Weird Studies

Fairy tales are among the most familiar cultural objects, so familiar that we let our kids play with them unsupervised. At the same time, they are also the most mysterious of artifacts, their heimlich giving way to unheimlich as soon as we give them a closer look and ask ourselves what they are really about. Indeed, these imaginal nomads, which seem to evade all cultural and historical capture, existing in various forms in every time and place, can become so strange as to make us wonder if they are cultural at all, and not some unexplained force of nature — the dreaming of the world. In this episode, JF and Phil use "Rapunzel" as a case study to explore the weirdness of fairy tales, illustrating how they demand interpretation without ever allowing themselves to be explained. Sign up for the upcoming course "Writing at the Wellspring" [https://weirdosphere.mn.co/] October 22-December 1 with Dr. Matt Cardin on Weirdosphere.org Support us on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies]. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1] and 2 [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2], on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com] page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia [https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/]. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop [https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies] Find us on Discord [https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp] Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau [https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s]! SHOW NOTES Walter Benjamin, "The Storyteller" in Illuminations (Hannah Arendt, ed.; Harryn Zohn, trans.). Novalis, Philosophical Writings. (Margaret Mahony Stoljar, trans.). Cristina Campo, The Unforgivable and Other Writings (Alex Andriesse, trans.) William Irwin Thompson, Imaginary Landscape [https://www.amazon.com/Imaginary-Landscape-Making-Worlds-Science/dp/0312048084] Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780307739636] Marie-Louise von Franz, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Louise_von_Franz], Swiss Jungian psychologist Sesame Street, “Rapunzel Rescue” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-fK8rYa45Q&ab_channel=SesameStreet] Disney’s Tangled [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0398286/] The Annotated Brothers Grimm [https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Brothers-Grimm-Books/dp/0393058484] Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aarne%E2%80%93Thompson%E2%80%93Uther_Index] Marina Warner, Once Upon a Time [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780198779858] W. A. Mozart, The Magic Flute [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Flute] Dante Alighieri, Il Convito [https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12867] Panspermia hypothesis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panspermia] Gregory Bateson, Mind and Nature [https://www.amazon.com/Mind-Nature-Necessary-Advances-Complexity/dp/1572734345] John Mitchell, Confessions of a Radical Traditionalist [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781620554159] Clint Eastwood (dir.) The Unforgiven [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105695/]

Comics, like cinema, is an eminently modern medium. And as with cinema, looking closely at it can swiftly acquaint us with the profound weirdness of modernity. Do that in the context of a discussion on Charles Burns' comic masterpiece Black Hole, and you're guaranteed a memorable Weird Studies episode. Black Hole was serialized over ten years beginning in 1995, and first released as a single volume by Pantheon Books in 2005. Like all masterpieces, it shines both inside and out: it tells a captivating story, a "weirding" of the teenage romance genre, while also revealing something of the inner workings of comics as such. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the singular wonders of a medium that, thanks to artists like Burns, has rightfully ascended from the trash stratum [https://www.weirdstudies.com/20] to the coveted empyrean of artistic respectability—without losing its edge. BIG NEWS: • If you're planning to be in Bloomington, Indiana on October 9th, 2024, click here [https://cinema.indiana.edu/upcoming-films/screening/2024-fall-wednesday-october-9-700pm] to purchase tickets to IU Cinema's screening of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, featuring a live Weird Studies recording with JF and Phil. • Go to Weirdosphere [http://www.weirdosphere.org] to sign up for Matt Cardin's upcoming course, MC101: Writing at the Wellspring, starting on 22 October 2024. • Visit https://www.shannontaggart.com/events [https://www.shannontaggart.com/events] and follow the links to learn more about Shannon's (online) Fall Symposium at the Last Tuesday Society. Featured speakers include Steven Intermill & Toni Rotonda, Shannon Taggart, JF Martel, Charles and Penelope Emmons, Doug Skinner, Michael W. Homer, Maria Molteni, and Emily Hauver. Support us on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies]. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1] and 2 [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2], on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com] page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia [https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/]. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop [https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies] Find us on Discord [https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp] Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau [https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s]! REFERENCES Charles Burns, Black Hole [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375714726] Clement Greenberg’s concept of “medium specificity” [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_specificity#cite_note-2] Terry Gilliam (dir.), The Fisher King [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101889/] Seth [https://drawnandquarterly.com/author/seth/], comic artist Chris Ware, Building Stories [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780375424335] “Graphic Novel Forms Today” [https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677339] in Critical Inquiry Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780691141053] Vilhelm Hammershoi [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilhelm_Hammersh%C3%B8i], Danish painter Ramsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780904311112] G. Spencer-Brown, Laws of Form [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_Form] Dave Hickey, “Formalism” [https://approachestopainting.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/19135319-hickey-7-formalism-036.pdf] Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Art] Chrysippus [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysippus], Stoic philosopher Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780060976255]

Every off-week, listeners who have chosen to support Weird Studies by joining our Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies] at the Listener's Tier get to enjoy a bonus episode. These episodes are different from the flagship show. Less formal and entirely improvised, they offer Phil and JF a different way of exploring the weird in art, philosophy and culture. To tide our listenership over until the next new episode drops on September 25th, 2024, here is a recent example of a Weird Studies audio extra, recorded as your hosts were finishing up their first Weirdosphere course, "The Beauty and the Horror." The conversation ended up centering on cultural works we experienced in childhood, and that are all the more magical for being only vaguely remembered. To enroll in JF's upcoming Weirdosphere course, "Whirl Without End: Fairy Tales and the Weird," please visit www.weirdosphere.org [http://www.weirdosphere.org].

Daphne du Maurier was a prolific English writer of novels, plays, and short stories resonant with what she termed "a sense of unreality." In this episode, JF and Phil discuss her great short story "Don't Look Now," which Nicholas Roeg famously adapted to the screen in 1973 in a film starring Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie. Recorded live at Shannon Taggart's Lily Dale Symposium on July 25th, 2024, the discussion takes a number of turns, exploring the ghost as an "image of itself," the phenomenon of "deathishness," the experience of derealization, the human capacity to break time, and grief as a rift in time. Visit the Weirdosphere [http://www.weirdosphere.org] and sign up for JF's upcoming course of lectures and discussions, "Whirl Without End: Fairy Tales and the Weird," starting on September 5th, 2024. Support us on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies]. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1] and 2 [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2], on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com] page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia [https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/]. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop [https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies] Find us on Discord [https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp] Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau [https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s]! REFERENCES Daphne du Maurier, "Don't Look Now" [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780765333629] Nicholas Roeg (dir.), Don't Look Now [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0069995/] Weird Studies, Episode 66 on “Diviner’s Time” [https://www.weirdstudies.com/66] Chuck Klosterman, "Tomorrow Rarely Knows” [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9781416544210] Thomas Mann, Death in Venice [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780141181738] Peter Medak (dir.), The Changeling [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080516/] Philip K. Dick, “Schizophrenia and the Book of Changes” [https://bookshop.org/a/18799/9780679747871]

Phil and JF are joined by Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford – practicing magicians, podcasters, and co-authors of the newly released Baptist's Head Compendium: Magick as a Path to Enlightenment, a collection of essays and reports from their famous occult blog, The Baptist's Head. Duncan and Alan are accomplished practitioners with deep insights into the nature of magic(k). The conversation touches on a number of subjects, including the parallels between magic, mysticism, and religion; form and formlessness; the nature of truth; the primacy of devotion; and the quest to converse with one's Holy Guardian Angel. To purchase The Baptist's Head Compendium at a 20% discount, go to http://www.spirit.aeonbooks.co.uk [http://www.spirit.aeonbooks.co.uk] and enter the code given in the introduction to this episode. Support us on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies]. Buy the Weird Studies soundtrack, volumes 1 [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-1] and 2 [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com/album/weird-studies-music-from-the-podcast-vol-2], on Pierre-Yves Martel's Bandcamp [https://pierre-yvesmartel.bandcamp.com] page. Listen to Meredith Michael and Gabriel Lubell's podcast, Cosmophonia [https://cosmophonia.podbean.com/]. Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop [https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies] Find us on Discord [https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp] Get the T-shirt design from Cotton Bureau [https://cottonbureau.com/products/can-o-content#/13435958/tee-men-standard-tee-vintage-black-tri-blend-s]! REFERENCES Occult Experiments in the Home [https://oeith.co.uk/about/], Duncan Baford's blog and podcasts. Barbarous Words, Alan Chapman's Substack. WORP FM, a ten-part podcast series with Alan and Duncan. The Abremelin working [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Abramelin] Illuminates of Thanatos (IOT) [https://iot-na.thanateros.org/] Aleister Crowley, The Book of the Law [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Law] Buddhist Geeks, “The Great Work of Western Magic with Alan Chapman” [https://podbay.fm/p/buddhist-geeks/e/1437514100] Aleister Crowly, John St. John [https://sacred-texts.com/oto/lib816.htm] Special Guests: Alan Chapman and Duncan Barford.