Marc Gauchee

Research engineer (INRAE) and doctor in cinema studies (Univ. Bordeaux-Montaigne). Author of “Marilyn's Dress” (2014) and “Revenge of the 50-Foot Woman” (2025).

It all began in April 1989, when Marc Gauché, then aged 25 and heartbroken, took refuge in a movie theater to see I married an alien. What could have remained a simple emotional escape becomes the starting point for a decades-long investigation. Facing the screen, her intellectual gaze is awakened: why is Céleste, the extraterrestrial played by Kim Basinger, filmed according to all the codes of “male gaze” theorized by Laura Mulvey? Why this traditional femininity so marked when the genre of E.T. or Klaatu never seemed important?

This initial questioning led Marc Gauché to methodically identify films featuring extraterrestrial women, Voyage to the Moon from Georges Méliès in 1902 until Sci-Fi Vixens from Beyond in 2024. More than 120 years of cinema where these creatures from elsewhere — Selenites, Martians, Venusians — served as a mirror to the fantasies, fears and gendered representations of each era.