Skin Deep

Abstract

Jonathan Glazer's 2013 film adaptation of Michel Faber's novel the is striking and provocative, and is distinctly different text than the novel. Both in their own ways pose questions about hierarchies and boundaries, about binary oppositions organized around difference, and about relations of affinity that inevitably deconstruct such binaries. The title Under the Skin plays with these questions of difference and sameness, asking us to think about whether we are all the same the but at the same time connotes the idea of something that stays with and troubles you: when things are under our skin, they irritate and obsess us- the expression suggests exasperation and infatuation. I've got you under my sings Frank Sinatra in one of the most famous recordings of Cole Porter's eponymous song; So deep in my heart, you're really part of me. I want to start thinking through questions of and subjectivity with this image of inter-subjective fusion. In A Cyborg Manifesto Donna Haraway asks, why should our bodies end at the skin, or include at best other beings encapsulated by skin? (178). This question, I argue, opens up what is so fascinating about Glazer's film and its implications for thinking about the cultural politics of science fiction.In Michel Faber's the Skin, we open with woman, Isserley, driving through the remote hills of Scotland and picking up male hitchhikers. Her intentions are not entirely clear, but her obsession with their bodies, their and what's under it, is evident, as in this passage where she reflects on her task:In truth, there was for Isserley an addictive thrill about the challenge. She could have some magnificent brute sitting in her car, right next to her, knowing for sure that he was coming home with her, and she could already be thinking ahead to the next one. Even while she was admiring him, following the curves of his brawny shoulders or the swell of his chest under his T-shirt, savouring the thought of how superb he'd be once he was naked, she would keep one eye on the roadside, just in case an even better prospect was beckoning to her out here. (4)The point of view is jarring: we are accustomed to narration that objectifies women's bodies in this way, but less accustomed to such blunt meat-market tactics applied to men. How easy it is to think of women as skin-on-display, and how different to think of men in this same way, is reinforced in the film by camera movement. In early scenes we join an unnamed woman (Scarlett Johansson) as she drives around Glasgow, the camera's gaze standing in for hers. As she cruises the streets and looks at passersby, the camera remains static when it frames women, who walk in and out of the shots without prompting reaction; yet it pans and tracks the men who come into frame, consuming them visually and pushing the viewer to notice that something is off in the gendered relationship to spectacle. Such camera work prompts us to realize how we fail to notice when it is women rather than men captured by the gaze.Similarly, in Faber's book, few pages after Isserley anticipates the superb nakedness of her passenger, we read the man's point of view as he notices Isserley's fantastic tits squeezed into a skimpy black top [...] for all to see-for him to see (11). The novel eventually reveals that Isserley is neither woman picking up strange men for sex nor female serial killer preying upon lone men-or at least not in the way we expect. Rather, Isserley is an alien whose species are sentient people, while the humans she picks up-vodsels, in her language-are food animals she collects for fattening and slaughter. The novel thus plays with the way sexual pursuit and predation are linked, but its focus moves from gender difference to species difference. The questions the novel raises about how much we are all alike the skin have more to do with the human/animal boundary than with the male/female binary, although it does remind us of how these two hierarchies are entwined in western cultural systems. …