Artificial Intelligence and Otherness Pt. 4 (Under the Skin)

Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin is a slow hypnotic masterpiece. It is inventive in its story telling and maddeningly patient. The film unfolds quietly, punctuated by horrors that then linger and only slowly drift away. It is something of an anomaly in this series. It is the only film listed in which the A.I. in question is not man made.

In every other film previous or to come in this series the robot or computer program is a human invention, an example of our creativity leading to either moral quandary or self-destruction. In Under the Skin the mechanical creature is of alien origin, a threat entirely from outside.

Scarlett Johansen plays an alien being under the control of a nameless and voiceless agent who brings her to life and releases her onto the streets of Scotland. Her function is to lure men into a trap where they are digested for fuel.

She is a skilled hunter, seeking those with no connections. She seduces them with sex and sympathy. In taking its time to observe these scenes of ensnarement the film is eloquent on the subject of human (particularly male human) frailty. We see each individual’s weakness and we also observe Johansen’s automaton gaining in consciousness, self-awareness, and finally a conscience.

It is elegantly stated through her (visually not verbally) that self-awareness is the birth empathy. Near the midpoint of the film, after she had devoured numerous victims Johansen sees herself in a mirror and realizes she is someone. She finds she can no longer kill wantonly with this knowledge and the story becomes about her search for self.

The issue of femininity as metaphorical threatening other is unmissable in Under the Skin. She is a robot from an entirely other planet but her status as different and threatening is only implied by her obtrusive femininity. She only destroys men. She is only derailed from her later quest for self when she realizes she is unequipped for sex. And she is finally revealed as alien only when a potential rapist puts his hand between her legs.

Here sexuality is the key to a female’s viability in the hunt and reproductive viability is the only reason she is tolerated by the world at large. The reverse of this film is interesting to consider, recasting the robot as male, communicating otherness by means of visible masculinity and the unobtrusive capturing of women. Of course then the robot might just look like every serial killer from movies and TV ever.

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