Name Student: Zoë de Ligt Student Number: 10000350 Completion Date: 26-06-2015 Course: Master Thesis
Supervisors: Tarja Laine, Marie-Aude Baronian, Maarten Reesink Programme: rMA Media Studies
University: University of Amsterdam Word Count: 20.587
FROM TRANSHUMANIST FANTASIES TO
POSTHUMANIST FUTURES
Index
Acknowledgements 3
Introduction 4
Chapter 1 - Fulfilling Transhumanist Fantasies
Luc Besson's Lucy 11
Chapter 2 - From a Predatory Gaze to an Empathetic Glare
Jonathan Glazer's Under the Skin 26
Chapter 3 - Being With Her and the World
Spike Jonze's Her 42
Conclusion 57
Bibliography 61
Acknowledgements
I would like to use this page to thank everybody who has supported me during the period of my thesis. Nevertheless, my gratefulness can hardly be expressed in words. First and foremost I would like to thank Tarja Laine, who has been a great supervisor for the second time during my studies. She always finds a way to motivate me and pushes me beyond my boundaries. Her feedback and ideas have been vitally important in working towards this final version. I would also like to thank my second and third reader, Marie-Aude Baronian and Maarten Reesink, who have taken the time and effort to read and comment on my work. A special thanks goes out to Maarten who was always willing to talk to me about my project and has given me much useful feedback. In addition, I would like to thank him for his sincere enthusiasm, which continues to inspire me. Moreover, Maryn Wilkinson has provided my with all the motivational speeches I needed throughout my project – thank you. I am extremely grateful to all colleagues and friends who have read, commented on or took the time to talk to me about parts of my thesis; all your feedback has been extremely helpful.
Most personally, I would like to thank Sander Mooij, whose humour and imagination is a continuous source of creativity. Thank you for always being there for me. I could not have accomplished this without you.
In the spirit of my thesis, I would like to thank some non-human actors that played a crucial role in writing this thesis. Initially, Lucy, Under the Skin and Her, the vibrant matters that sprung my imagination and creativity in the first place. Lastly, I would like to thank Moos and Gijs, my dearest companions, for always being on, above, under or near my desk, wherever in the house that might have been.
Introduction
The filmosopher engages in a thinking of and for the future (where film ‘tells’ us new things). In filmosophy, film is the beginning and the future of our thought. We thought we needed to calculate our beliefs about the world, but the of philosophy, with its metaphorical pictures of that belief, might lead us to realize that we can understand the world in like manner — that we can ‘film’ our beliefs.
Daniel Frampton – Filmosophy (212-213)
The ecological crisis that we face is so obvious that is becomes easy – for some, strangely or frighteningly easy – to join the dots and see that everything is
interconnected. This is the ecological thought. And the more we consider it, the more the world opens up.
Timothy Morton – The Ecological Thought (1)
The Anthropocene has become the general label for signifying our current era; the era in which the impact of humankind on the earth’s ecosystems has become clearly
measurable. The prospect of an approaching ecological catastrophe induces
philosophical reflection on the position of the human subject and its place in the world. Philosophers from different stances have pondered this question. Some regard the Anthropocene as an invitation to recognize that the fate of humanity is deeply
intertwined with the fate of all sorts of other entities (Shaviro Universe of Things 1). In their opinion, it is important for the future of the earth that we no longer consider ourselves to be unique. Rather, the human must be conceptualized as equal to all other beings. This type of thinking is a characteristic of posthumanism, which draws the centrality of the human subject into question. In contrary, other thinkers keep the human subject at the centre and affirm its privileged position. This is reminiscent of
transhumanism, a philosophical stance that celebrates the human subject and its rationality.
However, not only philosophers are occupied with these questions, as the medium of film also engages in this kind of thinking. Three contemporary science fiction films, all released in 2013, can be characterized as filmminds of the Anthropocene, which
reflect on and rethink the human-world relationship. The films: Luc Besson’s Lucy, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin, and Spike Jonze’s Her, embody philosophical reflections by means of their aesthetics systems. They speculate about the future and in doing so, they reproduce or critically examine beliefs concerning the world. Moreover, the films invite the spectator to think along and to react to the thoughts they embody.
With his concept of filmmind, Daniel Frampton asserts that films contemplate the characters and subjects they present. Furthermore, Frampton does not understand film-thinking in an anthropomorphic sense. A filmmind does not think like a human, but in its own way through its complex system of aesthetics. He states, “Film bleeds ideas. The rupturing of complex film-thinking creates spaces for ideas to appear” (165). In this manner, Frampton characterizes film as a non-human, performative entity; an organic intelligence that embodies philosophical reflection. Similarly, Tarja Laine uses Jane Bennett’s concept of vibrant matter to grasp this. Cinema is not passive, it is an active non-human agent that produces effects and affects; cinema is vibrant matter. For Laine, film is not only a filmmind but also a filmheart, a concept that she coins in her book Feeling Cinema: Emotional Dynamics in Filmstudies. As a filmheart, film cares about its subjects in a particular way and transfers these embodied emotions to the spectator.1 What I find particularly interesting about these conceptualizations is the premise that the spectator is taken beyond the human. By means of the filmic event, in which a dialogue between the human and the non-human film is established, the
spectator engages with a non-human type of thinking. If, as Frampton states, film is the future of thought, it might be interesting to explore to what extent film could help to make human thought less human centred.
As previously discussed, Lucy, Under the Skin, and Her embody thoughts
concerning the nature of the human being. All three films do so by telling the story of a female creature in process of becoming that either leaves her human form behind or entails an Other becoming human. Lucy portrays the story of a women becoming a supercomputer, as she learns to use the full capacity of her brain. In Under the Skin, an alien disguised as a woman begins a journey of self-exploration as she starts to wonder to what extent her human veil defines what or who she really is. Lastly, Her features an
1 Throughout my thesis, for the sake of clarity and structure, I will use the concept of filmmind.
But, I want to acknowledge and emphasize that I believe a filmmind also thinks with feeling. For me, a filmmind is a filmheart that feels for and feels with its characters and subjects.
A.I, which is an intelligent computer without a body who tries to make her way in a human world. In all three films, Scarlet Johansson plays the roles of these characters. According to Ara Osterweil, Johansson is the current favourite choice of contemporary filmmakers to play these inhuman characters, precisely because she is so human (46). With her classic female physique, her renaissance face, and lively voice, she dares the spectator to put a label on her, only to call these labels into question. All three films belong to the genre of science fiction and reflect on the porous boundaries between the human and the Other. In this process, they reveal essential insights about the world we live in (Osterweil 46).
Nevertheless, Lucy, Under the Skin, and Her are also markedly different. Ranging from Indie-cinema to Hollywood blockbuster, they have diverse cinematic styles. By means of their aesthetic systems, they reflect upon their protagonists’ transformations in different manners. My aim is to analyse how they do so and what this thought
embodies. In this way, I intend to discover to what extent these films could be characterized as filmminds that think ecologically. As such, an ecological filmmind would consider and recognize human beings’ equal position to and reciprocal relations with non-human entities; the fundamental entanglement with others and the world. An ecological filmmind is concerned with the earth’s future and dares the viewer to think differently. This idea is reminiscent of Timothy Morton’s book: The Ecological Thought. In the introduction he argues:
Ecology shows that all beings are connected. The ecological thought is thinking of interconnectedness. The ecological thought is thinking about ecology but it is also a thinking that is ecological. The ecological thought does not just ‘occur in the mind’. It is a practice and process of becoming fully aware of how human beings are connected with other beings. (7)
My aim is to show how films can think ecologically too. As non-human minds they think differently and could potentially help the spectator towards ecological
contemplation. Therefore, I address the following research questions: Lucy, Under the Skin and Her are embedded into the Anthropocene era. What are their thoughts about the position of the human subject and how do they embody these thoughts? In addition, can they be characterized as ecological filmminds?
To analyse the films and to answer these questions, I use one main theoretical background, namely posthumanism. Posthumanism is an important philosophical stance that reflects on the position of the subject and the biological and cultural tasks
connected to that position. Due to its frequent use in academic as well as in popular context, posthumanism (and related concepts such as the posthuman) has become a slippery concept. Over the years, different meanings have emerged. In an academic context, the posthuman is often associated with Katherine Hayles and her book How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Hayles’ critical work centres on the question of changing human subjectivity in an era where technologies emerge and develop rapidly. In her book, Hayles critically examines the changing thought as a consequence of these developments. Privileging information over materialism has transformed the human into the posthuman, a disembodied creature for which the body is a mere prosthesis (3). This idea of the posthuman should not be regarded as a move away from humanism. With the term humanism, I refer to the broad philosophical and ethical stance that ascribes humankind a privileged place in the universe. It emphasizes the value and agency of human beings essentially based on their capacity for reason. Hence, reducing the body to a mere shell or container for the mind should not be viewed as a move away from yet rather as an identification of the ideas of humanism. I will refer to this conceptualization of posthumanism as transhumanism.
In his book, What is Posthumanism? Cary Wolfe opposes himself to transhumanism. He states the following:
Posthumanism in my sense isn’t posthuman at all—in the sense of being “after” our embodiment has been transcended—but is only posthumanist, in the sense that it opposes the fantasies of disembodiment and autonomy, inherited from humanism itself, that Hayles rightly criticizes. (xv)
Wolfe’s posthumanism desires to criticize the anthropocentric worldview of humanism. He wants to move beyond humanism’s binary thinking in which the mind is separated from matter, body from ratio, human from animal; a mode of thought still so present and persuasive in contemporary society. For Wolfe, moving towards posthumanism would mean that the thematic of decentring the human to evolutionary, ecological, and technological coordinates is not merely discussed (xvi). More importantly, this move
towards posthumanism also entails trying to grasp how thinking confronts these thematics and what thought should become when facing these challenges (xvi). According to Wolfe, this forces people to “rethink our taken-for-granted modes of human experience, including the normal perceptual modes and affective states of Homo sapiens itself” (xxv).
My contribution to this line of thought is a filmic one. Namely, I would like to examine how a film, as an organic thinking subject, can reflect these questions, and how a film by means of its particular, non-human thinking might be able to alter human thought, as Wolfe requires. As such, Wolfe functions as a key-thinker throughout my thesis. Moreover, I refer to other posthumanist thinkers such as Karan Barad and Donna Haraway. In addition, I refer to other related philosophies that critique a human-centred worldview such as eco-criticism and object-oriented ontology.2
My methodology for examining these films could be characterized as film-phenomenological.3 A film-phenomenological method studies the relation between the embodied spectator and his or her relation with the cinematic body during the film. Film-phenomenologist Julian Hanich states, “Phenomenology can enlarge our capacities for conscious awareness, refine our cultural sensorium and change our perspective on the world” (7). Therefore, my thesis explores the aesthetics of these films. For example, how these films embody thoughts on the human-world relationship, and how they invite the spectator to react both philosophically and emotionally. In other words, to analyse the manner in which they guide the spectator to think and feel in a certain way that reproduces, comments, or critiques a humanist, anthropocentric worldview. In this thesis, the phenomenological works of Jennifer Barker, Laura Marks, and Laine play
2 I will use different works that belong to the field of object-oriented ontology, such as the work
of Levi Bryant, Ian Bogost and Timothy Morton. Some of Timothy Morton’s work could also be identified as eco-theory.
3 To others, my phenomenological method might seem to clash with an interest in ecological
thinking, since phenomenology puts the experience of the human subject at the center, which is what posthumanism and certainly object-oriented-ontology wants to critique. In this way, Tom Sparrow states that phenomenology has always been haunted by an anthropocentric specter. However, I do believe that a phenomenological method is still valuable. I consider our being-in-the-world not to be stable, but can shift due to people’s fundamental embodied entanglement with an ever-changing world. Phenomenology as a practice could aid to change that
imperative roles, since they have engaged extensively with embodiment in the cinematic experience. While not fundamentally phenomenological, William Brown’s book Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age provides a crucial basis regarding contemporary digital cinema. 4
Every chapter engages with one of the case studies separately. Throughout the chapters, I analyse their differences and similarities, tying them closely together. The first chapter discusses Besson’s Lucy. In the film, Lucy becomes a victim of an illegal drug operation, which ships the synthetic drug CPH4. This drug enables the human being to use more than ten per cent of its cerebral capacity, exploring previously unreachable areas of the brain. Accidentally, Lucy is exposed to a large amount of the CPH4, transforming her into the first human to use more than ten per cent of her brain and unlocking new abilities. In this chapter, I characterize Lucy as a transhumanist fantasy that celebrates the human because of its rationality and, therefore, positions it on an evolutionary pedestal. Lucy intensifies Cartesian thought and envisions the human as fundamentally privileged, separate from the world, and able to eventually transcend all material and biological boundaries. Therefore, Lucy rejects the invitation to think ecologically, but rather proceeds and reproduces anthropocentric thought.
Glazer’s Under the Skin is less straightforward and far more complex in its film-thinking. In Under the Skin, an alien traversing the earth and hunting for human skins learns what it means to be embodied. In this chapter, I intend to demonstrate how the film embodies the non-human phenomenology of the alien, which shifts from a
predatory gaze to an empathetic glare. During this filmic event, the spectator aligns with the strange phenomenology of the alien and is invited to reflect on it. While the film begins with a hyper-Cartesian distance, it moves towards an embodied closeness. In doing so, the film both preserves and challenges humanist dichotomies. Thus, Under the Skin can be characterized as a filmic event that makes the spectator philosophize about its ambiguous filmmind.
4 Brown identifies himself as a Deleuzian. Throughout his book he analyses Deleuze’s work and
applies it in the posthumanist readings of his case studies. Deleuzian and phenomenological ‘theory’ are often said to collide. However, I do believe that in this case my phenomenological method does not collide with Brown’s theory. Moreover, in his chapter on the experience of digital film Brown also elaborates on phenomenology, letting Deleuzian and phenomenological theory exist alongside each other.
Lastly, I examine Jonze’s Her, a film that could be categorized as an ecological filmmind. Her tells the story of Theodore Twombly, a middle-aged writer whose divorce has left him cut-off from the world, unable to make meaningful connections. In the film, Theodore comes to interact with Samantha, who is an OS, a conscious
operating system without a body. Due to this interaction, Theodore learns how to be with the world. Here, the film’s aesthetics shift to the haptic aesthetics of whimsical, which invite the spectator to touch and realize their embodied and open engagement with the world. Because of this, the spectator, similar to Theodore, obtains an insight into how to engage with the world anew by means of intimate gestures of care and responsibility.
Eventually, I aim to enhance the understanding of these films by highlighting their philosophical relevance. By examining them closely and critically, I hope to
demonstrate that these contemporary filmminds are embedded in the Anthropocene for they reflect upon the human’s place in the world in their own specific ways. By
employing the method of close reading, I aim to augment the understanding of cinema as a filmmind. Moreover, I propose that filmminds could be ecological. By aligning the spectator with their non-human way of thinking, ecological filmminds could potentially de-centre the human from thought and can help to observethat human beings are not the monarchs of being, but instead beings among beings, entangled in beings and
implicated in other beings (Bryant 44). I intend to illustrate how film as a non-human, vibrant matter could inspire the viewer to think about the future and invite to alter the nature of humanist thought, a feature so eagerly required in the Anthropocene.
CHAPTER 1
Fulfilling Transhumanist Fantasies
Celebrating Human Rationality and Overcoming Biology in Luc Besson’s
Lucy
Lucy tells the story of its homonym protagonist, a young student who lives in Taipei. In a confrontation with her new boyfriend Richard, Lucy (Scarlet Johansson) winds up in an ugly situation where she is forced to deliver a mysterious suitcase to Mr. Yang, a man unknown to her. Soon, the spectator learns that the suitcase holds a large amount of the experimental drug CPH4, and Lucy’s faith intertwines with that of an illegal drug operation. After Lucy has been taken into captivity, the film cuts to the parallel storyline of Professor Norman (Morgan Freeman). This storyline consists of a lecture given by Professor Norman about the evolution of cells. This lecture presents the viewer with the film’s conception of the human brain. Namely, through this cellular evolution the Homo sapiens have become able to use ten per cent of their cerebral capacity, and through science, this capacity might be expanded. In its first half, the film alternates between the storylines of Lucy and Professor Norman. The spectator learns that Lucy, with four other prisoners, is forced to ship a large amount of drugs to another country, the drugs being surgically implanted into her lower stomach. The CPH4 causes cells to reproduce at a phenomenal speed, which enables the human to use more than ten per cent of its cerebral capacity.
When Lucy is kicked in her stomach by one of the drug cartel members, a large amount of CPH4 leaks into Lucy’s body. As a result, Lucy’s brain changes rapidly. From this point, the film involves different sequences marked by a per cent signifying Lucy’s cerebral transformation (for example, twenty per cent and thirty per cent). The more her brain expands, the more Lucy develops. As such, Lucy becomes able to
control other people’s bodies, alter magnetic and electronic waves, and eventually travel through time. In order to keep her cells reproducing, and thus to survive, Lucy needs a larger amount of the drugs. She looks up information about the subject and finds Professor Norman. From this moment onwards, their lives and their storylines are entangled.
Furthermore, Lucy tracks down the other drug-mules with the assistance of a French police officer: officer Del Rio (Amr Waked). While the Chinese drug cartel hunts Lucy to prevent her from obtaining the drugs, Professor Norman helps her to pass on her knowledge. With Professor Norman’s aid, Lucy absorbs all the drugs and further colonizes the remaining capacity of her own brain. Because of this, she transforms into supercomputer, a god-like creature of pure ratio with infinite knowledge and power. The film ends when Lucy has passed on her knowledge to Professor Norman and Mr. Yang is killed.
Unlike Her and Under the Skin, Lucy was not well received after its release. Many reviews criticize Lucy’s transformation as being too fantastical, in particular because it is based on a disproven scientific hypothesis. Different reviews, such as “Save Your Brain: Skip Besson’s Fantastical Lucy” and “Lucy: Dumbest Movie Ever Made About Brain Capacity”, indicate that the ten per cent myth is incorrect since it has already been proven that humans use the full capacity of their brain. According these writers, the film should be dismissed for its incredibility. Moreover, Lucy’s bad reception might also be the reason that the film has lacked academic analysis. In comparison with both Her and Under the Skin, which came out in the same year, not much has been written on the film. Despite the film’s use of false science, I consider it a key object of study, since the film reproduces dangerous anthropocentric ideas and morphs them into a seductive transhumanist fantasy that is in need of critical reflection.
Furthermore, Lucy can be regarded as a filmic event that submerges the
spectator into a transhumanist fantasy. In terms of film-thinking, Lucy understands the human-world relationship in Cartesian terms, which entails that the human is deemed different and separate from the world and other entities in it. Additionally, the film celebrates human rationality through which the human is able to enhance itself by means of science and technology. For this reason, the film puts the human on an evolutionary pedestal. This chapter analyses in-depth how the film constructs this transhumanist fantasy, and how it pulls the spectator along with it. First, I explore the concept of transhumanism as an intensification of Cartesian thinking. Subsequently, the analysis is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on the timeline of Professor Norman, which consists of a lecture on the evolution of cells. The film uses this lecture to convey the anthropocentric ideas that form the basis of Lucy’s story. In the second part, I analyse how the film applies these ideas in Lucy’s fantastical transformation of
infinite progression and, in turn, fulfils a transhumanist fantasy in which Lucy overcomes all material, biological and evolutionary obstacles.
In the introduction, I define humanism as the broad philosophical and ethical stance that ascribes humankind a privileged place in the universe. Moreover, humanism is an anthropocentric dogma that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings. Wolfe states that a human is often provided with this privileged position because of its rationality. Wolfe reminds us of the following dictum: “Where there is reason, there is a subject” (129). Rationality means that the subject makes sense of the world in terms of facts, logic, and beliefs. This idea of rationality has its roots in the work of Rene Descartes. In Descartes’ opinion, the human subject exists because of its critical thinking – cognito ergo sum. Descartes cannot prove that objects exist in the world, however he can perceive or think himself thinking. Therefore, he must exist (Ayers 40). Descartes’ theory of subjectivity is a theory of scepticism, as he cannot prove that objects exist in the world and the world might not be real. In addition, it is a
correlationist theory since he is certain of his own thinking, the world might only exist because of his thinking. Hence, reality can only be known indirectly through the
subject. The mind does not have a position in the world, yet is separate from it and able to know the world. In Elizabeth Grosz’ words, “Descartes places the mind in a position of hierarchical superiority over and above nature. From that time until the present, subject or consciousness is separated from and can reflect on the world of the body, objects, quantities” (6).
Transhumanism does not oppose the Cartesian conceptualization of rationality, yet rather intensifies it. In her book, Hayles sketches the technological developments that form the cultural and philosophical basis for transhumanism. Hayles’ work focuses on the question of changing human subjectivity in an era where technologies emerge and develop rapidly. In the twentieth century, many scientists flirted with the idea of a thinking machine. In their view, the human brain was just an information-processing machine that could be replicated. Furthermore, consciousness became conceptualized as mere information that could be transported into a computer. In this way, transhumanist thinkers believe that the essence of the human lies in its mind.
Moreover, since the mind is an information-processing machine, this machine can also be improved. Transhumanism believes that the human can be perfected through new developments in science and technology. Eventually, emerging technologies can
facilitate the human to overcome all its limitations. The material and mortal body is viewed as one crucial limitation that can be overcome. Hayles is critical of these perspectives. Hayles states that transhumanist thinkers privilege information over materialism and consider the material body, which utterly binds them to the world and to other beings, as irrelevant. This has stripped the human being of its flesh and
transformed the human into a posthuman whose mind is fundamentally separated from its body. In the transhumanist view, the body is an unnecessary shell, an empty house, and a mere container for the mind. Thus, transhumanism envisions the human as more privileged than other beings because of its specific rationality and perceives materiality, as an obstruction that can eventually be overcome.
Thus, transhumanism celebrates human rationality and supposes that the human condition can be utterly perfected until all worldly obstacles are surmounted. Lucy, as a filmmind, thinks and eventually fulfils these transhumanist dreams. The film’s ideas of the subject are firstly constructed in Professor Norman’s lecture. During this lecture, Professor Norman stands on the stage of a lecture theatre and speaks to a large group of students and fellow scientists. Simultaneously, Professor Norman addresses the
spectator. As such, the film provides the spectator with ideas that subsequently feed into the understanding of Lucy’s story. In the film, Professor Norman’s research focuses on the ten per cent myth: the idea that the human only uses ten per cent of its cerebral capacity. Professor Norman believes that this could be expanded if a means is discovered to alter the way brain-cells reproduce. Therefore, Professor Norman’s lecture starts with a history of the biological development of brains. While presented with a black screen that gradually dissolves into an image of swimming jellyfish, Professor Norman begins to speak:
If life starts approximately a billion years ago, we would have to wait for hundred thousand years to see the aberration of the first nerve cells. This is where life as we know it begins: brains in formation of only a few milligrams. It is not possible to determine any sign of intelligence yet, it acts more like a reflex. One neuron, you’re alive. Two neurons you’re moving. And with movement, interesting things begin to happen.
Subsequently, the film alternates between shots of Professor Norman giving the lecture and shots of animals moving. By rendering the human equally large to other species on screen, the film could be said to emphasize the likeness and equality of these different species. Adrian Martin argues that an object-oriented approach to cinema would recognize that the human is just one of the many different entities on screen. Here, the film starts with an interesting, potentially posthumanist premise, namely that all living beings have a common feature - their cells. Bears, jellyfish, and humans are composed of cells, which work and behave in a similar manner. Therefore, Hannah Landecker states that acknowledging that humans are first and foremost biological entities, similar to all other biological entities, could result in more responsible behaviour towards other living beings (235). Similarly, Jan Jagodzinski argues that the experience of bio-art creates an embodied sense of spectatorship in which the viewers become aware of their position as biological entities and the socio-political capital that is attached to such viewing (16). In short, the aesthetic depiction of different beings in the beginning of Professor Norman’s lecture could potentially embody an ecological, posthumanist thought.
However, the film soon deviates from this idea of equality and rather presents the human as different from and more privileged than other biological beings. Soon after Professor Norman introduces his topic, he emphasizes the difference between animals and humans. Unlike most animals, who use three to five per cent of their cerebral capacity, the Homo sapiens are the first to use ten per cent of their brain. According to Professor Norman, “Ten per cent might not seem like much, but that this a lot when you look at all we have done with it”. In this moment, the spectator is offered a rapid sequence of images that present and celebrate the development of man. This sequence is dominated by technological and intellectual achievements such as the first airplane, the pyramids, Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam, and the atomic bomb. Professor Norman ends the first part of his lecture by comparing the human to the only animal that uses more per cent of its brain, which is the dolphin for it uses twenty per cent of its brain. With this twenty per cent, the dolphin has developed a more advanced sonar through cellular evolution than every sonar ever invented by men. In Professor Norman’s words, “And this is the crucial part of our philosophical reflection we have today: can we therefore conclude that humans are more concerned with ‘having’ than ‘being’?” This sentence forms the corner stone for the film’s transhumanist ideas, since
it considers the human as different and more privileged because it can ‘have more’ and thus enhance itself. Thus, throughout this sequence, the film places the human on a pedestal. This is not because the human uses the most per cent of its brain, but because it possesses a unique rationality, which allows it to invent, create, and modify.
The hierarchal position of the human is emphasized visually further on during the lecture. Professor Norman explains various characteristics that all cells share. In the beginning of the lecture, these statements are accompanied by a sequence of animal images. For example, when Professor
Norman elucidates that all cells reproduce when their habitat is favourable, the spectator sees images of different species reproducing. Every sequence of animal images ends with images of humans. For example, the sequence of reproducing animals is closed off with a shot of two people making love in a car. Therefore, the film does not level animals with humans because of their cellular equality, as these sequences rather present a cellular evolution with the human on top of the animal chain. This is also evident in the next sequence of animal images. Professor Norman explains that through reproduction information and knowledge is assigned to the next cell. Simultaneously, the film presents different animals giving birth,
as the viewer observers a piglet and subsequently a foal being born. The sequence closes of with a long-shot of a human mother in labour and a close-up of her new-born baby. Again, the film presents a linear, cellular evolution with the human as the end-point, accentuating the human’s privileged position.
Image 1.1 until 1.3
Professor Norman proposes that in time, the human might be able to use more than ten per cent of its cerebral capacity due to the developments in science and technology. Thus, Professor Norman asserts that enhancement could be directly
accomplished in the brain. By taking on the ten per cent myth, the film envisions that a brain can be expanded and colonized, which is a transhumanist assumption in itself. When one of the students wonders whether this will truly be possible, Professor Norman answers:
For the moment it’s just hypothesis, I confess. But if you think about it, it’s troubling to realize that the Greeks, the Egyptians and the Indians had notion of cells centuries before the invention of the microscope. And what to say about Darwin whom everyone took for a fool when he put forth his theory of evolution. It’s up to us to push the rules and laws, and go from evolution, to revolution.
With this answer, Professor Norman confirms his faith in his own hypothesis by making a comparison to history. As such, the film presents the human as qualified to surpass its origins in biology and evolution. So far, through Professor Norman’s lecture, the film brings about its anthropocentric ideas. The film envisions the human as different because of its rational ability to have, and the film conceptualizes this as a means of putting the human on top of a hierarchy. Moreover, in employing the ten per cent myth, the film reveals that it believes that the brain can be utterly perfected.
Additionally, I aim to assess how the film applies these ideas in the story of its protagonist, who transforms from a human woman into a disembodied supercomputer because of a synthetic drug. Lucy’s story is presented as a fantasy of eternal progression in which she eventually transcends all biological limitations, fulfilling all transhumanist dreams. I analyse Lucy’s timeline with the help of Brown’s third chapter: “From
Temporality to Time in Digital Cinema”. In this chapter, Brown makes a distinction between temporality and time. While analogue cinema portrays temporalities, digital cinema moves towards a depiction of time itself. For Brown, temporality is the experience of time. Brown wonders: “We and all matter may experience different temporalities, but what is time such that we can experience it at all?” (92). In this
manner, time in itself is a whole, the totality of time or the simultaneous coexistence, and the interlinked nature of all moments in time.
Brown claims that analogue cinema has often been occupied with representing human temporality. Consequently, he argues that Deleuze’s movement image is most characteristic of this. Brown characterizes the movement image as anthropocentric, since it strives towards achieving a temporality that feels like a daily experience of time. However, digital cinema departs from this anthropocentric idea and moves towards a depiction of time. In fact, digital cinema democratizes time and brings the spectator closer to an encounter with time in itself. According to Brown, there are different ways in which digital cinema achieves such a representation of time in itself. For example, by emphasizing that all moments in time are connected. Digital techniques make it possible to envision time as a continuum that can be traversed in any direction and in which all points in time coexist and are interlinked. Brown illustrates this with an example from Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life (2011). Here, the film travels through time and by means of digital techniques presents images of the big bang and the developments of cells. In Brown’s words, “The relevance of the big bang sequence is to suggest precisely how we are temporally connected from present moments right back to the origins of the universe” (111). For Brown, Malick’s scene moves beyond the anthropocentric
temporality of the movement image and presents a posthumanist encounter with time itself.
I aim to demonstrate that Lucy, despite its status as a digital film, still presents an anthropocentric, linear temporality. This is brought forward by means of the protagonist’s introduction. The film opens with a fission of a cell. Before the title appears, the credits are juxtaposed with a sequence in which a cell rapidly reproduces. After the title appears, the film presents the viewers a primitive ape-human, which is later identified as ‘Lucy’, the first woman on earth. At the same time, a female
voiceover pronounces the following question: “Life was given to us a billion years ago, what have we done with it?” With this question, the film interpellates the spectator by referring to ‘us humans’. To answer this question, the camera moves from the primitive human over the hills and Taipei appears. The film provides the spectator with a fast sequence of various people working and living in Taipei. Then the film suddenly cuts to Lucy and the spectator falls into the conversation she is having with Richard. Through this opening, the film marks Lucy as a biological creature that is part of a biological chain. Her being cannot be seen separately from the fission of the first cells, the first woman, or the other people making their way through Taipei. Nonetheless, by moving from a cell to Lucy, the film presents a linear temporality with her, the first woman who will soon use hundred per cent of her brain and will be on top of the hierarchy.
Therefore, the opening sequence does not illustrate an posthumanist encounter with time, yet rather reproduces an anthropocentric temporality with the (trans)human as the endpoint of the evolutionary chain.
As Lucy is exposed to the drug, her brain cells start to ‘reproduce at a phenomenal speed’ and she becomes able to ‘colonize her own brain’. Through this enhanced reproduction, Lucy receives more knowledge. In this manner, she develops new abilities. The development of these new abilities is aesthetically signified to the spectator. For example, through her enhanced rationality Lucy’s brain no longer filters information. Rather, she receives all impulses. This is exemplified when Lucy takes a cab to the hospital to get the leaking package of CPH4 removed from her body. Colours become more intense and images flash by more rapidly, symbolizing Lucy’s enhanced brain. Later on in the film, Lucy calls her mother. With a close-up, the film focuses on Lucy’s face and, as a result, the spectator pays attention to the words she speaks. Lucy explains to her mother that she suddenly experiences matters she was not able to
experience before, as she feels the blood in her veins, the space, the air, the vibrations, and the gravitation and rotation of the earth. Furthermore, Lucy starts to observe new phenomena. As Lucy leaves the hospital, the film presents the spectator with a medium shot of her looking at something. In a reverse shot, the spectator is presented with a see-through tree, revealing the oxygen flowing see-through the tree. The film only offers these insights as new knowledge Lucy has, as new abilities that enhance her being.
The film does not work out any posthumanist opportunities of this knowledge. For example, it does not use these observations to rethink the human’s position in the world as a biological being among these other biological beings. Different theorists emphasize that studying the experience of other life forms is of posthumanist
importance. A better comprehension of animals could contribute to a better treatment of them. Wolfe describes this is process in his chapter on Temple Grandin. Through her autism, Grandin is said to think in images instead of in language. Her unique visual life-world aids her to understand animals, such as cows, in a new way, since they are also preliminary visual creatures. Moreover, Wolfe claims that this kind of knowledge is imperative to rethink ethical and political responsibility beyond humanist dichotomies and alongside a fundamentally posthumanist set of coordinates (127). In a similar manner, Jagodzinski argues that the deterioration of anthropocentrism requires the full recognition that the human species has to modify itself along physiological,
neurological, and psychic dimensions in order to find a means to continue to coexist with non-humans on this planet (16). Thus, Jagodzinski contends that the human species has to modify itself; however, not by means of human perfectibility of enhancement,
but in order to share the planet without harming other life forms. This is fundamentally different from the manner in which the film deals with Lucy’s new abilities. Lucy envisions the use of this knowledge only for itself, to perfect itself.
In addition to focusing aesthetically on these abilities, the film also presents these abilities as a means to push the narrative further. Following Deleuze, Brown states that the action-image follows SAS’-structure: a human finds in a situation (S), carries out action (A), and as a result changes that situation (S’) (Brown 100). By concentrating on human action, the narrative is driven forward. This is also true for Lucy. Lucy
develops a new ability, which she can employ to modify her situation and bring herself further. This can be observed seconds after the drugs have entered her bloodstream. First, Lucy is able to control her body and by doing so, she becomes stronger. She can use her newfound strength to defeat the guard and escape the prison. Later on in the hospital, Lucy examines the different Chinese signs. Next, the signs are superimposed by their English translation. As a result, the spectator realizes that Lucy can now understand Chinese, which she was not able to do before. Due to this newfound ability, Lucy is able to locate a surgeon who can remove the leaking package from her body. Subsequently, she invades a surgery room where a number of surgeons are operating a patient. Lucy looks at the patient’s x-ray photographs. When the spectator is presented with several close-ups of the photos, the spectator comprehends that Lucy can now understand what these x-rays represent. Lucy kills the patient because she has learned from the x-rays that he will not make it and forces the surgeon to help her. Later on, Lucy’s abilities become even more fantastical: she can read Mr. Yang’s mind to
discover where the other drug mules went, control electronic waves to contact Professor Norman, and finally access every bit of information about everyone in discovering the location of the drug clan (image 1.8). This linearity and progression is emphasized by the film’s insertion of black screens that signify the expansion of Lucy’s brain (ten per cent, twenty per cent, thirty per cent and so on). Thus, the film frames her newfound abilities as a means to bring Lucy further in her journey. In fact, the film signifies that the most important goal of this newfound knowledge is progression. The film structures Lucy’s story as a journey of infinite progression, a fantasy of transcending all human boundaries.
Specifically, the film emphasizes that this new knowledge and the abilities that result from it must be utilized to overcome the human’s greatest obstacle - its material and mortal body. Early on in Lucy’s development, the body is presented as an obstacle that must be overcome. First, Lucy gains full control over her own body. This is signified by the fact that Lucy suddenly becomes able to fight men easily. Moreover, she no longer feels pain. Without a trace of discomfort, she removes a bullet from her own shoulder. Lucy undergoes the surgery without anaesthesia and has the package removed from her body without experiencing any pain, signified by her numb and emotionless facial expression. Lucy puts this development into words as she contacts Professor Norman further along in the film: “I don’t feel pain, fear, desire. It’s like all things that make us human are fading away.” The more Lucy’s brain expands, the less important her body becomes. All bodily affects and emotions fade away and what remains is pure ratio.
The scene in which Lucy flies from Taipei to Paris further denotes the body as an obstacle that can be overcome. During her flight, Lucy’s body suddenly breaks down as her body lacks the amount CPH4 it needs to survive. Through a sudden flashback, the spectator is reminded of Professor Norman’s lecture, in which he states that if the habitat is unfavourable, the cell chooses self-sufficiency. Suddenly, Lucy’s body begins to collapse. Initially, her teeth fall out and then her skin begins to crumble. The
flashback connects Lucy’s dissolving body to the behaviour of cells. However, the film does not present her as just a cell equal to all other cells. Lucy runs to the bathroom but her body starts to dissolve in the air. Nevertheless, in the bathroom she is able to inject
herself with more CPH4, which saves her body from collapsing entirely. Soon, she returns to her normal state. Through the CPH4, Lucy can escape any biological processes that might cause her to die. Thus, the film privileges rationality over
materiality, as the body becomes a mere prosthesis that can be fundamentally modified in service of the brain.
The final phase of her development works towards fully transcending her materiality. In the end, Lucy has the power to transcend more biological and bodily boundaries, namely those of space and time. After Lucy and officer Del Rio manage to collect all the bags of CPH4, they visit Professor Norman at the university in Paris. Subsequently, the scientists help Lucy to inject the remaining CPH4 into her body, so her cells will reproduce even faster and will eventually be able to pass on their
knowledge. Furthermore, she becomes able to teleport herself to other places and subsequently to other times. The viewers see her in Paris, in the Grand Canyon, and New York, where she learns
how to control her travel. As she moves her hands, she can speed up, slow down, or reverse time.
Now, Lucy can travel back to the origins of the universe in order to gain all knowledge humankind desires. Time reverses before Lucy’s eyes as Times Square
transforms and eventually Lucy is among dinosaurs. Almost attacked by one, Lucy travels back further. Here she meets the first woman, Lucy, which the spectator has already met in
the beginning of the film. Lucy touches fingers with her ancestor, which is presented in a shot resembling The Creation of Adam. Subsequently, Lucy travels to the universe’s origins. In doing so, Lucy gains all knowledge from the big bang until her present day
(image 1.10). This time-travel scene resembles the Big Bang scene in The Tree of Life on which Brown elaborates in his book. However, I would like to state that Lucy’s time-travel scene is different. In Lucy, the scene is presented as happening before her eyes by means of presenting her new knowledge about the world (image 1.11). The whole evolution is presented as being for the human that can be known and even controlled (signified by Lucy’s ‘scrolling’ through time).
Just before her body vanishes, Lucy passes on her newfound knowledge to Professor Norman via a USB. Earlier on, moments before the injection, Professor Norman asks Lucy whether it would be a good idea to pass on all the knowledge Lucy has gained. He wonders “All this knowledge, Lucy. I’m not even sure that mankind is ready for it. We’re so driven by power and profit. Given man’s nature, it might bring us only instability and chaos.” Professor Norman is uncertain whether Lucy’s knowledge will do any good. Humankind is so occupied with its greed that this might only lead to instability and chaos. However, Lucy answers, “Knowledge does not bring chaos, it only brings order”. Subsequently, Lucy passes on all the accumulated knowledge from Lucy’s day to ‘Lucy’ the first ancestor and beyond by handing over the USB. As such, the film accentuates that knowledge needs to be passed on, even though this might potentially be dangerous, also for other beings. Not passing on the knowledge, however, would have been a truly posthumanist and ethical gesture, since this would save all beings from the dangers that this knowledge might bring.
After having passed on her knowledge, Lucy vanishes. When Del Rio asks where Lucy has gone, he receives a message on his mobile phone saying: “I am everywhere”. Lucy becomes a true transhuman figure; a god like creature of pure ratio with infinite knowledge. Here the film shows its final image of the empty chair in which Lucy sat before. During this image, the omnipresent, god-like voice of Lucy says, “Life was given to us a billion years ago, now you know what to do with it”. With this
sentence, the film frames the passing of knowledge as the fundamental essence of human life. For Lucy, the only importance of this knowledge is the enhancement of the human species and therefor it needs to be transmitted. By ending the film at this point, the film preliminary focus remains on Lucy as the perfected version of the human. By not moving further, the film does not bother to speculate about what happens after the knowledge becomes available for other humans and its possible dangers.
As a contemporary filmmind, Lucy draws the spectator in a transhumanist fantasy. By employing the ten per cent myth, Lucy envisions that the human can be utterly perfected. In this manner, the film celebrates human rationality and affirms the human’s privileged position. Unfortunately, the film rejects every possible
posthumanist gesture and morphs it into a transhumanist one. By making its protagonist transcend all boundaries, Lucy deems that materiality and simultaneously the human’s origins in biology and evolution can be overcome. Therefore, the film intensifies Cartesian thought and tears the brain apart from the body, mind from matter, and subject from object. In sum, Lucy does not think ecologically, but anthropocentrically.
CHAPTER 2
From a Predatory Gaze to an Empathetic Glare
Preserving and Challenging Humanist Dichotomies in Jonathan Glazer’s
Under the Skin
Under the Skin is loosely based on Michael Faber’s homonym novel and tells the story of an alien’s journey on earth. Loosely, as the film only adapts the red thread of the novel and conveys it with almost no dialogue, making meaning through its
extraordinary and powerful audio-visual aesthetics. In the film, an alien (Scarlet Johansson) wears the skin of a woman as a disguise while she hunts for human men. She drives across the urban and rural areas of Scotland in her white van, followed by a male alien who is her guardian and supervisor (Jeremy McWilliams). During her trips, she picks up men who await a fatal ending. Luring them home with her erotic
appearance, the alien sets up a trap and devours them, leaving nothing but their pale skin floating in a vacuum of blackness.
However, the alien’s journey awakens her consciousness. Planet earth starts to gain her curiosity. This also accounts for the human beings. She develops empathy for the men she hunts, resulting in her setting free one of the men she has captured. Her journey through Scotland gradually becomes a journey of self-discovery in which she starts to wonder to what extent she is what her reflection shows her to be. Her
compassion makes her unable to continue her job, and she decides to flee to the countryside where she further develops her newfound, feeling identity. She tries to experience the deliciousness of a chocolate cake, the kind hospitality of male stranger, and even the pleasures of sex. Even though she begins to learn how to feel, her
emerging consciousness occasionally collides with the non-human body underneath the human skin.
As she flees again, this time towards the woods, she comes across a forest worker who asks her if she is out to make a “rumble in the woods”. The alien seeks shelter in a traveller’s cabin, where she falls asleep peacefully. Subsequently, she is violently disturbed by a hand that touches her suggestively. The spectator learns that this unwanted hand belongs to the forest worker, who she had encountered earlier. In the forest, he tries to rape her, but is perplexed when he tears off a piece of her skin. The
alien crawls away in pain and strips herself of her human disguise. The spectator is confronted with the alien’s true form: a completely black body. The forest worker sneaks up behind her, drenches her in gasoline, and strikes a match. Trying to escape, the alien runs until she collapses. Her burning body, surrounded by red flames, falls into the white snow.
Under the Skin embodies the phenomenological experience of the alien, who gets an insight into what it means to be embodied herself. Her journey into human identification and eventually womanhood, transforms her perception from a predatory gaze into an empathetic glare. Whilst Lucy presents a rather straightforward
transhumanist fantasy in which the humanist dichotomies are preserved, Under the Skin is far more complex. Firstly, I will expand the theoretical notions of Cartesian thinking, presented in the first chapter. Then, I will go into phenomenology’s conception of the human-world relationship. In doing so, I will be able to grasp the aesthetic changes occurring in the film. By aligning the spectator with the alien’s strange sensorium, the film challenges and maintains humanist dichotomies. The film plays with hierarchal oppositions such as subject/object, mind/body, ratio/emotion, and male/female, and reveals how they are fundamentally intertwined. In other words, the film is about these dichotomies and about the manner they structure our being. Therefore, the film could be regarded as an ambiguous filmmind that induces the spectator’s philosophical
reflection.
In the previous chapter, I elaborated on Cartesian thinking. Cartesian thinking is characterized by strict dichotomies. In her book, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Grosz discusses the history of Cartesian thinking, and how this dichotomous thinking has affected both philosophy and feminism. Grosz states that dichotomous thinking juxtaposes and hierarchizes two polarized terms so that one becomes the privileged term and the other the suppressed and negative counterpart (3). The privileged term is fundamentally opposed to the negative one and is everything the negative one is not. In Grosz’s words, “the primary term defines itself by expelling its other” (3). As such, the thinking subject is separated from the to-be-known object, which is both the world and everything of the world including the body. The subject is everything the object is not; therefore, the mind does not exist in the world but isolated from it, it is “an island onto itself” (7).
According to Grosz, dichotomies always exist in relation. The mind/body opposition has always been correlated with other dichotomies such as reason/passion, inside/outside, and reality/appearance. Hence, the mind/body hierarchy is connected to the opposition of vision with the other senses. In Cartesian thinking, the eyes function as the agents of ratio. Through vision, people can render themselves separate from objects in the world. Additionally, Laine explains that in Cartesian thinking, vision is therefore the sense most in congruence with reason (Bodies in Pain 11). Moreover, the object, which is to-be-seen and thus to-be-known, is placed before the subject, ensuring the ego’s technical mastery over it (Wolfe 133).
Furthermore, the mind/body dichotomy is thoroughly correlated with the male/female opposition. Man is convoluted with reason, while the woman is inherently connected to the body. This relation is not accidental but has a history in philosophy. As Grosz explains:
As a discipline, philosophy has surreptitiously excluded femininity and ultimately woman, from its practices through its usually implicit coding of femininity with the unreason associated with the body. It could be argued that philosophy as we know it has established itself as a form of knowing, a form of rationality, only through the disavowal of the body, specifically the male body and the corresponding elevation of mind as a disembodied term. (4)
Thus, to establish the idea of Cartesian rationality, the body had to be suppressed. In addition, man became correlated with reason and the mind. The woman, excluded from philosophy, became correlated with unreason, emotion and the body, a correlation still very much present in western culture today.
Different philosophical stances have critiqued Cartesian thinking for its dichotomous thinking and have tried to discover ways beyond it. As a philosophical stance, phenomenology moves beyond dualistic conceptions of the subject. For
phenomenologists, the nature of the human being is profoundly embodied. This means that as subjects, humans exist in their bodies and in the world and are inextricably bound to both. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty often states in his work, humans are not only subjects but also objects in the world. As a body among other bodies, a human cannot
only see but also be seen, not only hear but also be heard. As an object, the human is also grounded in the same ‘texture as the world’. According to Merleau-Ponty,
Visible and mobile, my body is a thing among things; it is one of them. It is caught in the fabric of the world, and its cohesion is that of a thing. But because it moves itself and sees, it holds things in a circle around itself. Things are an annex or a prolongation of itself; they are encrusted in its flesh, they are part of its full definition; the world is made of the very stuff of the body. (Visible and the Invisible 124)
Merleau-Ponty refers to this ‘texture of the world’ as the flesh. In her article on Merleau-Ponty’s concept of flesh, Isis Brook states that the flesh should be seen as a pre-substance of which both the subject and the world are made. For her, in his concept of flesh, Merleau-Ponty finds a way of joining and even merging the subject and the object. Brook states that the concept of flesh “seems to be pointing to a relationship of some sort, a sharing that breaks down a solitary self-enclosedness, both between me and other humans and between me and non-humans, and even between me and the
inanimate” (361). Since people are imbricated in the flesh by means of their bodies, their consciousness and subjectivity cannot be understood separately from them. For this reason, the body is the central manner in which the ‘interiority’ of the subject entangles with his or her ‘exteriority’ (Laine Bodies in Pain 11). In fact, humans are lived-bodies, transactional wholes of body-minds, which are open to the environment. In phenomenology then, there is no rigid border between the mind and the body, the subject and the object. Thus, the world and we engage in an open, reciprocal
relationship of embrace. In this way, the world and its people engage in a constant dialectic process of shaping and being shaped. For Brook, this understanding is important, since an ecological realization of our entanglement with the world, could feed into a better treatment of the world. In this way, Brook states that our reality is to be profoundly environed (361).
Furthermore, vision, in the phenomenological sense, is also perceived differently. No longer is vision purely the agent of ratio, which locates an object in space separate from one’s viewing position. Rather, perceiving is an embodied, reciprocal act that transforms both the perceiver and the perceived. This notion is also
evident in Barker’s phenomenological understanding of film viewing. During the filmic event, the lived-body of the spectator finds itself in a close, dialectic relationship with the lived-body of the film. By looking at the film, the spectator does not only inform the film, but the film also informs, moves, and touches the spectator. The spectator’s body moves with the bodily rhythms of the film, adapting itself to it. In this process, the spectator is simultaneously ‘here’ and ‘there’, on the side of his or her body and the side of the film. Occasionally, the spectator can be fully immersed in the film, forgetting his or her own body. At other moments, there is resistance. As Barker explains, “This dialectic includes moments where we and the film are in perfect harmony, other times there is resistance. The film might drag us along while we try to pull away during scenes that are too much, emotionally or sensually (91). Thus, the spectator and the film engage in a dialectic relationship of shaping and being shaped, moving and being moved.
Under the Skin embodies the phenomenological experience of a non-human life form. In many interviews, Glazer emphasized that he wanted to convey a story about the alien. He desired to grasp what it would be like to experience the world from an alien viewpoint. Therefore, it can be argued that the film partakes in a practice of alien phenomenology. Alien phenomenology is a term coined by object-oriented ontologist Ian Bogost with which he describes the practice of studying the experience of non-humans. Through their sense perception, humans are entangled with the world in a certain way. Yet, this is just one way among many other ways in which beings, object, or entities relate to the world. In the broader posthumanist project of decentring the human, it is imperative to engage with the everyday alienness and analyse their ways of relating in order to observe how people are entangled with other beings. In this manner, the film’s lived-body does not bother to copy human ways of experiencing the world, but is rather occupied with emerging the spectator in a strange new way of
experiencing. The whole film embodies the alien’s experience through which the spectator experiences the filmworld. This means that not only the point-of-view shots convey the alien’s perspective, but also the film’s aesthetic elements transfer her sense perception to the spectator. Hence, the spectator has to become accustomed to the once so familiar earth, which looks, sounds, and feels completely different. As Osterweil states, “As in a Whistler painting, it takes time for one’s eyes to adjust to the light, for darkness to become visible” (44).
Under the Skin’s strangeness is established by a complex ecology of aesthetics, ranging from disorienting montage, science fiction interludes, and a haunting
soundscape. In this chapter, I structure my analysis around one of the most important characteristic of the alien, which is the alien’s unfeeling identity. This unfeeling identity and the way this identity develops throughout the film, informs the aesthetics in an essential manner. In the film, the alien does not belong in the human world. She does not feel anything for her human body and the world it is entangled with. There is a fundamental separation between her consciousness and her new body. In fact, she is disconnected from the world. Moreover, the alien does not feel for the human world. Osterweil states that the alien has an unfeeling identity: the alien does not care for the human world (49). Her ways of looking could be said to be purely rational and uncombed by feeling. As she searches for men, her face has a blank expression. This alien is a hostile predator, seducing men to eventually devour them. As she drives on the Scottish roads, she gazes through her windshield, selecting the best copies she can find. The first hunts are
challenging, yet she soon finds her way around. She flirts with the men, offers them a ride, and subsequently brings them to her black hole to further seduce them towards their death. Consequently, her hunts become a ritual, which she repeats endlessly.
This predatory gaze of the alien is embodied by the film’s aesthetics. Shortly after the film begins, the viewers are presented with a scene in which they see the alien hunt. This scene was filmed with the One-Cam, a camera especially designed for this film. Because of its small size, the crew was able to hide and attach the cameras to moving objects. Glazer attached various hidden One-Cam’s to the van, so that men who passed by could be captured from different angles. This made the One-Cam suitable for conveying the predatory gaze of the alien. By using of long-shots and tracking shots as
seen through the van’s windows, the spectators can observe the men from a distance (Image 2.1).
In her book, Marks describes this way of looking as optic visuality. In optic visuality, distant objects are perceived in such a way that the spectator knows what he or she is seeing. Optic visuality is about viewing objects in their totality and about defining and knowing what is seen. Marks states that the distant gaze of optic visuality allows the spectators to organize themselves as an all-perceiving subject, and, thus, separating themselves from the passive object (162). This way of looking simulates the distance between the alien’s mind, the strange body she inhabits, and the world it is situated in. For this reason, the alien’s gaze could be characterized as hyper-Cartesian, since it creates a fundamental separation between the mind and the body, the subject and the world. Furthermore, the alien’s being creates a distant relationship between the perceiver and the perceived with which the spectator aligns. Hence, the spectator perceives in a different, non-human way, yet this perception preserves and even enhances the humanist distance between the subject and the object.
According to Osterweil, this distant, predatory gaze cannot be seen as separate from gender. In the eighties, Laura Mulvey analysed and criticized Hollywood’s male gaze, a representational strategy which subjugated and objectified women the (male) spectator. In contrast, the first half of Under the Skin rather presents with a distant and sexual female gaze of an alien longing to devour men. The alien does not care for the human men, but it seems as if she does sexually desires them. Her ritual, in which she obsessively repeats her hunting, presents it as more than her duty and act that she want to commit. This is emphasized by the way in which she perfects her flirting, her strip tease, seemingly longing for more. The alien’s phenomenology embodies a female gaze not mediated by emotions but saturated with sexual sensation. This is rare in cinema, since women are culturally characterized as emotional and feeling beings. Therefore, Osterweil calls the film “One of most important feminist interventions in recent cinematic history” (45). In this way, the film moves beyond the idea of the woman as fundamentally emotional and submerges the spectator into a rational female gaze not bothered with empathy. Thus, the film’s preservation of the Cartesian distance
progressively breaks the correlation between the rational/emotional dichotomy and the male/female dichotomy.
Initially, these distant and sexual, predatory scenes are uncomfortable for the spectators, as they have to share their point-of-view with the alien. The spectator knows that this predatory gaze will eventually lead to the murder of one of these men. One of the most important scenes of the film, in this respect, is the beach scene. In this scene, the alien wants to capture a young adventurer who is swimming in the sea. As she tries to make a conversation with him, the young man notices that a family further along on the beach is in danger. A mother has dived into the rough sea to save her dog. Shortly after this, the father dives after her as he realizes she will not make it, leaving their young child alone on the beach. The young adventurer in turn tries to save the father, but does not succeed. As he lies dying on the beach, the alien hits him with a stone. The horrible events that occur make this scene difficult to watch for the spectator. The alien (which of course looks like a human) witnesses the horror without taking action and eventually attacks the man.
At first these distant and sexual, predatory scenes are uncomfortable for the spectator, since he has to share his view with the point-of-view of the alien. The spectator knows that this predatory gaze will
eventually lead to the murder of one of these men. One of the most important scenes of the film, in this respect, is the beach scene. In this scene the alien wants to capture a young adventurer who is swimming in the sea. As she tries to make a conversation with him, the young man noticed that a family further along on the beach is in danger. A mother has dived into the rough sea to save her dog. Shortly after, the father dives after her as he realizes she will not make it, leaving their young child alone on the beach. The young
