Celebrity Headjobs: Or Oozing Squid Sex with a framed-up leaky {Schar-JØ}

Citation

Brown W & Fleming D (2020) Celebrity Headjobs: Or Oozing Squid Sex with a framed-up leaky {Schar-JØ}. Porn Studies, 7 (4), pp. 357-366. https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2020.1815570

Abstract
Scarlett Johansson has described fighting against a swell of deepfake porn images featuring herself as futile—especially because they can be produced by almost anyone with free algorithmic software available online and with access to one or more image of her face. However, in this short essay we maintain that within contemporary technocratic culture the mediated star image of ‘ScarJo’ always already reveals the complex convergence of both bios (life as qualified or narrated, qua bio- graphical life) and zoë (bare life, or the life of the cellular organism) with technos (technological life and/or life skills). This convergence of Scarlett Johansson as celebrity (bios), as human being (zoë) and as technological entity (technos) is consciously explored in, and thus can be amplified via, these deepfake videos, especially the way in which their efforts of ‘(con)trolling’ (a con image that is also a form of trolling) her celebrity image, they express patriarchy’s attempts to frame a threatening and oozing femininity, while also masking deeper issues of race.

Keywords
Deepfake pornography; Scarlett Johansson; critical race theory; chthulumedia; desiring-machines

Journal
Porn Studies: Volume 7, Issue 4

People

Dr David Fleming

Senior Lecturer, Communications, Media and Culture