Episode 52: On Beauty

Episode 52: On Beauty

Author: SpectreVision Radio July 31, 2019 Duration: 1:15:32
The idea that beauty might denote an actual quality of the world, something outside the human frame, is one of the great taboos of modern intellectual thought. Beauty, we are almost universally told, is a cultural contrivance rooted in politics and history, an illusion that exists only in human heads, for human reasons. On this view, a world without us would be a world without beauty. But in this episode Phil and JF explore two texts, by James Hillman and Peter Schjeldahl, that dare to challenge the modern orthodoxy. For Hillman and Schjeldahl, to experience the beautiful is precisely the break out of human bondage and touch the Outside. Beauty may even be one of the few truly objective experiences anyone could hope for. Peter Schjeldahl, “Notes on Beauty,“ in Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics James Hillman, “The Practice of Beauty,” in Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics C.G. Jung's retreat, Bollingen Tower Ugly public art in Palo Alto Dave Hickey, Air Guitar: Essays on Art and Democracy Deleuze and Guattari, “Of the Refrain,” from A Thousand Plateaus Roger Scruton, Beauty Weird Studies, Episode 36 -- On Hyperstition Weird Studies, Episode 33 -- The Fine Art of Changing the Subject: On Duchamp's "Fountain" Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking George Santayana, The Sense of Beauty Ingri D'Aulaires, D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths Messiaen, Quartet for the End of Time Christian Wiman, He Held Radical Light God, Book of Job 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 104: We'd Love to Turn You On: 'Sgt. Pepper' and the Beatles [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:23:13
It is said that for several days after the release of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in the spring of 1967, you could have driven from one U.S. coast to the other without ever going out of range of a local radio b…
Episode 103: On the Tower, the Sixteenth Card of the Tarot [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:17:24
Continuing their series on the tarot, Phil and JF discuss the card nobody wants to see in a reading – The Tower. Featuring lightning bolts, plumes of ominous smoke, and figures plummeting from the windows, the Tower’s me…
Episode 102: On Pan, with Gyrus [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:18:47
"What was he doing, the great god Pan, down in the reeds by the river?" With this question, the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning opens her famous poem "A Musical Instrument," which explores nature's troubling em…
Episode 99: Curing the Human Condition: On 'Wild Wild Country' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:31:02
In this never-before-released episode recorded in 2019, Phil and JF travel to rural Oregon through the Netflix docu-series, Wild Wild Country. The series, which details the establishment of a spiritual community founded…
Episode 98: Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:21:08
Exotica is a kind of music that was popular in the 1950s, when it was simply known as "mood music." Though somewhat obscure today, the sound of exotica remains immediately recognizable to contemporary ears. Its use of "t…
Episode 97: Art in the Age of Artifice [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:26:09
The question of art has been of central concern for JF and Phil since Weird Studies began in 2018. What is art? What can it do that other things can't do? How is it connected to religion, psyche, and our current historic…
Episode 96: Beautiful Beast: On Jean Cocteau's 'La Belle et la Bête' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:21:03
Jean Cocteau's visionary rendition of Madame de Beaumont's fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," itself the retelling of a story that may be several millennia old, is the topic of this Weird Studies episode, which proposes…
Episode 95: Demon Seed: On Doris Lessing's 'The Fifth Child' [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:26:18
Doris Lessing's uncategorizable oeuvre reached strange new heights in 1988 with the publication of her short novel The Fifth Child. The story couldn't be simpler. In the England of the 1970s, a couple determined to live…