ABSTRACT
What is the relationship between woman and alien? Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2013) presents one of the most terrifying yet seductive faces of the monstrous-feminine in Feminist New Wave Cinema. It is one of the most important feminist films of the new millennium. The Alien played by Scarlett Johansson is sent to Earth to seduce and capture human men for alien consumption. The Alien’s skin is white, hair black, lips red, body voluptuous. Her victims are annihilated in truly horrific scenes of evisceration in a deep black pool—an abyss or womb—of murky fluids. Despite this, she is a sympathetic character. When the Alien decides to abandon her role as femme fatale and become a human ‘woman’ she quickly learns that on Earth women are already aliens. When she encounters a violent man, a rapist, who discovers that her alien skin is actually black, she experiences a new form of terror. In becoming woman, the Alien is confronted with an existential crisis. Is it possible for woman to exist in a patriarchal world, or universe, that stereotypes woman as other/alien and reduces her to her sexuality and body?
