Exotica is a kind of music that was popular in the 1950s, when it was simply known as "mood music." Though somewhat obscure today, the sound of exotica  remains immediately recognizable to contemporary ears. Its use of "tribal" beats, ethereal voices, flutes and gongs evoke a world that is no more at home in the modern West than it is anywhere else on earth. With its shameless stereotyping of non-Western cultures and its aestheticization of the other, exotica rightly deserves the criticism it has drawn over the years. But as we shall see in this episode, if you stop there, you just might miss the thing that makes exotica so difficult to expunge from Western culture, and also what makes it a prime example of how the "trash stratum" sometimes becomes the site of strange visions that transcend culture altogether.

REFERENCES

Phil Ford, “Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica” 

Future Fossils, Episode 157 

Weird Studies, Episode 21: The Trash Stratum 

Weird Studies, Episode 79: Love, Death and the Dream Life 

Jack Smith, “The Perfect Filmic Appositeness Maria Montez” 

Yma Sumac, Peruvian singer 

Les Baxter, "The Oasis of Dakhla"

Steely Dan, "I Heard the News" 

Stravinsky, Rite of Spring 

Les Baxter, “Hong Kong Cable Car” 

Jacques Riviere, review of The Rite of Spring 

Nenao Sakaki, Japanese poet 

Lew Welch, American Beat poet 

JF Martel, “Stay with Mystery: Hiroshima Mon Amour, Melancholia, and the truth of extinction” 

Jeffrey Kripal, Mutants and Mystics 

Captain Beefheart, “Orange Claw Hammer” 

Martin Buber, I and Thou 

Episode 98: Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica

Professor Phil Ford and writer J. F. Martel host a series of conversations on art and philosophy, dwelling on ideas that are hard to think and art that opens up rifts in what we are pleased to call "reality."

Society & Culture

Personal Journals

History

Philosophy

Places & Travel

Arts

Literature

Performing Arts

Design

Food

Fashion & Beauty

Visual Arts

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” 

Episode 170: Art is Another Word for Truth: On Orson Welles's 'F for Fake'

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 

Episode 169: On Free Expression

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 

Episode 168: Visions of the Wasteland: On George Miller's 'Mad Max' Films

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.

Episode 167: The Hand of Ithell, with 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 

Episode 98: Taboo: Time and Belief in Exotica

Download our free app to listen on your phone