Episode 40: On Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin'

Episode 40: On Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin'

Author: SpectreVision Radio February 13, 2019 Duration: 1:18:29
In Jonathan Glazer's loose screen adaptation of Michel Faber's novel Under the Skin, a creature of mysterious origin drives around Scotland in a white van, collecting lonely men and spiriting them away to an otherworld where they are turned into food.... or something. Drawing on a deep well of literary, visual, and musical tradition, Glazer (with help from his score composer Mica Levi) create a vivid work of tragedy and horror, masterfully executed for maximal weirdness and unwaveringly true to the auteur's intent to reveal our world from an "alien perspective." In this episode, Phil and JF discuss some themes and ideas they've pried from this exquisite tangle of image and sound. Along the way, they discuss the role that serendipity, coincidence, and fate play in both art-making and scholarship. REFERENCES Under the Skin (Jonathan Glazer, 2013) Other films by Glazer: Sexy Beast (2000), Birth (2004) Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975) Iannis Xenakis, Greek composer Twin Peaks: The Return (David Lynch, 2017) Ligeti, Atmosphères Stranger Things (The Duffer Brothers, 2016) Screen shot of "Space Invader" Easter egg in Under the Skin Weird Studies Episode 37: Entities, with Stuart Davis John August, American screenwriter Phil Ford, "The Devil's On Your Side: A Meditation on the Perennially Disreputable Business of Hermeneutics" (unpublished) Room 237 (Rodney Ascher, 2013) William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape: Making Worlds of Myth and Science Interview with Mica Levi, who composed the score for Under the Skin Atar Arad, American violist David Caspar Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the heart of Weird Studies, a podcast from SpectreVision Radio, you’ll find long-form conversations between Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel. Their discussions aren’t simple reviews or straightforward analyses; instead, they wander through the tangled undergrowth where art and philosophy meet, giving generous time to concepts that resist easy understanding and to creative works that fracture our ordinary sense of the world. This podcast deliberately lingers in that ambiguous space, treating the “weird” not as a genre but as a particular mode of experience-one that reveals the cracks in what we comfortably assume is real. Each episode feels like joining a deep, meandering dialogue between two friends who are both deeply knowledgeable and endlessly curious, covering a vast terrain that includes literature, film, music, and esoteric thought. It’s a show for anyone who suspects that the most profound truths are often found in the shadows, the anomalies, and the strangely beautiful. As part of the SpectreVision Radio network, which specializes in content that explores the uncanny edges of creativity, Weird Studies builds a unique community of listeners who are eager to think differently. You won’t find pat answers here, but you will encounter compelling questions and a shared sense of exploration that makes each installment a distinctive journey.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 230

Weird Studies
Podcast Episodes
Episode 210  – Angels & Daimons, with Cristina Campo and M.C. Richards [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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In this episode, JF and Phil bring together two visionary essays on the daimonic and the imaginal: Cristina Campo’s “On Fairy Tales” and M.C. Richards’s “Wrestling with the Daimonic.” What emerges is a conversation about…
Episode 209 – At Home in the Labyrinth, with Murakami and Borges [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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In this episode, Phil and JF discuss Haruki Murakami’s “Cream,” from First Person Singular, alongside Jorge Luis Borges’s classic tale, “The Garden of Forking Paths.” Together, these two stories occasion a meditation on…
Holiday Bonus: Scavengers in the Ruins of Heaven [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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