celebrity gossip, academic style

Do you guys remember, oh, about 2001, when Scarlett Johansson was a bit of an enigma — a seemingly plain girl with some startlingly grace to her face, the beginnings of a husky voice, full lips, and some sort of kept promise in her eyes? She was the girl who fades into the background in junior high and then comes back to the reunion TOTALLY HOT, and with a Ph.D. in rocket science and a hot Argentine husband.

Ghost World, c. 2002

That was the promise of ScarJo before she was ScarJo, and I loved how that promise seemed to undulate beneath her skin — and had a tremendous effect on all of her costars. ScarJo before she was ScarJo: the Scarlett Johansson of The Horse Whisperer, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Ghost World, Lost in Translation, and even The Girl with the Pearl Earring.

But somewhere along the way — and I’m guessing it’s about the time when she started dating boring-face-Josh-Harnett and signed on for The Island, The Nanny Diaries and Match Point, when she became the beautiful yet meaningless face of Calvin Klein — she became something different. She was suddenly that hot girl at the reunion, but in the process, something was lost. I want to wipe all that make-off right off her face and tell her to stop posing like she’s a B-model in the back pages of the Victoria’s Secret catalog.

 

Victoria's Secret page 94

Now, when I see her in Vicky Cristina Barcelona or The Avengers, looking all super voluptuous and emanating pure sex, I mourn for the plain ScarJo of old. Now don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with an actress being sexual, being voluptuous, or even posing with her mouth open. I just fear that she, like Marilyn Monroe before her, has been cast as sex for sex’s sake, and in roles that ask her to embody that suggestion and little else.

Star scholars think of star images as “polysemic,” each with several potential meanings, each of which may be “activated” or received differently. In this way, a single star “mean” many things, even contradictory things. Monroe, for example, seemed to mean sex and innocence; Marlon Brando was at once intensely emotional and intensely masculine.

Importantly, the biggest stars — the ones that last — are the complicated ones, the ones that might play the same role over and over again, but that role, combined with the star’s extra-textual life, seems to represent something that matters and resonates with a tremendous and diverse swath of people. Johansson has this — you can see it in the early films — and it’s what made her a star in the first place. But now that she’s become a full-fledged star, marrying and divorcing another full-fledged star, that polysemy seems to have disappeared, just as the luminousness seems to have left her face.

Do you know what I’m talking about? Am I only the only one who sees this? She’s always looked kinda half asleep, but before that half-asleep-ness betrayed a certain desire unfulfilled. Now it’s as if she’s obtained it all, found it wanting, and just decided OH OKAY FINE I’ll be in this Avengers movie.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at her at the end of Lost in Translation — a clip that YouTube won’t let me embed. Or this scene when she goes and explores Japan. Again, there’s a curiosity there, something that doesn’t suggest that her beauty has become so powerful that she completely controls whatever situation she finds herself in, which is basically how I feel about every character she’s played since 2005. Now, there is a an art to playing that type of character, and conveying the pathos that accompanies it — Monroe knew how to do this; so did Garbo, in her way — but Johansson’s sex characters are essentially soulless. I feel nothing for them — no admiration, no lust, not even pity. And we all know that sex without soul is essentially a form of prostitution.

 

See?

You could argue that Johansson the Person has nothing to do with this — she’s taken roles in films that choose to treat her character a certain way, that exploit her body in a certain way, that make her a yoga instructor with little self-respect and less intelligence. But the star’s image at any moment is the sum of her parts and what she lets the press know about her personal life — and at this moment, she’s all wasted potential and nice breasts.

 

Posing for ladmags.....boobs boobs boobs....uninteresting.

Of course, I’m placing myself into this narrative: the ScarJo of Ghost World and Lost in Translation is someone I can see myself being friends with, and that’s what we’re generally looking for in a star — someone who’s relatable, with whom you’d like to share a French 75 or four. (There’s another subset of stars — the stars you’d be scared of and just want to look at from afar — in which Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt currently fit). But new ScarJo is neither here nor there, neither best friend nor goddess.

[Sidenote: If you find this new busty/lusty ScarJo sexy and want more and want me to just shut it -- okay, I get it. She's ostensibly hotter these days. But wouldn't that grown-up body be even more compelling if it was more than a body?]

The marriage to Ryan Reynolds seemed symptomatic of this transformation, providing a tanned and toned body to place beside her own. And Reynolds, for what it’s worth, has a tremendous amount of potential — every since I saw him in Van Wilder, I knew this guy was funny, but the roles that try to play him straight and capitalize on his Ken looks/serious-face are so ridiculously boring. The divorce was unexpected, the fling with Sean Penn even more so. Was that her adding something worn and seemingly wise to her life? It didn’t make sense at the time, but that’s only because her last ten roles put with her with smoldering men approximately her age. But think about it: The ScarJo image of old fits perfectly with a craggy-faced Sean Penn.

So I have high hopes, readers. Sure, she’s locked into this silly Avengers franchise that forces her to look like a blow-up doll. BUT WAIT — a Cameron Crowe movie!!! — next year! With Matt Damon! And my new favorite Fanning! About a zoo! THIS COULD BE GREAT! Cameron Crowe might not always be perfect (what was that Kristen Dunst/Orlando Bloom movie? So bad I seriously cannot even spend the time looking up the name) but Almost Famous, sweet Almost Famous. Remember how that movie made Kate Hudson seem like something really, truly special? Like something that wouldn’t go on to date A-Rod and movies that make me embarrassed to be a woman? The Cameron Crowe alchemy can truly do wonders.

And now that she’s got the Penn out of her system, I want the possibility of a new romance, and hopefully with someone unexpected yet interesting? He can be older, he can even be ugly, I just want it to surprise me. OH MY GOD WHAT ABOUT THE FASSBENDER? Another talented star roped into super-hero movies? I’m not seeing any evidence of a Fassbender wife in my cursory Googling? Please, ScarJo, make this happen. He has an Irish accent. He will be Rochester to your Jane Eyre. Do it.

 

If I can Photoshop their pictures together, IT CAN HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE

I guess I’m saying I want Scarlett Johansson to be interesting again. She used to be something worth talking about. Now she just slips from the mind, and makes me reconsider everything I thought about her in those early films. Does she actually have talent? Is she just a Good Body? I need some reaffirmation — I want that glint of promise and desire and enigma back in her eyes. It’s possible — I still see it in photos from time to time, usually in real life, very rarely when she’s been posed — but I think I need a performance, a really heartbreakingly good performance, to convince me of its existence.

This.