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 28: Weird Music, Part Two [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:04:59
"Music is worth living for," Andrew W.K. sings in his latest rock anthem. In this second episode on the weirdness of music, JF and Phil focus on two works steeped in ambiguity and paradox: Bob Dylan's "Jokerman," from th…
Episode 27: Weird Music, Part One [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:32
In this first of two episodes devoted to the music of the weird, Phil and JF discuss two works that have bowled them over: the second movement of Ligeti's Musica Ricercata, used to powerful effect in Stanley Kubrick's Ey…
Episode 26: Living in a Glass Age, with Michael Garfield [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:17
Stone, bronze, iron... glass? In his recent thought and writing, transdisciplinary artist and thinker Michael Garfield defines modernity as an age of glass, arguing that the entire ethos of our era inheres in the transfo…
Episode 25: David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:36
JF and Phil head for Interzone in an attempt to solve the enigma of Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg's 1991 screen adaptation of William S. Burroughs' infamous 1959 novel. A treatise on addiction, a diagnosis of modern ills…
Episode 24: The Charlatan and the Magus, with Lionel Snell [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:53
As Lionel Snell, also known as Ramsey Dukes, observes in his seminal esoteric essay, "The Charlatan and the Magus" (1984), the series of trumps in a tarot deck doesn't begin with the noble Emperor or august Hierophant, b…
Episode 23: On Presence [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:43:49
Phil stops by JF's Canadian homestead for a raucous IRL conversation on the idea of presence. The range of topics includes objects of power, the magic of books, the mystery of the event, modernity's knack for making myth…
Episode 22: Divining the World with Joshua Ramey [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:37
American philosopher Joshua Ramey, author of The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and the Spiritual Ordeal, and Politics of Divination: Neoliberal Endgame and the Religion of Contingency, joins Phil and JF to discuss a philo…
Episode 20: The Trash Stratum - Part 1 [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:42
Is the Holy Grail a crushed beer can in the gutter? JF and Phil consider the implications of Philip K. Dick's line, "the symbols of the divine initially show up at the trash stratum." Gnosticism, Aleister Crowley's Thoth…
Episode 19: Intermezzo [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:28
After announcing that Weird Studies will be going to a bi-weekly release schedule for the summer, Phil and JF talk about how the podcast has gone so far and what's on the horizon (more guests!). Before long, they're digg…
Episode 18: Does 'Consciousness' Exist? - Part Two [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:01:31
JF and Phil finally get down to brass tacks with William James's essay "Does Consciousness Exist?" At the heart of this essay is the concept of what James calls "pure experience," the basic stuff of everything, only it i…