University of Amsterdam
“Habits of the flesh” and horrors of the female body:
Issues of subjectivity and gender in Jonathan Glazer’s
Under the Skin
Rebecca Harrison
MA Thesis Comparative Cultural Analysis 10848770
Supervisor: Mireille Rosello Second Reader: Jules Sturm June 2015
Contents
Introduction 3
Gender as absent or other in Science Fiction 8
Abject Narratives 19
Ecofeminism and the Power of Fog 33
Phenomenological Embodiment 47
Conclusion 65
List of Illustrations 70
Introduction
Choosing an object to work with for a paper is often a challenging and
exhausting task. In my case, however, Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin immediately presented itself as an artwork I would struggle to relinquish from my mind’s grasp and – perhaps more importantly - as an object that resisted careless viewing in such a way that to watch it over and over again seemed an adventure; a pleasure not a chore.1
Released in 2013 to positive reviews, this “visually stunning but deeply disturbing” piece of cinema portrays the strange adventures of a nameless woman as she drives around Glasgow searching for men (Bradshaw 2014). Often shot with hidden cameras and with minimal dialogue, the film shifts between scenes of dark comedy to those of the most poignant sci-fi horror. The film therefore falls into the genre category of science fiction, a genre renown for it’s turbulent gender
representations and it’s “conventional blindness” to the historical and social
constructions of gender (Hollinger 127). Science fiction is traditionally regarded as created by and targeted towards men, as it’s content – themes surrounding science and technology, predominantly – are fields that women are deemed ‘naturally’ excluded from, relegating them to the fields of emotion and communication (Merrick 241): they are the body to the man’s brain. To exclude women in such a way, however, provides
1 The film is based upon a novel of the same name by Michel Faber, written in the year 2000. I mention this novel now only as a credit to the original author as, having watched the film before having had the chance to read the book, I decided to ignore it completely and work solely on the film itself, lest my analysis be clouded by it. I justify this decision with Glazer’s attitude to the novel itself, describing he and his team as “detaching [themselves] from it completely” and that even Walter Campbell, the writer of the screenplay, had chosen not to read it, instead making use of only a handful of key points from which he formulated the new narrative (Tobias 2014). This act of distanciation is arguably one of the factors that resulted in the film – the narrative particularly – being so irresistibly enigmatic.
what Helen Merrick describes as an “enormously fertile environment for the exploration of sociocultural understandings of gender” (241). Science fiction thus provides a space where normative gender discourses and conventions can be disrupted via the thwarting of traditional narratives; failing that, it can render visible the
oppressive social structures in place through the vehicle of feminist critique (Hollinger 127).
Under the Skin will therefore be my primary object of analysis in this thesis as, on the surface, its fundamental construction appears to already challenge science fiction conventions. With female characters usually relegated to the side-lines of the narrative – either as largely absent or instead represented as a symbolical ‘other’ to the male leads (as the monstrous or the natural, for example), cementing them into a dichotomous framework where the male is the bearer of power and visibility (Merrick 241) – to feature a female character as the focalizer is to already shake convention. I want to question whether Under the Skin therefore disrupts normative gender
discourses to the extent that it can be considered a piece of feminist science fiction, or whether it falls short despite this progression, continuing to enforce the binarised structure of gender in sci-fi film. In her piece Science stories, life stories: engaging the sciences through feminist science fiction, Merrick goes as far as to award feminist science fiction the potential to bridge the wide gap that still separates the science and the humanities, thus men and women, as its imaginative space provides a place where they can productively collide and intertwine – can such a collision be found here?
Over the next four chapters I will endeavour to answer these questions by confronting Under the Skin with a selection of theory, critiquing it from a
predominantly feminist – and therefore, highly political - position. Focusing
provides representations that are coherent with any one theoretical position and whether such a critique can bring forth new meaning and understanding to the representations on screen. Moreover, if this fails and contradictions do arise, in what ways might this affect the viewing experience and the political productivity of the piece?
I deem the theories I have chosen suitable to challenge the film as, like the conventional structure of the science fiction genre, each of them leans upon the dichotomous and exclusionary structure of the subject and the object, or the self and the other, that Western narratives are based on. Moreover, as a work filmed and set in Scotland, featuring English-speaking actors and directed by the English born Jonathan Glazer, I consider theories commenting on the Western subjective experience and society appropriate.
In Chapter 1, I will begin by introducing the narrative of the film, exploring its appropriation of gender and whether it resists or falls into conventional
representations of science fiction. Focussing on scenes that work to defamiliarize the body we see of Scarlett from the bodies we ourselves inhabit, this chapter looks at the way that power is distributed in the film through the gendering of bodies and the binaries that regulate its allocation.
In the second chapter, I will build on the gendered representation of the film, harnessing the tension that arise and confronting them with Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject, asking whether the film can be considered an ‘abject narrative’ in its refusal to conform to its genres conventions. Appropriating what she originally wrote for literature to Under the Skin and science fiction film in general, I highlight its literal and symbol resonance with the abject, its resistance to a stable viewing
stable sense of identity. The concept of boundaries and the breaching of those boundaries is a prominent theme in this chapter and I delve into the different ways that the subject can be either formed or destroyed by them. This chapter is
predominantly a Kristevian reading of the film, enlisting her rich text Powers of Horror and using the notion of the abject to question how the film’s unstable representations of embodiment might even go as far to destabilise the viewer itself.
In Chapter 3 the issue of contradictory gender representations continues. I continue further down the treacherous path of Enlightenment discourses and their dichotomous nature but this time delve further into the representation of a specific binary chain, that of human/nature – man/woman – mind/body. Through a selection of close readings I offer an insight into how the film turbulently shifts between a positive, deconstructive representation and one that facilitates oppressive structures. Can this be considered a productive movement to break genre convention rather than just an inconsistent one? Moreover, I want to question how the use of natural
symbolism alongside the body can signify but also produce the discourses at work on the female body.
Finally, Chapter 4 culminates in a reading of the film as a representation of a phenomenological experience, specifically enlisting the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and those who have worked with his theory in a more contemporary context. I make use of his concept of the ‘flesh’, examining its formulation and its limitations as highlighted by Kirsten Simonson and Sara Ahmed, as well as the ways in which our sensory perceptions, particularly vision - another key aspect of the film – render certain bodies part of that ‘flesh’ (or not). The interesting tension that arises from the literal representation of flesh in the film is also explored in this chapter and would be difficult to ignore, as even the title alludes to its significance. Moreover, as the only
of the three readings to offer a partial reprieve from the irreconcilable subject and object that permeates this narrative, can it successfully position them in a more equal framework and thus offer potential for a subject to deviate from both the norms of science fiction conventions and the ideological norms of Western reality?
Chapter 1 – Gender as absent or other in Science Fiction
Helen Merrick describes her “slippery” definition of gender as “the socially constructed attributes and ‘performed’ roles that are mapped onto the biologically sexed bodies in historically and culturally specific ways”, a definition that I also subscribe to (241). To examine gender in Under the Skin, then, is to examine how and which values have been inscribed on certain bodies and whether these align with normative standards; the problems arise, however, when the sexed bodies themselves are unstable surfaces on which to map.
Under the Skin, directed by Jonathan Glazer, is the enigmatic portrayal of an alien’s experience on Earth and the different encounters it has with human bodies, including it’s own. The audience is aligned with the gaze and narrative of the main protagonist, a woman, played by Scarlett Johannson, for the duration of the film but it is only at the climax that her true identity is revealed; she is in fact an alien-like creature beneath the human skin, masquerading as a human female. To consider the film in hindsight then is to dramatically alter the viewing experience as, while certain characteristics and events positioned the woman as an eerie outsider - along with the equally mysterious men she associates with – the removal of the skin challenges the fundamental constitution of the subject being represented and thus destabilises any notion of gender that we may have had upon watching the film. Questions arise surrounding the sex of the body beneath, which in turn invites more questions surrounding how that body might be engendered. Sex and gender are thus turbulent themes within the film, inviting critique and exploration as to what the answers to these questions might be. With so little information provided within the film itself, what clues can its construction and representations give us – particularly when
considered against science fiction conventions - to the sexual identities of these beings? This first chapter will therefore begin by unearthing how the film constructs the distinction between sex and gender through a brief summary of the narrative, exploring whether it abides to or breaks away from traditional conventions.
The viewer first sees Scarlett naked,2 in a seemingly limitless white space, removing the clothes from the lifeless body of a woman who had just been shown being picked up from the side of the road and dumped into a van by a man, or, at least, what appears to be a man - we cannot see his face, concealed behind a motorcycle helmet. What has happened to this woman? What will they do to her? This woman is the first, but only female, victim to fall prey to these characters and over the course of the film we learn very little about what the answers to these
questions might be, rendering a precarious audience position and leaving much of the details to the imagination of viewer. Whilst Under the Skin fails to provide a more concrete footing for understanding, its loss is our gain, as it allows a productive space to interpret and examine the ways in which we watch, assume and attempt to
understand what is in front of us; a prominent theme within the film itself.
Having removed the clothes from the body and dressed herself, the woman is shown cruising around Glasgow hunting for unsuspecting men whom she can lure back to her abandoned house under the premise of a sexual encounter. They are led to another seemingly infinite but this time all black room, where they strip naked and unknowingly sink into a thick, oil like substance in which they are suspended until they eventually pop. The viewer watches their skin, floating like a piece of silk in a breeze, completely intact but empty, while their missing, molten insides are shown sliding down a metal chute, culminating in a vast burst of light – a production of some
2 No name is given for the woman in the film or outside of it, so for clarity I will hereby refer to the character as Scarlett.
kind, one is led to presume. If we compare this room to that at the beginning of the film – all white – questions immediately arise surrounding the sexes of the victims and the spaces that they are taken or led to: no human females are shown within the black, oil like room, and no human men are shown entering the white one. While this may not mean that they do not enter the spaces, or could perhaps point to spaces where the living and dead are separated instead, what is made visible leads us to speculate that the alien characters firmly separate the two human sexes to the point that they are ‘dealt with’ as victims in very different ways and in different spaces; one living and for the black room, one dead and for the white.3 While the men are shown being reflected by and sinking into the oil like substance, what we see of the white room seems much more solid and is not reflective. Moreover, the stark white/black distinction of the two rooms posits the male and female bodies in a similar binary opposite. The characters that seem to be working together – Scarlett and the man wearing the motorcycle helmet - however, are made visible to the audience in both spaces; what might this reveal about their own sexes?
The woman says very little outside of her flirtations and her motivations for the acquisition of these men remain unclear. However, having captured and sunk into the oil a man with neurofibromatosis,4 the next morning she is shown letting him go and also departs the house, embarking on a journey where it is clear she is far from familiar with usual human behavior, even eating. On her journey she encounters two men, both of whom engage her in physical human contact, positive and negative. The
3 In an essay on the film, Ara Osterweil comments on the sexes and the ways they are dealt with in the derelict house; for one thing, she argues, “no woman in her right mind would enter that hellish abode” (45). In this regard, perhaps the spaces are engendered in a way that facilitates the sexual nature of the deaths of the male victims as part of the seduction, but is unnecessary for females brought there against their will.
4 The National Human Genome Research Institute describes Neurofibromatosis as “a genetic neurological disorder that can affect the brain, spinal cord, nerves and skin” and, in the case of Adam Pearson, the person who plays the character in the film, non-cancerous tumors have
first man finds her alone and offers her help and accommodation, culminating in a consensual sexual encounter between them where the sexual identity and experience of Scarlett’s body is called into question. As her and the man become intimate, she appears shocked at the discovery that she has a vagina, alluding to the notion that she is not at all aware of the intricacies of the body in which she resides, despite her clear sexual intent. Conversely, the second man she crosses paths with attempts to sexually assault her and, in doing so, compromises her disguise. The disguise however is no ordinary mask – as afore mentioned, the alien was embodied within human skin which, when ripped from its back, reveals an under-body, not flesh but a shining black, oily skin still uncannily human-like but far from it. This alien is subsequently burned alive by the attacker, leaving the audience without any concrete answers but eagerly equipped to turn back to the narrative and attempt to make sense of it afresh with this alien-revelation.
At first glance, the way that gender is represented in the film through the various bodies we encounter posits it as both resisting and encompassing of normative gender discourses, with the conclusion throwing the entire film into confusion. The scenes that I have highlighted in the above summary of the narrative – as well as many others which I will draw attention to forthwith – indicate a stark contrast between the bodies of those who might be alien-like creatures and those who are firmly represented as human, in both the way they are represented sexually and in the spaces that they inhabit and control. I speculate that the silent male Scarlett appears to be associated with at the beginning of the film, as well as others briefly represented as similar to him towards the end of the narrative, are all of the same “kind” and that, beneath their human forms, there too lies an alien-like being, explaining why he is shown alongside Scarlett in both the white room and the black room. While humans
are restricted to a particular space dependent on their sex, the aliens appear free to navigate them both as they choose. But what might this mean for the sex of the
aliens? The ability to pass freely between the two signifies a fluidity of categorization, of being above and less restricted by the sexual distinction of human males and
females; it could even signify that this distinction is not there.
In terms of science fiction conventions, this appropriation of gender is relatively subversive, but needs to be approached on two levels. Merrick discusses how the self/other distinction that arises from the traditional exclusion or symbolic representation of gender in science fiction reflects wide-spread cultural anxieties about a selection of ‘othered’ bodies, who are positioned as separate from or in
opposition to the human heroes (2003; 241). Sexism, racism and xenophobia therefore permeate narratives on a symbolic level, as monstrous characters, aliens or natural phenomena come to signify that which opposes the ‘human’, solidified as the white male (241). Hollinger clarifies:
As history since the Enlightenment has demonstrated, more often than not the subject of universal ‘human nature’ has been white, male and middle-class (125).
For Under the Skin to offer a main protagonist that is both alien and who appears to be biologically female is to therefore award visibility to both literally and
symbolically marginalised characters. Despite the fact that the two labels seem to be exclusive, in that Scarlett’s female body must be compromised to make visible her true alien nature, the consistent portrayal of jarring gender representations,
charged with ambiguity and positions the characters as deviations on the norm even before the revelation at the conclusion. This is achieved through the feminist science fiction convention of defamiliarization, or what Veronica Hollinger calls the “making strange” of taken for granted human reality (129). The repetition of scenes featuring productions reminiscent of but different from gendered acts such as heterosexual sex and birth - stretched either to the point of parody or which are visually ‘other-wordly’ - are what predominantly drive the film and solidify the alien characters as just that, alien. Moreover, to shake practices so enmeshed in gender further distances the body that we see from the sex that we ascribe to it, to the point where the alien body beneath appears to separate itself from human sex and gender discourses entirely.
The sub-genre of ‘androcentric’ science fiction, which draws attention to and subverts the normative gender representations found in the main-stream genre, often features elements such as this, where the turning upside down of the opposing nature of women and men can result in a number of potential counter-representations: men and women can be posited as complementary, equal halves of society, or as a combination of the two genders in a denial of difference (the ‘female man’, for example), however both of these example still work under the premise of the gender binary (Merrick 242). Alternatively, androgyny will become the signifier of gender in attempt to break down that structure. Here the amalgamation of the two sexes can result in a hermaphrodite figure; multiple sexes and genders can become the way the society is organised; or a downright refusal of gender categorization can take place (Merrick 242). From the scenes where the aliens are granted access to both the black and white spaces, as well as the visually unsexed appearance of the alien at the end of
the film,5 the latter category of androgynous representation seems to be at work here, rendering the sex and genders of the alien beings fundamentally outside of the
normative human binary. This makes sense of much of the unexplained foreignness to the bodies, as to consider them as not only not human, but also not aligned with the sex and gender that their human form visually ties them to, can begin to make sense of this disparity. The alien bodies can thus be regarded as outside of normative gender discourses in that they are not represented as organised in binarised sexes beneath their human skins and are therefore encountering the human male/female dichotomy as outsiders, appropriating it not as something to which they are biologically aligned, but as something they have observed and adopted accordingly to suit their own means in their selection of bodies.
If the bodies and gender roles that the aliens have selected are therefore not indicative of an aligning sex or gender beneath, their adoption of sexuality and femininity (in the case of Scarlett) can thus be considered to be what they have deemed the optimum vehicle for their plan to harvest human flesh, carefully selecting certain discourses and stereotypes to subscribe to by looking outside-in on a society organised differently to their own, gaining a critical perspective often best achieved by someone so radically external (Haraway 679). By examining their allocation of certain bodies from this perspective, we can render visible some of the dominant discourses at work on and producing gendered bodies, question their origins and thus begin to formulate potential ways of breaking them down. Under the Skin therefore breaks down convention to confront it on a higher level, providing an androgynous
5 Osterweil, in her own footnotes, writes how the end of the film seems to reveal a female body beneath the human skin (50), but I am inclined to disagree. The face that is revealed is sharp and structured but has nothing that points to its “femininity”. Further, we are offered no means of comparison to a “male” alien body, rendering any attempt to distinguish a
platform from which binarised gender conventions are performed through the adoption of a human skin, thus a sex, thus a gender role.
Assuming that the man in the motorcycle helmet who supervises Scarlett’s activities and the fleet of other motorcyclists who appear at the end of the film to attempt to track her down are of the same kind and are also wearing human skin to disguise their true, sexless identities, the bodies they inhabit show an imbalance in the distribution of power between male and female bodies. Scarlett, the only alien we see embodied in female skin, is represented at the beginning of the narrative as an
independent, intense woman who uses her sexual agency to attract men back to her derelict house where they are absorbed into the black, oil-like substance and left suspended in it beneath the surface, reminiscent of babies in a womb. Reduced to an embryonic state of existence and left floating naked as Scarlett walks away, she ambivalently turns her back on the men she has led to their deaths, whose insides disappear from their bodies and are shown sliding down a metal, factory like chute, culminating in a fiery burst of intense light. If we connect the light produced by this harvested flesh with a similar but extended sequence of lights at the opening of the film - where the alignment of different lights and shapes hint at elements of the production of Scarlett, either as an alien being or as a being inside human skin - we can postulate that the stolen flesh plays a part in this process, providing a means of energy perhaps, or even providing DNA, while the floating skin serves as the means to disguise these new creations. These defamiliarizing sequences can thus be
speculated to be the alien’s equivalent of reproduction in a process that decentres the locus of reproduction from the female body and, in doing so, provides an escape from the biologically reductive discourse of woman as nothing but a container for new life, with every aspect of their existence defined by this potentiality for motherhood
(Shildrick 22). This is a particularly prominent trope in gender subverting science fiction, as to separate birth from the woman is highly political and challenging of one of the most ‘natural’ of relationships for humans (Hollinger 129).
A product of Enlightenment thinking and enforced by the increase in medical discourses being regarded as ‘truth’, the alignment of the female body with maternity and the qualities that supposedly come with it – nurturing, caring etc. - arose from the Cartesian mind/body split, the basis of many restrictive binaries which cement women as inferior to their male counterparts (Shildrick 17). Dualist thinking positioned the body as something which must be ignored and risen above on the journey to pure reason, a fate deemed unattainable for women who, due to reproduction, are more connected to their bodies and therefore less capable of reason (26). Moreover, women are the producers of babies, milk and blood; they are leaky and disturbing of the notion of the unified whole of the healthy, ideal (male) body, paradoxically creating an element of threat alongside their constructed inferiority (189). In short, the binaries produced by the Cartesian split are the foundation of many of the oppressive
discourses women find themselves enmeshed in today which is why such a
representation of a female as separate from and indifferent to reproduction reads as progressive and destabilising of such positions. The rejection of heteronormative motherhood is boldly enforced in one uncomfortable scene where a baby, deserted on the beach and with the tide fast approaching, is left screaming and crying without a second glance from Scarlett who turns away while the camera lingers for what seems like an eternity. The discomfort the audience feels at that scene is a moment of fear for the child, but also at the breaking down of medical ‘truth’ and the writing over of the inscribed norm of woman = mother (Kristeva 4; Lyotard 138).
However, upon closer inspection some of these norms appear to be very much still at work. Scarlett’s sexual agency is a performance adopted for her role in their plan to capture men in that her body is adopted for the prime reason of sexual attraction, positioning the body as a honey-trap for heterosexual males. The only visible female body among the alien characters is there to be used as an object of attraction and it is the male bodies of the motor bikers who seem to be the bearers of power and the regulators of Scarlett’s body. If, the aliens are without binarised sexes to determine their transition to human bodies as the construction of the film signifies, then the bodies they choose highlight which bodies are deemed more suitable for roles of power, namely the male body. As the only visible female body at work within the operation, she is subject to scrutiny and intimidation from the man who follows her around, watching her closely, and whose job role is seemingly to remove evidence and ensure the whole operation goes smoothly. In terms of a Cartesian binary, where Scarlett is the body to which men fall pray to, the man here is ‘reason’, the brains behind the operation. For them to place those with power in male bodies and those with less in a female body speaks of the prevalence of discourses positioning female bodies as inferior to male, highlighting too the heteronormative standard to which their plan also subscribes. Scarlett’s targets are all young, white, heterosexual males of lower to middle class and thus all fit the mold of the standardised ‘human’ that Hollinger identified (125). This lack of diversity lends to the notion of a carefully selected criteria that Scarlett should apply her seduction technique to, shown visually within the film through intense point of view shots of her driving around Glasgow, scanning the streets for men who suit this description and who, at the beginning of the film, is completely ambivalent to others that deviate from it. No attempts are made to entice women in the same sexual, or any other, manner back to the house, rather, it
seems Scarlett has no experience with women at all aside from the opening scene, ignoring them completely until thrown amongst them by coincidence. It is only once the alien begins to notice the form of it’s own body that it’s gaze broadens to female bodies, an aspect I will delve into in more detail in Chapter 4.
Under the Skin can thus be found to provide a turbulent foundation for gender discourses in that it both resists and enforces the binary conventions of its genre, creating a space where the gendered (humans) and the genderless (aliens, without gender as humans understand) are juxtaposed to productive effect. The final scene of the removal of the skin throws any security of representation into turmoil, drawing attention to the fundamental instability of the structures made visible to the viewer and it is this instability which will continue to be probed in the following chapter.
Chapter 2 – Abject Narratives
As I explored in detail in Chapter 1, the bodies at work in Under The Skin are represented as androgynous blank canvases onto which certain human discourses of gender and domination are applied and subscribed to by choice. Through these choices we can begin to examine the detrimental effects of such a structure and the ways in which the film works as both within them and outside of them in its narrative and representations. The main protagonist, Scarlett, can therefore be regarded as having a contested identity, maneuvering her/its existence on two levels – one sexed and human, the other sexless and alien – a turbulent experience which proves
problematic for her sense of self. This lack of graspable identity - for Scarlett as a character and for the audience itself as they watch her – which the film toys with through its enigmatic characters, contradictory gender representations and largely unexplained scenes of sci-fi horror provides a narrative which Julia Kristeva, when discussing abject literature, would describe as “unbearable” (141). Kristeva’s seminal work Powers of Horror explores the notion of the abject through feminist theory, detailing the precarious balance of the subject and object and the ‘abject’ that
therefore resides between them, acting as a stabilizer through the expulsion of objects (commonly excrement, blood, semen etc) which can thus be labeled ‘other’ and, in doing so, constitutes the self as separate from it and thus as that which lives on in the face of inevitable death (Kristeva 9, Butler Gender Trouble; 169). Both Kristeva’s concept of the abject and Under the Skin draw attention to the instability of the
subject and the feelings of revulsion that arise when we encounter just how permeable the boundaries of our being are, particularly with its representation of gender and its deconstruction and visualization of the binaries structuring the human experience.
While this is portrayed literally in the construction of some scenes through the
expulsion of flesh or the presence of blood, can the narrative journey of Scarlett itself come to represent a similar disjuncture between the subject and object, producing what Kristeva might call an ‘abject narrative’? If so, what effects does this have on the representation of gender in the film and for the genre in general?
The alien inhabiting the female body and living as the character Scarlett is in a unique position between subject and object. As afore mentioned, the body being inhabited has been chosen specifically for its value as an object which can be used to sexually lure men back to their lair, but, as we see at the end of the film, the body’s level of complicity in the objectivity is two-fold because it is in fact not their true body but a new layer, an extra skin on top of their own providing a disguise. Therefore, the Scarlett that we see for most of the film is really a subject once removed, a boundary between the true subject beneath the skin. This disjuncture between the object and subject of the main protagonist is then mirrored in the construction of the film. Kristeva writes that
When narrated identity is unbearable, when the boundary between subject and object is shaken, and when even the limit between inside and outside becomes uncertain, the narrative is what is challenged first. If it continues nevertheless, its makeup changes; its linearity is shattered, it proceeds by flashes, enigmas, short cuts, incompletion, tangles and cuts (141).
The lack of situated-ness within the narrative of Under the Skin begins with the very opening scene where the viewer is immediately thrown into complete darkness, their hair raised by the sounds of staccato violins traditionally associated with scenes of
horror. Slowly, the pitch-black is penetrated by a dot of light, increasing in size as if we are hurtling towards it, growing until it consumes the darkness in its entirety. Futuristic sequences of lights and shapes follow, aligning cosmically and
accompanied by the faint sound of a voice babbling in a way reminiscent of a baby introducing itself to language, tinged with a tinny and mechanical edge. Is this some kind of creation? A birth? A growth?6 The scene culminates in a light so bright the eyes can barely stand it. This immediate confusion of scale, location and boundaries of subjectivity sets up the rest of the film as a piece of art which resists careless consumption and understanding, instead enlisting a distressing and challenging audience position – the boundaries of subject and object are put to the test on both sides of the screen as we both mystify at and attempt to identify with the main protagonist. This opening scene challenges “the limit between inside and outside” as to the ear a subject seems to be forming but, to the eye, the lights and shapes are objects beyond anything the viewer has encountered in that context before and, when experienced together, are jarringly different despite our best efforts to morph them into a unified whole. The audience is thus situated between the boundaries of the known and the unknown, both enticed and repulsed by the scene unfolding in front of them as they are simultaneously “radically excluded” yet “draw[n] toward[s] the place where meaning collapses” (Kristeva 2).
The theme of breaching boundaries is one that is prevalent within the film and which Kristeva identifies as the main cause of feelings of abjection. The body of
6 This is a scene that further points towards an ‘androcentric’ science fiction representation. If this cosmic scene displayed before the viewer is some kind of birth, then one of the
fundamental pillars of human gender distinctions of woman = baby maker is challenged. To remove the burden of the label ‘producer’ from one kind of body – or to not have it on any body at all, as could be with the alien’s case – is to approach gender from a different perspective entirely. Moreover, this scene hints at an acceleration of growth that further removes aspects of parenthood from the equation, eliminating the requirement of child-rearing which is also traditionally the responsibility of the mother, although is slightly more equally weighted.
Scarlett figures as a literal boundary crosser in its adoption of a human identity and it is thus this lack of stability that contributes to the concept of an “unbearable narrated identity” within an abject artwork (141). She writes how
It is thus not lack of cleanliness of health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, systems, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite (4).
When Scarlett appears to release her final victim, allowing him to run, naked from the derelict house after he had been shown sinking into the oil-like substance the night before, she too decides to leave, driving away from the house into the country. Again, no solid reasons are provided in the enigmatic narrative, but I speculate that the man’s release and her choice to leave the house are acts of defiance and empathy, deviating from her job to lure and capture men and choosing to remove herself from the oppressive relationship she has with the intimidating man who looks over her. By leaving the house behind and heading out of the city, she embarks on a journey of discovery, entering the realm of human beings and experiencing music, food and sexual and social contact (outside of her premeditated encounters with targeted men) presumably for the first time. In hindsight, knowing that the female skin we see is a surface level border to the true subject in disguise, it appears that through this stage of the narrative a new, multi-faceted subject is beginning to form, one that is
incorporative of both the object above and the subject beneath. In a humorous scene Scarlett is shown sat in a restaurant, alone but among other families dining together. She sits behind a large slab of cake, eyeing it with curiosity, as though it is her first experience with such a thing. Taking a large forkful and slowly putting it into her
mouth, she immediately chokes at the taste, coughing and spitting it out much to the surprise and shock of the other customers. This behavior is hardly expected of what appears to be an adult woman. However, it is behavior expected of a rudimentary subject, a young child for example, and such behavior is what Kristeva believes begins to constitute an ‘I’ in them, a subject with tastes and desires separate of their parents (3). She describes food loathing as “perhaps the most elementary form of abjection” in that it is one of the first breaches of inner/outer that the child is conscious of (2-3). A child rejecting the food its caregiver has given him/her would vomit it back up, spit it out and refuse it to stay in their body. This act establishes their ‘I’:
‘I’ want none of that element, sign of their desire; ‘I’ do not want to listen, ‘I’ do not assimilate it. ‘I’ expel it. But since the food is not an ‘other’ for ‘me,’ who am only in their desire, I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself within the same motion through which ‘I’ claim to establish myself (3, her emphasis).
While Scarlett is clearly not a child on the surface, she is experiencing a new form of subjectivity that is in the process of developing in these moments. Here, rather than a parent providing the food which she can reject and thus create a distance between them and herself, she is choosing to subscribe to a particular noted aspect of the human experience and wants to try it, to expand her human subjectivity. In the same way that a child might spit out the food to constitute themselves, her choice to consume the food is her establishing herself as separate from her fellow alien beings and embracing the dimension of humanness that her extra skin has provided her with.
But, while she does spit out the food like the child in Kristeva’s text, her spitting out here could be considered counter-representative and instead oppose the constitution of the new subject, symbolizing perhaps the parent, the outsider who insists on feeding the child despite its best efforts to reject it. The dominant subject strikes back and the true non-human being – whom it is assumed by the scene has no experience with human food as a form of sustenance or pleasure – asserts themselves as that which fights back against a shift in subjectivity. While Scarlett is on one level choosing to amalgamate the layers of her increasingly two-fold body, her foundations remain stubbornly prominent.
When Scarlett leaves behind the house in the city and decides to journey alone, she encounters a man who is kind to her, offering her a place to stay and trying to help what appears to be a lost and bewildered young woman. During that stay they find themselves in increasingly intimate situations, resulting eventually in their having sex. Here however, the concept of boundaries arises once more. Scarlett’s exploration of her body has developed over the film through the use of reflective surfaces, mostly mirrors, where she intently stares at the body before her, caressing it with her hands and appearing to be transfixed by the form before her. Her hand movements are not inherently sexual, rather explorative, and with the conclusion of the film the audience can begin to understand why that might be. Being with this man then, is what we can assume is Scarlett’s first human sexual encounter, despite her body being used as a sex object to lure the men back to the house to their deaths. This lack of experience is made clear when their intimate encounter is abruptly ended by Scarlett upon the unnamed man attempting to penetrate her. She leaps to the end of the bed, grabs the desk lamp and begins to inspect the space between her legs – the explorations of her body had clearly not progressed that far.
The act of heterosexual sex for the female body is one of literal boundary crossing and one that challenges conceptions of wholeness in that the female body is considered more open and fluid than a male body as it can be entered (Shildrick 16-17) – ultimately, it is taken to be the passive element to its male counterpart in the act of heterosexual intercourse and thus facilitates and produces the discourse of women being inferior to men. By examining Scarlett’s reaction to sex in the afore mentioned scene, we can begin to understand further the surface-level appropriation of human gender discourses by the alien beings as the shock of being entered helps solidify the assumption that the beings are without binarised sexes as humans have appropriated it from the reproductive heterosexual act. While it may be the case that they do have sexual contact but in different ways, the sheer shock of penetration for Scarlett points to a less restrictive gender dichotomy which isn’t based on a sexual act that ultimately positions men and women as active/passive, dominant/submissive, male/female binary. It also points to sense of wholeness transcending that of the human body, whose boundaries are permeated frequently.
Connecting this scene with that of the food consumption and the climax of the film, where the skin is ripped revealing the shiny, black, oil-like skin beneath, the beings appear to have much more stable and solid boundaries than humans, in particular human women whose bodies are described by Shildrick as inherently transgressing “the boundaries of the proper” in Enlightenment discourses (17). It appears that very little seems to go in or out of their bodies – we never see any of the alien characters consume any food or water (aside from Scarlett’s experiment with the cake, an act of rebellion where she engages in “sensations of the flesh” (Osterweil 49)) and therefore there would be no excess or waste products, the gruesome reminders that we are in fact alive but continuing on in the face of eventual death
(Kristeva 3). Moreover, the alien characters are never shown drawing blood, not even when Scarlett is attacked. In fact, in one scene where Scarlett receives a rose from a man on the side of the road, she looks down at the flower and notices it is covered in his blood, bright red and which has transferred onto her hand. The shots that follow structure Scarlett as unaware of what the blood is, as the camera firstly shows her staring at it in a confused manner; then cuts to a mid-shot of the man rearranging his bandage on his clearly very injured hand; and then finally cuts back to Scarlett now lightly touching and playing with the blood. The shot-reverse-shot structure aligns the camera with Scarlett’s gaze and reveals her thought process in approaching the blood, how she comes to realise it’s origins and what kind of substance it might be. This leads to an expectation of disgust for the viewer, an expectation she denies. Her lack of revulsion points to a separation from the ways in which the human body both produces and approaches the sign of blood and further consolidates a separation from the dualist structures of Western society where the living and the dead are considered as irreconcilable as the distinction between men and women. In Mexican culture for example, the living/dead binary is much less stark, and the connections between life and death are in fact celebrated, portraying “an outside view of the inside” through skeletal imagery in cultural phenomena engaged with as early as children’s stories (Cataldi 241). For them, and others less confined by fear of the dead, the blood would serves as a far less poignant reminder of the living/dead binary (Cataldi 236).
For Kristeva, this binary is stretched to its absolute limit in the moment of giving birth with its combination of gruesome flesh and sexuality reaching a pinnacle of abjection. She describes it as:
the height of bloodshed and life, scorching moment of hesitation (between inside and outside, ego and other, life and death), horror and beauty, sexuality and the negotiation of the sexual (155).
As discussed above, Under the Skin appears to decenter the locus of reproduction from the female body, representing the female as ambivalent to so called “maternal instincts” and using overt sexuality as a means of capturing men and leading them to their absorption and eventual death. The horror of this scene can be awarded to many of its stylistic features: the -like state of the men, stripped and vulnerable; the high-pitched, fractured music; or even the impenetrable darkness of its setting. However, I believe that these scenes are the ultimate symbolic portrayal of abjection in their amalgamation of breaching boundaries, sexuality, reproduction and flesh. Watching the men sink slowly into the oil-like substance as they wade through it, seemingly unaware of what is happening to them, the viewer is overwhelmed and horrified by the ease in which they sink into the substance, how fluid the boundaries really are between inside and outside and thus their related dualisms (fig. 2) . Like in Kristeva’s description of birth, the disappearance of these men into the fluid darkness can signify
a kind of reverse-birth or reabsorption into another body, heightened further when it is revealed that they are in fact being preserved beneath the surface, like babies in a womb. Moreover, the removal of their clothes shows the precarious nature of nudity in that it can easily shift from that which is considered liberating and sexual to immediately heightening their sense of vulnerability and powerlessness.
In her text Embodying Death: Emotional Apprehension and Reversibilities of
Flesh, Suzanne Laba Cataldi enlists a Kristevian perspective to explore different
relations to death and the dead, drawing attention to the different states and adjectives that are attributed to them. She uses the term “inconsistent consistenc[ies]” which I particularly like to describe the slimy, decaying states which cultures such as our own tend to avoid at all costs, especially in food and on the skin (236). I think that this term perfectly embodies the betrayal of states that the audience is faced with when watching the men sink into the oil-like substance and the feelings of horror which arise when being forced to encounter such a breaking down of the distinctions between subject and object. Thinking back to the black and white rooms that we see the male and female victims taken to, it is interesting to note that it is the black room where the men are taken to which is unstable and fluid, qualities usually associated with the ‘leaky’ female (Shildrick 189), while the white room is stable and solid. The absorption of the men into the oil-like substance could thus signify the threat and the contamination of the fluid and leaky woman and the violence that the sexually active female body can come to inflict. Alternatively, when juxtaposed with the stability of the white room, it could in fact represent the turning over of that binary and that by following their desire for Scarlett – following their bodies, not their minds – they are in fact the weak and unreasoned body to women’s reason and mind.
The boundary between inner and outer is pushed to the absolute limit when the male bodies, embryonic in their situation, are shown beginning to freeze around the edges, to crunch and loosen until they eventually pop, their skins whole and floating away as if their organs and bones had simply disappeared. Their skins dance and float like pieces of fabric on a washing line, remaining uncannily animated, whilst the viewer is shown their molten innards sliding down a factory chute towards a bright fiery light which, as I described earlier, alludes to some kind of production. This also seems to be the only form of sustenance or intake that the aliens require throughout the entire film, bar the single woman who was captured at the beginning whose fate remains unknown. Kristeva writes about how the insides of the body – “urine, blood, sperm, excrement” – would usually appear as a means of reassurance at such a moment of destabilization and provide an object onto which one can focus both their sexual desire and repulsion, saving them from having to deal with their true fear, that of losing “the integrity of one’s ‘own and clean self’” and ultimately the ever-present Freudian fear of castration (53).7 In this scene however, the expulsion of such fluids and insides has no such sense of relief and reassurance for the characters as it represents the true expulsion of the body in it’s entirety, an excess which tips the subject over the edge – “nothing remains in me and my entire body falls beyond the limit – cadere, cadaver” (3, her emphasis). I believe that the sight of the two elements of the wasted body, the flesh on the chute and the floating skin, provides the audience with an even greater abject experience than that of experiencing the corpse. Two of the prominent signifiers of abjection are at work here together: the expulsion of flesh which symbolically provides you the means to live on in the face of death is
7 Scholes and Rabkin writes how the Oedipus myth permeates the sci-fi genre, infiltrating both the literal and symbolic representations (185). Graphic depiction of sex is rare, they say, but are amply made up for by the use of phallic symbols and reminders of such states of sexuality such as the one in that scene (185).
juxtaposed with the sight of the floating corpse, the body that has crossed over and become an object, and whose sight absorbs the subject against their own will (1-2). By separating the two elements so cleanly and in such a ghostly manner, the scene in
Under the Skin leaves the viewer stranded at that border, confronted with both the
living and the dead as two states that are even less distinct than they ever realised. Over the course of the film, as I have explored, the breaching of the
boundaries of subjectivity and the body have been themes that have risen again and again, enforcing my original identification of an abject narrative. This kind of narrative is produced by the absence of stable identity and is then reflected in the instability of the narrative itself. While the narrative is linear, its staccato nature, jump cut edits and ambiguous events and characters provide a far from comfortable
viewing experience and resists many conventions of mainstream science fiction cinema designed more as a Hollywood blockbuster, even more subversive due to its casting of Scarlett Johansson in the lead role, a global superstar. It is interesting to note too that some of the scenes within the film were filmed with hidden cameras with non-actor members of the Scottish public, further blurring the lines between reality and fiction, subject and object (thedissolve.com 2014).
This “unbearable identity” which Scarlett resists with tentative steps towards a new subjectivity, ultimately prevails, despite her attempts to assimilate herself with the human world and the alien’s failure is cemented in the conclusion of the film. Going back to Kristeva’s description of abject narratives, she writes how eventually the narrative will fail completely, cascading into violence and horror as the only solution:
At a later stage, the unbearable identity of the narrator and of the surroundings that are supposed to sustain him can no longer be narrated but cries out or is
descried with maximal stylistic intensity (language of violence, of obscenity,
or of a rhetoric that relates to the text of poetry) (141, her emphasis).
This “crying out” manifests itself as the moment when Scarlett is attacked alone in the forest and the human skin on the surface is ripped, revealing the alien body beneath. The violence that Scarlett is subjected to partially reconstructs the otherwise broken narrative and some dots can finally be connected with regards to what happened to the men and to why she seemed so alien to human concepts. However, while this scene may provide relief to the puzzled viewer, the subject-object distinction remains tested and fragile as the alien stares down at the human face in its hands, resulting in the necessary destruction of Scarlett so as to stabilize it once more. As we watch the alien being burnt alive a status quo is restored and the subject can begin to relinquish its sense of uneasiness, despite the otherwise open-ended nature of the narrative.
This final scene of horrific violence on Scarlett not only solidifies the film as an abject narrative but also holds tremendous power in its destruction of the main protagonist. Scarlett is the focalizer of an ‘abject narrative’, but as an alien and a woman in a science fiction film, can she not also be considered an ‘abject character’, who breaches the boundaries of convention and thus disturbs the unified whole to the point of its destruction? Writing about the construction of the monstrous in the horror genre, Noel Carroll describes how to make a monster just that:
That it kills and maims is enough. The monster may also be threatening psychologically, morally or socially. It may destroy one’s identity (…), seek
to destroy the moral order (…), or advance an alternative society (…). Monsters may also trigger certain enduring infantile fears, such as those of being eaten or dismembered, or sexual fears, concerning rape and incest (43).
For the majority of the film Scarlett is represented as far from visually monstrous; even the alien body beneath is smooth, human-like, uncanny. However, symbolically, the lone figure of Scarlett throughout the film can come to embody the monstrous (ticking many of the boxes offered to us by Carroll) and thus Kristeva’s description of the abject as that which resists the dominant social order. Its confronting of normative gender values achieved through its representation of a woman with sexual agency challenges the fundamental structure of dichotomous society and thus results in her necessary punishment. Science fiction is always about otherness but (Osterweil 45), despite the attempted humanization of Scarlett, it is her that is expelled and excluded at the conclusion of the film for the benefit of the subject, desperate to stay intact, aligning the figure of the monstrous and the position of the abject not to her alien identity, but to her particular embodiment in female skin.
Chapter 3– Ecofeminism and the Power of Fog
Having challenged Under the Skin with Kristeva’s concept of the abject - located between the poles of the subject and object - a key theoretical dualism, in this chapter I will shift my focus to the structure of dualisms in general, and the effects that they have on the representation of embodied experiences in the film, honing in on the nature and human distinction in particular. It is important to address the relational nature of dualistic structures and how they both create and facilitate oppressive discourses and hierarchies; only when this structure is made evident can we begin to attempt to think outside of such a framework.
I will be looking at the representations of such dualisms in Under the Skin, in both its narrative and stylistic construction, and I want to question the effects that their juxtaposition might have with the afore mentioned ‘abject narrative’ which, as discussed in Chapter 2, denies a stable viewing experience and disturbs the usually (and preferably) stable poles of the subject and object in normative Western
discourses and in the science fiction genre. Can the disjointed nature of the film create fractures in such a naturalised system and provide productive counter-representations? Alternatively, does the film fall short and continue to facilitate – or worse, promote - such regimented binaries and systems of domination?
I will be particularly focussing in on the chain of dualisms that positions women as subordinate to men and nature as subordinate to reason/humans, which thus, through extension, aligns women with nature, and men with reason/humanity (Plumwood 1993; 43). In order to unravel the film in this way I will be enlisting the ecofeminist theories of Val Plumwood, among others, whose seminal work Feminism and the Mastery of Nature addresses the need for critical thinking surrounding
structures of domination and the need for a complete overhaul in the way we
approach the natural world. As a means of contrast I will explore the film via another, less critical, branch of ecofeminism that chooses to enhance the connections of the dualistic framework, rather than seeking to destroy them (Stearney 146).
A societal structure with its origins based in dualisms should be considered extremely dangerous as it distinguishes and separates two groups in ways which make it appear as if there can be no reconciliation, only opposition - one thing is exactly what the other is not and defines themselves accordingly based on these differences. Val Plumwood writes how:
In dualism, the more highly valued side (males, humans) is construed as alien to and of a different nature or order of being from the ‘lower’, inferiorised side (women, nature) and each is treated as lacking in qualities which make
possible overlap, kinship or continuity. The nature of each is constructed as the other, as the exception, the aberration or the subsumed, and man treated as the primary model. (32)
This structure also creates a market for hierarchies, allowing for seemingly justified domination of the supposedly ‘inferior’ group, whose position is completely
constructed and products of the prevalent discourses of that particular culture and society; we need only look back as far as the times of slavery to see how terrifyingly easy it is for people to be forced into nightmarish structures of oppression. Plumwood discusses how the work of dualisms in society has resulted in the naturalization of domination, to the extent that the position of the dominant or subordinate has been so incorporated into subject identities that the corresponding elements cannot be
understood in isolation from one another (32-33). In the case of the male/female gender distinction, these identities are maintained through the performance of certain ‘gender roles’ which, despite their discursive nature, are reproduced mimetically as a kind of original blueprint for the sexes and the lives they must lead as two very separate forms of human being (Butler Gender Trouble 10).
As explored in the previous chapter, in Under the Skin these formulated gender roles are made evident in the selection of bodies by the alien beings, who situate those in positions of power in the skins of human men, choosing only one female body to work as a ‘honey trap’, an object to allure their victims but never to question or diverge from this role. Scarlett is represented as inferior to the man who intimidatingly follows and inspects her as she goes about her task to lead men back to the house to their deaths and it is this hostile relationship which appears to partially influence Scarlett to flee, heading away from the city to the countryside in an act of resistance towards this man and their alien mission. This moment of resistance provides a flair of action which has the potential to challenge and break down the restrictive male/female framework that the aliens have chosen to subscribe to, with Scarlett’s actions serving as a means of seizing back power and awarding it to the female body that is visible to the viewer. However, I will now argue that while Scarlett may have escaped one oppressive system, a larger set of discourses can now have access to the body in which the alien is residing.
I consider the moment when Scarlett decides to leave the derelict house - appearing to let the final man she captured go, naked but seemingly unscathed - as a ‘tipping point’ from which the appropriation of the female body increases, through the alien’s own means as the protagonist but also on a level which escapes the alien’s knowledge and agency. The audience sees Scarlett leaving the house alongside the
naked man whom, prior to this scene, had been shown being absorbed into the oil-like darkness towards the same fate as the other two men whose flesh had been removed from their bodies and harvested. While his rescue is not made visible in the film, his leaving alongside Scarlett points to her complicity in his escape and her choice to diverge from her role within their alien system. Having previously encountered human gender discourses from a distance in the safety of its own kind, the alien is now alone in the Scottish countryside, becoming an active, visibly female subject onto whom gender discourses will begin to act and shape. Up until this point, Scarlett’s actions and demeanor largely challenged the dominant sexist discourse of women being passive and disinterested in sex for non-reproductive purposes, however it must be taken into consideration that this was instigated in the name of a role and a purpose, to capture the human males. The juxtaposition of the white van that she drives around with the female body of Scarlett draws attention to this disjuncture in roles, as the hyper-masculinized ‘man in a van’ stereotype is reproduced and replaced by a new type of predator, Scarlett. Despite this exchange, the roaming and intense point of view shots that follow the men around the streets of Glasgow do not take on a overtly sexual quality due to their unnerving musical accompaniment, however this could also be because when we see a woman staring at men we immediately assume that there must be an explanation outside of basic physical attraction because, as gender roles dictate, a woman is there to be looked at, not to do the looking herself and thus the rarity of such a gaze from a female character – devoid of empathy and charged with a desire that is inaccessible to the viewer - is unharmonious in itself (Osterweil 47).8 In an interview about his direction of the film, Jonathan Glazer describes how the jarring vision of Scarlett in the van was what most of the non-actors
they picked up and secretly filmed questioned her on, asking “what’s a woman like you doing driving a white van around Scotland...?”, the “like you” highlighting just how intrusive a normatively constructed feminine identity is in such a renown male space (Tobias 2014).9
The gaze of Scarlett in the van works as a further element of defamiliarization in the film which, as afore mentioned, productively destabilizes the human world in feminist science fiction and draws attention to the ‘naturalized’ aspects of the ordinary that are often taken for granted (Hollinger 129). In her essay on the film, Osterweil discusses how the scenes of Scarlett driving around in the van watching the swarming masses of people on the street – at football games, shopping, talking on their phones – posit the human race as the collective to her individual, humanizing her and relegating the human race to that which is indistinguishable from one another, machine or even insect-like, a fate often deemed for the ‘othered’ bodies opposed against humans in science fiction film (46; Scholes and Rabkin 187-188).
To remind the reader of the gendered construction of the film which I explored in Chapter 1, the characters that appear to be connected in their plan to capture
humans can be speculated to be similar alien beings to Scarlett and who, as a “kind”, are external from and without sex and gender as human beings currently understand it, signified by the androgynous bodies beneath the human layer. From this, the bodies they select are not reflective of a “male alien” or “female alien” beneath, but are rather indicative of a hierarchy of power, with the female body being awarded to the alien with the least responsibility. As outside of human gender structures therefore,
9 In his book debunking common stereotypes, Geoff Rolls describes the figure of the ‘white van man’ and how the stereotype came into circulation. The figure is associated with
aggressive driving and who is easily homogenized into a boorish white male character, further enforced by the anonymity awarded by their unmarked vehicle. They are commonly
associated with knowing the roads and operating in a local area as a plumber or electrician for example, offering them an aspect of territory (13-16).
they can carefully select the stereotypes and gender discourses to which they subscribe or reject, so as to go undetected amongst ‘real’ humans, but especially to best achieve their plan to capture heterosexual males by using a normatively attractive, sexually forward female body as bait. From this perspective then, the selection of the van as Scarlett’s mode of transportation can be speculated to be an extension of such a conscious choice, playing on such gendered stereotypes of spaces and enlisting them as a method of drawing attention to the female body within. In one scene in a traffic jam, Scarlett is offered a rose by a man on the side of the road, bought for her by a fellow van driver who is revealed to be male when he waves at her. Clearly, the van acts as a creator of links to other van drivers who would often fall into the alien’s target demographic, namely the heterosexual, working class male.10
Following the abandonment of its superior, the alien I am referring to as Scarlett moves swiftly out into the human world alone where her strength and control appear to rapidly decline. Alone in a strange, unfamiliar world this is perhaps to be expected, but, as I delve further into in the following chapter, it appears that as Scarlett begins to align herself with a human subjectivity and her connection to the human body and world increases, her strength and coherence with such a world ebbs, plunging her into ever more vulnerable situations and inciting a greater level of vulnerability in Scarlett that was previously unseen, even pushing her to accept help from a human stranger.
What is interesting however is the cinematic construction of the film around this point in the narrative and the ways it reflects and potentially shapes the fate of
10 Osterweil comments on the use of the van as part of Glazer’s commitment to the political aspect of the film, choosing not to delve too far into the futuristic spectacle that science fiction often relies on and instead commenting more on today’s society through conventions
Scarlett. When Enlightenment thinkers turned their backs on nature in favour of science - diminishing it to that which is wild and chaotic but that can ultimately be controlled by reason and technology - the already established connection between women and nature posited them in the same position through the dualism framework: wild and without reason yet able to be controlled (Shildrick 26). This control however could not be achieved or exerted by the females themselves, as their heightened sense of embodiment apparently rendered their decision making capabilities foggy and inept, with the body instructing the mind rather than the more desirable opposite (26). In short, when science began to aspire to the mastery of nature, men solidified their domination over women and created an inescapable web of subordination through association.
This fogginess of mind is displayed literally within Under the Skin when the audience sees Scarlett drive into the countryside, exit her van and look around her, lost and unable to see due to a thick white mist completely obscuring the vision of the road. From a camera situated at the back of the van the viewer watches her leave it and walk into the mist until she disappears entirely. An extended close up of her face there is no sound as it zooms out except her footsteps and the occasional bird
