Even Falling, Recognizably Herself
The internet’s relationship with Scarlett Johansson has always been shaped by the straightforward fact that she’s extraordinarily attractive and the internet is what it is. Every person who spent 2003 watching Lost in Translation on repeat has some specific, probably embarrassing attachment to that voice, that face, that particular quality of presence on screen.
So when she stumbled on the set of Under the Skin in 2013—genuinely unsexy, mid-trip, arms out—the internet processed it the only way it knows how: Photoshop. Within days she was falling off a dolphin, falling down a ski slope, falling with a lightsaber, falling as Skrillex behind a DJ MacBook. The meme was called "Scarlett Johansson Falls Down" and it was, honestly, pretty good. The joke works because she’s almost comically beautiful under normal circumstances—the pratfall punctures something, and the internet is constitutionally incapable of resisting a deflation.
It wasn’t her first time through the machine. In 2011, a hacker broke into her phone and leaked nude photos she’d taken for her then-husband. The internet’s response was to share them comprehensively and then, in some kind of collective processing move, spawn "Johanssoning"—people photographing themselves in odd poses in front of mirrors, mimicking the style of her selfies. I’m not going to pretend I didn’t look. She had her phone violated, and the internet treated it like a gift, which is about as honest a description of internet culture as you’re going to get.
The falling meme is gentler. Sad Keanu, the Ridiculously Photogenic Guy, the Overly Attached Girlfriend—all of them hit the same nerve, the same decontextualized image applied to everything until it collapses under its own weight. With Scarlett there’s always the sense that the format has met something it can’t quite absorb. She’s too specific, too present as a person, to disappear entirely into the joke. Even falling down, she’s recognizably herself.
The falling one is better, I think. Less complicated. Funnier. Doesn’t require anyone to feel weird afterward.