Another great piece. On the subject of your upcoming thesis, and not knowing any further details, I'm wondering if you've encountered Mark Fisher's work on The Weird and the Eerie. He makes use of much of what you outlined above concerning Freud's theory of the 'unheimlich' or the uncanny. Fisher uses examples from literature and contemporary film to attempt a "folding of the weird and the eerie into the unheimlich [as something] symptomatic of a secular retreat from the outside." Fisher argues that Freud's conception of the uncanny "operates by always processing the outside through the gaps and impasses of the inside." Modes of the weird and the eerie make the opposite move by allowing "us to see the inside from the perspective of the outside." In this view, the weird is manifested in presence, in "things which do not belong" or "two or more things which do not belong together." Conversely, the eerie concerns questions of agency and arises in spaces where the absence of the human is felt and curiously pronounced. I bring this up because the tension you identified in Moon is a perfect example (I think) of the film successfully manipulating the interplay between these modes: the clones and surreal hallucinations (the weird) and the cold, clinical station environment contrasted with the austere, unforgiving lunar landscape (the eerie).
I suppose that when your real world home is the source of such anxiety, the appeal of the un-homelike will begin to grow.
This was a pleasure to read, in part because it helped me remember more of a film that had survived in my memory only as a few disconnected images and the deeply creepy smiley face robot who ended up being nothing but friendly and helpful (madeleine : Marcel's childhood in Combray :: this post : movie I watched a decade ago). I wonder if there's something to the way the film telegraphs and subverts its genre hallmarks and its ability to inhabit the uncanny, as if it relates to the abandoned space station genre in the way one Sam does to another: both same and other, the outer inside and the inner outside, etc. Maybe there isn't, but that's the thought that this post provoked.
I'm just glad that the symbols on their hats match their tunics. They might get confused as to which goes with which, otherwise.
Another great piece. On the subject of your upcoming thesis, and not knowing any further details, I'm wondering if you've encountered Mark Fisher's work on The Weird and the Eerie. He makes use of much of what you outlined above concerning Freud's theory of the 'unheimlich' or the uncanny. Fisher uses examples from literature and contemporary film to attempt a "folding of the weird and the eerie into the unheimlich [as something] symptomatic of a secular retreat from the outside." Fisher argues that Freud's conception of the uncanny "operates by always processing the outside through the gaps and impasses of the inside." Modes of the weird and the eerie make the opposite move by allowing "us to see the inside from the perspective of the outside." In this view, the weird is manifested in presence, in "things which do not belong" or "two or more things which do not belong together." Conversely, the eerie concerns questions of agency and arises in spaces where the absence of the human is felt and curiously pronounced. I bring this up because the tension you identified in Moon is a perfect example (I think) of the film successfully manipulating the interplay between these modes: the clones and surreal hallucinations (the weird) and the cold, clinical station environment contrasted with the austere, unforgiving lunar landscape (the eerie).
I suppose that when your real world home is the source of such anxiety, the appeal of the un-homelike will begin to grow.
This was a pleasure to read, in part because it helped me remember more of a film that had survived in my memory only as a few disconnected images and the deeply creepy smiley face robot who ended up being nothing but friendly and helpful (madeleine : Marcel's childhood in Combray :: this post : movie I watched a decade ago). I wonder if there's something to the way the film telegraphs and subverts its genre hallmarks and its ability to inhabit the uncanny, as if it relates to the abandoned space station genre in the way one Sam does to another: both same and other, the outer inside and the inner outside, etc. Maybe there isn't, but that's the thought that this post provoked.
I'm just glad that the symbols on their hats match their tunics. They might get confused as to which goes with which, otherwise.