Abstract
Looking to her science fiction roles, this chapter examines Johansson’s position as racialized star. Taking up a discourse of idealised whiteness in conjunction with star theory, Sean Redmond frames white female stardom as a privileged yet restrictive state. Locating Johansson within such a construction of stardom, Redmond looks to how her idealised white star image as resolved through her roles in Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017) is simultaneously recognisable and alienating within these texts. As idealised white star, Johansson traverses the cinematic universe, moving with privileged access into roles, spaces and intimacies laid open for her. Yet as an unobtainable and non-reproductive idol, Johansson is also alienating, an embodiment of the loneliness, fragmentation and isolation that plagues contemporary (white) social existence.
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Redmond, S. (2019). The Alien Whiteness of Scarlett Johansson. In: Loreck, J., Monaghan, W., Stevens, K. (eds) Screening Scarlett Johansson. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33196-2_11
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