Episode 164: Towards a Weird Materialism: On Expressionism in Cinema

Episode 164: Towards a Weird Materialism: On Expressionism in Cinema

Author: SpectreVision Radio March 6, 2024 Duration: 1:29:45
What is expressionism? A school? A movement? A philosophy? At the end of this episode, Phil and JF agree that it is, above all, a sensibility, one that surfaces periodically in history, punctuating it with occasional bursts of frenetic colour and eruptions of light and shadow. Whenever it appears, expressionism challenges our tendency to divide the world up into neat quadrants: mind and matter, subject and object lose their legitimacy as they start to bleed into one another. Prior to recording, your hosts agreed to focus on two pieces of writing: Victoria Nelson's The Secret Life of Puppets and a recent Internet post on eighties and nineties American films entitled "Neo-Expressionism: The Forgotten Studio Style." Though focused on a number of films, the conversation includes forays into the world of the visual arts, literature, and music. Support us on Patreon. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 and 2, on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop Find us on Discord Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau! REFERENCES comrade_yui, “neo-expressionism: the forgotten studio style” Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets Francis Ford Coppola, Bram Stoker’s Dracula Weird Studies, Episode 161 on ‘From Hell’ Bram Stoker, Dracula E. H. Gombrich, The Story of Art Jean-Francois Millet, “Gleaners” Kathe Kollwitz, “Need” Robert Weine, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Arnold Schoneberg, Pierrot Lunaire Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 1 Peter Yates (dir.), Krull Wilhelm Worringer, German art historian Weird Studies, Episode 136 on ‘The Evil Dead’ In Camera The Naive Visual Effects of Dracula Kenneth Gross, Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life Weird Studies, Episode 121 ‘Mandwagon’ 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 194: Animal Songs, with Meredith Michael [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:23:02
In this episode, Phil and JF are joined by Meredith Michael—musicologist, podcaster, and Weird Studies production assistant—for a conversation about animal songs. The phrase is intentionally slippery. Are we talking abou…
Episode 193: On Conversion, or Arousing the Bodhi-Mind [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:54
How do you become religious? What is a conversion experience? Does it happen all at once or gradually? What's the point of religion, anyway? These are questions that JF (a Catholic) and Phil (a Zennist) have often been a…
Episode 192 - A Dream of Landscape: On Walking [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:13:43
Phil and JF first explored the mysteries of walking back in episode 59. That episode felt like a mere introduction—a tentative first step on a long and winding path. Now, 133 episodes later, they return to the theme as t…
Special Episode: Theory, Philosophy, and Uranus [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:29
This conversation was originally recorded in August 2024 and released for our Patreon supporters. Weird Studies will be back with a new episode on June 25, 2025. What is cultural theory? How is philosophy "a preparation…
Special Episode: Myth, History, and Form [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:55
This special release is a Patreon extra we’re making available to all listeners, in lieu of the official episode originally scheduled for today. As explained in the introduction, we will be back with a full episode later…
Episode 191 — The Acid Queen, with Susannah Cahalan [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:28:01
Best known as the wife and partner of Timothy Leary, Rosemary Woodruff was in fact a central figure in the psychedelic movement in her own right—a political radical, underground fugitive, and neglected architect of the c…
Episode 190 – Here Be Shrubs: On Algernon Blackwood's 'The Willows' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:04
In this episode, JF and Phil paddle into the marshlands of Algernon Blackwood’s 1907 masterpiece The Willows, a tale Lovecraft once called the finest weird story of all time. They explore how a narrative in which almost…
Episode 189: Care of the Dead, with Jacob G. Foster [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:35:47
In this episode, JF and Phil are joined by Jacob G. Foster—sociologist, physicist, and researcher at Indiana University Bloomington and the Santa Fe Institute—for a conversation about their recent collaboration in Daedal…