In his introduction to the BFIâs Star Studies: A Critical Guide, Martin Shingler suggests, âOne of the most persistent questions asked about stardom is why some film actors become stars and not othersâ (2012, 3). Yet we might also pose another questionâwhy do some stars become the focus of scholarly and popular writing on their stardom and not others? What qualities do some stars possess, in their saleability, their enduring appeal or their engagement with processes of commodification, that make them worthy of the type of close scrutiny that sustains articles and book-length examinations? In developing Screening Scarlett Johansson, these questions have been unavoidable. What about this actress, whose careerâwhile spanning more than two decadesâis far from complete, makes her ready and fitting to be the focus of a book? Of all the actresses who currently populate the films of Hollywood and world cinema, or adorn the pages of magazines promoting perfumes, fashion brands or simply themselves, what makes this one distinctive? In short, why a book on Scarlett Johansson?
There are many reasons to single out Johansson for special attention within the growing collection of studies devoted to contemporary stars and stardom. Johansson sits among a number of female stars who have transitioned from child actor to adult star since the 1990s. Alongside the likes of Natalie Portman, Kirsten Dunst, Kristen Stewart and Emma Stone, Johansson has emerged over the past two decades to an increasingly central role within Hollywood filmmaking, franchise cinema and global celebrity culture. While a case could be made for an exploration of many of these women, however, there are qualities to Johansson that stand her apart from this company. Unlike the majority of these actresses, she has not won an Academy Award. Instead, she has achieved fame and acclaim in other ways.
Much of Johanssonâs celebrity rests in her popular appeal as a hyper-feminine beauty and global glamour star. Moreover, much of this notoriety has come, as Dyer (1986) suggests it does for all stars, from the diverse, multimedia and intertextual star images of Johansson that have circulated beyond her on-screen roles. After topping a poll run in Esquire in 2006, Johansson has regularly featured in âsexiest woman aliveâ lists in menâs magazines such as Maxim, GQ, Playboy, FHM and Menâs Health, including achieving the perhaps dubious honour of becoming in 2013 the first woman to have achieved top spot twice on the Esquire chart. The popularity and fascination with Johanssonâs body and beauty have not only captivated male fans, however. Numerous brand endorsements have also secured her place in the pages of womenâs magazines. She has worked as a model and spokeswoman for several fashion and cosmetic brands, including Calvin Klein fragrance, Louis Vuitton fashion, LâOrĂ©al hair products and Dolce & Gabbana perfumes and cosmetics. Such endorsements shore up Johanssonâs image, building on her sexualised persona and place within the popular imagining of contemporary Hollywood stardom. Yet it was in 2016 that Johanssonâs popularity found a more material measure, with Forbes naming her the yearâs top-grossing star due to the $1.2 billion USD brought in by the films in which she starred (Robehmed 2016).
Although such popular appeal offers a reason why this star might be singled out for a closer look, there is more to Johansson than her status as a sexy, bankable actress. Johanssonâs films and her actions off-screen move within and beyond this popular image in ways that distinguish her as a star worthy of closer scrutiny. Johanssonâs long and varied career demonstrates she is an actor capable of change, and it is precisely this changeable qualityâand the performances it fostersâthat drives this book. Beyond her place as popular Hollywood starlet, Johanssonâs career has also framed her as a child actress, a darling of American independent cinema, a leading lady within global art house productions, and more recently as the recognisably female face of contemporary science fiction and action franchise cinema . Her ability to move through and across genres and institutional modes with an ease and visibility possessed by few other contemporary actresses marks her as a figure worthy of some consideration. Her body of work, moreover, provides a fertile ground to interrogate not only what contemporary stardom, and female stardom particularly, looks like, but also to see how an examination of the work of a single actor might foster new critical approaches to explorations of gender, genre and stardom in the twenty-first century. It is on this fertile ground that this book sits.
If Johansson has charted a career through a multitude of roles that play to and subvert cultural norms around her recognisable femininity , several of her roles have also worked to highlight her tendency to play up such transformations. Johansson has, with somewhat astonishing regularity, embraced characters that are themselves in transition. Whether playing ingénue or cyborg , Johansson is frequently cast as women who wander, experiencing coming of age or identity crises. She plays American flùneuses in Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003) and Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008); characters that investigate the boundaries of their humanity and non-humanity in The Island (Michael Bay, 2005), Her (Spike Jonze, 2013) and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017); and femmes fatales burdened by their own performances of seduction in Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) and Avengers franchise. As Johansson (2017) remarks:
perhaps subconsciously Iâve chosen characters who are on some existential quest, perhaps itâs some reflection of my own journey ⊠These characters all have that struggle and brush up against themselves time and again until they break through and are sitting as women in their own skin.
Whilst Johansson has a large body of work in which she does not play such characters (turns in Hail, Caesar! [Joel and Ethan Coen, 2016] and Rough Night [Lucia Aniello, 2017] indicate her skill in comedic roles, for example), it is a conspicuous feature of her career that her persona should be so regularly mobilised to portray femininity in transition.
Johanssonâs decision to take on such characters has a pragmatic element. Roles as ingĂ©nues and cyborgs have allowed her to participate in several milieus of cinema culture at various points in her career, performing as both a starlet of independent films as well as a mainstream science fiction performer. Yet it is nonetheless intriguing that Johansson should be the actor who is emblematic of unstable personhood and feminine identity crisis. She is the contemporary go-to actress for Hollywoodâs own feminine archetype; blonde-haired and green-eyed, Johanssonâs appearance recalls 1950s sex icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield. Admirers routinely make hyperbolic claims about her femininityâcalling her âgilded to beholdâ (Lane 2014) and âsexually overwhelmingâ (Allen qtd. in Hill 2007)âas well as comically redundant declarations: âShe looks like a woman. She exudes womannessâ (Jacobs 2006). Despite this characterisation of Johansson as femininity embodied, she has nevertheless become representative of women in flux.
This chapter gives an overview of Johanssonâs career as a way of mapping out her persona and its vicissitudes. As the contributors to this volume demonstrate, Johanssonâs critical interest is extensive, her persona opening up numerous pathways for discussions of child performance , the eroticisation of violence , white supremacy , national versus transnational cinema , and the human and animal divide. The purpose of this opening chapter, then, is to offer an overview of Johanssonâs career to precede and complement these contributions, as well as to give a unifying perspective on her image . We therefore examine Johanssonâs early career as a child actress , her positioning as a star of American independent cinema, her fame as an object of heterosexual male desire, and her recent turn towards self-parody in science fiction cinema . In providing this overview, we trace the development ofâand productive contradictions withinâJohanssonâs image. We consider how Johansson has evolved in paradoxical ways throughout her twenty year career to become representative of Hollywoodâs iteration of the perfect woman, yet, at the same time, a star of feminine transformation and instability.
Early Roles and Rising Stardom
As with all stars, Johanssonâs persona consists of a lived biography . Scarlett Ingrid Johansson was born in 1984 in New York City to parents Melanie Sloan and Karsten Johansson. She has three siblingsâan older sister and brother, Vanessa and Adrian, as well as a twin brother, Hunter. The Johansson and Sloan famil...