Friedrich Nietzsche’s misogyny is a brute fact that no pageant of interpretation can disguise
Johnny describes ‘Skin Feature’ as “a headlong dive into existentialism”.
“It draws from Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: ‘The Earth has a skin, and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases is called, for example, ‘humanity’.”
“I was interested, like a lot of artists in the late 70s period, in the concept of nihilism, not necessarily as a reason to mope around about suffering and meaninglessness, but more to do with how we come to affirm life”.
“With ’Skin Feature’”, says Johnny, “the song is about the affirming, and it’s all written in an interpretative style, to reflect the style Nietzsche wrote in”.
“It delves into philosophical pessimism yet with a dose of Dionysian energy”
“Nietzsche is confronting because certain proclamations are considered highly provocative, belligerent and uncompromising. In private however, Nietzsche was said to be vulnerable, lonely and sometimes self-pitying”.
“The title, ‘Skin Feature’, is a double-entendre referencing the Zarathustra: ‘The Earth has a skin, and this skin has diseases. One of these diseases is called, for example, ‘humanity’.
The lyrics start from a play on this sort of the nihilistic view of life as a ‘B-grade feature’, flipping immediately to ‘five-star feature’, and setting up immediately the kind of extremities between sort of nihilism and affirmation.
‘Skin Feature’ invites film or video as a way to address philosophical issues
It references Mary Poppins, by Pamela Lyndon Travers, who put forth feminist perspectives beyond a Dionysian view of nurturer and emancipator
The refrain, ‘Listen to the preacher man, God’s not gonna reach you, the devil’s making it along’, is a reminder that developing a firm foundation from showing up, and that no matter what happens in life, even encountering hardships, you can always reach back to one who’s going to be there.
The coda, ‘We’re all living on the movie screen, covered in cream we’re all in ecstasy’, returns us back to the symbol of the movie screen which makes the point that just because someone has a ‘w0ow’ moment, doesn’t mean that someone else’s experience is anything less than valid.