Episode 21: The Trash Stratum - Part 2

Episode 21: The Trash Stratum - Part 2

Author: SpectreVision Radio July 13, 2018 Duration: 1:06:11
The writings of underground filmmaker Jack Smith serve as a starting point for Phil and JF's second tour of the trash stratum. In their wanderings, they will uncover such moldy jewels as the 1944 film Cobra Woman, the exploitation flick She-Devils on Wheels, and (wonder of wonders) Hitchcock's Vertigo. The emergent focus of the conversation is the dichotomy of passionate commitment and ironic perspective, attitudes that largely determine whether a given object will turn out to appear as a negligible piece of garbage... or the Holy Grail. By the end, our hosts realize that even their own personal trash strata may give off shimmers of the divine. Jack Smith, Flaming Creatures Robert Siodmak (director), Cobra Woman (1944) Jack Smith, "The Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez" Roger Scruton, English philosopher Mystery Science Theater 3000 (TV series) Kenneth Burke, American literary theorist Alfred Hitchcock (director), Vertigo (1958) Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground Charles Ludlam's Theater of the Ridiculous Mel Brooks (director), High Anxiety (1977) "Ironic Porn Purchase Leads to Unironic Ejaculation", The Onion (1999) James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games Jorge Luis Borges, "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" Herschell Gordon Louis (director), She-Devils on Wheels André Bazin, What is Cinema? Erik Davis, "The Alchemy of Trash" David Lynch, Mulholland Drive William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience Phil Ford, "Birth of the Weird" 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 47: Machines of Loving Grace: Technology and the Unabomber [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:24
Made in 2003, Lutz Dammbeck's documentary The Net: The Unabomber, LSD, and the Internet is a film about many things, but the gist of it is something like what William Burroughs called the doctrine of control. We live in…
Episode 46: Thomas Ligotti's Angel [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:29:37
In his short story "Mrs. Rinaldi's Angel," contemporary horror author Thomas Ligotti contrasts the chaotic monstrosity of dreams with the cold, indifferent, and no less monstrous purity of angels. It is the story of a bo…
Episode 45: Jeffrey J. Kripal on 'Flipping' Out of Materialism [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:27
"May the present 'you' not survive this little book," Jeffrey Kripal writes in the prologue to The Flip. "May you be flipped in dramatic or quiet ways." Indeed, Kripal's latest is a kind of manifesto, a call to embrace t…
Episode 43: On Shirley Jackson [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:32
Shirley Jackson's stories and novels rank among the greatest weird works produced in America during the 20th century. However, unlike authors such as Philip K. Dick and H.P. Lovecraft, Jackson didn't cut her teeth in the…
Episode 42: On Pauline Oliveros, with Kerry O'Brien [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:12
In the mid-1960s, Pauline Oliveros was a composer of experimental electronic music. But at the end of the 1960s, shocked by the political violence around her, she turned away from electronic technology and towards to a d…
Episode 41: On Speculative Fiction, with Matt Cardin [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:00:22
Neil Gaiman wrote, "If literature is the world, then fantasy and horror are twin cities, divided by a river of black water." Flame Tree Publishing underwrites this claim with their recent publication, The Astounding Illu…
Episode 40: On Jonathan Glazer's 'Under the Skin' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

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 w…
Episode 39: The Challenge of the Paranormal, with Jeffrey J. Kripal [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:45
"The world is not simply composed of physical causes strung together in strictly materialistic and mechanical fashion," writes Prof. Jeffrey J. Kripal in his seminal book, Authors of the Impossible. "The world is also a…
Episode 38: Style as Analysis [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:45
Music writing has always been something of an occult practice, trying by some weird alchemy to use concepts to describe stuff that defies the basic categories of intellect. So long as we stick to classical music, we can…