Weird Studies Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

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, taking horror’s pale-gloved hand, gives up all pretense to permanence and fixity and joins the danse macabre of our endless becoming. This episode is a preamble to a five-week course of lectures and discussions starting June 20th on Weirdosphere, JF and Phil’s new online learning platform. For more information and to enroll in The Beauty and the Horror, visit www.weirdosphere.org.


REFERENCES


JF Martel, Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice, the audiobook, with a new introduction written and read by Donna Tartt.
Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two
William Blake, “The Tyger”
Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows
Steven Spielberg, Raiders of the Lost Ark
Walter Pater, The Renaissance
David Lynch, Twin Peaks: The Return
Anna Aikin, “On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror
Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness
Charles Baudelaire, “Le Voyage”
Franz Schubert, “Death and the Maiden” Quartet
Franz Schubert, Piano Sonata in C major, D. 840
J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit

Orson Welles made F for Fake in the early seventies, while still bobbing in the wake of a Pauline Kael essay accusing him of being cinema's greatest fraud. Ostensibly a documentary on the famous art forger Elmyr de Hory and his biographer Clifford Irving (a talented faker in his own right), the film blurs the line between fact and fiction in an effort to explore art's weird entanglement with illusion, magic, and ultimately, the search for truth. This is a film unlike any other, and it is arguably Welles's most important contribution to the evolution and theory of film aesthetics.


Join the Weirdosphere online learning community by enrolling in Phil and J.F.'s inaugural course, [THE BEAUTY AND THE HORROR](www.weirdosphere.org), starting June 20th.


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!


RERERENCES


Orson Welles, F for Fake
Gilles Deleuze Cinema 2
Elmyr de Hory, art forger
Clifford Irving, American writer
Howard Hughes, American aerospace engineer
David Thomson, Biographical Dictionary of Film
David Thomson, Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles
Pauline Kael, Raising Kane
“War of the Worlds” radio drama
The Farm Podcast, “Horror Hosts, Films & Other Strange Realities w/ David Metcalfe, Conspirinormal & Recluse”
Orson Welles - Interview with Michael Parkinson (BBC 1974)
Geoffrey Cornelius, Cornelius
Victoria Nelson, Secret Life of Puppets
Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking
Sokal affair, hoax
Werner Herzog, “Minnesota Declaration”

The ongoing crackdown on protests at many American universities prompts a discussion on the politics, ethics, and metaphysics of free expression.


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


Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic
George Orwell, The Prevention of Literature
George Orwell, Inside the Whale
New York Times, “At Indiana University, Protests Only Add to a Full Year of Conflicts
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Indiana Daily Student, “Provost Addresses Controversy”
Official government page for the Proposed Bill to address Online Harms in Canada.
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals
GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy
Daryl Davis, American musician and activist
DavidFoster Wallace, Just Asking

There are artists who express the vision of a place, person, or thing so vividly and originally that it sets the bar for all future imaginings. With his four Mad Max films, this is what George Miller did with the image of the Wasteland. No one has been able to capture the stark, raw energy and chaotic beauty of a post-apocalyptic desert quite like Miller. His portrayal not only defines the aesthetic of a cinematic world but also prompts us to think about the meaning of civilization, technology, humanity, and how they intertwine. In this episode, Phil and JF discuss how Mad Max challenges our perception of civilization, and our conception of the human.


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


George Miller (dir.), Mad Max
George Miller (dir.), Mad Max: The Road Warrior
George Miller (dir.), Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdrome
George Miller (dir.), Mad Max: Fury Road
Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk
Stanley Kubrick (dir.), A Clockwork Orange
Sam Raimi (dir), The Quick and the Dead
Joe Bob Briggs, movie critic
Phil Ford, “The Wanderer”
Felix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, Nomadology
Our Known Friend, Meditations on the Tarot

Ithell Colquhoun (1906-1988) was a British painter, poet, and occultist, long identified as a pioneer of the Surrealist movement in the UK. While her work is increasingly recognized for its mystical themes and innovative use of automatic techniques, deeply influenced by her esoteric studies, it also inspired extensive research on its broader cultural and spiritual contexts. Amy Hale, an anthropologist, folklorist, and author, has dedicated much of her career to exploring Cornwall, the fabled region of southwest England that became Colquhoun’s spiritual home. Hale’s book, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern-Loved Gully, published by Strange Attractor Press, offers a profound biographical study of Colquhoun, examining the historical and spiritual forces that influenced her work. In this episode, she joins JF and Phil to discuss Colquhoun, Cornwall, and the transformative power of research and writing.


REFERENCES


Amy Hale, Ithell Colquhoun: Genius of the Fern-Loved Gully
Agnes Callard, I Teach the Humanities, and I Still Don’t Know What Their Value Is
Steven Feld, Jazz Cosmopolitanism in Accra
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
Lionel Snell, My Years of Magical Thinking
Special Guest: Amy Hale.

In culture and the arts, labeling something you don't like (or don't understand) "pretentious" is the easy way out. It's a conversation killer, implying that any dialogue is pointless, and those who disagree are merely duped by what you've cleverly discerned as a charade. It's akin to cynically revealing that a magic show is all smoke and mirrors—as if creative vision doesn't necessitate a leap of faith. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the nuances of pretentiousness, distinguishing between its fruitful and hollow forms. They argue that the real gamble, and inherent value, of daring to pretend lies in recognizing that imagination is an active contributor to, rather than a detractor from, reality.


Pierre-Yves Martel's EPHEMERA project


It isn't too late to join JF's upcoming course on the films of Stanley Kubrick, which goes until the end of April, 2024.
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


Brian Eno, A Year with Swollen Appendices
Dan Fox, Pretentiousness: Why it Matters
Ramsay Dukes, How to See Fairies
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens
Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition
Weird Studies, Episode 49 on Nietzsche’s idea of “untimely”
Sokal Affair, scholarly hoax
Weird Studies, Episode 75 on ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’
Stanley Kubrick, “Notes on Film”
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Uses and Abuses of History
Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak
Mary Shelley, “Introduction to Frankenstein”
Matt Cardin, A Course in Demonic Creativity
Playboy interview with Stanley Kubrick