Episode 178: Edge of Reality: On John Carpenter's 'In the Mouth of Madness'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 23 October 2024

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Earlier this month, Phil and JF recorded a live episode at Indiana University Cinema in Bloomington following a screening of John Carpenter's film In the Mouth of Madness. Carpenter’s cult classic obliterates the boundary between reality and fiction, madness and revelation—an ideal subject for a Weird Studies conversation. In this episode, recorded before a live audience, the hosts explore the film’s Lovecraftian themes, the porous nature of storytelling, and how art can function as a conduit to unsettling truths. Special thanks to Dr. Alicia Kozma and the IU Cinema team for hosting and recording the event. 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 John Carpenter, In the Mouth of Madness John Carpenter, Prince of Darkness* John Carpenter, The Thing Joshua Clover, BFI Film Classics: The Matrix Philip K. Dick, Time Out of Joint David Cronenberg, Videodrome Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)" Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer Nick Land, English philosopher H. P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu" Jonathan Carroll, The Land of Laughs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:02.0	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:20.0	For more episodes or to support the podcast,
0:23.4	go to weirdstudies.com. Hi, welcome to Weird Studies. This is Phil. This week's episode is a recording from a live show we did to accompany the IU Cinema's 30th anniversary screening of John Carpenter's 1994 Cosmic Horror Film in the mouth of madness.
1:07.6	The IU Cinema is a perfect jewel box of a theater with a world-class program curated by the fabulous Alicia Cosma,
1:15.9	and it was an honor to be invited back there again.
1:19.2	Our audience at the IU Cinema had just seen the movie and needed no refreshers on the plot, of course.
1:25.5	But we can't assume that you know the film at all. In the
1:28.5	Mouth of Madness is not one of Carpenter's better-known films, so it might be helpful to run through
1:34.0	a quick synopsis of it before getting on with the show. The film begins with a man in a
1:39.5	straitjacket being bundled into a cell in a mental institution. That man is John Trent, a cynical insurance fraud investigator,
1:48.3	and when a doctor turns up to interview him, we begin to learn his story.
1:53.0	Some time earlier, Trent's services had been retained by Arcane Publishing,
1:57.6	which was trying to learn the whereabouts of its most successful author,
2:01.1	Sutter Kane.
2:02.5	Kane is the most popular author in the world.
2:05.3	You can forget about Stephen King.
2:07.4	Sutter Kane outsells them all, says Kane's editor, Linda Stiles.
2:12.2	The galloping popularity of Kane's fictions has an edge of hysteria to it, even mass psychosis.
2:19.4	Episodes of violence are breaking out at bookstore events, and some of Kane's less
2:24.2	stable readers seem to have trouble distinguishing fiction and reality. As a matter of fact,
2:30.2	Trent himself had earlier been attacked by a hulking, axe-wielding maniac who asks him,
	...

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