Episode 21: The Trash Stratum - Part 2

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2018

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spector Vision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an art and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martell.
0:22.4	For more episodes and to support the podcast, wanted to explore but not all.
0:56.3	So here we are again discussing it.
0:59.7	Hanging out the trash stratum.
1:01.2	Right. Hanging out of the dump.
1:03.5	I was thinking about it.
1:04.6	It occurred to me that the first time this line from Philip K. Dick's work, the symbols of the divine show up in our world initially at the
1:11.6	trash stratum. The first time that came up was in the D&D episode. And I brought it up because I was
1:16.6	trying to defend the claim that tabletop role-playing games represented a kind of like a major
1:22.6	cultural innovation or achievement of late 20th century culture.
1:32.9	And that this was very far from apparent to almost everyone, including D&D players.
1:37.1	I mean, most of my friends, I mean, I don't think any of the friends I play with would agree with that.
1:38.8	But I think it's true.
1:44.1	And so did the people who wrote the introduction to that book that I mentioned, like the Dungeons and Dragons in philosophy.
1:48.9	And then I was thinking about what it is that makes it so unapparent that this might be the case.
1:54.4	And I think it has to do with the ridiculousness of what Dungeons and Dragons represents.
1:59.7	It's like the most generic fantasy cliched kind of thing, right?
2:03.9	It's all like unicorns and dragons and dwarves and knights and that sort of thing. And I have to admit that if I were to watch a Dungeons and
2:10.0	Dragons movie, I would probably be bored. Like I have no tolerance for that sort of generic stuff.
2:15.0	I can't read. I don't read fantasy novels with some exceptions.
2:18.9	I could never read a book about a knight fighting a dragon, you know, unless it were done
	...

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