Under the Skin
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Jonathon Glazer’s Under the Skin (2014) is a film that works well to demonstrate to audience new perspectives and ways of viewing the world through a viewpoint that is foreign to those watching. By shooting the film in a way that demonstrates the perspective of an extra-terrestrial being in western society for the first time, we are distanced from our own preconceptions of the world and receive instead an outside, objective look into the way we live and interact with each other, all through the eyes of this alien character. The main social focus of the film appears to be the relationship between genders in society, as the alien’s (Scarlett Johansson) sole purpose appears to be to seduce men into a house where an inexplicable process occurs in which it seems they are trapped and harvested. The emphasis, however is not on what happens in the house, but the process of the alien’s seduction and the motions through which she locates, seduces and brings her targets back to the house. The process through which this happens reflects and highlights the relationship between men and women in society and reverses them in interesting ways.
While trying to find men to seduce, we watch as Johansson looks out of her van window at unsuspecting male targets in a series of point of view shots that show the world through the eyes of the alien and helps to translate her experience onto us in the audience, to show how she thinks and feels. Here, the alien’s intentions are to seduce men into coming back to her house, intentions that so many males have in modern society and that has been consistently displayed in popular culture for decades. However, instead of just showing the audience the seduction, we see extension montages of Johansson’s character searching for a target. This can be seen as a reference to the male gaze and the objectification of women by men. Here Johansson’s character is not interested in the people themselves, rather she just needs them in order to take them to the house and harvest them. The process then works to objectify the men that she is looking at in a way that is different to the classical Hollywood way of doing so-we don’t see any glorified sexualization of these men, even when they are in the nude and the men themselves are not conventionally attractive- instead they are seen as forms of commodities to her- this speaks to the way in which women in Hollywood have been represented essentially since the beginning of modern cinema. This idea is emphasized, too, by the inclusion of Scarlett Johansson in the lead role as she is an actress that, throughout her career, has been objectified by male viewers and made a victim of the male gaze by the film industry because of her attractiveness. In this film, she is the one looking at unsuspecting men.
However, we don’t just see the alien looking, we also see her in the process of seduction, this again being a clear role reversal in classical gender roles in the movie industry. The use of real people in the sequences where Scarlet Johansson engages in flirtatious conversation emphasizes how the fact that a woman engaging in interactions and seducing a man is deeply unusual in the context of modern society. This is shown in the genuine reactions of surprise they show as those that she talks to seem genuinely taken aback by her advances. These sequences show the woman as the predator and the men as prey, putting the female character in control of the situation in how she speaks with self-assuredness as she manipulates them into getting her way. The film puts the female in control of both the story and the male characters in it, providing satisfaction for female viewers who perhaps do not feel safe talking to men in certain situations. And, while this will be more empowering for female viewers, Glazer’s decision for this character to be an extra-terrestrial, presenting her viewpoint as a new and unique perspective on the world, creates an even playing field for identification, so to speak. Because the character’s perspective is not gendered or biased in anyway, it’s easy for all to identify with her, making her power and success in seduction pleasurable for all viewers. However, as the alien’s experience becomes more and more comparable to a real female experience, this pleasure in identification fades into paranoia and fear.
The tone of Under the Skin changes when Johansson’s character seduces a man with neurofibromatosis (Adam Pearson), a genetic disease that results in tumors growing in his face and causing severe disfigurements, who’s genuine disbelief (induced by heavy self-awareness) appears to induce some empathy into the alien and she spares him from the fate that the other men experienced. The empathy appears to have come from a moment of self-realization in a mirror in the hallway of the house- a sudden awareness appears to instill in her and she seems to become conscious of appearances, relationships and the human experience in general, entangled in this is her position as a female in society. Having released the man from her house, she instantly becomes hunted by a mysterious motorcyclist and over the course of the last act of the film, she becomes ever more paranoid and cautious. While we experience this alongside her, simultaneously there are also a number of voyeuristic long shots that remove us from her perspective which we were previously so closely tied to, again making the female character more of an object of our view. The gender roles that the alien had previously reversed therefore return to the classical relationships shown in cinema and that unfortunately occur in society. This is translated openly into sexual terms when she meets a man who starts a conversation on a bus and they engage in a sexual relationship that seems conventional, leading to them having intercourse- a strong role reversal from the start of the film, especially as she is so vulnerable when the man engages in conversation with her- albeit with good intentions. This idea is affirmed when the alien is sexually assaulted and then burned alive by a man at the end of the film, in the instant of her assault she is seen as and reduced to nothing more than a sexual object by the man that abuses her. The power and pleasure that Glazer creates through universal identification at the start of the film crumbles into the horror of a very gendered perspective and a look into the reality of many women’s experience in society. This perspective is one that every audience member (even male) is forced to go through because of how Glazer’s techniques at the beginning of the film made the character so universally identifiable.
Despite this, it is still easy to see how the film may deal in experiences that are uniquely female throughout the film, firstly in the sense of sexual attraction and how this can be a source of power and confidence in the first part of the film. Here Scarlett Johansson’s advances on real people bring out genuine reactions of confusion as she is acting outside of ‘conventional’ gender norms, the director, Jonathon Glazer, said: ‘some were suspicious. Some were wary. Some were frightened. You see a whole range of complexity of how men do respond to that scenario.’ Themes of sexual liberation and the power of the female body are explored in similar films such as Jennifer’s Body, Ginger Snaps and even Carrie. However, the film also deals with the other side of this in the last act where the alien’s role shifts from being the ‘predator’ to the ‘prey’, an experience that female viewers (as well as males) may find less enjoyable but perhaps more realistic. Viewed in this way seemingly uncompromising female perspective, then, should make the film hard for male viewers to identify with in a gendered context. However, as a heterosexual male, I still found the film affecting because of the way it displayed these ideas alongside wider themes.
I found that, while the film deals quite heavily with the female experience, another way Glazer creates a feeling of identification for everyone (in addition to ungendered perspective he worked to create at the start of the film) was the inclusion of themes that universal and deeply personal to each viewer. For example, the feeling of being in an alien environment is something that everyone is able to identify with, this can especially be seen in the context of racial relations or immigration, especially in the current day. Here, both Scarlett Johansson’s performance along with the camera work that aims to show the environment clearly, yet in a way that is her perspective work to emphasize the fact that this is a new and perhaps uncomfortable environment for this character, and to see it as she does helps us identify with her. Through this identification, the audience experiences this familiar feeling of being somewhere that is new and uncomfortable, one that allows for me personally to identify to the main protagonist of the story. This is also a theme made clearer by the decision to set the film in Scotland, where the accent is difficult for many to understand and is emphasized by a large amount of shots that simply show the streets in a clear manner with little stylization so that we are able to take in the details easily. One scene in particular demonstrates this well, as the alien is sat in the van when a group of young men begin climbing and shaking the van in a threatening manner and instead of reacting immediately, she sits for a moment confused at the situation, not seeing the danger in the moment before driving away. The scene demonstrates just how unaware the alien is of her new environment and makes it very clear that this is not a place of comfort for her. We see clearly how the alien’s new environment is not one she knows and people in the audience are able to relate in a way that allows for everyone to identify with the story, me included. Because of this, I found the power we saw the character to exert as pleasurable, because I could relate to her, also some of the men she picked up were less than savory.
In the latter part of the film, we see how another theme- that of fear and paranoia- is added to this environmental discomfort to make the character even more accessible. Again, Johansson’s performance is important in translating this, as well as the camerawork that begins to include long shots that give a voyeuristic feeling to the film. This also creates a change in energy of the music, despite the soundtrack remaining largely the same. Glazer described how the music is used to portray the character’s frame of mind ‘in the way the camera can't, and that we don't have words [for]’, so while it remains relatively neutral, the subtle changes in the cinematography feel like enough for the music to shift from being a source of the character’s power, to a representation of fear. Therefore, while the shift from power to fear is subtle, I felt it in the character and this universal feeling, again, worked to help me realise and experience the paranoia and even dread that can accompany simply being a woman in certain situations.
Including these themes, therefore, made it much easier for me to understand the female specific commentary in the film and meant that I was able to identify across gender borders, as I felt I had been plunged into the situations along with the alien. By (in a sense) packaging the feminine experience along with more universal ideologies and presenting them in a way that relays the character’s foreign-ness to her environment and the human condition- effectively making them alien to us again, Glazer is able to experiment with very female themes while simultaneously making it possible for everyone- myself especially- to identify with them. From the start of the film, I had a subconscious understanding of the character that I was watching. Therefore, despite being a white male watching a film with subtexts that could be seen as both very feminine and also that deal themes such as immigration (feeling out of place and feared), I was able to understand the character and identify with her across gender borders. It’s because of this that Under the Skin affects me more than other films in the horror genre, as it shows the female experience in terms that feel more accessible to me as a viewer.