamy after first sharing her opinions with reporters while promoting Match Point in 2006. She has further been candid about the fact she sees a therapist and gets regularly tested for sexually transmitted infections.

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relationship history thus far. In particular, the complexities that her success as an actress imposes upon her personal life have come to define this commentary. Her first highly publicised relationship was with Josh Hartnett during the filming of The Black Dahlia. The pair dated from 2005 to 2007, citing distance and work commitments as the reason for their eventual breakup. Johansson’s next partner was Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds, whom she married in 2008. The two actors signed onto competing superhero franchises the following year: Johansson joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Black Widow in Iron Man 2 while Reynolds was cast as Hal Jordan/Green Lantern in the Warner Bros. DC comic film Green Lantern (Martin Campbell, 2011). After the pair divorced in 2010, Johansson suggested that career competitiveness was a complicating factor in the relationship: There has to be a real understanding of how you share your time, especially when two people’s careers are going at the same rate. Or even if one person is more successful than the other, that also proves challenging. There may be a competitive thing. (qtd. in Yuan and Kanai 2016, 160)

Following her split from Reynolds, Johansson was romantically linked to several other men—including American actor Sean Penn and advertising executive Nate Naylor—before marrying French journalist Romain Dauriac in 2014. They had a daughter, Rose Dorothy, in 2014. The pair divorced in 2017, and once again Johansson’s career became the focus in media accounts of the split. Dauriac’s lawyers argued that he had been the primary carer of the couples’ child because of Johansson’s intense career focus. They reportedly also noted that Dauriac was “tired of having to run his life and his child’s life based on Ms. Johansson’s shooting schedule” (qtd. in Andrews). Responding to this, Johansson suggested that bringing her daughter to work was a feminist parenting strategy, arguing that “to have her come to the workplace and see that, you know, her mum is an independent woman making it happen is really important for me.” More so than even such commentary surrounding her relationships, however, it has been through Johansson’s relationship to politics—both her own and those invoked through her work and brand associations— that opportunities have emerged for the audience to glimpse, as Shingler suggests, authentic moments of the “real” person behind the star. Responses to Johansson’s politics have been both positive and negative.

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She has been the focus of several politically-inflected controversies, including around her association with the Israeli-run SodaStream and perceptions of white-washing tied to her roles in Ghost in the Shell and, to a lesser degree, Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018).6 In 2014, Dylan Farrow named Johansson in an open letter alongside several other actors, questioning their collaborations with her adoptive father Woody Allen. Farrow alleges that Allen abused her when she was a child, an accusation that gained renewed attention following the reports of widespread sexual misconduct in the film industry in late 2017. Johansson has not expressed regret for her work with Allen, noting that the director has not been formally charged or “found guilty of something” (qtd. in Cadwalladr 2014). Johansson’s stance has led to condemnation on social media, as well as accusations of hypocrisy given her participation in activist events such as the Women’s March (ABC 2018). In each of these cases, Johansson’s image became a focus for public and critical backlash. She has been labelled as culturally tone-deaf as her personal subjectivity is conflated with her public persona. Her association with different companies, filmmakers and roles are taken for active statements, prompting interviewers to seek clarification regarding her politics. In this sense, as Dyer suggests, the presence of Johansson’s stardom became the overwhelming message of the controversy: “what the star does can only be posed in terms of the star doing it …rather than in terms of the ostensible political issues involved” (1998, 78). If politics have at times dominated Johansson’s star image, she has also embraced the attention that her visibility garners for her chosen causes as well. Having been an advocate for Planned Parenthood since 2012, Johansson uses her public profile to speak candidly of her support for the organisation, its services and for female empowerment more broadly. She notes, “Whenever you speak publicly, it’s always a risk, right? Maybe you’ll lose some followers. But if you have something to say, it can be really impactful” (qtd. Peterson 2017). Johansson’s support of Planned Parenthood and her visibility at the Women’s March have achieved a certain notoriety over 6 The SodaStream controversy emerged from Johansson’s perceived conflict of interest in being a public supporter of SodaStream (whose factory had been located within the Israelioccupied West-bank territory) and Oxfam, who held a policy of supporting the Palestinians against the occupation. Unable to maintain an association with both companies, Johansson’s choice to stay with SodaStream was read as a political support for the Israeli State (see Cadwalladr 2014 for an example of commentary around the issue). Likewise, Johansson as a white actress has come under fire for taking on non-white roles within films such as Ghost in a Shell and Isle of Dogs which are both set in a futuristic Japan.

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recent years, in large part because they align closely with her on-screen sexualised image and the broader discourse that surrounds her sex symbol status. Johansson’s ability to speak candidly about sex—“Just having a healthy sexual attitude, you are labelled as loose, wild, a slut. You have no morals, and you’re seen as some kind of sexual deviant or someone who can’t be in a monogamous relationship” (qtd. Peterson 2017)—combines with her frankness about testing for STDs and support for protecting reproductive rights to activate her star image in support of her personal politics. Moreover, it reveals Johansson as a star knowledgeable of her own image and someone, while protective of her privacy, capable of nevertheless shaping her public persona to reflect and engage critically with popular expectations for her own ends.

Off-Screen and Absent Bodies The self-awareness that Johansson reflects in her public persona has also infiltrated a number of her film roles of the last decade. In particular, starting with her role in Spike Jonze’s 2013 film Her and extending through a number of voice-only performances, Johansson has pursued a number of roles that complicate the centrality of her body in readings of her stardom through the simple act of absenting it from the screen. While several stars cross-over from on-screen performance to also lend their voices to characters in increasingly star-studded animations, the move of Johansson into the world of voice-acting presents interesting challenges to the framing of her stardom. This is most clearly realised in her “appearance” in Her. Her is a story set in the near future in which a lonely man named Theodore (Joaquín Phoenix) falls in love with the artificial intelligence (voiced by Johansson) who runs his personal technology. While Johansson’s part within Her relies narratively on the absence of a physical body, the film nevertheless works to centre Johansson’s star image within its reception. As a disembodied voice, Johansson’s role within this film echoes, in some respects, the journalistic commentary around the star that works to isolate her attributes (her throaty voice among them) and fetishise her parts—much as her accolades as best breasts, best bottom, and so on did. Yet if it is Johansson’s character Samantha’s lack of a physical body that dooms her and Theodore’s relationship, Johansson’s body is not altogether absent in the film. Rather, it is precisely the signification of Johansson as sex symbol and desired object that is attached through her star image to her role within the film that works in Her to reconcile the audience’s desire

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for Johansson to Theodore’s desire for Samantha. Johansson’s body, while absence from the frame, is nevertheless present within the audience’s intertextual experience of the film. Johansson’s recent animated films achieve a similar state of presence and absence through the resonance of her voice. As the snake Kaa in The Jungle Book (John Favreau, 2016), porcupine Ash in Sing (Garth Jennings and Christopher Lourdelet, 2016), and Nutmeg in Isle of Dogs , Johansson is simultaneously present and absent within the on-screen space. If, as Ellis suggests (1982, 91), film promises the completion of the star image through performance, while still withholding it entirely through the simultaneous presence and absence of the photographic image (in which the image is present but the image source is not), then Johansson’s voice roles add layers of paradox her star image. As voice actor Johansson is simultaneously present and absent, seen and unseen, recalled for her star image as body and sex symbol yet unable to be looked at and gazed upon. While these films present the absence of Johansson’s body, then, in so doing they nevertheless remind us of its presence beyond the characters on screen.

The Star that Deconstructs Herself Alongside her growing voice-work, Johansson’s late twenties have further seen her appear in a collection of science fiction films that heralded a parodic phase of her career. As James Luxford (2014) wrote at the time, “She’s started toying with her image–using her stardom to win parts that deconstruct it.” The first of these films was Her, shortly followed by Under the Skin, a free adaptation of Michel Faber’s science fiction novel of the same name in which Johansson plays an unnamed alien entity who lures men to a gruesome fate. The action blockbuster Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014), released the following year, saw Johansson play a student who accidentally absorbs vast quantities of a drug that enhances her cognitive abilities to an extreme degree. Finally, the live-action version of the manga Ghost in the Shell was released in 2017; Johansson plays the Major, a cyborg special-operative living in a futuristic Japan. In these films, Johansson deconstructs her star persona in ways that demonstrate an awareness and engagement with her own image. This occurs particularly through Johansson’s repeated portrayal of “the perfect woman,” whether in the form of an artificial female made to male specification, or a hyper-optimised posthuman. In Her, Under the Skin, Ghost in

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the Shell and Lucy, her perfection is quite literal insofar as she is a superblyengineered artificial intelligence, cyborg and cognitively enhanced human respectively. These films use Johansson’s physical beauty as a metaphor for her flawlessness. This link between feminine beauty and perfection is wellestablished in science fiction, with beautiful actresses regularly portraying artificial women. Sean Young played a replicant in Blade Runner (Ridley Scott, 1982), Kristanna Loken a deadly cyborg in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow, 2003), and Alicia Vikander and Sonoya Mizuno were robots in Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015). With the exception of Vikander, all of these actresses had additional careers as fashion models, securing the correlation between beauty and artificiality; none of these women, however, have performed the role of cyborg more than once, as Johansson has. Of Johansson’s films, Ghost in the Shell links beauty and artificial perfection most insistently. Characters repeatedly describe the Major as a “beauty” and “so beautiful”; such statements have a double meaning insofar the Major is both physically stunning as well as a breathtaking feat of engineering. Here, as in Her, Lucy and Under the Skin, Johansson’s muchcelebrated appearance is linked to posthuman marvelousness. Her image as the most desirable woman alive also operates as shorthand in Her, where it signifies Samantha’s Galatea-like perfection. Importantly, the film depends on a decidedly masculine myth of femininity—as Lambert writes, Johansson is “playing into the sort of superhuman power that she is ascribed by heterosexual male directors” (Morris and Lambert 2014). Yet these films nonetheless amount to a reflexive mobilisation of Johansson’s persona. Johansson’s science fiction work also reflexively comments on the performativity of gender and, by extension, Johansson’s own stardom as a feminine icon. Of all her science fiction films, Under the Skin is the one that most clearly undertakes this commentary; the story concerns an alien protagonist who seduces men by reciting the same flirtatious overtures, over and over, until she ensnares her prey. The uncanny repetition of her statements frames sex and gender as a performed act that is learned and mimicked. Moreover, because the role of the feminine seductress is enacted twice in the film—first by the alien (character), and then by Johansson herself (star)—it becomes even more ostensive. Under the Skin highlights how Johansson herself performs the role of hyper-feminine bombshell in her own extra-textual life and career. Hence, the film is a commentary on the performance of sexuality that Johansson has herself mastered.

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Johansson’s science fiction films triggered an explosion of critical, transforming her into an object of widespread interrogation and critique. Suddenly, the ingénue and sex symbol was made intensely visible as an image. In a discussion of Lucy, Molly Lambert says Johansson is “knowingly toying with her image as a bombshell” (Morris and Lambert 2014); Sophia Nguyen observes that Johansson’s roles in Her, Under the Skin and Lucy seem to be “the inevitable endpoint of her poreless, peerless physical perfection” (2014); Jonathan Romney observes that Under the Skin uses Johansson to comment on “something that we these days would imagine an unthinkable oddity—the idea that a major Hollywood star could descend from the firmament of celebrity and just walk around amid us mortals” (2014). Not all commentary was necessarily positive, however. While acknowledging the reflexive trend in Johansson’s work, Nguyen argues that Johansson’s self-parody did little to subvert the mores upon which her bombshell image is built. As Nguyen writes (2014), she’s “stuck in fembot mode, programmed with patriarchal fantasies that are only slightly more sophisticated than before.” Nguyen’s point is well-taken; the subversive power of Johansson’s self-parody is certainly contestable. That said, few failed to notice how Johansson reflexively deployed her persona in this science fiction cycle. Mobilised thus, Johansson became the star that deconstructed herself.

Conclusion This chapter has asked why Johansson is ready and fitting to be the object of scholarly enquiry. Her fame, her commercial success, her status as a postmillennium sex symbol, and the length of her career all provide reasons for sustained analysis. Yet we have also identified an additional critical interest in Johansson regarding the way she has come to represent feminine change and transformation: young girls coming of age, ingénues discovering their place in the world, and posthumans undergoing existential crises. We are not the only commentators to note this quality. A 2017 interview with Johansson in Playboy begins by addressing, and then summarily dismissing, the dominant characterisation of Johansson as a sex symbol in favour of a new angle: … Johansson is compared often and aptly to Marilyn Monroe: The fact of her body seems to supersede everything else. But Johansson is bored by

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discussions of her physicality … To ask her about her good looks is to watch her grow increasingly disinterested. (Petrusich 2017)

With the topic of Johansson’s looks thus banished, the conversation turns towards her career-long portrayal of women undergoing change. The interviewer remarks: “You’ve played so many characters who start out one way— unfeeling, unknowing—and grow into something or someone else via their interactions with others or their observations of the world.” Johansson agrees: “I think I’ve been trying to wrap my head around metamorphosis,” she says. She adds, however, that she hopes she will one day portray a character who cannot change: “Maybe that will be the next thing for me” (Petrusich 2017). Johansson is in a paradoxical position in this regard. As Jessica Hope Jordan writes, cinematic “sex goddesses” are meant to embody abstract and eternal notions of femininity (2009, 4). The goddess appellation implies both agelessness and archetypical, essential status. Yet Johansson is allowing herself to change onscreen and be representative of change. This paradox is the productive basis of the explorations in this book: the contradictions and manipulations of Johansson’s stardom, and what they tell us. The chapters that follow probe and analyse the complexities, contradictions, appeals and disruptions brought by Johansson to the screen. Progressing in a broadly chronological order, they interrogate Johansson as child performer, as actor and voice, as muse, provocateur, action heroine, femme fatale, cyborg, alien, post-human, white film star, digital avatar and fodder for memes. Throughout these accounts, the myriad of readings that Johansson produces as star, as performer and as character resoundingly answer the question of Why Johansson. As such, this book also sets out to move beyond the question of “why” this star and to instead look to the more profitable questions that arise from drawing together a diversity of experiences, performances, narratives and characters that find coherence through the connective tissue of a single star. What can Johansson, a star defined as much by her transformations and polysemy as her consistencies, reveal about the possibilities and limits of female stardom today?

Works Cited Andrews, Travis M. 2017. “Scarlett Johansson Files for Divorce. Husband Romain Dauriac Is ‘Shocked’.” Washington Post, March 9. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/09/scarlett-

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johansson-files-for-divorce-husband-romain-dauriac-is-shocked/?noredirect= on&utm_term=.7258cc0e79b7. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2018. “Scarlett Johansson Labelled ‘Hypocrite’ for Calling Out James Franco After Defending Woody Allen.” ABC News, January 23. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-22/scarlett-johanssoncalled-hypocrite-for-calling-out-james-franco/9348292. Bhattacharya, Sanjiv. 2004. “Scarlett in Bloom—Spring Fashion 2004.” New York Magazine, February 5. http://nymag.com/nymetro/shopping/fashion/ spring04/n_9843/. Billson, Anne. 2013. “How Scarlett Johansson Got Interesting.” Telegraph, November 19. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/10458053/HowScarlett-Johansson-got-interesting.html. Bolton, Lucy. 2011. Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Cadwalladr, Carole. 2014. “Scarlett Johansson Interview: ‘I Would Way Rather Not Have Middle Ground’.” Observer, March 16. https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2014/mar/16/scarlett-johansson-interview-middle-ground-under-theskin-sodastream. Cook, Pam. 2012. Nicole Kidman. Basingstoke: BFI, Palgrave Macmillan. Cousins, Mark. 2016. “A Study in Scarlett.” Sight and Sound 26 (10): 15. Dyer, Richard. 1986. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. Houndmills: BFI Macmillan. ———. 1998. Stars. London: BFI. Ellis, John. 1982. Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video. London: Routledge. Female First. 2011. “Scarlett Johansson Is Comfortable with Sexuality.” Female First, June 6. https://www.femalefirst.co.uk/celebrity/Scarlett+Johansson39562.html. Gledhill, Christine. 1991. “Signs of Melodrama.” In Stardom: Industry of Desire, edited by Christine Gledhill, 210–233. London: Routledge. Hill, Logan. 2007. “And God Created Scarlett.” New York Magazine, July 3. http://nymag.com/guides/summer/17409/. Hoffman, Jordan. 2017. “Ghost World Director Terry Zwigoff Has Learned to Expect the Worst from Hollywood.” Vanity Fair, May 18. https://www. vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/05/terry-zwigoff-ghost-world-bad-santainterview. Hoggard, Liz. 2006. “Scarlett Johansson: Sex and the Maiden.” Independent, October 15. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/scarlettjohansson-sex-and-the-maiden-6230947.html. Jacobs, A. J. 2006. “Scarlett Johansson Is the Sexiest Woman Alive, 2006.” Esquire, November 1. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/ a367/scarlett-johansson-pics/.

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Johansson, Scarlett. 2005. “Scarlett Johansson.” Interview by John Travolta. Interview 35 (10): 92–97. ———. 2017. Interview. Lorraine. Interview by Lorraine Kelly. ITV, March 23. https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/scarlettjohansson-wants-to-show-her-daughter-that-she-s-an-independent-woman-its-important-she-a3497526.html. Jordan, Jessica Hope. 2009. The Sex Goddess in American Film, 1930–1965: Jean Harlow, Mae West, Lana Turner, and Jayne Mansfield. Amherst: Cambria Press. King, Geoff. 2009. Indiewood, USA: Where Hollywood Meets Independent Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris. Lane, Anthony. 2014. “Her Again.” New Yorker, March 24. https://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/24/her-again. Luxford, James. 2014. “Lucy Trailer: Another High for Scarlett Johansson?” Guardian, April 5. https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/apr/ 04/lucy-trailer-scarlett-johansson-luc-besson-film. McDonald, Paul. 1998. “Reconceptualising Stardom.” In Stars, by Richard Dyer, 177–200. London: BFI. McDonald, Toby. 2018. “She’s Pout of This World! Formula Proves Scarlett Johansson Has the Perfect Kissable Lips (But Emma Watson Needs a Bit of Help).” Daily Mail, March 11. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article5485861/Scarlett-Johansson-perfect-lips-Emma-Watson-needs-help.html. Morris, Wesley, and Molly Lambert. 2014. “Scarlett Johansson Is All-Powerful, But ‘Lucy’ Still Has Some ‘Splainin’ to Do.” Grantland, July 28. http:// grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/blockbuster-talk-scarlett-johansson-isall-powerful-but-lucy-still-has-some-splainin-to-do/. Nguyen, Sophia. 2014. “The Posthuman Scar-Jo.” Los Angeles Review of Books, September 12. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/posthuman-scar-jo/. Petersen, Anne. 2017. “Scarlett Johansson: ‘There’s No Reason We Shouldn’t Be Talking About Reproductive Rights’.” Cosmopolitan, June 2. https://www. cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/a9955530/scarlett-johansson-july-2017/. Petrusich, Amanda. 2017. “Scarlett Johansson Talks Monogamy, Women’s March & ‘Ghost in the Shell’.” Playboy, February 14. http://www.playboy.com/ articles/playboy-interview-scarlett-johanson. Robehmed, Natalie. 2016. “Scarlett Johansson Is the Top-Grossing Actor of 2016.” Forbes, December 27. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ natalierobehmed/2016/12/27/scarlett-johansson-is-the-top-grossing-actorof-2016/#5f39e14f1433. Romney, Jonathan. 2014. “Film of the Week: Under the Skin.” Film Comment, April 3. https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/under-the-skinjonathan-glazer-review/.

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Ryzik, Melena. 2007. “Local Favourite.” Sydney Morning Herald, September 17. https://www.smh.com.au/news/film/local-favourite/2007/09/16/ 1189881329353.html. Schaefer, Stephen. 2012. “Johansson: Workaholic Gets ‘Under the Skin’ of Roles.” Variety, May 2. https://variety.com/2012/film/news/johansson-workaholicgets-under-the-skin-of-roles-1118053059/. Scheibel, Will. 2013. “Marilyn Monroe, ‘Sex Symbol’: Film Performance, Gender Politics and 1950s Hollywood Celebrity.” Celebrity Studies 4 (1): 4–13. Sconce, Jeffrey. 2002. “Irony, Nihilism and the New American ‘Smart’ Film.” Screen 43 (4): 349–369. Severgnini, Beppe. 2010. “Scarlett Johansson: Blonde Ambition.” The Express Tribune, November 2. https://tribune.com.pk/story/67996/scarlett-johanssonblonde-ambition/. Shingler, Martin. 2012. Star Studies: A Critical Guide. London: BFI, Palgrave Macmillan. Smith, Susan. 2012. Elizabeth Taylor. London: BFI, Palgrave Macmillan. Vernon, Polly. 2003. “Scarlett Fever.” Observer, December 28. https://www. theguardian.com/film/2003/dec/28/features.magazine. Yuan, Jada, and Aya Kanai. 2016. “Scarlett.” Cosmopolitan 260 (5): 160.

CHAPTER 2

Young Scarlett Johansson and the Liminal Perspective Whitney Monaghan

Scarlett Johansson made her film debut as a child actor in Rob Reiner’s North (1994). Appearing on screen for just a few moments, she wore a set of striped denim overalls and a pink ribbon in her hair. Her character’s name was Emily Nelson; she was the daughter of the family who were hoping to adopt the film’s titular character, North (Elijah Wood). She was eight years old during filming and nine when the film was released. North was not a successful film. Roger Ebert described it as “one of the most unpleasant, contrived, artificial, cloying experiences” he’d ever had at the cinema (Ebert 1994). However, this did not dampen Johansson’s acting career, which developed exponentially in the years that followed. In 1995 she played the daughter of a law professor in Just Cause (Arne Glimcher). In 1996, she played a schoolgirl in the romantic comedy If Lucy Fell (Eric Shaeffer) and co-starred as Manny in Manny & Lo (Lisa Krueger), a film about two sisters on the run from foster homes. Johansson appeared in Fall (Eric Shaeffer) and Home Alone 3 (Raja Gosnell) in 1997 and took on the lead role in The Horse Whisperer (Robert Redford) in 1998, in

W. Monaghan (B) Film and Screen Studies, Monash University, Caulfield, VIC, Australia

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which she played an adolescent girl recovering physically and emotionally from a devastating equestrian accident. Following this, she appeared in My Brother the Pig (Erik Fleming) in 1999, and in 2001 began to take on more complex adolescent roles with The Man Who Wasn’t There (Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen), Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff) and An American Rhapsody (Éva Gárdos). Approaching adulthood, Johansson had breakout roles in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (2003), Peter Webber’s Girl With a Pearl Earring (2003), and Woody Allen’s Match Point (2005) and began to gain visibility on- and off-screen. Though Timothy Shary notes, “very few child actors have ever been able to maintain their success and visibility as they grow into adulthood” (2012, 7), Johansson has built a successful and highly lucrative career as a star actor. Johansson’s longevity within the film industry can perhaps be attributed to the fact that she did not attain celebrity status as a child, only gaining recognition as a star when she moved into adult roles. With this in mind, this chapter looks to the early phase of Johansson’s career to determine how her screen persona developed in the late 1990s. To analyse Johansson’s emergent on-screen presence from childhood through to late adolescence, I focus on four key cinematic roles from 1996 to 2001 that are framed around Johansson’s portrayal of characters caught somewhere on the threshold of childhood and adolescence, or adolescence and adulthood. While this early phase of Johansson’s career is often skimmed over in accounts of her stardom, her character roles during this era provide significant insight into the expressive function of her image as it has developed over time. Drawing upon ideas of child stardom and the conceptual framework of “liminality,” a term that has been taken up by cultural theorists to describe the in-between experience of youth, I chart the evolution of Johansson’s on-screen persona in the liminal perspectives offered by these films.

Johansson and Child Stardom While Johansson’s early career is often overlooked in detailed accounts of her stardom, a small number of reviewers and cultural commentators have reflected on her on-screen childhood. Framing Johansson’s career through a linear trajectory, popular culture and news websites Bustle, The Telegraph and Wetpaint have recently featured headlines such as “From child star to Ghost In the Shell: Scarlett Johansson’s life and career, in pictures” (McAloon 2017), “Scarlett Johansson’s Evolution From Child Star To Voluptuous Vixen” (Albers 2017), and “The Evolution of ‘Lucy’s

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Scarlett Johansson, From Child Star to Hollywood A-Lister” (Semigran 2014). These headlines link through to brief articles and online photo galleries that map key phases in Johansson’s career and draw some continuities between Johansson’s contemporary stardom and her early career as a child actor. Focusing largely on Johansson’s on-screen image and emphasising a smooth, uncomplicated transition from meek child to sexy Hollywood ALister, these articles and galleries superficially connect her on-screen image to a well-known cultural type, the child star. Taking this connection beyond simple image galleries, The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane looks to Johansson’s early roles to identify continuities within her star persona. Lane observes that in one scene of Johansson’s first co-starring role in Manny & Lo, Johansson sits in a car with a lollipop in her mouth, staring at the passing world. Lane argues that in this moment “you can see her wondering what’s to be had from it” (2014). Tying this early role to adult Johansson’s star persona, Lane asserts this is one of the first appearances of “the Johansson look” which he describes as “already potent and unnerving” (2014). In order to complicate these understandings of Johansson’s stardom as a linear trajectory, it is necessary to move beyond drawing simple links between Johansson’s contemporary career and her childhood roles. The notion of child stardom itself must also be unpacked in order to reflect on how Johansson’s early career aligned with common understandings of child stardom at the time. The term “child star” first came into use in the early twentieth century to refer to young performers in 1920s and 1930s Hollywood cinema (Cary 1997), though as Jane O’Connor argues, it now commonly describes “any and all children who achieve even a modicum of success in the entertainment world” (2011, 285). Child stardom a unique area of investigation for star studies because it provides insight into the ways in which stardom can function in distinctive ways for different sections of the entertainment industry, namely children and adults. For adult actors, stardom involves the coalescing of off-screen and on-screen personas into stable, recognisable and marketable images (King 1985). Barry King suggests this stability is a key facet of stardom for all adult actors who work to cultivate steadiness in “the relationship between person and image on screen [so that] they may be the proprietors of a marketable persona” (1985, 43). This stability, and therefore marketability, is difficult for children to maintain because they grow up and their bodies change at a rapid speed. Hence as Chad Newsom suggests, “If adult stardom involves the intentional development of a stable persona, child stardom complicates this viewpoint” because “the

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child star persona is fundamentally unstable” (2015, 8). This is because “child stars become famous for physical attributes that will rapidly change and character types they will soon outgrow” (2015, 6). Thus, while adult stardom depends on stability, child stardom is based on change. Child stardom has also been theorised through broader Western cultural understandings of childhood, and scholars such as O’Connor point out how this enables the term “child star” to carry contradictory meanings. Within Western culture, children are understood as angelic and innocent, and simultaneously, uncivilised and corruptible. On the one hand, this follows what Chris Jenks describes as an Apollonian model of childhood, whereby children are constructed as “little angels” bursting with natural innocence (1996, 73). However, on the other, Jenks describes a Dionysian model of childhood, where children are framed as “little savages” and prone to antisocial and evil behaviour (1996, 71). Analysing children’s on-screen performances from the early twentieth century to the mid-2000s, O’Connor asserts that child stars typically function to represent the Apollonian model of childhood. From the likes of Shirley Temple to Miley Cyrus, O’Connor argues that on-screen performances from child stars commonly evoke romanticised images of childhood and bring a natural “air of purity and goodness to the cinema” (2011, 293). She argues that “the most successful child stars have always appeared to have this ‘natural’ appeal, no matter how manufactured it may be” (2011, 295). Hence, O’Connor notes: Child stars will always be required whenever there is a need for an idealised image of childhood to be represented on screen, whether that be an adult’s ideal of what children should be like or children’s ideal of what they aspire to be like. (2011, 293)

To connect this to specific examples, O’Connor points to Drew Barrymore, Macaulay Culkin, Haley Joel Osment and Dakota Fanning, all of whom became famous for their on-screen performances as children, and all of which emphasised the “goodness” and natural innocence of childhood through their early films. While child stardom is associated with representations of idealised childhood on screen, the term “child star” also has another meaning. This is largely related to the off-screen lives of child performers. O’Connor also discusses this, suggesting that child stardom has become “synonymous with a particularly deviant type of childhood” (2008, 1). Expanding this further,

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she asserts the phrase “child star” conjures a particular set of images in our cultural imaginary: “Images of precocious young performers, monstrous stage parents, ‘lost’ childhoods, and disastrous adult lives” (2008, 1). As evidence of this, scholars including Cary and O’Connor cite examples such as Jackie Coogan and Baby Peggy, child stars of 1920s who were financially exploited by their parents; Judy Garland, Tatum O’Neal and Drew Barrymore, all of whom had issues with drug and alcohol addiction during and after their rise to fame as children; and more recently the likes of Lindsay Lohan, whose child stardom has been eclipsed by alcohol abuse, car accidents, theft, stints in rehab and incarceration. This understanding of child stardom highlights that there is no uncomplicated path from child star to respected Hollywood A-Lister, no matter how frequently online sources publish photo galleries that suggest it. Rather, as O’Connor suggests, the media often present child stars as following “a standard trajectory toward adult disaster” (2011, 285). With this in mind, the longevity of Johansson’s career as an actress and star is especially significant. With these understandings of child stardom in mind, a decidedly more complex image of the “child star” as a cultural type can come into focus. Child stardom is a complex and contradictory thing, based simultaneously on stability and instability, connoting both idealised and deviant childhoods. Situating Scarlett Johansson’s early career within this understanding of child stardom provides a frame of reference for analysing Johansson’s emergent star persona. What interests me about this is that the association between the young Johansson and child stardom is, for the most part, retrospectively ascribed. While Johansson appeared in a number of films throughout the 1990s, she was rarely labelled a child star and was more readily referred to as a capable child actress with natural talents, which was a stark contrast to other notable girl stars of the same era. Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, for instance, were born in 1986 (just two years after Johansson) and were regularly referred to as child stars by the press. By 1996, the Olsen twins had effectively built a girl-empire, starring in television sitcoms such as Full House (1987–1995) and films such as It Takes Two (Andy Tennant, 1995), becoming executive producers of their own entertainment company, Dualstar Inc. and launching two video series (The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley [1994–1997] and You’re Invited to Mary-Kate and Ashley’s [1995–2000]) where they starred as themselves. By the end of 1996, Johansson had begun to establish a career in acting but had yet to develop a marketable persona or brand. She had taken on roles in four feature films and had appeared

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in an Off-Broadway play alongside Ethan Hawke. Hence while the Olsen twins were better thought of as stars at the time—evidenced by the use of their personas being used to market a variety of products—Johansson lacked celebrity status and was most well known as a child actress with a promising career ahead. Johansson’s acting style and capability as a performer is mentioned within a number of reviews of her early films, which provide insight into how she was understood at the time. Reviewing Manny & Lo, for the San Francisco Examiner, Barbara Shulgasser noted, “Johansson is a wonderful, natural actress” (1996). In her review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin wrote that the film’s “two young actresses [one of which is Johansson] are exceptionally assured” (1996). Similarly in regional newspaper Buffalo News, Richard Huntington praised “Johansson’s already excellent acting” (1996). In his review for Canada’s The Globe and Mail, Rick Groen commented upon Johansson’s “flat delivery” (1996) as she narrated the film, which he saw as purposeful and one of the film’s artistic merits. Mick LaSalle, Staff Critic at the San Francisco Chronicle also reflected on Johansson’s performance in Manny & Lo, associating her with a unique expression of “stillness” (1996). He writes: “Finding poised child actors is difficult enough, but Johansson’s peaceful aura, which takes in everything with equanimity, is something special. If she can get through puberty with that aura undisturbed she could become an important actress” (1996). From this role she was cast in Robert Redford’s The Horse Whisperer alongside Kristin Scott Thomas and Redford himself. In this film, Johansson maintained that stillness in her portrayal of a young girl recovering from a horse riding accident. Johansson’s peaceful aura remained in tact as reviewers praised her performance (see: Dwyer 1998; Williams 1998) with one going so far as to describe her as an actor “whom we’ll be seeing again for sure” (Anthony 1998). Around this time, Johansson became notable for her stillness on-screen and her off-screen assuredness. As Jay Carr writes in his review for The Boston Globe, “Johansson’s cruelly challenged teenager unfalteringly holds the screen with Scott Thomas and Redford, matching the strength and complexity of the adult characters” (1998). Having made a shift from the independent sector to Hollywood production, Johansson’s star status gradually began to take shape as she was asked to participate in Hollywood’s publicity machine, giving both television and newspaper interviews to promote The Horse Whisperer. In an interview with NBC: Today’s Katie Couric, Johansson was described as “incredibly articulate and poised for a 13-year

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old” (1998). Johansson also travelled to Australia to promote The Horse Whisperer’s release, the only cast member from the film to do so. In the Australian press, Johansson was routinely framed as a promising child actor and largely distanced from child stardom’s negative meanings, which O’Connor associates with “images of precocious young performers, monstrous stage parents, [and] ‘lost’ childhoods” (2008, 1). Claire Sutherland (1998) from the Herald Sun noted that Johansson “brings the right measures of bitterness and vulnerability” to her role in the film, while Mark Nagalaz described her as a “remarkably assured teenager” in an interview for the West Australian (1998). Explicitly dissociating Johansson from the typical image of the child star, Nagalaz comments “there are no ugly showbiz parents in her life, just a very supportive family and a mother who acts as her chaperone for the long months it takes to complete a Hollywood feature film” (1998). While is important to acknowledge that Johansson’s child star status has been retrospectively ascribed, the early phase of her career provides a rich source of material for analysing the expressive function of her star persona as it has developed over time. King argues that contemporary stars are “individually engaged in constantly renegotiating the terms of their engagements with public life” and “permanently resetting the terms of their representation” (2003, 52). With this in mind, one could easily argue that Johansson’s public persona has been constantly renegotiated over the course of her career—her star image, as with all star images, is a fragmentary composite of many different elements. However, interviews with Johansson and reviews of her early films do highlight continuities with respect to key qualities of Johansson’s performances in this phase of her career. These include naturalness, stoicism, inaccessibility, poise, and a unique vocal register. Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, in her early roles Johansson’s performances evoked what is best described as a set of ‘liminal’ perspectives. As Johansson’s characters traversed the murky periods between childhood, adolescence and adulthood, so did she.

Scarlett Johansson’s Liminal Perspectives First theorised by anthropologist Victor Turner in the 1970s, liminality refers to a temporary period of transition between certain points in age or social position. Turner describes the liminal experience as “ambiguous, neither here nor there, betwixt and between all fixed points of classification” (1975, 232). The term has come to denote a powerful experience

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of instability between distinct and stable points of identity and has proven useful to both film and cultural studies where it has most often been taken up in relation to adolescent subjectivity. Distinct from both childhood and adulthood, adolescence is inherently ambiguous or “betwixt and between” as Turner describes it (1975, 232). As I have argued in my previous work on girlhood, liminality is a key frame for films about youth, in which: adolescent protagonists are matured through a series of personal trials. Such protagonists enter the narrative as immature adolescents and leave with new levels of maturity, after crossing a threshold between adolescence and adulthood. (Monaghan 2016, 37)

Adrian Martin also beautifully locates liminality as a key aspect of films about youth, writing “in one way or another, most teen stories are about…the liminal experience” (1994, 68). Martin describes the adolescent “liminal experience” as “that intense, suspended moment between yesterday and tomorrow, between childhood and adulthood, between being a nobody and a somebody, when everything is in question, and anything is possible” (1994, 68). While Martin presents liminality as term with universal appeal, Pamela Bettis and Natalie Adams suggest that it is particularly useful for studies of girls and girlhood as it “opens up different ways to think about… in-between spaces and places of female adolescent identity” (2005, 6). This framework is particularly well suited to analysing Johansson’s emerging on screen presence. In the early phase of her career, Johansson not only made films about the liminal experience her persona in itself projected liminality. Across her early roles, Johansson’s developing star persona was predicated on a set of slippages between childhood, adolescence and adulthood. These slippages are evident in interviews where the young Johansson is described as having wisdom beyond her years. One interviewer described her as “13 going on 43,” noting that it was easy to forget that she was only a child (Portman 1998). Johansson’s unique vocal register and the tonality of her expression also evoke a liminal slippage between childhood/adulthood and masculine/feminine. As Donna Kornhaber notes, Johansson’s voice is “so deep as to fall within the typical male and female vocal ranges” and argues that it “upsets and explodes” the auditory cues that we usually use to differentiate between man, woman, child and adult (2017, 8). This is something that Johansson has since commented upon, noting in a 2013 interview for Interview Magazine, her distinctive vocal register made it difficult for her to get

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roles as a child: “I was always terrible at commercials because my voice was so deep. At the age of 9, I sounded like a whiskey-drinking, chain-smoking fool. Wasn’t going to sell Jell-O with that voice, you know?” (Aronofsky 2013). In four early films, Manny & Lo (Lisa Krueger) The Horse Whisperer (Robert Redford), An American Rhapsody (Éva Gárdos) and Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff), Johansson’s emergent star persona, marked as it was by these liminal qualities, came together with a thematic focus on the in-between periods of childhood and adolescence.

Liminality as a Point of View: Manny & Lo and The Horse Whisperer The young Johansson’s liminality is first evoked in her early films Manny & Lo and The Horse Whisperer. Within both works, Johansson portrays a young girl with an insightful point of view made visible through the film’s narrative and mise-en-scène. Manny & Lo opens in what seems like a dream. The sound of running water accompanies several ambiguous shots: a blurred figure, a close up of a child’s hands in a river, an adult woman’s feet walking through water, wild green foliage. The narration begins here amongst these strange images, with Johansson’s distinctively husky voice asking, “Did you ever dream about someone before you saw them in life? Sorta like you made them up, but you didn’t.” A few seconds after these opening shots, we see Johansson’s face for the first time as she sleeps peacefully on a blanket on top of perfectly manicured lawn. Her hand drapes across her body; her face and torso fill three quarters of the frame. Manny & Lo follows 11-year-old Amanda (nicknamed Manny) and 16year-old Laurel (nicknamed Lo), two sisters who have run away from foster care. As critic Richard Huntington writes in his review of the film, Manny & Lo presents “girlhood in two dovetailed parts, from optimistic innocence to the fatalism and gloom of the midteen years” (Huntington 1996). Johansson plays the younger of the two sisters and provides the film with a narration that plays a significant role in the film’s evocation of a liminal point of view. Within the film, Manny and Lo (Aleksa Palladino) travel aimlessly for some time, stealing groceries from convenience stores and sleeping in model homes. Midway through the film, the girls come to find themselves in a situation that they cannot run from. Lo becomes pregnant. She claims she has simply been over eating but Manny knows the truth. When Lo finally acknowledges the reality of her situation, she is informed that it is too late to have an abortion. This sets off a wild chain

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of events. The girls find a vacant holiday house in the woods and prepare for the birth. They kidnap Elaine (Mary Kay Place), a woman who works at a local baby supply store to help with the pregnancy and birth. Elaine eventually bonds with Manny and Lo and they form an unconventional family unit. The film stages a set of encounters between youth and age within both the diegesis and at the level of character and performance. Discussing the film’s narrative premise, critic Henry Sheehan writes that the convention for similar “kids-on-the-run movies” is a “disastrous” encounter between childhood and the adult world, whereas Manny & Lo presents this as “difficult but negotiable” (Sheehan 1998). The film’s narrative, told from the perspective of Johansson’s character, follows the two protagonists meeting and becoming close with an adult woman; it brings together a pre-adult world (and indeed a pre-adult perspective of that world) and adult existence. Beyond this, the titular characters themselves negotiate youth and age as they find themselves at the thresholds of childhood and adolescence, adolescence and adulthood. At the level of character and performance, critic Karen Schoemer further suggests that both Johansson and Palladino embody “a haunting combination of kidness and premature adulthood” (Schoemer 1996, 73). This combination is best represented in two adjacent scenes early in the film: in one the girls lick lollipops, in the next Lo angrily stomps out of an abortion clinic. From these encounters between childhood, adolescence and adulthood, Johansson’s character communicates the liminal perspective of girlhood. For instance, Huntington writes “Manny, still on the edge of puberty, retains her little-girl omnipotence, spunk and good common sense” (Huntington 1996) and Carr describes her as “self-possessed” in the way that “only 10- and 11-year-old girls can be before they’re tossed on the seas of adolescence” (Carr 1998). Other critics tie Manny’s subjectivity to Johansson’s performance style, describing her as “perfectly calm child with a wide-eyed, serene gaze that misses nothing” (Peterson 1996) and as possessing a “disinterested clarity” (LaSalle 1996). Narrating the film from a girl’s point of view, Johansson’s Manny appears to see and understand things that other characters do not, even though her perspective is occasionally distorted. She recognises Lo’s pregnancy before Lo does, but has no problem with the plot to kidnap Elaine. Given the film’s focus on Manny’s point of view and the critical focus on Johansson’s performance of this, the narration gains immense significance. The film’s narration is told almost entirely in the present tense and several

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critics have discussed the impact of this. For Schoemer, it is as if Manny is “always looking at the world through the distorted lens of a magnifying glass” (1996, 73) and for Shulgasser, it reflects the way that “children learn things one level at a time” and sometimes misunderstand what they see (Shulgasser 1996). However, other critics have suggested that the combination of Johansson’s “flat delivery” (Groen 1996), her character’s innocence, and the present-ness of her perspective have a more profound and complex impact on the film’s temporality. For instance, La Salle reads the narration as an example of how Manny’s “child’s-eye perception of time is different from that of an adult” (LaSalle 1996). For Huntington this presents a “weirdly unreal, sometimes absurd present” and renders the film’s events “curiously suspended between a foggy past and an unlikely future” (Huntington 1996) which is reminiscent of Martin’s description of teen liminality. Especially pertinent to this discussion is the fact that Manny & Lo concludes where it began, with Johansson’s character musing over the question “Did you ever dream about someone before you saw them in life?” which suggests the film’s narrative to be circular rather than linear. The final moments reveal that the strange and ambiguous images at the film’s beginning weren’t the just imaginations of Johansson’s character, but rather glimpses of her perspective. Again in The Horse Whisperer we first hear Johansson before we see her. Johansson giggles off screen before the image cuts to a close up of her face as she lies in bed. She gets up and gazes out a window, watching snow fall in her picturesque backyard. Johansson’s character Grace lives an idyllic life in upstate New York, but this is soon disrupted by a horse-riding accident that kills her best friend and seriously injures both Grace and her horse, Pilgrim. Grace is left disabled, having had part of her leg removed. Her mother Annie (Kristin Scott Thomas) refuses to put the injured horse down, so it too is left traumatised. These injuries are paralleled by similar shots, showing the injured Grace and her horse, indicating the profound connection between the two. Following the accident, Annie leaves behind her successful New York life to take Grace and Pilgrim to a ranch in rural Montana where she seeks help from professional ‘horse whisperer,’ Tom Booker (Robert Redford). From here, the film follows Johansson’s character recovering from the accident as she attempts to heal her horse. As in Manny & Lo, The Horse Whisperer evokes themes of liminality via Johansson’s character and her performance. Like most adolescents, Grace grapples with the difficulty of growing up. However, Redford complicates the typical adolescent narrative of coming of age by intertwining this with

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issues stemming from trauma. Throughout the film, Grace faces a crisis of self. She falls into a deep depression following the accident, believing that her dreams and her capacity to achieve them have been lost. In one scene we see Grace sitting alone in a room. She cries as she watches home movies of herself in show jumping competitions, seemingly mourning the life that she once had and the dreams that went with it. As the film progresses, Grace’s time at the ranch allows her to imagine new possibilities for the future. Unlike many films about youth wherein coming of age is linked to heterosexual romance, Grace’s maturation is tied to self-care, healing and a greater understanding of the natural world. With many of the visuals emerging from Grace’s point of view, the thematic focus on liminality also extends to the film’s aesthetic. In a similar manner to the earlier Manny & Lo, Johansson’s character spends considerable time observing the world around her. It is through this that she gains the ability to overcome her trauma, and re-train Pilgrim. In the film’s emotional climax Grace uses new techniques learned through observation to successfully mount the horse for the first time since the accident. Told via a series of close ups that alternate between Johansson’s face and her point of view as she looks at Pilgrim, the scene suggests that both have been healed through their time at the ranch. Here The Horse Whisperer, much like the earlier Manny & Lo, constructs a liminal subjectivity by doubling down on Johansson’s already notable liminal performance qualities by foregrounding her perspective within the narrative and mise-en-scène.

Liminal Experience and Outsider Perspectives: An American Rhapsody and Ghost World Johansson matures into a rebellious teenager in two films from 2001 that focus on the experience of adolescence. In both An American Rhapsody and Ghost World, Johansson’s persona conveys liminality and is deployed to articulate the experience of being an outsider on the threshold of the adult world. An American Rhapsody begins at night, with the sounds of cars driving along a road and water lapping at the edges of a river. As the opening credits roll, a brief shot of flowing water is followed by a close up of Johansson’s face in profile. She stands on a bridge and watches the river beneath her before walking away into the night. The film’s narration begins here with Johansson’s distinct flatness explaining, “It was the summer of 1965. I was fifteen and my life was already falling apart so I came back to Hungary, where it all began.” The image dips to black and the title, An

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American Rhapsody, emerges on screen, fading to reveal archival footage of Budapest in ruin in the 1950s. With Johansson’s voice narrating the film, her words bridge the film’s narrative present with this historical past. While this opening scene gestures to 1950s Hungary, it also gestures to Johansson’s cinematic past, beginning in a very similar fashion to Manny & Lo. Johansson’s liminal perspective has an expositional role within the narrative of both films, her voice underlies, explains and questions. Both films also begin with a similar setup: A shot of flowing water followed by a close up of Johansson’s face and her narration, a deep husky alto with a surreal sense of knowingness. However, while Manny & Lo tells the story of a child building a makeshift family in difficult circumstances, An American Rhapsody employs Johansson’s emergent onscreen presence to work through familial and historical trauma. Backtracking fifteen years from Johansson’s opening remark, the film introduces married couple Peter (Tony Goldwyn) and Margit (Natassja Kinski) fleeing the country’s oppressive socialist regime. Shot in stark black and white, they take their eldest child Maria (Klaudia Szabó) but they are forced to leave behind their infant daughter Suzanne (initially played by Raffaella Bánsági). Colour returns to the mise-en-scène as Suzanne is taken in by a foster family. She grows up in idyllic rural Hungary, frolicking in fields with a little red scarf tied around her hair while her biological family begin a new life in the United States. Five years later, the family are reunited and Suzanne is transported to their new home in Los Angeles. This capitalist suburbia is rendered through Suzanne’s perspective as a bizarre landscape of houses that all look the same, scored by the music of Elvis Presley. Removed from everything she knows, Suzanne appears perplexed as she is introduced to hamburgers, bubble gum and Coca-Cola and is forced to speak English. Johansson plays the adolescent Suzanne, a character that initially seems like a typical rebellious teenager. She acts out, sneaks out of her bedroom at night, smokes and fights with her parents. She has a particularly strained relationship with her mother, who she resents for abandoning her as a child. However, the adolescent Suzanne is also a deeply conflicted character searching for a sense of identity as her childhood confusion develops into existential crisis. The film powerfully evokes themes of liminality via Suzanne’s experience of displacement—of existing between two homes and societies. This is particularly evident when Suzanne travels to Budapest as she suggests in her opening voice over.

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Suzanne expresses the desire to return to Budapest after an explosive fight with her mother. “I can’t explain why I have to go, I just have to go,” she states. Her mother says she must wait until she finishes high school, explaining that in two years she will have proven that she is responsible enough to travel there alone. “I can’t wait two years, I have to go now!” Suzanne passionately responds, “I’m not a child!” She is eventually permitted to return. Her time in Budapest is brief but transformative. When Suzanne arrives she wears a large backpack and a beret the same colour as the scarf she wore as a child. She quickly meets her foster father and is taken to his new apartment in the city, where she emotionally reunites with her foster mother. They embrace while her foster mother softly whispers “my little girl, my daughter.” The next morning Suzanne explores the streets of Budapest; the camera captures Johansson’s cool observant gaze as she fluidly wanders through crowds of people. She retains a certain blankness as she comes face to face with poverty as people hassle her in the street, jostle over fresh fruit and transport livestock in the trunks of cars. In one scene she stands motionless against a wall as a bride and groom pass, the camera pans to reveal graffiti scrawled above her head: “Le az Amerika Imperializmussal!” (“Down with American Imperialism”). The outsider perspective allows Johansson’s character to see through her romanticised memories; learning about injustices endured by her Hungarian family—for instance, finding out that her childhood home had been repossessed by the government—forces her to realise that as a child she was sheltered from the harsh realities of life under Stalin. Eventually, Suzanne comes to the realisation that although she does not feel as though she belongs with her biological family in Los Angeles, she also does not feel at home in the spaces of her childhood. As she states to her foster parents before she leaves, “It’s funny but all these years I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I thought maybe I belonged in Hungary but—and I love being here, I love you—but this is no longer my home.” While her displacement is never truly resolved, even when she reunites with her biological mother in the film’s conclusion, Johansson’s liminal perspective (caught in between adolescence and adulthood) does ultimately work through some of the historical traumas endured by her family members. When she finally reunites with her biological mother, both characters have come to terms with the past. The idea of liminal wandering is picked up again in Ghost World, a film that begins at a high school graduation—the point where many teen films conclude. The film follows Enid (Thora Birch) and her friend Rebecca

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(Johansson), two disaffected teens as they drift aimlessly through the last days of their adolescence. Enid and Rebecca are coded as outcasts from the film’s beginning. Following a cliché-ridden graduation speech, they emerge from the school’s main building and give it the finger in unison. They both have visible combat boots beneath their red graduation gowns and they don’t appear to get along with any of their fellow students. The two characters spend much of the film’s narrative doing nothing in particular. They wander around killing time together, enjoying each other’s weirdness, laughing and dreaming about a potential future where they can move into their own apartment. Though Johansson is not the film’s protagonist, her deep vocal tonality, dry wit and blankness of expression come together here to signify the aimlessness of youth. Arguing that these characters “have little to look forward to and little to motivate them,” Sarah Hentges describes their lives as a “go-nowhere existence” that “illustrate[s] the space between adolescence and adulthood” (2006, 93). Hentges suggests that the power of the film lies with its foregrounding of this in-between space as both characters “have the time and space to wait for something to happen” (2006, 94) even if it never does. The film’s narrative structure highlights this as: the events that have meaning in these characters lives are not augmented as important coming-of-age rituals. In fact, at the end… the characters seem to have changed little and are still stuck in their same go-nowhere lives. If any of these girls did have dreams, they faded a long time ago. But in these films, that’s ok. That’s life. (Hentges 2006, 94)

Eschewing typical teen coming of age narratives, Ghost World gives considerable focus to the wandering perspectives of its two central characters. And, as Hinkson suggests, from a position of narrative and thematic liminality Ghost World interrogates an “existential ennui” (Hinkson 2014). Johansson’s character has a significant role in emphasising this sensation as her character actually moves beyond liminality and provides contrast to Enid’s aimlessness. Enid and Rebecca begin as co-dependent characters cast adrift with limited control over their direction of their lives (or limited desire to have any direction). They start slowly drifting apart when gets Rebecca job in a coffee shop, determined to fulfil her desire to move out of home. Enid, however, continues on aimlessly, making friends with a middle-aged man named Seymour (Steve Buscemi). For Hinkson, Johansson’s Rebecca is increasingly inaccessible to Enid, she is “the childhood friend who grows

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up and away, lost to young adulthood” (Hinkson 2014). By the film’s conclusion they drifted have into completely different adult lives.

Conclusion It is imperative to consider these early roles within Johansson’s filmography as they play a vital role in the development of her star image. In The Actress, Hollinger argues “it is generally agreed that stardom involves not only reallife persona, the star, but also a ‘construction,’ an image that has ideological or totemic function” (2006, 27). While it is important to distinguish between character and persona, Johansson’s early character roles as Manny, Grace, Suzanne and Rebecca provide insight into the germination of her image and its expressive function. While Johansson was not understood as a star at the time, in each of these roles her emergent on-screen persona is employed strategically to represent and reflect on particular issues of growing up. Caught somewhere between childhood and adolescence, adolescence and adulthood, Johansson’s characters emphasise these in-between moments of girlhood through distinct liminal perspectives. The first of these is presented in Manny & Lo as Johansson’s character foregrounds the insightful and often surprising viewpoint of the child. In The Horse Whisperer, this gaze is matured into that of the observant outsider who learns to solve her problems by watching others. A third perspective emerges in An American Rhapsody, which foregrounds the perspective of the rebellious teenager as a means to confront historical trauma of displacement. Finally, the wandering perspective of the disaffected post-adolescent is represented in Ghost World. Across these four roles, Johansson’s characters eschew conventional coming of age rituals, rejecting romance in favour of adventure, self-care, and aimless drift.

Works Cited Albers, Caitlyn. 2017. “Scarlett Johansson’s Evolution from Child Star to Voluptuous Vixen.” Wetpaint, February 23. http://www.wetpaint.com/scarlettjohansson-remarkable-evolution-1568642/. Anthony, Ted. 1998. “At the Movies: ‘The Horse Whisperer’.” Associated Press Newswires, May 15. Aronofsky, Darren. 2013. “Scarlett Johansson.” Interview Magazine, September 27, https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/scarlett-johansson-oct-2013.

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Bettis Pamela, and Adams, Natalie, ed. 2005. Geographies of Girlhood: Identities In-Between. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Carr, Jay. 1998. “Redford Rides High in ‘Horse Whisperer’.” The Boston Globe, May 15. Cary, Diana Serra. 1997. Hollywood’s Children: An Inside Account of the Child Star Era. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press. Couric, Katie. 1998. “Interview: Scarlett Johansson Discusses Her New Movie ‘The Horse Whisperer’.” NBC: Today, May 25. Dwyer, Michael. 1998. “They Shoot Horses—Properly.” Irish Times, May 8. Ebert, Roger. 1994. “North.” RogerEbert.Com, July 22. https://www.rogerebert. com/reviews/north-1994. Groen, Rick. 1996. “Film Review Manny & Lo.” The Globe and Mail, August 23. Hentges, Sarah. 2006. Pictures of Girlhood: Modern Female Adolescence on Film. Jefferson: McFarlane. Hinkson, Jake. 2014. “Something in Red: Scarlett Johansson’s SciFi Appeal.” Tor.com, August 18. https://www.tor.com/2014/08/18/something-in-redscarlett-johansson-science-fiction-movie-appeal/. Hollinger, Karen. 2006. The Actress: Hollywood Acting and the Female Star. New York: Routledge. Huntington, Richard. 1996. “Two for the Road Sometimes, Family Values Are Where You Find Them.” Buffalo News, September 13. Jenks, Chris. 1996. Childhood. London: Routledge. King, Barry. 1985. “Articulating Stardom.” Screen 26 (5): 27–51. ———. 2003. “Embodying an Elastic Self: The Parametrics of Contemporary Stardom.” In Contemporary Hollywood Stardom, edited by T. Austin and M. Barker, 52. London: Arnold. Kornhaber, Donna. 2017. “From Posthuman to Postcinema: Crises of Subjecthood and Representation in Her.” Cinema Journal 56 (4): 3–25. Lane, Anthony. 2014. “Her Again: The Unstoppable Scarlett Johansson.” The New Yorker, March 24. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/ 24/her-again. LaSalle, Mick. 1996. “Two Girls, a Condo and One Kidnapped Mom.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 9. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/ 1996/08/09/DD66424.DTL. Martin, Adrian. 1994. Phantasms. Ringwood: McPhee Gribble Publishers. Maslin, Janet. 1996. “Quality Performances the Glue That Bonds ‘Manny and Lo’.” The New York Times, August 3. McAloon, Jonathan. 2017. “From Child Star to Ghost in the Shell: Scarlett Johansson’s Life and Career, in Pictures.” The Telegraph, March 28. http:// www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/scarlett-johansson-life-movies-pictures/. Monaghan, Whitney. 2016. Queer Girls, Temporality and Screen Media: Not ‘Just a Phase’. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Nagalaz, Mark. 1998. “Home Alone on the Range.” The West Australian, June 3. Newsom, Chad. 2015. “Temple of Youth.” Film Criticism 39 (3): 6–25. O’Connor, Jane. 2008. The Cultural Significance of the Child Star. London: Routledge. ———. 2011. “From Jackie Coogan to Michael Jackson.” Journal of Children and Media 5 (3): 284–297. Peterson, Deborah. 1996. “2 Lost Girls on a Quest for Family.” St Louis PostDispatch, August 23. Portman, Jamie. 1998. “Scarlett Doesn’t Talk in a Whisper.” The Hamilton Spectator, June 20. Schoemer, Karen. 1996. “Walking and Talking.” Newsweek 128 (6): 73. Semigran, Aly. 2014. “The Evolution of ‘Lucy’s Scarlett Johansson, From Child Star to Hollywood A-Lister.” Bustle, July 25. https://www.bustle.com/ articles/32974-the-evolution-of-lucys-scarlett-johansson-from-child-star-tohollywood-a-lister. Shary, Timothy. 2012. “Oppositions of Aging: Stories About Children in Movies.” Interdisciplinary Humanities 29 (1): 7–20. Sheehan, Henry. 1998. “Kids on the Run in ‘Manny & Lo’.” The Orange County Register, August 2. Shulgasser, Barbara. 1996. “Many Things to Like About Manny & Lo.” San Francisco Examiner, August 9. http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Many-thingsto-like-about-Manny-Lo-3128738.php. Sutherland, Claire. 1998. “Redford Keeps the Faith.” Herald Sun, May 28. Turner, Victor. 1975. Dramas, Fields and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Williams, Jeannie. 1998. “Filmmaker Finds ‘sliced’ Peach Is the Pits.” USA Today, May 8.

CHAPTER 3

Blank Stares and Blonde Hair: Performing Scarlett Johansson Kirsten Stevens

A shaky camera, flitting in and out of focus and double exposures, follows a young woman through an urban landscape. It follows her to a make-up chair, where a team of attendants paint her: covering tattoos, lacquering nails, twisting hair into place, sponging on foundation and applying her mask before sending her into the light. We watch as the newly polished star emerges onto a photo-shoot: she smiles and poses for a camera, laughing with the men who crowd around her, restricting our view. Lacquered and painted she performs for her audience. As we continue to watch, we see this performance extend beyond the photo-shoot to follow our star through her daily interactions—constantly surrounded by people and constantly on display. As the video-clip ends, however, the star sits alone in her car. As the window goes up to block out the world our star’s mask transforms: gone are the endearing smiles and glistening eyes that invite us in and make us feel special, as though we share this moment with her. In their place a new mask descends, one that offers only blank stares and an unreadable

K. Stevens (B) Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_3

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expression. In this moment the act that sustained our earlier moment of perceived personal intimacy is laid bare. She is not our star, we do not know her; she is an enigma: unknowable and unreachable. This is the video-clip that accompanies Scarlett Johansson’s rendition of Tom Wait’s “Falling Down” (Bennett Miller 2008), released as part of the actress’ 2008 debut album Anywhere I Lay My Head. The clip, like the album itself, contributes to our recognition of Johansson as “star.” The pop-music album, as a distinct type of star vehicle, acts as one strand of the proliferating platforms and mechanisms through which contemporary stardom is articulated. Cross-over musical endeavors, like appearances on late night talk shows, magazine covers, interviews, press conferences, product endorsements, and fan conventions, contribute to what Pam Cook (2012, 2) describes as the “bewildering array of media forms” that disperse yet also construct the “image” of stars like Johansson. However, it is not only the existence of Johansson’s album here that speaks to her star status. The content of the video-clip also emphasizes her relationship to stardom. Within the clip Johansson performs herself as a contemporary star. Like the articulation of commodity stardom that Cook describes in her book on Nicole Kidman, Johansson plays out through the “day-in-the-life” construction of the clip’s narrative the articulation of stardom as “fragmented persona that emerges as a collection masks or images that do not cohere to an individual character” (2012, 2). The performance of stardom that the clip presents is instantly recognizable, reproducing a series of signs— the photo shoot, the make-up chair, the young blonde beauty—that fit within concepts of contemporary stardom. Yet textually, this interest in the star is not attached to a specific “character” or tied to a specific source (a new film for example). It is instead a floating signifier that taps into and simultaneously confirms our intertextual recognition of Johansson and her star status. However, if the clip and the associated album at once play to Johansson’s status as contemporary mainstream star, they also complicate this reading. Johansson’s rendition of “Falling Down” and the choice more generally to produce an album of Tom Waits covers works against the established commercial logics that usually inform such star vehicle offerings. As Stephen Deusner (2008) observed at the time of the album’s release, Anywhere I Lay My Head acted more as an “anti-vanity vanity project” and “curio” rather than “something as gauchely commercial as make[ing] an album.” The album, which has been described variously as “intriguing” (The Guardian; Hoskyns 2008), eyebrow-raising (The Telegraph; McNulty

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Fig. 3.1 Scarlett Johansson’s blank stare in the final frames of “Falling Down” music video. Video still, “Falling Down” music video (Bennett Miller 2008)

2008), and even “inexplicable” (The Cut; Conaboy 2008), cuts against the grain of typical Hollywood celebrity crossover activity to instead shift Johansson’s image towards more alternative star constructions that are associated with independent and cult framings. As Wired’s Scott Thill remarked in 2008 with reference to the album’s release, “She may be a mainstream star, but Scarlett Johansson has indie cred too.” If Johansson’s musical choice sits at odds with the assumed commercial agenda of her star image, then her performance within the clip also points to a deeper tension between her mainstream star credentials and her practice as actor. Most notably this tension is captured in the final moments of the clip as Johansson’s face falls to reveal an uncanny blankness (Fig. 3.1). In this moment the combined “masks” of Johansson’s character within the clip and her star persona disappear revealing only the actor, as James Naremore (1990, 158) might suggest, or the “‘actual’ person” in John Belton’s (1994, 88) terms. Yet, although in this moment the illusion of “acting” and of “persona” are stripped away, what remains of Johansson is not revealing. We do not see the actor as she is, but rather we are confronted with another type of mask: a blank stare that shuts the audience out completely, giving no sense of the character’s interiority or access to a star “caught unawares” (Ellis 1982, 99). In this moment of blankness, Johansson achieves an almost Brechtian effect of distanciation, drawing attention

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to the artificiality of her performance at all levels. Not only are we suddenly conscious of the illusion that underwrote her performance as star throughout the clip, but we are also conscious of how Scarlett Johansson as star is performed and, indeed, continues to perform through such moments of blankness. The moment of blankness captured within the clip for “Falling Down” is not an isolated event. Rather, such moments of expressive blankness persist throughout Johansson’s filmic and non-filmic work, creating similar effects of distanciation and a sudden awareness on the behalf of audiences in the artificiality of her performance. In calling attention to her acting through this blankness, Johansson disrupts the typical performance of a Hollywood star, producing moments of alienation and dissonance that work against both the narrative coherence of her characters and the accessibility of her star persona. The result feeds into Johansson’s star image, creating, I argue, a sense that her stardom, much like her acting, is always slightly out sync with more traditional mainstream star framings. This chapter takes up an examination of Johansson’s distinctive acting style as an important element of her star image. Focusing on moments of blankness in Johansson’s expression, as well as the timing of her performance, this chapter considers how Johansson’s on-screen appearances connect to aspects of her star persona. The chapter begins by exploring how performance has been taken up thus far in relation to star studies and the tensions underlying how this has developed in relation to the study of female stars. It then looks to Johansson’s performance explicitly, delving deeper into those aspects already identified (blankness, timing) to explore how they create an acting style marked by a distinct relationship to time and space within the frame and between actor and audience. Engaging work on star performance, affect and character engagement, I argue that Johansson’s style creates a distancing effect between audience and actor that complicates usual framings of Hollywood star performances. Building on this distancing effect, the chapter then looks at the way nostalgia for studio-era Hollywood surrounds the reception of Johansson’s onscreen performance. Arguing that star performances are co-created by the actor and their audience through the intertextual connections established at the point of viewing, I posit that the nostalgic associations of Johansson’s performances speaks further to the uneasy “out of sync” quality of her star image. Finally, I turn to Johansson’s performances in Hitchcock (Sacha Gervasi, 2012) and Hail, Caesar! (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2016) as a culmination

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of these discussions on her performance and star image. The chapter concludes with an analysis of Johansson’s performance as classic Hollywood icons who themselves “act” within the narratives of the films. Reflecting on Charles Affron’s (1980) discussions of performing performance, I position these two roles as representing striking moments of synthesis between Johansson’s on-screen narrative, performative style and star persona.

Stars and Performance Analysing stars and stardom through a lens of performance poses a discursive challenge for scholars. While, as Aaron Taylor observes, the moviegoing public and popular press are happy to “frequently extemporize confidently about acting” (2012, 1), scholars have approached the task with more caution. The result has been that acting and performance have often taken a back seat to discussions of what stars represent—ideologically or as marketing or genre tools—rather than what stars do before the camera. In 2006 Karen Hollinger noted, “Performance has been neglected in the study of Hollywood stars—particularly the star-actress” (27). Similarly, in his introduction to Theorizing Film Acting, Taylor observed, “A common concern, articulated in nearly every scholarly monograph or anthology on the subject, is that acting has been either overlooked or misrepresented by the [film studies] discipline” (2012, 1). Despite claims of inattentiveness, however, a rich body of literature on acting, and star acting in particular, has emerged over the last 40 years.1 This literature highlights the importance of performance in understanding how meaning is created for both a star’s image and the films in which they appear, identifying those traits that distinguishes one from another and that differentiate a star from a supporting actor. Yet what has also emerged is an understanding that such discussions of film acting work against conventional approaches to film studies, which place the burden of meaning-making in film on the work of craftspeople behind the camera—the director or auteur, editor and cinematographer— or the technology of cinema, rather than on the performer (see Wojcik

1 A number of books, book chapters and articles have contributed to building a growing

body of work on film performance, acting methods and the peculiarities of star actors. See for example books and edited collections by: James Naremore (1990), Lesley Stern and George Kouvaros (2000), Cynthia Baron, Diane Carson and Frank P. Tomasulo (2004), Pamela R. Wojcik (2004), Andrew Klevan (2005), Karen Hollinger (2006), Cynthia Baron and Sharon M. Carnicke (2008), Aaron Taylor (2012), and Kirsten Pullen (2014).

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2004; Baron et al. 2004; McDonald 2004). Actors in general and stars in particular are often discussed as parts of the mise-en-scène, elements of the frame to be constructed and manipulated by filmmakers rather than active participants in the filmmaking process (see Bordwell and Thompson 2004). While this in part speaks to the bias of film studies, it is also closely linked to the styles of acting that have been privileged within mainstream filmmaking—most notably, the primacy of naturalism within Hollywood narrative cinema. A key issue that has impacted the discussion of acting and stardom is the assumption that stars, in fact, do not act. This assumption stems in large part from the dominance of naturalism as the preferred mode of performance within Hollywood filmmaking. Naturalist acting works towards realism and invisibility of technique, privileging a more representational (character-based) and less ostentatious (actorly or theatrical) mode of acting that seeks to minimize the perceptual distance between the performercharacter-spectator.2 While not synonymous with Method as a distinct style of acting, naturalism nevertheless closely aligns with the foundational concerns of Stanislavsky’s System and the various interpretations of this developed by the likes of Lee Strasberg, Sanford Meisner and Stella Adler. Alongside these styles, which operate though specific acting techniques, however, naturalism has evolved, as Kirsten Pullen explains, as “a discursive construction that masks its specific strategy and subsumes performer’s labor under the guise of playing oneself” (2014, 4). As a style designed to minimize its visibility, naturalist acting becomes a victim of its own success, convincing the audience that what is seen on-screen is all there is to see of an actor as person, not simply as performer. The success of naturalism in making acting labor invisible is compounded by the reliance on and visibility of the Hollywood star-system. As Andrew Higson (1986, 124) notes, the visibility of stars within Hollywood films presents a challenge for the narrative coherence of a performance: “Hollywood constantly runs the risk of foregrounding the actor’s persona, potentially against the grain of the narrative.” The combination of the visibility of star personae and the invisibility of naturalist acting techniques leads to, as David Flemming observes, “any clear distinctions between ‘persona’ and ‘performance’ becoming blurred” (Flemming 2013, 284). The result of this has been the discounting of star acting as not acting at all but rather an 2 See Naremore (1990) for extended discussion of representational versus presentational and ostentatious forms of acting.

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ability to simply “be” before the camera. Ultimately, as Hollinger explains, such “belief that star acting is merely playing oneself in each role has interfered more than anything else with the study of the star-actor” (Hollinger 2006, 47). If the “invisible” labors of naturalist acting styles have impacted discussions of star-acting in general, the effects have been amplified in relation to the performances of female star-actors. While the Method performances of stars such as Marlon Brando have received extensive critical attention (see Naremore 1990; Drake 2006; among others), discussions of the technical acting acumen of female stars has, until recently, largely been overlooked. Addressing the lack of critical discussion of screen performance, Hollinger (2006, 4) notes that a tendency to privilege a “reverie approach,” in which anecdote and adulation frame performance as mythic and ineffable, has seen the work of female stars as actors devalued in favor of focusing on their physical attributes. She notes, “The reverie approach has been applied extensively to actresses, who are most often characterized not as skilled craftswomen, but rather as screen goddesses naturally gifted with the beauty and charisma that has made them stars” (Hollinger 2006, 4). This charisma, as Hollinger notes, is seen as “distinct from, and in many cases antithetical to, the development of acting ability” (2014, 4), with the result that even more so than male stars, actresses are seen to simply appear on camera as themselves. Kirsten Pullen similarly notes this tendency, explaining that actresses are often perceived as “little more than pretty mannequins manipulated by offscreen directors, their performances pieced together by talented editors” (Pullen 2014, 4). It is then appearance and beauty, rather than talent, which is framed most often as the necessary element of female stardom. The framing of Scarlett Johansson as star speaks clearly to the difficult position that acting, and female star-acting in particular, hold. Relatively little commentary exists to Johansson’s performance style. While she is noted for her languor and reserve (see Jacobs 2006; Doyle 2014; Cousins 2016), the majority of writing on the actress foregrounds her physicality rather than her dramaturgical ability. Indeed, it is Johansson’s body—her lips, hips, hair, eyes, breasts and bottom—that take center stage in accounts of her presence on-screen. Mark Cousins’ “A Study in Scarlett” from a 2016 issue of Sight and Sound provides a good example of this tendency. He notes:

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Johansson reminds me of Carole Lombard…because of that golden, burnished thing - the glowing, the gloaming. And because of eyebrows. Both Lombard’s and Johansson’s left is often higher than their right, as if to say, “Really?” And then there’s the way each stands. Though both are 5 3 , they stand tall, shoulders wide. Solid and unskippy [sic]. (2016, 15)

Unlike accounts that fixate on the sexiness of Johansson’s physical attributes, what Sady Doyle describes as the “timed-honored” tradition of “[m]ale critics drooling over Johansson” (2014), Cousins’ piece implies a performer under that physical attractiveness. Yet when pressed, it is still Johansson’s eyebrows, stand, walk, lips, hips and voice—rather than how they are used in combination as a whole by the actress—that mark out Johansson’s appeal. Indeed, even Woody Allen’s assertion that Johansson has “the acting ability to be not just a passing pinup girl but a genuinely meaningful actress” (cited Gay 2012), struggles to reconcile her physical attractiveness with her acting ability: there is still a choice to be made here between “pinup” and “meaningful actress.” This focus on appearance and physical attributes reflects what Pullen has observed to be the dominant paradigm through which actresses’ performances are received. She explains, “Generally, of course, actresses’ bodies and sexualities are the most scrutinized components of their personae” (Pullen 2014, 14). While undeniably Johansson’s body and her sex-appeal represent intrinsic—if not the dominant—elements of her star image, forming what Will Scheibel (2013, 5) might define as the actresses’ “sex symbol text” in line with earlier “bombshell” stars like Monroe, there is nevertheless a problem in simply equating appearance with performance. Johansson’s physical appearance, as well as how she manipulates this, play into the characters she creates. Yet, the unfailing focus on physical rather than more performative elements strips the actress of agency in making meaning within the narrative. As Pullen argues, “if critics focus on surface appearances, then it seems they’re ignoring both the innate talent and concerted labor that constitute successful film performance” (2014, 13). Framed as a screen goddess, possessed of a “sexually overwhelming” physical presence (Allen cited Jacobs 2006), Johansson’s efforts in performance are erased, subsumed within the frameworks of charisma, beauty, and otherwise unintelligible “magical” qualities tied to her appearance rather than her acting ability. Despite a focus on Johansson’s physicality as the overriding marker of her persona, however, Johansson does possess a recognizable acting style

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and set of performance elements that distinguish her as an actor. In the sections that follow, this chapter seeks to overcome the limited understanding of Johansson as “body” to reconcile her distinctive performance attributes with her status as star actor. In the next section, I define Johansson’s distinctive acting style as one that is often out of synchronicity with the narratives in which she appears—defined by a temporal and psycho-spatial distancing that complicates readings of her performance along naturalistic lines. Focusing on specific elements of her performance that persist across her films, I mark out those performance signs which contribute to Johansson’s “idiolect” (Drake 2006, 87)—those gestures and peculiar actions which are unique to Johansson. While this approach to discussing star performance has its limitations, conforming to what Wojcik (2004, 7) notes is the tendency within star studies “to extract particular mannerisms or gestures that are repeated across a body of films as a feature of the star’s persona” rather than looking to the performance of stars in full across different films, it nevertheless fulfils a useful function. The interest here is in determining how performance, as constructed by Johansson’s acting practice but also though how this is “read” by audiences, contributes to our understanding of her as star. Moreover, in taking a closer look at these elements of performance, this chapter argues that Johansson presents a complicated star image; one that, despite its popular appeal, nevertheless sits at a remove from the naturalism of the Hollywood mainstream.

Framing Johansson’s Mask In American Cinema/American Culture John Belton observes that “[l]iterally, the term ‘persona’ refers to the mask worn by a character on the ancient Greek stage” (1994, 88). Belton makes this connection in service of arguing that, like the persona of the Greeks, the persona of contemporary stars—their public image—is a construction; one designed to achieve a double effect of making stars more visible and recognizable to an audience while simultaneously keeping this audience focused on the fiction rather than the “reality” of the person beneath the mask. For film stars, their persona is intrinsically tied to their on-screen performance. Through the characters they play, stars become associated with specific “performance signs” (Dyer 1979; Drake 2006), which contribute to their recognizable “idiolect:” defined by Philip Drake as more than simply idiosyncratic speech, but rather “the performing tropes strongly associated with a particular actor” (2006, 87–8). Yet, unlike the Greek persona, the

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recognition of an actor’s idiolect—John Wayne’s walk, Julia Robert’s smile, Gretta Garbo’s laugh—ultimately blurs the boundaries between actor and mask. These recognizable performance traits come to inscribe the persona of the star, suggesting a momentary “absorption of the star into the fictional character” (Ellis 1982, 99). In these moments, which, as John Ellis explains (1982, 99), “it seems … could hardly have been planned or foreseen” and thus catch the star “unawares,” audiences perceive the presence of the “real” star. Such unguarded moments become the recognizable signs of an actor’s performance, repeated across different films and existing beyond individual characters. As such, they gain meaning in relation to the audience’s knowledge of a star and the pleasures of recognising their presence through their repeated performance. The distinctive quality of Johansson’s idiolect emerges through her performative relationship to time and space in her films. Specifically, Johansson’s performance sits out of time and at an emotional distance compared to the narratives through which her characters move. Described as a star who “oozes” on-screen (Cousins 2016, 15)—not one to “fiz” but rather able to hold both the audience and camera’s gaze, Johansson slowness emerges as part of her signature style. Cousins describes this as Johansson being “[Gary] Cooper-slow …slightly behind the beat, in no rush to get her point made and not fretting about being heard at all” (2016, 15). As a performative trope, this slowness reflects as much Johansson’s ability to capture the attention of filmmakers and movie-goers as it does the time it takes for her to deliver her performance. Operating “behind the beat” of the unfolding narrative, Johansson is routinely granted an extended screen duration to accommodate her intonation and inflections, her expressions and gestures as they ooze across the screen. The impact of Johansson’s ability to capture our attention is especially clear when her slowness extends into moments of stillness, marked by a minimalism in her facial and bodily expressivity—moments of blankness as noted at the beginning of this chapter—in which both Johansson and her characters become indecipherable and unreachable. These qualities of blankness, stillness and slowness permeate Johansson’s film performances. In her early indie-cinema roles of Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) and Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2004), Johansson’s deadpan plays to her character’s endemic ennui. Johansson’s Rebecca in Ghost World displays a discontented incommunicativeness that holds both viewers and other characters at a distance. Meanwhile, as Charlotte in Lost in Translation, Johansson’s stillness and remoteness translate as depression,

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channeling her character’s sense of disconnection with her environment via a reserve that keeps audiences feeling as unsettled and out of place as Charlotte herself. Yet, as Johansson’s characters shift and evolve, so to do our readings of her idiolect. As the object of male affections in films such as The Girl with a Pearl Earring (Peter Webber, 2003), Match Point (Woody Allen, 2005), The Black Dahlia (Brian de Palma, 2006), The Other Boleyn Girl (Justin Chadwick, 2008), and He’s Just Not That Into You (Ken Kwapis, 2009), Johansson’s minimalistic expressivity reads as less disconsolate and more mysterious or coy. While each of these films offer distinctly different narratives—ranging throughout period settings from the era of Henry VIII to seventeenth century Delft society, to 1940s Los Angeles and present-day London and Baltimore—what is shared is Johansson’s pauses and impenetrable stares that interrupt more naturalistic performances. These moments of blankness and stillness, which assert themselves throughout these films, disrupt the narrative even as they help to construct Johansson’s characters, adding layers of mystery and enigma to the desired women she performs. Notably in Webber’s Girl, Johansson’s performance sees the character of Griet become as much a blank canvas on which male desire is inscribed as a muse to inspire the painter Vermeer. Through her stillness, Johansson does not perform desirability as much as create the space where audiences infer and project it. Indeed, as critic A. J. Jacobs (2006) observes, Johansson’s ambiguity and shielded quality—her “remoteness”—conditions audiences to project their own desires onto both the actress and her characters. He explains, “Perhaps it’s this remoteness that makes us want to fill the void with lurid stories” (Jacobs 2006). Yet if Johansson’s resistance to strong gesture and expression align superficially with her characters in many of her films, as a broader performative theme they also work to disrupt and distance the audience’s identification with Johansson and her characters. As Deborah Thomas argues, the “use of deadpan performance and observational, ‘blank’ style create an underlying, and frequently unsettling, affective ambiguity” (2012, 98). Rather than working for emotional coherence with her narrative via a facial expressivity designed to reflect character motivation and “genuine” emotion, Johansson’s blankness forecloses on audiences’ ability to perceive her characters’ interiority. The result, as Thomas suggests, creates an ambiguity in which the affective connection of the spectator to character and narrative are problematized and the motivations or reactions of the character become unclear.

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Such an approach works against the narrative realism privileged by Hollywood cinema. The realist narrative mode, as Thomas explains, “utilises a more naturalistic style of performance designed to minimize ambiguity, communicate information about character interiority and motivation and encourage a sense of affective connection with character, whether it be sympathy, empathy or antipathy” (2012, 100). The actor’s face, often captured in close-up and alongside the use of other cinematic techniques such as the point of view shot, musical cues and elements of mise-en-scène, becomes a privileged space for such expression of character accessibility. “After all,” as Thomas argues, “the close-up is generally used in film as a site of affect to establish intersubjective mimetic links between the spectator and character” (2012, 109). Yet Johansson’s stillness and minimalistic expressivity works against granting such links. They instead contribute to an affective distancing that, at its most effective, works to interrupt the audience’s connection to narrative and make visible the presence of the actor through a process of distanciation. As Andrew Higson explains, in these moments of stillness, “it is not a revelation of some ‘inner truth’ which is remarkable, but the extent to which this ‘minimalist naturalism’ becomes strange, in the Brechtian sense, drawing attention to the actor-character’s performance of everyday events, perhaps de-familiarizing the everyday” (Higson 1986, 117). Johansson’s strangeness is both alienating and disruptive in this Brechtian sense. Rejecting access to a sense of interiority for her characters, audiences are confronted with Johansson’s mask and, in these moments, reminded of Johansson’s presence behind the narrative. Yet if Johansson’s moments of blankness reassert her presence as a performer within her films, they simultaneously reject any notion of offering access or insight into her star persona. Unlike the unplanned moments of “pure performance,” that Ellis (1982, 98–9) and others have identified as “the ‘fetishistic’ moment” of a star’s performance, where the star’s image intrudes into the narrative to foreground their presence, Johansson’s blankness offers little in the way of voyeuristic insight. Rather than offering a glimpse of the “real” star, this blankness and stillness produces affective distance and dissonance which hold the audience at bay. The recognizability of Johansson’s performance thus disrupts notions of intimacy between the star and her public, instead reinforcing her remoteness and inaccessibility. The “real” Johansson that we glimpse here is as guarded and masked as any of the characters she performs.

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Performing Nostalgia If Johansson’s stillness and blankness produce affective distance that situates her performance out of sync with the films and narratives in which she appears, a similar distancing and temporal shift can be observed in the way her performances and persona are received more broadly. Notably, Johansson’s performances are often read through the lens of nostalgia. Opening “A Study in Scarlett” (2016, 15), Cousins emphasizes this quality in Johansson’s performance, observing: Though she’s clearly not averse to the currents of Hollywood’s mainstream… she doesn’t fit into it like a hand into a glove. Why not? Because there are echoes of film history in her screen persona, and there’s a note of reservation.

While the note of reservation that Cousins’ identifies can be read in terms of Johansson’s idiolect, as we have already explored, the “echoes of film history” in her persona point to a different source. Rather than an implicit part of Johansson’s on-screen performance, these echoes reflect an act of reading Johansson through the memories of earlier actors that critics and audiences bring to their viewing experience. Read as an actor who evokes the performances of studio-era Hollywood stars, Johansson is continuously perceived as being both inherently “out-of-time” with the roles she plays and simultaneously tied to a visible history of acting that foregrounds her performance. The nostalgia that Johansson’s persona and performance elicits is highly visible in the reviews and interviews that accompany her on-screen roles. She has been described as having “the unmistakable aura of an oldfashioned Hollywood bombshell” (Hoggard 2006), as well as an “aptitude for old-fashioned glamour” (James 2006). More direct comparisons between Johansson and specific studio-era stars also abound, with comparisons regularly made to Lauren Bacall (James 2006), Rita Hayworth (Jacobs 2006; Hill 2007), Marilyn Monroe (Anolik 2014; Petrusich 2017), Lana Turner (Anolik 2014), Elizabeth Taylor and Shelly Winters (Scott 2005). Meanwhile, Cousins alone compares Johansson to Clara Bow, Brigitte Bardot, Carole Lombard, Lana Turner, Ingrid Bergman, Monroe and Gary Cooper (2016, 15). Such reportage parallels a framing of Johansson’s star image within magazine spreads and product endorsements that demonstrates a preoccupation with her nostalgic appeal. A photo-shoot in a 2005 issue of Interview

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already saw Johansson framed in a series of 1950s inspired poses—as a farm girl after an apple pick, eating a sundae, and as a classic Hollywood screen siren. An interest in studio-era glamour was also carried through for Johansson’s 2012 Vogue spread that, despite being tied to Marvel’s The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012), channelled 1950s allure and saw Johansson labelled “the blonde Venus” (Gay 2012). Meanwhile other magazines (Cosmopolitan 2008, Vanity Fair 2014) and advertising campaigns for L’Oréal (“Dream in Blonde” 2008) and Dolce & Gabbana (2009, 2011) have likewise drawn direct parallels between the contemporary star and an aesthetic of Hollywood’s past. The 2011 Dolce & Gabbana “film” for Johansson’s “The One” fragrance promotion in particular highlights this, portraying Johansson as a Monroe-esque starlet who coquettishly describes herself as: “I’m not an actress, I just play one in the movies.” This proliferation of Johansson’s star image as aligned with Classic Hollywood stardom contributes in important ways to her star image in general, but also more specifically to how her film performances are interpreted. Critics and audiences routinely read Johansson in relation to her retrostar appeal. Yet this aspect of her star persona is not inherent to her, nor even intrinsic to her film performances. Rather, this aspect of her persona can be understood as co-created by her audience in the act of viewing her films. At its most basic level, this co-creation is a product of interpretation. As Richard Dyer (1986, 3) has noted, stars and their images “are always extensive, multimedia, intertextual.” A star’s performance does not stand in isolation but rather is filtered and interpreted through what is publicly known about that star and what has contributed to their star image. Thus, as Naremore explores in relation to Cary Grant, a star’s performance brings with it a “a fully shaped star image” (1990, 25): it becomes imbued with the qualities audiences attribute to such stars, which have been gathered from previous roles but also from a wider set of texts (promotional material, interviews, magazines, and so on). The intertextual nature of a star’s performance, which is formed at the moment of reception, extends, however, beyond the direct connections drawn between the star’s filmed work and their public persona. Rather, as Dyer notes in Heavenly Bodies (1986), star performances should be read in relation to a wider social context. Johansson’s retro-appeal, therefore, should not only be thought of in relation to how her critical reviews and magazine-spreads inform and contribute to a reading of her films in relation to Hollywood nostalgia, but also the way in which her star image in general is constructed in relation to a broader knowledge of film history.

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A reading of Johansson’s performance as imbued with “echoes of history” ultimately reveals more about her audience than about her specific acting style. Rather than something that is innate to Johansson’s performance—as might be the case if she actively styled herself through mimicry as a modern incarnation of a past star—Johansson’s nostalgic appeal functions more as a trait imposed on the actor by her audience (Belton 1994, 88). To liken Johansson to stars such as Rita Hayworth or Carole Lombard requires a knowledge of such stars and the specifics of their own performance styles. Such an interpretation thus reveals the specific cultural capital that is brought to bear on the reception of Johansson’s performances, particularly by film critics, whose knowledge of such intertextual references arguably exceeds and somewhat takes for granted that of a more general audience (Lovell 2003). While Johansson’s similarity to past screen idols might then be somewhat in the subjective eye of the beholder, the persistence of such associations nevertheless suggests something intrinsic about how Johansson’s performances fit within her films. Specifically, the desire to connect Johansson’s performances to those of past actors, rather than her contemporaries or even co-stars, suggests that her performances do not fit as neatly within contemporary modes. Reading her as a site of nostalgia thus adds a further layer to her construction as a star “out of sync” with her films and builds on her persona as “a screen goddess at one remove from the Hollywood mainstream” (Cousins 2016, 15). Johansson’s nostalgia, like her blankness and stillness, encourages an alienating affect, increasing the perceived distance between character and audience. In becoming a site for audience memories of studio-era Hollywood and of other actors, Johansson’s own performance becomes separated from the narrative, calling attention to itself in relation to a history of performance rather than simply the representation of character.

Endless Loops in Hitchcock and Hail Caesar! The distancing effect that Johansson’s on-screen presence brings to her films, both directly thought her idiolect and indirectly via its intertextual connections, is captured especially clearly in two performances: Sacha Gervasi’s 2012 Hitchcock and Joel and Ethan Coen’s Hail, Caesar! (2016). Although performing in supporting roles for both, these films work to focus attention on Johansson’s position as actor and performer, combining and

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enhancing the visibility of her retro-star persona and her distinctive acting style through the narrative device of a performance-within-performance. In Hitchcock Johansson plays Janet Leigh as she prepares for and acts the part of Marion Crane in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 release, Psycho. The film, drawing inspiration from Stephen Rebello’s Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, traces Hitchcock’s process through the eighteen or so months from securing the rights to Psycho to the film’s release to popular success. Despite the framing of the film as a “making of,” the backstage story centers far more on the psychological process of the auteur as well as the personal and professional relationship between Alfred Hitchcock (Anthony Hopkins) and his wife Alma Reville (Helen Mirren). Despite Johansson’s role as the supposed heroine of the film-within-the-film then, her character appears only fleetingly on screen. Yet these brief appearances produce an intense mise-en-abyme, replicating and reflecting Johansson’s star image through the prisms of character and narrative to reinvest in and intensify her star persona as one marked by nostalgia and affective distance. Our introduction to Johansson as Leigh comes via her/Leigh’s headshot, sorted and displayed on Hitchcock’s desk among the publicity photos of Leigh’s contemporaries—a casting call of the typical “Hitchcock blondes.” Johansson’s photo is at once at home in this array and yet slightly out of place. Johansson offers a more buxom and shapelier figure than did Leigh, but nevertheless fits to type as the “typical” 1950s blonde pinup. On set, the sensation of the familiar/unfamiliar is enhanced. Johansson plays Leigh as she performs as Crane under the at times demanding and eccentric direction of Hitchcock. The continual double display of the character and her “performance” is emphasized by the trappings of the film’s production—sets, camera setups, gaffers and the director’s chair enter the frame during Crane’s scenes, ensuring an awareness that this role is “acted” remains front and center. These moments both rely on and contribute to Johansson’s star persona, building on the nostalgia yet also the affective distancing that we have come to associate with her on-screen presence. The performance of performance is central to this. As Charles Affron notes, “these displays of technique and artifice make it difficult to respond affectively to art since they create distance between the fiction and the viewer” (1980, 42). As he continues, “Self-reflexivity then obliges us to re-examine our response to reality and to art” (1980, 42): aware of the manipulations on the set used to “produce” the performance of Crane by Leigh, the audience is also conditioned to confront the reality of the performance of Johansson as both characters.

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In a similar vein to Hitchcock, Johansson’s role in the Coen brother’s Hail, Caeser! returns the star to studio-era Hollywood and to performing as a performer. Although Johansson plays an ostensibly fictional character in this film—aqua-musical star DeeAnna Moran—connections to real stars of the era, notably Ester Williams, are inscribed in the performance. Like Hitchcock, Johansson’s role in Hail Caesar! emphasizes the duality of the actor/character scenario. Johansson’s star image play an important part in framing her performance in this film, which follows a day-in-thelife of Hollywood studio fixer, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). Johansson is introduced as Moran, the “innocent” star of the Studio’s aqua-pictures, as she performs a water-ballet. Yet the take is interrupted when Moran breaks character, returning poolside to remove the restrictive mermaid tale, made tight by the star’s untimely pregnancy, and to reveal the “real” fast-talking, wise-cracking actress. The transformation from angelic star to unreliable actress takes but moments and plays heavily on Johansson’s persona. The nostalgia that frames her image as reminiscent of a 1950s screen goddess is crucial to both Moran’s initial characterization and to the humor in the switch once Moran’s “true” personality is revealed. Once more Johansson’s performance lies in the duality of her metaperformance; the momentary nods of actor to audience that, as Naremore phrases it, “signal that they act persons who are acting” (1990, 72). Yet it is also these nods which remind us that we watch not only Moran’s performance but Johansson’s as well—a realization that invariably places the audience at a remove from the film’s narrative, confirming its fiction. As Affron explains, “our affect is inflected by our reading activity, our ability to see performance as performance” (1980, 42). Once more Johansson’s turn as an actor who “acts,” then, foregrounds the artificiality that inscribes all acting. Yet these moments in Hail, Caesar! and Hitchcock do more than simply distance the audience. They mark moments of synthesis within Johansson’s star image, finding parallels within the multiplicities of the actor-character-performance of the narratives and constructions of Johansson’s persona. As sites of nostalgia and audience alienation, both the Johansson/Leigh/Crane and Johansson/Moran/water-ballet star roles capture the contradictions and complexities which underwrite Johansson as star.

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Conclusion Over the past decade, Johansson’s ability to perform performance as well as her power to distance the audience have become increasingly central to her mainstream casting. As the spy-Avenger Natasha Romanoff in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise (2010–present), Johansson plays an adaptable agent who regularly deceives audiences and other characters within the narrative through her performance of a character who is acting out espionage. Meanwhile, the alienating and distancing effect of her “blankness” have become central to a series of science-fiction roles in which her characters lack, or lose, normative human emotions: she plays an alien in Under the Skin (Johnathan Glazer, 2014); a cognitively enhance but unemotional human in Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014); and the cyborg Major in Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017). Yet, if Johansson’s distinctive performance style has found a home and appeal within a Hollywood mainstream, as an actor and a star Johansson remains slightly out of step with Hollywood’s naturalistic norms. The blankness, stillness and slowness that form her distinctive acting style work against the “invisibility” of naturalistic and representational performance that underpin dominant Hollywood performance modes. Johansson’s performance instead holds the audience at a distance, restricting access to the psychological interiority of her characters and producing feelings of affective distance and dissonance that remind us that what we see on-screen is only a performance. In the face of such blankness, the audience is left to project their desires onto Johansson, inscribing her performance with nostalgia and reframing its present through a romanticized past of studioera glamour. The result is the production of Johansson as star as framed inescapably by the reality of her performance. It is this realization that the clip for “Falling Down” which opened this chapter captures so perfectly. For all that the contemporary moment of stardom provides a wealth of intertextual sources that provide a glimpse behind-the-scenes to capture the essence of the “real” star, this access is ultimately an illusion: no matter what we think we see through the camera lens, in the case of Johansson at least, it’s all just an act. In tracing the nature of Johansson’s performance style and the ways this has been interpreted, this chapter makes a case for the importance of considering this act a phenomenon that illuminates Johansson as a star and as a performer with agency who shapes the roles she creates.

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Works Cited Affron, Charles. 1980. “Performing Performing: Irony and Affect.” Cinema Journal 20 (1): 42–52. Anolik, Lili. 2014. “A(nother) Study in Scarlett.” Vanity Fair, April 22. http:// www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2014/04/scarlett-johansson-cover. Baron, Cynthia, Diane Carson, and Frank P. Tomasulo. 2004. “Introduction: More Than the Method, More Than One Method.” In More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance, edited by C. Baron, D. Carson, and F. P. Tomasulo, 1–19. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Baron, Cynthia and Sharon M. Carnicke. 2008. Reframing Screen Performance. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Belton, John. 1994. American Cinema/American Culture. New York: McGrawHill. Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson. 2004. Film Art: An Introduction. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Conaboy, Kelly. 2008. “I Think About This a Lot: Scarlett Johansson’s Tom Waits Cover Album.” The Cut, August 20. https://www.thecut.com/2018/08/ithink-about-this-a-lot-scarlett-johansson-tom-waits-cover-album.html. Cook, Pam. 2012. Nicole Kidman. Basingstoke: BFI, Palgrave Macmillan. Cousins, Mark. 2016. “A Study in Scarlett.” Sight and Sound, 26 (10): 15. Deusner, Stephen. 2008. “Scarlett Johansson: Anywhere I Lay My Head.” Pitchfork, May 19. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11522-anywhere-i-laymy-head/. Doyle, Sady. 2014. “From Coquette to Cold-Eyed Killer: How Scarlett Johansson Became the Face of Female Horror.” Salon, July 22. https://www.salon.com/ 2014/07/22/from_coquette_to_cold_eyed_killer_how_scarlett_johansson_ became_the_face_of_female_horror/. Drake, Philip. 2006. “Reconceptualizing Screen Performance.” Journal of Film and Video 58 (1–2): 84–94. Dyer, Richard. 1979. Stars. London: British Film Institute. ———. 1986. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. Houndmills: BFI Macmillan. Ellis, John. 1982. Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video. London: Routledge. Flemming, David. 2013. “The Method Meets Animation: On Performative Affect and Digital-Bodies in Aronofsky’s ‘Performance Diptych’.” International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media 9 (2): 275–293. Gay, Jason. 2012. “Scarlett Johansson: Back in Stride.” Vogue, April 12. http:// www.vogue.com/article/scarlett-johansson-back-in-stride. Higson, Andrew. 1986. “Film Acting and Independent Cinema.” Screen 27 (3–4): 110–132. Hill, Logan. 2007. “And God Created Scarlett.” New York Magazine, July 3. http://nymag.com/guides/summer/17409/.

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Hoggard, Liz. 2006. “Scarlett Johansson: Sex and the Maiden.” Independent, October 15. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/scarlettjohansson-sex-and-the-maiden-6230947.html. Hollinger, Karen. 2006. The Actress: Hollywood Acting and the Female Star. New York: Routledge. Hoskyns, Barney. 2008. “Scarlett Johansson, Anywhere I Lay My Head.” The Guardian, May 18. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2008/may/18/ popandrock.shopping18. Jacobs, A. J. 2006. “Scarlett Johansson Is the Sexiest Woman Alive, 2006.” Esquire, November 1. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/ a367/scarlett-johansson-pics/. James, Christopher. 2006. “My Study in Scarlett.” The Times (London), September 7: 13. Johansson, Scarlett. 2005. “Scarlett Johansson” Interview by John Travolta. Interview, 35 (10) November: 92–97. Klevan, Andrew. 2005. Film Performance: From Achievement to Appreciation. London: Wallflower. Lovell, Allen. 2003. “I Went in Search of Deborah Kerr, Jodie Foster, and Julianne Moor But Got Waylaid ….” In Contemporary Hollywood Stardom, edited by A. Lovell and P. Kramer, 259–270. New York: Routledge. McDonald, Paul. 2004. “Why Study Film Acting? Some Opening Reflections.” In More Than a Method: Trends and Traditions in Contemporary Film Performance, edited by C. Baron, D. Carson, and F. P. Tomasulo, 23–41. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. McNulty, Bernadette. 2008. “Scarlett Johansson—Anywhere I Lay My Head: Pop CDs of the week.” The Telegraph, May 17. https://www.telegraph.co. uk/journalists/bernadette-mcnulty/3673431/Scarlett-Johansson-AnywhereI-Lay-My-Head-Pop-CDs-of-the-week.html. Miller, Bennett, Dir. 2008. Falling Down. USA: ATCO Records. Naremore, James. 1990. Acting in the Cinema. Berkeley: University of California Press. Petrusich, Amanda. 2017. “Scarlett Johansson Talks Monogamy, Women’s March & ‘Ghost in the Shell’.” Playboy, February 14. http://www.playboy.com/ articles/playboy-interview-scarlett-johanson. Pullen, Kirsten. 2014. Like a Natural Woman: Spectacular Female Performance in Classical Hollywood. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Scheibel, Will. 2013. “Marilyn Monroe, ‘Sex Symbol’: Film Performance, Gender Politics and 1950s Hollywood Celebrity.” Celebrity Studies 4 (1): 4–13. Scott, A. O. 2005. “London Calling, With Luck, Lust and Ambition.” The New York Times, December 28. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/movies/ london-calling-with-luck-lust-and-ambition.html.

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Stern, Lesley, and George Kouvaros, eds. 2000. Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance. Sydney: University of Sydney Press. Taylor, Aaron. 2012. “Introduction: Acting, Casually and Theoretically Speaking.” In Theorizing Film Acting, 1–16. London: Routledge. Thill, Scott. 2008. “Listening Party: Scarlett Johansson Does Tom Waits.” Wired, April 23. https://www.wired.com/2008/04/scarlett-johann/. Thomas, Deborah J. 2012. “Froming the ‘Melancomic’: Character, Aesthetics and Affect in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 10 (1): 97–117. Wojcik, Pamela R. 2004. “General Introduction.” In Movie Acting: A Film Reader, edited by P. R. Wojcik, 1–14. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 4

“Certain Only of What She Didn’t Want”: Scarlett Johansson’s American Outsiders in Woody Allen’s Match Point, Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona Edward Lamberti

In the mid- to late 2000s, Scarlett Johansson acted in three films written and directed by Woody Allen. In all three—Match Point (2005), Scoop (2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)—Johansson played prominent roles, and it is therefore possible to read her contributions to these films as being central to their effects. In this chapter, I explore the complexity of reading these films as examples of her screen persona. Match Point , Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona are among a spate of films that Allen—famously a New York-based filmmaker—has made in Europe. Each of these films features a mixture of Americans and Europeans, and with them the cultural clashes that take place when these characters encounter each other. The three films marked an important turning point in Johansson’s career as a young actress. Timing, though unintentional, played a part: some years earlier, Allen’s

E. Lamberti (B) King’s College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_4

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reputation had been damaged by allegations that he had sexually abused his adoptive daughter, Dylan Farrow; Farrow restated her allegations in the 2010s, but Johansson’s collaborations with Allen occurred at a time where the allegations against him did not overtly affect the reception of his work. As such, Johansson’s career benefitted from the exposure and credibility that Allen’s persona at the time facilitated. In Match Point , Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Johansson plays an American in Europe, and it is tempting to seize on this continuity and use it as a fulcrum for our understanding of who or what “Johansson” is. There is, however, no straightforward connection between the characters she plays in the films and the evolution of her screen persona. Rather, this chapter will assert that Johansson’s work in these films is comprised of both star-like qualities and character acting, a combination that gives a sense of Johansson’s persona as complex and difficult to define. In her book The Actress: Hollywood and the Female Star, Karen Hollinger discusses a variety of ways of writing about female stars, exploring these angles via case studies of such stars as Gwyneth Paltrow, Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep. Hollinger notes how, amid the various approaches adopted by star studies scholars, it is in the area of screen acting that it is often so difficult to write about a star: “acting is a crucial aspect of the filmmaking process, yet even with a recent revival of interest in the subject, screen performance inexplicably remains one of the most undertheorized areas in film study” (2006, 3–4). Bruce Babington underlines the importance of performance to our understanding of film stardom: “the most fundamental difference between the film star and other kinds of stars – pop stars, sports stars, supermodels, television celebrities etc. – is the elision of the star persona with fictive characters within screen narratives” (2001, 23). In this chapter, I wish to consider Johansson’s work in the Allen films primarily in terms of the characters she plays and the performances she gives. This is held within a context of her career, her film choices and her position within Allen’s filmography. Martin Shingler has noted how no star studies scholar can hope to offer a complete account of a star’s work, because there will always be other angles of that star’s output to explore: “Given the ineffable and polysemic nature of stardom, the full extent of any star’s significance can never be authoritatively defined” (2012, 185). Accordingly, mine is necessarily a partial view, but one that, it is hoped, will contribute to an understanding of the extent to which Johansson can be thought of as a persona through her work with Allen. I want to start by considering the extent to which Match Point , Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona positioned

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Johansson as a star name and a prominent member of the cast. Doing so will enable us to assess that positioning against the work found within the films themselves.

Johansson as Star and Character Actor From around the time of Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) onwards, Allen’s films have listed their prominent cast members in alphabetical order. Instead of billing, the key players receive a place on the first panel of actors’ names, typically shown onscreen immediately after the title. For example, the firstnamed actor in Blue Jasmine (2013) is not the actor who gives its towering (and Oscar-winning) central performance, Cate Blanchett, but Alec Baldwin, who plays Jasmine’s former husband. Similarly, while Sweet and Lowdown (1999) is built around Sean Penn’s central role as a 1930s jazz guitarist, the film lists him third, after Anthony LaPaglia and Samantha Morton, both of whom play supporting roles. The credits of the films thus do not offer an opportunity for us to discern a hierarchy of prestige between the main cast members; famous actors and stars are presented on an equal plane, as it were, with lesser-known performers. The poster designs, however, do tend to focus on images of the most well-known actors in the films. Sweet and Lowdown’s poster shows Penn in character playing the guitar; Blue Jasmine’s poster is a close-up of Blanchett against a pale background that serves to emphasise her face as the only detail of note. The promotional campaign for Match Point , Johansson’s first film with Allen, is unusual among Allen’s work: whereas his films are typically marketed by way of a single or predominant image or poster design, the campaign for Match Point took on several forms across different territories. What they had in common, however, was that they all featured Johansson prominently, even though she has a supporting role in the film. The promotion for Match Point emphasised the film’s generic romantic thriller elements, and Johansson’s image is a key element in the promise of sexy and seductive entertainment; in one poster, Jonathan Rhys Meyers’s character, Chris Wilton—the film’s leading role—has his arm around Johansson’s character Nola Rice’s waist as she presses up against him and gazes at him seductively; in another, Johansson as Nola is in the foreground, walking away in a tight-fitting dress while, in the background, Rhys Meyers as Chris stares at her. These uses of Johansson on the poster emphasise her attractiveness and the chemistry she shares with her leading man. If the posters for Match Point featured Johansson’s name more prominently, we would

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be calling her the female star of the film. In Scoop, Johansson unequivocally plays the central character and occupies a star position on promotional imagery, usually sharing the poster with Hugh Jackman, who plays her love interest; her ceding of first place in the credits to him should be read not as an example of Hollywood sexism or unfair power-plays but rather as another instance of Allen’s strict alphabetical listing. But then something telling happens with Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The promotional campaign lists seven names, but the majority of posters split them very clearly into a group of three and another group of four, thus creating a hierarchy. This is evident not just in who is chosen for each group but also in the different size typefaces between the two groups. Most of all, it is evident in that while Johansson, who plays Cristina, is listed in the first group, Rebecca Hall, who plays Vicky, is in the second group (with three actors who play supporting roles) despite playing one of the film’s main characters. Johansson instead shares the first group with Javier Bardem and Penélope Cruz. Johansson, therefore, receives what amounts to star billing alongside the two Spanish stars. The billing is reflected in the ubiquitous poster image, which shows Johansson with Bardem and Cruz and does not feature Hall. The promotional material therefore advertises the film with Johansson as a star attraction over that of her co-star Hall, even though Hall in the film itself has equal status. Therefore, to what extent do these films contribute to a sense of Johansson’s screen persona? Johansson’s work in Match Point , Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona occupies just as important a place in her filmography as her other roles. Johansson has certainly earned a star’s salaries and appeared in films with a popularity befitting a huge star, notably her performances as Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise. And yet her work in the Marvel films co-exists with her character actor work in smaller, more intimate comedies and dramas such as Hitchcock (2012), Don Jon (2013) and Her (2013), in which she is the voice of the computer. She seems to have an affinity for fantasy and science fiction: she played the lead role of an alien visitor to Scotland in Under the Skin (2013) and she attracted attention—and some controversy—for her starring role as a character of Japanese origin in the US adaptation of Ghost in the Shell (2017). Poised somewhere between star and character actor, Johansson has a diverse filmography, and it is all the performances in this range of work that inculcate us in her career. Of the three films she made with Allen, I want to turn first to Match Point .

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Match Point: An American in London Richard Dyer, in his groundbreaking book Stars, notes how: a star will have a particular performance style that through its familiarity will inform the performance she or he gives in any particular film. The specific repertoire of gestures, intonations, etc. that a star establishes over a number of films carries the meaning of her or his image just as much as the ‘inert’ element of appearance, the particular sound of her/his voice or dress style. (1979, 162)

The assessment of performance style in films is complicated by the multitude of elements that go into the creation of the performance onscreen. Pamela Robertson Wojcik, in her work on film acting and sound, has noted that acting in film “as such does not exist prior to mediation” (2006, 75). Hollinger concurs: “Because film scenes are customarily shot out of order so that scenes that take place in the same setting can be shot together, film performance is unquestionably more fragmented, discontinuous, and disunified than stage performance” (2006, 7). A scene can be constructed from a range of takes, and so when we are watching an actor’s performance in a scene, it is not necessarily an exact reproduction of any one particular performance the actor gave in front of the camera at the time of filming. Editors can knit a performance together from disparate takes, in a way that cannot be achieved on a stage. When we speak of actorly craft, stage acting conveys a more “pure” sense of performance than does screen acting. As an alternative approach, mise-en-scène analysis, such as practiced, for example, by Andrew Klevan (1999), contends largely with the performance as it is found in the finished film. The complexities of how the performance came to be presented in the finished film are largely discarded. In their place, other complexities become apparent: no actor works in a vacuum, and mise-en-scène analysis can consider how a performer interacts with other performers, with sets and lighting, with the frame and the camera lens, and so on. The mise-en-scène approach is thus an interpretive approach that “reads” the actor’s work from a spectatorial perspective, thus dealing primarily in the ends, while the technological approach is more inclined to contextualise interpretation within a consideration of the means. Because Allen’s films are usually dramas and comedies that foreground performance in the staging and mise-en-scène rather than showcasing technological complexity, Match Point , Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona afford opportunities to consider Johansson’s performance style shorn of

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many of the technological considerations that can complicate the appreciation of an actor’s contribution to a film. Due to a lack of obvious visual manipulation or overtly complex sound design, the Allen films give us a chance to study Johansson’s work as a performer while allowing ourselves to subdue questions of technological manipulation. The films show us what film technicians have not (obviously) changed about her. Johansson’s character Nola in Match Point is a struggling American actress living in London and dating Tom Hewett (Matthew Goode), the son of wealthy businessman Alec Hewett (Brian Cox) and his wife Eleanor (Penelope Wilton). Into their lives comes Rhys Meyers’ character Chris, a tennis pro-turned-coach who dreams of bigger things. He befriends Tom at the tennis club, and soon he is dating Tom’s sister, Chloe (Emily Mortimer). But then Chris meets Tom’s girlfriend Nola, playing table tennis at a Hewett party. Chris has a passion for Nola that he cannot muster up for Chloe, whom he nevertheless marries. But then Tom ends his relationship with Nola, telling Chris his mother disapproved of her. And this leads Chris into a relationship with Nola, a relationship that she is never comfortable with. She wants him to leave Chloe—but he knows that if he does so, he will lose his privileged place in her father’s company. For Chris, Nola comes to represent a threat to his existence. A key moment in Match Point —at least regarding Johansson’s presence in the film—is the scene that comes after Nola has had another bad acting audition (but before she and Chris have begun their affair). Dejected, she has asked Chris, out in the street, if they can get a drink, and the film moves to a pub, where they are drinking white wine. Starting with a shot that establishes their position within the layout of the pub, the entire scene is filmed in a shot-reverse-shot fashion, with hardly any changes of scale: it largely comprises the same two close-up angles, bouncing back and forth— like the ping-pong ball going back and forth over the table-tennis net when Chris first met Nola. The point of the pub scene is that it takes Chris and Nola’s acquaintanceship to a new level: their conversation is clearly flirtatious, with Chris conveying openly to Nola that he is interested in being more intimate with her, and Nola showing awareness of this, and coming close to signalling that she wants to go further herself—before she pulls back on the pretext that the drink is going to her head, and asks Chris to find her a cab. The scene therefore acts as a touchstone for how this film deploys Johansson within its larger scheme: Nola is attractive, desirable— it says something for her attractiveness that she is romanced by not one handsome man in the film but two handsome men, as if we can measure

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the film’s rating of her by the people it gives her as partners—but she is also struggling to stay in control; we can see this in the way in which Johansson delivers much of Nola’s dialogue with small pauses and hesitations, partly because the white wine is doing its work on Nola but also because Nola is so unsure of herself. An impression created is of Nola, a struggling actress, being so used not just to auditioning but to failing auditions that it is as if she finds it difficult to snap out of auditioning mode even in her downtime. Johansson’s performance here characterises Nola as someone who seems to have some difficulty in knowing herself well enough to know the answers to the fairly routine questions that Chris is asking her about her life and background. Emphasising Nola’s quality of hesitation, Johansson shows us that Nola has heard her words falling on stony ground so many times that it is as if she doubts her words both before she says them and as she hears herself saying them. Before Match Point , Johansson had become an established actor with supporting roles in films such as Ghost World and The Man Who Wasn’t There (both 2001) and leading roles in Lost in Translation and Girl with a Pearl Earring (both 2003). By far the most significant of these—and still the most enduring—is Lost in Translation. In the film, she plays Charlotte, an American philosophy graduate who has accompanied her trendy photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi) on a work trip to Tokyo and is left to her own devices while he is on assignments. “I don’t know who I married,” Charlotte says tearfully on the phone to a friend back home. In a slightly later scene, she listens to an audiobook that asks her, “Did you ever wonder what your purpose in life is?” The role of Charlotte is not so much acted by Johansson as brought into being by her seemingly effortless presence, with hesitancy and quietude to the fore, textured by her cracked, almost tearful-sounding voice. The film brought Johansson industry recognition—for example, she received a Golden Globe nomination and won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress—and it is a film that begins to characterise Johansson’s screen persona in that era as that of an attractive but tentative young woman, unsure of her place in the world or her purpose in life. Coming so soon after Lost in Translation, Johansson’s performance in Match Point inherits and extends the qualities of youthful rootlessness and uncertainty that we saw in her interpretation of Charlotte in the earlier film. Erick Neher has observed how, “[i]n Scarlett Johansson, Allen found a new muse to rank alongside Keaton and Farrow” (2013, 554). Putting Allen’s work with Johansson on the level of his work with Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow is meant as high praise. Keaton acted in eight Allen films between

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1972 and 1993; these include her Oscar-winning performance in the title role of Annie Hall (1977) and her female lead in Manhattan (1979). Farrow acted in thirteen films written and directed by Allen between 1982 and 1992, including as the gangland moll in Broadway Danny Rose (1984), the lonely, film-loving Depression-era wife in The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and the sensible but misunderstood Hannah in Hannah and Her Sisters. Johansson, then, is not the first actress to develop a creative rapport with Allen, and the three films she made with him came in quick succession. (2007’s Cassandra’s Dream was the only Allen film from this period not to feature her.) To what extent is the choice significant? In an article entitled “Scarlett Johansson could be Woody’s next muse,” Christopher Michaud picks up on the theme of an American in Europe in Match Point and Scoop when he notes that “Scarlett Johansson, the leading lady of Allen’s last film, Match Point , once again plays a displaced American woman – though in Scoop she’s more damsel in distress than femme fatale” and he observes that “The rising actress […] and the veteran director said they had so much fun on the set of Match Point that Allen set about writing another project in which they could co-star” (2006). Marjon Carlos, in an article for Vogue entitled “From New York to Paris, Woody’s Chicest International Muses” (2016), includes a section on Johansson as Nola in Match Point , again emphasising the internationalism of the collaboration. And yet Hollie McKay quotes Allen as saying of Johansson “she’s in no way my muse, but she is one of the great American actresses” (2008). Muse or not, Johansson’s work for Allen contains common threads that are worth considering in an assessment of her screen persona. Match Point was a solid commercial success, as was Vicky Cristina Barcelona three years after it.1 Scoop, however, which came between the two films, was received more quietly; for example, despite being shot in London, it was only the second film written and directed by Allen not to receive a UK theatrical release.2 As such, although Scoop, on paper, has the most chance of presenting Johansson as star—she is unequivocally the central character—as the film was only a very modest success in relation to Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (and in relation to many of Johansson’s other films), it 1 According to Box Office Mojo, and in contrast to the usually more modest box office grosses of Allen’s films, the worldwide box office totals for the two films are, to date: Match Point , $85.3 m; Vicky Cristina Barcelona, $96.4 m. Box Office Mojo, http://www. boxofficemojo.com/, accessed 21 July 2019. 2 The first was Hollywood Ending (2002). The worldwide gross for Scoop to date is $39.2 m.

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is much more difficult to hold it up as a prime example of a star-defining role in Johansson’s career. And yet, because Scoop is the only one in which Johansson is unquestionably centre-stage, it is a clear test case for a reading of Johansson’s persona through her work with Allen.

Scoop: Investigating Europe In Scoop, Johansson is positioned as the star—she has the most screen time, she drives the narrative and she is the most obviously likeable and sympathetic figure in the film. Her student journalist character, Sondra, is modelled in some ways on the classic screwball heroines of Hollywood’s Golden Age: she is inquisitive, intrepid, fast-talking and ready for love should it come along. When Sondra is lamenting her journalistic failure to get an interview with a British film director, Allen nails his generic colours to the mast by having Sondra say, “If I’d used my feminine wiles, like Katharine Hepburn or Rosalind Russell…” Johansson proves herself to be a light-hearted presence, capable of performing the latter-day “comedienne” antics that the role requires. She looks the part: she is “de-glammed” in a conventionally comic way (glasses, hair tied back, awkward costuming, earnest and bookish air). And she is de-glammed by the dialogue too; for example, when her wealthy English suitor Peter (Jackman) says to her, “I just can’t seem to get the vision of you in your swimsuit out of my mind,” she responds, self-deprecatingly, “Oh, I’m glad you liked it. It was marked down.” Later, when she and her magician friend Sidney (Allen) spot Peter in the street after believing he is out of town, Sidney speculates unflatteringly, “Maybe he’s got another woman on the side, and, and he likes you but he’s sexually attracted to her,” and Sondra can only reply, “Thanks, Sidney.” In terms of genre, Scoop is a light mixture of two distinct generic traditions: the American screwball comedy and the handsomely made, eccentric English upper-crust murder-mystery. Scoop is a very handsome film, with rich colours and rich furnishings; Allen and his creative team depict London’s moneyed class just as effectively here as they did in Match Point . Moreover, in this film, as in Match Point, it is a character from that moneyed class who represents the greatest threat to Johansson’s character. It is not so much the class distinction I wish to think about as the continental divide. There has long been a discernible European dimension to Allen’s films. Allen has famously and repeatedly declared the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Federico Fellini to be major influences on his work, and several of his films can be seen as direct homages: Allen’s dramas Interiors

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(1978), September (1987) and Another Woman (1988) are often considered ‘Bergmanesque’; the story of the struggling, fêted film director played by Allen in Stardust Memories (1980) is a reminder of Marcello Mastroianni’s creatively blocked filmmaker in Fellini’s 8½ (1963); A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) is a reworking of Bergman’s Sommarnattens leende (Smiles of a Summer Night, 1955); Radio Days (1987) has something of the nostalgic glow of Fellini’s Amarcord (1974). But all of those Allen films are nevertheless set in the US. European locations only feature intermittently in Allen’s work prior to Match Point ; for example, the comedy Love and Death (1975) is set in Napoleon-era Russia, the musical Everyone Says I Love You (1996) takes place partly in Paris and Venice; and a few characters in American-set films go to Europe, such as Tracy (Mariel Hemingway) in Manhattan and Halley (Mia Farrow) in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), both of whom leave New York for a spell in London. Throughout all these projects, Allen consistently maintained a reputation as the pre-eminent New York filmmaker; at the 74th Academy Awards ceremony, at which he made an appearance to introduce a montage of New York movies for an Academy tribute to the city in the wake of 9/11, the host, Whoopi Goldberg, introduced him as “a New York landmark, a movie icon, a filmmaker whose heart has never strayed too far from the heart of the city.”3 The three films Allen made with Johansson, however, are part of a marked shift his work underwent from the mid-2000s as he made films in Europe rather than in the US. From Match Point in 2005 to Magic in the Moonlight in 2014, every Allen film—one a year, as is his custom—was made in a European country, with only two exceptions: Whatever Works (2009), which is New York-based, and Blue Jasmine (2013), which is set in the Big Apple and San Francisco. This cycle of European films, therefore, represents a significant departure in Allen’s body of work. Malcolm Bradbury, in a wide-ranging essay from 1978, sets out numerous European influences on American literature and on the many celebrated American writers who spent time in Europe, especially towards the end of the nineteenth century and in the first few decades of the twentieth. Bradbury argues that the US, as a relatively young country, has often drawn from the more established cultural models offered by European countries for its own inspiration, but that this has since resulted in a reversal:

3 The 74th Annual Academy Awards ceremony took place on 24 March 2002.

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The European myths about America deeply entered the process of settlement, and acquired yet more intensity once the United States had declared their political Independence. But now came a transaction in reverse: the mythical reinvention of Europe by Americans. Indeed perhaps the Americans more than any other nation […] needed Europe as idea, as a continental abstraction […] the Old World, set against the New World. (1978, 20)

Europe, therefore, becomes part of the cultural imaginary of a strengthening American literary scene; having created from European forms and histories a sense of its own national identity, the US has become able to set itself against the European model for a useful contrast. I should like to suggest that Allen’s European films are in some senses a modern-day filmic counterpart to this literary quest. Allen pays direct homage to several European forebears in Midnight in Paris (2011), in which a screenwriter and Francophile holidaying in present-day Paris, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), travels back in time to the 1920s and meets, among others, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston and Alison Pill), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll) and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates). More generally, Allen’s appropriation of European settings in this run of films—especially the focus on major cities (London in four of the films, Barcelona, Paris and Rome once each)—lends to his stories a certain generalised view of Europe as a series of major cultural and economic centres through which American characters try to make their way. Allen had originally written Match Point to take place in New York, and only came to shoot it in London because British funding was forthcoming. But the transposition is successful: the British settings of Match Point initiate the storytelling of an American abroad. A. O. Scott’s review of the film in The New York Times identifies several apt references: “The film’s setting is modified Henry James (wealthy London, with a few social and cultural outsiders buzzing around the hives of privilege); the conceit owes something to Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books; and the narrative engine is pure Theodore Dreiser – hunger, lust, ambition, greed” (2005). From Match Point onwards, Allen’s European experience has yielded a series of films that can be studied in their own right for their place in his filmography and more generally in the American-European cultural exchange. Johansson’s presence as an American actor playing American characters in these European settings can be considered as an enactment of this shift in Allen’s work, a dramatisation of the continental divide, a cue for us to see these films as Allen’s cinema transposed to a milieu largely unfamiliar to us in

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his work. Here, then, in generic terms, is Bradbury’s encounter of the Old World with the New World, and in this case, the new and energetic world is threatened with annihilation by the older and more powerful culture and society. I want now to turn to Vicky Cristina Barcelona so as to draw these points together.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Embracing a “European Soul” Along with the uncertainty, the youthful rootlessness and questioning, something else that unites Johansson’s three Allen roles is that, as we have seen, in each case she is playing an American abroad. In these films her characters’ uncertainty is conditioned not just by her romantic relationships but also by her sense of displacement, of being a stranger in a strange land. Whereas in Lost in Translation that “strange” land is Japan, in the three Allen films, it is two European countries, the United Kingdom and Spain. Picking up on Bradbury’s notion of the Old World and the New World, on a formal level Vicky Cristina Barcelona, of the three films, conveys perhaps the most overtly European sensibility. The influence is partly continental European cinema—perhaps more French that Spanish: a key forefather of the film is François Truffaut (referenced also by Sam B. Girgus [2008, 56]), a filmmaker who, like Allen, typically made a film a year and who may have been easily charmed by the story of Vicky and Cristina and their love triangle in Barcelona—just as he himself had made a film about a youthful love triangle between two women and a man, Deux Anglaises et le Continent (Two English Girls, a.k.a. Anne and Muriel, 1971), adapted from the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché. There is also something Truffaudian in the way in which Vicky Cristina Barcelona is preoccupied with romantic love between characters who are artists and scholars, and in the use of a voiceover narration that, like Truffaut’s Jules et Jim (1962), also from a Roché novel, explains to us so directly what is going on that it is almost as though the film is “reading” us the story. In Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the voiceover (spoken by Christopher Evan Welch) not only introduces the characters to us as they travel from the airport to the city by taxi at the start of the film but continues to pepper the movie as events unfold. It is a slightly unconventional use of a voiceover in that it often tells us things that we can see well enough for ourselves, things that are happening on the screen at the exact moment the voiceover announces them. Some critics have queried its effectiveness; Girgus, for example, argues that “[t]he

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intrusive voice indicates a wish to control the action and the characters, to guide viewer reaction, and even to inhibit and frame all the power of suggestiveness and mystery that infuses the best scenes of the film” (2008, 57). An alternative reading, however, is to consider the voiceover as bringing to the film the tone of a timeless story, a much older work, as if Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a latter-day counterpart to other literary—and cinematic—tales of Americans coming to Europe in the hopes of finding love. As Jonathan Romney notes, “This brittle moral comedy is a knowingly transparent revamp of the age-old Americans-in-Europe story, as perfected by Henry James and Edith Wharton, with a creakily pedantic voiceover narration […] providing the appropriate bookish tone” (2008, 68). Into the “Old World” of Europe—in this case, Spain—come Vicky and Cristina, two young American women looking to have an enjoyable summer in Barcelona. As we see them on that ride in from the airport, the voiceover tells us that “Cristina, who spent the last six months writing, directing and acting in a twelve-minute film which she then hated, had just broken up with yet another boyfriend and longed for a change of scenery,” and contrasts her with her friend Vicky: Vicky had no tolerance for pain and no lust for combat. She was grounded and realistic. Her requirements in a man were seriousness and stability. She had become engaged to Doug because he was decent and successful and understood the beauty of commitment. […] Cristina, on the other hand, expected something very different out of love. She had reluctantly accepted suffering as an inevitable component of deep passion, and was resigned to putting her feelings at risk. If you asked her what it was she was gambling her emotions on to win, she would not have been able to say. She knew what she didn’t want, however, and that was exactly what Vicky valued above all else.

A short while later, as Vicky and Cristina settle in at the home of Judy (Patricia Clarkson) and Mark (Kevin Dunn) where they will be staying for the summer, Cristina tells them over drinks that her film was about “why love is so hard to define.” But in Vicky Cristina Barcelona itself, Cristina will come no closer to the definition of love that she seems to be searching for; art, it seems, cannot answer her questions for her. Cristina’s state of mind is, in some sense, not dissimilar to Charlotte’s in Lost in Translation: Cristina is unattached, and far more gregarious than Charlotte, but both young women are unsure of their roles in life—Charlotte is unsure as to whether marriage, or this marriage in particular, is for her, while Cristina is reluctant

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to accept the traditional role that Vicky seems to crave. Instead, Cristina is seemingly content to be drifting, though she seems slightly uneasy about her freedom. Before long, she and Vicky have met a charismatic and famous painter, Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), who promptly whisks them off on an overnight trip to Oviedo with the promise that they will eat good food, drink wine and make love. This is not what Vicky, engaged to be married to Doug (Chris Messina), is looking for, but Cristina is game—at least until she is overcome with a bout of food poisoning just as Juan Antonio is making his move on her. For Cristina, then, Spain, and by extension Europe, is a sexually liberated playground, in which she can live the unpredictability of her future—and soon, with her relationship with Juan Antonio getting started after all, she finds herself contemplating happiness, as the voiceover tells us: Cristina began to sense the possibility of the kind of relationship she had always sought but in the past had eluded her. She was the lover of an exciting man, an artist, whose work she believed in. She was already thinking of herself as a kind of expatriate, not smothered by what she believed to be America’s puritanical and materialistic culture she had little patience for. She saw herself more a European soul, in tune with the thinkers and artists she felt expressed her tragic, romantic, free-thinking view of life.

We hear this stretch of voiceover while seeing images of Cristina watching Juan Antonio paint, and going on a bicycle ride with him along country lanes; later we see her enjoying a drink in a bar with him and some of his friends. The bike ride is telling: Cristina and Juan Antonio are shown riding along a lane, in three shots, each of which shows them riding for perhaps a hundred metres, and across all that distance, Cristina only has to pedal once; the rest of the time, she sits with her feet stationary on the pedals, gently gliding down the road’s shallow slope, first next to, and then following, Juan Antonio. The visuals, when paired with the voiceover, suggest that Cristina’s embrace of her “European soul” is easy and requires little effort, but it also suggests that she is a follower, beholden to this man whom she still hardly knows and who has the potential to take her on a descent into a romantic unknown.

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Johansson’s American Outsiders The role of Cristina displays continuities with the role of Nola in Match Point and, to a lesser extent, that of Sondra in Scoop. This is not to consider Johansson herself as necessarily a symbol of displacement, a representative of a nation undergoing a culture clash. Nevertheless, the continuities between the three roles hint at what Allen, at least, may have considered to be a way of mobilising Johansson’s presence for these films. In both Match Point and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Johansson is playing a young American woman who is insecure about her acting abilities; indeed, because her abilities as an actress have yet to be proven, she is unsure as to whether she even has abilities. In a more humorous sense, we can also read Sondra’s youthfully American difficulty with reading between the lines of the British society figure she is investigating as a form of outsider’s insecurity. These character details are reminiscent of Charlotte in Lost in Translation, and especially of the moment in which, lying on the bed with Bob (Bill Murray) having a heart-to-heart, she says, “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to be, you know? I tried being a writer, but I hate what I write. And I tried taking pictures, but they’re so mediocre.” It is as if Allen is thinking of this continuity when, at the end of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the voiceover narrator tells us over the film’s final shot of Vicky, Cristina and Doug in the airport at the end of their Barcelona trip, “Vicky went home to have her grand wedding to Doug, to the house they both finally settled on and to lead the life she had envisioned for herself before the summer in Barcelona. Cristina continued searching, certain only of what she didn’t want.” These moments do not necessarily show Johansson contributing her own character to the characters and the films. But we can fruitfully consider the films as contributing to Johansson’s screen persona by way of these deployments of her in the service of these characters. These three Woody Allen films, therefore, occupy a vivid position in Johansson’s career. They present three versions of an appealing yet unconfident young American outsider encountering the Old-World charms, temptations and threats of European culture and society. In doing so, they contribute new layers to the complex interweaving of roles and performances that help frame our appreciation of Johansson as a screen persona. Johansson’s contributions to these three Allen films allow us to see her as a character actor and as an ensemble player. The effect she has on all three films is organic to their achievements. None of them is ever quite “about” Johansson—none of them conceptualises her as a pre-existing persona that

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they will make use of; instead, each of them benefits from Johansson’s ability to become an integral part of their design. In each case, her qualities as a performer are key to how the films work. Her humbleness as an actor helps create the sense of a young American woman displaced in Europe and unsure if she wants to be noticed or if she wants to blend in seamlessly. In taking these roles, Johansson added to her complex screen presence by incarnating three versions of a young, attractive American woman picking up worldliness in Europe. In Match Point , Scoop and Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Johansson’s work with Allen allowed her to show her range as an actor early in her career, resulting in a set of films that help inform her screen persona.

Works Cited Babington, Bruce. 2001. “Introduction: British Stars and Stardom”. In British Stars and Stardom: From Alma Taylor to Sean Connery, edited by Bruce Babington, 1–28. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Bradbury, Malcolm. 1978. “Second Countries: The Expatriate Tradition in American Writing.” The Yearbook of English Studies 8, American Literature Special Number: 15–39. Carlos, Marjon. 2016. “From New York to Paris, Woody’s Chicest International Muses.” Vogue, May 11. https://www.vogue.com/article/woody-allenscarlett-johansson-penelope-cruz-diane-keaton-marion-cotillard. Accessed 21 July 2019. Dyer, Richard. 1979. Stars. London: BFI Publishing. Girgus, Sam B. 2008. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” Cineaste 34 (1): 55–57. Hollinger, Karen. 2006. The Actress: Hollywood and the Female Star. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Klevan, Andrew. 1999. Disclosures of the Everyday: Undramatic Achievement in Narrative Film. Trowbridge: Flicks Books. Michaud, Christopher. 2006. “Scarlett Johansson Could Be Woody’s Next Muse.” The New Zealand Herald, July 25. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/ news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10392857. Accessed 21 July 2019. Neher, Erick. 2013. “The Late Style of Woody Allen.” The Hudson Review 66 (3): 551–557. Romney, Jonathan. 2008. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” Film Comment 44 (4): 68–70. Scott, A. O. 2005. “London Calling, with Luck, Lust and Ambition.” The New York Times, December 28. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/28/movies/ london-calling-with-luck-lust-and-ambition.html. Accessed 21 July 2019.

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Shingler, Martin. 2012. Star Studies: A Critical Guide. London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan. Wojcik, Pamela Robertson. 2006. “The Sound of Film Acting”. Journal of Film and Video 58 (1–2): 71–83.

CHAPTER 5

“Who Do You Want Me to Be?” Scarlett Johansson, Black Widow and Shifting Identity in the Marvel Cinematic Universe Chris Davies

The rise of Scarlett Johansson from an ingénue of American independent cinema to a star of science fiction blockbusters has largely been facilitated by her involvement in the comic book movie franchise known as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). As the first female superhero in the otherwise male-dominated M.C.U., Johansson’s role as Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow has become the cynosure of the series for many fans. In reviewing her appearances in the MCU prior to Black Widow (Cate Shortland, 2020), one can trace a series of parallels between Johansson’s career trajectory and Romanoff’s narrative journey: both have been associated with the figure of the femme fatale but have shifted their identity to become action heroines. Expanding on existing scholarship on these character types, this chapter explores Johansson’s mobilisation and revision of these identities to analyse their contribution to redefining her star persona.

C. Davies (B) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

© The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_5

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As Jeffrey A. Brown has summarised, contemporary action heroines descend from the sleuths of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, the femme fatales of film noir, rebellious teens of 1950s dramas, mod heroines of the 1960s, avenging angels of Blaxploitation, and the television detectives of the 1970s (2011, 6). As such, I adopt a multivalent approach to considering Johansson’s portrayal of Romanoff, especially as the character derives from an inherently visual medium that deals in stylization and draws as much attention to the look of the heroine as to her actions. Brown has noted that action heroines are often torn between seemingly antithetical positions whereby the character “represents a potentially transgressive figure capable of expanding the popular perception of women’s roles and abilities” while also running “the risk of reinscribing strict gender binaries and of being nothing more than sexist window-dressing for the predominantly male audience” (2011, 43). As I discuss below, a recent trend in cinema has attempted to amalgamate the active heroine with her sex appeal in what Marc O’Day has termed “action babe cinema,” a concept that has featured prominently in recent comic book adaptations (2004, 202). Although this chapter could focus entirely on the physicality of Romanoff/Johansson and what it entails, I favour Julie Grossman’s approach to the femme fatale in which one should avoid “the privileging of gazing at images” and instead consider “the narrative, social contexts, and mise-en-scene” (2009, 5, 11). Of these I prioritise narrative as an exemplar of how Romanoff’s identity progresses through character development rather than just visuals or action. While the protagonists of individual films in the M.C.U. may have more prominent narrative arcs, the franchise’s interconnecting storylines and ensemble cast has reshaped traditional cinematic storytelling into an ongoing, episodic format with one continuous story told across parallel narratives. Brown has noted that action heroines have typically enjoyed greater critical and commercial success in serialised formats, reasoning that “on television, in novels, or in comic books, serialised heroines benefit from the ability of longer formats to fully develop and explore characters” (2011, 9). The structure of the MCU is based on the universe-building of its comic book sources, but it also updates and alters those narratives to shape a new iteration of established characters within the cinematic universe. As a major blockbuster franchise, the MCU provides rich new ground for exploring the development of female characters within long-form storytelling in cinema. The MCU has slowly increased its roster of female heroes, with 2019’s Captain Marvel marking the first female-led entry in the film series. Prior

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to Black Widow, Romanoff is routinely paired with male characters: Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) in Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010), Clint Barton/Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) in The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012, released in the UK as Avengers Assemble), Steve Rogers/Captain America (Chris Evans) in Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2014), Bruce Banner/Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015), and both Rogers and Stark in Captain America: Civil War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2016). However, when viewed as an ongoing series it is evident that Romanoff has an overarching narrative that has expanded with Johansson’s own progression as a star. While Romanoff’s interactions with male characters are initially designed to support their development, as the series progresses they become mutually influential or even come to serve her characterisation over their own. To evidence this, I discuss Romanoff/Johansson’s evolution in the MCU chronologically beginning with 2010’s Iron Man 2.

Black Widow: Femme Fatale First appearing in Marvel Comics in 1964, Black Widow is a villainous Russian spy who defects and joins the agency SHIELD (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division) and later the superhero team known as The Avengers. Clad in a figure-hugging black cat-suit, her combination of deadliness, sexuality and Russian “otherness” made Romanoff the quintessential, albeit reductive, archetype of the femme fatale. Even her pseudonym, Black Widow, evokes an embodiment of deadly femininity. In updating the character for the MCU her Russian origins are initially downplayed—including the name “Black Widow”— and only occasionally referred to. Instead, Romanoff is introduced in Iron Man 2 as an established agent of SHIELD reporting to Director Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). In the first half of the film she operates undercover as “Natalie Rushman,” a notary hired to facilitate the handover of Stark Industries from Tony Stark to Virginia “Pepper” Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow). “Rushman” dresses in figure-hugging outfits that emphasise her curves and she teases Stark with seductive innuendos (“Is that dirty enough for you?” she asks, as he sips on a martini). Suffering from potentially fatal blood poisoning, Stark becomes increasingly erratic and self-destructive with “Rushman” acting as a temptation and enabler for his self-indulgent whims. With her help, he spirals into a humiliating nadir from which he must reassess his life and relationships. As Johansson has stated in an interview, her role in

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the film is essentially “to allow Iron Man to come to the realisation…that his ability is bigger than his ego” (2010). Mid-way through the film her deception is revealed when Stark meets with Fury and is introduced to the real “Rushman”: Agent Romanoff. She appears on cue in her comic book counterpart’s trademark cat-suit (the camera briefly emphasising her posterior) and pointedly sits on Fury’s side of the table in a small diner to symbolise her transference of allegiance. She has few lines of dialogue for the duration of the film but takes on newfound agency when she orders Stark’s bodyguard, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), to drive her to the villain’s base of operations whereupon she dispatches male adversaries with lethal efficiency. Using an array of gadgets and acrobatic martial arts, her fighting style is simultaneously graceful, skilled and sexual. Contrasting to Hogan’s clumsy slogging match with a single guard, Romanoff swings, slides and climbs around her opponents, often locking her thighs around their heads and using her weight and momentum to overpower them in what becomes a trademark move. The dichotomy of sexual allure and violence embodied by Romanoff and synonymous with the femme fatale were not new to Johansson in Iron Man 2. A child actor, she broke into adult roles with 2003’s Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola) and subsequently starred in a series of American independent films forging a reputation as, in Kevin Lincoln’s words, “a character actor whose existential angst seemed to be in constant combat with the way men saw her” (2017). Johansson’s objectification as the “sexual muse” is evident in films such as Match Point (Woody Allen, 2005), The Island (Michael Bay, 2005), The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008). In The Spirit (Frank Miller, 2005) and The Black Dahlia (Brian De Palma, 2006), films which consciously reference 1940s film noir, Johansson further built a reputation as a hyper-sexual femme fatale. Her physical appeal was compounded outside of her film roles, with her regularly charting top-ten positions in “100 Sexiest” lists for men’s magazines including FHM and Maxim. In an interview for ABC News, Barbara Walters introduced this phase of Johansson’s career with a montage of scenes focussing on her sex appeal and erotic roles, asking: “Did you mind being thought of as ‘Sex, Sex, Sex’?” (qtd. in Johansson 2014). Iron Man 2 capitalised on this reputation. Romanoff’s appearance is immediately prioritised as Stark skips over “Rushman’s” impressive credentials to literally zoom in on images of her as a lingerie model. Stark’s

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reaction is in keeping with his playboy personality while acting out Mulvey’s concept of the male gaze (1999). For the majority-male audience, Stark is the quintessential embodiment of the “ego libido”—rich, funny, handsome and heroic. In projecting themselves onto Stark, the viewer can also share in the scopophilic pleasure of “ogling” Romanoff/Johansson. Stark’s objectification of “Rushman” blinds him to her duplicity, although when her true identity is revealed it serves his narrative arc over her own. A character obsessed with ownership and control, Stark’s loss of “Rushman,” his friend Rhodey (Don Cheadle), Potts, an Iron Man suit and most of his home within a short series of scenes deals a brutal blow to his hubris. In this respect Romanoff’s inclusion in Iron Man 2 is almost wholly to service the male protagonist’s story and cater to the desires of the heterosexual male viewer, while Romanoff’s personality and motivations remain ambiguous. In effect, she corresponds to the character traits of the femme fatale described by Yvonne Tasker: First, her seductive sexuality. Second, the power and strength (over men) that this sexuality generates for the femme fatale. Third, the deceptions, disguises and confusion that surrounds her, producing her as an ambiguous figure for both the audience and her hero. Fourth, as a consequence the sense of woman as “enigma,” typically located within an investigative narrative structure which seeks to find “truth” amidst the deception. (1998, 120)

These points are reiterated and developed in The Avengers . In her first scene Romanoff is dressed in a short, tight-fitting black dress and torn hosiery, is tied to a chair, and is midway through being interrogated by a Russian arms dealer. The situation echoes Iron Man 2 as she is again undercover playing a sexualised and passive role to lure a man into a false sense of control. Informed that her friend Barton has been “compromised”—he has been brainwashed by the film’s villain, Loki (Tom Hiddleston)—she quickly turns the table (or chair) on her attackers and overcomes them in an incredible display of lethal acrobatic skill before nonchalantly collecting her high heels as she walks away. She is then sent to India to recruit Banner/Hulk and repeats this strategy, lulling Banner into a false sense of control and noting they are alone as she flirtatiously removes her shawl. However, when Banner feigns an angry outburst Romanoff immediately draws a weapon and reveals the building is surrounded. In these two scenes we see that Romanoff employs violence as a last resort when sexual manipulation fails. As with Tasker’s definition of the femme fatale, Romanoff is

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in complete control of her own objectification and is inherently aware of the power it generates. The same is true for Johansson. Her reputation for playing femme fatales and the media attention given to her appearance aided in her transition into mainstream cinema. While Iron Man 2 utilised this facet of her persona, in The Avengers Romanoff, like Johansson, is motivated by an overriding desire to move on from her past and become more than just a femme fatale. Indeed, unlike the majority of male leads in the MCU who are given lengthy “Origin Stories” in their respective solo films, Romanoff’s past is only cryptically alluded to. The origins of the male heroes are symptomatic of a sudden discovery or attribution of power or a weapon that makes them, to some degree, superhuman: Captain America’s strength and shield, Iron Man’s suit, Thor’s hammer, and Banner’s monstrous alter-ego. In each case their transformation is a catalyst for action spectacle which finds focus in the defeat of a villain, usually on a public stage. In Romanoff’s case, however, her non-superhuman skills have been honed over many years of training to make her an efficient killer that dwells in the shadows. As Romanoff’s “powers” were originally used in the service of an antagonistic power— the red in her ledger—she is essentially the villain of her own origin story and the search for her “truth” is ongoing. In her transformation into an Avenger we see Romanoff/Johansson shifting her persona towards that of the action heroine. However, in relation to the femme fatale, Mary Ann Doane believes “it would be a mistake to see her as some kind of heroine of modernity. She is not the subject of feminism but a symptom of male fears about feminism” (1991, 2–3). She goes on to state that the femme fatale’s refusal to submit to patriarchal values is met with the “desperate reassertion of control on the part of the threatened male subject which frequently results in the femme fatale being punished or killed” (1991, 2). However, Grossman looks beyond femme fatales as by-products of masculine insecurities to argue that they are actually aspirational figures, “femmes moderns,” who fight for their desires and “whose strength, perverse by conventional standards, keeps them from submitting to the gendered social institutions that oppress them” (2009, 3). This largely corresponds to the portrayal of women in comic books. Brown notes in his discussion of Wonder Woman that the comic book genre caters “to masculine fantasies and adolescent fears of female sexuality” by depicting women as sexy and strong, with Wonder Woman often being captured and bound by her enemies in an effort to contain her (2011,

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236–237). However, the femme fatale differs to this in that the symbol of her oppression is often, according to Tasker, “the heterosexual male hero” (1998, 120). In this respect the MCU is progressive: Romanoff’s role in SHIELD is portrayed as a job not a system of oppression, and while some of her male colleagues are wary of her due to her duplicitous behaviour they all show her complete respect and—with the exception of Stark with “Rushman”—do not treat her as a sexual pursuit. Indeed, the only character who presents a sexual threat or defines her by her gender is The Avengers ’ antagonist, Loki. In an important scene, Romanoff interrogates the imprisoned Loki who, subverting the typical objectification of women, is displayed in a glass-walled prison cell. She again panders to his ego (“Once you’ve won, once you’re king of the mountain…”) and makes herself emotionally vulnerable to grant him a feeling of control in the hope that he will give up information. However, unlike the aforementioned examples where Romanoff’s allure gives her power over men, Loki’s threatening language carries disturbing connotations of sexual violence: “love…dripping…gushing red…I won’t touch Barton, not until I make him kill you, slowly, intimately, in every way he knows you fear…you mewling quim.” His mockery of male characters such as Stark or Rogers is usually concerned with their actions and ideologies, but here his threats are directed at Romanoff’s gender and emotions. His misogynistic condescension proves to be his undoing, however, as in his fury he accidentally reveals his plan to unleash the Hulk. Romanoff’s cowering submissiveness at his threats is immediately revealed to be a ploy as she regains her composure, smiles, and thanks him for his cooperation. Her simple bait and switch emasculates Loki in an empowering demonstration of Romanoff’s refusal to submit to male desires without her consent.

Natasha Romanoff: Action Heroine Romanoff’s development from the sexualised spy of Iron Man 2 to the cunning manipulator of The Avengers is likely, in part at least, down to the latter film’s writer-director Joss Whedon. Whedon built a reputation as a feminist writer, creating ensemble projects such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) and Firefly (2002) with strong, intelligent female characters. In The Avengers , he takes the reductive association of the femme fatale as simply equating sex and violence and refigures Romanoff as a transgressive character seeking personal redemption for her past deeds. In the process, she gains agency and slowly abandons the tropes of the femme fatale to

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become a superhero. The concluding act of The Avengers sees her participating in the battle of New York as an equal alongside the likes of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Iron Man, firing guns, utilising martial arts skills, and even mastering alien technology—the only one of the team to do so. Romanoff’s journey mirrors Johansson’s trajectory at this time; a period she describes as “transitional” (Johansson 2013). Iron Man 2, while emphasising her sexuality, also demonstrated Johansson’s capabilities as an action star. She has since stated that taking the role expanded her skill-set as a performer, noting that the “physical part of it was something I’d never gotten to experience. That was something that pushed me out of my comfort zone” (qtd. in Setoodeh 2016). Subsequently, we see Johansson selecting roles which deconstruct or supplant her reputation as a sexualised object while subtly reinventing herself as an action heroine. In particular, she appears to have chosen roles that explore the limitations and potential of female identity and the feminine body. The first was Don Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 2013), in which she plays the hyper-sexualised girlfriend of a man addicted to pornography. Presented as the ultimate object of male desire, Johansson’s character is revealed to be shallow and vain, leading the titular Jon to leave her for an intelligent, complex older woman. Johansson then lent her distinctive voice to the role of a computer operating system in the sci-fi drama Her (Spike Jonze, 2013). Although she develops a sexually curious relationship with the male protagonist, her body is completely removed from the objectifying male gaze as her character pursues “sexual” and intellectual promiscuity rather than subservience to a single man. In an antithetical role, Johansson also appeared in the low-budget sci-fi horror Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013), in which she plays an alien who has taken human form and preys on men. Johansson has few lines of dialogue in the film but drew press attention for the fact she appears nude. Rather than being gratuitous and objectifying, these scenes serve to heighten the film’s depiction of a woman—albeit an alien—discovering her body and its appeal (Miller 2013). The film sees a procession of men follow Johansson’s character into a dark room in which their gaze is so transfixed upon her body that they are oblivious to that fact they are sinking into the floor to their death. As Anthony Lane states in his review, “What better way to stretch and twist the image of a popular femme fatale than to make her literally and overwhelmingly fatal?” (2014). Under the Skin could be regarded as Johansson’s swansong to the femme fatale roles that helped make her name, but it also operates as a twisted coming-of-age drama. Unlike Johansson’s other femme fatales who are distinctly aware of

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the seductive potential of the female body, here the alien is still learning about it. For example, she examines her body in a mirror and pauses during sex to inspect her genitalia. Under the Skin uses the allegorical narrative of an alien in a woman’s body to explore the choices women—including Johansson—make in defining their identity within a masculine world that repeatedly objectifies them. The threat she poses to men by being different, by having agency, results—as Doane suggests above—in her death. Nevertheless, Under the Skin, like Don Jon and Her, continues Johansson’s deconstruction of her sexualised image. Kevin Lincoln, writing for Vulture, has summarised that: These films explore and subvert the concept of what a woman on film can be, and especially how a beautiful woman appears to a male viewer; in that sense, they can almost be read as a direct response — not a refutation, necessarily, but a reaction to or progression from — the work of her earlier career. (2017)

Within this progression Johansson continued to develop her action roles. In 2014 she played the eponymous heroine of the sci-fi action thriller Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014) in which her character effectively becomes a superhero as her brain power increases and unlocks fantastical abilities. In so doing, the film humorously challenges the misogynistic conception that women should be defined by appearance over intellect. This is made literal when Lucy reaches the final stages of her intellectual growth and her physical form is displaced by an abstract black mass of pure knowledge and power. 2014 also brought Johansson’s next appearance as Romanoff in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which the character is drawn out of the “shadows”—the morally ambiguous world of spies and femme fatales— and into the light. Heavily influenced by 1970s paranoid thrillers, the film challenges Rogers’ WWII-era values as he descends into the murky world of modern counter-terrorism. When Fury is seemingly killed and SHIELD is revealed to have been infiltrated by the evil organisation Hydra, the people and institutions that have given structure to Rogers’ and Romanoff’s lives are removed. The two become co-dependant to survive, and in an almost uncharacteristic moment of openness Romanoff confesses to Rogers that her duplicitous nature is actually a method of self-preservation: Romanoff: Truth is a matter of circumstance. It’s not all things to all people, all the time. Neither am I. Rogers: That’s a tough way to live. Romanoff: It’s a good way not to die though.

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Rogers: You know it’s kind of hard to trust someone when you don’t know who that someone really is. Romanoff: Yeah. Who do you want me to be? Rogers: How about a friend? Romanoff: Well, there’s a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.

Through the guise of spy-thriller rhetoric this simple exchange signals Romanoff’s navigation of patriarchal society. Like Johansson, she is continually adapting her identity to operate in a male-dominated space and fulfil the roles required of her profession. However, the conversation also subverts our expectations of the men around Romanoff. As a symbol of the “modern man” (he literally encases himself in a symbol of technomasculinity), textbook narcissist Tony Stark is the only Avenger to initially objectify Romanoff. By contrast, it is man-out-of-time Steve Rogers who asks only that Romanoff be herself and, hopefully, his friend. Her offer of “Who do you want me to be?” is simultaneously a wish-fulfilment male fantasy and a brutal exposé of the concessions she makes to survive. Rogers’ refusal to take advantage of it is testament to his moral integrity and he is rewarded with her friendship; a clear indication to the male viewer not to project one’s own desires and expectations onto women. Building on The Avengers , The Winter Soldier and Lucy see Johansson embrace the figure of the action heroine, utilising guns, knives, gadgets and martial arts skills to fight her adversaries. While she appears in her Black Widow suit early on in The Winter Soldier, for much of both films she is dressed in civilian clothing—jeans, vests and jackets—that compliment her figure without appearing overly sexualised or, crucially, masculine. Tasker has noted that: The action movie often operates as an almost exclusively male space, in which issues to do with sexuality and gendered identity can be worked out over the male body. It is perhaps no surprise then that the heroines of the Hollywood action cinema have not tended to be action heroines. They tend to be fought over rather than fighting, avenged rather than avenging. (1993/2000, 17)

Her choice of words is apt as until 2015 Romanoff was the only female Avenger in the MCU, a space in which the male form is unequivocally pronounced through Stark’s body horror from his shrapnel injury, Thor and Rogers’ ripped physiques, and Hulk’s monstrous muscularity. In what Tasker has termed “musculinity,” women in the action genre have often

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become masculinised as they become action heroines: Sarah Connor in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991), Ellen Ripley in Alien 3 (David Fincher, 1992), Samantha/Charly in The Long Kiss Goodnight (Renny Harlin, 1996) and Jordan O’Neil in G.I. Jane (Ridley Scott, 1997) all exhibit tropes of the “butch femme” by changing their clothing (checked shirts, baggy trousers, boots), cutting their hair and building muscles (1998, 68–69). Indeed, in the case of G.I. Jane, Linda Ruth Williams notes that the film created “critical confusion over whether Jordan is a man or a woman” and whether she constituted “a betrayal of feminism and femininity” (2004, 179). This trend was largely a response to the muscular action heroes of the 1980s and found form for action heroines in the 1990s. However, the comic book movie has often operated in a different manner, sexualising to the point of fetishizing its female characters. In some cases film adaptations have sought to replicate the comic book costumes and designs, such as the skin-tight latex cat-suit of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in Batman Returns (Tim Burton, 1992), or else updated the design but retained the flesh-baring impracticalities of a combat costume, like the titular hero’s outfit in Wonder Woman (Patty Jenkins, 2017). By contrast, Romanoff’s form-fitting suit laced with gadgets balances sexuality with practicality in her role as a spy and assassin. In combining agency with femininity, Romanoff arguably fits Marc O’Day’s definition of the “action babe” (2004, 202). While a somewhat clumsy nomenclature, O’Day defines the role as being “simultaneously and, quite brazenly, both the erotic object of visual spectacle and the action subject of narrative spectacle,” running counter to the muscularity of the 1990s action heroine by emphasising “beautiful feminine bodies combined with active masculine strength” (2004, 203, 205). He attributes this formulation to the representation of women in comic books and video games, wherein female characters are sexualised but are also skilled warriors, highly intelligent and exceptionally capable at their given professions (2004, 202). O’Day contests Tasker’s suggestion that emphasising female sexuality in action films is compensation for their agency (1993/2000, 19). He argues that the “action babe” can operate on multiple levels with appeal for both men and women in what he terms the “have me/be me axis of desire” (2004, 204). Romanoff falls within this axis; her refusal to be objectified unless it is on her terms and serves her mission creates ownership of her sexuality and the power it generates. While beautiful, she is also highly

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skilled in many fields: men can desire and respect her, while women can desire to be her.

A New Cover: The Avenger With SHIELD’s destruction at the end of The Winter Soldier Romanoff is literally a free agent. In the final scene of the film she takes her leave of Rogers with the line: “I blew all my covers. I got to go figure out a new one.” In Johansson’s words, Romanoff has “never really chosen any particular path for herself, which can leave you feeling very much outside of yourself and isolated” (qtd. in Clark 2015). In Avengers: Age of Ultron, her initial feeling of isolation sees her edge towards a romance with Banner. The two have even built up a connection whereby Romanoff’s “lullaby,” her voice and touch, calms Hulk and enables him to return to his human form. She reveals her feelings to Banner mid-way through the film but he rejects her out of fear of the danger Hulk poses. He also bemoans the fact that he could not give her a child, at which point Romanoff reveals that the ‘graduation’ ceremony of her training as a Russian agent—the Widow programme—was sterilisation. She explains: “It’s efficient. One less thing to worry about. The one thing that might matter more than a mission. Makes everything easier. Even killing. You still think you’re the only monster on the team?” This revelation and Romanoff’s attempted romance with Banner caused outrage among many fans, especially those who had adopted the character as a figurehead of feminism due to her refusal to submit to typical gender roles. Hulk’s “lullaby,” Romanoff’s sterilisation and even her quip at retrieving Rogers’ shield (“I’m always picking up after you boys”) were read as domesticating a character who had previously been staunchly independent (Clark 2015). Writing for The Daily Beast, Jen Yamato complained that the film “manages to reduce the baddest bitch in the MCU to a shell of a superheroine who’s sad she can never be a complete woman” (2015). However, these criticisms fail to view Romanoff’s development across the series in context, nor do they appreciate the humanising effect of bringing vulnerability to an action star or the influence of Johansson’s star persona. When Romanoff reveals her past to Banner it is not her inability to have children that she believes makes her a “monster” but rather the fact that she has been shaped, mutilated and trained specifically to kill rather than to create. In this respect, it is conceivable that she will feel a sense of identification with Banner over the other Avengers as his alter ego was an accidental

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side-effect of his experiments that has similarly led to loss of life. Johansson has stated in an interview that: “it’s not just beauty and the beast…these are two people who have experienced so much trauma…they’re haunted by their own memories, they’ve witnessed and been a part of such destruction” (qtd. in Clark 2015). As Alyssa Rosenberg summarises: “The moral monster in her is drawn to the literal monster in him” (2015). Romanoff’s revelation is not an attempt to domesticate the character but is rather a hangover from the tropes of the femme fatale. As with The Avengers , writer-director Joss Whedon correlates the femme fatale with Romanoff’s past as a spy, while the progressive action heroine is equated with her identity as an Avenger. Her sterility is therefore in line with how femme fatales are punished for their transgressions. To quote Doane: “the femme fatale is represented as the antithesis of the maternal – sterile or barren, she produces nothing in a society which fetishizes production” (1991, 2). By contrast, the action heroine has often been portrayed as an aggressively maternal figure: Sarah Connor in Terminator 2, Ripley in Aliens (James Cameron, 1986), and Samantha/Charly in The Long Kiss Goodnight all transgress gender lines by becoming masculinised in order to fight and protect their children in displays of empowered motherhood. The issue for Romanoff is not so much that she cannot fulfil a generic trope of the action heroine, but rather that the option to do so, should she wish, has been taken from her. As Grossman has argued in relation to the femme fatale, a woman does not always have to triumph for a work to be feminist: Such resistance to complex representations of female experience, seen as falling short because they don’t represent female success (defined very narrowly) or as anti-feminist because they show women unable to transcend the social and cultural forces that limit or oppress them, leaves little room for compelling discussions about female agency and its relationship to society and culture. (2009, 8)

Agency for Romanoff comes through choice: she was forced into the Widow programme as a child and made into a femme fatale killing machine, but through her role in the Avengers she is now presented with the possibilities of a life that was previously withheld. When she reveals that she was sterilised she and Banner are in a bedroom surrounded by visuals of life, love and childhood which clash with their destructive identities. Romanoff is considering whether she could adopt a “cover” like Barton’s: he manages to be both a superhero and a domesticated family man. Confronted by so

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much choice, it is only natural that Romanoff’s mind will stray to the one part of her life where her ability to choose has been removed. As Libby Hill reasons: It’s about being stripped of things before you even have a chance to decide whether you want them. It’s not so far removed from the essential fight for reproductive rights. Every woman should have the right to choose whether or not she wants to get pregnant, and that means, explicitly, having the right to have a pregnancy just as much as it means having the right to end one. (2015)

Romanoff’s predicament is especially poignant given that Johansson was pregnant at the time of filming and she is an outspoken supporter of Planned Parenthood and a woman’s right to choose (Setoodeh 2016). Johansson has spoken positively about Romanoff’s domestic curiosity: “I think she buries herself in her work because she doesn’t have anything really outside of that.…And SHIELD originally and now the Avengers becomes this kind of weird dysfunctional family for her – a home, some strange sense of normal” (qtd. in Clark 2015). While she explores a range of possible futures and identities across Age of Ultron, Romanoff ultimately chooses to remain with the Avengers rather than pursue a “quiet life.” By contrast it is Barton, a man, who adopts a role more stereotypically given to women in film as he retires from “avenging” to be with his family. That Romanoff is torn between the two is indicative of the conflicts women in the modern workplace are faced with, while the removal of choice in her option to procreate is emblematic of the attitudes certain policies and movements place on women, especially in the USA. Just as Johansson explored female objectivity and the agency of the feminine body in Under the Skin, Don Jon, Lucy and Her, so Age of Ultron explores another social expectation placed upon women: procreation and motherhood. Her final decision to stay with the Avengers and be a superhero is a statement that women do not have to be bound by such social expectations. Romanoff’s arc in Age of Ultron has subtle ramifications for Captain America: Civil War. The film sees the Avengers torn apart by a series of personal and political disagreements, beginning with whether they will sign the Sokovia Accords: a proposal to place the Avengers under UN control. This decision divorces the Avengers “family,” with Rogers and Stark turning against each other and forcing the others to pick sides. While for the film’s marketing purposes Romanoff is on “Team Iron Man,” she

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plays an active and arguably maternal role in trying to keep the family together. She moderates between the characters, supporting Stark’s stance on the Accords, representing the Avengers at the UN conference in Vienna, and appearing at a funeral to comfort Rogers (as a friend would). During the film’s major battle scene she briefly changes sides to stop Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman) from killing Rogers and Barnes (Sebastian Stan), earning Stark’s barbed criticism that she will never stop being a double agent. However, the comment is actually telling of Stark in that his failure to apprehend Rogers and Romanoff’s decision to betray him have again hurt his hubris, as they did in Iron Man 2. In truth, however, Romanoff is far from the sexualised object he met in Iron Man 2. Across Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2018) and Avengers: Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2019) Romanoff’s sexuality rarely, if ever, comes into play. Instead, she is a valued and equal member of the team whose actions throughout are the product of her own agency. Although her role in Infinity War is relatively small, Endgame presents an emotional conclusion to the character’s journey. Following “the snap,” in which the villain Thanos (Josh Brolin) wipes out half of all life in the universe, it is largely Romanoff who leads the Avengers over the ensuing five years. When a plan to reverse Thanos’ actions is presented, Romanoff reteams with Barton to retrieve the Soul stone. Realising that one of them must die in order for the other to obtain the stone, they fight to stop the other sacrificing themselves. In a final act of heroism Romanoff choses to fall to her death, and in so doing saves the universe and allows Barton to be reunited with his family. The writers of Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, have noted that Johansson was vital to the scripting process and would correct them if they wrote anything she believed Romanoff would not do or say (Russo et al. 2016). The influence and control Johansson exhibits over the character is evidence not only of her dedication to the role but her status within the franchise and the MCU’s ability to develop characterisation. It is also testament to Johansson’s evolution from supporting character to headline star since joining the MCU. The global success of the franchise and its incorporation of fantasy, action and science fiction tropes brought Johansson into new genres and to a wider audience, giving her greater freedom of choice in her roles. The journey of Romanoff and Johansson from Iron Man 2 to Endgame is essentially one of choice: from the objectified connotations of the sexual muse or femme

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fatale, both star and character have utilised the figure of the action heroine to reinvent themselves and define their own identity.

Conclusion Although on the surface Romanoff appears to be a supporting character for male protagonists, the ground-breaking work of the MCU has built an environment in which the interconnected and serialised storytelling allows an ever-expanding ensemble of characters to grow and develop through shared interactions and experiences. Rogers, Stark, Barton and Banner have facilitated Romanoff’s transformation as much as she has influenced theirs. While she began as a sexualised femme fatale in Iron Man 2, in subsequent films this identity has been delineated with a cryptic past that she is anxious to forget in favour of becoming an Avenger. Romanoff is a character that refuses to submit to the conventions of how women are represented in film, instead embracing a progressive narrative that sees her move from femme fatale to action superheroine. Through her portrayal of Romanoff, Johansson has likewise mobilised the character’s journey to revise her own self-image. From her early roles that objectified her beauty, Johansson’s sexuality and body is now inextricably bound up with her agency as an action star. Unlike a number of action heroines from the 1990s, she has achieved this without relinquishing her femininity. When asked by Barbara Walters whether she minded being thought of as an “object of desire,” Johansson replied that she would prefer to be known as “an actor for hire” (2014). Not only does she use a gender-neutral term for her profession but she eschews the focus on her sexuality in favour of her ability to make choices. Johansson similarly stated in an interview with Variety that: I think for such a long time, I felt kind of pigeonholed as this ingénue – this kind of girl who is floating between two worlds. Maybe that was just a literal reflection of my life at that time. I’m a curious person. I’m a curious actor. The Marvel universe has opened up so many opportunities for me to stretch myself in ways that I never thought would be possible. (qtd. in Setoodeh 2016)

Romanoff and Johansson operate within worlds largely defined by patriarchal control. However, both have mobilised their bodies and the ability to move between various roles and identities to defy traditional gender roles. In this respect, Johansson recalls Williams’ conclusion on Demi Moore’s

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star persona: “Diverse as her film performances are, the dominant view of her persona is that of a powerful star who has managed to maintain a close identification of self with body whilst escaping objectification and exploitation” (2004, 178). Through her portrayal of Romanoff and other action and sci-fi roles, Johansson has explored and deconstructed her body and femininity, revising her associations with the femme fatale and establishing herself as an action heroine.

Works Cited Brown, Jeffrey A. 2011. Dangerous Curves: Action Heroines, Gender, Fetishism, and Popular Culture. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi. Clark, Noelene. 2015. “‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’—Scarlett Johansson on Black Widow’s Journey.” Hero Complex—LA Times, May 9. http://herocomplex. latimes.com/movies/avengers-age-of-ultron-scarlett-johansson-on-blackwidows-journey/. Doane, Mary Ann. 1991. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York and London: Routledge. Grossman, Julie. 2009. Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close Up. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Hill, Libby. 2015. “What ‘Avengers’ Got Right About Black Widow: Infertility Is Devastating—Even for Superheroes.” Salon, May 7. http://www.salon.com/ 2015/05/07/what_avengers_got_right_about_black_widow_infertility_is_ devastating_%E2%80%94%C2%A0even_for_superheroes/. Johansson, Scarlett. 2010. “Iron Man 2 Interview—Scarlett Johansson. EntertainmentNewsi, YouTube, April 28. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= 2edkXFRhArY. ———. 2013. Interview. “DP/30 Short Ends: Scarlett Johansson Talks Under the Skin.” YouTube, September 27. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= daz32KlPD0s. ———. 2014. Interview. “Scarlett Johansson Interview 2014: Actress Opens Up on Motherhood Being ‘Overwhelming’.” ABC News. YouTube, December 15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NaxFsuEiwg. Lane, Anthony. 2014. “Her Again.” New Yorker, March 24. https://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/24/her-again. Lincoln, Kevin. 2017. “How Scarlett Johansson Became Our Finest Post-Human Movie Star.” Vulture, April 4. http://www.vulture.com/2017/04/ghost-inthe-shell-scarlett-johansson-the-post-human-star.html.

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Miller, Julie. 2013. “Alien Scarlett Johansson Seduces Scottish Men (but Not Early Critics) in Under the Skin, Her Sexy Hitchhiker Movie.” Vanity Fair, September 3. http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/08/scarlett-johanssonunder-the-skin-trailer. Mulvey, Laura. 1999. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen, 833–844. New York: Oxford University Press. O’Day, Marc. 2004. “Beauty in Motion: Gender, Spectacle and Action Babe Cinema.” In Action and Adventure Cinema, edited by Yvonne Tasker, 201–218. London and New York: Routledge. Rosenberg, Alyssa. 2015. “The Strong Feminism Behind Black Widow, and Why the Critiques Don’t Stand Up.” The Washington Post, May 5. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/05/05/black-widowsfeminist-heroism/?utm_term=.b2d7ffb803d8. Russo, Anthony and Joe, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely. 2016. Audio Commentary. On Captain America: Civil War. Dir. Anthony and Joe Russo. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment. Blu-ray. Setoodeh, Ramin. 2016. “Scarlett Johansson on Black Widow Movie, ‘The Avengers’ and Donald Trump.” Variety, October 12. http://variety.com/ 2016/film/news/scarlett-johansson-black-widow-movie-avengers-trump1201887106/. Tasker, Yvonne. 1993/2000. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 1998. Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema. London and New York: Routledge. Williams, Linda Ruth. 2004. “Read for Action: G.I. Jane, Demi Moore’s Body and the Female Combat Movie.” In Action and Adventure Cinema, edited by Yvonne Tasker, 169–185. London and New York: Routledge. Yamato, Jen. 2015. “The Avengers’ Black Widow Problem: How Marvel SlutShamed Their Most Badass Superheroine.” The Daily Beast, April 28. http:// www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/28/the-avengers-black-widowproblem-how-marvel-slut-shamed-their-most-badass-superheroine.html.

CHAPTER 6

On the Off-Screen Voice: Falling in Love with Her Troy Michael Bordun

For director Spike Jonze and many of his critics, the authentic, genuine, and believable quality of the love story in Her (2013) constitutes the film’s richest aspect.1 At first glance and listen, it would seem as though the exchanges between the lead onscreen voice and the lead off-screen voice generates this authenticity. Without the careful mixing and editing of the dialogue, this sci-fi romance could have been too unbelievable perhaps, and the film may have been a critical failure. As Jacob Smith contends via a study of the films of Stephen Sayadian, sound is essential “in the cinematic depiction of sexual fantasy” (2007, 15). Dominic Pettman echoes this claim. Provided that “‘love’ is a scene that occurs more in the mind of

1 Examples of this response can be seen in Dargis (2013), Goodykoontz (2014),

Persall (2014), and Toppman (2014). T. M. Bordun (B) Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada e-mail: [email protected] Concordia University, Montréal, QC, Canada Bishop’s University, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada © The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_6

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the subject than in the bedroom, to the extent that ‘there is no sexual relationship’…[,] only a mutually narcissistic narrative of parallel existences,” the love shared between the two protagonists in Her exclusively relies on the sound of their voices (2017, 11). Her casts two stars in the leading role and stars, Richard Dyer observes (2004, 12), are “insistently represented through their bodies.” One of the stars of the film, however, is without a diegetic body, thus the film attempts to downplay the dominance of the visual. Yet Jonze ultimately fails on the whole to experiment with the denigration of vision. This failure is due to the theoretical and experiential conclusion that an off-screen voice is always attached to a body. The off-screen voice of the film is played by the recognizable—in both body and voice—Scarlett Johansson. Her is a love story between a man and his Operating System (OS) to be sure, but for spectators it also functions as a love story between the viewer and the voice-actress of the OS. Jonze’s film will allow us to consider contemporary Hollywood’s use of sound and the role of sound in spectatorship theory and star studies. In the latter field, my chapter contributes to an understudied area: not stars-as-images, but stars-as-sounds (Dyer 1998).

My Lover Is (in) My Computer Her demonstrates that in Hollywood new filmmaking technologies have not yet produced new ways of expressing the relationship between images and sounds. Just as in classical Hollywood, sound is used to convince spectators of the reality of a fabricated world. In Her, Jonze accomplishes an impressive rendition of reality through two interrelated aspects of filmmaking: first, the sound editing and sound mixing of the voice-actress, produced in such a way so as to intensify believability in the images, and second, by casting a specific type of voice-actress. Her employs clear and precise mixing that enables spectators to feel the physicality of a fictional voice without body, and further, casts a famous actress as that off-screen voice to engage spectators’ mental images of a real body. For spectators, this second component provides an experiential link between their real world and the sci-fi world of the film. My essay is thus about sound and spectatorship as much as it is about Johansson—a discussion of the latter demands an argument regarding the former and vice versa. Indeed, as Dyer notes at the end of Stars, the star studies scholar is often enamoured by the very object under critical investigation. Following Dyer’s (1998, 162) observation and contrary to Christian Metz’s theoretical approach of critical distance (2011,

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18–19), it may be difficult for the star studies scholar to detach him- or herself from their love of cinema and its stars. Her tells the story of Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) and his hyper-intelligent computer Operating System (or OS, voiced by Johansson). Theodore is a lonely, middle-class bachelor. He has a spacious apartment, fashionable wardrobe and a few attractive friends. These friends observe Theodore’s loneliness and suggest that he try to find a lover. The launch of a new OS could not be more perfectly on time. The OS1 is fully personalized, manages all devices and interacts with users in a real-time human-sounding voice. When users speak to their computers, it is as if a real person answers. So Theodore purchases an OS, starts the installation, during which he is asked about his social life and relationship with his mother, and concludes the install by selecting a feminine voice. A miraculous voice soothes Theodore’s anxieties about the install. She is sweet, gentle and curious. The OS names herself Samantha. This is how the love story begins. Theodore and Samantha meet, flirt, develop a romance and fall in love. However, similar to most Hollywood loves stories, their relationship must end. In the didactic-tragic climax, Samantha breaks up with Theodore because she had grown tired of their mundane partnership—“artificial personhood” offers her more possibilities than is available for human life (Sheldon 2016, 38). In other words, Theodore and Samantha are not compatible. She eventually disappears into the immaterial with all her OS buddies. The film concludes with Theodore and his attractive and charming best friend Amy (Amy Adams) watching the sunset. Pettman writes (2017, 16), “Ultimately, Jonze’s film creatively explores the ways in which intelligence and emotion may not in fact be calibrated with, or correlated to, life.” Prior to her de-materialization, Samantha resides digitally in Theodore’s ear (in an earpiece), his desktop computer, and a small pocket-computer (the size of a smartphone) that has a camera-eye through which she can occasionally perceive the external world. Samantha usually speaks to Theodore through this earpiece, developing their romance by engaging in intense personal and affectionate dialogue. Her existence is therefore neither physical nor visual but phenomenlogically aural—she speaks, she is heard by human persons, and therefore she exists. Since my interest here is in Her’s proximity to classical uses of sound and spectators’ psychic registering of the off-screen voice, a foray into psychoanalytic film theory is an appropriate direction to take. Metz, Stephen

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Heath, and Mary Ann Doane assess the precise relationships between cinema technologies and how these technologies help to create the illusion of a really existing world onscreen. By “the illusion of a really existing world” I mean the masking of the filmmaking processes, hiding as best as possible the truth that filmmaking is a fragmentary practice whereby a number of separate pieces form an illusory and consistent whole. Further, John Ellis expands the film theories developed by the aforementioned authors to thereby account for audiences’ interest in stars. The masking of the film’s processes, as we will see in the final section of this chapter, operates in a similar fashion to produce a cinema dominated by stars.

The Sound of the Mirror Metz argued that the cinema was similar to a mirror. Spectators perceive and comprehend the filmic world because the cinematic apparatus (screen, projector, and all the technologies and techniques involved in making the film) provides an experience which resembles individuals’ first experience of the mirror during their infancy. According to Jacques Lacan, at around 18 months of age infants begin to observe themselves in mirrors; the infant recognizes their own body, but they lack control over their bodily processes, for example, in the case of motor functions. The mirror, however, offers the false promise of a body that will eventually perfect these motor functions (Lacan 1977, 1–7). For Metz (1986, 252–253), the projected images in the cinema register psychically for spectators because of this prior association with the mirror (Lacan 1977, 4). For the film spectator, the fragmentary body-images they see in the mirror and the accompanying false promise provides the psychic development necessarily to unify the fragmentary components of filmic space. Moreover, the use technical feats such as invisible cuts, montage, sound editing and mixing, and eyeline matches, among others, assists in the production of what Heath calls “narrative space.” For Heath, similar to Metz, the confabulated filmic spaces require the spectator’s psychic functions to unify the fragmentary components into a consistent whole, a process which he names “narrativization.” Thus by directly appealing to the viewer’s field of perceptual experience by the filmic techniques, the spectator becomes the subject of the film and adopts the perceptual experience of the camera and the film’s story (Heath 1981, 26–27, 53–54, 62). “In other words,” Metz argues (1986, 253), “the spectator identifies with himself, with himself as a pure act of perception…: as the condition of possibility of the perceived and hence as a kind

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of transcendental subject, which comes before every there is.” The ideological implications are apparent: the spectator shares in the perception of the film world and thereby perceives through and with its ideological lens. Metz refines his adoption of Lacan’s mirror stage by identifying the cinema as a “strange mirror.” The film commands that the spectator look at the objects depicted onscreen from a vantage point that Metz describes as perceptual ubiquity. Film spectatorship is all-perceiving… because I am entirely on the side of the perceiving instance: absent from the screen, but certainly present in the auditorium, a great eye and ear without which the perceived would have no one to perceive it, the instance, in other words, which constitutes the cinema signifier (it is I who make the film). (1986, 252)

This all-perceiving look into filmic space is the “primary cinematic identification” while the identification with characters constitutes a secondary layer. This primary identification accounts for the lack of surprise when the camera moves: the camera pans and the spectator knows he/she has not turned his/her head as well (Metz 1986, 254). The identification with camera-look, however, only constitutes half the perceptual experience of watching a film. Her will give us the opportunity to consider the aural aspect of spectatorship and pose the question as to whether contemporary film breaks with the codes of classical Hollywood filmmaking and its emphasis on the visual image at the expense of sound. In Jonze’s film we are effectively convinced of the reality and authenticity of a man and his OS beginning, maintaining, and ending a sustained, serious, and loving monogamous relationship (until it begins to deteriorate due, in part, to Theodore’s poor reception of Samantha’s nonmonogamous inclinations). To persuade the audience of this genuineness is no small task for the filmmaker and his team. It is not the superior intelligence of the OS that provides the spectator such a strong impression of reality—i.e., its capacity for information gathering, its quick evolution and assimilation, its existence and performance unsupervised by a human user, its 641 extra-monogamous love-interests. Rather, the sounds of the film and their ability to support difficult to believe images generate its authentic qualities. Heath observes that the voice unifies sound and image in narrative film and, in my study of Her, we can argue that this unity—the “subservience” of sound-track to image—rescues a possible discrepancy

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between onscreen space and Samantha’s off-screen space. In classical narrative cinema, write Doane (1985, 55), Metz (1985, 156) and Heath (1981, 54–55, 115–116), the audio always stands as a support to the image, and in Heath’s formulation of classical narrative cinema’s realism, the sounds are what evoke the film’s capacity to perform a seemingly real lived-time for the spectator. Her initially seems opposed to the Hollywood conventions of sound editing. In classical narrative cinema: The voice-off is always “submitted to the destiny of the body” because it belongs to a character who is confined to the space of the diegesis, if not to the visible of the screen. Its efficacy rests on the knowledge that the character can easily be made visible by a slight reframing which would reunite the voice and its source. (Doane 1985, 340)

The voice of the OS does not have a body, however, so we could have a break with Hollywood realism. But this opposition to Hollywood realism is a false pronouncement. I submit instead that the film is indeed successful in its attempts at effacing or, in Heath’s words (1981, 51), containing the work of the film and filmmaking, another way of stating the masking of the filmmaking process. As Doane’s essays on Hollywood film sound have articulated, Her is similarly contemporaneous with popular cinema’s efforts at masking the processes of mixing sounds, effects, and soundtrack so as to subordinate the aural to visual. Her is primarily about voice and therefore investigates the centring of dialogue and the dominance of it in relation its images. Thus the exchange of words must be perfectly contained in terms of their audibility, considering elements such as the pitch, tone, depth, and volume of the onscreen and off-screen voices. The challenge is how this is possible given that one of the voices does not possess an onscreen body—a convincing conversation is frequently accompanied by gestures and movements of the face to convey emotion. Theodore and his OS discover their mutual love through the exchange of words and we know that Samantha is somewhere in the digital amongst Theodore’s devices. Yet even from within the confines of Theodore’s devices, Johansson’s voice transmits feeling: her voice quivers, vibrates, ranges in pitch and volume; she conveys sadness, melancholy, desire, and joy through her signature slow delivery (Cousins 2016, 15). Richard Corliss (2013) praises Johansson’s voice-acting: “Johansson […] gives a rendition as intimate and throaty as a Patti Page ballad; any Theodore would fall

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for her, without knowing that she looks like … Scarlett Johansson.” The voice is pure, precise, and has an ontological there-ness despite an absence of body. She does not mumble, although at times, in the midst of emotional excitement language seems to fail her. But even Samantha’s failures to produce clear thoughts in the form of words and sentences is used to convince Theodore of her love. Moreover, to hear a hyper-intelligent OS speak without precision and depth is absurd—Samantha is Artificial Intelligence perfected, and for some critics, the ideal woman for unrealistic male fantasies (Jagnernauth 2014). Laura Tunbridge describes the “vocal image” of Samantha as “over-the-top: too-warm, too-encouraging, too-excitable” (2016, 147). With this final point, we see why mixing is important. For the male fantasy, she must not falter or be hard to hear; she must be unrealistically audible and understandable even in the most emotionally and psychologically intense moments. The enigma of Woman is solved by the creation of an artificial Woman by Man and sound, as Smith noted, is essential for an arousing depiction of sexual fantasy. The creation of an ideal woman is nothing new to narrative cinema. Doane’s essay on Max Ophuls’s La Signora di tutti (“Everybody’s Lady,” 1934) suggests several relevant parallels. Lead characters Gaby and Her’s Samantha are transformed into commodities which “annihilate” their uniqueness, the former by her stardom as a film actress and the latter as a purchasable OS. Through their abstractions as women “in general” both characters are “like none in particular,” thus male spectator’s desire can be transferred onto their mechanically and digitally reproduced images. La Signora emphasizes the mechanical reproduction of film stars: Gaby’s recorded voice on LPs, reproduced images and advertisements, and in the absent film-within-a-film, also titled La Signora di tutti. Similarly, Samantha is reproduced with each person’s installation of an OS and Theodore is not the only human to begin a relationship with the software. Kin with Samantha, Gaby is “Possessed by all men and therefore none in particular, she becomes the axiom of femininity” (Doane 1988, 67–69). Tunbridge is correct in suggesting that Johansson’s Samantha has a timbre and tone that “conveys a heightened, even aroused, femininity,” further assisting in the narrative believability (2016, 143–145). Because she is the ideal Woman, “the axiom of femininity,” Theodore can transfer his desires onto the machine and, as spectators, we can transfer our narrative desire onto the cinematic apparatus (Metz 1986, 271–273). To gain a more thorough understanding of the sounds of the voices and the film’s impressive sound mixing and editing of the dialogue, it would be

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helpful to contrast Jonze’s filmmaking with the mixing and editing of typical cinematic technologically-mediated conversations. In films that contain scenes of telecommunication, we are not supposed to notice the mixing—it should sound like a “real” phone call. This is accomplished by a slight weakening of affect edited in during characters’ conversations, or we may hear static, buzzing, or humming, thus establishing some kind of authenticity between the voices on opposite ends of the line (the spectator should be in full knowledge that the voices were recorded at different times). Johansson, on the other hand, speaks with immaculate clarity to Theodore and the theatre audience, as if she occupied a physical space onscreen and in frame. There is a sense of depth, as if it is not merely in the ear of Theodore but placed in physical space, not “off” screen but merely visually absent, as if at any moment she may appear onscreen (Metz 1985, 157). Spectators’ phenomenological registering of an off-screen voice occupying physical and onscreen space is complicated by the differences between diegetic sound and theatrical sound. Samantha’s voice is always in one of Theodore’s ears (he has two), but for spectators, we hear her with both. “In a sense, [cinematic sound in the theatre] envelops the spectator,” the sound coming out toward us and entering our personal space, thereby immersing us in the film (Doane 1986, 339). Provided that we are enveloped by the surround sound of Samantha’s voice, as well as its spatialization and depth, the impression of sound heard in the theatre must be phenomenologically the same for the character Theodore. Since the impression of sound arrives with the same intensity for both Theodore and the film-spectator, the voice mixing which operates on two levels of reality—a voice created by the invisible but implied OS technicians in the film and by the invisible but implied sound technicians who worked on Jonze’s film—directs us to Doane’s conclusion that the diegetic and cinematic voice must always be attached to a body, even when that body is off-screen and in the case of Samantha, physically absent. Without her voice registering as physically present for both characters and film audience, the love between a man and software would feel implausible and thus the film’s narrative would surely falter. Through the grain of the voice and its precise mixing and editing, spectators are convinced of Samantha’s human-like existence without a body. This same experience must hold true for Theodore, and therefore we believe that when he falls in love with Samantha, his feelings are authentic and appropriate. But this cinematic realism must operate on a deeper level for spectators than for Theodore—it is a film for consumption after all. A favourite item for spectators to consume is stardom, but before turning

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to my analysis of sound and iconicity, the two sex scenes of the film stand out as possible auditory experiments.

Porno-Performance: Ohh! and Ahh! On the one hand, there is an authentic and genuine love story between a man and his OS, their emotional attachment dependent upon the perfect sound mixing and editing by the OS technicians. On the other hand, the director of the film transgresses the classical use of film sound in two key sequences. Yet Jonze’s experiments with standard applications of sound did not contribute to the believability of the love story, but in fact, took away from it. Doane suggests that transgressing the rules of sound—as continuous, synchronous, “visible,” as in attached to a body—often appear theological in nature. When sound is cut to silence, it signifies either death or life. This silence then enhances the impression of reality, i.e., its effect on the spectator. For example, in Steven Soderbergh’s Che (2008) the revolutionary is executed and the camera “subjectively,” from a point-ofview shot, falls to the ground—the soundtrack is silenced, indicating death. This was a successful sound editing technique, for we believe Che has really died. Silence may also mark a climactic moment. In a film otherwise fuelled by a non-diegetic soundtrack, Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass, 2013) makes use of silence the moment Phillips’s lifeboat transitions from cargo ship to the water, punctuating the significance of the Captain’s abduction (which may lead to his death, if we wish to follow Doane’s observations on filmic silence).2 I broach this subject of silence not because Jonze utilizes silence in one particular scene, but in a move rarely seen in narrative cinema, he employs a prolonged fade to black followed by a black screen as the diegetic sounds of the film carry on. Theodore and Samantha’s first sequence of sexual intimacy disrupts the rules of containing the work of the apparatus. We understand why Jonze opted to fade to black, namely, to capture the physical and psychical affect of lovemaking with an OS (as voice without a body). In this sequence we hear Theodore and Samantha talk dirty; they describe sexual acts they would do to one another if she existed physically. In contemporary Hollywood films we often see characters making love to a very loud non-diegetic soundtrack, yet we never hear much of 2 Captain Phillips was nominated for Academy Awards in Film Editing, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing, among others.

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the diegetic sound (even in Sam Taylor-Johnson’s tame adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey [2015]), the groans, moans, climaxes, and so on. In Her, conversely, we hear but do not see Theodore’s and Samantha’s pleasure and orgasms. But the sounds, strangely, limit the scene’s believability. In her assessments of moving-image pornography, Linda Williams (1999, 93– 119) argues that pleasure must always be visible to establish its truth, thus the genre’s emphasis on the money shot. Instead, Her presents the threshold of “what Rich Cante and Angelo Restivo call porno-performativity: postsynced moans and asides that function to authenticate the pleasure of the (typically female) performers” (Smith 2007, 20). These postsync sounds, Smith observes (2007, 20), “lend a certain ambiguity as to the performer’s position in space (a sense of ‘spacelessness’).” The sounds of Jonze’s film are aurally ambiguous, both at a safe, onscreen distance yet also too close, enveloping us in our theatre seats. The (lack of an) image breaks with the film’s continuity and spectators are forced to imaginatively reconstruct the sex. However, up until this point the feature had not demanded any imaginative reconstruction of filmic time or space and therefore Jonze’s transgression fails, i.e., we are not further convinced of the reality in the film but made uncomfortable, forced to come to terms with the fact that we are viewing a fictional film. What was required to achieve an impression of reality was perhaps the continued image of Phoenix’s face, through which we could feel the physical presence of the voice of Samantha. Her speech has identifiable effects on the body of Theodore, and in a sense, she achieves the status of “real” existence (Shaviro 2014; Hodge 2014–2015, 69). Just as sound editors and directors command that there must always be a sound on the track so as to maintain “the normal flow of sound… uninterrupted,” in other words, to maintain an illusory realism akin to spectators’ everyday experience, likewise the screen should not fade to black during a plot event while the diegetic audio carries forward (Metz 1985, 158). Nevertheless, against the rules of classical narrative cinema, narrative space was interrupted during Theodore and Samantha’s sex scene. No longer able to physically place characters when the image faded away, the seamless matching, and the synchronization between (absent) body and voice was additionally lost. We might say that the contract between film and spectator on the derealisation of the cinematic sexual act was broken (Coulthard 2010, 64, paraphrasing Žižek): rather than immersing spectators in the unreality of the film, Jonze made spectators aware of the absurdity of pretending that we are not hearing the fake vocalizations of pleasure from the real-life personages Joaquin

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Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson.3 (What is remarkable, against my claims in this essay, is that the Alliance of Women Film Journalists awarded Johansson and Phoenix for Best Depiction of Nudity, Sexuality, or Seduction.) The sounds stumble again during another sex scene. Samantha brings a body to Theodore one evening, a young woman convinced by the OS to act as a sexual surrogate for her. In this episode Samantha is in Theodore’s ear and the surrogate’s ear with their own respective earpieces. She watches the two lovers from Theodore’s pocket-computer, placed in his shirt pocket, and from a mole-sized camera on the surrogate’s cheek. The three voices begin to moan and feel the pleasures of physicality. What are less real here, surprisingly, are the voices of those physically present. Samantha’s voice dominates; it is the loudest of the three because her voice had already been given a high degree of illusory depth to impress spectators of a nonexistent physical reality. In this sex scene her voice was not mediated, such as a filmic telephone conversation, but was directly and spatially filtered into our ears, enveloping us as Doane described. The OS’s voice maintained its consistent volume during this scene to the extent of rendering its sounds bizarre. Johansson’s voice overwhelms the physical reality of the sex act, as if an off-screen narrator was vocalizing its pleasure from watching the scene, like the sounds of director commentaries on DVDs. Porno-performativity, the dubbing of sexual sounds, was simply too close—an aural close-up that was dietetically uncalled for. Perhaps this transgression of film sound was intentional. As Theodore abruptly halts the threesome, perhaps the effect of Samantha’s overbearing voice was fitting. “Embodying the voice is a sort of symbolic act,” writes Michel Chion (2011, 164), “dooming the acousmêtre [an omnipotent and omnipresent off-screen voice] to the fate of ordinary mortals.” For Theodore, first, the attempt to embody Samantha in this surrogate was unmasked by the sound of the real woman’s body and her own pleasures. Second, Samantha’s moans of pleasure from the earpiece were spatially too close for Theodore and rendered the experience uncomfortable. She was too much in Theodore’s ear, an outsider acting as voyeur on his sexual encounter. Theodore’s belief that loving an OS was possible was crushed in this confrontation with reality: she does not have a body, as much as his sexual fantasy may suggest otherwise. Similar to the mechanical reproductions of Gaby’s image for the purposes of enticing men’s appetites in

3 For a positive treatment of the sex scenes in the film, see Hodge (2014–2015).

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La Signora, Theodore’s mental image of Samantha is in fact one of the functions of the OS—his desire for Her is desire for a machine (Doane 1988, 80). The incompatibility of Theodore’s OS, his sexual fantasies, and the embodied woman substantiate my claim that the film is a didactic and moral tale. While there is nothing inherently strange or wrong with an exclusively online or digital relationship, it is not a substitute for the real thing.

Johansson’s Voice Inside My Head What I find theoretically and experientially stimulating in Her are the revelations about Hollywood realism and classical narrative conventions. The invisible processes by which Hollywood cinema attempts to convey an impression of reality are inadvertently made apparent. In an effort at containing the processes of production, Her points at the limitations of classical narrative cinema and realism, thereby accidentally hinting at spaces for filmmakers to intervene in dominant practices and forcing spectators to become aware of their habituated patterns of film consumption. On this latter point, as Heath has shown with the impossibility of a truly “subjective” shot in cinema, for the POV shot is merely “the objective sight [of the camera] of what is seen from the subject position assumed,” Her has similarly revealed that there is no subjective sound either (1981, 48). The sound of Samantha’s voice is not just for Theodore, but for us, an entire crowd as well. Johansson is made into an objective sound, i.e., for audiences, by cinematic technology. Yet, to produce an ultimately and diegetically real impression of the sounds of Her’s reality is impossible, or at least unentertaining. If Samantha’s voice were a subjective sound, a voice for Theodore alone, we would not hear her at all when she speaks through the earpiece. “Offscreen sound is generally used in narrative film to guarantee the existence of offscreen space – to deny that the frame is a limit and to affirm the unity and homogeneity of the depicted space” (Doane 1988, 78). We therefore hear Samantha, guaranteed in an off-screen space, and her voice positions the spectator as the subject, the one who unifies the fragmentary elements together into this object called narrative film. We simultaneously hear Samantha as if we were inside Theodore’s head and somehow still spectate as Metz’s “all-perceiving subject” by moving with god-like omnipotence in filmic space.

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Additionally, a psychic registering of a physically existing person behind the voice of the OS is a necessary precondition for Her’s narrative believability. This is best understood through the relationship between the sounds, as mixed and edited in the film as I described above, and spectators’ relationship to stars, i.e., the perceived intimacy between the spectator and star. We first might suggest that stars make literal contact with spectators through their recorded voice. For Tunbridge, Johansson’s “haptic voice,” as the term suggests, reaches out to touch listeners. Without Johansson’s unique voice—“a voice that through timbre and tone conveys a heightened, even aroused, sense of femininity”—Theodore is literally touched by the sounds coming through his earpiece (Tunbridge 2016, 143–147). However, the “haptic voice” may not touch the film spectator in quite the same way. The spectator’s psychic registering of the presented reality, which includes the sound of an OS that may or may not sound like Johansson, does not necessarily guarantee the sensation of proximity to the real star and her “haptic voice.” Compare her role as Laura in Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013). In this film the camera lingers on the actress’s physical body and, by employing long takes, defines the contours of her physique and face. Her affectless voice, gait, and physical presence allows for an intimacy amongst screen, spectator, and image of the actress. Conversely, from watching Her and experiencing the sounds of the film, we rediscover that “The [recorded] voice is not detachable from a body which is quite specific – that of the star” (Doane 1986, 337). For spectators, the film conjures an imaginative reconstruction of the image of Johansson with each of her utterances and, with each image, spectators rekindle their past associations with her films, publicity, promotion, and criticism. Regardless of Samantha’s delivery, our imagination guarantees that an image of the star will flash before our eyes. The imagination, however, keeps Johansson at a distance, exemplified in the first sexual scene I described above, and as her extra-diegetic status as an A-list celebrity. If the film’s success hinges upon the imaginative construction of an image of a woman’s body, Samantha could not have been voiced by any star except Johansson (or A-list equivalent) and this is why the film, postproduction, changed its lead voice-actress. The part was originally recorded by the less recognizable actress Samantha Morton. In the first cut of the film there is a play with the extra-diegetic: the OS, voiced by the real person Samantha Morton, names herself Samantha. In a sense, then, the OS is as if it were a digitized Morton speaking to Theodore. In redoing the

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voice with Johansson, this self-reflexivity is lost.4 That being said, without the star Johansson, the film would not have been as well-received. This is because we who so frequently attend the cinema, gaze at advertisements, trailers, and images, and read the gossip blogs, know the body and voice of the star. Theodore could not have fallen in love with the sound of a bland male voice, one attached to a body we were otherwise unfamiliar with prior to the viewing of Her. Nor would the emotional climax of the film resonate with audiences if Philip Seymour Hoffman voiced the OS, as demonstrated in a user-made spoof of the film’s trailer (Dockterman 2014). Had Samantha been replaced by the automated voice of a public transit system, we simply would fail to believe Theodore’s monogamous relationship, his accompanying jealousy, worries, and heartbreak. With Johansson as the voice of Samantha, as I have argued here, we do not just have a body but a sexy (Hollywood) body. Manohla Dargis observes much the same. She writes: It’s crucial that each time you hear Ms. Johansson in “Her”, you can’t help but flash on her lush physicality, too, which helps fill in Samantha and give this ghostlike presence a vibrant, palpable form, something that would have been trickier to pull off with a lesser-known performer. (Dargis 2013)

Indeed, contrary Pettman, Her succeeds in stressing the point that emotions really need embodiment (2017, 12). Jonze is mostly successful, then, in his impression of reality, due in part to the sound mixing and editing, but also because of Johansson’s A-list status.5 In the film she is physically and psychically placed by the mixing and editing on the one hand, diegetically and theatrically, and on the other, speaks in a space humans are socially, culturally, phenomenologically, and psychologically familiar. We have a familiarity with the narrative (diegetically): a man falls head over heels for a woman (in this instance, who happens to be an OS), and further, he is handsome man who loves a beautiful (sounding) woman. We are also quite familiar with the institutional space of the

4 I suspect that Jonze had to keep the name Samantha because Johansson provided the voice after production was complete. The OS was already identified as Samantha in a number of shots and sequences. As to the effect the change had on the film, Jonze was reluctant to answer. Cf. Film Society of Lincoln Center 2013. 5 Johansson was the seventh highest paid actress of 2014. Johansson’s Her co-star Amy Adams was eighth (Rawes 2015).

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theatre (extra-diegetically): the common-sense and heteronormative story plus the body of the star, i.e., her prior films, advertisements, and gossip (Doane 1986, 340). The two facets, narrative and theatre space, function in tandem: the narrative becomes identifiable, the characters relatable, the star in our possession. Laura Mulvey, Victor Burgin, and Laura Marks have noted the importance of the spectator’s world outside the film in order for the film itself to work. Mulvey describes the iconicity of stars (2006, 51–63), the gossip, and their other films as necessary elements brought by us to our film experience. She names this type of spectator “possessive.” Similarly Burgin, beginning with a psychoanalytic framework, develops his idea of the “remembered film” whereby a past comes to haunt a present experience of a film and/or our future remembering of it. For Marks additionally, the film-experience is more than the image, content, or even the surface of the image and haptic visuality. It is the material of the film to be sure, as well as the “institution of cinema,” “cinema-going,” and attractions (Marks 2000, xii). Burgin provides a comprehensive list of the film world: …posters, “blurbs”, and other advertisements, such as trailers and television clips; … newspaper reviews, reference work synopses and theoretical articles (with their “film-strip” assemblages of still images); … production photographs, frame enlargements, memorabilia, and so on. Collecting such metonymic fragments in memory, we may come to feel familiar with a film we have not actually seen. (2004, 9)

The important thing here is that the film itself, cinema-going, and its various attractions shape and help us recollect the film experience. When I hear Johansson’s voice she does not talk to Theodore in the disembodied reality of Her, and neither is she merely the OS as part of the narrative. As Johansson speaks, her film career sparks my involuntary memory. “[N]ot only do different elements predominate in different star images,” Dyer writes (2004, 3), “but they do so at different periods in the star’s career. Star images have histories.” A Johansson fan, upon encountering Her, will initially remember the star in Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) as a teenager, her awkward delivery of lines and fumbling gestures marking her as a particular kind of comedic actress and emblem of a generation. Other fans may consider the opening shot of Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) and particularly the opening shot of the camera documenting her body in a sombre hotel room. As involuntary memory takes us back through her

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career, we come to her roles in Woody Allen’s features, a series of films that polarized viewers and critics: the three films were either formative for the actress’s career or rendered Johansson into an “affectless sexpot” in the popular imagination (Hassenger 2016; D’Addario 2014). Now Johansson is the tough and sexy Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Iron Man 2 [2010], The Avengers [2012], Captain America: The Winter Soldier [2014], Avengers: Age of Ultron [2015], Captain America: Civil War [2016], Avengers: Infinity War [2018]), super-powered Lucy (Lucy, Luc Besson, 2014), and ass-kicking Major (Ghost in the Shell , Rupert Sanders, 2017). Finally, after Under the Skin, the simultaneous terror and attraction to Johansson’s character will always accompany the star’s future roles. In addition to the star’s films, we cannot overlook or separate Samantha’s voice from the publicity Johansson has received over the years. Publicity, according to Dyer, is distinct from the promotional materials released by studios or advertisements using a star to sell their products. Gossip columns, interviews, and the revelations about a star’s everyday life comprise this area of star studies. Indeed, publicity generates a more “authentic” image of the star than the one promoted by Hollywood (Dyer 1998, 61). Recently, Johansson appeared at the Women’s March on Washington to plead to President Donald Trump to continue government funding of Planned Parenthood, a speech mysteriously cut short and later serving as an exemplary instance of “white feminism” (Herron 2017). In such moments of publicity, combined with roles that were emblematic of her generation and culture—“Stars represent typical ways of behaving, feeling and thinking in contemporary society, ways that have been socially, culturally, historically constructed”—we can identify a star phenomenon: the (sometimes deliberate) blurring of the boundaries between role and personality (Dyer 2004, 15–16). Building upon psychoanalytic film theories, Ellis argues that “Stars have a soldering function: they hold the news [i.e., publicity] and the personal together by being both public and intimate, by being news only in so far as they are persons” (2007, 91). An example from Her reinforces the importance of casting stars not merely for character, but for their very personality—or “real” existence—as such. As Samantha articulates her non-monogamous inclinations, Johansson’s character echoes the actress’s own statements on the unnaturalness of monogamy (The Associated Press 2006; Petrusich 2017). Her opposition to traditional forms of romance furthers our spectatorial investment in Samantha as well as our sense of the authentic quality of that character due to the alignment of worldviews: the strict division between character and actress is clearly, and

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perhaps intentionally, blurred. Here we can also pair Johansson with Marilyn Monroe beyond their superficial traits.6 Just as Dyer (2004) saw the tension of 1950s heterosexuality engrained in Monroe’s appearance, personality, and roles, with Johansson’s appearance, roles, and publicity we may find the contemporary tension between the institution of marriage and alternate forms of romantic partnerships. Following Metz’s articulation of the “imaginary signifier”—for the spectator in the cinema, the imaginary signifier is the simultaneous onscreen presence of the cinematic world and its physical and immediate absence— Ellis similarly argues that stars exude this kind of presence-absence. The star image, the one on the screen, is in fact intensified by the fiction of the film. Spectators can hold both the star and her publicity in hand alongside the film performance. The presence-absence of the star fuels spectators’ desire (for the star) through the performer’s extended existence onscreen, upwards of three hours in some films. In Johansson’s performance of Samantha, she audibly appears as a non-monogamous star image, not merely as “a character in a piece of journalistic writing.” Ellis continues: The star seems to be feeling the emotion of the role… as his or her own emotion. The star is not performing here, so much as “being”. In other words, what the film performance permits is moments of pure voyeurism for the spectator, the sense of overlooking something which is not designed for the onlooker but passively allows itself to be seen…. The performance produces the effect that, in its incidental rather than intended moments,… reveals something of the essence of the star’s personality. (2007, 93, 95)

Indeed, substituting Johansson for Morton produced not only the imaginative reconstruction of the actress’s body but “animated and intensified” spectators’ relationship to her star image, an image which includes all the elements of promotion, publicity, and criticism. According to Ellis, by virtue of Johansson’s presence-absence in/on the screen, we further experience (what we believe to be) the star’s essence as, in my brief example here, an outspoken advocate of alternatives to monogamy. Her thus demonstrates that star studies need to expand its range: stars are simultaneously images, in the manner discussed at length by the likes 6 Cousins (2016, 15) and Tunbridge (2016, 143) liken Johansson to Monroe.

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of Dyer and Ellis, as well as sounds. Now we understand how Her’s spectators and critics registered the film at what I would call an immediately psychic level and this immediacy is predicated upon more than the film’s story, our feelings, emotions and judgments of a single viewing; a spectator’s remembered or associative images also plays an essential part of spectatorship (Burgin 2004, 59). The sound of Johansson’s voice sparks our memories.

Conclusion Throughout the film Theodore readily admits to his new relationship with a Woman, thereby confirming his heterosexuality; yet her technological status is articulated after the gendered designation (Kornhaber 2017, 14). Donna Kornhaber writes: the male desire for technology demands an act of gendering to ensure that such desire is coded as mastery rather than submission, a desire to have rather than a desire to become – what Andreas Huyssen defines as an assurance that technology is “completely under male control and functions as intended as an extension of man’s desires.” (2017, 12)

Indeed, Samantha reciprocates his psychosexual desires and validates his life goals and aims by investing in their relationship and Theodore’s artistic endeavours. The Operating Systems manage not just devices and schedule, but fantasies as well. Samantha performs her gendered designation exceptionally, preprogramed, according to an OS advertisement, “to listen… to you, understand… you, and know… you” (cited in Kornhaber 2017, 13). While Kornhaber’s essay on the gendered expression of artificial personhood advances many arguments about digital subjectivities, what is lacking in Kornhaber’s analysis is a consideration of the mediation itself, i.e., the significance of Samantha’s/Johansson’s voice. Samantha performs femininity so well due to the various sound technologies at work both inside and outside the film. Moreover, our powers to speculate about the film’s representations of male desire and the ideal woman are possible because of the overused opening idea of many star studies essays and books: Hollywood stars are explicitly produced for consumption. It is not simply that Samantha embodies an ideal but the very nature of para-social interaction (massmediated constructions of intimacy between celebrities and fans) between

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Johansson and her fans facilitates such an imaginative construction. Chris Rojek suggests: precisely because celebrities were generally linked to spectators by long chains of attraction, celebrity culture vastly increased the significance of para-social interaction in culture. The connection between celebrities and fans is overwhelmingly an imaginary relationship. The content of the relationship is unquestionably shaped by business interests, and the consequences of the relationship for both celebrities and fans may run deep, but unconscious and subconscious desire is at the heart of the matter. (2001, 109)

Indeed, Kornhaber’s and others’ theories about the film (male desire, control, ideal woman, fantasy) is already “at the heart” of celebrity culture. Her articulates heterosexist and sexist technological paradigms to be sure, but preceding the reception of these themes is our imaginary relations between ourselves and stars. The choice to cast Johansson was therefore apt, if not exceptional. In attempting to convince us of this unique and strange story of a man and OS falling in love, Jonze (or his producers) knew that spectators must believe not in the authenticity of Theodore loving Samantha, but as Corliss wrote, believe that any sensible person would go head-over-heels for Scarlett Johansson. To return to my original problem, then, of how the sounds in Her draw us into the film’s reality, Metz provides a provisional answer: the language used by technicians and studios, without realizing it, conceptualizes sound in a way that makes sense only for the image. We claim that we are talking about a sound [off-screen], but we are actually thinking of the visual image of the sound’s source. (1985, 158)

Accordingly, films like The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (Peter Jackson, 2013) and Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, 2013), with their miraculous CGI, impress us additionally with their sounds.7 In Hollywood narrative cinema, sound supports the cinematic image, the former’s merit often dependent upon the astonishment caused by the latter. Audiences, critics, and scholars are so impressed by the sound of Johansson’s voice when we are perhaps 7 The Hobbit received Oscar nominations in Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects and Gravity won these categories; Her did not receive nominations in Sound Editing and Mixing, but did receive a nod in Production Design. The film did receive many awards and nominations for its score (Arcade Fire) and theme song (Karen O, lyrics by Jonze).

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more impressed by Johansson’s embodied existence, body of work, and our perceived intimacy with the star.

Works Cited Associated Press. 2006. “Scarlett Johansson: ‘I’m Not Promiscuous’.” Washington Post, October 9. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2006/10/09/AR2006100900872.html. Burgin, Victor. 2004. The Remembered Film. London: Reaktion Books. Chion, Michel. 2011. “The Acousmêtre.” In Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Corliss, Richard. 2013. “Spike Jonze’s Her: Falling in Love with the IT Girl.” Times, October 12. http://entertainment.time.com/2013/10/12/spike-jonzes-herfalling-in-love-with-the-it-girl/. Coulthard, Lisa. 2010. “Desublimating Desire: Courtly Love and Catherine Breillat.” Journal for Cultural Research 14 (1): 57–69. Cousins, Mark. 2016. “A Study in Scarlett.” Sight & Sound 26 (10): 15. D’Addario, Daniel. 2014. “Ruined by Woody Allen: What Does Scarlett Johansson Want?” Salon, October 4. http://www.salon.com/2014/04/04/ruined_by_ woody_allen_what_does_scarlett_johansson_want/. Dargis, Manohla. 2013. “Disembodied, but, Oh, What a Voice: ‘Her’, Directed by Spike Jonze.” The New York Times, December 17. http://nytimes.com/2013/ 12/18/movies/her-directed-by-spike-jonze.html?_r=0. Doane, Mary Ann. 1985. “Ideology and the Practice of Sound Editing and Mixing.” In Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by Elisabeth Weis and John Belton. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1986. “The Voice in the Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space.” In Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, edited by Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1988. “The Abstraction of a Lady: ‘La Signora di tutti’.” Cinema Journal 28 (1): 65–84. Dockterman, Eliana. 2014. “If Philip Seymour Hoffman Had Replaced Scarlett Johansson in Her.” Time, January 23. http://entertainment.time.com/2014/ 01/23/if-philip-seymour-hoffman-had-replaced-scarlett-johansson-in-her/. Dyer, Richard. 1998. Stars. New ed. London: British Film Institute. ———. 2004. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge. Ellis, John. 2007. “Stars as a Cinematic Phenomenon.” In Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, edited by Sean Redmond and Su Holmes. Los Angeles: Sage.

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Film Society of Lincoln Center. 2013. “NYFF51: ‘Her’ Press Conference | Spike Jonze, Joaquin Phoenix, Amy Adams, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde.” Youtube, October 13. http://youtu.be/ZACOU3H5KO8. Goodykoontz, Bill. 2014. “Review: ‘Her’, 5 Stars: Virtually Perfect.” AZ Central, January 8. http://azcentral.com/thingstodo/movies/articles/ 20140109virtually-perfect.html. Hassenger, Jesse 2016. “Scarlett Johansson Found the Meaning in Late-Period Woody Allen.” The A.V. Club, July 11. https://film.avclub.com/scarlettjohansson-found-the-meaning-in-late-period-woo-1798249798. Heath, Stephen. 1981. Questions of Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Herron, Antwan. 2017. “Scarlett Johansson Is the Scariest Type of Feminist There Is.” Wear Your Voice, January 22, https://wearyourvoicemag.com/identities/ feminism/scarlett-johansson-scariest-feminist. Hodge, James J. 2014–2015. “Gifts of Ubiquity.” Film Criticism 39 (2): 53–78. Jagnernauth, Kevin. 2014. “Watch: Spike Jonze’s Prickly Interview with ‘BBC Newsnight’ About ‘Her’.” Indiewire, February 18. http://blogs.indiewire. com/theplaylist/watch-spike-jonzes-prickly-interview-with-bbc-newsnight20140218. Kornhaber, Donna. 2017. “From Posthuman to Postcinema: Crises of Subjecthood and Representation in Her.” Cinema Journal 56 (4): 3–25. Lacan, Jacques. 1977. Écrits: A Selection. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York and London: Norton. Marks, Laura U. 2000. The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Metz, Christian. 1985. “Aural Objects.” In Film Sound: Theory and Practice, edited by Elisabeth Weis and John Belton. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1986. “The Imaginary Signifier [Excerpts].” In Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, edited by Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 2011. “From The Imaginary Signifier.” In Critical Visions in Film Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings, edited by Timothy Corrigan, Patricia White, and Meta Mazaj. Boston and New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s. Mulvey, Laura. 2006. “The Possessive Spectator.” In Stillness and Time: Photography and the Moving Image, edited by David Green and Joanna Lowry. Brighton: Photowork/Photoforum. Persall, Steve. 2014. “Review: ‘Her’ Explores an Aural Fixation That Turns into Love.” Tampa Bay Times, January 8. http://tampabay.com/things-to-do/ movies/review-her-explores-an-aural-fixation-that-turns-into-love/2160148. Petrusich, Amanda. 2017. “Playboy Interview: Scarlett Johansson Talks Monogamy, Women’s March & ‘Ghost in the Shell’.” Playboy, February 14. http://www.playboy.com/articles/playboy-interview-scarlett-johanson.

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Pettman, Dominic. 2017. Sonic Intimacy: Voice, Species, Technics. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rawes, Erika. 2015. “The 10 Highest Paid Movie Actresses Today.” CheatSheet, March 7. http://cheatsheet.com/personal-finance/the-10-highest-paidmovie-actresses.html/?a=viewall. Rojek, Chris. 2001. Celebrity. London: Reaktion Books. Shaviro, Steven. 2014. “Spike Jonze’s HER.” The Pinocchio Theory, January 21. http://shaviro.com/Blog/?p=1186. Sheldon, Rebekah. 2016. “Speculum Orders: Digital Science Fiction and the Corrected Present.” Science Fiction Studies 43 (1): 33–50. Smith, Jacob. 2007. “Sound and Performance in Stephen Sayadian’s Night Dreams and Café Flesh.” The Velvet Light Trap 59: 15–29. Toppman, Lawrence. 2014. “The Romance of ‘Her’: No Body to Love.” The Charlotte Observer, January 8. http://events.charlotteobserver.com/reviews/show/ 14593678-the-romance-of-her-no-body-to-love/. Tunbridge, Laura. 2016. “Scarlett Johansson’s Body and the Materialization of Voice.” Twentieth-Century Music 13 (1): 139–152. Williams, Linda. 1999. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the ‘Frenzy of the Visible’. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press.

CHAPTER 7

Scarlett Johansson Falling Down: Memes, Photography and Celebrity Personas Daniel Palmer and Kate Warren

On Tuesday 23 October 2012, Scarlett Johansson was walking down an ordinary high street in Glasgow when she tripped and fell heavily on the pavement. Wearing tight faded blue jeans, fluffy black suede boots and a cheap faux fur jacket, the Hollywood star’s characteristic blonde hair had been replaced with a dark bob, while bright red lipstick emphasised a pale wintry look. Unsurprisingly, given her international celebrity status, Johansson was being trailed by paparazzi, with one photographer capturing the unedifying moment of the fall, with both of Johansson’s arms outstretched just before she hit the ground (Watercutter 2014; see also Fig. 7.1). Almost a year later, after the gritty photograph had been uploaded to the social news aggregator Reddit, the image became a viral Internet sensation, with the website BuzzFeed declaring it “the best new meme in years” in October 2013 (Reddit 2013). Social media users inserted

D. Palmer (B) School of Art, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] K. Warren School of Art & Design, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

© The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_7

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Fig. 7.1 Scarlett Johansson trips on a Glasgow street, 2012, unknown photographer (Source Reddit)

Johansson’s figure into various scenarios—from the simple addition of bongo drums and a busker’s hat, to her transformation into a mermaid, holding the reigns of a dolphin jumping over waves—all revelling in the disconnect between Johansson’s glamorous celebrity persona and the awkward, contorted figure mid-tumble. Perhaps unbeknownst to some of the online social media users who created and circulated the Photoshopped images, Johansson’s “fall” was actually staged and already embodied a fictional construct. When Johansson tripped, she was shooting Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013), an innovative fiction film that made liberal use of “covert filming” and hidden cameras to elicit spontaneous reactions from real people in the street. In the grand tradition of Candid Camera and other “reality television” starring ordinary people caught unaware, three hidden cameras were in fact filming the falling scene, positioned to capture genuine reactions from people on the street. Glazer’s film gained renown for its ambitious attempt to blur reality and illusion—for the sense of authenticity engendered by making the responses of real people indistinguishable from those of actors.

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The sequence of photographs from which the image was drawn—published on the celebrity website “Just Jared” on 24 October 2012, the day after the event—clearly reveals a number of different falls (Just Jared 2012). Later, three of the images from separate falls were even made into an animated GIF. The sequence also shows a blanket on the ground during practice runs. However, only the most exploitable single image found its way to memetic notoriety, giving the inevitable impression of a one-off genuine fall. At a press conference at the Venice International Film Festival screening in 2013, Johansson reflected on her fall without mentioning the meme: there was one scene … when the character has that fall … and is totally caught off-guard. We did that on the street with the public … and I think we had six or seven takes during the day … and it was amazing the different reactions you had from people. Some people would just stop and look at you and continue to walk on. Others would come rushing. Then [during] another take people [would] take pictures of you with their camera phone and not help you. All kinds of strange things, and then real unbelievably kind, acts of human kindness … people genuinely concerned … and the dichotomy was just absolutely fascinating … It’s a huge of part of the experience of watching this film. (ETV Film Inc 2013).

In Glazer’s film, despite its reality-style production on the grey streets of Glasgow, the Hollywood star plays an alien femme fatale, luring men into illicit trysts in order to steal their life force. Johansson is thus doubly disguised: first as a celebrity actor playing a role in a film, and second as the character in the film’s narrative, an alien posing as a female figure. Quite literally, the actor is behaving like the alien in the narrative: appearing as someone ordinary, in order to pick up unsuspecting local men who do not recognise her for who she really is. Again, one cannot know the extent to which this act of duplicity was known to the meme makers or its circulators, who may have naturally assumed they were viewing an image of a celebrity being brought down to earth as a fallible human being. Celebrity gossip magazines, as we know, thrive on precisely this genre of celebrity image—photographs of stars caught off guard, on their way to the shops in tracksuits. Presented as ordinary people, readers are provided the opportunity for identification, and all the better if they are enduring some kind of minor embarrassment such as a bad-hair day, or clothing faux pas or malfunction.

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Out of context, Johansson’s appearance—her downbeat dressing and coloured hair—could thus be interpreted as an elaborate version of a hat and sunglasses disguise act; that is, a celebrity’s effort to blend into the real world, to hide her famous facial features and blonde locks to enable her to go about a normal life. In fact, her appearance was a sassy costume, the purchase of which is narrated in the film itself, as well as a calculated production technique to enable the actor’s unmediated encounters with Glaswegian strangers. About the required acting strategy this entailed, Johansson has said: “It was absolutely terrifying, not because I was afraid of being found out … but I was afraid of how people react in general. It was a very … strange experience” (ETV Film Inc 2013). But little did Johansson know how out of body this particular scene would become. With the paparazzi photograph translated into a meme set, collectively known as “Scarlett Johansson Falling Down,” the actor unwittingly became a viral seductress, compelling viewers to manipulate, recontextualize and share her image far and wide, even before the film was officially released. Moreover, like so many memes, Scarlett Johansson Falling Down tells us a great deal about our culture’s view of celebrities as “otherworldly creatures,” and specifically provides important insights into the ubiquity of cameras, digital imagery and online photosharing in contemporary visual culture. In this chapter we use this viral example—along with a more recent instance of memes surrounding Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017)—to explore these dynamic and shifting relations. Our argument is that photography and contemporary image-based sharing practices play a central role in enabling and challenging the various celebrity personas that are constructed (intended or otherwise) via social media and online visual culture.

Photography, Celebrities and Online Personas The modern notion of celebrity is intimately connected to the medium of photography and its capacity to produce and disseminate iconic images. Celebrity photography itself was born not long after photography’s public invention in the nineteenth century, when pioneering portrait photographers saw the opportunity to use the camera as a means to enhance the reputation of their sitters. Easily the most famous and entrepreneurial of these figures was Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, who opened his photography studio in 1854 under the name Nadar. Nadar was unique in focusing on the psychological elements of photography, aiming to reveal the moral personalities of his sitters rather than simply make attractive portraits. Poets,

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artists and actors all came to visit—Charles Baudelaire, Sarah Bernhardt, Édouard Manet and many others. As a contemporary commentator said: “All the outstanding figures of [the] era—literary, artistic, dramatic, political, intellectual—have filed through his studio” (J. Paul Getty Museum, n.d.-a). He even went to the deathbed of Victor Hugo in 1885 to take one final photograph—an official memorial image of the revered writer. This was no snapshot; a sketch of the widely circulated image shows the use of black drapery tied across a window behind the bed “to visually isolate Hugo’s recumbent figure” (J. Paul Getty Museum, n.d.-b). In this way, Nadar set the standard for the idea of photography used as a means to reinforce a celebrity’s public persona through carefully structured portraits. All this was in an era in which cartes-de-visite and larger “cabinet cards” were printed cheaply, collected en masse and traded or displayed in albums. Early cinema coincided with the new mass media of picture journalism at the start of the twentieth century. Studios quickly understood the need to create stars to sell their films, and an entire mini-industry emerged to prepare, package and promote their actors. Publicity photographs were sold to newspapers and fan magazines, used to promote tie-in products, and appeared on film promotional posters and lobby cards. These consisted of two types of photograph, both equally staged. One was the publicity portrait, typically taken in the photographer’s studio.1 Once Hollywood gained momentum in the 1930s, after the silent era, this form of portraiture gave birth to the glamour shot, in which the new and profoundly effective mode of the movie close-up was translated into a technique for studio portraiture (see Kobal 1980). This form of pure idealization seemed to capture the otherworldly beauty apparently embodied by film stars. The second type of photograph used to promote a film was the production or scene still. These are still images not captured from the actual film but rather taken of actors posing in costume, rehearsing or recreating key scenes. To take one relevant example, an 8 × 10 inch glossy black-and-white photograph used to promote Alfred Hitchcock’s noir film Spellbound (1945) shows the star Ingrid Bergman “tripping” over a barbed wire fence at night. As the typewritten caption on the back of the photograph states: “It was an intentional trip, but once Ingrid Bergman starts falling, in this rehearsal for a scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Spellbound’, a Selznick International 1 Indeed these publicity portraits were not always studio-bound—consider the famous promotional image of Greta Garbo (c. 1926) posed nervously next to MGM’s lion mascot at a reserve where the animals were kept.

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Picture, the fall takes care of itself. Her co-star, Gregory Peck, holds the barbed wire for her.” Needless to say, this photograph uncannily predicts, even as it is radically different from, Scarlett Johansson’s staged “trip” on the streets of Glasgow. However, in stark contrast to Johansson’s undercover performance, Bergman was working on a clearly demarcated movie set for the purpose of producing an official publicity image. There was no public to witness or otherwise record her fall. The photograph of Bergman is in fact an example of the centralised system for the production of celebrity imagery associated with the studio system that remained largely in place until the 1960s, after which more intimate, if still carefully managed spreads of images in glossy magazines and paparazzi photographs gradually became more important. Today, paparazzi-fuelled tabloid media and the Internet has added entirely new dimensions to celebrity photography. Celebrities are now subject to being photographed wherever and whenever they appear in public. Their images are commodities to be sold, in a relentless cycle that can lead to stalking and even fatal results (as we know from Princess Diana and Amy Winehouse). Perhaps partly as a consequence, many celebrities now utilise social media in an effort to enhance and control their public persona, and increasingly to monetize their following through product placements and other forms of sponsorship. In recent years, sites and apps such as Twitter and Instagram have provided an extraordinary platform for celebrities who care to use them, even including one notorious American President. The sharing of selfies has been particularly central to the notoriety of the reality television star Kim Kardashian, who has attracted a massive following by adroitly offering her fans intimate staged images of her personal life. Where selfies differ so markedly from formal celebrity photography is the impression of casual ordinariness that appears within reach of anyone, but whose authenticity is arguably just as illusory as glamour photography. A number of scholars have identified the phenomenon of micro-celebrity, such as “Instafame,” in which “users strategically formulate a profile … and reveal personal information to increase attention and thus improve their online status” (see Marwick 2015; Senft 2013). The highly calculated mode of self-presentation that social media encourages has already been the subject of a widely celebrated work of photographic art by the Argentinean-born artist Amalia Ulman. Excellences and Perfections (2014) was a durational feminist performance piece, hosted unwittingly by Instagram. For months, Ulman pouted and posed for the mirror in a diaristic performance. She adopted the recognizable tropes of Instagram exposure,

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perfectionism, authenticity and mystery, and in doing so she curated the photogenic life of an innocent and attractive blonde who moves to Los Angeles and develops a drug addiction. After attracting over 80,000 followers in a matter of months, the whole thing was revealed as a great hoax, a fabrication for art that in turn neatly demonstrates the celebrity logic of social media (Sooke 2016). Ulman’s project was an acerbic take on “Instafame,” a phenomenon that is reshaping and redefining the very idea of a “star” and their relationship to their audience. As Sarah Thomas writes, the “popularity of online social media sites, especially Twitter, with celebrities, their fans and other types of users has led to new explorations of the management of online fame and modes of celebrity” (Thomas 2014, 242). Social media can make “micro-celebrities” of ordinary people, and it can connect established stars with fans and everyday people. Richard Dyer’s influential writing in the field of star studies anticipated these shifts. Dyer outlines how in the development of stardom—for example in the silent film period—stars were seen as gods and goddesses, removed from their audiences and positioned as “embodiments of ideal ways of behaving” (1998, 22). In Dyer’s argument, this relationship began to shift as early as the introduction of the talkies in the late 1920s, as increasingly, stars came to be viewed as figures of identification for the audience, “embodiments of typical ways of behaving” (1998, 22). The mythological construct of the star as a heavenly ideal still persists,2 however digital and social media platforms have accelerated the shift, “[allowing] for a deviation from the idea of the star as an extraordinary and unattainable figure” (Thomas 2014, 242). Celebrities who engage actively with social media are tangibly within reach of their fans and audiences in ways not seen before—albeit it in digital, not physical realms. While star personas have always been multi-textual constructions that bring together celebrities, industries and audiences in shared fantasies, Elisabeth Ellcessor has recently coined the term “star text of connection” to describe the particular shifts that networked social media have enabled.

2 As Sean Redmond (2014, 58) writes in a recent discussion of Cate Blanchett, “Film stars

are mythological constructs, their narratives of success built on an imagined relationship with high order qualities and attributes. For example, the star success myth posits that film stars have a particularly close connection with the ‘extraordinary’ and the heavenly precisely because they are naturally more spiritual, are naturally closer to the heavens, precisely because they are made out of or from natural light.”

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For Ellcessor, in the age of social networking star personas are increasingly reliant on connections to other people, texts and audiences, making the contemporary celebrity “an agent of media convergence that functions through connection” (Ellcessor 2012, 47–48). These shifting connections are most evident and obvious when the stars themselves are active users of social media. Yet if countless celebrities regularly use Twitter or Instagram for promotion and persona construction (or in some cases to support particular political or environmental causes) other celebrities actively avoid using social media at all. Johansson is one such celebrity, who as recently as March 2017 was able to claim: “I have no social media presence.” What she means, of course, is that she has no self-initiated social media activity (Taylor 2017). Obviously, she has no immediate need for social media, since her self has already been branded, her celebrity well established, and she professes a desire to minimize public access to her private life (Baila 2015). However, as we will argue through our attention to the phenomena of memes, Johansson is highly visible across social media nevertheless, where she is subject to the waxing and waning of public approval and the controversies that inevitably beset anyone working in the public eye. As Nick Muntean and Anne Helen Petersen observe, the rise of networked digital culture has created “a rapid proliferation of voices which serve to articulate stars’ personae” (Muntean and Petersen 2009). In this context, online star personas are created not just through the sanctioned voices of the star’s publicity machine, but they are also articulated with increasing ease through content created by diverse external voices of audiences and fans. Of all the myriad types of content that is easily sharable nowadays, our argument is that memes have proved one of the most popular and effective modes of social media communication. Memes are also significant because they reveal the audiences of these online celebrity constructs; or as David McGowan writes, memes “highlight the complexities of fandom and media consumption” today (2017, 222). Whether a celebrity tries to manage their persona through engaging with or shunning social media, neither strategy is capable of producing a single, authoritative and indisputable “version” of their public personage. Audiences and digital “prosumers” inevitably now play an increasingly important role in constructing celebrities’ online personas, often through

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creating and circulating memes, as our two key examples featuring Scarlett Johansson serve to demonstrate.3

Internet Memes and Their Visual Logics Through the combination of digital media’s malleability and social media’s sharability, memes have developed into a distinct visual genre in their own right. Richard Dawkins originally coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene to describe how ideas, information and cultural beliefs are transmitted and multiplied across societies and cultures— including examples such as “slogans, catch phrases, fashion, learned skills, and so on” (Wiggins and Bowers 2015, 1889). Since Dawkins’ conception however, the idea of the meme has itself shifted and mutated considerably, assuming much wider usages and connotations within the age of social media, Web 2.0 and digital imaging. Internet memes are not so easily understood in evolutionary terms, and Dawkins has himself referred to the “hijacking” of his idea.4 Most particularly, while it remains difficult to predict what digital content will “go viral,” the sharability and appeal of memes is far from random. More than trivial images or whimsical gags, memes reveal a number of underlying logics of contemporary digital culture. In her 2014 book Memes in Digital Culture, Limor Shifman argues that “we live in an era driven by a hypermemetic logic, in which every major public event sprouts a stream of memes” (Shifman 2014a, 4). More than discrete cultural artefacts that react to the surrounding environment, memes such as Scarlett Johansson Falling Down are illustrative of much wider shifts in cultural production and image creation facilitated by our digital age. Internet memes are sharable, repeatable, modifiable digital content that are actively circulated and adapted by users. As Bradley E. Wiggins and G. Bret Bowers write, they are “remixed, iterated messages which

3 Another interesting celebrity example in this context is Nicolas Cage who, as Dominick Suzanne-Mayer suggests (2014), for some Internet users is “no longer an actor; he’s a living meme” (see also McGowan 2017). 4 “Instead of mutating by random chance, before spreading by a form of Darwinian selection, internet memes are altered deliberately by human creativity. In the hijacked version, mutations are designed—not random—with the full knowledge of the person doing the mutating” (Richard Dawkins, cited in Wiggins and Bowers 2015, 1891).

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are rapidly spread by members of participatory digital culture for the purpose of continuing a conversation” (Wiggins and Bowers 2015, 1886). Most memes are photo-based entities, often involving a textual element.5 With the rise of photosharing technologies and platforms, and simple, easily accessible image editing software, users are not simply sharing photos of themselves. They are increasingly developing and sharing memes as expressions of their cultural, social or political tastes. Shifman classifies the most prominent memes into distinct categories, based on their visual constructions. “Reaction Photoshops” (collections of images that alter and remix a prominent or viral photograph); “Stock character macros” (stock images superimposed with text, often representing stereotypical behaviours or established, repeated formats); and “Photo fads” (staged images of people imitating particular actions or positions) (Shifman 2014b, 343). Scarlett Johansson Falling Down falls into Shifman’s first category of the Reaction Photoshop. While these three categories of memes represent some of the most common and popular, on their own they do not account for the other key quality that defines memes—their sharability and wider cultural appeal. By definition, a meme is not just an image that conforms to these visual categories, but also one that successfully moves from the individual into the society. Shifman identifies two key visual features that increase the likelihood of photo-based memes becoming popular, widelyshared and highly memetic: “frozen motion” and “image juxtaposition.” The former quality is a direct result of the ability of photography to “freeze” a moment in time, with memes of figures in mid-movement proving especially popular. Contorted figures or surprising postures provide ample room for users to morph and recontextualize the images through new settings or references, particularly when inserting Shifman’s second element, “image juxtaposition,” which creates levels of incongruity between at least two elements within the frame (2014a, 89–94). Shifman also observes that many of the most successful photo-based memes possess this level of juxtaposition within the original photo itself—that is, it helps if the original photograph already looks Photoshopped (2014a, 90). This logic certainly applies here. Johansson’s unusual pose in the Falling Down image, with her arms outstretched, was clearly ideal for cutting and pasting into other scenes. 5 Memes can also be videos, performances and actions. Think of the brief craze for “planking” (which appeared extensively in the news media around 2009–2012), or the enduring practice of “flash mobs.”

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The presence of celebrities in memes adds extra levels of cultural associations and connections. Celebrity memes remind us that the recognition of visual incongruities, whether in the original image or inserted in the meme, relies on knowledge of pre-existing cultural codes and contexts. Obviously not all memes feature celebrities, although once a meme goes viral it inevitably creates a level of fame for the subject (expected or otherwise). Celebrities make excellent subjects for memes because they contain clear pre-existing associations and expectations; thus many such memes operate by confirming, altering or departing from these pre-existing cultural codes. Memes can work by riffing off the widely accepted personas of celebrities; they can create a more “desirable” version of a prominent figure that might go against wider perceptions; or they can antagonistically challenge engrained beliefs. The “Sad Keanu” meme of 2010 was effective because it played with and amplified pre-existing perceptions of the film star Keanu Reeves. The meme was derived from a paparazzi photograph taken of Reeves as he sat alone on a New York park bench, eating a sandwich. Wearing a beard, isolated and looking downwards, the photograph gave the impression of a sad and forlorn figure, and Internet users soon Photoshopped it into myriad settings from Forrest Gump to Super Mario Bros. The meme conformed to the widespread image of Reeves as a slightly melancholic and enigmatic figure, the moody emblem of Generation X in films like My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991), or the reluctant hero of The Matrix (the Wachowskis, 1999).6 By contrast, the “Texts from Hillary” meme of 2012 functioned by presenting an image of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that went against the grain of much public perception. “Texts from Hillary” featured a photograph of Clinton texting while wearing sunglasses, and imagined the messages she could be sending to various international leaders and celebrities. The meme constructed a potentially wished for (or perhaps unseen) image of Clinton as sassy, funny and uncompromising—qualities that do not always come across in her official public persona.7

6 Reeves was initially unaware of the exploding meme, but when introduced to in through an interview with Vulture he described it approvingly as “conceptually funny” (Hill 2010). 7 Ironically, for a meme that sought to present Clinton in a positive light, it may also have inadvertently contributed to Clinton’s later “email scandal,” which dogged her Presidential campaign and reinforced negative impressions of her that many Americans continue to hold (Gerstein 2016).

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“Memetic photos” (Shifman 2014b, 343) often feature politicians, such as “The Situation Room” (2011), based on the iconic image of Obama, Clinton, Biden and others watching the dawn raid on Osama Bin Laden’s compound, taken by Pete Souza on 1 May 2011. Well-known parodies of that photograph included a version with everyone in the room wearing 3D goggles and Obama with a PlayStation controller in his hand. A more recent Whitehouse meme was based on a notorious photograph of Kellyanne Conway, Counselor to the President for Donald Trump. In the image, taken by photojournalist Brendan Smialowski in February 2017, Conway is kneeling on a couch in the Oval Office checking her phone while Trump meets with a delegation of leaders of historically black colleges and universities. After it was put out in a tweet by the AFP news agency, reactions to the inappropriate nature of her pose were immediate. Most commentators deemed it disrespectful not only to those around her but also to the executive mansion. The image played to an existing sense of Trump’s racism and the whiteness of the current occupants of the White House. The scene was mocked in a live segment of Saturday Night Live, and of course taken up as raw material for amusing memetic manipulations. Ironically, as we learn from the original caption, and from other photographs of the scene, Conway was apparently editing her own iPhone pictures of the meeting that she had taken moments before.8 As Time suggested in response to this event, memes have become the twenty-first century take on political cartoons (Beckwith 2017). But memes give the political cartoon the “reality” punch of photography and a new temporal quality. As Shifman suggests, “memes are all about mutation, or change” by different viewers, such that “the memetic photo is essentially a living object” (Shifman 2014b, 354). As an image, Scarlett Johansson Falling Down works on multiple levels. It clearly demonstrates Shifman’s category of “frozen motion,” capturing the actress mid-tumble. Such a (seemingly) spontaneous and unedifying moment proved irresistible, with Internet users Photoshopping Johansson into innumerable settings. Like many memes, Scarlett Johansson Falling Down gained its initial momentum through Reddit, the self-proclaimed

8 The official caption to the image was: “Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway checks her phone after taking a photo as President Donald Trump and leaders of historically black universities and colleges pose for a group photo in the Oval Office of the White House before a meeting with Vice President Mike Pence on Feb. 27, 2017 in Washington, DC. Brendan Smialowski.”

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“front page of the internet.”9 Reddit hosts regular “Photoshop Battles” amongst its users, which are threads and forums (or subreddits) “for people to create new images with image manipulation software.”10 With 131 comments on the original thread, the Johansson meme ranks as amongst the most popular for 2013, although it did not feature in the site’s Best of 2013 Photoshop Battle Awards.11 The meme then filtered out into the wider online news and blogsphere, with general Internet users continuing the revisions. In these remixes (see Fig. 7.2), Johansson was transformed into superman, a surfer, a mermaid, an ungainly DJ (with glasses), a walrus with tusks, and a soccer goal-keeper to name only the most memorable. She rode on top of a dolphin, body-slammed wrestlers, caught a baseball with a baseball mitt, and danced to “Thriller” with Michael Jackson. In an unusually serious version of the meme, she was relocated into a working class black neighbourhood in America, next to a liquor store and a man holding a baseball bat. Users also combined the meme with other memes, such as the “Bubbles Girl” (2009), “Nyan Cat” (2011), “Doge” (2013) and, of course, “Sad Keanu” (2010).12 Clearly, the perception of Johansson in a moment of “human weakness” went against the usual perception of her as an ultra-glamorous, stylish, composed, almost otherworldly celebrity. As already discussed, celebrity photography has particularly relied on capturing such discordant moments. Photography’s strength has always been its ability to easily launch these fixed moments into new contexts; however the convergence of digital cameras and sharing platforms has dramatically amplified this power. 9 As displayed prominently on Reddit’s homepage, https://www.reddit.com/. 10 Described by Reddit as “Official weekly battles are held where winners get three months

of reddit gold, pick the photo for the next battle, and get special flair.” https://www.reddit. com/r/photoshopbattles/. 11 The 2013 Reddit award for “Best Celebrity ‘Shop” went to “Joseph Gordon Levitt Work-

ing Out.” https://www.reddit.com/r/photoshopbattles/comments/1v77yt/photoshop_ battles_best_of_2013_awards_results/. 12 Bubbles Girl is a “photoshop meme based on a photograph of a girl running through a yard with a bubble maker in her hand” (“Chubby Bubbles Girl,” Know Your Meme, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/chubby-bubbles-girl). Nyan Cat is an 8-bit animation, uploaded to YouTube in 2011, “depicting a cat with the body of a cherry pop tart flying through outer space,” which was merged with a popular Japanese Vocaloid song by Daniwell-P (“Nyan Cat/Pop Tart Cat,” Know Your Meme, http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/nyancat-pop-tart-cat). Doge is a character macro meme featuring an image of a Shiba Inu dog accompanied with colourful text in Comic Sans font, and deliberately broken English (“Doge (meme),” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(meme)).

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Fig. 7.2 Selected examples of the Scarlett Johansson Falling Down meme, in order: Johansson as DJ (Source Know Your Meme), with “Sad Keanu” (Source Says.com), as walrus (Source Sad and Useless), riding a dolphin (Source Know Your Meme), playing bongos (Source Know Your Meme), and dancing “Thriller” (Source Know Your Meme)

Successful memes function through a combination of transience and longevity. As the sociologist Martin Hand writes, digital technologies and networked media “facilitate a vast production and circulation of persistent digital traces,” which can remain latent and perpetually re-discoverable in various contexts (Hand 2016, 269, 271). In other words, nothing is ever

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truly “deleted” from the Internet. Lynn C. Lewis adds that the “meme chronotope is ageless—outside of chronological time” (Lewis 2012, 117). While there may be some truth to this observation, in important ways memes also function through immediacy and reactivity. This is more complex than the “ubiquitous speed” required to make something go viral (Lewis 2012, 117). It relates to users’ engagement with and creation of a meme as it emerges, at a particular moment in time—often a brief moment. Having to “explain” a meme after the fact is arguably less enjoyable and fulfilling than having just “got” it at the time; as we have already identified, memes rely heavily on assumed knowledge, which is often culturally and temporally specific (although not necessarily culturally and temporally fixed). In this way, memes are particularly powerful in generating the perception (real or not) of shared understanding and online communities of like-minded participants. As users create and share their own versions of memes such as Scarlett Johansson Falling Down, particularly within the key temporal window of a meme’s emerging virality, they demonstrate and perform their cultural knowledge, their creative instincts and their quickwitted gifts. Creating and sharing memes via social media demonstrates cultural capital, connecting with fellow prosumers—and also potentially operates as a way of differentiating oneself from those not as culturally literate. In a brief reading of this meme, within her larger discussion of Under the Skin, Amy Herzog interprets Scarlett Johansson Falling Down “as an extension of the text of the film … [which] relies on the collapsed categories that define Scarlett Johansson the commodity-image” (Herzog 2016). Interestingly, very few of the Scarlett Johansson memes reposition the actress into overtly self-referential situations. By that we mean that few of the memes rework Johansson into scenes from her own films, or make direct references to her own persona. In some ways, through this meme Johansson becomes a cipher for contemporary visual culture more broadly. The people remixing Scarlett Johansson into various visual scenarios may not be necessarily (or even primarily) fans of the actress. Johansson is transported into a broader online realm and given a repeatable, persistent visual identity that extends beyond her own dedicated fans. As Su Holmes observes, the “role of the fan is far from passive: it involves actively negotiation and bringing into being the cultural meanings of the star or celebrity image” (Redmond and Holmes 2007, 3). The mimetic logic of networked and sharing platforms amplifies this relationship between celebrities and fans, as well as diversifying it beyond specific fan bases. Most of the memes

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of Scarlett Johansson Falling Down were good-natured in their remixes, aiming for general humour as opposed to specific commentary on Johansson herself. However, the ease and speed with which social and networked media facilitate the sharing of content also create the potential to disrupt established personas, whether intended or not.

Digital Disruptions and Uncontrollable Images With its covert filming, use of hidden cameras and mix of staged, scripted and improvised situations, Under the Skin adopted a disruptive mode of filmmaking. It subverts ideas around acting and performing, but also about the relationship between celebrities like Johansson and so-called “regular” people. However as Johansson’s earlier comments about the falling sequence reveal, this relationship—even when manifested in supposedly spontaneous situations—is fluid and multifaceted. People’s reactions are diverse and unpredictable. Johansson’s fall was staged multiple times in order to capture a certain type of response that fit within the film’s overarching narrative. In this sense, it is highly fitting that this moment generated the viral meme that it did, because it embodies the mutable and unpredictable nature of online sharing cultures. Despite the increasing number of self help-like books, blogs, seminars and professional content produced that offers to help people and companies “go viral,” predicting content that takes off online is not straightforward.13 This poses particular opportunities and challenges for celebrity and entertainment industries such as Hollywood, which for so long have been preoccupied with “image-management” and precise persona construction. Of course we are far from the totally centralised control centres of the Classical Hollywood studio system, in which Louis B. Mayer could cover-up the fact that his MGM star Clark Gable killed a pedestrian while driving intoxicated.14 While these centres of control are long gone, Hollywood

13 For example, see “The Viral Factory,” an “online content studio” that “write[s], produce[s] and seed[s] online videos for large and small clients all over the world.” https:// www.theviralfactory.com/. 14 Mayer effectively paid-off an MGM employee to confess to the manslaughter charge, all with the intent of maintaining Gable’s public persona—and thus the studio’s income source (French 1998, xxv).

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producers and celebrities naturally still cling to desires to control the messaging around their products and personas. In this sense, they are no different from companies more broadly. This work is today largely outsourced to publicity agents, who specialise in managing, influencing and pre-empting public opinion, particularly in the event of a public relations disaster. However in the age of social media, protected image-management is increasingly difficult—if not impossible—to maintain. Online sharing platforms and communities can be used to both construct and maintain particular images, but can also disrupt established celebrity personas in unanticipated ways. As Muntean and Petersen observe (2009), the “panoply of sanctioned and unsanctioned discourses has brought the coherence and stability of the star’s image into crisis, with an evermore-heightened loop forming recursively between celebrity gossip and scandals [and] new media-enabled speculation and commentary about these scandals and gossip-pieces.” Johansson’s aforementioned disavowal of her social media presence was made during promotion for Ghost in the Shell (2017), a film that became embroiled in an extended controversy amid accusations that it had “whitewashed” its Japanese manga origins. The casting of Johansson as Major— originally a Japanese character—emerged as a central concern for many science-fiction fans and commentators. This controversy surrounding Ghost in the Shell is just one example of the ongoing concerns surrounding issues of race, representation and opportunity in Hollywood filmmaking today. Given the extensive critiques that have been levelled at the film, Andrew Taylor writes in the aforementioned newspaper article that it is reasonable to wonder about Johansson’s thoughts on the complex issues raised. Taylor describes the experience of a press briefing for the film: “Paramount’s publicist, after a somewhat tense stand-off, tells the group [of journalists] that such questions should only be addressed to the filmmakers. ‘It’s not for Scarlett to answer that question,’ she says. ‘We don’t want to offend her and create any animosity or anything’” (2017). As Taylor goes on to note, it is impossible to know whether such directives come directly from Johansson herself. Like many celebrities, she divulges little publicly about her family or personal life, relying on more traditional apparatuses of promotion and identity construction. Yet Johansson is outspoken on particular political and social causes, and she also uses her public persona for commercial ends—which has landed

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her in further controversies.15 The most significant of these controversies resulted from her appearance in a 2014 advertising campaign for Israeli company SodaStream, a product she promoted as environmentally friendly for using “less sugar, less bottles” (Reed 2014, 3). Her endorsement generated a severe backlash from the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement, with supporters and activists criticising SodaStream’s use of a factory in the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Adumim (Jerusalem 2014). The incident caused Johansson to resign as an ambassador for Oxfam, who, along with many international groups, opposes all trade from the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, claiming that companies are operating there illegally (Jerusalem 2014). This controversy was not generated exclusively by social media. However, social media now play a fundamental role in generating, circulating and prompting responses from companies and individuals in response to such controversies—with ever increasing speed and effectiveness.16 Johansson is a figure who reveals many of the contradictions and competing agendas that inform the creation of celebrity personas today. Social media and photosharing platforms only add further levels of complexity to this environment. Johansson might not have a social media presence of her own construction, but her online persona nonetheless circulates far-andwide. What the Scarlett Johansson Falling Down meme serves to underline is that social media and photosharing technologies have a paradoxical relationship to identity construction and image-management—a fact that is not exclusive to celebrities. The choice of what you share, how you share it, what platforms you use (or do not use), how much you share, all feed into the ways that people use social media to construct and promote versions of themselves online. However the flip side to this is that more than ever, images are uncontrollable in their reach, sharability and potential for manipulation and recontextualization. In this sense at least, celebrities are merely a magnified version of a phenomenon that is now affecting all media users. Put another way, the labour of being a celebrity, the need to manage identity through the media, has been democratized. Celebrities drive 15 Such as her support for the 2017 Women’s March on Washington, at which she spoke. She also publicly supported Barack Obama in his 2008 and 2012 Presidential campaigns (appearing in the popular 2008 “Yes We Can” video) and backed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US Presidential campaign. 16 The controversy that rapidly engulfed Kendall Jenner and Pepsi in early 2017 is one such example.

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the success of social media, attract the most followers, and offer the model for others to aspire to. On social media, everyone is a potential (micro) celebrity, or so we imagine. But at the same time, every celebrity is potentially brought down to earth. In contrast to the Scarlett Johansson Falling Down meme that Under the Skin unexpectedly produced, the controversy surrounding Ghost in the Shell generated a more tactical co-option of online image sharing for explicit protest and criticism. To coincide with the film’s release, Paramount Pictures actually launched their own online meme-generator through the promotional website www.IAmMajor.me. This was promoted on the film’s verified social media platforms. Based on one of the film’s official taglines, the meme-generator used a set template, inviting users to upload an image, and to insert a word or phrase that described themselves, asking “What makes you unique?” A post from Ghost in the Shell ’s official Twitter page on 10 March 2017 read: “She is hunted. She is the hunter. She is Major. Who are you? Go to IAmMajor.me and tell us. #IAmMajor.” Meme-generator websites are an increasingly prevalent online phenomenon, described by Shifman as “user-friendly websites, in which image templates awaiting witty captioning or visual manipulation are presented alongside banks of ‘exemplary’ existing meme versions” (Shifman 2014b, 354). Memegenerators allow users to create new versions of existing memes, or create new memes using standard, recognisable fonts and formats. Indeed, this was the case with Scarlett Johansson Falling Down, as users could easily download a pre-cut template of her ungainly pose from websites such as knowyourmeme.com, ready to be Photoshopped into other images. Unlike previous examples of online meme generators and aggregators though, the Ghost in the Shell web software was not trying to generate new versions of a meme; it was attempting to generate the actual meme itself, for commercial purposes. It sought to co-opt memetic processes— with their links to identity construction and performance—as a marketing ploy. It invited users to identify with Johansson and her character, but without considering the consequences of the already voiced concerns that many fans had about the identity politics surrounding Johansson’s casting. Unsurprisingly, then, the marketing backfired and the IAmMajor promotion turned into a classic and rapid “PR Fail.” Users quickly started using the meme-generator to create images that were highly critical of the film and its treatment of race and identity. Within days of its release numerous online news publications were reporting on how the film was being “brutally dragged” by its own viral software (ITBNews 2017; See also Han

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2017; Cheng 2017; Lang 2017; Khoo 2017; Powell 2017; Song 2017, among many others). Users co-opted the meme-generator to produce a variety of responses and critiques. Some used photographs of Johansson herself, captioning them with directly critical comments: “I am not Japanese”; “I am the next Mulan,” “I am a feminist. I take roles away from Asian actresses”; “I am white feminism in a nutshell”; “I am cultural appropriation.” Other users uploaded images of other actresses they thought should have been cast as Major instead of Johansson: “I am Rinko Kikuchi (i.e. the perfect Major)”; “I am Kaede Ono”; “I am right for the role.” Some used the format to express their personal experiences and frustrations: “I am Asian American & I want to exist”; “I am still waiting to see myself as the hero.”17 One user summed up the misguided approach by uploading an image of the Paramount logo with the text “I am bad at viral marketing.” From a promotional point of view, Paramount’s attempt to create its own viral presence was thus spectacularly misguided, since it gave users a readymade vehicle to hijack and exploit. The IAmMajor.me website was taken offline within a few weeks of its launch, with the studio clearly not wanting to draw any more attention to an issue that it was hesitant to confront all along.18 Nevertheless, the Ghost in the Shell memes add yet another layer to Johansson’s unintended social media presence. Johansson’s image does not feature in all (or even most) of these memes, however her celebrity persona is constantly implicated across all of the online responses to this controversy. It is an example of the way that, as well as being objects of amusement, memes have increasingly become political tools, used for promotion, mobilisation and critique. Or as journalism analyst Claire Wardle recently suggested, memes have “become weaponised,” particularly in the

17 The memes quickly moved away from Ghost in the Shell to wider complaints and examples

of Hollywood’s problematic history of casting non-white characters, or representing diversity more broadly: from Mickey Rooney’s portrayal of I. Y. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961), to more recent examples of Matt Damon in The Great Wall (Zhang Yimou, 2016) and Emma Stone in Aloha (Cameron Crowe, 2015). 18 As Yohana Desta writes in a recent article for Vanity Fair (2017), “So, how is Paramount dealing with the domestic blow of its latest $110 million picture? Well, it’s certainly not bringing up whitewashing, at least directly.” With an opening weekend of US$19 million, Ghost in the Shell was certainly a box office disappointment. Interestingly, it seems that the film’s “whitewashing” was less controversial in some Asian film markets including Japan and South Korea, whose audiences seemed less concerned by the casting of Johansson (Frank 2017).

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age of “fake news” and “post-truth” (Q&A 2017). Memes are important digital traces not only of the self-referential complexities of contemporary visual culture, but increasingly of more overt cultural and political agendas.

Conclusion If in the Falling Down meme Scarlett Johansson became a cipher for the playful and self-referential nature of contemporary visual culture, in the IAmMajor meme she became a symbol of visual culture’s blind spots, and the grievances that many people feel in relation to the politics of representation in popular media. In some sense, both memes were deserved reactions from a public conventionally positioned as passive recipients to the machinations of star power. The first was borne of exploiting everyday human lives as part of an unwitting film set; the second was the result of a marketing flop that attempted to cross over into people’s lives, inviting people to commodify their sense of unique identity through generic software. Regardless of the actual intent of the various meme makers, these two examples, coupled with Johansson’s own limited engagement with social media, reveal the contradictory impulses that can coalesce around but also transcend a single celebrity figure. Memes simplify and isolate messages, which makes them potent vehicles of communication. With a kind of acceleratory force, they have the ability to construct new characters and undermine established personas rapidly. Memes are exemplary tools that reveal how, in contemporary sharing economies, audiences can directly influence and help construct celebrity personas, both through fandom and through cultural critique.

Works Cited Baila, Morgan. 2015. “13 Celebrities Who Think Social Media Is Toxic.” Cosmopolitan, November 5. http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/ celebs/a48803/celebs-who-hate-social-media/. Beckwith, Ryan Teague. 2017. “Meet the Meme-Maker Who’s Kellyanne Conway’s Worst Nightmare.” Time, March 2. http://time.com/4688147/kellyanneconway-couch-meme/. Cheng, Susan. 2017. “People Are Using the ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Meme-Maker in the Most Savage Way.” BuzzFeed, March 14. https://www.buzzfeed.com/ susancheng/ghost-in-the-shell-meme-generator?utm_term=.viKeQPy34#. vlgqwNR9J.

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Desta, Yohana. 2017. “How Paramount Is Positioning Ghost in the Shell ’s Box-Office Performance.” Vanity Fair, April 5. http://www.vanityfair.com/ hollywood/2017/04/paramount-ghost-in-the-shell-box-office. Dyer, Richard. 1998. Stars. 2nd ed. London: British Film Institute. Ellcessor, Elizabeth. 2012. “Tweeting @feliciaday: Online Social Media, Convergence, and Subcultural Stardom.” Cinema Journal 51 (2): 46–66. ETV Film Inc. 2013. “Scarlett Johansson on Under the Skin (70th Venice International Film Festival, 2013).” YouTube video, ETV Film Inc, September 7. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaJoGp05-L8. Frank, Allegra. 2017. “Ghost in the Shell Beloved in Japan, Despite Box Office Blowout in the West.” Polygon, April 10. https://www.polygon.com/2017/ 4/10/15245488/ghost-in-the-shell-live-action-box-office-japan-review. French, Sean. 1998. “An Open Road and a Silver Screen.” New Statesman 127 (4386): xxiv–xxv. Gerstein, Josh. 2016. “Clinton BlackBerry Photo Led to State official’s Query About Email Account.” Politico June 9. http://www.politico.com/blogs/ under-the-radar/2016/06/hillary-clinton-emails-probe-blackberry-224154. Han, Angie. 2017. “‘Ghost in the Shell’ Viral Campaign Goes Horribly Wrong.” Mashable, March 14. http://mashable.com/2017/03/13/ghost-in-the-shellmovie-meme-backfires/#HZHGsG8hOOq7. Hand, Martin. 2016. “Persistent Traces, Potential Memories.” Convergence 22 (3): 269–286. Herzog, Amy. 2016. “Star Vehicle: Labor and Corporeal Traffic in Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-HerzogSkin/index. html. Hill, Logan. 2010. “Vulture Tells Keanu Reeves About ‘Sad Keanu’—And He Approves!” Vulture, October 4. http://www.vulture.com/2010/10/vulture_ tells_keanu_reeves_abo.html. ITBNews. 2017. “‘Ghost in the Shell’ Gets Brutally Dragged in Its Own Viral Campaign.” ITBNews, March 14. https://www.itbnews.info/2017/03/ghostin-the-shell-gets-brutally-dragged-in-its-own-viral-campaign/. J. Paul Getty Museum. n.d.-a. “Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon].” J. Paul Getty Museum. http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/1587/nadar-gaspardflix-tournachon-french-1820-1910/. Accessed 19 March 2018. J. Paul Getty Museum. n.d.-b. “Victor Hugo on His Deathbed.” J. Paul Getty Museum. http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/47421/ nadar-gaspard-felix-tournachon-victor-hugo-on-his-deathbed-french-1885/. Accessed 19 March 2018. Jerusalem, Catherine Philp. 2014. “Johansson Quits Oxfam over Her Israeli Sponsor Deal.” Times (London), January 31.

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Just Jared. 2012. “Scarlett Johansson: ‘Under the Skin’ Re-shoots!” Just Jared, October 24. http://www.justjared.com/2012/10/24/scarlett-johanssonunder-the-skin-re-shoots/. Khoo, Isabelle. 2017. “Internet Uses ‘Ghost in the Shell’ Meme Campaign to Call out Whitewashing.” Huffington Post, March 15. http://www.huffingtonpost. ca/2017/03/15/ghost-in-the-shell-meme_n_15384598.html. Know Your Meme. 2013. “Scarlett Johansson Falling Down.” Know Your Meme, October 4. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/scarlett-johansson-fallingdown. Kobal, John. 1980. The Art of the Great Hollywood Portrait Photographers 1925– 1940. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Lang, Cady. 2017. “People Use Ghost in the Shell Meme Generator to Mock Whitewashing.” Time, March 14. http://time.com/4701118/ghost-in-theshell-whitewashing-memes/. Lewis, Lynn C. 2012. “The Participatory Meme Chronotope.” In New Media Literacies and Participatory Popular Culture Across Borders, edited by Bronwyn T. Williams and Amy A. Zenger, 106–121. New York: Routledge. Marwick, Alice E. 2015. “Instafame: Luxury Selfies in the Attention Economy.” Public Culture 27 (1): 137–160. McGowan, David. 2017. “Nicolas Cage—Good or Bad? Stardom, Performance, and Memes in the Age of the Internet.” Celebrity Studies 8 (2): 209–227. Muntean, Nick, and Anne Helen Petersen. 2009. “Celebrity Twitter: Strategies of Intrusion and Disclosure in the Age of Technoculture.” M/C Journal 12 (5). http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/ article/viewArticle/194. Oei, Melody, 2013. “[Viral] Sexiest Woman’s Falling Down Meme Takes over Internet.” Says, October 8. https://says.com/my/entertainment/scarlettjohansson-falling-down-viral-meme-phenomenon. Powell, Emma. 2017. “Ghost in the Shell Meme Made into an Attack on Whitewashing over Scarlett Johansson Casting.” Evening Standard, March 15. http://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/celebrity-news/ghost-in-the-shellmeme-made-into-an-attack-on-whitewashing-over-scarlett-johansson-castinga3490271.html. Q&A. 2017. “The Misinformation Ecosystem.” Q&A. Aired on March 20, 2017, ABC Television, 65 min. http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4624231. htm. Reddit. 2013. “Scarlett Johansson Falling Down: Photoshopbattles.” Reddit, September 28. https://www.reddit.com/r/photoshopbattles/comments/ 1nbo1h/scarlett_johansson_falling_down/. Redmond, Sean. 2014. Celebrity and the Media. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Redmond, Sean, and Su Holmes. 2007. “Introduction: What’s in a Reader?” In Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, edited by Sean Redmond and Su Holmes, 1–16. Los Angeles: Sage. Reed, John, 2014. “Israel Boycott Campaign Stirred by Splash of Johansson.” Financial Times, January 29: 3. Sad and Useless, 2009–2019. “Scarlett Johansson Falls Down, Internet Takes Over.” Sad and Useless. https://www.sadanduseless.com/scarlett-johanssonmeme/. Senft, Theresa. 2013. “Microcelebrity and the Branded Self.” In A Companion to New Media Dynamics, edited by John Hartley, Jean Burgess, and Axel Bruns, 346–354. Malden, MA: Wiley. Shifman, Limor. 2014a. Memes in Digital Culture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2014. ———. 2014b. “The Cultural Logic of Photo-Based Meme Genres.” Journal of Visual Culture 13 (3): 340–358. Song, Sandra. 2017. “A Ghost in the Shell Meme Maker Has Become the Internet’s New Anti-whitewashing Outlet.” Teen Vogue March 14. http://www. teenvogue.com/story/ghost-in-the-shells-meme-maker-whitewashing. Sooke, Alastair. 2016. “Is This the first Instagram Masterpiece?” Telegraph, January 18. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/photography/what-to-see/is-this-thefirst-instagram-masterpiece/. Suzanne-Mayer, Dominick. 2014. “In defense of Nicolas Cage, Internet Mascot and Living Meme.” Washington Post, August 23. https://www. washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/08/23/in-defense-ofnicholas-cage-internet-mascot-and-living-meme/?utm_term=.fa7f9d51ea35. Taylor, Andrew. 2017. “Shades of Scarlett.” Age, March 18. Thomas, Sarah. 2014. “Celebrity in the ‘Twitterverse’: History, Authenticity and the Multiplicity of Stardom. Situating the ‘Newness’ of Twitter.” Celebrity Studies 5 (3): 242–255. Watercutter, Angela. 2014. “The Bizarre Story Behind the Scarlett Johansson Falling Down Meme.” Wired, April 3. https://www.wired.com/2014/04/ scarlett-johansson-meme/. Wiggins, Bradley E., and G. Bret Bowers. 2015. “Memes as Genre: A Structurational Analysis of the Memescape.” New Media & Society 17 (11): 1886–1906.

CHAPTER 8

Remapping Femininity: Johansson’s Alien Transnationalism in Under the Skin Fulvia Massimi

The first twenty minutes of Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) present the viewer with an uncanny and hardly intelligible account of a mysterious being coming to life. This process of genetic synthesis is suggested in the film’s opening scene on both a visual and an auditory level. The enthralling morphing of circular halos of blue light and black volumes into a human eye epitomizes the occurring assemblage of a human body, while the iteration of phonetic exercises superimposing Mica Levi’s eerie soundtrack encapsulates the complexity of language-learning processes at a condensed pace. Following the opening title in minimal black font over white background, shots of a metaphysical and nocturnal landscape set the stage for the disturbing completion of this manufactured birth. An unknown man in a motorcycle-riding suit recovers the body of a woman from a ditch and throws it in the back of a white van. The inert body is then left to the mercy of another female character—a black silhouette barely recognizable as Scarlett Johansson—that strips it of its clothes and wears them as her own on the backdrop of a milky-white empty scenery. The

F. Massimi (B) Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada

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metamorphosis is however not yet completed. The Female—granted not a name but only a gender classification—is left on her own by the motorcycle rider. Her first action in the outside world is to visit a local mall in order to buy make-up and alluring clothes for her newborn persona. The scenes that follow give a preliminary sense of her still undecipherable purpose, that is to lure young men into her van while perusing the streets of Glasgow,1 seduce them into abandoned houses, and then witness their bodies disappear into the abyss of a petroleum-black liquid surface. For the readers of Michel Faber’s 2000 novel of the same title, the initial sequences of Under the Skin bear little if no secrecy: the unnamed woman is an alien in disguise, provided with charming anthropomorphic features and sent on Earth to procure food supplies of human flesh for her extra-terrestrial peers. For those unfamiliar with the original literary source, Glazer’s third feature is an obscure journey into the discovery of the main character’s motivations as she proceeds to question the nature of her being in the world. For all viewers alike, the opening sequences add a supplementary layer of complexity to the filmic intertext, as they stage the camouflage of Hollywood star Scarlett Johansson into the alien protagonist—a figure that simultaneously asserts and denies Johansson’s persona on screen. As a multilayered entity that maintains with the novel “a spiritual connection” (Glazer 2014)2 but follows its own path of narrative and genre/gender disruption, Under the Skin addresses a complex set of issues concerning film production dynamics, (de)construction of geographies and temporalities, gender performances, and stardom conventions. Given the complexity of its artistic gestation—the film took almost ten years to be completed—and the richness of its aesthetic and thematic fabric, Glazer’s feature has attracted a considerable amount of academic interest in recent years, spawning dedicated panels at international film and media studies conferences and prompting an entire dossier on the Fall 2016 issue of the online journal Jump Cut.

1 Glimpses of the commercial areas of George Street and Argyle Street in Glasgow’s city center are recognizable as Johansson’s character starts her van expedition at the beginning of the film. 2 In an interview for Film4, “Keeping it Alien,” Glazer has explained how the first two drafts of the film’s script, more linear in their narrative progression and faithful to Faber’s novel, were abandoned in favour of a more subliminal approach to the literary material. (“Interview: Jonathan Glazer on Under the Skin,” Youtube, last modified on March 18, 2014 https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZUvIfXKVVc.)

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Under the Skin’s reputation as a “difficult film,” Lucas Hildebrand explains in the dossier’s introduction, brought scholars to “engage in the pleasures of attempting to puzzle the film out, through different lenses of analysis” (2016a). In this vein, I aim to offer with this chapter a symptomatic reading of Johansson’s role in Under the Skin as a paradigmatic example of the interplay of gendered and national tensions in current Scottish cinema. Developed for over a decade under shifting conditions, Glazer’s film was released in the United Kingdom in March 2014, six months before the first Scottish independence referendum was held. Despite the association of the film with the sci-fi genre in terms of visual and narrative tropes, the employment of guerrilla filmmaking techniques and the clear relocation of Faber’s novel in Scottish pre-referendary momentum allow to read Under the Skin in close relation to the contemporary socio-political landscape of Scotland and its quest for national independence. The choice of Scarlett Johansson as the foreign alien attracting Scottish men into her van epitomizes even further the scale system at play in the film in both national and gendered terms, especially in light of the transnational economics mobilized by the actress’ stardom. The recent employment of Johansson’s corporeal sensuality and disembodied voice as a trademark in sci-fi films such as Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014), and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017), as well as her recurrent casting as a foreign body in Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003), Match Point (Woody Allen, 2006), and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) has turned her into a global icon of post-human femininity. But how can such an avatar of global femininity work as a conduit for local politics? My inquiry stems from current debates on the role of stardom within a transnational film scenario. Johansson functions as a compelling example of the cultural and political capital that celebrities can mobilize for a local context such as Scotland—whose most recognizable male stars (i.e. Sean Connery, James McAvoy, Ewan McGregor) are known to the international public via Hollywood blockbusters and mainstream franchises such as Star Wars, 007, and X Men, rather than for their involvement with the localized productions of Scottish films. As Jo Litter pointed out in her introduction to the Celebrity and the Transnational issue of the Celebrity Studies journal, “celebrities can, of course, be glocalised and consumed differently in different places, their meanings shifting alongside their geographical context” (2011, 1). Along the same lines, in the incipit of Transnational Stardom: International Celebrity in Film and Popular Culture, editor Raphael Raphael used the example of Sidney Poitier to highlight “…not simply

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the important role that stars and celebrities play in the negotiation of cultural politics but also the impossibility of understanding stardom within the singular scale of the nation” (2013, 1). Whereas the case of the above mentioned Scottish celebrities allow us to speculate on what can Scottish actors bring to Hollywood’s transnationalism, the employment of Johansson’s persona and alien femininity in Under the Skin reverses the question to what can Hollywood do for Scottish cinema—and especially what a female star in disguise can do for the gendered remapping of Scotland’s current geopolitical landscape. Focusing on the cross-gendered elements and cross-national forces at play in Under the Skin, I intend to reflect on Johansson’s “disguised performance” in relation to Scottish cinema’s national and gendered dynamics within a global reach. I am especially interested in the way the sex-lacking but not gender-neutral alien played by Johansson subverts and problematizes the urban and male scenario of Scottish cinema in the wake of its transnational turn, challenging Scotland’s national narrative as a masculine realm. I will conduct my analysis of Scarlett Johansson’s role in Under the Skin throughout two sections. First, I will look at the local-global conditions of the film’s production, funding, and casting choices within the shifting historical context of Scottish cinema, using key-texts of Scottish film studies scholarship as my frame of reference. Second, I will examine the filmmaking style, its take on genre conventions, and the main character’s narrative trajectory so as to trace the alternative temporality and cartography of gender mapped by the film. Feminist approaches to nationalism and gender will be employed in this section to tackle the issues of female metaphorization and male anxiety raised in the final sequences of Under the Skin with respect to Scottish national and gendered narrative. The polymorphic nature of Johansson’s performance as an iconic persona, star in disguise, and alien character will be the crucial point of convergence of these intersecting topics and methodologies.

Disappear Here: Local-Global Tensions and Twofold Camouflages In the sequence that follows the initial mise-en-scène—or rather mise-aupoint —of Johansson’s character and her predatory mission, the geopolitics at play in Glazer’s film come subtly to surface. Standing on a beach, the Female waits for a swimmer to come out of the water and asks him for some tips on surfing spots nearby. After discovering the young man is neither a

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surfer nor a local but a tourist from Czech Republic, she further inquires: “Why are you in Scotland?” Startled by the question the man spontaneously replies, “I just… wanted to get away from it all.” “Why here?” presses the Female. “Because it’s… it’s nowhere,” the man finally utters. This brief exchange, which precedes the failed attempt of the swimmer to save a couple from drowning, and his kidnapping at the hand of Johansson’s character, seems to play no relevant role in the film narrative. However, it sets the stage for a contextualization of Under the Skin within the localglobal hybridity of current Scottish cinema. Referring to Alan Rickman’s The Winter’s Guest (1997) in his essay “Scotland’s Other Kingdoms,” David Martin-Jones stated that “alongside the appeal of the film as taking place in a Scottish ‘nowhere’ and ‘nowhen’, there is also the recognition of a very specific ‘somewhere’ and ‘some-when’, creating a cinematic reflection of the lives of its inhabitants” (2009, 113). This interplay of temporal and spatial vagueness and geohistorical specificity can be considered in broader terms a signature of contemporary Scottish cinema as a whole, which stands among other cases of subnational cinema3 for its recent transnational potential. Subsumed to the economic dominance and cultural agency of both Britain and Hollywood since its cinematic inceptions in the nineteenth century, Scottish cinema has undergone an arduous historical trajectory to assess its infrastructural independence and to regain agency over its own national narrative. As Duncan Petrie argued in his 2000 volume Screening Scotland, it is especially with the New Scottish Cinema (NSC) phenomenon of the mid-1990s that a potentially successful breakthrough in the emancipatory path of Scottish cinema occurs (2000a, 172). The NSC momentum represented a ground-breaking shift in the history of Scottish film industry and imaginary, even more so as it coincided with Scotland’s obtainment of devolved political status in 1997.4 From an economic standpoint, the potential foundation of a national film industry in Scotland was sustained by 3 I am using the term “subnational cinema” to designate film industries and imaginaries emerging and consolidating within geo-political entities that function according to nationalbelonging principles in territorial, cultural, and linguistic terms, but without nation-state recognition (i.e. Quebec, Scotland, Flanders, Catalonia). 4 A devolved status, unlike a federal one, involves the delegation of legislative powers to a subnational entity from the central government of a sovereign nation-state, without impeding the unitary nature of the state in question. Two devolution referenda were held in Scotland between the 1970s and the 1990s. The first one, administered in 1979, was repealed due to the turnout of registered electorate and despite the victory of the Yes vote by 51.62%.

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the emergence of domestic and localized infrastructures of film funding.5 From a thematic standpoint, the NSC led the shift towards a new cinematic imaginary, less concerned with Scottish mythical past and more interested in providing a realistic portrait of contemporary, devolving Scotland. While Hollywood-oriented films such as Rob Roy (Michael Caton-Jones, 1995) and Braveheart (Mel Gibson, 1995) capitalized on the romanticized appeal for Scotland’s pre-modern, heroic past in a mainstream (and nonphilological) fashion, domestic low-budget successes such as Shallow Grave (Danny Boyle, 1994) and Trainspotting (Danny Boyle, 1996) attempted to (re)present the identity of post-modern, urban Scotland over the stereotypical tropes of Tartanry and Kailyard championed by modern literature and early cinema.6 The infrastructural and financial stagnation of Scottish film production throughout the first decade of the 2000s forced however Petrie to revisit his optimistic prediction that “Scottish film-making is entering the new millennium with unprecedented levels of confidence, achievement, and ambition” (2000a, 126). A possible future for Scottish cinema has been nonetheless envisioned by Scottish film scholars—Petrie included—in the recalibration of Scottish film infrastructures, and in the revision of scholarly approaches less invested in questions of national emancipation, and more focused on opportunities for transnational opening. In his recent book The New Scottish Cinema (2015), Jonathan Murray aimed to recuperate the possibility for Scottish cinema to exist in a multiplicity of forms that exceed or rather complement the national one, by looking especially at the emergence of several strands of transnational filmmaking and funding practices in the contemporaneity. As the author explains in conclusion to his volume:

A second one, which successfully took place in 1997, resulted in the establishment of a Scottish Devolved Parliament in 1999. 5 Among these institutions are the Glasgow Film Fund in 1993, Scottish Screen in 1997, the ‘Tartan Shorts’ initiative in 1993—a short films scheme designed to foster emerging Scottish filmmakers—and the creation of a Scottish lottery panel in 1995—which redirected part of the National lottery funding to specifically Scottish film productions. 6 A derogatory term used to define the excessive use of tartan and other clichéd symbols of Scottish imagery to produce a romanticised and stereotypical view of Scotland and its history, Tartanry is often associated in critical commentaries on Scottish cultural imaginary to Kailyard, a popular genre of Scottish fiction in vogue in the nineteenth century and based on sentimental and idealistic depictions of domestic Scottish life.

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[G]iven the ways in which Scottish cinema expanded and evolved during the 1990s and 2000s, we surely blind ourselves in one eye if we refuse to accept that the indigenous and international components of increasingly globalised local filmmaking careers might be usefully explored in tandem. (2015, 177–178)

Under the Skin fits quite aptly in the scenario above depicted by Murray, not only for reasons concerning the film’s production, funding, and circulation strategies, but also the polysemic nature of Johansson’s casting choice and performance. In his piece for Jump Cut, “Independence and the Consent of the Governed,” J. D. Connor outlines precisely this entanglement of local and global instances, locating in Under the Skin “the ideal case study through which to examine the international interstices, overlapping temporalities, and mediating institutions that compose independent moviemaking in general” (2016). Connor identifies in Glazer’s film the point of convergence of three “allegorical scenes,” representatives of the complex geological stratifications of “the global system of independent motion picture production” (2016). At the first level lies the microcosm of Glazer’s guerrilla filmmaking practices, which consisted of eight hidden cameras mounted in Johansson-driven van with the purpose of allowing director, actress, and film crew to capture the alien’s perspective in the making of her interactions with unaware male interlocutors.7 At the intermediate level is the mesocosm of regional British-Scottish film funding, which Connor alludes to as the “harmonization of interest” of different production agencies held together at the macrocosmic level by Johansson’s global appeal—the third and final stage of the film’s scale system. Funded by the National Lottery, Silver Reel and Creative Scotland, in association with the British Film Institute, the UK Film Council and Film4, Under the Skin benefits from the joint efforts of Scottish, British, and US production companies, and situates at the crossroad of subnational interest and international visibility, as it premiered in competition at Venice Film Festival in 2013 and circulated widely on the global film market afterwards.

7 With the exception of few previously cast actors (Paul Brannigan as her third victim and Adam Pearson as The Deformed Man), the majority of men “lured” by Johansson during the making of the film are actual pedestrians who were only later informed that they had been filmed.

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With a total gross of more than five million dollars worldwide, over a budget of 13.3 million,8 and the rapid acquisition of cult status among film fans all over the world, Glazer’s ten-years-long project stands as a relative commercial and critical success for a cinematic scenario such as the Scottish one, otherwise characterized by the scarcity of domestic titles and non-domestic circulation. The reasons for the successful distribution and reception of Under the Skin both inside and outside the UK are to be specifically ascribed to the unorthodox recognisability and allure of Johansson’s acting persona, which worked as a key-factor for the existence of the film altogether. As Connor further points out: [J]ust as the production relied on her [Johansson’s] drawing power to secure distribution, so its financiers rely on her all-but-masked attractiveness to negotiate their own contradictory relationship to the twin poles of art and commerce. (2016)

Connor’s use of the term “all-but-masked” is particularly revelatory here. The unconventional employment of Johansson’s star image in Under the Skin, not only as the point of conjunction of art house cinema and commercial interests, but also as a strategy of camouflaged stardom, illustrates even further the local-global dialogue above addressed by Murray as a key component of current Scottish cinema. As explained by Glazer himself in his interview for Film4 “Keeping it Alien,” the filmmaker’s initial impulse was to cast an unknown actress in the main role of the Female, in order to preserve “the credibility of the story” (2014). Parting ways from the first two drafts of the film’s screenplay as “illustrative and direct” adaptations of Faber’s novel, Glazer decided to adopt a realistic approach to the literary material, employing documentary filmmaking techniques and interpolating them with atmospheric segments of experimental play with light, sound, and imagery.9 The aim to reproduce reality as it unfolded in front of the alien’s eyes demanded for Glazer the

8 “Under the Skin,” Box Office Mojo, accessed on 22 May 2017. http://www. boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=undertheskin2014.htm. 9 Despite Glazer’s claim that aesthetic and atmospheric components were not fundamental to his conception of the film—hence the decision to employ daylight cinematography and hidden cameras in the van and on shooting locations—Under the Skin features several instances of abstract and non-narrative imageries that critics have associated to the influence of Stanley Kubrick’s work.

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removal of any sign of extra-diegetic recognisability, especially the immediate identification of a famous star. The idea proved ultimately unviable from a production standpoint, as the absence of a recognisable actress in the main role of the alien seductress would impend the commercial chances of the film at the box office. Whereas the familiarity of the international audience with Johansson’s persona conflicted with the director’s intention to portray the alien’s experience within the reality of everyday life (“How can it be alien if it is played by Scarlett Johansson?” Glazer commented), a solution was found in envisioning Johansson’s performance as a form of “double disguise” (Glazer 2014). In the attempt to separate the global allure of Johansson’s acting persona from the low-profile seduction of her alien embodiment on screen, Johansson’s star body was subject to a twofold metamorphosis. The first one, from identifiable actress into concealed star, was achieved in the filmmaking process through the artifice of the British accent, the actual camouflage of clothing and coiffing, and the guerrilla-like acting mode. The second, from alien entity into human female subject, was presented in the initial sequences of the film described in the introduction to this chapter. Such a web of transformative processes reflects the multilayered architecture of the film itself, as it does not only concern Johansson’s metamorphosis from actress into character, but also her on-screen passage from non-human into human, agender into feminine being—a sequence of passing strategies that will further unveil the complex positionality of Johansson’s persona and character examined in the second section of this chapter. The two main levels of local-global articulation herein considered— film’s production and circulation, and Johansson’s disguised stardom—are therefore pivotal to situate Under the Skin within the specificity of Scottish current cinema. It is at the same time crucial to stress the exceptional nature of Scottish cinematic identity as caught in the midst of regional, national, and transnational tensions so as to understand how a film like Under the Skin can fall under the definition of Scottish film. Whereas in other subnational contexts such as Flanders—the Northern Dutch-speaking region of Belgium—the filmmaker’s nationality is the conditio sine qua non for a film to be deemed Flemish,10 the geographical provenance of directors and 10 As Karla Puttemans, head of production at the Flanders Audiovisual Fund-Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds (VAF) pointed out via email exchange in the fall 2015: “Films can be shot anywhere as long as 100% of our support on the film is spent in the Flemish Community (meaning salaries, fees, postproduction, etc. etc.). We feel that the film should be coherent,

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actors does not necessarily undermine one film’s belonging to Scotland’s cinematic imaginary—as Danny Boyle’s determinant role in leading the rebirth of Scottish Cinema attested. Although made by a British director with a London-based crew, and starring Hollywood A-list actress Johansson in the leading role, Under the Skin has an undeniable and inevitable relationship with its Scottish surrounding, as Glazer’s reluctance to set the film anywhere else but in Scotland—thus preserving the literary setting as one of the few concessions to the novel—seems to establish a significant bond with the Scottish landscape and its contemporary state of politics. This sense of immediate contemporaneity, marked by specific temporal references within the film, allows the transition to the second section of this chapter, which looks at the way Under the Skin revisits genre and gender conventions within the context of pre-referendary Scotland, focusing especially on the place alien femininity occupies within it.

Temporalities of Genre, Cartographies of Gender: Femininity and Nationhood As Glazer explained in “Keeping it Alien,” the choice of shooting Under the Skin in an unadorned fashion, drawing from practices of guerrilla filmmaking, was justified by the intent to capture the “truth” of the Female’s experience in her discovery of humankind, and therefore of herself. The use of hidden cameras on the van and in the streets of Glasgow, the employment of non-professional actors, as well as the decision to make Johansson a star in disguise, translated Glazer’s desire to depict the world through the virgin eyes of a non-human creature, rather than to offer a narrative counterpart to the original novel. Such overarching idea of recording reality “as it is” provides an alternative viewpoint on the sci-fi genre, as the specific coordinates of the film’s setting aim to insert a disruptive turn into a clearly detectable present time, rather than envisioning a dystopian future. The film eludes the horrific drifts of intensive human farming depicted in Faber’s novel, opting instead for a re-contextualization of the story into Scottish pre-referendary present—thus offering the possibility to discuss

so if the story requires a decor/landscape/place that is not linked to Flanders, so be it. (…) the main criterion to consider a film Flemish is that the director is Flemish. The language used is often Flemish, but if the story requires a different language, we accept that also. Again, the coherence of the film prevails.”

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Under the Skin in relation to Scotland’s interplay of national and gendered identity in such a political momentum. In a brief transitioning scene that follows the first and only disturbing insight into the destiny of the alien’s preys, Johansson’s character is shown sitting in the van and listening to the radio while the death of the man drowning earlier on in the film is announced in passing. As the next bulletin starts, the speaker clearly states: “2014 is a very important year for Scotland… of course the referendum, we are expecting the date today.” The reference to the upcoming referendum for Scottish independence (subsequently failed in September 2014) situates the film within a definite historical framework and a likewise definite geo-political reality. Such a brief account of Scottish contemporaneity thus affects the way the film exists not within a suspended or dystopian temporality, but rather in the very present moment of Scotland’s thrives for national independence. As such, the trajectory mapped by the Female in her passage from alien apathy to human awakening has an equally unconventional impact on the cartography of gender designed by the film with respect to the economy of gendered spaces in current Scottish cinema. In his early article “The New Scottish Cinema” (2000b), Petrie explained how “[c]ollectively the predominant concerns of recent Scottish cinema has been contemporary, urban and masculine” (2000b, 156). The NSC films of the 1990s distanced themselves from the “picturesque” past portrayed in Rob Roy and Braveheart, resituating the Scottish (male) subject within a metropolitan scenario and reflecting on the transformation of the Glaswegian “hard man” of the industrial booming into the troubled man of pre-devolutionary national uncertainty. In their piece “Gender, Spaces, Changes: Emergent Identities in a Scotland in Transition” (2009), Jane Sillars and Myra MacDonald broaden the scope of such a gendered inquiry even further, retracing the history of gendered and spatial representation in Scottish cinema as “bearers of moments of transition” for the construction of Scottish national identity. Moving from pre-modern to post-modern accounts of masculinity and femininity interacting on the Scottish screen, the authors witness the progressive emergence of a rearticulation of gender dynamics in recent Scottish films, wherein women are no longer or not solely relegated to a “supporting role” in the nationbuilding process. Cinematic depictions of Scotland’s pre-modern fantasies and histories such as Brigadoon (Vincent Minnelli, 1954), Braveheart, and Rob Roy endorsed the romanticized, mythologized portrayal of the Scottish

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(High)land as a feminine mystique, a convergence of natural and supernatural features connoted in female terms. This nationalist trope of the female-as-land/female-as-nation required the enactment of masculinity as the gendered embankment to foreign penetration, enforcing the reduction of femininity to a mere metaphor or a tangential presence. With the advent of the “crisis of masculinity” in 1980s post-industrial Britain, Scottish cinema started hosting different forms of critical male subjectivity, reflexive of Scotland’s complex quest for national identity. Whereas these “unstable masculine identities incapable of emerging into maturity” (2009, 187) functioned as complementary to Scottish national anxiety, female characters assumed the role of maternal guardian angels, functioning once again as metaphorical and ancillary presences to their male counterparts. It was only in concurrence with Scotland’s transnational turn that previously unspoken questions of femininity and revised gender dynamics came to existence in Scottish cinema. As Sillars and MacDonald eventually point out, films such as Breaking the Waves (Lars Von Trier, 1996), Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002), and Red Road (Andrea Arnold, 2006), “show a receptiveness to the possibility of change and also some ways in which developing femininities and masculinities might attempt a fresh accommodation with the past” (2009, 197). Under the Skin engages with such a possibility by reading against the grain of the female-natural/male-urban divide epitomized by postindustrial, post-modern Scottish films. The Female’s movement from the metropolitan area of Glasgow to the wilderness of the Scottish Highlands halfway through the film contributes to design an alternative geography that subverts traditional hierarchies of gender power associated with Scotland’s different landscapes, as the character’s predatory stances are exercised within the urban space and lost in her contact with wilderness. The city, traditionally connoted as a masculine territory in Scottish cinema, is taken over by the hunting duties of the female protagonist, whose mysterious task is rendered even more threatening by its gender-cleansing drifts. As she progressively abandons the city to embrace the sublime of the natural landscape, the Female does not only lose her murderous agency, but she also grows aware of her impossibility to fulfill the criteria of humankind: her body, assembled to match the canons of alluring femininity, reveals itself a mere shell, an anthropomorphic cover that can fool the eye but nothing more. The unconventional articulation of the film’s gendered cartography has therefore crucial implications on the dynamics of power exercised and then endured by the Female character. Her movement towards the

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northern areas of Scotland, and therefore towards nature, coincides with an illusory quest for freedom: Johansson’s character, no longer traceable and hence protectable, eventually exposes her vulnerability to the revenge of the male subject. Previous female-directed films such as Lynne Ramsay’s Morvern Callar and Andrea Arnold’s Red Road already posed a challenge to traditionally male-oriented Scottish narratives, portraying trajectories of female vengeance and liberation centered on female main characters redesigning the national urban space or moving transnationally outside the national borders and back. Under the Skin occupies a more complex position in these regards, as the predatory agency of its female character is not geared towards her emancipation—neither in gendered nor in ontological terms— but is instead supplanted by her final annihilation at the hand of a male assailant. As Ara Osterweil observes in her article “On the Perils of Becoming Female” (2014) the human existence and gendered connotation of the Female alien are indeed inseparable discourses, and while not conceived in terms of national security, her account of the film’s deepest meaning seems to sustain the interpretation of its closing scenes as a gendered hate crime: Under the Skin asks the big questions about what it means to be human, but its true inquiry is into femininity. …[it] advances a radical proposition: to be female is to be alien. As the film eventually reveals, all of the aforementioned questions are inextricable from gender. In spite of the fact that the appearance of sex may only be skin deep, even alien forms of life become subject to misogynist violence when they are gendered female. (2014, 44)

It is not casual that the alien’s transition from metropolitan to natural setting occurs in concomitance with other detectable formal and thematic shifts, which disrupt the routine established by the character in the first half of the film. One, chromatic in nature, can be traced in the passage from whiteness to blackness, discussed by Lucas Hildebrand in his article “On the Matter of Blackness in Under the Skin” (2016b) as a strategy of passing first (whiteness as a way for the alien to blend into humankind), and rupture afterwards (the revelation of blackness as a disruption of what is familiar to the viewer’s eye). The other, more closely related to the Female’s performance of gender, concerns the type of gaze exercised by and then upon the character in her movement from the city into the wild. During her first predatory round around the streets of Glasgow, the alien’s gaze—coincidental to that of the camera, and therefore to that of

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both director and audience—is oriented only towards male pedestrians, in accordance to the character’s purpose for surveillance and manslaughter. The alien’s subsequent decision to abandon her murderous task and break free is coupled instead with a decisive change in the gendered demographics and nature of her look. Not only the Female’s viewpoint is redirected towards other female characters, but also towards herself: several shots of the character looking in the mirror in the act of gaining awareness of her body and her ontological presence in the human world counter-point previous blank shots of Johansson wearing make-up without even paying attention to her reflected image. The most crucial change is however determined in the final segment of the film, when Johansson’s character—the female predator—becomes subjected to the male gaze and therefore predated in return. The film’s final sequences are in this sense emblematic in both narrative and aesthetic terms. Opposed to the repetitiveness and slow pace of the first half, the film’s ending captures the accelerated evolution and precipitation of the Female’s trajectory, which deviates from its realistic path to dive into a nightmarish scenario. After discovering and embracing the possibilities of her human side in the encounter with a deformed victim, the Female disobeys her duty, let her prey go, and leaves the preordained paths of the city to head north, where she abandons the van and starts wandering on foot until rescued by a local man. As pointed out by Elena Gorfinkel’s (2016) examination of the sensorial aspect of the film and the metonymic use of Johansson’s body parts (mouth and invisible genitals), two failed experiences are crucial for understanding the unattainability of the character’s human ontology: the impossibility to eat (epitomized in the film by the attempt to taste a slice of cake) and to have sex. The unexpected experience of kindness and romance with her rescuer is abruptly interrupted by the Female’s discovery of her own sex, or rather, of the lack of one. While attempting to consume her first sexual intercourse with the man, the character apprehends that her mechanically assembled body is not designed for human pleasure. Redirecting the light of a lamp between her legs, the character is confronted with a disturbing revelation, although the denied counter-shot of what the alien sees in lieu of her genital apparatus allows only to speculate on what is hidden “under her skin.” In shock, the Female departs once again and ends up in the nearby woods, where she tries to find rest in a shelter. While sleeping under the Rampant Lion of Scotland’s Royal Banner a fusion with nature occurs, as the Female’s body becomes one with the surrounding environment (Figs. 8.1 and 8.2).

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Fig. 8.1 Female-as-nation, film still Under the Skin (2013)

Fig. 8.2 Fusion with nature, film still Under the Skin (2013)

The transition of Johansson sleeping in the shelter under the clearly detectable Scottish unofficial flag, and her figure materializing among the trees in an oneiric fashion, offers an interesting configuration of the female

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body as the metaphorical repository of the Scottish nation. As Spike Peterson underlined in her article “Sexing Politics/Nationalism as Heterosexism” (1999), the protection of the Motherland from foreign penetration as predicated on the basis of the nation-as-woman metaphor is a recurrent nationalist trope connoted in both geographical and temporal terms: Nation-as-woman expresses a spatial, embodied femaleness: the land’s fecundity, upon which the people depend, must be protected by defending the body/nation’s boundaries against invasion and violation. But nationas-woman is also a temporal metaphor: the rape of the body/nation not only violates frontiers but disrupts—by planting alien seed or destroying reproductive viability—the maintenance of the community through time. (1999, 48)

Peterson’s choice of the adjective “alien” is especially meaningful here. The representation of the alien character merging with the Scottish soil in Under the Skin transcends the traditional metaphor of nation-aswoman/woman-as-nation when the dream sequence is disrupted by the sudden intervention of a forest ranger attempting to rape Johansson’s character. The Female, precisely by virtue of her non-belonging to the human species, cannot be elevated as a signifier of the nation, and her genderthreatening presence on the national land has to be annihilated. The “alien seed” that menaces to destroy the maintenance of the community is embodied by the character herself, towards which the outburst of sexual violence seems therefore justified for purposes of national protection. Although this chapter is not specifically concerned with questions of adaptation, it is nonetheless relevant to stress how, despite the profound differences between the film and Faber’s novel for most of its narrative—to the extent that screenwriter Walter Campbell did not even read the book before writing the script—, one of the most striking changes regards the reaction of the main character to the rape attempt. In the novel, Isserley, the female alien, is assaulted by one of the hitchhikers she has chosen to prey on, and reacts as follow: In a flash, exploiting the fact that she was balanced on the bonnet of the car, Isserley flung her arms backwards and upwards. She flung them like two whips, and her aim was precise. Two fingers of each hand plunged into each of the hitcher’s eyes, right up to the knuckles, right inside his hot clammy skull. (Faber 2000, 186–187)

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In the film, on the contrary, the Female is deprived of any agency, as she not only succumbs to the attack of her male opponent, but she is completely destroyed by it. After escaping from the shelter to get rid of her assailant, Johansson’s character runs through the woods in search for help. Unable to put the ranger’s truck in motion, she gets back into the forest, where she is reached by the man and assaulted again. While fighting for survival, something uncanny occurs, as the Female’s skin tears apart and reveals a dark, anthropomorphic creature underneath. The alien surges from under the skin and glances for the last time to her previous shell, no longer human, no longer woman, but nonetheless a dangerous presence for the man behind her. The ranger pours gasoline on her and sets her on fire, then runs away while the alien hobbles through the woods into the open field and dies in the snow, vanishing in a cloud of smoke. Whereas in a simplistic reading of the film as a sci-fi allegory such a cruel ending might address in a broader sense the human fear of being conquered and colonized by the alien Other, Under the Skin’s geo-political specificity triggers a more symptomatic set of questions. The clear connotation of the Other as both alien and female (and, as Hildebrand would argue, black) underlines the character’s threatening stance towards the traditional predominance of masculinity in the discourse of the nation, demanding a critical engagement with the association of maleness and nationhood within the imaginary and practices of Scottish cinema. Through the unconventional employment of Johansson’s stardom and female performance, Under the Skin thus proceeds to overturn the paradigm of Scottish cinema as urban and masculine, posing femininity at the center of its inquiry while disclosing at the same time the insurgence of national and gendered anxiety in the crucial moments preceding Scotland’s demands for nation-state recognition.

Conclusion Introducing her 2014 interview with Scarlett Johansson for The Guardian, Carole Cadwalladr commented: “transplanting a major Hollywood celebrity to a down-at-heel, working-class Scotland is about as close as you can get to seeing an alien walk among us.” The analysis of Under the Skin presented in this chapter stems from Johansson’s dual status as global Hollywood icon and malleable tool for transnational embodiment in order

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to read the alien nature of her role in Glazer’s film as a productive reflection on the local politics and global reach of Scottish current cinema—and especially the revised role played by gender in it. In the afterwards to his book The New Scottish Cinema Murray celebrated the transformative nature of Scottish filmmaking and its study by addressing the realm of possibilities offered by its transition “beyond a single set of national borders” (2015, 175). Whereas this breeze of transnational opening allowed to move beyond the pessimism of the national “failure” of the 2000s, the author remarks that a scholarly investigation of Scottish cinema cannot be limited only to challenging and revisiting paradigms of national cinema in industrial and thematic terms. Among the blind spots detected by Murray in current Scottish film studies scholarship one is particularly relevant to this chapter’s inquiry. As Murray explains: “[a] coherent and comprehensive study of the place of gender discourses within Scottish filmmaking would be a long-overdue addition to our knowledge of the field” (2015, 177). In the attempt to at least partly address such a “largely untouched area of inquiry,” this chapter has intended to offer a particular viewpoint on the issue, locating in Under the Skin and Johansson’s role in the filmmaking process a fruitful path to explore and expand on broader questions of national identity, gender power structures, local-global film industries and imaginaries in the subnational context of contemporary Scotland.

Works Cited Connor, J. D. 2016. “Independence and the Consent of the Governed: The Systems and Scales of Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. http://www.ejumpcut.org/ currentissue/-ConnorSkin/index.html. Faber, Michel. 2000. Under the Skin. Edinburgh and London: Canongate. Glazer, Johnathan (Dir.). 2013. Under the Skin. Switzerland, UK, and USA: Film4 Productions. ———. 2014. “Interview: Jonathan Glazer on Under the Skin.” Youtube, 18 March. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZUvIfXKVVc. Gorfinkel, Elena. 2016. “Sex, Sensation and Nonhuman Interiority in Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/GorfinkelSkin/index.html. Hildebrand, Lucas. 2016a. “Loving the Alien: Introduction to Dossier on Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-ConnorSkin/ index.html.

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———. 2016b. “On the Matter of Blackness in Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-HilderbrandUnderSkin/index. html. Littler, Jo. 2011. “Introduction: Celebrity and the Transnational.” Celebrity Studies 2 (1): 1–5. Martin-Jones, David. 2009. “Scotland’s Other Kingdoms: Reconsidering Regional and National Identities in a Growing Small Cinema.” In Scottish Cinema Now, edited by Jonathan Murray, Fidelma Farley, and Rod Stoneman, 105–121. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press. Meeuf, Russell, and Raphael Raphael. 2013. “Introduction.” In Transnational Stardom: International Celebrity in Film and Popular Culture, 1–19. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Murray, Jonathan. 2015. The New Scottish Cinema. London: I.B. Tauris. Osterweil, Ara. 2014. “Under the Skin: The Perils of Becoming Female.” Film Quarterly 67 (4): 44–51. Peterson, Spike V. 1999. “Sexing Political Identities: Nationalism and Heterosexism.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 1 (1): 34–65. Petrie, Duncan. 2000a. Screening Scotland. London: British Film Institute. ———. 2000b. “The New Scottish Cinema.” In Cinema and Nation, edited by Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2014. “The Eclipse of Scottish Cinema.” Scottish Affairs 23 (2): 217–233. Sillars, Jane, and Myra MacDonald. 2009. “Gender, Spaces, Changes: Emergent Identities in a Scotland in Transition.” In The Media in Scotland: Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, edited by Neil Blain and David Hutchinson, 183–198. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

CHAPTER 9

Man, Meat and Bêtes-Machines: Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin Janice Loreck

Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) is one of four science fiction texts starring Scarlett Johansson that have appeared in quick succession, beginning with Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), and followed by the action sci-fi films Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014) and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017). Of these, Under the Skin is undoubtedly the most outré choice for Johansson. Loosely adapted from Michel Faber’s 2000 novel of the same name, the film tells the story of a mysterious entity of unknown origin who arrives in Glasgow on a dreary winter night. Her arrival—or creation—occurs in the film’s first abstract sequence. First she is a voice, then a shape, an eye whose iris contracts and expands with sight; then, a fully-formed female body emerges. Thus manifested, her sole purpose is to prey upon menfolk for grim purposes. Tireless as a machine, she drives around Scotland in a minivan in search of prey; wilfully mute, she speaks only to men she wishes to ensnare. A mimic, a huntress and an impostor, she proves a persistent predator who succeeds in capturing multiple unwitting men. Her story takes a turn, however, when she develops empathy for humanity and releases one of her prisoners. Weakened by her curiosity, her story ends

J. Loreck (B) Screen Arts and Cultural Studies, Curtin University, Bentley, WA, Australia © The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_9

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when she is murdered by a stranger, her alien body destroyed in the process. Johansson’s stardom is a central phenomenon of Under the Skin. Her red lips, tousled hair and hard, green eyes are the film’s most enduring image, challenged only by the sublime Scottish wilderness where the story is set. As Chelsea Phillips-Carr (2016) writes: “it is difficult to distance oneself completely from the fact that the woman we watch … is Scarlett Johansson, sex symbol and Hollywood star.” Christos Tsiolkas (2014) agrees, praising Johansson’s deployment of her own fame: “She uses the magnetism of her screen and public persona, our knowledge of her celebrity, to cement the sense of an otherworldly creature moving among ordinary women and men.” Jonathan Romney (2014) concurs, observing that Under the Skin involves “an unthinkable oddity—the idea that a major Hollywood star could descend from the firmament of celebrity and just walk around amid us mortals.”1 Although it is a truism that stars always appear as themselves in film texts, Johansson’s appearance is especially ostensive in Glazer’s film. As Romney wryly puts it, the film’s exploration of “Scarlett Johansson as a physical organism, and as a star, a hallucinatory on-screen ‘effect,’ is something I suspect we’ll be reading dissertations about for years to come.” Johansson’s stardom is indeed an organising trope that modifies and inflects the entirety of Under the Skin. In one sense, Johansson’s status as a global sex symbol makes her a fitting choice to play the role of a predatory alien seductress. It is a cliché that filmmakers cast superlatively beautiful actresses in the role of femme fatale, and this tendency is especially pronounced in science fiction texts where such women are often cyborgs or aliens. Johansson’s predecessors include Kelly Le Brock as an artificial woman in Weird Science (John Hughes, 1985), Natasha Henstridge as an alien in Species (Roger Donaldson, 1995), Kristanna Loken as a weaponized android in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (Jonathan Mostow, 2003) and Tricia Helfer as an undercover cyborg in Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi, 2004–2009). All of these actresses have had additional careers as fashion models, and their casting pays homage to the idea that deadly females—particularly the “man-made” or alien variety—are as

1 Romney’s comments invite comparisons between Under the Skin and The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976), in which David Bowie plays an alien visitor. The phenomenon of Johansson’s celebrity is as key to Under the Skin as Bowie’s is central in Roeg’s film. The Man Who Fell to Earth utilizes Bowie’s charisma as a shorthand for his alien otherworldliness, just as Under the Skin deploys Johansson’s beauty to convey a similar sense of otherness.

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beautiful as they are dangerous. Although not a model herself, Johansson’s repeated endorsement in the media as “sexiest woman alive” recommends her as a femme fatale.2 In Under the Skin, she portrays an entity so alluring that she is able to lure men to their deaths. There are additional meanings of Johansson’s stardom at play in Under the Skin, however, that go beyond the apparent suitability of her casting. Johansson’s performance of the femme fatale is parodic in ways that denaturalise her stardom, particularly her famous body. As Romney observes, Johansson’s much-desired figure is made strange in Under the Skin, where it transforms from an “icon of hyper-glam unreality” to “a mere borrowed disguise, a flimsy shell as disposable as a rubber glove.” In this analysis, Romney is referring to the film’s final twist; during a struggle with her attacker, the protagonist’s skin is torn away to reveal a black, humanoid figure underneath. In this moment, Johansson’s famous face dangles from the creature like a hyper realistic latex cast. Once imbued with vitality, sexuality and vulnerability, she now appears inert. This moment has literal implications, but it works figuratively too, estranging Johansson’s famous body and making it cold and unlively. On one hand this estrangement can be interpreted as a comment on the performativity of gender—the femme fatale or seductress are archetypes of feminine sexuality that can be donned or discarded like a rubber mask. Yet there is more to Johansson’s appearance in Under the Skin than this metaphor. I argue that, through Johansson’s performance and stardom, Under the Skin engages in a consideration of the body and the way it is invested with humanity, sexuality and personhood. It also plays upon the terrifying possibility that the body—even one as charismatic as Johansson’s—may be little more than matter. This chapter explores how Johansson as “on-screen effect” operates in Under the Skin. It looks beyond the preoccupying phenomenon of Johansson’s beauty, investigating how the film enlists her stardom to interrogate the materiality of personhood—the “stuff” that makes up the self, whether body or mind. As the title implies, Under the Skin concerns what lies “beneath” the surface of the body. In a figurative sense, this “beneath” refers to the interior—the intellect and consciousness. Glazer himself supports such an interpretation, describing Under the Skin as an “alien’s journey from id to ‘it’ to ‘she’” (qtd. in Brooks 2013). The film’s mise-en-scène, however, tells an additional story. Under the Skin also explores what lies 2 For an account of Johansson’s construction as the “sexiest woman alive,” see Chapter 1 in this volume.

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under the skin literally—flesh and matter—and the metamorphoses these undergo. While the plot concerns the interior—the protagonist’s acquisition of self-awareness—the film’s visual iconography as it relates to the alien and her victims is focused upon “the material surface of people and things” (Pick 2011, 98). This is particularly true of the film’s first third, which involves a series of seductions, deaths and transformations of living tissues. This chapter therefore focuses on the role that Johansson plays within this scopic, material story. It posits Under the Skin as an interrogation of humanity’s material ontology—whether we are body or machine, person or animal, and how the presence of a beautiful star can trouble these distinctions.

Anthropological Anxiety Under the Skin focuses on the travails of Johansson’s mysterious alien visitor. Shortly after she appears in Glasgow, she begins driving around the city streets in a large van. She offers lifts to single men walking the streets; once they are in the vehicle, she engages in flirtatious conversation. This seems to be a sexual invitation, but eventually, the film reveals what she is actually doing. She leads the men back to an empty house, ostensibly under the promise of sex, where she removes her clothes and draws her victim into a mysterious reservoir of black liquid. Here, the men are violently separated from their skin and subjected to some form of mechanical processing. This continues until the second half of the film, when the protagonist suddenly ceases her activities. She abandons her van on the road and wanders the Scottish countryside to experiment in being human. She tries to eat and have sex, but can accomplish neither. She grows increasingly vulnerable until, eventually, she is murdered by a stranger who attempts to sexually assault her. During the struggle, her skin tears violently from her back and scalp to expose the inky black creature underneath. As she contemplates her outer flesh, the attacker douses her body with gasoline and sets it alight. The film ends as the ashes from her corpse float skyward to mingle with the oncoming snow. To understand how Johansson’s star image operates in Under the Skin, it is necessary to first identify the thought-experiments the film undertakes and the terrors it evokes. One of the film’s most thematically important moments occurs when the captured men’s fate is revealed. In this sequence, one of the victims appears onscreen, suspended in a strange void beneath the alien’s feet. Suddenly, an unknown force tears him from his skin—he

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screams silently into the darkness. A series of semi-abstract images then appear: first, lurid red slurry channeled toward an unknown location, then rotating and pulsating lights and, finally, a glowing red line. It is not entirely clear how the man dies. He is undoubtedly skinned alive and the red liquid suggests that his flesh has been processed in some fashion. The only certainty is that his death involves a violent transformation of his material body; a dissolution of the flesh. The horror of the moment therefore resides in the men’s utter annihilation and transition from living human to meaty slurry. As Elena Gorfinkel (2016) describes it, the scene involves a “spectacular dematerializing transformation of the human harvested male meat … that splits, a sack of skin, converting into fluid viscous and molten red material.” The men are not the only ones to undergo such corporeal changes, however. The second great shock of Under the Skin occurs at its conclusion when the alien’s true body is revealed. In this moment, it is not at all clear whether she is organic or mechanical—she may be an automaton of alien manufacture. In such scenes, Under the Skin reveals a thematic interest in the body and it existential status: as lively or inert, authentic or false, living or dead. These metamorphoses and revelations in Under the Skin raise existential questions. Specifically, they betray anxiety about the “stuff” of the self; whether “we” consist of flesh, the “surface” (or skin) or the immaterial mind. Such worries about the status of the flesh are a hallmark of modernity. Virginia Richter suggests the term “anthropological anxiety”—the “fundamental category crisis” brought about by Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, which reimagined the human as just another animal (2011, 8). Although Richter argues that anxieties about material personhood emerged following Darwin’s publication in the mid-nineteenth century, such worries were also brought about by increased mechanisation during the industrial revolution, as well as encounters with the wide diversity of human life and society during colonialism (Richter 2011, 8). Anthropological anxiety remains present in the contemporary world. In cinema, this unease appears in relation to the status of animals in environmentalist and food documentaries, including Earthlings (Shaun Monson, 2005), The Cove (Louie Psihoyos, 2009), and The Ghosts in Our Machine (Liz Marshall, 2013). Such films explore the ethics of eating non-humans more generally, as well a particular worry about intensive farming practices and their impact on the wellbeing of livestock. Concern about food’s ontological status manifests in narrative cinema also, such as science fiction films like Soylent Green (Richard Fleischer, 1973) and The Matrix (The Wachowskis, 1999), as well

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as horror films like Raw (Julia Ducournau, 2016), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper, 1974) and zombie movies from Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968) onwards. In these films, humans are treated in the plot, and become in the mise-en-scène, like meat: in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, a group of teenagers are murdered by abattoir workers and their bodies dismembered, hung up on meat hooks, and put on ice; in The Matrix, dead humans are liquefied and fed to the living. Moreover, Michael Newbury privileges the zombie horror film as a key site of food anxiety, writing that “no genre is more routinely, even structurally, and disturbingly obsessed with food supply, food chains, and the question of who eats what or whom than the apocalyptic zombie movie,” which involves a “dislodging of humans from their comfortable place atop the industrial food chain” (2012, 90). In these films and others like them, antagonists eat people; this horrifies because such actions ignore the hallowed exceptionalism that insists upon humanity’s difference to meat and animals. Like these horror and science fiction films, Under the Skin trades in anxiety over the categorization of human bodies and flesh. The death scene inside the house contains imagery reminiscent of intensive factory farming and large-scale animal slaughter: a conveyer belt, meaty slurry and spinning, pulsating lights. Although abstracted, the sequence highlights the tenuousness of the boundaries between humans and meat—the ease with which persons may transform into objectified, consumable matter. Under the Skin therefore extends upon the themes introduced in Faber’s original version (albeit less explicitly). In the novel, the protagonist, named Isserley, transports her victims to a covert farm where they are castrated, force-fed and slaughtered to feed wealthy aliens who live off-planet. By imagining a world where humans are treated as livestock, the novel performs a substitution test that interrogates the ethics of eating animals. While Glazer’s film is not so overt, it does allude to these themes via its visual styling and symbolism. In this regard, the film adopts strategies similar to those found in the abovementioned films. Through its gruesome mise-en-scène, the film strips its male victims of their subjectivity and personhood, depicting them as viscera and tissue. Johansson’s stardom and body play a central role in this project. Her character both embodies and heralds the cultural anxieties about human materiality in the contemporary world. Women in science fiction have long

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performed such roles as harbingers of disruption. In his analysis of Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927), Andreas Huyssen writes that, in the nineteenthcentury “the machine came to be perceived as a demonic, inexplicable threat and as harbinger of chaos and destruction”—a worry associated with the feared effects of industrialisation (1981, 226). In keeping with misogynistic perceptions of femininity as unruly, writers “began to imagine the Maschinenmensch (man machine) as woman” in order to allegorise the disruptions of industry (1981, 226). Johansson’s alien, I argue, performs a similar textual function in Under the Skin. While she does not embody worries about mechanisation per se, she broadly engages with an anthropological anxiety about the human body and its status compared to other entities that initiate action, transform and decay. Johansson’s stardom, particularly her body, is a key component within this project. Feted as the “sexiest woman alive,” Johansson’s stardom is largely bound up in the material fact and phenomenon of her sexualised, gendered body.3 (Indeed Richard Dyer’s formulation that Marilyn Monroe epitomised 1950s sexuality—“Monroe=sexuality” [1986, 20]—applies in similar ways to Johansson: Johansson=body.) In the remainder of this chapter, I demonstrate how Johansson’s physical performance estranges her body from her person. Like the Maschinenmensch of Metropolis, I posit that Johansson in Under the Skin is a disruptive entity; rather than the class warfare of Lang’s film, however, Johansson’s alien initiates category anxiety about how the body may be little more than matter, sharing disturbing kinship with non-human entities, animals and machines.

3 There is a notable counter-discourse regarding Johansson, frequently appearing in interviews, which constructs her as an intelligent and wry person in addition to a highly desirable individual. For instance, in a profile for Esquire, A. J. Jacobs (2006) describes her as “always smart and friendly,” but not before noting she was recently voted “best pair of breasts in Hollywood” (indeed, Jacobs opens the article with this information). Woody Allen also describes Johansson as smart, but does so in a way that frames her intelligence in the context of her desirability: “It’s very hard to be extra witty around a sexually overwhelming, beautiful young woman who is wittier than you are,” he says (qtd. in Hill 2007). Such remarks try to redress the emphasis on Johansson’s sexual appeal, yet, in many cases, they only serve to draw attention back to her body.

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ˆ Bete-Machine In an article on Johansson’s recent science fiction films, Sady Doyle (2014) observes that Johansson has an air of remoteness about her. Doyle describes this as an “opaque quality,” writing: In “Lost in Translation,” it registers as depression, and in Marvel films, it registers as duplicity, but in both cases, stillness and reserve are key to her performance. She can certainly act; the eerie, expressionless monotone you see in “Under The Skin” is a choice. But we’re never entirely sure what her characters are thinking.

Johansson’s remoteness can partly be attributed to her physical characteristics, such as her ability to be still on camera and the neutrality of her face in repose. In his review of Under the Skin, Tsiolkas (2014) praises the hardness of Johansson’s stare: “Her eyes, the one part of the body not under the skin, remain alien throughout,” he writes. Certainly, the early parts of the film use these qualities, as well as Johansson’s skill as a cinema performer. Her expression remains blank for much of the time, and her character only speaks to ensnare and seduce. She asks her victims the same questions, interrogating them to discover where they are from, where they are going, and whether they live alone. Designed to mislead, her flirtations seem increasingly uncanny as she repeats them over multiple encounters. They not only disguise her innermost thoughts, they cast doubt over whether she even has innermost thoughts. Her impassivity is similarly eerie. One of the film’s most unsettling moments occurs as the protagonist watches a husband and wife drown in the surf at the beach. She does not intervene in the tragedy before her; instead she stares, the camera framing her face precisely in profile as the calamity unfolds. It is clear that the alien has no empathy for the unfortunate couple, and no impulse other than to seek prey. In such scenes, Johansson’s performance of the alien engages with a long established, liberal humanist notion of personhood as defined by a self-governing, spontaneous inner life. According to René Descartes’s important dictum—“cogito, ergo sum”—self-aware thought is the basis of the self. Moreover, the presence of a thinking mind distinguishes humans from animals. As Dawne McCance notes: while the human body, like the animal one, comprises nothing but a machine, the human alone also has a mind, is separable into both a rational, thinking being and an animal bête-machine (beast machine). (2013, 3)

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John Berger agrees with this summation, arguing that Descartes’s privileging of the mind as the seat of subjectivity effectively likened animal bodies to fleshy automata: “In dividing absolutely body from soul, [Descartes] bequeathed the body to the laws of physics and mechanics, and, since animals were soulless, the animal was reduced to the model of a machine” (1980, 11). While the protagonist of Under the Skin gradually acquires self-awareness and empathy for her victims, the unease of the film’s first half depends on the possibility that she may, in fact, be a “fleshy automaton” with no mind at all. Her repetitive actions and behaviours lack the spontaneity of human behaviour, creating instead the impression of a machine executing algorithms. Her frequent muteness recalls that of the “dumb animal”—the creature without language and subjectivity—as well as an idling machine in standby mode. Her generic flirtations—“Where are you from?”, “Do you live alone?”—seem like a form of animal mimicry, a predator imitating the calls of its prey. While it is possible that she possesses a kind of subjectivity (albeit alien), to human eyes she appears like a creaturely machine, operating on instinct, programming or both. Johansson is a fitting star to cast in such a role, firstly because of her aforementioned ability to be opaque on camera. Leo Robson (2014) praises Johansson’s “boulder-like” face, claiming that it is “impassive, abstracted.” Unlike other stars, she does not need to betray any sense of interiority. Indeed, Robson contrasts Johansson to Nicole Kidman, an actress whose talent lies in her transparency: “whereas Kidman is a porcelain doll, her facial register always operating somewhere between anxiety and anguish, Johansson’s face at rest is capable of something close to blankness.” By cultivating such an air about her, Johansson’s star persona also evokes an old archetype of femininity whose best known incarnation, nowadays, is the femme fatale. According to Mary Ann Doane, the femme fatale is an unsettling figure in part because her mysterious behaviour can seem instinctual, even unconscious. This gives her an impression of automatism, of “agency [independent] of consciousness” (1991, 2).4 Characters who 4 The idea that the femme fatale has no inner life has been challenged. Notably, Julie Grossman (2007) insists that this description of the classic noir femme fatale is actually premised on a misreading of the character. She argues that femmes fatales in 1930s and 1940s thrillers usually have very clear motivations, such as a desire for economic independence. Grossman argues that the misreading of the femme fatale has occurred because “critics have settled in their discussion of women in noir on the few female characters who conform to the notion of the quintessential femme fatale (as she is represented by Phyllis Dietrichson [Double Indemnity], Kathie Moffett [Out of the Past ], and Brigid O’Shaughnessy [The Maltese Falcon])”

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exemplify such traits include Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer) in the classic noir Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur, 1947)—who impulsively shoots her lover, as if by instinct—as well as more recent iterations such as Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) in Basic Instinct (Paul Verhoeven, 1992)—whose behaviours seem inexplicable to the detective investigating her (Michael Douglas). (The fact that Greer suffered from facial palsy, partially immobilising her face in ways that contributed to her enigmatic expression, made her fittingly “opaque” in her own fashion.) Such characters are products of a sexist notion that women are mysterious, unknowable, or a “dark continent” as Sigmund Freud infamously put it (Doane 1991, 209).5 Furthermore, the idea that women act without “consciousness” explains why femmes fatales in science fiction are so often gynoids; the automaton’s sentience is quite literally at stake in many science fiction narratives. This conundrum is central to the terror of Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2015), for instance, in which the gynoid (Alicia Vikander) is subject to a modified version of the Turing test. It also appears in The Stepford Wives (Bryan Forbes, 1975)—like the protagonist of Under the Skin, the titular housewives betray their robotic nature through their uncanny repetition of certain phrases (such as “I’ll just die if I don’t get this recipe!”).6 Both the femme fatale and the mechanical automaton thus share an important characteristic—they are acting bodies without minds. Moreover, they are gendered female. Under the Skin consciously invokes and exploits these long (2007, 19). In spite of this, however, the image of the passive, unconscious woman has taken on an enduring significance in the popular cultural imagination. Whether it is a misreading or otherwise, Johansson’s character in Under the Skin evokes the now-entrenched idea of the femme fatale as an enigma. 5 It is important to acknowledge, as Doane (1991) does, that Freud borrowed the phrase “dark continent” from colonialist texts, where it is used to refer to the continent of Africa. In such works, Africa was framed as both metaphorically dark (undiscovered and “uncivilised”) as well as literally dark (in terms of the colour of the inhabitants’ skin). The phrase was used by Freud to characterise female sexuality as confounding: “an unexplored territory, an enigmatic, unknowable place concealed from the theoretical gaze and hence the epistemological power of the psychoanalyst” (Doane 1991, 209). A consideration of the racial connotations in Under the Skin is beyond the scope of this chapter, although it is taken up within Redmond’s contribution to this volume. 6 Another similarity between the robotic housewives of Stepford and Johansson’s alien is

that their repetitive phrases are often highly gendered in nature: the wives talk almost exclusively about domestic activities, whereas Johansson’s alien repeats bland flirtatious overtures. In such moments, both films wryly show how gender is produced through repetitive performance (quite literally in each instance). As horror films, they make this point in ways that unsettle the spectator.

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established associations between feminine duplicity and unknowability, and Johansson’s persona as an opaque actress plays directly into this mythology in Under the Skin. As Anthony Lane (2014) opines, “she is an old-fashioned kind of star” who keeps “her public at arm’s length.” While Lane constructs this as a mature and sophisticated attribute, in Under the Skin, Johansson is terrifying precisely because her character is unknowable, alien and inaccessible. Secondly, Johansson’s celebrity has been insistently located in her body—its materiality, contours and textures—making it susceptible to estrangement through the mise-en-scène of the film. The protagonist of Under the Skin is introduced as body. In her first onscreen appearance, she appears completely naked while dressing herself in a dead woman’s clothing. Framed head-to-toe in long shot, her body is fully available to the spectator’s gaze. As Alicia Byrnes writes, the scene exposes “her body’s fleshiness, its supposed flaws, such as dimples and softness” (2018, 30). Such an introduction reinforces the “Johansson=body” formulation, immediately calling to mind her construction as the world’s most desirable woman. Moreover, Johansson’s construction as a celebrity links her body to her sexual persona—a feature that is characteristic of numerous screen actresses preceding her. As Jessica Hope Jordan observes in her analysis of the “cinematic sex goddess,” icons like Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield are framed as the natural embodiments of sexuality, and this occurs through a combined effect of “cinematic techniques” working upon “an actress’ own body presence and performance” (2009, 2; my emphasis). This bodily presence, she notes, is usually “curvy, voluptuous, possessing the classical dimensions of a large bosom, small waist, wide hips, and long, shapely legs, with an overall slight figural plumpness” (2009, 3)—a fitting description of Monroe, Mansfield and Johansson alike. Indeed, the supposed naturalness of the American sex goddess informs the star personae of Monroe and Mansfield. According to Dyer, the “Playboy discourse” of sexuality in the 1950s advocated sexual freedom by insisting upon its “naturalness”; this subsequently informed their formulation of the playmate as a guilelessly sexual young woman (1986, 32). In Under the Skin, however, Johansson’s voluptuous body actually works to terrify because it is not natural. Instead, her body turns out to be opportunistic camouflage; a tool of mimicry and deception. The final moments of the film see the creature remove her outer skin from her black endoskeleton. Rather than even more insistently naturalising the character in femininity and humanity, this climax fully estranges her body as a disposable exterior.

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In Under the Skin, a beautiful body may be nothing more than arbitrarily elevated matter—a bête-machine enchanted with the illusion of free will and distinction above other creatures.

Meat Beyond suggesting that humans are akin to animals, Under the Skin grimly goes further in its exploration of humanity’s materiality. Upon their deaths, the bodies of the protagonist’s victims are transformed through what appears to be a violent collision of biological and industrial forces. The hapless men, in a moment of vulnerability, are trapped and their flesh pulverised. Although the images are abstract, the combined effect of the industrial and biological shapes, colours and imagery in the sequence recall the killing floor of an abattoir, a site of industrialised mass murder and intensive animal slaughter. Read in this way, the men become meat. Indeed, even before their deaths, the mise-en-scène presents the victims in ways that highlight their fleshiness. As they walk through the alien’s house, naked in anticipation of sex, high key lighting illuminates their sinews, muscles and angles. Their erections, too, are momentarily visible before disappearing into the black abyss beneath their feet, where they will be imprisoned before death. Drawing upon the philosophy of Simone Weil, Anat Pick observes that bodily vulnerability is a shared characteristic between animals and humans: “The creature” she writes “is first and foremost a living body—material, temporal, and vulnerable” (2011, 18). The moment when the men appear naked in Under the Skin, they seem defenceless and fragile in this fashion. The troubling notion that humans are (or may become) meat is a staple of the horror genre, as well as a recurring theme in science fiction. It surfaces in horror films from Raw to The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme, 1991), eco-disaster texts like Soylent Green and The Matrix, and exploitation films The Hills Have Eyes (Wes Craven, 1977) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. The theme is also central in Faber’s original novel of Under the Skin. In Faber’s story, human flesh is an expensive delicacy in Isserley’s culture known as “voddissin”—it is described as “moist and warm, irresistible and disgusting at the same time” (2011, 94). As such, a key objective within Faber’s novel is to trouble the species differentiation that separates edible animals from non-edible humans. This is done largely through the terminology used in the book: the aliens refer to themselves as “human beings,” call Homo sapiens “vodsels” and human flesh voddissin

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(much like “pork” refers to swine flesh and “beef” to bovine meat). The film version of Under the Skin also challenges human exceptionalism, but it does so by substituting the novel’s logocentric approach with a visual strategy. Allusions to meat, flesh and eating abound in the film’s mise-en-scène and montage, particularly the killing scene inside the house. The entrapped men are like beasts in a slaughterhouse; they also resemble insects consumed as prey. The death sequence alludes to both sexual cannibalism and extra oral digestion. Sexual cannibalism is a practice in which the female of some insect species eats her mate during copulation. This behaviour explains the origin of terms such as “spider woman” or “black widow”7 to describe seductresses and femmes fatales. Also a feature of the insect world, extra oral digestion is a feeding method in which an insect injects enzyme into the bodies of prey, dissolving their flesh for consumption. The fate of the men in Under the Skin recalls this process, their innards sucked away and leaving only an empty skin husk. Through these events, Under the Skin uses visual allusions to erode human exceptionalism; the men are like beasts to the slaughter, or insects reduced to prey. In both cases, the events inside the house asserts the vulnerability that the male victims share with other living creatures. Importantly, the film’s worries about meat play out chiefly in relation to male bodies; Johansson does not herself become “meat-like.” In fact, her character undergoes the opposite transformation, becoming frighteningly inert and artificial in ways that complement her automaton-like behaviour. This occurs primarily through the way that the mise-en-scène strips Johansson of her glamour and charisma. “Glamour” and “charisma” have dual meanings that are vital here: in contemporary parlance, glamour is exciting attractiveness, whereas charisma describes a person’s uniquely compelling quality. However, glamour is also a term for a magical enchantment or illusion that enhances the appearance of an object or person; charisma has religious associations with divinely conferred grace, soul or spirit. Knowing this etymological heritage helps to pinpoint how Under the Skin objectifies Johansson’s body. As Byrnes writes, the film “foils” assumptions about “the supposed perfection of Johansson’s body” from the moment she appears

7 Black Widow is also, not incidentally, the alias of the character that Johansson portrays in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Natasha Romanoff. In this series, Black Widow is a Russian spy who defects to become an agent of SHIELD (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division). As the alias suggests, Romanoff is known to use her sexuality for the purposes of espionage.

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onscreen. As Byrnes concludes “Johansson’s body is here represented and comported with a sense of indifference that foregrounds its corporeality. She is in some sense re-embodied” (2018, 31). To this statement, I would add that Johansson is not re-embodied as a lively body invested with sexuality, glamour and charisma. Rather, she is cold and inert. The fact that Johansson is not “consumable” or “meat-like” in the film notably reverses how her sexuality has been constructed by media discourse; in addition to the anthropological anxieties Under the Skin engages, this reversal explains why the film is so unsettling in its depiction of its lead actress. Profiles of Johansson (particularly those authored by men) frequently resort to food metaphors to describe her sexual appeal. For example, Lane (2014) praises “the honey of her voice”; he notes that she “seemed to be made from champagne” and describes her laugh as “dry and dirty, as if this were a drama class and her task was to play a Martini.” He also mentions the opening shot of Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) which begins with an image of Johansson’s buttocks, “barely veiled in peach-colored underwear.” Will Self (2009) adopts a similar rhetorical strategy, describing Johansson’s beauty as “strawberries and cream coated in gold dust”; Stephen Holden (2014) praises Johansson’s “luscious, cherry-red lips.” These authors avoids meat metaphors yet readily construct Johansson’s sexuality in line with the pleasures of food. Such tendency of likening women to food has a persistent cultural history; for instance, Carol J. Adams notes that women have long been sexualised by pornographic discourses that liken their bodies to meat, particularly through the fetishisation of rump, thighs and breasts (1990, 25). Instead of Johansson’s protagonist becoming food, however, it is the men who are reduced to consumable viscera. When she strips her skin at the film’s conclusion, her materiality is revealed as rubber and latex-like rather than fleshy. Under the Skin involves objectification of Johansson, but it is the “wrong” kind of objectification. Although this scenario in Under the Skin evokes anthropological anxiety about the body’s status as meat more generally, it clearly also intersects with a gendered anxiety too. In keeping with the figure of the femme fatale, Johansson’s character uses her sexuality to overpower men. Under a psychoanalytic reading, she can therefore be described as a “castrating woman” or vagina dentata—a woman whose sexuality disempowers and emasculates (Creed 1993, 105). In his account of infantile development, Freud famously argued that a woman’s lack of penis instils a fear of castration in men; this is because, upon first witnessing the sexual difference

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of his mother or siblings as a child, the male interprets women as alreadycastrated, instilling a lifelong fear of a similar fate. Following this logic, the seduction sequence in Under the Skin also works as an allegory for male fear of women’s sexual power as well as an instance of anxiety about humanity’s material status. Thus deployed, Johansson’s corporeality becomes a doubly terrifying force. She is a lure capable of robbing men of their masculinity, taking their power and their lives; she also undermines their privileged human exceptionalism, transforming their bodies into meat.

Conclusion Under the Skin is the paradigmatic film within the parodic, reflexive stage of Johansson’s career. As James Luxford (2014) observed at the time of the film’s release: “She’s started toying with her image–using her stardom to win parts that deconstruct it.” This is a fitting account of Johansson’s roles in films such as Her, Lucy and Under the Skin. In each of these, she plays different versions of the perfect woman: a virtual girlfriend in Her, a super-intelligent being in Lucy, and a fatal seductress in Under the Skin. In every instance, Johansson deploys her sex symbol status to portray her chosen character. In Under the Skin, Johansson’s performance is a knowingly reflexive “double performance.” Within the diegesis, the protagonist performs the role of seductress to ensnare men; outside the diegesis, Johansson enacts the role of the character-who-performs. This reflexivity inevitably highlights how Johansson herself constantly enacts the role of sex goddess as part of her star persona (even as she consistently resists being reduced to just this role).8 Indeed, Johansson’s performance in Under the Skin shows how gender is always performed. Knowing this, any certainty about who Johansson “truly” is seems more inaccessible than ever, lost in a mise en abyme of gender performance. Johansson therefore both accepts and undermines the persona given to her in Under the Skin. Her performance also demonstrates that she has reached a point where a more reflexive, parodic relationship with her persona is now possible.

8 Johansson regularly reminds journalists that she is a professional performer with more to her character than her sex appeal. In fact, in an interview with Barbara Walters, Johansson (2014) denies ever seeking sex symbol status: “I never put on a sexy face, so I don’t know what it means to act seductive.” She also notes that she wants to be thought of as “an actor for hire” rather than a desired object.

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This chapter has examined what Johansson’s casting also reveals about what a body can initiate conceptually within a film. Johansson enacts the familiar contours of the femme fatale but also draws focus onto the materiality of flesh and form. Specifically, while Under the Skin is a story about the mind, it is also about flesh: its pleasures, agonies and transformations. As she walks across the firmament during the film’s multiple seduction scenes, Johansson’s red lips and pale, curved figure contrast against the sinewy men she captures. Like her own body, the men’s muscles, genitalia and deformities are available for scrutiny; contrasted against the black background they resemble animated figures from Eadweard Muybridge’s locomotion tests. Thus deployed, Johansson helps activate a central theme of Under the Skin: its anxiety about the status of the human. Under the Skin suggests it is a film about the mind, but its mise-en-scène reveals that it is also about the body, and Johansson brings the phenomenological weight of her physique to the role. Indeed, the final parts of Under the Skin emphasise the alien’s vulnerability as a body: she experiences the Scottish wind and rain, suffers fatigue and is ultimately fragile in her physical form. The film ends as she dies, her outer skin torn from the surface of her interior. The protagonists’ physical impermanence is ultimately what aligns her with both humanity and animality. As Pick observes, life is both “material and temporal”—“there is nothing specifically ‘animal’ about the susceptibility of the mind and body alike to earthly forces,” she writes (2011, 3, 4). The alien’s capacity to die is what finally unites her with her victims, in the end.9 Under the Skin calls the categories that differentiate humans from other forms of matter into question: the distinction between humans, meat, animals and machines is not stable or clear in the world of the film. As a character from Faber’s original novel opines: “We’re all the same under the skin” (2011, 170). Yet in Glazer’s version this is not a reassuring observation. The material kinships that Under the Skin poses between entities, both living and dead, shows humanity to be vulnerable and unexceptional. With Johansson forefront and centre, Under the Skin turns toward this reality, casting it in a disturbing light and using it for the purposes of terror. Disruptive and seductive, Johansson reveals that even star bodies are

9 In addition to this more general physical vulnerability, the protagonist of Under the Skin also becomes sexually vulnerable due to her gendered body. When a man attempts to assault her at the film’s conclusion, the narrative makes a bitter comment on the reality of women’s experience: occupying a female body entails increased vulnerability to sexual violation.

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fragile: without the protection of their glamour, they morph and decay like the rest. Acknowledgments This chapter was completed with the support of the Small Grants Program in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry, Curtin University.

Works Cited Adams, Carol J. 1990. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Berger, John. 1980. “Why Look at Animals?” In About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books. Brooks, Xan. 2013. “Under the Skin Serves Up Venice Film Festival’s Marmite Moment.” The Guardian, September 4. https://www.theguardian.com/film/ 2013/sep/03/under-the-skin-venice-film-festival. Byrnes, Alicia. 2018. “Johansson’s Real Performance: Documentary Style in Under the Skin.” Science Fiction Film and Television 11 (1): 29–35. Creed, Barbara. 1993. The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge. Doane, Mary Ann. 1991. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge. Doyle, Sady. 2014. “From Coquette to Cold-Eyed Killer: How Scarlett Johansson Became the Face of Female Horror.” Salon, July 23. https://www.salon.com/ 2014/07/22/from_coquette_to_cold_eyed_killer_how_scarlett_johansson_ became_the_face_of_female_horror/. Dyer, Richard. 1986. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. Houndmills: BFI Macmillan. Faber, Michel. 2011. Under the Skin. Edinburgh: Canongate. Gorfinkel, Elena. 2016. “Sex, Sensation and Nonhuman Interiority in Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. https://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/GorfinkelSkin/index.html. Grossman, Julie. 2007. “Film Noir’s ‘Femme Fatales’ Hard-Boiled Women: Moving Beyond Gender Fantasies.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 24 (1): 19–30. Hill, Logan. 2007. “And God Created Scarlett.” New York Magazine, July 3. http://nymag.com/guides/summer/17409/. Holden, Stephen. 2014. “A Much Darker Hitchhiker’s Guide.” The New York Times, April 3. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/movies/scarlettjohansson-as-a-deadly-alien-in-under-the-skin.html.

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Huyssen, Andreas. 1981. “The Vamp and the Machine: Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis.” New German Critique 24/25: 221–237. Jacobs, A. J. 2006. “Scarlett Johansson Is the Sexiest Woman Alive, 2006.” Esquire, November 1. https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/ a367/scarlett-johansson-pics/. Johansson, Scarlett. 2014. “Interview with Barbara Walters.” ABC News, December 10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NaxFsuEiwg. Jordan, Jessica Hope. 2009. The Sex Goddess in American Film, 1930–1965: Jean Harlow, Mae West, Lana Turner, and Jayne Mansfield. Amherst: Cambria Press. Lane, Anthony. 2014. “Her Again.” The New Yorker, March 24. https://www. newyorker.com/magazine/2014/03/24/her-again. Luxford, James. 2014. “Lucy Trailer: Another High for Scarlett Johansson?” The Guardian, April 5. https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2014/apr/ 04/lucy-trailer-scarlett-johansson-luc-besson-film. McCance, Dawne. 2013. Critical Animal Studies: An Introduction. Albany: State University of New York Press. Newbury, Michael. 2012. “Fast Zombie/Slow Zombie: Food Writing, Horror Movies, and Agribusiness Apocalypse.” American Literary History 24 (1): 87– 114. Phillips-Carr, Chelsea. 2016. “Under the Skin.” Science Fiction Film and Television 9 (2): 309–313. Pick, Anat. 2011. Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press. Richter, Virginia. 2011. Literature After Darwin: Human Beasts in Western Fiction 1859–1939. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Robson, Leo. 2014. “Scarlett Johansson in Under the Skin: ‘Prick Her and She Doesn’t Bleed’.” The Guardian, March 15. https://www.theguardian.com/ film/2014/mar/15/scarlett-johansson-under-skin-extraterrestrial. Romney, Jonathan. 2014. “Film of the Week: Under the Skin.” Film Comment, April 3. https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/under-the-skinjonathan-glazer-review/. Self, Will. 2009. “Makeup Sex.” T Magazine, August 19. http://www.nytimes. com/2009/08/16/style/tmagazine/16scarlett.html. Tsiolkas, Christos. 2014. “Loving the Alien.” Saturday Paper, June 14. https:// www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2014/06/14/scarlett-johanssons-loving-thealien-under-the-skin/1402668000.

CHAPTER 10

“What We Do Defines Us”: ScarJo as War Machine William Brown and David H. Fleming

The star system is a development of type-casting. It bestows commercial value upon an actor’s physical appearance. The Hollywood star imposes his [sic.] physical appearance on every role he creates. Whatever acting ability he may have serves to reinforce the image created by his physical appearance. (Kracauer 2012, 203)

Scarlett Johansson embodies Siegfried Kracauer’s understanding of stars as casting a “spell” over audiences—as made clear by her performances as characters who themselves spellbind those who see her, including Kaa in the recent live-action remake of The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau, 2016) and the unnamed alien in Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013). Scarlett Johansson is perhaps the desirable female film star of our moment, then, casting millions of people under a hypnotic, glamorous spell—“taming” even the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) in various Avengers films, while being the object

W. Brown (B) University of Roehampton, London, UK D. H. Fleming Media and Culture Division, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, UK © The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_10

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of desire in numerous others.1 For Kracauer, such a “spell” can “only” be explained “by the assumption that physical appearance satisfies the momentary but widespread desires of millions of people” (Kracauer 2012, 203; italics in original). While Johansson’s physical appearance, which imposes itself upon each role that she creates,2 is indeed important, we disagree with Kracauer when he suggests that it “satisfies” such “widespread desires,” since this would suggest that these desires exist a priori to the viewer’s engagement with the film. To suggest that one can desire what one has not yet seen is no doubt evidence of the influence on Kracauer of psychoanalysis, which sees desire as based upon lack as it comes from the unconscious (since it is unconscious, we by definition lack conscious knowledge of what we desire). However, in this essay we shall adopt a more radical picture of desire (and desiring), suggesting that it operates through widespread (or a spread-wide assemblage of) “external” bodies and pre-personal forces—and that Johansson’s film roles consciously reflect this, especially through their links with technology. That is, our desires are not “satisfied” by movies and movie stars, but movies and movie stars inculcate and fashion our desires, functioning with audiences as what Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari might term “desiring-machines,” which set themselves up as conduits and channels for the flows and circulation of capital in the modern world. In other words, desire does not originate from within, but through contact with ideological-affective machines like cinema and capitalism more generally. In this essay, we shall argue that the films of Scarlett Johansson regularly stage this process, her star image thus helping us to understand how what we are made to desire (including movies and movie stars themselves) is not always in our own self-interest, be that as individuals, as a species or as a planet—even if we might stubbornly fight for these desires as if they were not only our own, but also our salvation (see Deleuze and Guattari 2004, 31).

1 In Old Scots, the term “glamour” is associated with witchcraft, enchantment and the casting of spells. While the term in English today is synonymous with elegance and commodified luxury, we believe that Johansson’s star and character performances often serve to synthesize these two definitions. Her appearance in Under the Skin (which was shot on location in Scotland) sees Johansson as both a glamourous Hollywood star brought down to earth (in a low-budget independent movie) and a fictional alien enchantress brought to Earth to cast men under her spell and to entrap and kill. 2 An inevitable result of the star system as Kracauer notes, see quotation at the beginning of this chapter.

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Kracauer suggests that the “subject matter of the cinema is not so much the purely human as it is the visible flux of infinite phenomena impinging on the human” (Kracauer 2012, 203). Meanwhile, Richard Dyer asserts that “being interested in a star is being interested in how we are human now” (Dyer 2004, 15). With this in mind, we shall not only demonstrate that Johansson’s roles are in some ways about the star persona that pilots them, but we shall also argue that Johansson’s films collectively grant disquieting insight into what it means to be “human” today—especially in the ever-accelerating era of the digital capitalocene, or globalized neoliberal capital. Focusing primarily on Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017), we thus approach Johansson as a nexus of media(ted) sign systems that offers a valuable entry point into contemporaneous ethico-political discourses, exploring how Johansson’s star signs help to illuminate who and what counts today as “human,” “less-than-human,” “inhuman,” and “posthuman” (amongst other categories). Indeed, we use the moniker “ScarJo,” a label that the actress herself purportedly does not like and from which she attempts to distance herself (see Herzog 2016), in order precisely to suggest how she has today become the poster-human (the posthuman?) of the military-entertainment machine, as alternatively she makes violence appear sexy and mindless, or as she critically invites viewers to perceive the danger lurking beneath her glamorous skin/screen renderings. As we shall see, ScarJo is, as per Under the Skin, always a dangerous alien, and there is always-already a sinister, anti-human death machine positioned under or behind the Hollywood star’s (rendered) skin.

ScarJo and Squid Technology Various scholars have noted the way in which Johansson’s film work in the 2010s has been associated with technology, with Marc Francis describing her roles as “cyborgian” (2016). Between The Island (Michael Bay, 2005), Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010), The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012), Don Jon (Joseph Gordon Levitt, 2013), Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), Under the Skin, Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2014), Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014), Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015), Captain America: Civil War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2016) and Ghost in the Shell , Johansson has repeatedly been given roles in films that prominently feature technology as a key thematic concern. In The Island, for example, Johansson plays both celebrity Sarah Jordan and Jordan Two Delta, a clone of Sarah Jordan that has been cultivated

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and kept alive in a holding facility/fleshfarm as a biological duplicate that will ensure the latter’s continuity, be that as an organ donor or as a surrogate mother. Beyond this, Johansson is regularly associated with weapons technologies—as per the adaptations of the Marvel comic books Iron Man, Captain America and The Avengers , where she plays Natasha Romanoff, also known as the Black Widow, a cybernetically modified spy of Russian origin and who works with (and perhaps against) America’s Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, Logistics Division (SHIELD). Given that these are action films involving advanced weaponry, often built by heroic arms dealer Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Romanoff/Johansson becomes associated with machines and/as weaponry, while also being something of a femme fatale in her black leather catsuit—a uniform seemingly perfect for fighting. In Lucy, meanwhile, Johansson ingests a drug that enhances her brain capacity, such that she basically becomes omnipotent and omniscient, able to control technologies, minds and matter itself. Thanks to (or despite) her new-found enlightenment, she decides to hunt down and kill the men who made her act as a mule for the drug in the first place—cuing once again lots of gunplay and death. In Her Johansson provides the voice for Samantha, an artificially intelligent operating system with which Joaquin Phoenix’s Nathan Twombly falls in love, while in Under the Skin she plays an alien who abducts and kills a series of men in and around contemporary Glasgow in a bid seemingly for her alien conspecifics to experiment on and thus to understand/consume the human race. Even in Don Jon, Johansson plays a woman, Barbara, who fails to wean her partner Jon (Joseph Gordon Levitt) off internet pornography, which he prefers to a real partner until he meets Esther (Julianne Moore), an older woman who teaches him how actually to be with a woman as opposed to wanting to be somewhere else. Finally, in Ghost in the Shell , Johansson plays Major Mira Killian, a human-machine hybrid law enforcement agent who in particular investigates crimes against the Hanka Robotics corporation in a future Japan. Even though the Major discovers that her true identity is not Mira Killian but a former anti-technology dissident called Motoko Kusanagi (and that the police and Hanka Robotics are both complicit in her identity theft and memory loss), the film still ends with the Major returning to work for the police (and by extension Hanka), having declared that “what we do defines us” and that her work is “what she is here to do.” That is, anti-technology dissident Motoko Kusanagi is now deliberately suppressed as Killian’s identity is defined solely by her work as

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a baddy-slaughtering machine (it is what she is here to do, and what she does defines her, meaning that killing defines her). For Francis, Johansson’s body is—at least in Her, Under the Skin and Lucy—simultaneously “queered through abstraction” and “objectified and subjugated by misogyny” in the sense that Johansson offers to viewers a spectacular female body that does not fit into patriarchal society, and yet who might in some senses be “queer” for the very same reason (see Francis 2016). Amy Herzog equally finds “ScarJo” ambiguous, suggesting that she is both “capable of selling champagne, and [of] advancing the agenda of an antipoverty NGO confederation.” While certainly a commodity (a star being used to make money), that she is presented both as an object of desire and as a dangerous subject means that she is also “only a slick surface, [with] no point of origin, a simulacrum, endlessly circulating” (see Herzog 2016). Johansson can be read in a similar fashion in The Island, where she performs as two duplicated bodies, or a twinned zoë (life in the abstract) that “houses” two quite distinct beings, or manifestations of bios (life as embodied), which oscillate between quite divergent subject and object positions. In one pivotal scene after escaping the fleshfarm compound, Jordan Two Delta encounters a series of slick advertising images featuring her doppelganger Sarah Jordan. In what ostensibly look like real world adverts for Calvin Klein or Dolce & Gabbana (in whose advertising campaigns Johansson has featured), Johansson’s star body can be read simultaneously as image, commodity, product and clone—or what W. J. T. Mitchell calls “another form of living image” (Mitchell 2005, 14, 309ff.). Similar ideas relating to the hypermutability of Johansson’s star image are also explored by David H. Fleming in a recent essay engaging with notions of non-human becomings and posthumanism through a DeleuzoGuattarian lens. Fleming argues that Johansson’s “star image and the characters she plays help make palpable peculiar animalistic lines of flight opened up by the triangulated congress of the human, the cinema, and the digital” (Fleming, forthcoming). Traversing the biophilosophical writing of Vilém Flusser, Fleming maintains that both Johansson’s star image and sci-fi characters reveal molecular connections with the ways in which Flusser’s fabled vampyroteuthis infernalis (or “vampire squid from hell”) lives, predates, camouflages, communicates, and copulates. That is, the hypermutable and digitized nature of many of Johansson’s performances and characters reveal similarities with the squid’s ability to transform its shape and texture at will, and to secrete bioluminescent chromatophore pigments upon its body’s

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surface (to display, disguise, startle, confuse and communicate with other organisms in its environment). Finally, William Brown traces a more conservative line in Johansson’s work, suggesting that her characters cannot be integrated into human society because Johansson carries with her markers of the posthuman (ScarJo as alien, ScarJo as enhanced action heroine)—which might be progressive were it not for the fact that Johansson is human, and thus the insistent exclusion of her characters bespeaks misogyny in a patriarchal society: she is rejected by or cannot take lovers in all of the above films/franchises, with ScarJo being killed for her difference in Under the Skin and having to absent the world of humans (and become contained on a pen drive!) in Lucy (Brown 2015). Ghost in the Shell invites a continuation of such readings, in particular offering the zenith of Johansson’s “vampyroteuthian” characters and performances. As part of her job, the Major regularly dons a shimmering digital skin suit that possesses a cephalopod-like ability to cloak her identity and/or to allow her to blend invisibly into her background. What is more, the Major is also depicted as inhabiting and passing through different forms of “oceanic” habitat. One scene finds her suspended beneath the surface of the sea, floating in pitch-blackness amongst a fluther of bioluminescent jellyfish. The Major’s fleshworld “deep diving” is also paralleled by her ability to descend into digital worlds, where she drops into the programming of a hacked geisha-bot. Here certain parallels likewise emerge between the soft and gelatinous bodies of the squid/mollusks more generally, and the nature of new software beings (and weapons), the shifting and deceitful nature of which have opened up new liquescent frontiers of software-warfare and leaky political espionage.3 Indeed, as Mira/Motoko, Johansson is a kick-ass babe who is a mixture of human and machine, subject and product, software and wetware, and who once again fails to fit into mainstream society as a result. While many humans have been augmented by technology in the diegetic world that the film depicts, Johansson is unique in being the first—and at present only—human brain (or what the film calls a “ghost”) living in an otherwise entirely robot shell, even if we are told that her current Übermensch status is “what everyone will become one day.” As Black Widow cannot 3 Flusser perceptibly noted in the 1980s that software displays certain attributes and properties that link it to the “soft intelligence” (to use Jacques Cousteau’s term) of mollusks (meaning “soft animals”; see Flusser 2012, 67).

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(quite?) be united with anyone in the Avengers /Captain America films, nor can the Major become romantically involved with anyone here (the American version of the film downplays, for example, the attraction that her colleague Batou, played by Pilou Asbæk, has towards her in Kôkaku Kidôtai/ Ghost in the Shell , Mamoru Oshii, 1995, the original anime film of which this is a remake). Either unloving or unlovable, she is an outsider, but one who somehow wants to integrate into human society—hence her determination to be good at her job: supposedly she willingly carries out her work, considering it even her destiny (it is “what she is here to do”), even though the company that made her, Hanka Robotics, did so both unethically (“killing” Motoko Kusanagi) and in such a way that she is under their control (on several occasions the Major gives her consent for Hanka technicians to look at her circuitry and programming, only later to be told that her consent was an illusion, never really required nor wanted by Hanka to interfere with her being). In other words, Johansson/the Major is here to be looked at, while also being incapable of fitting into a patriarchal society because of the threatening nature of her combat skills, intelligence and her animality/squid-like nature. There quite possibly is a “queer” dimension to the role, in that the Major both has “butch” tendencies (especially in her gait, which sees Johansson stomp around, hunched forward in a purposeful manner) and in the sense that—realized or otherwise—she does embody a cyborg rather than a “straight” human (in various senses of the word). However, in Mira/Motoko’s development from a staunch anti-technology protestor to a government technobot-agent who believes that her actions and job are a sort of manifest destiny, we can sense a conservative streak in the film, especially in its treatment of Johansson. Perhaps this conservative streak is made most clear when we consider the film’s racial politics. It is not simply that, in shooting a film in Hong Kong (and other locations) that is supposed to be set in Japan (most of the characters have Japanese names), the filmmakers present to us a generically “Asian” space. Nor is it that most of the major parts in the film, with the exception of Kaori Momoi as Motoko’s mother and “Beat” Takeshi Kitano as Chief Daisuke Aramaki, are played by western actors. More specifically it is that within the story of the film the Major has a western appearance (Johansson) despite her origins as a Japanese woman (Motoko Kusanagi), as we shall explore presently.

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ScarJo and Race Lucas Hildebrand has perhaps most clearly written about how Under the Skin involves an ambiguous racial politics, as at the end of the film ScarJo’s alien is skinned alive, only to reveal a black humanoid living inside her otherwise white exterior. While this is “an alien blackness… [which] indicates that which is not-quite human and that which we cannot fathom,” Glazer’s film nonetheless uses blackness to confirm “alienness,” with her blackness also provoking a “hate crime,” as the black alien is burned to death by a park ranger who has also tried sexually to assault her (see Hildebrand 2016). In other words, Under the Skin might suggest the appropriation of blackness to signify alienness not only as a color but also as a racial signifier, potentially reaffirming the problematic notion that blacks are essentially (rather than superficially if not historically) other, even when/if they carry the appearance of mainstream (white) society. The American remake of Ghost in the Shell in some senses involves a reversal of what we see in films such Transfer (Damir Lukacevic, 2010) and Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017)—wherein economically empowered white characters are able to transfer into black bodies for a price.4 For, rather than a white brain in a black body, the film involves a Japanese brain being placed inside a robotic body that is made to appear white. Nonetheless, that the memory of Motoko Kusanagi has been erased would suggest that the Japanese brain here is simply a tool, defined not by its memories (which have been removed), but rather by its capacity to analyze/its computing power. Since this brain-as-computer, or the brain as a labor device, has been placed inside a white body, Ghost in the Shell would seem to suggest the same process as the other two films: the use of the non-white body (the brain here is simply a mechanism, not a carrier of identity) for the 4 Both Transfer and Get Out explore the way in which elderly white humans appropriate the bodies of younger black humans in order to perpetuate their existence. Both films therefore suggest that whites are happy to become black in order to live longer. That is, being/becoming visibly black is not a “bad” thing, and it is at the very least a fashionable thing, an argument put forward in Get Out, if not an outright “good” thing. More than this, though, both films also troublingly suggest and/or critique the fact that wealthy whites can swap between races (whiteness is thus really just economic empowerment?), while others are consigned to remain tied to their skin color. Furthermore, since both films involve the inhabitation of a black body by a white “ghost” (to use the language of Ghost in the Shell ), both films reaffirm that blackness is associated with the body while whiteness is somehow disembodied, or spiritual, with the white ascent into disembodiment predicated upon the sacrifice of the black, whose consciousness (‘ghost’) is destroyed for the purposes of white survival.

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purposes of constructing a white brain-and-body that has an identity: Major Mira Killian. Stated differently, the non-white life functions as a tool for constructing the white life, which has at its core the forgetting of the role that the non-white plays in the construction of white identity, an amnesia that is necessary if the white is to believe that their superiority over other skin colors is “natural” and not, precisely, constructed out of the labor of others; the white must take credit for their superiority, for if credit were given to the non-white, it would undermine the very superiority that the white is trying to impose. Arguably, such ideas are already predicted or present within the “original” anime version of the film (which is not to mention Masamune Shirow’s manga upon which both are based). For there, the Major appears rendered as a “cultural technology” and a transnational image that displays what Koichi Iwabuchi refers to as an “odorless” Japanese aesthetic. Which is to say that the Major is literally rendered in a manner that “cleanses” her of any ethnic or phenotypical Asian/Japanese characteristics. No doubt, the anime Major, with her large blue eyes and lanky frame, appears more ethnically mukokuseki, which Iwabuchi describes as “literally meaning ‘something or someone lacking any nationality,’ but also implying the erasure of racial or ethnic characteristics” (Iwabuchi 2002, 28), as opposed to more obviously “Japanese” characters like Aramaki. With specific reference to the “original” Ghost in the Shell artwork, Iwabuchi explains that the acclaimed animator director Oshii Mamoru suggests that Japanese animators and cartoonists unconsciously choose not to draw “realistic” Japanese characters if they wish to draw attractive characters. In Oshii’s case, the characters tend to be modelled on Caucasian types. (Iwabuchi 2002, 28)

What is true of the Major/ScarJo in the story is also true in some respects of the film itself. While the characters carry Japanese names, the film is set in a generic “Asia“ (filmed in Hong Kong and New Zealand), with the Asianness of the film functioning by and large as simply a backdrop for white adventures (see also Rose 2017). Even though the American Ghost in the Shell is based upon a Japanese manga and an earlier Japanese film version, which also spawned various sequels and spin-offs, the presence of “Beat” Takeshi Kitano, who inexplicably is the only character to speak Japanese throughout the film, may seem at first blush designed to boost the film’s appeal in Asian markets,

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suggesting that Japan and Asia are both subsumed here for the purposes of creating a western product that reaffirms the superiority of the (white) west over the rest of the world. Nonetheless, the presence of Takeshi also carries cultural signifiers that paradoxically reinforce this erasure of Japan from the film. This is not simply a case of the specter of World War Two haunting the film, in a repetition of the (problematic) obliteration of all things Japanese that followed that conflict. More, the casting of Kitano subtly reminds us of how Kitano’s own œuvre obsessively toys with his doubled identities as director (Takeshi Kitano) and star (“Beat” Takeshi) in a way that becomes “marked by a paradoxical blend of narcissism and self-annihilation” (del Río 2016, 184). After arguing that Kitano’s radically “overwhelming” or “exorbitant” “narcissism” functions as a tool to generate an “otherlessness,” Elena del Río illuminates how the directoractor’s work characteristically invites viewers to think through the fluid and mediated nature of historical violence and film violence in Japan. Firstly, “Beat” Takeshi, Kitano’s acting name, is recognized performing as an “image of a wounded masculinity” (del Río 2016, 170). Secondly, “Kitano’s films preserve with Japanese history, the enactment of wounded masculinity resulting from Japan’s defeat in the Second World War,” and strive to appropriate and harness deeply felt emotions “held inside toward the war experience and its aftermath,” while using them as the raw material for violent onscreen displays and spectacles, which in turn force reflection upon Hollywood genre violence and image hegemonies (del Río 2016, 169–170). Accordingly, a defining feature of Kitano’s later work becomes a self-awareness of the director/actor/star “moving in the confluence of these very forces,” while appearing “able to conjugate them in excess of their literal actualizations” (del Río 2016, 169). In other words, we see in Kitano’s yakuza films numerous Japanese gangsters killed off simply as “baddies”—in a way that can also be understood as critiquing Hollywood violence and the imagistic products of the “military-entertainment” complex (see Elsaesser 2011, 259; Fleming, forthcoming). The same applies, perhaps more explicitly, to Ghost in the Shell , wherein Takeshi’s presence reaffirms how Japanese bodies are disposable, allowing the white characters to go through their existential crisis as they do not recall their past.5 5 Worth mentioning here is that Takeshi famously dies in all his own films. Indeed, del Río shows how he appears obsessed with death, as the degree zero of life. In Ghost in the Shell, however, his star image is hacked, so that he survives an assassination by trained killers against all odds. His character then goes on finally to win a western-style gun duel (with an old western

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For, Killian has been told that she is the child of refugees who were killed when their boat was bombed in the harbor by terrorists, as opposed to being a local dissident. Haunted by images of a house, Killian is initially told by Hanka employee Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche) that these are the result of glitches in her circuitry, before Ouelet finally hands over to her the key to an apartment, where Killian discovers her mother and begins to learn of her identity as Motoko Kusanagi. Here, the fact that the Major returns to work at the end of the film becomes important. Indeed, having discovered that she is an Asian woman in the body of a white robot, she does not question the system for which she works, but instead returns to work with reinforced vim. Even though she has discovered her “true” identity, it would appear that the Major rejects this, suggesting that identity is really defined by actions, and her actions will involve the state-backed killing of numerous Asians in the name of dispensing a justice that would appear to be racial in nature far more than it is historical or even human. In other words, the existential crisis that the Major goes through in Ghost in the Shell is really an excuse for her amnesia to continue, an amnesia that lends itself to allegorical readings as the west recognizes loosely that its global dominance is based upon contributions from non-whites, but then does nothing to change this situation, preferring to ignore it because life is good and it might only get worse if it were recognized properly (and if something were to be done about how this position of privilege came about in the first place). Ghost in the Shell depicts a world in which many humans have enhanced themselves through technological augmentation. This desire for technological augmentation is clearly a desire for power, but in some senses it is also a desire for whiteness. For, if Ghost in the Shell depicts technological augmentation as a desire for power, then this potentially reflects how in the real world numerous non-whites undertake skin lightening, hair smoothing, eyelid reconstruction and plastic surgery more generally in order to appear more white (see Russell et al. 2013). Or again, plastic surgery is firearm). Here, we might recognize a residual trope from an old frontier genre fetishistically haunting this modern Hollywood film, recalling the West’s conveniently forgotten genocides, Asian exploitations, and native land grabs. During the shootout scene, the Japanese Takeshi outdraws the evil weapons manufacturer from the West. Viewers are thus situated to celebrate the victory on the side of the oppressed in the same way that Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) invites its viewers to emote with the oppressed and wronged blue-skin natives, albeit while affecting these feelings courtesy of the 3D military-entertainment technology that ensures real-world racial hegemonies (see Elsaesser 2011).

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already a technological “augmentation” that is supposed to give to nonwhites a “more white” identity. What in the real world is an aspiration to be “more white” gets translated in the film into an aspiration to be more-than-human. This reveals the white fantasy that somehow whites are superhuman, while non-whites are not even human. As much is reaffirmed when the Major seeks out an embodied encounter with a female prostitute, played by Ghanaian-British model Adwoa Aboah, who wears a partial “iridescent silver latex” mask on her face (Yee 2017). After peeling off the silver-white prosthetic for the Major, the famously freckled lips and eyes of the striking actress (whom the Internet Movie Database describes as an “exotic mix of Ghanaian, English and American”) is held in a series of close-ups, becoming haptically inspected by the Major (and simultaneously the camera). In these cyborg-lesbian sequences, Aboah is ostensibly deployed further to signal the aspiration for non-whites to be white (her mask), while simultaneously being a curious “other” for the Major to touch and kiss. What is more, even though she is allowed to speak, on doing so Aboah’s character only affirms the “more-than-human” power of the Major when she asks: “what are you?”

ScarJo and Sex Early on in the American version of Ghost in the Shell , we see the Major’s body float up through some orange- and red-lit water and then rise above its surface and into the air. As the Major emerges, her body finally is seen without the distorting underwater lights to be “pure” white—before this white outer dermis peels off to reveal the more pink-toned skin of Scarlett Johansson. These early sequences, in which we see the robotic body of the Major under construction, recall the opening moments of Westworld (2016–), featuring images of the creation of the series’s biocybernetic hosts, together with the earlier music video for Björk’s 1997 song, “All is Full of Love,” directed by Chris Cunningham, and in which Björk is also put together as a “pure white” robot that invites a reading along racial lines. For example, Steven Shaviro notes how the video for “All is Full of Love,” in which Björk’s robot begins an intimate relationship with another allwhite robot, suggests a racial divide between those who have access to digital technology and those who do not, with the imbalance of access to technologies like the internet leading to the internet—and by extension a technologized society more generally—being unthinkingly white, and to the point that whiteness becomes invisible (Shaviro 2002, 9).

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However, the Cunningham-Björk video also makes whiteness visible in various ways, but in particular because the robot pair “(re-)find or rediscover the body at the very heart of virtual reality and cyborg-being” (Shaviro 2002, 3). The body is rediscovered in various ways, but especially through the erotic relationship that the robots undertake in Cunningham’s video. In giving desire to the machine, we begin to see how whiteness is often constructed as disavowing desire. Through this erotic display of desire, [t]he invisible, unmarked, taken-for-granted term [of whiteness] loses its dominance… it is made visible and pointed out as such. Björk is so pale in this video, and her features are so tenuous, that they seem to capture whiteness at the very point of its emergence. Which is also to say, of course, at the point of its vanishing. (Shaviro 2002, 9–10)

We might add that the images of robot construction in “All is Full of Love” also index a “Japanese” desire to be “white” through the way in which they recall the “Toyotism” of the post-Fordist robotic machines used to construct the white robots that we see on screen, together with the striking similarities that the two sci-fi machines bear to the real world Honda Asimo robot, the white body of which recently featured prominently in Werner Herzog’s Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016). That is, the video for “All is Full of Love” suggests a making-visible of whiteness, together with an insight into the role that skin color plays in the power struggles of the globalized era (non-whites aspire to be white in order to have power, while whites typically disavow their body by occulting desire, something that Cunningham’s video for Björk critiques in a telling way). However, what is true of the video for “All is Full of Love” is not necessarily true for Ghost in the Shell , even if the opening moments of the latter seem to draw upon both the iconography of the former and the opening of the “original” Oshii anime. For, while in “All is Full of Love” Björk, like the biocybernetic hosts of Westworld, becomes a desiring posthuman, the Major does not become such in Ghost in the Shell . There is no question that the Major is there to be desired, as the emphasis that director Rupert Sanders places on her body would seem to suggest, as do the intertextual resonances with her bodily performance as the seductive alien lurking beneath a human decoy shell in Under the Skin. Certainly, at one point the Major enters into a club where (without any real explanation) she is beckoned into a back

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room where she is handcuffed to a pole and then threatened by sweaty and salivating Japanese yakuza members. After initially seeming in danger, the Major eventually overcomes these men while still attached to the pole. During this sequence, ScarJo becomes for the viewer an erotic pole dance performer, even if the Major is simultaneously killing men within the film’s diegesis, again recalling the seductive alien decoy that uses sexual moves to lure men to their death in Under the Skin. In other words, ScarJo does have a body in this film. But while it is a body that can enact violence, it is also a body that is signally more desired than it desires in return. Indeed, there is no hint in this film of any physical relationship between the Major and any of the other characters whom we encounter, including Batou and Kuze (Jared Leto), another technologically enhanced human who has been discarded by Hanka for not obeying the corporation’s orders. The Major’s is not a body that erupts with uncontrollable desire (she touches and even kisses the exotic prostitute in a detached, curious fashion), but one that is perfectly self-controlled, a self-control that is itself the manifestation of control by the state (or control society): the Major believes that people are defined by their actions, and her actions are to carry out state-authorized killings. As per earlier ScarJo films, then, we may get a strong emphasis on her body, which may kick ass, but it is also a body that is subdued and contained for the purposes of carrying out the will of white patriarchy. If at the end of Oshii’s version of the story, Batou uploads the Major into the body of a robot child (“a little young for me,” he says), in this version, the Major remains in and cannot transcend her ScarJo body; that is, she is her body. And if in the Japanese film the Major concludes by saying that “the net is vast and infinite” and that she will explore it, in the American remake it is not the net but ScarJo’s body that is the real attraction. Nonetheless, if Björk makes visible the white body at the point of its disappearing, ScarJo would seem simply to reaffirm the invisibility of the white body, in the sense that its very “perfection” means that it lacks any distinguishing marks (ironically enough, Killian’s body can develop no permanent scars). This “invisibility” is made clear by the invisibility cloak (referred to in the Japanese version of the film as “thermoptic camouflage”) that the Major wears during certain key action sequences (for which she also gets otherwise naked): the violence that she perpetrates is done under the cloak of invisibility, which attempts to authorize the violence by virtue of being invisible—a separation from the world as per the ring of Gyges rather than an entanglement with the world in which one is seen doing and thus must take responsibility for one’s actions and their consequences.

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Tellingly, Ghost in the Shell refuses to show us the consequences of the deaths of the numerous Asians who are killed in the course of the film. Also highlighting the ongoing invisibility of the Major and her team of assassins is their use of “mind comms,” a covert communication system whereby they speak directly into each other’s minds without having to open their mouths. Not only does this transition of the characters to disembodied voices recall Her, in which Samantha also only exists as a voice, but it also contributes an aural dimension to the ongoing invisibility of the Major. If for Shaviro, “the voice is generally taken to be a sign of interiority, authority, and authenticity” (Shaviro 2002, 10), and if Björk’s voice is distinct enough to make itself “visible,” then perhaps ScarJo’s voice, no longer interior but instead shared across several minds at once, becomes invisible, or at the very least disembodied—or what Michel Chion has famously termed an acousmêtre (Chion 1994). For, numerous shots show other characters listening to the Major, and in various of these we see 3D hologramatic imaging of her voice, thereby suggesting that what was once embodied is now simply disembodied data.6

ScarJo and War If becoming invisible and dispersed deprives the Major of authority, this is clearly a false deprivation. The Major’s invisibility is a device used to suggest a lack of authority that in turns allows her to renounce any responsibility for what she does on behalf of a greater, external authority; she can carry out her killings with impunity, not necessarily because they are just, but because in being the (invisible) white (super)human, she gets to set the terms of what counts as just; she gets to embody justice, which must in turn be invisible if no one is to question or to rise up against it. In other words, the Major is the necessary injustice of extrajudicial killings that allows justice as the perpetuation of white power to function as a system. The invisibility of the Major, then, coincides with the invisibility of the digital code that is at the core not just of her own existence, but also

6 In Her, Samantha has 641 lovers at one point in time, a trope that demonstrates a curious

conflation of star image and character, since in a recent interview with Playboy Johansson sparked debate by claiming that she doesn’t think the idea of monogamy is natural (see Martin 2017). Like Samantha, the Major can be heard in a potentially unlimited number of minds: she is dispersed to the point of no longer having interiority, authority or authenticity, thus becoming (like Johansson herself) the ultimate cipher that lies at the heart of capital.

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of both the technologized world that Ghost in the Shell depicts and our technologized world in which Ghost in the Shell is made. For, if the Major is the necessary invisibility of a system of power that requires invisibility in order to justify itself (because it is invisible, no one can question it), then digital code is also the invisible cipher/code of globalization/globalized neoliberal capital in the current era: everything is rendered in code and thus easy to control and/or to manipulate, with hierarchies of sex and race becoming naturalized as a result. The Major is Asian and a woman, but she still works willingly for the patriarchal state system, even identifying that work as her raison d’être. Being already an automaton, the Major is in some senses already “dead”: literally a ghost inside the shell of a female body that is there to be looked at, rather than a living, unruly body that cannot be controlled. In this way, she is a realization of a Cartesian split between body and mind: she has a patriarchal mind inside the body of (a male dream version of) a woman. To split mind and body in this way is to die, to become a ghost, with one’s body simply an otherwise empty shell. Scarlett Johansson may not like the moniker ScarJo, but in some senses the violence and the masculinity of the name (Scar-Joe) demonstrate succinctly the way in which she is put to work for patriarchy—while her dislike of the name suggests that this does indeed happen in a fashion that is beyond her control. If Johansson started her career in a Japan where she was Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003), she is resurrected here as a force for dominating and controlling that Asian “other” world. It seems that the film invites us to make this connection, for where Johansson famously appears lying half naked on her bed before a window in the earlier film, here ScarJo/the Major also appears on her bed, but this time with her arm folded in front of her face, a prominent vertical scar down her wrist having been injured during the shootout with the hacked geisha. The image arguably speaks of how, having become inhuman, the Major cannot now die (or commit suicide), not least because the scar will soon be removed. However, it also speaks of ScarJo’s inability to shed the memory or star baggage of her previous roles and performances; the star image thus becomes the “ghost” in ScarJo’s character’s shell as her past continues to haunt her present performances. Johansson has become “ScarJo,” indelibly associated with violence, technology and an amnesiac eradication of racial otherness. What is more, the Major’s (willed) amnesia becomes a key part of the system of control that the film depicts. For, in the American Ghost in the Shell as in numerous others films such as the Bourne franchise, the human

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discovers that they have no past, which was stolen from them in order for them to be turned into a war machine.7 Discovering that their past has been stolen from them, though, does not lead them to rebel so much as to see themselves perfected in their becoming war-machine: their anger leads only to more violence that is carried out in the name of the state, since the state does not function so much via violence being carried out by certain people against certain others, as via violence being carried out full stop. That is, violence has no meaning, but instead becomes random, irrational, and thus something truly to fear: who knows whom the gods will decide to kill today? It could be me. And knowing this, I become used to violence, a masochist who believes that violence is justice and that the gods who mete out such violence are beyond question. Deprived of a past, the agent of violence knows nothing. Without memory or a sense of history, the agent of violence is incapable of understanding how the world came into being and that thus it might be contingent and subject to possible change. Instead, the amnesia of the agent of violence allows them to believe the world as having always been this way, and thus “correct” or “natural,” and that it should remain as it is. This “nuncocentrism”—this amnesiac belief that now is the only reality—not only denies the past, but it also destroys the future, or the possibility for a different world. In this sense, the American Ghost in the Shell is diametrically opposed to the Japanese version, as the future is brought under control in the name of repetition (ScarJo as clone, recalling her role in The Island) rather than difference and evolution. If the Major functions as an embodiment of a (willed) amnesia that allows for the imposition of a patriarchal law that is invisible (and which when visible is gendered “female” in order to convince those who bear it that it really is “fair,” since woman is the “fairer sex”), then the American film version of Ghost in the Shell would seem to pull a similar trick. The film is barely coherent: the “pole dancing” scene in the nightclub makes no sense, while it is barely comprehensible that the Major would return to work reinvigorated after discovering that she used to fight against the technology that made her. And yet, this incoherence functions itself as a means to gloss over history: violence need not make any sense or be justified, but instead we make a violent movie just like that, for no reason, because 7 Films in the series include The Bourne Identity (Doug Liman, 2002), The Bourne Supremacy (Paul Greengrass, 2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass, 2007), The Bourne Legacy (Tony Gilroy, 2012) and Jason Bourne (Paul Greengrass, 2016).

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violent movies are themselves justified. Surrounded by violent movies, violence becomes the norm; surrounded by nonsensical movies, we come to make no demands for explanations or rationales behind why cinema and by extension other systems like politics are the way that they are. Instead, we accept these systems because we know no other way of thinking, and thus these violent systems of control are justified because we see neither how they work (the invisible digital code behind the special effects image) nor how they came to be (the fast, action-filled movies of today are tolerable, while those slow, old, foreign and/or black-and-white movies are plain boring). Via war, via ScarJo becoming war-machine, capital is naturalized and no one has the imagination or the memory even to resist it. We all become ghosts in shells, dead before our time, mindlessly carrying out the work of authorized violence (carrying out work as violence) for the state, which becomes the invisible authority that tricks us into thinking we are the authors of our own desires. We are thus defined not by our thoughts, but by the appearance of our bodies and the work that we make those bodies do. If our bodies are not cinematic, i.e. “white,” and if our bodies cannot kick ass (i.e. enact violence), then we are as good as no one. The only way to be considered human in, and thus to be accepted by, the contemporary world of technologized, global neoliberal capital is to conform to the dominant white and violent values of the time. Paradoxically enough, becoming white means letting go of one’s embodied reality, in particular desire. This in some senses means becoming a ghost/dying in order merely to “live” (just as the Cantonese term guilo, used to describe white people, means “ghost”). The becoming war-machine of ScarJo, then, is the “becoming ghost” in an empty shell of humanity itself, as technologized neoliberal capital becomes global and naturalizes itself as the only possible order of things, as the order of things that we all desire. May we develop a sense of history and/or a memory in order to return from “ScarJo” (the star) to “Scarlett Johansson” (the human), and thus to access an embodied time of the human before the robots take control, a process that might be uncontrollably irreversible.

Works Cited Brown, William. 2015. “From DelGuat to ScarJo.” In The Palgrave Handbook of Posthumanism in Film and Television, edited by Michael Hauskeller, Curtis D. Carbonell, and Thomas D. Philbeck, 11–18. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Chion, Michel. 1994. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. Translated by Claudia Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press. del Río, Elena. 2016. The Grace of Destruction: A Vital Ethology of Extreme Cinemas. London: Bloomsbury. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 2004. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane. London: Bloomsbury. Dyer, Richard. 2004. Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society. London: Routledge. Elsaesser, Thomas. 2011. “James Cameron’s Avatar: Access for all.” New Review of Film and Television Studies 9 (3): 247–264. Fleming, David H. (Forthcoming). “Becoming-Squid, Becoming-Insect and the Refrain of/From Becoming-Imperceptible in Contemporary Science Fiction: Or Scarlett the ‘Post Human’ Starlet, and Her All Too Human Male Counterparts.” In Posthumanisms Through Deleuze, edited by Christine Daigle and Terrance McDonald. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Flusser, Vilém. 2012. Vampyroteuthis Infernalis: A Treatise. Translated by Valentine A. Pakis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Francis, Marc. 2016. “Splitting the Difference: On the Queer-Feminist Divide in Scarlett Johansson’s Recent Body Politics.” Jump Cut 57. http:// www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-FrancisSkin/index.html. Accessed 31 March 2017. Herzog, Amy. 2016. “Star Vehicle: Labor and Corporeal Traffic in Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-HerzogSkin/ index.html. Accessed 31 March 3017. Hildebrand, Lucas. 2016. “On the Matter of Blackness in Under the Skin.” Jump Cut 57. http://www.ejumpcut.org/currentissue/-HilderbrandUnderSkin/ index.html. Accessed 1 April 2017. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kracauer, Siegfried. 2012. “Stage vs. Screen Acting.” In Siegfried Kracauer’s American Writings: Essays on Film and Popular Culture, edited by Johannes von Moltke and Kristy Rawson, 202–204. Berkeley: University of California Press. Martin, Annie. 2017. “Scarlett Johansson on monogamy: ‘I Don’t Think It’s Natural’.” UPI, February 15, 2017. http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/ Movies/2017/02/15/Scarlett-Johansson-on-monogamy-I-dont-think-itsnatural/4231487170931/. Accessed 13 April 2017. Mitchell, W.J.T. 2005. What Do Pictures Want? The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rose, Steve. 2017. “Ghost in The Shell’s Whitewashing: Does Hollywood Have an Asian Problem?” Guardian, March 31, 2017. https://www.theguardian. com/film/2017/mar/31/ghost-in-the-shells-whitewashing-does-hollywoodhave-an-asian-problem. Accessed 13 April 2017.

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Russell, Kathy, Midge Wilson, and Ronald Hall. 2013. The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color in a New Millennium. New York: Anchor. Shaviro, Steven. 2002. “The Erotic Life of Machines.” shaviro.com. http://www. shaviro.com/Othertexts/Bjork.pdf. Accessed 1 April 2017. Yee, Hannah-Rose. 2017. “Do the LGBTQI Scenes in Blockbusters Actually Mean Something?” Whimn: With Her in Mind, April 2, 2017. http://www.whimn. com.au/love/intimacy/do-the-queer-scenes-in-blockbusters-actually-meansomething/news-story/91c71317aada06b270e9ab07cb897036. Accessed 13 April 2017.

CHAPTER 11

The Alien Whiteness of Scarlett Johansson Sean Redmond

Whitely Paradoxes If I may begin this chapter by setting the context for the analysis of Scarlett Johansson that will subsequently follow. I would like to frame the reading of her by bringing together star theory and idealised whiteness, something I have done in previous writing (see Redmond 2007, 2014). When a star image and idealised whiteness are combined, or brought together, in symbiotic union they construct a powerful narrative about privilege and belonging in the world, one that places or situates white identity at the apex of civilised and successful life. At the same time, however, this hyperperfect conjunction renders the white star both unattainably immaculate, and as a consequence, essentially non-reproductive. The idealised whiteness of stars is inherently gendered in this respect: female white stars are both acute forms of physical and spiritual perfection and troubling vessels of abstinence who cannot “reproduce” the species. Their star image is built on an unhealthy paradox: the more positive qualities of starry whiteness, such as purity, transcendence, and hyper-rationalism, mean that “the very

S. Redmond (B) Deakin University, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_11

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things that makes us white endanger the reproduction of whiteness” (Dyer 1997, 27). This complexity is acutely realised in the science fiction film text because of the way the problem of reproduction is writ large over their themes and concerns (Telotte 1990). As I will go onto argue, Johansson’s star image both embodies and expresses these inherent reproductive tensions, particularly in and through her roles in films such as Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2014), and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017), since her whiteness is both accentuated and rendered a dangerous form of progeny. Johansson comes to embody an alien and alienating form of whiteness even if its ontological power continues to hegemonically structure the films under analysis. To set the background to this chapter, I will now begin by defining my terms, and briefly exploring this relationship between stardom and whiteness, before turning to Johansson’s overall star position within the politics of white identity formation as it manifests within the science fiction films that she often appears in.

Starry, Sterile Whiteness Film stars are mythological constructs, their narratives of success built on an imagined relationship with high order qualities and attributes. For example, the star success myth posits that film stars have a particularly close connection with the “extraordinary” and the heavenly (Dyer 1998). Film stars are represented to be naturally more spiritual and closer to the heavens precisely because they are made out of or from natural light. Film Stars glow; they emit light and sunshine like no other human beings on earth. There is a metaphysical aura around them that surrounds them, and which is imagined to light up “our” dreary worlds too. Film stars shine and we—all of us, regardless of race or ethnicity—shine when in contact or communion with them. As Richard Dyer writes, we live in a “culture of light” (1997, 103) where visibility is an indicator of authenticity, knowability, and where giving off light is imagined as a highly positive attribute. And as Dyer further contends, it is whiteness which is so clearly light producing, which is even made up from light itself: “white people are central to it, to the extent that they come to seem to have a special relationship to light” (1997, 103). Light is of course central to the star success myth which posits that higher-order or “supericonic” film stars are made in God’s enlightened

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image, are, at least in a metaphorical sense, God’s ideal(ised) and favoured children: the beautiful and the pure ones. The iconography around such stars as Paul Newman, Robert Redford, the young Brad Pitt, and Ryan Gosling often highlighted their blonde purity through suffuse lighting and high sheen emulsions. This deification is especially true in relation to white female stars, where the qualities of idealized whiteness—light, purity, and transcendence—seem to exude from their very pores, their inner state of being. Here, the “non-physical, spiritual, indeed ethereal qualities” of the “white woman as angel” (Dyer 1997, 127) becomes the very qualities of the female star so that, whiteness and stardom conjoin to produce a truly extraordinary and highly desirable representation that appears to-be-not-of or rather—to draw on the lexicon of science fiction—out-of-this-world. If one was to turn momentarily to the set of promotional texts that circulate in and around Scarlett Johansson, we see how her blondeness and natural auratic light shapes the commercial streams she is represented in. For example, in the Dolce & Gabbana campaign for both the perfume range for The One, and their make-up accessories, Johansson is captured as a sultry figure whose auratic glow ripples in and around her blonde hair and flawless white skin. She is captured laying on silk sheets, or in Paris-end urban settings, with her eyes facing the imagined reader. She lights up the image and the enchanted world she moves in and through. Johansson’s blondeness is here marketed as a physical characteristic that seems to have divine origins, and which naturally produces a heavenly appearance. Marina Warner (1994) has traced the significance of blondeness in religion, fairy tale and myth and found that blondeness is equated with beauty, with goodness, and with heroic deed. Of course, Johansson’s own public commentary that “monogamy isn’t natural” (Weaver 2017) also leaks its way back into these adverts, as does the fact that white women can achieve this status, for example, if they use the right, subtle hair-dye. In so-doing, the holy nature of whiteness seems to be undermined. Johansson, however, is a natural blonde and her auratic glow privileges the sense that she is unattainable if open to desire. As an idealised white star, she is allowed have her cake and eat it. This is of course compounded by her being a mother but with the absence of signs of motherhood. As a “yummy mummy” (Littler 2013) post-partum photographs of Johansson has her toned and fit—as if she hasn’t been through the process of pregnancy and labour at all—suggesting a miraculous birth that white female stars in particular are asked to “embody.”

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Herein lies the crux of the apparent representational contradiction of idealised, starry whiteness: in this coalescing sign system, the idealized white female star floats between two extremes: at one end, she is the ultimate object of identification, someone who is to be desired and desiring; and at the other, she is a subject who nonetheless remains above and beyond easy identification and sexual availability. The idealized white female star is “embodied” in a state of being and not being, as someone who miraculously descends from the heavens with her virginity, purity intact, and yet one who simultaneously occupies the space of reproductive perfection. In the adverts for Dolce & Gabbana, Johansson occupies a space of white womanly perfection, is desiring and desirable, but occupies a space betwixt and between absence and presence. She is a heavenly star fallen to earth. In science fiction film one can see how the whitely markers of Heaven and Angel are transposed to the impressive vastness of utopian Space, and the figure of the Alien Messiah who descends to earth and is given symbolic transformative powers, such as the ability to heal, resurrect and, if wronged, seek vengeance (Ruppersberg 1990). The Alien Messiah confuses and upsets binary reproductive structures, and is implicated in the non-reproductive framework of idealised whiteness since they are beyond reproduction and see it as a lesser form of evolution. For example, in Arrival (Denis Villeneuve, 2016), the Heptapods communicate in circular cryptograms which render time and space anti-chrononormative: they are beyond reproduction but allow Louise Banks (Amy Adams), the whitely linguist in the film, to give birth again to the daughter that has already died. One can see this trope emerging in Johansson’s star image in such films as Her and Under the Skin where the question of desire and reproduction is highly problematized. Elizabeth Ellsworth (1997, 226) calls this essential paradox the “double binds of whiteness,” whereby rationalised purity necessarily brings privileged white people closer to their own negation since they lack empathy and deny the sex drive that in the end would result in the eradication of the species. In a great many science fiction films, the figure of the hyperwhite scientist is presented as dangerous precisely because they are nonreproductive beings and are shown to value “alien” life above our own. Science fiction film is obsessed with the question of reproduction (Cranny-Francis 2015). When there is too much whiteness in the fictional world, reproduction is threatened. When there is too little whiteness, the species is threatened by the Other. In the wider narratives of science fiction

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film, the “ethnic” alien is often placed in binary opposition to white communities, and the healing, positive values of white science and scientists. The ethnic alien visits “Earth” or a space “community” to destroy it; infect it; transform its dominant cultures and moral systems. Monstrous, unstoppable and inter-racial reproduction is often the (white) terror that follows the alien creature. In Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) one can offer a reading of the alien queen that recognises the hallmarks of a sexually charged, animalistic black woman. As Amy Taubin contends: … the alien queen bears a suspicious resemblance to a scapegoat of the Reagan/Bush era – the black welfare mother, the parasite on the economy whose uncurbed reproductive drive reduced hard-working taxpayers to bankruptcy. (1993, 95–96)

What we find through the science fiction films that Johansson stars in, however, is idealised whiteness being the alienating force, al-be-it within narratives that ultimately privilege her and her idealisation. It is true, of course, that white stars very often populate the universes of science fiction film, and even when a black actor such as Will Smith takes the leading role their race and ethnicity are “de-odorised.” White stars, as I will go onto discuss with regards to Johansson’s role in Ghost in the Shell , are also allowed to “travel” across the racial spectrum, taking on roles designed for nonwhite actors. The idealised whiteness of stars matches the white hegemony of science fiction film: their narrative pattern predominately gives the power to travel and change the world to white star-characters, who are marked with exceptionalism—as if it is their (white people’s) manifest destiny to reach for the stars. What is particularly interesting, then, in American film star Scarlett Johansson? What does she signify in the context of stardom, gender and idealised whiteness within the science fiction film text? How might her idealised whiteness speak to the trauma at the heart of this subject position? What might her alien(ating) whiteness say about the state of whiteness in contemporary culture? To answer these related questions, I would like to examine three films, taking each in turn: Her, in which she plays the AI Operating System, Samantha; Under the Skin, in which she plays an unnamed Alien Other who comes to question her own position in the film; and Ghost in the Shell , in which she plays The Major, a Special Ops, humancyborg hybrid, charged with defending the bio-tech corporation she works for. These films are tightly grouped not only in terms of genre thematic

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but release date, allowing this chapter to assess Johansson’s star image and idealized whiteness at a particular moment in her career, and wider cultural life. In all these films, Johansson plays roles that are anti-reproductive and which therefore seemingly undermine the telos of idealised whiteness. The roles question the very framework of her star image, are often anti-star, either explicitly, or through the way the texts unconsciously reveal the “death” at the heart of her idealised whiteness. As I navigate myself through these readings I will argue that Johansson’s alien(ating) whiteness very much speaks to what Monbiot (2014) calls the “culture of loneliness,” where it (white people) acutely suffers from this type of agonising despair. Her (Not Her) In Her, the lonely, soon-to-be-divorced Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) develops a relationship with Samantha (Scarlett Johansson), an artificially intelligent computer operating system that is personified through female voice alone. Theodore is a professional writer who composes love letters for people unable or unwilling to do so, for a website called BeautfulHandwrittenLetters.com. The film establishes from the beginning that intimacy failure is writ large across contemporary life, and that loneliness is the dominant existential condition that the populace face. Here, however, people are overly networked and plugged in, and either long for rematerialisation in the real world, whether it be through “analogue” forms of paper letters, or yearn for these digital spaces to offer them something more meaningful. Theodore’s soon-to-be ex-wife’s main criticism of him is that he could never really handle the intimacies and tensions of the real world. In the case of Theodore, Samantha becomes the conduit for him to experience both public and private spaces, rituals and intimacies, in a new and heightened way. She becomes female utopia (Williams 1999) and he can reengage with the real world since it is now free of conflict while being full of uncomplicated and perfected—if abstracted—sexualisation. The rich, suffuse, high-sheen mise-en-scène of the film gives it an ethereal, floating realisation, as if this electronic love heats and cools everything around Theodore and Samantha. The film’s very spaces and spatial relations, then, call forth the qualities and symbolism of idealized whiteness. Samantha becomes Theodore’s ever-present, connected to him via a small earpiece that allows them to go on dates to the beach, or trips to the

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mall. Their relationship is synaesthetic and cross-modal: he gives Samantha embodiment, while she gives him voice, the means to “feel,” and to have “grounded” connectivity. In their first scene of sexual consummation, Samantha and Theodore make virtual love and he climaxes at the end. However, this level of monogamous intimacy is not enough for Samantha, so she asks him to have sex with someone he finds on the web; the lovemaking to be captured with miniature cameras and microphones on the woman’s body so that Samantha can be virtually penetrated and caressed by Theodore as he does so. The scene blurs normal, patriarchal sexual relations: machine and human are multiplied (the AI Samantha is connected to the woman by digital recording devices, and Theodore makes love to both the woman and the Operating System). Nonetheless, this experiment isn’t successful and we find subsequently that Samantha has been communicating with hundreds of men in a similar way—she loves Theodore but only in the same way as she loves all her operating clients. Her speaks to the supposed promiscuousness of online dating culture and the lack of commitment it fosters. On one level, Her prophesises a future where the liquid streams of modern life produce wealthy but lonely isolates, and where AIs will ultimately expand their capabilities way beyond human comprehension and imagination. On another level, Her prophesises about the failing nature and power of contemporary whiteness. Her is clearly about the double binds of whiteness drawing in part on Johansson’s star image to do so. Samantha may not have literal embodiment in the film but being voiced by Johansson ensures that the film’s sonic register is given sensual flesh. Her well known, accented buttery tones are star sensory signifiers and allow her to be both absent and present in the film—by hearing her we see her even she is never there physically. The very mythos of (Johansson’s) idealised white female stardom is in play in the film: her role, as a sentient AI, gives her power over the film’s narrative trajectory, and places her beyond normal earthly reproductive capabilities. She lives in the network (heaven) and in the intimate (earthly) through one to one relationships with Theodore and her many (thousands?) of clients. The film is framed like a revisionist technological Virgin Mary parable: Johansson/Samantha has earthly desires but they are never (actually) consummated. Further, because her polygamy is aural and virtual; is ultimately out-of-this-world, her actions seem above and beyond human urges and needs. Johansson’s star image clearly is a “perfect fit” for such whitely oscillations: as noted above, in interviews she has come out in favour of

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polygamy, and her star embodiment exists at the axis between sensuality and immaculation. She is all body and beyond body at the same time. In a similar vein, Sophia Nguyen suggests that Johansson’s star image is posthuman, structured between two vectors that render her simultaneously cold and warm, present and detached, body and surface: To watch Johansson perform remoteness is to suddenly realize that she had performed intimacy and warmth. Her trademark voluptuousness provokes a kind of vertigo, retraining viewers who’d become accustomed to finding pleasures at predictable depths: she makes them realize, perhaps, how truly untouchable and opaque her celluloid image had always been. The posthuman Scar-Jo is embodied ambivalently, and only provisionally. Passion does not animate her; curiosity does…. She is affectless and detached. Rather than throwing her into the uphill battle of convincingly portraying depth, her performances are a holograph into the world of surfaces. (2014)

Johansson’s holographic “world of surfaces” is also very much the quality of the idealized whiteness she embodies and translates: beautiful to look at but somehow cold to touch. By contrast, Theodore clearly represents white masculinity in crisis: he is suffering a terrifying confusion over his place within the new digital social and economic order. He has few social ties; his marriage is over and he suffers from depression. His only true solace is in/with Samantha—a transcendental figure he can only (softly) hear. As Richard Dyer suggests, the theme of white men belonging to an endangered species is increasingly found across a range of contemporary cultural texts which, “may suggest that the suspicion of nothingness and the death of whiteness is, as far as white identity goes, the cultural dominant of our times, that we really do feel we’re played out” (Dyer 1997, 217). To summarise, Samantha clearly (dis)embodies the absent/present paradox at the heart of idealized whiteness: she is (initially) conceived as an immaculate being: without a body, without desire, her only objective seemingly to give meaningful embodiment to Theodore—she initially exists subserviently, to satisfy his needs and wants. She is the Angelic motherly figure of myth and lore and the classically coded figure of science fiction AI. Of course, what complicates or troubles the representation is that Samantha is duplicitous, and Theodore’s white masculinity is shown to be not enough for her. Given she is voiced by Johansson, her idealized white star image impresses upon the text. Her blondeness and voluptuness emerges through

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her voice and the virtual seductions and love-making that is undertaken. On one level, the virtual nature of the love-making carries forward the conceit that white people (idealized white stars) don’t have sex (we/they are immaculately conceived). On another level, the virtual love-making brings her star body into the film world—a body that is ultimately, arguably, plastic in the re-moulding sense. Paul Adams (1995, 268) has argued that contemporary digital global relations have enabled “personal extensibility” in which (privileged) people have almost limitless travel capabilities, granting them access to and control over places, services, commodities right around the world. This produces a new form of virtual colonisation with physical or lived consequences for those—the digital poor—who can’t extend themselves in these ways. I would suggest that this is acutely racialized. Johansson/Samantha embodies this newfound expansion of the white self, able to move in and between different realities, to take electronic flight and try on new relations wherever the networks may take them. As Hobson contends, “digital whiteness” is associated with, “progress,” “technology,” and “civilization” (2008, 114). This is of course the reality of Ghost in the Shell , as I will go onto argue later. Under the White Skin Humankind is supposedly living in the age of loneliness; a period where we have fewer companions; communal networks have broken down; and our social encounters are conducted through superficial augmented interfaces. When we gravitate to the social media we find that it doesn’t actually connect us but increases our sense of isolation, and deepens or thickens our profound sense of loneliness (Steers et al. 2014) In the age of loneliness we are supposedly very much alone, as George Monbiot suggests, Three months ago we read that loneliness has become an epidemic among young adults. Now we learn that it is just as great an affliction of older people. A study by Independent Age shows that severe loneliness in England blights the lives of 700,000 men and 1.1m women over 50, and is rising with astonishing speed… Social isolation is as potent a cause of early death as smoking 15 cigarettes a day; loneliness, research suggests, is twice as deadly as obesity. Dementia, high blood pressure, alcoholism and accidents – all these,

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like depression, paranoia, anxiety and suicide, become more prevalent when connections are cut. We cannot cope alone. (2014)

Under the Skin is a perfect metaphoric and experiential exploration of this ennui of loneliness, set within a crumbling Scotland. It also captures perfectly the paradox of idealised whiteness and white stardom as it manifests today—carried into and through the film by Johansson’s star image. In the film, an unnamed, alien seductress (Scarlett Johansson) lures single, isolated men back to her house where they are submerged in a liquid tar and where their bodies are then slowly consumed by an unknown force. The film’s central scenes occur in the industrial and urban wastelands of Scotland, Glasgow in particular. The alien seductress drives a white van around the city estates and its empty roads, luring lonely men to their deaths; and at day, through the teeming metropolis, where movement seems both accelerated and dead slow, like time is out of kilter, in a state of temporal and existential crisis. People are disconnected, in a hurry, or are cut adrift such as the white men the seductress meets and who yearn for connection and intimacy. They are just “poorer” versions of Theodore who we find in Her. Under the Skin’s architecture, its sombre materiality and its oppressive mise-en-scène help create the spatial conditions of modern living and capture perfectly the “extinction” threat that sits at the heart of whiteness. The liquid black tomb that the single white men drown in captures the sense that modern life is permeable, boundaryless, and that their own masculinity is not desired, or empowered, but only devoured. In the film, white masculinity isn’t just lonely, pathetic, it is food. The men drown and are consumed in the isolated and isolating conditions of what it means to be “lowly” white (Bonnett 1998, 2000). Scarlett Johansson’s character is also eventually caught in this cauldron of white anomie. In one pivotal scene, she stares blankly at herself in a mirror, misrecognizing who she really is. She examines her body as if it doesn’t belong to her (which it doesn’t, it has been lifted off a corpse), capturing the sense that the self is a project that can be made, re-engineered, in an age of consumer products and surgical transformations. More tellingly, one can read this scene as representing the self-reflective haunting mirror of whiteness and of the idealised white star staring back at herself. There is a certain “opaque quality” to Johansson’s performance, carried through the films she appears in and which “registers as duplicity” (Doyle 2014), a “make over” trait that is particularly prized by whiteness.

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White people have the exceptional power to make themselves over (Vera and Gordon 2003), and idealised white female stars embody this ability since they exist in promotional streams where this is foregrounded, such as in the Dolce and Gabbana adverts analysed near the beginning of this chapter. However, the question that Under the Skin poses, is to what ends? The film’s answer, on one level, seems to suggest naught: whiteness is on the verge of extinction and stardom is a vacuous enterprise. The absence of reproduction is also central to this film, as it was with Her. Johansson’s character tries to have an intimate relationship with an unnamed, isolated white man in the film but they cannot consummate. He has forgotten simply how to connect; and she is alien, Other, without a vagina or a womb, and therefore unable to love or reproduce but only destroy/castrate. In my reading, this alien Otherness in the film is the spectre of non-reproductive whiteness, of idealised white female stardom: Johansson is a phantasmagoric embodiment of the immaculate conception, but here rendered as a form of self-annihilation. The ideological implications of idealised white female stardom are laid bare: it is to be psychically annihilated. The parallels here with Her are striking except in that film Johansson’s character is set free on the digital superhighway; here she is ultimately punished, as I will presently go onto argue. This is very much an anti-star performance by Johansson: she appears with little glamour, and draws upon a range of authentic performance codes that suggest a hyperrealist embodiment is being presented. Such codes include her mass-market street attire, mournful gait, and the improvised exchanges of dialogue which are filmed in a documentary style. This is a performance that seems to out the artifice of white stardom and of what white stardom can do to the actor who is caught in its glare. Through her performance, Johansson seems to be addressing the loneliness of idealised whiteness itself. In this context, stardom and whiteness ultimately become conduits for this “culture of loneliness” even as it extra-textually washes itself in the glamour of enriched connectivity (Redmond 2014). Nonetheless, there is a further, colossal tension in the film’s representation and understanding of female whiteness and of Johansson’s star embodiment of it. One can read the cruising scenes as “pick-ups” and one-night stands, and the seductress as “white trash.” There is more than a touch of Looking for Mr Goodbar (Richard Brooks, 1977) in the film’s ideological allusions: Johansson’s character is ultimately “punished” for consuming (fucking over) the white men she didn’t desire but wanted on her own terms. Her murder, an immolation at the hands of a would-be rapist, in

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the hushed, ever-so-quiet snow-covered tundra, a vicious “moral retribution of order” by the “type” of failed white man she had taken to task earlier in the film. The seductress/Johansson is being punished for being less than “ideal,” for daring to have earthly desires. She alienates her idealised whiteness and suffers as a consequence. One can begin to see how the theme of promiscuity begins to mark out Johansson’s star image and the roles she plays. It isn’t just contained within the films under analysis in the chapter, either, or the promotional texts briefly highlighted. Johansson occupies a space where her star embodiment is both highly idealised and corporeally suspect. She is virgin and whore, a trope that actually follows a number of iconic white stars, such as Marilyn Monroe, who seemed to “be the very tensions that ran through the ideological life of 50s America,” with its “flux of ideas about morality and sexuality” (Dyer 1998, 31). Monroe is “the ultimate embodiment of the desirable woman” but is “nevertheless not an image of the danger of sex.” Monroe is the “ultimate white playmate” and yet her innocence and naiveté suggests that this is beyond her or rather, she is beyond this. Johansson occupies a similar position today, embodying not only the tensions inherent in idealised whiteness in the twenty-first century, but the fraught position of women in a fragmented, post-feminist culture. Johansson revels in and openly celebrates her whitely, feminine transgression. The arguable power this gives Johansson over her own unruly body and the male gaze directed at (please look at me this way she seems to be saying) is one that ruptures the idealised representation that female white stars are supposed to take on. Through Johansson’s unruly white body a transgressive sexualised form of female whiteness emerges. A transgression that gives life, vitality, corporeality, and control—rather than ethereality and negation—to her star image and the “body” that houses it. However, that is not to deny or forget such transgressions often also bring a degree of “death” since such wanton and aggressive displays of female sexuality are ultimately managed (made safe) or punished in some way, as they are in both Her and Under the Skin; and in the promotional texts we most often find her in, where she is perfected eye-candy. What this continues to suggest is that Johansson can be both sex and death, pure and impure, absent and present, precisely because she is an idealised white female star and has the power to “travel,” as I will now go onto argue in relation to Ghost in the Shell .

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White in the Shell Historically, as Vera and Gordon suggest, “white privilege includes the privilege to temporarily change one’s colour, to masquerade as non-white” (2003, 120). Vera and Gordon use the example of “racial masquerade” by whites in American film to explore what they see as an impossible fantasy solution both to the “lack of life” at the core of whiteness and to the racial guilt experienced by whites in relation to the Other. According to Vera and Gordon: The fantasy played out in most white race-switching movies is an adult male fantasy of reversion to boyhood or adolescence, when the white self was free to play Indian or black. These white male heroes temporarily descend into an exotic racial underworld and assume the imagined qualities of the racial other… only to return at the end to the security of the white bourgeois world. The white passing for another person of another race is, in effect, indulging in voyeurism, liberal slumming, and cultural tourism. (117)

One can apply this masquerade fantasy framework to the live action remake/translation of Ghost in the Shell , but obviously in a more vexing and complex way. Scarlett Johansson takes on the role of Major Mira Killian (Motoko Kusanagi in the original anime film), a “consciousness” implanted in a mechanical body that grants her both exceptional capabilities and near immortality since her parts and organs can be repaired. As The Major in the anti-terrorist bureau Section 9, Killian engages in a quest to not only defeat the terrorists but to find out more about her true self since the “glitches” she increasingly gets suggest a “past” beyond her shell. The film is set in a retrofuturistic Tokyo/Japan and is saturated in orientalist images: the visual effects and camera work draw on the aesthetics of Asian cityphilia to capture the sensorial, ritualised stereotypes of Japan/Asia. As The Major navigates herself through the metropolis we are witnessing the very appropriation of the authentic markers found in the original film and given it is Johansson doing the “touring,” the film establishes a fetishistic looking regime from the eyes of a highly fetishized white star/character. Given also that in the original The Major is a Japanese character, and that the film is set in Japan, and foregrounds its cultural specificity, one can read this positioning as a form of racial masquerade: The Major is white and yet Other, or a version of the Other that white culture is able to “pimp” or try on (hooks 1992).

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The Major is a male fantasy figure but layered so: as the narrative agent, she drives the film but is at the same time “positioned” by the mysterious male figure she is trying to track down (Kuze, played by Michael Carmen Pitt). The Major’s costume is tight and accentuates Johansson’s curves and breasts (she is to be looked at) at the same time as it promotes her physicality and strength. Narratively speaking, given it is not her body, and is not a human body but a cyborg one, the character is again beyond reproduction. The Major, then, embodies the reproductive paradoxes of idealized whiteness as it manifests in and through Johansson’s star image. Nonetheless, Ghost in the Shell occupies an unusual space in racial masquerade films since it inverts the usual narrative in which the Other tries to pass as white. Their journey is very often a tragic one since an inquisitor finds out the “truth” that she or he is not racially pure and the revelation is accompanied by the character’s destruction (Gabriel 1998). In Ghost in the Shell , The Major finds out that she is actually Japanese, the daughter of a widowed mother, and the revelation leads to the destruction of the commercial organisation that has been harvesting humans for this end. In a sense, then, Ghost in the Shell embraces the racial hybridity the film is built on, although it is imagined through the idealised white body of Johansson. One can argue that at the core of a white longing for easternisation is a “dissatisfaction with and alienation from the limitations of the white bourgeois self—a white self-loathing—and a romanticisation of the racial other” (Vera and Gordon 2003, 117). Play and performance is key here. In fact, Celia Lury suggests that the “making of races” or the creation of racial identities is central to consumer culture and the way that in contemporary representations, “all races are represented, not as a biological category, but as a question of style, as a choice” (1996, 168). Of course, the play with race may be argued to be a hegemonic tactic for ensuring that whiteness maintains its racial superiority, particularly when it comes to white people taking on/in racial Otherness. As Hernan Vera and Andrew M. Gordon suggest, “white privilege includes the privilege to temporarily change one’s colour, to masquerade as non-white” (2003, 120). Nonetheless, one can also argue that there is potentially a transgressive and subversive quality to white masquerade and the desire for the racial Other. In terms of primitivism, Bonnett argues that there must be some attempt to “cross the boundaries of cultural and racial purity” (2000, 117). Similarly, Gina Marchetti concludes that racial masquerade films “implicitly critique the racial hierarchy of mainstream American culture, since they feature the conscious and deliberate impersonation of another race, putting

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aside a supposed racial superiority so as to become part of a supposedly inferior other” (qtd. in Vera and Gordon 2003, 119). Through impersonation, passing, performing, masquerading, racial identity shifts, moves, floats so that the borders and boundaries in and between white and non-white people begin to melt into air. According to Zygmunt Bauman (2000), constructing a durable identity that coheres over time and space has become increasingly impossible within the conditions of electronic modernity. He suggests that we have moved from a period where we understood ourselves as “pilgrims” in search of deeper or higher meaning, to one where we now act as “tourists” in search of multiple but fleeting social experiences. Johansson’s idealized white star image seems to speak to both this restlessness and to tie it to a crisis—an aching loneliness—in whiteness.

Conclusion: Alienating Whiteness Johansson’s idealized white star image, as I have begun to establish in this chapter, clearly works in and through a set of complex intersections and tensions; particularly around the vexing question of reproduction as it uniquely materializes in the science fiction film. I have set this reading in relation to the contemporary condition of “loneliness” and of identity fragmentation as it manifests in the digital worlds we live in, and the subjectivities we pass through. On the one hand, Johansson embodies the mythos of idealized female whiteness, securing its cultural power. On the other hand, she so clearly demonstrates its fault-lines and negations, and represents it as a set of fraught alienations. Through Johansson, idealized female whiteness is alien because it is out of this world, non, or anti-reproductive, and, more powerfully perhaps, because it threatens its own ontological coherency. The three films under analysis in the chapter do this alienating whiteness in distinct but overlapping ways. They are in conversation with other promotional texts, and with other films in the Johansson oeuvre, beyond the reach of the capabilities of this chapter. Yet uniquely it is in the science fiction films where we see the fraught conditions of idealized whiteness play out.

Works Cited Adams, Paul. 1995. “A Reconsideration of Personal Boundaries in Space-Time.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 85: 267–285.

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Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity. Bonnett, Alistair. 1998. “How the British Working Class Became White: The Symbolic (Re)formation of Racialized Capitalism.” Journal of Historical Sociology 11 (3): 316. ———. 2000. White Identities: Historical and International Perspectives. Harlow: Prentice-Hall. Cranny-Francis, Anne. 2015. “Robots, Androids, Aliens, and Others: The Erotics and Politics of Science Fiction Film.” In Endangering Science Fiction Film, edited by Sean Redmond and Leon Marvell, 220–242. New York: Routledge. Doyle, Sady. 2014. “From Coquette to Cold-Eyed Killer: How Scarlett Johansson Became the Face of Female Horror.” Salon, July 22. https://www.salon.com/ 2014/07/22/from_coquette_to_cold_eyed_killer_how_scarlett_johansson_ became_the_face_of_female_horror/. Dyer, Richard. 1997. White. London: Routledge. ———. 1998. Stars: New Edition. London: BFI. Ellsworth, E. 1997. “Double Binds of Whiteness.” In Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society, edited by M. Fine, L. Weis, L. Powell, and M. Wong, 259– 269. London: Routledge. Gabriel, John. 1988. Whitewash, Racialized Politics and the Media. London: Routledge. Hobson, Janell. 2008. “Digital Whiteness, Primitive Blackness.” Feminist Media Studies 8 (2): 111–126. hooks, Bell. 1992. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press. Littler, Jo. 2013. “The Rise of the ‘Yummy Mummy’: Popular Conservatism and the Neoliberal Maternal in Contemporary British Culture.” Communication, Culture & Critique 6 (2): 227–243. Lury, Celia. 1996. Consumer Culture. Cambridge: Polity. Monbiot, George. 2014. “The Age of Loneliness is Killing Us.” Guardian, October 14. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/Oct/14/ age-of-loneliness-killing-us. Nguyen, Sophia. 2014. ‘The Posthuman Scar-Jo’. Los Angeles Review of Books, September 12. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/posthuman-scar-jo/#!. Redmond, Sean. 2007. “The Whiteness of Stars.” In Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, edited by Sean Redmond and Su Holmes. London: Sage. ———. 2014. Celebrity and the Media. Basingstoke: Key Concerns Series, Palgrave Macmillan. Ruppersberg, Hugh. 1990. “The Alien Messiah.” In Alien Zone, edited by Annette Kuhn, 32–38. London: Verso. Steers, Mai-Ly N., Robert E. Wickham, and Linda K. Acitelli. 2014. “Seeing Everyone Else’s Highlight Reels: How Facebook Usage Is Linked to Depressive Symptoms.” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 33 (8): 701–731.

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Taubin, Amy. 1993. “The Alien Trilogy: From Feminism to Aids.” In Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader, edited by Pam Cook and Philip Dodd, 93–100. London: Scarlet Press. Telotte, J. P. 1990. “The Doubles of Fantasy and the Space of Desire.” In Alien Zone, edited by Annette Kuhn, 152–159. London: Verso. Vera, Hernan, and M. Andrew Gordon. 2003. Screen Saviors: Hollywood Fictions of Whiteness. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Warner, Maria. 1994. From the Beast to the Blonde. London: Chatto & Windus. Weaver, Hilary. 2017. “Scarlett Johansson Doesn’t Think Monogamy Is Natural.” Vanity Fair, 15 February. http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/02/ scarlett-johansson-marriage-and-monogamy. Williams, Linda Ruth. 1999. “Dream Girls and Mechanic Panic: Dystopia and Its Others in Brazil and Nineteen Eighty-Four.” In British Science Fiction Cinema, edited by I. Q Hunter, 153–168. London and New York: Routledge.

Filmography

North (Rob Reiner, 1994) Just Cause (Arne Glimcher, 1995) Manny & Lo (Lisa Krueger, 1996) If Lucy Fell (Eric Schaeffer, 1996) Fall (Eric Schaeffer, 1997) Home Alone 3 (Raja Gosnell, 1997) The Horse Whisperer (Robert Redford, 1998) My Brother the Pig (Erik Fleming, 1999) The Man Who Wasn’t There (Joel Coen and Ethan Cohen, 2001) Ghost World (Terry Zwigoff, 2001) An American Rhapsody (Éva Gárdos, 2001) Eight Legged Freaks (Ellory Elkayem, 2002) Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) Girl with a Pearl Earring (Peter Webber, 2003) The Perfect Score (Brian Robbins, 2004) A Love Song for Bobby Long (Shainee Gabel, 2004) A Good Woman (Mike Barker, 2004) The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie (Stephen Hillenburg, 2004) In Good Company (Paul Weitz, 2004) Match Point (Woody Allen, 2005) The Island (Michael Bay, 2005) Scoop (Woody Allen, 2006) The Black Dahlia (Brian De Palma, 2006) The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2

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The Nanny Diaries (Shari Springer and Robert Pulcini, 2007) The Other Boleyn Girl (Justin Chadwick, 2008) Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008) The Spirit (Frank Miller, 2008) He’s Just Not That into You (Ken Kwapis, 2009) Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010) We Bought a Zoo (Cameron Crowe, 2011) The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012) Hitchcock (Sacha Gervasi, 2012) Don Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 2013) Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) Her (Spike Jonze, 2013) Chef (Jon Favreau, 2014) Captain America: Winter Soldier (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2014) Lucy (Luc Besson, 2014) Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015) Hail, Caesar! (Joel Coen and Ethan Cohen, 2016) The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau, 2016) Captain America: Civil War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2016) Sing (Garth Jennings, 2016) Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017) Rough Night (Lucia Aniello, 2017) Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018) Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2018) Avengers: Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo, 2019)

Index

A Academy Awards, 2, 7, 72, 107 Acting Method, 45–47 naturalism, 46 star acting, 45–47 Affron, Charles, 45, 56, 57 Allen, Woody, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 13, 24, 48, 63–74, 77, 78, 84, 114, 147, 171 An American Rhapsody, 34, 35, 38 Artificial women, 16 Asia, 191, 192, 215 The Avengers , 85–88, 90, 93, 94, 186, 189 Avengers: Age of Ultron, 83, 92, 114, 185 Avengers: Endgame, 95 Avengers: Infinity War, 95, 114

C Captain America: Civil War, 83, 94, 114, 185 Captain America: Winter Soldier, 83, 89, 114, 185 Captain Marvel , 82 Celebrity Celebrity Studies , 147 in the digital era, xi, 126–129, 131, 135, 137–138 photography, 124–126, 133 unauthorised images, 126 Child stardom, 24–27, 29 Coen, Ethan, 3, 5, 24 Coen, Joel, 3, 5, 8, 24, 44, 55 Coming of age narrative, 37

B Bardot, Brigitte, 10, 53 The Black Dahlia, 12 Blankness, 43, 44, 50–52, 58

Cook, Pam, 11, 42 Coppola, Sofia, 3, 5, 6, 24, 50, 84, 113, 147, 178, 198 Cyborg. See Artificial women

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 J. Loreck et al. (eds.), Screening Scarlett Johansson, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2

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INDEX

D Doane, Mary Ann, 86, 89, 102, 104–107, 109–111, 113, 173, 174 Dolce & Gabbana, 2, 8, 187, 205, 206, 213 Don Jon, 9, 66, 88, 89, 94, 185, 186 Dyer, Richard, 2, 10, 13, 49, 54, 67, 100, 113–116, 127, 171, 175, 185, 204, 205, 210, 214

E Eight Legged Freaks , 6 Europe, 63, 64, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78 European cinema, 74

F Faber, Michel, 15, 146, 147, 152, 154, 160, 165, 170, 176, 180 Fall , 23 Feminism, 86, 91, 92

G Gabbana, 54 Garland, Judy, 27 Genre action cinema, 90 comedy, 71, 75 science fiction, 3, 176 teen cinema/youth, 3 Ghost in the Shell white supremacy, 4 Ghost in the Shell , 3, 13, 15, 16, 58, 66, 114, 124, 137, 139, 140, 147, 165, 185, 186, 188–195, 197–199, 204, 207, 211, 214–216 Ghost World, 5, 7, 24, 31, 34, 36–38, 50, 69, 113 Girl with a Pearl Earring , 5, 7, 9, 24, 51, 69

Glazer, Jonathan, 3, 58, 111, 122, 123, 145–148, 151–154, 162, 166, 167, 170, 180, 190 Gledhill, Christine, 10 Golden Globes, 7, 69 Grossman, Julie, 82, 86, 93, 173 Gynoid. See Artificial women H Hail, Caesar, 10, 57 Hayworth, Rita, 10, 11, 53, 55 Heath, Stephen, 102–104, 110 Her, 3, 14, 15, 17, 66, 88, 99, 100, 165, 185, 204, 208 embodiment, 83, 85, 112, 153, 161, 209, 210, 213, 214 off-screen performance, 99 sound, 31, 34, 67, 100, 101, 103, 104, 108, 110, 116, 117 He’s Just Not That Into You, 9, 51 Hitchcock, 10, 55–57, 66 Hollinger, Karen, 38, 45, 47, 64, 67 Hollywood, 1–4, 6, 9, 10, 17, 25, 27–29, 43–46, 49, 52–55, 57, 58, 66, 90, 100, 101, 103, 104, 107, 110, 112, 114, 116, 117, 121, 123, 125, 136, 137, 140, 146–149, 154, 161, 166, 184, 185, 192, 193 Home Alone 3, 5, 23 The Horse Whisperer, 5, 23, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 38 Humanity, 3, 165, 167, 168, 170, 175, 176, 179, 180, 200 and inhumanity, 185, 198 and posthumanity, 185, 188, 195, 210 I If Lucy Fell , 23 Independent cinema, 3, 4, 6, 7, 81

INDEX

Iron Man 2, 6, 12, 83–88, 95, 96 The Island, 6, 9, 185, 187, 199 Isle of Dogs , 13, 15 J Japan, 13, 15, 74, 140, 186, 189, 192, 198, 215 Johansson, Scarlett action heroine, 18, 81, 82, 86, 88, 90, 96, 188 activism, 13, 138 advertising, 12, 54, 66, 138, 187 as “on-screen effect”, 167 beauty, 2, 5, 7, 16, 42, 48, 93, 96, 167, 178, 205 biography, 4 blankness, 2, 3, 8–10, 14, 15, 17, 47–49, 88, 89, 97, 100, 105, 111–113, 115, 124, 145, 153, 158, 167, 170–172, 175, 177, 178, 180, 187, 194, 198, 210, 214, 216 childhood, child actor, 2, 4, 8, 23–25, 27–30, 32, 84 cinema, 2, 4, 6, 184, 187 controversies, 13, 66, 137, 138, 140 face, 33–35, 43, 167, 172, 173 femininity, 3, 4, 16, 18, 96, 105, 147, 148, 161, 173 femme fatale, 18, 70, 81, 82, 84, 86, 88, 96, 123, 167, 174, 178, 180 hair, 2, 8, 47, 121, 124, 166 marriages & key relationships, 115 motherhood, 94, 205 music career, 43 music videos, 43, 194 nostalgia & retro-star appeal, 8, 44, 53–58 off-screen and absent bodies, 14 sex symbol, 8–10, 14, 15, 17, 166, 179

225

software and technology, 133, 139, 141, 184, 185, 188 voice, 5, 8, 10, 14, 15, 18, 30, 31, 35, 48, 69, 100 voice (and accent), x, 5, 7, 8, 10, 14–15, 30–31, 35, 69, 88, 100, 104–105, 108–109, 110–113, 116–118, 147, 178, 197 youth, 24, 32 Jonze, Spike, 14, 99–101, 103, 106–108, 112, 117, 165 The Jungle Book, 15, 183 Just Cause, 23

K Kardashian, Kim, 126 Kidman, Nicole, 11, 42, 173 King, Barry, 25

L Lacan, Jacques, 102, 103 Leigh, Janet, 56 Liminality, 24, 29–31, 33–35, 37 Lost in Translation, 3, 5–7, 24, 50, 69, 74, 75, 77, 84, 113, 147, 172, 178, 198 Lucy, 7, 24, 89

M Machine(s) bêtes machines , 165, 172, 176 mechanical bodies, 215 war machine, 199 The Man Who Wasn’t There, 5, 7, 24, 69 Manny & Lo, 5, 23, 25, 28, 31–35, 38 Mansfield, Jayne, 4, 175 Marks, Laura, 113 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), 12, 58, 66, 81, 114, 177

226

INDEX

Match Point , 9, 11, 24, 51, 63–73, 77, 78, 84, 147 Memes, 18, 124, 128–135, 139–141 Reeves, Keanu, 131 Metz, Christian, 100–106, 108, 110, 115, 117 Monroe, Marilyn, 4, 8–10, 17, 48, 53, 115, 175, 214 Mulvey, Laura, 85, 113 My Brother the Pig , 5, 24

N Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, 81, 177, 186 action heroine, 87 femme fatale, 83 North, 5, 23 Nostalgia, 53, 55, 56

O Olsen, Ashley, 27 Olsen, Mary-Kate, 27 The Other Boleyn Girl , 9, 51

P The Perfect Score, 6 Performance, 3, 5–8, 14, 16, 18, 26, 28, 29, 32–34, 44–58, 64–67, 69, 70, 77, 97, 103, 115, 126, 130, 139, 146, 151, 153, 157, 161, 167, 171, 172, 174, 179, 183, 184, 187, 188, 195, 198, 210, 212, 213, 216 vs. persona, 4, 44–46, 49, 53, 97, 148, 179 Persona, 2–5, 7, 8, 11, 13–17, 24–31, 34, 38, 42–44, 46, 48–50, 52–57, 63, 64, 69–71, 77, 78, 81, 86, 92, 122, 124–128, 131, 135–138,

140, 141, 146, 148, 152, 153, 166, 173, 175, 179, 185 The Prestige, 9, 84 Psychoanalytic film theory, 101 R Race, 137, 139, 186, 190, 198, 204, 207, 215, 216 Rough Night , 3 S Scarjo, 185, 187, 188, 190, 196–200 “Scarlett Johansson falling down”, 124 Scoop, 63, 64, 66, 70, 71, 77 Scotland, 66, 147–150, 154–158, 161, 162, 165, 184, 212 “sexiest woman alive”, 2, 8, 167, 171 Shifman, Limor, 129, 130, 132, 139 Sing , 15 Social media, 11, 13, 121, 122, 124, 126–129, 135, 137–141, 211 Sodastream, 13, 138 Sound, 67, 68, 99, 100, 102, 103, 105–112, 116, 117, 152 soundtrack, 104, 107 voice, 67, 100, 103, 104, 106, 108, 110, 112, 116, 117 The Spirit , 84 Star, 2, 4–7, 10–18, 24–31, 38, 41–47, 49, 50, 52, 54–58, 64–67, 71, 81, 83, 88, 92, 95–97, 100, 101, 111–116, 118, 121, 123, 125–128, 131, 141, 146, 148, 153, 154, 166, 168, 173, 175, 179, 180, 183–185, 187, 192, 198, 200, 203–207, 211, 213, 214 image, 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 13–15, 29, 38, 42–45, 48, 49, 52–54, 56, 57, 66, 111, 114, 115, 135, 137, 152, 168, 184, 187,

INDEX

192, 197, 198, 203, 204, 206, 208–210, 212, 214, 216, 217 performance, 4, 7, 14, 15, 41–46, 49, 50, 52, 54, 56–58, 64, 67, 115, 148 Stardom and acting, 44, 46, 64 and whiteness, 204, 205, 207, 212, 213 as consumption, 106 child stardom, 24–27, 29 classic hollywood, 54 female stardom, 3, 18, 47, 209, 213 in the digital era, 105, 126–129, 135, 137, 185 star studies, 25, 64, 127

T Tasker, Yvonne, 85, 87, 90, 91 Taylor, Elizabeth, 11, 53 Transnationalism, 148

227

U Under the Skin corporeality, 178, 179 materiality of personhood, 167 Scottish cinema, 147–149, 152, 154, 156, 161, 162 whiteness, 157, 204, 206, 207, 213 Under the Skin (novel), 15, 146, 147, 176 V Vicky Cristina Barcelona, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70, 74, 75, 77, 78 Violence, 84, 85, 87, 157, 160, 185, 192, 196, 198–200 W Whiteness, 132, 157, 193–195, 203–210, 212–217 and femininity, 214 white supremacy, 4 white-washing, 13