S4E22.5: Under the Skin

Started this episode today. When y'all hinted at "the process", I was so intrigued I had to go watch the movie myself. 10/10 filmmaking but also made my stomach churn. I agree with Abi's reading and the feminist themes really hit me hard as a cis male viewer. I wish I could see the "humanist" angle Devon saw in it, because to me it was quite grim. Every man, even the good or nice ones, was a threat or had ulterior motives. The guy at the bus stop, the guy hiking in the forest, they all made me suspicious and anxious. The obvious subversion of all these men getting in a van with an unknown woman. I've read Jonathan Glazer didn't intend a feminist or rape culture theme, but I think it very clearly appears anyway. Still, thanks for the episode and for alerting me to an incredible movie. I'm quickly becaming a Glazer fanboy. Congrats on 5 years of the podcast, keep going for another 5 more. <3

Really thought Abi was going to suggest Species as a shit version of this at the end

i had a glitched copy of under the skin where everything was false colour except the void scenes and up until you mentioned the red lipstick (which in my version was brightly purple) i thought this was a directorial decision to put the viewer into a more alien pov. i did not "get" the movie as a result. trying to see the ending through the eyes of an alien made it appear very nihilistic to me.

I have actually done the Jason Bourne disappearing bit in real life, but the secret was to drop behind a knee-high wall and scurry

This does sound like a really interesting film, though it hits some specific triggers of mine that mean I sadly can't watch it. It was nice to hear you talk about it, and to experience such a powerful film through your conversation! But especially on the re-listen, I feel like there a side to this film or a reading of it that I'm surprised you didn't discuss, or seemingly think of. I don't think this is a film that intends to be transmisogynist, but I feel strongly that that's a reading of it. Her character looks like a woman but under her surface she isn't human, she preys on men and that's deliberately coded sexually, she starts to lose track of what she 'really' is and starts trying to actually live as a human woman (which is established to be impossible), she is confused by her own genitals during intimacy, then during sexual contact a man discovers her true nature and is motivated to kill her out of disgust and horror. On the face of it, that sequence of events could be straight out of a "Silence of the Lambs (with aliens)" story, but you clearly didn't feel that when watching it. Is there something about the experience of watching this film that sidesteps a transmisogynistic narrative or reading? From hearing you talk about it, it feels like the choice of having her be a woman does, perhaps unintentionally, echo our culture's transmisogyny? I think there's probably an interesting conversation there about how attempts to shift narratives around sexual violence and have a woman be a predator of men in this particular way, especially paired with her not being human, might fall into or be constrained within existing tropes and fears rooted in transmisogyny.

Best movie of the 2010s? I think you're forgetting about a little film called Mad Max: Fury Road.

just before the hour mark of this podcast i began to understand this film as like. shoot'n'cry the little mermaid

"into the sluice chute, flyboy" was right there

only the Void can reduce a man to a soup-like homogenate

I've been meaning to pitch it for a while and it just got sadly relevant, so... would you be interested in taking a look at 2001's Spy Game? In a way, it's both a spy movie and a heist one.

"Wel. Come. ToMy. Black. Void." Sluicer caroline polachek

Recently joined the Patreon, so I'm working through from the beginning in between new episodes - this worked out perfectly, in that after the interesting but emotional hard going of this episode, I reached the Top Secret! episode. Some days are hard-hitting analysis days, some days are for listening to Abigail cry-laughing about gloriously stupid visual gags

So I clean South West airplanes for a living, yes the pilots are generally inhuman. The conductive slime from their flagella is really annoying to clean.

The bit at the end about marketing budgets reminded me that Minions had a 600 million USD marketing budget vs a 74 million production budget. Absolutely staggering, there were fucking Minions murals in my city. 1.6 billion at the box office.

This movie sounds really interesting.

This was a weird one to listen to the day of an epic exsanguination of a certain man who I refuse to name. Really good episode, thanks for introducing me to so many movies!

Loved this movie without ever fully getting it, and also enjoyed one called Border (2018, a Swedish movie) which I thought had similar vibes and themes.

This falls into religion season because we worship Scarlett Johansson

Corker of an last line from November, whose Possessor take I am desperate to hear

You can lead a horse to voider, but you can't make them shrink

This is a weird coincidence but recently I've started reading Demon: The Descent, which is a game all about that sort of story of "weird supernatural intelligence agent starting to prefer their cover identity and trying to defect". Weird parallels

The opening scene was a real missed opportunity to day "eye you love to see"

As a transman, I had a very interesting experience with this film. I think it's one of the best films I've ever seen and I hated it. I watched a being in the skin of a woman but clearly not one, being a predator, reacting with emotional disstress to realising woman bits about themselves and when the hidden self is revealed by an act of extreme violence they get get murdered. I don't blame Glazer for any of that, I think this reading is entirely a product of my personal trauma and I see the other readings, but I never want to watch this again

I've not seen this only because I'm afraid it would hit me like requiem for a dream did. Damn that movie was terrifying.

I watched this film a few years ago knowing nothing about it and while on a pretty sporty dose of synthetic mushrooms, hoo boy! Skin sack void man may be the most terrifying thing I've ever seen and it is not for lack of competition. Incredibly evocative sequence and film.

The film is even more off-putting when you're from a right-side-driving country. First time something set in Britain made me feel weird about that, I feel? Possibly intentional to an extent in the framing of some scenes.

Read Kimmy if you love being trans and men being digested - and dehumanisation yaay

Whatever artistic path Johnathan Glazer is on, I‘m terrified to see the next one. How haunting can one person‘s oeuvre get?

Who up getting they twink sluiced?

Love the way the metaphor works that, having attempted to rape her, he completes the objectification by destroying that which he has already seen as the monstrous other.

"The man who fell to Earth" is an incredible book (and I assume movie with David Bowie and TV show with chewitel ejiofor) about "what if Jesus came to Earth but discovered alcohol"

Also, because Signs is an incredible movie, I'm assuming that Abigail has to say it's shit because it has Mel Gibson and M Night Shyamalan? Despite Shyamalan being an occasionally incredible director and Mel Gibson being pretty much always an incredible actor. Signs is really damn good. I wonder if she just hasn't seen it in a while or something.

I saw this when I was visiting someone's ferrets (not a euphemism) they were like Scar Jo Alien movie, set in Glasgow! And we're Scottish so we clamour for any recognition. I was not ready for The Process

My graduate employee was walking down the Trongate on his lunch when Scarlett Johansson collapsed on the pavement in front of her. He stepped over her and told us all about it back at the office to cries of "sure you did"... two days later, with photos of filming in the newspaper, the cries dried up to be replaced with "in the bath when opportunity knocked"

Always hated Johansson since she chose Israeli money over her Oxfam Ambassador role.

Long live sci fi religion season

The 2018 movie "Borders" is sort of a fantasy version of this in some ways. A woman works for Swedish customs and knows that there's something wrong with her and she's not a normal human woman and has to explore her identity. It is the world's first movie that is almost textually about being trans AND 9/11.

They found it. A movie about being Trans, AND about 9/11. Even released on 9/11, wow.

Not sure if yall read these, but I clicked on the link in the description for http://tomallen.media and the link is broken

I'm not 100% on what to do with this, but the scene where the guy is walking backwards down the staircase, bringing her along to the ground is a lovely mirror image of her enVoidening the men. She's so scared of the descent because normally she would just skip along on the surface.

Signs is an amazing movie! Really interested to see whether everyone agrees with Abby about it being terrible.

I misread this and thought it was Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In for a second

Excited to hear about my boy Geronimo the alpaca on the next episode

Listening to the description of “moving your body for the pleasure of being able to” reminds me quite a bit of the scene at the end of Ex Machina, which is a reasonable pitch idea for religion season.

The use of aliens to create an understandable threat to a first world audience is a neat trick and it has a strong pedigree. The War Of The Worlds was written in part to try to impress upon a British audience an idea of what it might be like if a superior power did to them what the British had just done to the people of Tasmania. The point is lost of course because HMS Thunder Child is so sick.

banished to the equitable lacuna

Hearing y’all talk about this film as well as its book counterpart made me want you to watch “Annihilation”. I love that they’re a movie and book pair that are more spiritually connected than a beat-for-beat recounting.

Art doesn't work. Most people can't hear the message because they're too distracted by everyday life, or they are actively trying to not hear it because it challenges their beliefs. The few people who do want to listen and learn aren't numerous enough to make a meaningful change, and even if they did have their perspectives changed, it's unlikely that they'll actually act on it and seek change in the world. We're all stuck in the mud and muck of life, restrained from action or change, and the state of things just keeps flowing on towards inevitable doom and disaster. That kid in Andrei Rublev may have made that bell, and it may have been a monumental, beautiful achievement, but the police will continue to torture people, the princes will continue to bicker and destroy their people, the Tartars will continue to pillage and burn towns, and plague will continue to kill indiscriminately. The only way for things to actually change, to actually convince people to act, is for people's actual lives to be affected personally. And even then, most people just cope and carry on. I don't know.

Wonderful episode thanks

I watched this movie while signed off after a mental breakdown after years of depression and it hit me so hard, probably for very different reasons. It has stuck with me and I think for many of the reasons you described too. Such an incredible piece of art with such amazing performances. Thank you for doing this episode!

Podcast host will say they know a place and take you to the epistemilogical lacuna

All my human homies love chilling in THE VOID.

Possessor is a banger!!

adding this one to the list of movies that are both about 9/11 and being trans

I saw this movie years ago because my mom was watching it, the movie definitely stuck with me but I didn't really know what to think of it symbolically at the time. Im looking forwards to y'all's analysis

I think the low budget version is better than the envisioned high budget version they originally planned.

Aliens getting the War of the Worlds infection from a Claire’s’ piercing.

I was really excited to hear you all were talking about this! This movie is really an incredible experience to watch. I deeply hope anyone who sees this comment goes to watch it before they listen to the watch. While the context of the film is the Iraq war, I associate the "what if your neighbors are being taken by something far more powerful than you are" with what ICE is doing in America, but I appreciate that is an America-centric viewpoint.

Rare film I've actually seen! Watched with a beautiful woman after she'd come out to me and made me (I think) second person to know her name.

A movie that goes unmentioned in “movies that are better then the books they’re based on” lists, the book is a very straightforward metaphor for factory farming

This movie made me want to die [complimentary]

*Adam Pearson, guy I love to see!

Ooh! I haven't seen this one yet but am a big fan of Adam Pearson, who's also in A Different Man which is a banger of a weird film. Hope you cover that one too!