Episode 25: David Cronenberg's 'Naked Lunch'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 12 September 2018

⏱️ 80 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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 podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Specter Vision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an art and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:21.8	For more episodes and to support the podcast, go to Weird Studies.com. I think it's because Paul always had ideas, whereas John was, uh, things had to, like,
0:56.8	marinate for a while, and then he'd have, like, one great idea, whereas Paul just, it just never
1:03.0	ended.
1:03.3	You know, actually, I think this is a situation where the hedgehog versus fox thing works
1:09.8	pretty well.
1:14.1	Paul McCartney was totally a fox,
1:20.9	constantly having ideas about this, that, and the third, and John was definitely a hedgehog.
1:41.6	Yeah. It was had like one master idea that would be governing a given situation. Whereas with Paul, he was one of those guys who could say sort of like Marshall McLuhan and some journalist was bitching about McLuhan's something about McLuhan's ideas. McClune was like, you don't like my ideas? It's okay. I got others.
1:47.2	And I always get that feeling with,
1:50.7	that's like the, that's the Fox thing.
1:53.3	Is, you don't like those ideas?
1:54.2	I got others.
1:55.5	Yeah, totally.
1:58.3	Whereas, whereas if you don't like John's idea,
2:01.5	then that, I mean, he doesn't have others.
2:03.2	It's like, it's all or nothing.
2:06.2	That's, it's, that's his idea he's working with.
2:06.5	Yeah. You can either accept it or reject it, but he's not going to change it.
2:10.4	Yeah, which is another, another reason that if we were to assess or evaluate our relationship
2:16.7	in Beatles terms, where I would fall into the John
	...

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