Episode 25: David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch'

Episode 25: David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch'

Author: SpectreVision Radio September 12, 2018 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, a lucid portrait of the artist as cosmic transgressor, and like the book, "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork," Naked Lunch is here framed in the light Cronenberg's recent speech making the case for the crime of art. Image by Melancholie, Wikimedia Commons. REFERENCES David Foster Wallace, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way," from Girl With Curious Hair Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus, and "How Do You Make Yourself a Body Without Organs?" in A Thousand Plateaus David Cronenberg (writer-director), Naked Lunch (the film) William Burroughs, Naked Lunch (the novel) Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an Opium-Eater Dale Pendell, Pharmako/Poeia: Power Plants, Poisons and Herbcraft "David Cronenberg: I would like to make the case for the crime of art," Globe and Mail June 22 2018 JF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice Phil Ford, Dig: Sound and Music in Hip Culture Derek Bailey (director), On the Edge: Improvisation in Music Phil Ford, "Good Prose is Written By People Who Are Not Frightened" Geroge Orwell, "Inside the Whale" 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 176: On Charles Burns' 'Black Hole' and the Medium of Comics [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:21:43
Comics, like cinema, is an eminently modern medium. And as with cinema, looking closely at it can swiftly acquaint us with the profound weirdness of modernity. Do that in the context of a discussion on Charles Burns' com…
Mid-Break Bonus: The Quiet Earth [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:28
Every off-week, listeners who have chosen to support Weird Studies by joining our Patreon at the Listener's Tier get to enjoy a bonus episode. These episodes are different from the flagship show. Less formal and entirely…
Episode 175: Don't Look Now: Live at Lily Dale [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:58:40
Daphne du Maurier was a prolific English writer of novels, plays, and short stories resonant with what she termed "a sense of unreality." In this episode, JF and Phil discuss her great short story "Don't Look Now," which…
Episode 173: By Heart: On Memory, Poetry, and Form [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:50
In this computerized age, we tend to see memory as a purely cerebral faculty. To memorize is to store information away in the brain in such a way as to make it retrievable at a later time. But the old expression "knowing…
Episode 172: Head Over Heels: On the Hanged Man of the Tarot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:20:27
The Hanged Man is arguably the most enigmatic card in the traditional tarot deck. Divested of any archetypal apparel – he is neither emperor nor fool, but just a man, who happens to be hanging – he gazes back at us with…
Episode 171: The Beauty and the Horror [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:09:28
This week on Weird Studies, Phil and JF explore the intersections of the beautiful and the terrible in art and literature. There is a conventional beauty that calms and placates, and there is a radical beauty which, taki…