In the parking lot of the Twin Pines Mall, Doc Brown plans to use his Delorean time machine to head 25 years into the future and see, as he puts it, “the progress of mankind.” But like the license plate on the Delorean, Doc is out of time. Through his absent-mindedness—and angering some terrorists—Doc has failed to provide a future into which he or his friend Marty McFly can progress. Meanwhile, Marty’s own options and possibilities have been foreclosed by the mistakes of his parents, whose inaction and passivity have failed to secure happy lives for themselves or their children. Out of time and without a viable future, Marty’s only way forward is back. Wes & Erin discuss the 1985 film, “Back to the Future,” and how securing the provisions for one’s own future depends on two modes of confrontation: one in the present and one with the past.

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0:11 Erin: In the parking lot of the Twin Pines Mall. Doc Brown plans to use his DeLorean time machine to head 25 years into the future and see, as he puts it, the progress of mankind. But like the license plate on the DeLorean, Doc is out of time. Through his absentmindedness and angering some terrorists, Doc has failed to provide a future into which he or his friend Marty McFly can progress. Meanwhile, Marty's own options and possibilities have been foreclosed by the mistakes of his parents, whose inaction and passivity have failed to secure happy lives for themselves or their children. Out of time. And without a viable future, Marty's only way forward is back. On today's episode, we're discussing the 1985 film Back to the Future and how securing the provisions for one's own future depends on two modes of confrontation, one in the present and one with the past. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. This is Wes Allwin, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, I've been thinking a lot about the story of Marty's parents meeting, and it always struck me that it was similar to how my parents met. My mom's car actually broke down in front of my dad's house, and that was how they met. And so I was thinking a lot about just about cars in this movie, the significance of cars in the film and how that might point us in a lot of different directions in terms of where we might start our discussion. It seems to me that cars are a really significant part of American culture and this idea of American freedom in particular. They're really tied into sort of California's culture, and they seem to be. Besides being a method of time travel, they seem to be a really important mechanism in terms of how the plot is operating. So I thought we might start there.

1:58 Wes: Yeah, it's funny. I think the originally they were going to use for the time machine, they were going to use something like a refrigerator that you crawled into or some other stationary object. But they were worried that that would influence kids to crawl into refrigerators and attempt to go backward in time.

2:18 Erin: So isn't a refrigerator how. What's a refrigerator in terms of surviving nuclear fallout? What's that from?

2:25 Wes: Yes, I know what you're talking about. I can't remember the movie, but the

2:29 Erin: Brendan Fraser thing is just in a bomb shelter. But I'm trying to think of what movie someone survives in a fridge. The listeners will tell us, or we'll remember it as soon as we stop Recording.

2:40 Wes: I'm glad that they ended up going with the car. Cause of course, as you're hinting at symbolically it's a far richer and culturally it's far richer and it's more dramatic and there's lots of good reasons. But you know, the automobile, right, it fits in well with someone who's a teenager. And I think, right, he aspires to get that, I don't know what you call it, that truck, right. In the beginning of the movie, he's aspire. Is it a 4×4 or some sort of Toyota truck or outdoorsy type vehicle that he actually does end up getting in the end. And the car problem is really like the first plot point in the movie's external line of action. So, you know, you could have made it, in a way, the basis for a story. What it represents for teenagers, right, is newfound freedom. Then there's the sex aspect, being able to pick up women. What does the phrase pick up even come from? And go to the point or whatever they park, whatever they call it in the movie. And then the car that Marty is gonna go, he wants to go to the cabin by the lake with his girlfriend, right? And that car that he's hoping to do that with is wrecked in the beginning because his father is so spineless that he lets Biff, major antagonist of the movie, borrow the car. The bully, you know, the car is. In this case, the wrecked car as a stand in is closely connected to the spinelessness of the father, which at an emotional level is the big problem of the movie, right.

4:08 Erin: It's also something connected to Lorraine and to Lorraine's father as well, right? Because. Well, one of the first things she says in the film is about her dislike of Marty's girlfriend and the fact that when she was young she didn't call boys and she certainly wouldn't sit in a parked car with a boy.

4:26 Wes: Such a hypocrite. And I know, as parents always are sexually. But anyway, with regard to the sexual mores of the youth. But yeah, sorry, go ahead.

4:35 Erin: Right. No, but you know, the significance of sitting in a parked car will take on a really, really sinister association when Biff tries to, you know, basically to rape her in the parked car. You know, so there's the freedom that the car provides, which has been co opted by Biff. It's sort of stalled by Biff twice, right? So we have the totaled car at the beginning and then we have, you know, Biff assaulting Lorraine in the parked car and sort of like impeding her progress towards George and her, the future that she seems to be destined for. But I'm also wondering about Lorraine's father hitting supposed to be George and then hits Marty and what that might mean and what the passivity of that first meeting suggests. Like, obviously, there had to be some sort of plot mechanism in which George is introduced to Lorraine, in which Lorraine can feel sort of sorry for him, which will occasion their getting married in the first place. And so I think the fact that George is, like, run over by somebody else's car is a perfect image for that. And I'm also wondering if it's, to a certain extent, also an expression of some of the sort of incestuous themes that'll come up in the film. This is just occurring to me now, just the fact that the father is the one that has to initiate the relationship between his daughter and George and that the father seems to have the actual agency in that relationship. And both George and, to a lesser extent, Lorraine are just sort of agents or pawns in this sort of larger passive bringing together that will be flipped on its head or restored or righted, rather, when Marty intervenes and forces George to pursue her more actively.

6:19 Wes: Hmm. I'm just thinking about it. This is something I hadn't thought about. I mean, the incest part I've thought about a lot, and I feel like I'm going to be plagiarizing my own essay that I wrote many, many years ago on this as I talk about it. But, yeah, this part about the father, Lorraine's father, hitting Marty with the car and that being the thing that leads to their union, it's really interesting to me because the father's function is usually to be an impediment to that. Right. To be part of the daughter's selective mating strategy and to help her weed out the losers. But instead he runs over the loser and does the one thing that's gonna make her like a guy like that. Right.

6:59 Erin: Well, I think there's something to that as well. Right. You know, the fact that the father accidentally hits George. I mean, he does hit him with the car. And so there is something aggressive. Right. Like trying to take out the male suitor, which occasions, you know, the bringing together of the couple. Right. The fact that, you know, Lorraine is maybe going against the father's unconscious wishes.

7:21 Wes: It's too disorganized to be effective. Yeah. So it's more aggressive in a way, but also not focused and organized enough to be a real deterrent. Right. So ironically, it does the opposite of the thing that it should Be, you know, if he had killed him, he would have prevented a catastrophe, that marriage. The father's intervening role is importantly connected to incest in psychoanalysis. The father is the one who prevents incest from happening through threat of retaliation, through threat of castration. So what does that mean in more practical, less dramatic terms? It means that as part of the maturational process, there's some sort of detachment, separation and individuation that happens. It takes us away from our connection to the maternal and the mother or whatever primary caretaker is serving that role and forces us in a different direction. And that direction is towards the development of certain psychical capacities like a conscience, like aspirations, right? Our libidinal ties, our attachments, our energies get redirected towards those other objects, right? And not just towards the person who's going to feed us and take care of us. So that's part of maturation and theoretically part of the way that works is to realize that the mother is, is not just a feeder and a caretaker, a baby raising machine, but she has her own interests and desires. And that's partly what the father of the phallus represents. Her attentions are not just towards the child, they are elsewhere. And ultimately, as we get older, we have to realize, you know, our mother is actually just a person and imperfect and does lots of messed up things. And part of it is because she has her own interests and desires out side of us. So the father is part of that and the father. So the presence of the father intercedes and comes in between what might otherwise just be an incestuous relationship in the broad sense of someone never being able to separate from the mother, from wanting to have her entirely for himself or herself, and to have that forever, to not grow up. So when you have a spineless father like George, there are incestuous implications because the father can't play that role, he can't come in between. And again, father in a very abstract sense, like a paternal principal culture is also father teachers. Your mother, you know, can play the role of a paternal principal and does in certain ways. But it's just that interceding paternal principle that would lead you to the process of identification, to the building of a superego, conscience and ego, ideal aspirations to turns your libido in different directions. And if you don't have something that's strong enough, right, to attract you like a lightning rod that says, okay, I'm going to. My goal is no longer just to be taken care of, but now I want to do, I want to become a great Guitarist, like with Marty, right. If there's not something that can draw you in that direction, like a stronger father or something that intercedes strongly, then you get arrested development. You could get a maturational problem. And then the more complicated part of that is. And I'm sorry, I'm going on that length, but the more complicated part of that is aspirations and ambition can get wrapped up in. They seem in some way to be an escape from incest and an escape from the maternal, but they can get wrapped up in it symbolically in a way that interferes with them. So they can become grandiose. In other words, they can become symbolic of being with the mother, of being godlike. Right. You know, so in very grandiose people with grandiose psychological pathologies, people might think they're Jesus or God or this or that. That's ambition in a way, taken to the extreme. And, you know, we all have, I think, a bit of it at times. And what it does is it activates an incest taboo again, in the broad sense. And so it inhibits us. So the more grandiose we are and the more grandiose our ambitions and the more tied that is to the concept of love, the more inhibited we get about actually accomplishing them. And that's the position of Marty in the beginning of the movie, right? He's got a. An inhibition about guitar, about succeeding with that particular ambition. And then he's got some external obstacles to being with his girlfriend, his mother. Right.

11:39 Erin: So anyway, sorry, just so I'm clear, how does that inhibition activate the taboo? Like, how does that grandiosity return you to the mother?

11:47 Wes: Because it is reminiscent of. Of a perfect condition where one is no longer dependent. So the ideal state, right, is to be one's own parents or to be parentless, to be completely self sufficient. And the idea is that it kind of feels that way. Speculative. This is very speculative. But in the beginning there's such a symbiotic relationship with the mother. I mean, in the beginning you're in the womb and then you're in this very close, know, being taken care of type of relationship, which is, if it goes well enough, is very ideal in a sense. So the grandiose ambitions can give you the feeling of. And this is sort of what it means to be in a manic state as well. It can give you the feeling of reuniting or take you back to the feeling of being in that perfect Garden of Eden, basically. So being godlike. So there's the hubris element, transcending the disappointment, you know, the ordinariness of life and the disappointingness of our love objects. And so the, you know, the one's ambition becomes the ultimate love object. And if you can accomplish it, it can be perfect in a way that other people can't be perfect. The very thing that's supposed to take us away, you know, aspirations and a conscience. The conscience. We have a moral code and we want to be good. Where there's energy and gratification out of that, even if it's self denying, there's an element of gratification, it's compensatory. So we get told as children, you can't do this, you can't do that. And that's frustrating. But then the payoff is gratification in the idea that we're being good. But in either case, in the case of conscience or in aspirations, the very thing that's supposed to lead us away from the childhood situation can in a very subversive way, actually symbolically keep us attached to it. So that's the dilemma.

13:42 Erin: So, I mean, that's all super interesting. I was thinking a lot about the role of Lorraine's parents in this. Maybe according to the definition that you're providing here, you know, the fact that Marty only has to go back one generation indicates something positive about Lorraine's parents, even though they don't seem to be immediately, you know, particularly enlightened or even in spite of the intervention of the father, having several different potential meanings. I'm thinking about the fact that like Marty's problems seem to originate just with his parents. And so there's an Edenic quality, I think, to California and to the fact that to go back 30 years in terms of the town that he lives in is really to go back to the beginning, to go back to an origin. This could only kind of happen in America or maybe in California, you know, this time period, you know, the problem seems to spring up with his parents and not with some sort of earlier original sin that's been carried forward through generations prior. So I think in later there might be. In the what in the third one he goes back to like the Wild west or something that's not talking about that. So there's a sense of, yeah, ruin it with the terrible.

15:00 Wes: I think they're terrible. Maybe I don't remember them well.

15:03 Erin: I was really frightened of the second one. I can't even remember why now. I just know that I have a dread around that from childhood. Like the sense that you can go back to the beginning and that can only be 30 years ago. The one line in the film that stuck out to me for being maybe somewhat false. So much of the script is just really, really brilliant and complex. But I think it's when Biff calls George an Irish fly, which is like a funny. It's a funny joke, obviously, but it struck me as hitting slightly the wrong note because they're all so. Like. They're not Irish, you know, they're all like these California. Like, they have no origin. They've sprung up out of nothing, it seems. And Marty can go right back to where the problem is. So rather than having to go back thousands of years to some sort of problem, you know, some sort of generational finding, the origin of the generational trauma that's persisted in, you know, throughout his family for hundreds of years, as we might expect, he can just go back to his parents and fix the problem.

16:00 Wes: This is very interesting on so many different levels. It has me wanting to say a million things at once. But, I mean, part of what you're pointing to is the implausibility, right, of all of this. First of all, the implausibility that Lorraine would really get with a guy like George, I think, be very unlikely, even with the car accident. And I think Crispin Glover, you know, he really overdid it. And they were trying to get him to not overdo it because he's so unattractive. He looks practically, you know, just socially irredeemable. Just really messed up. But I. Although I think it's great. I mean, it's part of what makes the movie great, I think. But. But even. Even though it makes it less plausible. And then the fantasy here is of, you know, what if we could go back and repair our parents in a way that would solve some of our psychological problems, right? On one level, it's just, he's not going to exist. He went back there by accident and he's not going to continue to exist unless he gets his parents together. But you can see the effect in the end is that he makes his father an assertive guy and not a loser. And that's the wish, right? That's really what's motivating. If you saw this as a kind of dreamlike sequence in the second act. And it is. In a way, it reminds me of the wizard of Oz, in a way. Even though it's time traveling and the characters are the same, they're different in a way, they're reminiscent of each other in the way that the characters in the different acts of wizard of Oz are. Except the Makeups in the first act and back to the future. Right. So going back, just one generation to fix your parents, to make them better adjusted. So you could be well adjusted. Better adjusted because. Right. Marty's problem has something to do with music. I mean, there are only hints of this. I mean, he seems pretty. Right. He seems pretty well adjusted, which is another implausible thing. Although you could say. Well, he got that from his mom, essentially. And because she seems fine. Right.

17:49 Erin: Herself more indication that her parents were actually doing an okay job with her.

17:55 Wes: Yeah, by just being careless, schlubby, average parents. You know, you have your hang ups, but it's not. You know, you're not a George McFly.

18:04 Erin: Right.

18:04 Wes: So I was thinking about this too. It's 1985, and all you have to do is go back 30 years to get to 1955, which seems like such a. Like today, you go back 30 years and what has changed? And I've lived it, so it seems like very little has changed. You know, technology has changed, but socially it certainly doesn't feel as radically different. And it may be just the fact that I've lived it, but.

18:34 Erin: Well, now I'm here. So that's the big. That's the big change.

18:38 Wes: So that I thought about that as well. Wow. It's really amazing that in 1985. 1955 just seemed like a different world. It just seemed like an entirely different world. And you could play up these ironies or these distinctions between the cultures. Right. Him on a skateboard being cool and wearing the jacket that looks like a life preserver. And the concept of coolness in 1955 being so different with slicked back hair and this and that. You know, all that stuff. You could make a movie today that went back 30 years and had any of those contrasts, really.

19:13 Erin: That's something that I really noticed during this viewing. That opening sequence, which I really love, of all of the technology inside the garage. But it's all. It's all been just left there to operate on its own by Doc, who's out, you know, doing some whatever, getting his plutonium or whatever. Whatever he's doing that morning when Marty comes in, right. I started to see those images, you know, of the coffee boiling, but there's no. There's no carafe to catch it. The TV turns on and there's all these stories about the Libyan terror group, which comes into play, right. The newspaper showing that Doc's home has been. He's obviously sold it. And it's now been sold for commercial real estate. The dog Food just, you know, dumping it into Einstein's bowl. But you know, the bowl is overflowing cause he hasn't been there to eat it. And the burned toast and the automated toaster launching again and again. It's a microcosm of like the 1985 world outside. Right. So technology leading to a decadence on the one hand with the dog food bowl, like too much of a good thing, sort of the food bowl overflowing, but also to waste and you know, to a certain extent to ruin and decline. So it's like the whole future, the whole 1985 future seems to be out of time. And the way that I was using that phrase as like a cipher to interpret this idea of like the lack of futurity, the lack of a way forward that that message about 1985, at least, you know, insofar as the film sees it. And then the, you know, the renewal that happens with the spaces when you see the Same Town back 30 years earlier where the town square is not a parking lot. And you know, the things that were created to be something, you know, like the diner is still a diner. It's not been turned into some kind of aerobics class, some kind of gym. Right. So I didn't pay a ton of attention to in those ending sequences to whether or not Marty having fixed, fixed to the past has helped to avoid some of that decline that seems to be happening in 1985. But I think that what I'm trying to say is that there's a tremendous amount, I think, of difference that happens in those 30 years. That happens on a lot of different vectors. I think that the movie is pretty. Even though Biff is in both time periods and he's the real force for evil in the film. I think the movie is making an argument that there's a lot of decline that's happened in 30 years as well as a lot of technological progress. I don't know if that's fair or pie eyed or about the past or what.

21:41 Wes: Yeah, no, I didn't think about that because the 80s to me is such a time of innocence and wonder.

21:47 Erin: Sure.

21:47 Wes: Even though I wasn't a happy kid. But the 80s, man, the music and the culturally, I don't know how to explain it. So it's really just a matter of, you know, nostalgia for me probably. So when I look at the 80s, I see something more innocent in a way than 1955. It's interesting. A lot of things that I, you know, that we or I, or we even might find quaint about the 80s you could point to as a softening or making superficial of the culture. Maybe there's a level of superficiality with this movie in particular. Right. They had trouble, enormous trouble, getting it made, in part because the comedies of the time were generally more racy. There had to be a topless scene that was just de rigueur for those movies. And then Disney, on the other hand, wouldn't take it because of the incest.

22:38 Erin: Right.

22:39 Wes: So the movie is racy in a much different, less comfortable way, let's say. It doesn't flatter people's easy conceptions of sexuality at the time, which, as a kid, actually, I did find kind of disturbing because I came from Ireland, which had a much different attitude towards sex. And so when I saw films like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which I think actually is a brilliant movie, but at the time I was shocked by it. Right. That's one of the movies I pitched to you for this episode. So, yeah. No, you. You have me thinking about something else again that I hadn't really thought about, which is the social, cultural element of the film. It's not like they make a huge amount out of that, except they're trying to milk it for comedy. But I think there's something to that, you know, with that amazing beginning scene, in particular with all of Doc's inventions that I guess they work, but they're not very practical. Right. And you get the sense that no other invention that he's ever tried has really worked, except for the time machine. And he's the typical crazy scientist. He's disheveled and not taking care of his living space and not taking care of himself and somewhat crazy. Which has to make you wonder about why he and Marty are friends. Right. What's the story behind that? How has that helped Marty not become like his father? Maybe he's sought out a different father figure, but a very crazy, disorganized one. I think maybe what you've made me think of now is just some of the frivolousness of those inventions as a commentary on the frivolousness of technological advance in general. Right. It seems very practically oriented and very oriented towards progress, but it might just be, in some ways be masturbatory. Right. So that brings us back to the incest theme, you know, or a fantasy or playful or grandiose. Right. The time machine itself is, like, about as grandiose an invention, science fiction invention as you can get.

24:37 Erin: Right. The improbability of the Doc, Marty friendship is a great John Mulaney joke. People can look that up, but.

24:44 Wes: Oh, really?

24:45 Erin: What does he say? What does he say? He talks about how, like, weird that is that, you know, his best friend is a disgraced scientist who's decades older than him.

24:54 Wes: Have you ever seen Rick and Morty?

24:55 Erin: Well, I've seen parts of it.

24:56 Wes: The animated show. Yeah. But the same guy who did Community. Anyway, I think he's. He has to be ripping off, you know, and riffing.

25:02 Erin: Oh, right.

25:03 Wes: To the future with the. No, it's the grandson, actually. It's a grandson and a. The grandfather and it's much more racy. But, yeah, it's a weird relationship and it makes you want to say, wait, what's up with this? And the film never addresses it, which it shouldn't, but it should just make you think, huh, what's going on?

25:20 Erin: But, yeah, well, I like the fact that Marty is. What does it show about him? And, you know, this is just occurring to me now, but it's showing that he already has a flexibility in relationship to time. He's good at navigating these sort of cross generational spaces. Not as good as he will be once he has to go back in time and parent his father. Right. But it shows that he has some purchase on other generations already by being able to have this friendship and that he has this really great way of relating to people which seems to spring out of nowhere to a certain extent. But one of the things I was trying to get at in my intro is that Doc also. I like what you say about these inventions and about him being kind of a screwed up character in and of itself. He also has a fraught relationship to time, as anyone who is, you know, the absentminded professor character, Right. Has this fraught relationship with time. And I think, you know, to a certain extent, Marty's going back in time and fixing his parents, you know, also has that subplot of saving Doc's life. And I think in the end, when Doc is told what's going to happen, and then Doc makes the provision, right, to wear the bulletproof vest, that also shows a form of. Of growth and maturation for Doc, that he's able to provide for himself. I think Doc's problem repeatedly, is that he does not provide for the future. He has to get Marty to bring the video camera to the mall because he's forgotten it, which I think is pretty significant. And then he rips off these Libyan terrorists, like, that's not gonna. That's not gonna come back to bite him. So he's not providing for the future. And yet he wants to go into the future. Right. The whole time machine plot begins with this idea that he's not going into the past, he's going into the future, which I think is really significant.

27:05 Wes: 25 years, which is ridiculous. Yeah, he had the idea 30 years ago, and then he spent 30 years so that he could jump another 25 years.

27:17 Erin: Could have at least been wanting to go 30 years into the future. Well, I think he says something about wanting to see a time that he would not ordinarily see. Yeah, there's something about the fact that he doesn't expect to live 25 more years. Yeah, it's hard to tell what age the movie wants us to think he is at any given moment, apparently.

27:37 Wes: Yeah, he's old enough that he wouldn't expect to live that long, but still, why not go 100 or a thousand, you know?

27:43 Erin: Well, I think there's something significant, too, about the fact that, you know, it's funny when he sees the footage of himself on Marty's video camera and says. Remarks, you know, that he's such an old man when really there's no. He's also, I think, as you're suggesting, like a sort of replacement or surrogate father and has a. What, for the most part, is a really positive relationship with Marty. There's also this suggestion that he is also out of time. Like he's just born looking like that, apparently, and has no. Yeah, he doesn't really age. But I'm thinking about, just to return just for a second to this California thing and this idea that one's clock starts, you know, 30 years before and that you can go back in time. Someone, when they heard that I was recording on Back to the Future, said, oh, you should do a paired episode with Oedipus Rex. I said, I think we've already recorded on that. But I couldn't remember. We did. But anyway, I was reading Emerson. I was reading something else, but someone said that to me that day and later that evening, a line from another Emerson's. All of Emerson's essays sort of allied. I think that's an Emersonian phenomenon. So I was reading either Self Reliance or something else, and all of a sudden I had this memory of a line which I looked up, and it's from Emerson's History. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. In the section about how the whole of history is just in one man. You know, how man contains everything that has happened throughout history. The Sphinx must solve her own riddle. And I was like, oh, this is so. This is so Great to bring up in this episode. Right. Because it has the Oedipus Rex connection and it has this idea that, like, you know, Marty has to go back and solve his own history, right? He has to solve his own parents. He has to solve the riddle that he's been given himself.

29:32 Wes: So what is it in Emerson? What does it mean exactly?

29:35 Erin: It's this idea that you have to, like, no one can solve your problems for you. You have to solve them yourself. Right. And that you have the ability to do that, that you have the ability to reckon with your own path. You know, it's typical optimistic Emerson. You know, it strikes me that this film is very much in an Emersonian vein. No other country could produce a film like Back to the Future. It has to be this American culture that invents itself, that thinks that you can just go back to when California was farmland and that'll. Which was only five seconds ago in the grand history of time, and solve the problem yourself with a time machine one generation back. Because that's where the origin is. Right. I mean, I wonder what European audiences made of this. When it came out, they probably laughed at it. Right. The idea that your problems only started, as I said, five seconds ago, in the grand scheme of things is a really American idea. Not to mention the fact that then you can also just solve those problems and everything will be great and you'll get what, in the end, the ultimate symbol of American success, which is a nice car, you know, that'll take you all over the place. So anyway, I was thinking about this film as being like an expression of a lot of those Emersonian ideals and this film as being like a kind of joining that really American philosophical tradition, which I love Emerson, don't get me wrong, he's. I love the Transcendentalists.

30:56 Wes: Yeah. This is really fascinating. I think you're speaking to the American idea of a pioneering spirit and self determination. And self determination is, of course, I think it's a theme in Oedipus, certainly, and here and even Chinatown. I was thinking of all three of these together. So self determination in the sense of. Right. Thinking back to our Oedipus episode, he solves the problem of the Sphinx just by using his reasoning power. He can do it a priori without collecting any empirical data. Right. It's just a. It's a language problem and the solution of the problem is just internal to the puzzle. He turns out not to be good at collecting empirical data, that is being an investigator. Right. When he actually. The city is sick and he has to figure that out. And likewise, you know, Jake has an investigation problem as well. So Sophocles makes a lot of the fact that reason and rationality, that there is an incestuous element to that because it is kicking off tradition and the need for connection to the outside world and to, like I said, empirical data to anything that might condition it right, to make it to anything that might not make it self determined. This is another thing Oedipus plays on a lot himself is the fact that he's kind of a self made man and what is he doing when he flees his, what he originally thought was his homeland to get away from it so he can avoid incest. He's trying to cast off all of these determinative influences, parental, cultural, whatever, and to transcend fate, to change fate, which is of course what Marty is doing to some extent when he goes back in time and tries to change the character of his father. So presumably he can change his own character and life as well. These are attempts at transcending fate, attempts at being self determining, and they go wrong. And the result in Sophocles, right, is barrenness. Hyperrationality is barren. It can't reproduce, it can't produce. You need something richer, something that involves the world more closely and feelings and facts about the world. And so the other thing that happens in Oedipus Rex is Sophocles makes a lot of the idea that to sleep with one's mother is to sow in the field from once one came. Right. In a way, it's like giving birth to oneself. And that's the problem. It's an attempt to evade dependency and, you know, which ultimately means evading any dependent relationship or any dependent relationship with a love object. And it's unproductive, right? It leads to blight in the fields. And we can think of this psychologically as well. The effect of it is to deprive us of a full featured psyche, let's say. You know, the other thing I wanted to mention is that Cadmus, the, you know, part of the reason why Oedipus is Thebes is cursed and then ultimately Oedipus is cursed, is because Cadmus, who's sort of like a Promethean figure because he brings the Alphabet to the Greeks from Phoenicians, right? So this association with rationality is it's also generally an association with history and culture, right? The way that we have of time travel, the way we normally time travel, is to have written history or to have the reasoning capacity to think about the future and deliberate about what we're going to do. The advent of that can seem like a crime. It's typically cast in terms of hubris and supplanting the gods. The gods get angry and then they knock you down. But, but the subtext of that is, sorry, oops is becoming, you know, becoming the go, becoming one's own parents and no longer paying proper homage to tradition, to the previous generation, to, you know, speaking of blight or whatever's happening in the 80s, you know, being unmoored from previous generations in this very terrifying and potentially destructive way. As good as technology is, as good as an Alphabet is as good as fire is all that stuff. Right. You know, the other way of time travel that we have, if we want to change ourselves, we do. I mean, history is like that too. We're trying to learn from history, but therapy, right? And memory in general. Memory is what is our time travel.

35:22 Erin: Right. I was thinking about the sort of double strand that goes on in the sort of literalization of this therapeutic experience or of the memory experience that Marty enacts. Right? Because I was thinking about this in terms of the word confrontation and the fact that Marty is being confronted with history and with the facts of his family's problems in front of him. And he's also trying to, he's trying to bring about several confrontations between his father and the things that his father must kind of face, right? So he's both like doing his own, taking his own therapeutic journey and taking his father sort of kicking and screaming through a kind of therapeutic journey that happens both in the past, but also in that present moment. Right. So there's like a collapsing that happens, which seems to me to be like very similar to what happens in the therapeutic experience or like in any experience, Right. Because we don't have the ability to time travel, right? But essentially like what we're doing is reckoning in the present with past memories. So I think like, there's something about the therapeutic experience that's being literalized here through the time travel trope. I don't know if that makes sense.

36:41 Wes: You know, the question is, how do we change ourselves? How do we change our character given our. The hang ups that come from. Right. It's kind of a cliche psychoanalytically or psychotherapeutically to say, okay, our parents messed us up, but the deeper, maybe the deeper way to put it is these are formative forces, right? We are creatures, we have been created, we have been plucked out of nothingness and just inserted into the temporal Right into the world and the temporal frame or stream and which is in and of itself a traumatic experience. Even if you didn't have messed up parents, that would be a source of, and is a source of hang ups and problems and pathology and all that. So, but, so it would be, what a wonderful fantasy, you know, if only we could have better parents but be better formed ourselves. Right. So you're going to go back the artisans, the ones who've made you, you're going to go back and give them instructions on how to do a better job maybe, or you're just going to make them better in some way at their craft by making them better people because the craft just is so closely connected to their own well, adjustedness, their own character and all that. And we do have that pattern in general. We try to repair our objects, so to speak, our love objects. We, we do all sorts of things. I even did it with my mom. I was constantly trying to like get her to take better care of herself, for instance. Right. Even though it's too late. It's too late to make her a better person in a way that makes me a better person and.

38:13 Erin: Right.

38:14 Wes: And then, you know, but, but we do it with love objects as well. We try to, we try to repair ourselves, to make ourselves worthy of the love object. And then we try to repair them by various forms of influencing them. So the therapeutic process, the way it's supposed to work, if you don't have a time travel machine, you can't actually go through all that. You know, the therapist can be something like a surrogate parent. And then you repeat some of what didn't happen or what happened in not the best way in your early childhood situation so that you can take in different formative influences. Even though it seems like it's too late, you're already formed. You try to put yourself in a position where the clay kind of softens up again and the relationship with the therapist can change you at a deep level. Right. Change your character. Right. So if it were George McFly, could he go to a therapist and become more assertive after living a life with that particular character? Probably not, but given enough time. Yeah.

39:18 Erin: I like what you're saying about the film as an expression of this fantasy. And I think it's also that you are. Everyone is Marty here. Everyone is the. What is the thing that kids are saying now that they have main character syndrome or a main character complex or whatever. Right. That like you are the.

39:35 Wes: I'm too old to have even heard that.

39:38 Erin: You know, you're the one. You're the exception. You're the well adjusted exception that's going to fix the rest of the family, which Marty literally is. Right. Once everyone catches up with you, they're going to give you the freedom that you want to sleep with your girlfriend. But what you're also making me think of is something that maybe, I don't know, it's occurring to me now, but maybe it's more obvious than I think. What do we make of George's interest in the future? Right. Seeing as his sense of futurity is so thwarted and that he can't really look forward to a positive future. What do we make of the fact that he is like Doc, Right. Doc wants to go into the future and so does George with his science fiction. With his science fiction. Right. And you would think that based on George's character that he would want to repeat, to retreat rather into a past. You know, he might be a history nerd or something. Right. That he would want to go into a past that actually like didn't contain him.

40:33 Wes: Right.

40:33 Erin: That's like the ultimate form of non confrontation is to not exist at all. Instead, he's sort of imagining a future in which what? It's not really a future in which he's.

40:43 Wes: You're asking a very deep question here, which is why nerds get into science fiction as opposed to going into the past.

40:50 Erin: Well, it must be a fantasy about being powerful. But the way in which that's enacted in the film is. Again, I'm sorry, I'm just like, I haven't thought through any of this. It's just happening to me right now or just occurring to me right now. But you know, the way it's enacted in the film is that those powerful forces in the form of Marty's like, you know, Darth Vader intervention, right. Is that they act on him. Marty finds a way, or he finds like a loophole to get his father to be more assertive by forcing him into an even deeper passivity. Right. By going and saying like, you have to do this because I'm this guy, you know, the sci fi guy that.

41:30 Wes: Yeah, he has to become a puppet master.

41:32 Erin: Sure. That's better than. That's better than how I was phrasing it. I don't know, I think, you know,

41:38 Wes: he has to make his father like

41:40 Erin: existentially powerless in that moment where he's subject to the whims of, you know, of another species. Right,

41:49 Wes: right. Because it is a retreat into fantasy and it's a retreat into a kind of power that lies in the future. And I guess it has something to do with the hope that when technology dominates the world, it's less about whether the bully has bigger biceps anymore. And that, you know, when this plays out, the high school nerd is the one making the big money at Google.

42:14 Erin: Right.

42:15 Wes: But then the other thing you're saying about Marty himself and the passivity of his father is also very interesting. How crazy is his plan? It's crazy that there's a film so focused on incest that's a very popular comedy, I think, where incest plays such a strong thematic role.

42:34 Erin: Well, it's unwitting, so it's. I mean, it's innocent.

42:37 Wes: I mean, the mother is literally trying to have sex with the son for a large chunk of the movie. And then he sets up this crazy plan to get them back together. What's the plan? He's gonna be messing around with his mother in the car, and then his father can intervene to separate them. Which, by the way, is a perfect representation of the psychoanalytic theory. Right. The Oedipal moment. The father intervenes and saves so that the father gets saved on the surface level, but really it's about saving the son from incest. But still, it's a crazy plan. Why would you do that? Why would you put yourself in a position? And George himself asked Marty, are you going to touch her on her. Oh, no, no. It'll just be. But he doesn't ever give a good explanation. How is he going to make that work? I find that so fascinating, especially because

43:32 Erin: he's been so disturbed by. I mean, he's had experience being at the receiving end of his mother's.

43:38 Wes: Yes. It's like.

43:40 Erin: And he's so, you know, obviously disgusted by it, that to put himself in that position all over again seems like exactly the opposite of what he would want to be doing at that point in the film.

43:51 Wes: It's brilliant because it could, because it. I mean, it moves the plot in the way that it needs to go, but it also reflects some of the unconscious dynamics. And then, of course, it gives us a good setup for George's inadvertent confrontation with Biff, where. So he's put in a situation where he can man up in the end, I guess, get physical, even though it's completely implausible, but still it works within the fantasy of the film. I think.

44:16 Erin: Before we move to that, and I think we should. I just want to say something about. It's a sidestep, but something about this idea of sci fi and the Honeymooners episode that features twice in the film. I'm a really big fan of Honeymooners. I know all the. There aren't that many episodes to know. Right. The classic 39.

44:35 Wes: I think I've seen them all. Yeah. And then they're great. I love Jack Eagleson.

44:40 Erin: He's the best. He's a great one. I was thinking about that episode and I actually went back and rewatched it just to totally refresh my memory. But it's the, you know, the man from space is Jackie Gleason's or rather Ralph Kramden's costume idea of this costume ball that they're having. And he wants to. It's a typical scheme where there's a costume competition and he wants to rent a costume for a certain amount of money and then win the competition, which comes with a cash prize, so that he'll make a profit. Basically. He figures if he puts. I can't remember what the amounts are, but if he puts, you know, $5 into a costume rental and wins the $20 prize, he'll make a profit of 15 or something. And he doesn't even have the money to be able to rent the costume. So he's looking to Ed Norton to try and, you know, get him to lend him the money to rent the costume. Ed won't lend it to him because Ed decides that he's going to rent a costume himself. So Ralph is instructed by Alice, his wife, to come up with his own costume. So he decides he's going to be the man from space. And what he does is he takes, you know, he has this famously, you know, dilapidated apartment, and he takes all this crap, this domestic crap from around the apartment. You know, their appliances, but their appliances, quote unquote, are all outdated. Like in 1955, it's a subject of great fun and hilarity that Ralph and Alice still have just an icebox. They don't actually have a refrigerator. But one of the things he does is he takes the icebox door and uses that as the sort of like, front panel of this really ridiculous looking spacesuit. In addition to all the things that the episode kind of contains within it. Like, it's the fact that George is watching an episode of the Honeymooners while he's sort of ignoring his wife. And while his wife is kind of. At first dreamily and then kind of ruefully recounting the inciting incident of their marriage. It's significant because even though Ralph and Alys are poor and there's always, you know, there's Always some kind of scrape that they get into or something like that. Right. They have a really happy marriage, a much happier marriage than George and Lorraine do. And also we have this image of this guy who wants to look like a man from space, a man from the future, but who's covered in the trappings of domesticity and kind of the symbols of Ralph's own domestic failures as a provider because Ed is able to afford a refrigerator that Ralph can't. And a lot of it has to do with the fact that Ralph can't hold onto money because of his own stupidity. So he's sort of like held back, right, by all of his failures, his past experiences.

47:24 Wes: And compared to Ed, that's saying something. But, yeah, anyway.

47:27 Erin: Right. Well, Ed. Well, there's a suggestion that Ed takes out a lot of things on credit, but Ed is a lot slyer about, like, he's dumber than Ralph, right. But he's better at, like, existing in the world and making things work for him than Ralph is. And to a certain extent, it's Ralph's kind of his sincerity that trips him up. But anyway, in the end, you know, the famous end of the episode is Ed Rather, who works in the sewer, has this emergency in the sewer, and then he ends up showing. And he had been shown earlier in the episode wearing this, like, almost like this underwater suit that he had to go down into the sewer with. Right. So Ralph goes to the costume thing with his own makeshift costume, which is really ridiculous. They think he's a pinball machine, and they think that he is about to win the contest. Right. And then Edge bursts in in his sewer outfit and wins the contest for being the man from space, which is a typical twist that happens. So anyway, I don't know how relevant that is, but I think the fact that it's not just the. For me, anyway, it's very telling, the combination of that particular episode with the film. And it's not just about the fact that there's this sci Fi thread in that particular episode that seems to make it chime with the purposes of the. Of the movie.

48:39 Wes: Yeah, I think you're right. There's something grandiose about what he's doing. Right. This is the way I'm thinking about it in relation to what I've said already about grandiosity. But when grandiosity kind of contaminates ambition and makes it stupid so you end up. There's a narcissism to it. You know, you're the. You're the cat who looks in the mirror and sees a lion, and you're putting together what's supposed to be an amazing costume out of outdated appliances.

49:05 Erin: Right.

49:06 Wes: And there's an element of trying too hard and aiming too high, which always backfires and reveals one's abject humanity. Outdated appliances. And then the. The way getting things done and ambition actually have to work, they kind of have to be a bit inadvertent, which is the way you avoid the incestuous implications. Right. There has to be kind of a implied father keeping enough of a buffer so that the implication of success is not incest or killing or the aggression or the killing of the father. This is. I know this probably sounds really implausible to listeners, but this is the theory. And I think, you know, someone who could explain it better would. Could make it more plausible. So if you create the sewer costume, Right. That's what it is. So it aims lower in a way, but it ends up being more successful. Because aiming too high is precisely the psychological dynamic of incest. The way it plays out in work. You're aiming at the mother, and you can't aim at the mother.

50:12 Erin: Well. And it's entirely accidental. Ed just shows up. You might take it as inspiration. I mean, it's totally unconscious on Ed's part, but you might take it symbolically as being the inspired choice to show up in sewer costume. I really like that. And I love. I mean, Ralph is just the perfect encapsulation of grandiosity in a TV character, which makes him sweet also.

50:35 Wes: Yes, he's grand, despite his constant threats of domestic violence.

50:41 Erin: Don't get me started. He's bang zoom. Yeah. That's just about the only time that I find a threat like that to be humorous. And it's only because he is so. He has such lack of power that it is funny.

50:57 Wes: Yeah, exactly. I think that's a good point for us to make our transition to the postscript.

51:04 Erin: Okay.

51:04 Wes: And I think we probably have quite a few other things to talk about, and even then, we're not gonna get to them. There's so much in this film, but. And I can't say exactly what we're gonna focus on in the postscript, but it'll be a pleasant surprise, I promise. Thank you, thank you. Thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com Like Food, with former New York Times food journalist and best selling author Mark Bittman, and Movie Therapy, in which Siskel and Ebert meets Dear Abby. AirwaveMedia.com.

In “Holy Sonnet 14,” John Donne would like his “three person’d God” to break instead of knock, blow instead of breathe, and burn instead of shine. This vision of redemption is about remaking rather than reform. And it seems to be motivated by a sense that neither reason nor the typical rhetoric of faith are not enough to bridge the mortal and the divine—what’s needed is God’s violent intervention. Wes & Erin discuss Donne’s surprising and paradoxical use of war and rape as metaphors for salvation.

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0:08 Wes: In Holy Sonnet 14, John Donne would like his three person God to break instead of knock, blow instead of breathe, and burn instead of shine. This vision of redemption is about remaking rather than reform. And it seems to be motivated by a sense that reason and the typical rhetoric of faith are not enough to bridge the mortal and the divine. What's needed is God's violent intervention. In this episode, we discuss Dunn's surprising and paradoxical use of war and rape as metaphors for this intervention. This is Wes hall. One.

0:41 Erin: This is Erin Olonek, and you're listening to subtext.

0:49 Wes: So Erin, when he says batter my heart, is he talking about battery or is he talking about deep frying?

0:55 Erin: I think. I think it's deep frying. That seems to be the conceit that's running through this whole poem, is that he's just gotten a job at McDonald's and he wants God to save him.

1:07 Wes: Batter my heart and season it with 13 spices. I'll deliver it to you on a platter, my love. What we're getting at, I think we're reacting to the violence of the poem. The way I summarize this poem to someone who's telling about it, I just said, you know, it's kind of like he's asking God to rape him, basically.

1:30 Erin: Yeah, I think that's totally right.

1:32 Wes: So that's one way to overcome one's doubts, I guess, is to have God.

1:37 Erin: That's interesting what you say about doubt, because I'm wondering if doubt even comes into the poem. So you see this as a poem that has doubt in it. I never even considered that it's my

1:48 Wes: interpolation or the only thing really to go on. Right, is that he's bethrost to the enemy, which I take to be Satan. That's one of the questions of the poem. What is it that separates him from God? Or however you want to put it in such a way that God's being Mr. Nice Guy, right? He doesn't want the Mr. Rogers version of God breathing, shining, mending. He needs something more forceful still. The question is why?

2:13 Erin: That's interesting. I can see that reading now, being betrothed to the enemy and the enemy being Satan. I usually think that belief in Satan is the first thing to go. It's the first step on the way to unbelief if you're raised within that tradition. So the fact that he believes himself betrothed to Satan tells me that he's in thrall of sin. But it could also be doubt, too. I'M also seeing that reason is captive proves weak or untrue. So that could mean doubt as well. I didn't see that reading the fact that reason is weak or untrue, I saw as being to stand up against the sin that he feels is overwhelming him, that you wouldn't be smart enough to combat these instances of sin when they arrive, or that reason would even betray you, and that you would be using your reason to sort of justify your sinfulness. So it's betrayed you to say, even though it's supposed to be this gift from God, it's actively working against you.

3:03 Wes: I think the talk of doubt, it runs against the being betrothed to the enemy. Suggests that he believes. Right. It's just that he believes that he's caught up in the other forces. And then the rest of it's about chastity and freedom. So this has something to do with impulsiveness, his own sinfulness and impulsiveness and perhaps sexual impulsiveness and maybe aggression goes in there as well as sex and aggression. So God's metaphorical sex and aggression is the only thing that can save him from his worldly sex and aggression and impulsivity. He's asking God to become the carrier of the impulsivity that he wants to get rid of from himself. Do you want to read it before we go further?

3:42 Erin: Sure. Holy Sonnet 14. Batter My Heart 3 Personed God for you as yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend, that I may rise and stand O' erthrow me and bend your force to break, blow, burn and make me new. I like an usurp town to another do labor to admit you, but owe to no end reason your viceroy in me me should defend, but is captived and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you and would be loved Fain but am betrothed unto your enemy. Divorce me untie or break that knot again. Take me to you, imprison me, for I, except you enthrall me, shall never be free, nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

4:28 Wes: Very nice. So a three persons God.

4:31 Erin: Yeah, I was wondering about that to

4:34 Wes: begin with, you know, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the three spices that go in the batter.

4:39 Erin: Yep.

4:40 Wes: Just kidding. The use of the word person there, right. Makes it more corporeal maybe than where you used to or maybe not. But it's almost like there's a hydra like effect. I think the very, you know, from the very beginning, it's kind of a surprising image. I don't know. What do you think about that?

4:56 Erin: I was thinking through this a really long time because I was just wondering why three? Why three? I mean, why emphasize the triune God here? And I noticed that the first six lines or so have that spondaic foot in the middle, so that we get three stresses in a row in the middle of the line. So it's as if there's like three, you know, three knocks that happen in the middle of each of those first lines, which gives it that really explosive kind of power. And the more I thought about that and that battering or knocking, the more I thought that, you know, if his heart is a door and they're battering it, you would need more than one person to break down a door, wouldn't you? Or you'd need more than one person to batter it down with a battering ram, I think. So he needs three people, it seems, to stand up to his sin or to stand up to Satan. Like there's a kind of strength in numbers here, maybe that's being implied.

5:43 Wes: Yeah, I mean, he is thinking the Trinity, right? It makes me wonder. So he's come up with this nice, you know, as you were saying, these three stresses in the middle. Knock, breathe, shine, and later on, break, blow, burn. And then of course there's in each case a fourth thing, which is the effect, you know, maybe the effect of the fusion of those things. So God does these different things. Knocks, breathes, shines, and then men's. And I suppose that the knock, breathe, shine, right, has to do with each different person in the three persons, God. So it makes me think about the genesis of the poem which came first. Did he come up with that nice idea of knock, breathe, shine, right? And then think, okay, let me backward engineer the first line. But anyway, whatever the case, it's rhythmically interesting. And then also. So what are knocking, breathing and shining? Knocking is politely knocking at the door to announce his presence, his existence. So that's like the first awareness of God being a child and being told there's God showing up to church early on. One's first memories of church or something like that. And then there's the other two, by

6:51 Erin: the way, for the stresses too. I'm reading that three stress from the very first line. So heart, three personed God. So I'm reading those three stresses there. And then also the triple stress on stand or throw me to batter my heart.

7:04 Wes: I mean, I'm three personed God. I'm still reading that as iambic.

7:07 Erin: So batter is reverse foot. It is Iambic pentameter. But of course, there could be variation. In fact, there should be some variation if you don't want it to be right. So batter my heart three personed God. So I'm reading my heart as an iambic foot and three personed. So three per would be a spondaic foot. So you'd have heart, three personed God.

7:29 Wes: Yeah. Okay.

7:30 Erin: And then the same in that I may rise and stand because of that caesura or throw gets a kind of. Both halves of that word get equal weight. So we have stand or throw me. That's another line that has that three in a row.

7:46 Wes: So we get three per. So that's the spondaic unstressed for und. And then God again. And then the second line, knock, breathe, shine. Yep, all stressed.

7:57 Erin: Then rise and stand or throw me. So stand or throw. And then in the fourth line, break, blow, burn, of course. And then I think that's where we. And I like a new SERP town too. That's where we get the change in rhythm there. So the first quatrain, I should say, I think maybe at the beginning, I thought it was the first, or said generously, was the first six lines, but it's really the first four. But I think that there are a lot of changes in rhythm that then happen or continue to happen throughout the poem. It keeps kind of shifting. And of course, the biggest tonal shift comes with the octave turning into the sestet. It's worth mentioning again that this is another combination of the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean, or the Italian and the English sonnet. So just as death be not proud, so we have A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A, C, D, C, D, E, E. So we have the traditional Petrarchan octave, and then we have the break with the sestet. But then it ends on that Shakespearean couplet to tie it all together. So back to knocking. The other thing I really see there, of course, I'm reading this really biblically. I spent a lot of time with my Bible over the past couple days reminding myself of some of these references. And of course, knocking is Christ the bridegroom knocking on the door of the bedchamber. So from the very beginning, we have a little bit of that sexual implication, right, with the church or the soul, even, like I think was traditionally conceived of as being feminine because of the fact that there was a lot of this kind of like, male female imagery in a sort of. Not in a literal sense, but in, like, a supernatural kind of sense. Just as A metaphor. And so Christ was always the bridegroom and his church, the bride in this metaphor. And so the soul was conceived of as being like, feminine for that reason that Christ is the masculine bridegroom that woos the soul is the feminine bride. So the knocking on the bedchamber is a reference to several things. There's connections to revelation there, but also to the Song of Songs, famously erotic poem in the Old Testament, which the early church fathers and most Christian traditions interpret either both as a love poem, which it is, but also as a metaphor for Christ seducing the soul, the sinner. And so that kind of gentleness. Or the bridegroom knocking on the door already has this decidedly not rapey but romantic implication from the very beginning. And a gentle knocking as you're saying

10:14 Wes: Jesus is a nice guy.

10:16 Erin: Yeah. So Jesus has a lot of different roles.

10:19 Wes: Right.

10:19 Erin: So he can also be. Mean is the wrong word. Right. Because that implies that, like, he's doing something wrong, but justly, he could be the just punisher as well, like mighty king. All these things are images of God that are baked into the Old Testament as well. So here he's being gentle, which is part of it too.

10:34 Wes: Yeah. This makes me think this is out of order, but maybe I'm just trying to read this too rigidly with lining things up with the Trinity, but knocking with Jesus and breathing with the Holy Spirit and maybe inspiration shining with the glory of God.

10:48 Erin: Yeah. I was wondering that myself, because I was like, okay, knock seems like a reference to Christ, but then shine, we have this idea that it's connected with the sun, S U N, which would then be a homophone for S O N. So maybe knock is supposed to be God the Father, but not sure.

11:04 Wes: I was thinking. Yeah. That probably each of these, you could make an argument for each of them lining up with the different parts of the Trinity. Maybe it's informative to compare them to what they're going to turn into. Breaking, blowing and burning. Knocking will become breaking down the door. Breathing, which again, to me, but you can correct me if I'm wrong, but connotes inspiration, breathing into. Probably there are other ways to read that too. Whereas blowing is no longer. Well, let's compare breathing and blowing. Breathing gets inside you. And blowing is external. It's like something internal versus external force in a way. And then shining versus burning. So shining puts light and warmth over things and there's glory in it and articulates and clarifies the world. And burning, of course, is destructive. So you get these verbs which are Associated with establishing some sort of relationship, some sort of connection between two beings, the divine and the. The mortal. And it's non destructive. And the second one is just entirely. Seems to be entirely destructive, but also external. If you're inspired, if. Right. In the first case, you can become a believer, you have a sort of internal or have faith, there would be some internal spiritual or psychological change in one's attitude. In the second case, it turns that into something seemingly, at least metaphorically external.

12:29 Erin: Mm.

12:30 Wes: You are forced. And it's no longer a matter of faith, Although it could be. Maybe that's what faith looks like under this model. Right. Something. Maybe force is the. Is the way that's the argument on the face of it. Right. Is that this nice guy stuff is not good enough. If you're really gonna get to me, I need this force. So Very, very interesting.

12:52 Erin: Yeah. I was thinking, like, blowing into somehow. But you're right, it is external. I'm thinking of Lear. The more I sat with this, being knocked around on the heath, the idea that this is external. I really like knowing Donne's upbringing in Catholicism and his relatively late conversion. So he was educated in Catholic teaching and all of that. And then even when he became an Anglican. Right. It was what we would recognize today as being like, extremely high Anglican, you know, Catholic. Catholic light. So the Catholic understanding of God's influence in our soul, of grace's influence in our soul, is something that really does. To the extent that we can say sort of metaphorically speaking or even, you know, sort of creatively speaking, that the soul has some form of physicality or some form of reality which is. You know, I'm using physicality loosely here. Right. But the extent to which it's maybe visible to God, the extent to which it's somehow present within us. You know, Catholics believe that through the sacraments, through sanctifying grace, our souls are literally changed. They're in some way evidently changed in the sight of God. So this idea of remaking one's inner self or this idea of like, a physical change being enacted on the body is actually a pretty good metaphor for what is happening internally. Right. The kind of internal change that is conceived of in Catholic teaching. And I could talk about sanctifying versus actual grace, I suppose, because I feel like that's like a good reference point to talk about if people don't know.

14:20 Wes: But you should do that. But I would just want to emphasize the point you've just made, because I think it's very important. This breaking, blowing, burning. They seem like externalities and more radical remaking. Right? So the effect of knock, breathe, shine is to mend. Right. But the effect of break, blow, burn is to make new. And it's almost. Maybe hints of transubstantiation there. Right? So something seemingly destructive happens, but that's what's necessary for something truly transformative. Right? Don't just patch me up and make this feeble, broken thing a little bit better. Give me a crutch or something like that. Just, yeah, completely transform me. So I think that's very good. Because, you know, as you put it, the question is, what kind of influence. How did you put it? What kind of influence does God have on us?

15:02 Erin: This episode, by the way, is brought to you by the Baltimore Catechism. So grace is. I'm thanking my mother for, you know, making me memorize some of that. So grace's favor. It's this free help that God gives us to respond to his call, right? To partake of his, like, divine nature. So grace is participating in the life of God. It's sanctifying us. It raises us up. It's a gratuitous gift that God gives us out of himself. And it surpasses human intellect, and to a certain extent, it surpasses human will. So there are two types of this that at least the Catholic Church recognizes that Don would have been familiar with. The first is sanctifying grace. This is like the being in the state of grace thing that people might have heard of, right? This is like when you have supernatural life. So if you die in a state of sanctifying grace, you may have to go through a process of purgation first. But Catholics believe that you will go to heaven. The lines are open to God. You're free of mortal sin. You've, like, received sacraments. God is working within you. So this is kind of like the state that has to be continually cultivated through, you know, if you do commit a mortal sin through, like, confession. Right. And receiving absolution. So this is like your operating system. Ideally, actual grace is more of what Donne is talking about here. Now, sanctifying grace, like to be in that state of sanctifying grace through the intervention of the sacraments through, like, baptism, confirmation, all those things. Right? That does, like, physically to get there. That does physically change your soul in this way that I'm talking about. Actual grace is also what Donne is really, I think, talking about here, which. This is the second type. This is God's intervention in our process of sanctification. So this is when God offers us an Opportunity to convert back to him. Right. He's collaborating with us, though. It's God's free initiative to offer this to us. And we have to have, you know, Catholics believe in free will. Right. So it demands a free response. We have to, like, enter freely into God's love. Otherwise, you know, it's not really love. Right. So God is basically standing at the door and knocking with actual grace. Like, he's saying, can I come in? Right. He's inspiring us maybe to convert, to return to him through this kind of supernatural help, and also helps us, like, resist temptation. Actual grace. So he's standing at the door and saying, like, can I come in? And we have to let him in freely. But that can be really hard to do. Right? Because sometimes we don't want to accept the call. Right. We're free to reject grace. So, for instance, for me, it's the way that I conceive of this, if I was teaching a catechism class or something to kids would be to say, okay, that might be something like the working of your conscience when you've done something wrong and you get this nagging feeling like, I really have to make that right. That would be actual grace. But of course, you can ignore that and push it away and just be like, no, I'm fine. There's a famous line from Augustine, I think, in his Confessions where he's like. He reaches this point where he knows that he wants to convert to Christianity and to live a holy life, but he's like, okay, not yet. Like, I'm not done sinning. Like, I want to. I want to stay doing this other stuff that I'm really enjoying. So we can reject that. And the problem is, when we're habituated to reject it or when we're habituated into certain sins, it becomes really easy for us to just reject that. So Donne is here advocating for, I think, an actual grace that takes away his free will so that he can't say no. He can't reject it in favor of, like, continuing to live a sinful life. So it's this sort of paradox of using his free will in this poem or using this creative effort to ask God to basically remove his free will, make it so I can't reject this grace. I know I went on for a bit, but I don't know if it's worthwhile to make that distinction between the

18:40 Wes: two forms of grace. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's very helpful. Your talk of free will is very apt here in light of the fact that he's going to complain later on. Right. That reason, you, Viceroy in me, me should defend the way free will is thought of in this period as being the product of reasoning in our capacities to reason and to make choices based on reasons rather than simply on impulses. So this is in line with what you've been saying about, in a way, being asked to be relieved of the choice and free will and just basically having one's door knocked down. And no, you don't have a choice. Whether or not you're going to accept this, it's going to be by force. This reminds me, because I'm rereading the Brothers Karamazov right now for the live show that partially Examined life is doing in New York soon. Ivan's famous speech about the Grand Inquisitor argues that Jesus messed up because when he rejected Satan's temptations, because Satan basically offers him the chance to have absolute power over the world. And that power would mean the ability to create a utopia and to make sure that no one ever suffers. Right. But the cost would be to freedom and to free will. There's some commonalities between that vision and this vision, the vision of being. They're different in important ways. But the commonality here is the idea that wouldn't it be nice if we didn't have a choice at all and faith were simply imposed on us?

20:06 Erin: Yeah. You know, the other thing that most orthodox, small, Orthodox Christianity argues, is that reason alone is just not enough to withstand evil. Right. Like we need God's grace. So we do need some sort of divine intervention. But often what we get is so accommodating of our free will that it's easy to reject it or to just walk away from it.

20:25 Wes: When we say reason is not enough. Yeah. The question is, what else do we need? Right. The more general question, just putting aside religion for a moment, is a failure of reason might be a failure to persuade. It might be a failure to solve a diplomatic problem in an international level, meaning violence or war is necessary. Or maybe even at a personal level, reason doesn't always work. Or reason might fail in the sense that we need our feelings. We need our feelings to navigate the world, and we need our feelings to relate to people. There are lots of ways in which we can point to the failure of reason. And then we look for what are the contrasting faculties or domains that are available to us that are alternatives to reason. So there's instinct and emotion, and there's love and sex and violence and impulse. And then there's also faith. Right. And religion, oddly, Enough. Maybe the religious and the divine and faith kind of straddle the line between those two. Right. So if we're thinking of the classical division of the soul, maybe the Platonic division, reason, eros, and then the spirited thumos. Thumotic part of the soul, maybe faith in some sense has a foot in each of those things. I don't know, but I think what you just said made me think of the sense in which faith must transcend reason. Right. You're not going to reason your way into believing in God by proving God or something like that. Something. It has to be outside of reason. But on the other hand, once you start talking about free will or once you start talking about resisting one's impulsivity or one's temptation to sinfulness, there seems to be a place for reason.

22:02 Erin: Sure.

22:03 Wes: So I think you could say that about any faculty here. Right. So it seems like the erotic might be opposed to faith into the religious in important ways, but here they're important. And as with Donne's poetry in general, I mean, there are important parallels between the religious and the erotic.

22:19 Erin: Yeah. In Catholicism, at least, obviously. It's hard for me to even say that reason isn't enough as someone who loves Aquinas. Right. So there's like that whole, you know, intellectual tradition within Catholicism, but there's also the erotic there as well. Like, there's a really strong link, I think, more so than in most religions, between the erotic and the sacred.

22:37 Wes: What part does the erotic have to

22:39 Erin: play in faith, besides the obvious joke about Catholics loving sex and having a lot of kids? You know, I think that the idea of God, or Christ in particular, as a bridegroom wooing the bride is something that really comes into a lot of Catholic and orthodox Christian stories of mysticism, of different saint stories, have, like, famous periods of ecstasy, Right. In which the saint experiences something like sexual ecstasy to see when being visited by God. The really famous version of this, or a good visual image of what I'm talking about is Bernini's famous sculpture, which is in the Vatican, the Ecstasy of St. Teresa, which shows Teresa being visited by an angel. Actually, this is a great image for this poem. She's being visited by an angel. She has this beautiful gold behind her coming down like the Holy Spirit, and almost like, you know, the shower of Danae, you know, the coins coming down, the Holy Spirit coming down upon her. And this angel is holding an arrow, I think an arrow or a spear of some kind, and is going to, like, plunge it into her. And she looks like she's wrapped in a kind of erotic ecstasy. And so, you know, this idea of, I think, like, communion of joining with God, in a way, it kind of like mirrors sexuality in the fact that this is supposed to be this. Ideally, you know, it was supposed to be kind of like a joining together of two souls in like, a really beautiful and intimate way. Right. So that's all part of it. So stories like. Of ecstasy, which, you know, can look a lot of different ways. And it's not like God is literally coming down like Zeus would and having sex with. With women or something like that. I don't mean to suggest that at all.

24:18 Wes: That was the old style.

24:20 Erin: Right, right. But just more like that is the closest metaphorically we can get to understanding that kind of communion with God. And that's why it's a, you know, like the bride and bridegroom metaphor. That's why it's a trope that is useful for people thinking about this kind of thing. To return to.

24:34 Wes: Yeah, you're making me think that monotheism solved the problem of being literally raped by the gods. The closest you could get to Zeus was if he was sexually assaulting you.

24:46 Erin: God, what a terrifying religion that was.

24:48 Wes: Fucking with your fate in other ways.

24:50 Erin: But. Right.

24:51 Wes: I was also reminded of. There's the whole soulmate thing. And I was reminded of Aristophanes and Plato's Symposium telling a story about how because they pissed off the gods, because they tried to be like the gods. I think after Prometheus brought the fire. Right. Human beings are punished for their advanced reasoning capacity. Speaking of reason again. And the way they're punished is to be cut in half. All of us used to be kind of joined at the back. Each of us have four arms and four legs, and so they get cut in half. And then everyone. Love is about searching for one's soulmate and re. Merging with that person. And this is a conception of love that Socrates actually rejects. Socrates sort of entertains the speeches of a bunch of people, including Aristophanes. And maybe he preserves parts of those accounts, but overall he's going to say that all of them come up short because it turns out that what love is, according to Socrates, has something to do with our reproductive capacities. In particular, reproduction in the presence of beauty. And that reproduction, that's broadly conceived. Right. It could be actual reproduction of children. It could be the sense in which thinking is reproductive, in the sense of it involves representation. And the same thing with the arts, so the same thing with anything sublimating. So in other Words, Socrates argument is that actually love is a kind of relatedness that actually preserves the distinction between the two lovers, but produces a reproductive third. But the maintaining of the distinction is important and the prevention of merger. And you see the same sort of idea later on in psychoanalysis, where the conception of love as merger is kind of a pathological element to that. Right? Because it's reminiscent of the merger with the mother and being in the womb, or in this symbiotic relationship where the distinction, separation and individuation hasn't occurred and the distinction between mother and child is not yet clear. This is not unrelated to the incest taboo, Right. The sense in which the idea is that there are types of relationships which obliterate the person. There are types of love relations, you know, like if there were a sexual relationship between parent and child, the psychological significance of that is psychological obliteration and trauma and so on and so forth. So what am I trying to say here? So I'm trying to think about that in light of. That doesn't necessarily transfer to faith in a way. That might be what makes faith unique. I think whatever model of faith and its relation to the erotic you're working with, obviously the individual is preserved. It may be ecstatic, it may be that one is inspired or filled up or feels merged at particular moments, but one is not simply destroyed by the divine. And in Dunn's account, right, it's overthrow me so that I may stand, destroy me in order to make me new. The destructive part of the merger is actually a moment in something new, something standing. And so you get that reproductive third that Socrates was talking about. In a way, you give birth to a new self through the divine.

28:02 Erin: Yeah, that's great. I'm thinking about this too, in terms of. Like, you're suggesting this parallel to the creative. The submission, whether it be to the muse or to the divine, has to be a submission, right? Like, you have to metaphorically willing to be penetrated in order to allow, like, a creative force to work within you, in order to allow a supernatural power to come into your life, right. You have to. You have to admit that you need something larger than yourself, that you alone are not enough. Right? And you have to be willing to be humble enough to open yourself up to that kind of, again, submission penetration,

28:40 Wes: which isn't supposed to be inspiration, the muse, right?

28:43 Erin: Which ultimately results in something that's supposed to be not demeaning to you in any way. By humbling yourself, you actually are then able to produce the creative thing that you're trying to Produce, because you have to be open to that kind of transmission. And if you're overly determined in terms of your reason or in terms of trying to control all elements of the creative act, for instance, and not allowing inspiration to come into you and to strike where it may, then that means that you're going to produce something that's rather closed off and as a result is going to be pretty much an artistic failure. Right. I think the same thing with the divine here. Like, I think that the poem, even as I think it's not super humble in a lot of ways, I think is humble in the way that it's thinking about submission and about using this, frankly, like using this rape metaphor to describe the way in which Donne wants to be penetrated by the divine, wants to open himself up to another's influence. I don't know if that's too gross. Yeah. And I'm not. I feel like by the end of this, I'm, like, advocating for something really, really terrible here, which I'm not meaning to do. Obviously, rape is.

29:50 Wes: Rape is bad, even if it's. All right. I hope you're not going to ask me to take that joke out after we're done. So there's an interesting transition here now in the second quatrain to. It's not a different metaphor. I think everything works. Well, it is and it isn't. We talked a little bit about rapes, but now we have a. I guess it's a political version of that where we have a town under siege and maybe the possibility of a pillaging. So I like a usurped town to another do labor to admit you. All right, let's unpack this. What's going on here with this? It's a usurp town, so it's already been taken over by the devil, I suppose, or by some equivalent of that to another dude. Right. Due to God, I think.

30:34 Erin: Oh, I see.

30:35 Wes: He's trying to give God his due, but he can't. Right. God is besieging the town to take back what's his. But Don can't open the gates. Reason, his viceroy. Okay, so if he's the town, there's a viceroy in that town, which is reason. The viceroy should be able to defend the town, but it is captived and proves weak or untrue. So those are different ideas. Either the viceroy has been put in the tower, put in prison, or he's a collaborator. I'm not sure which, or if there's some combination of that. But yeah. So we get the unfolding of A very elaborate and different sort of metaphor, but go ahead.

31:15 Erin: Yeah. Well, I like the fact that he's not sure if it's weak or untrue. Right. That's indicative of someone whose reason is in fact captive.

31:22 Wes: Right.

31:22 Erin: Because he just not sure. So Viceroy is. I had to look this up to know exactly what it is because outside of the Star wars universe, I realized. I realized I don't have a strong understanding of that. So this is a representative of the Monarch or someone who acts in the name of the Monarch. Right. So reason is acting in the name of God here. So reason is supposed to be. It's a gift from God. It's supposed to be there to. I guess short of having God in like a tiny form sort of working the controls in some sort of Cartesian like image, we have reason at the helm. This part always makes me think of Lord of the Rings too. But anyway, so we have the steward, in light of the fact that Aragorn is off being a ranger, whatever, so should be defending us, but instead is captive. So this is where I get this idea, which I mentioned earlier, that reason is either too weak to withstand sin, which would be literally true. Right. Like it would be true in Dunn's understanding. We need something more than reason. As I already said, to withstand evil, we need God's grace.

32:25 Wes: Yeah.

32:26 Erin: Or it's become warped. It's like the Viceroy has been paid off by Satan and has actually been actively betraying what it's supposed to be used for. So it's been warped by sin to believe that it's doing the right thing. So it's using reason to justify one's sinfulness or to remain in one's sinfulness.

32:43 Wes: Yeah. There's a bunch of different ways to make sense of reason. Being captured. Right. And being weak or untrue. I mean, normally we would think of reason as something very strong and the vehicle to truth. And strong in the sense of just the transformative effect for human beings of reason and education and culture. And then that includes the existence of a city and it includes technology. And it's of course intimately related to self consciousness and language and everything that we take to be human. Right. So it's Aristotle's writing. It's what is distinctive in our humanity and separates us from the brutes. So it's a unfortunate circumstance, turns out to be weak and untrue. And the capture. I think the most straightforward reading is that it's just not strong enough to deal with our impulses. Plato has this image of a. I think it's reason. This is not the exact metaphor, but reason trying to rein in horses, basically, but being drawn this way and that by our impulses. The other way to think of this is that. And I think you were getting at this a little bit. You know, reason can be used to rationalize. So it's a dangerous. And a psychoanalyst would think of it even as a defense. It can be a dangerous way to justify things, even things that are positively evil. One other way to look at this is that reason is on Freud's account, and it's a really interesting account because there's a paradox involved, and we know that Donne loves these paradoxes. But on Freud's account, what we call the ego, which is associated with reason, is kind of constructed out of the clay of the ID of the passions. And so is our conscience, which is part of the ego as the superego. But that account is quite complicated. But the idea is that anything that's motivated has something to do with our passions. And reasoning actually is a motivated activity. There has to be. What's the best way to put this? So, for instance, if we are wrestling with some sort of moral conundrum and we're saying, well, I want to do that because I just want it, that would be very pleasurable. And some other part of us is saying, no, that's wrong, or that would, in the long term, not be in my best interest. Or it may just be wrong, morally wrong. If the reason side is going to win out, it has to win out because there's some amount of pleasure, right, in being good, being a good person, ultimately obeying our conscience. There has to be something that satisfies, at least, is a compromise, right? With the passions, it's a form of sublimation. It's not just sex, for instance, that feels good. But refraining from sex can feel good in a different sense, maybe a higher sense. So anyway, that's the complexity in which reason can be captured by the passions. And in some sense, maybe built out of. It may be a structure that's built out of. Of the clay of the passions. So, but anyway, I like this idea of the people being cities in God's domain in his country. And when they rule themselves through reason, to some extent, they are really doing that as representatives of God. But on Don's account, it's not a very workable form of government because, in fact, the town is occupied. What is the town occupied by? By the passions. So, God, you know, is this really the way things are supposed to work? Right. You've installed the governor, but you've also installed a usurper.

36:14 Erin: Right. I was thinking about that. First of all, this is another connection which I didn't see, to Teresa of Avila, whose book the Interior Castle kind of works with this idea of us as being a city. In fact, I'm thinking of the COVID image used on a lot of editions of Interior Castle, which has. I think it's a Remedios Varro painting, this fabulous woman's surrealist painter, which shows something like a city, the extent to which Like a castle is kind of like a city also, because the inside usually has several buildings within it. But I was thinking about that idea of the town or the city and the maiden that then comes into this, the betrothed maiden. And I'm wondering, I don't want to skip over this hinge line so we can return to it this yet dearly, I love you. But what connects the two, I wonder? The collapse of town and maiden or betrothed woman.

37:03 Wes: Yeah, he's given us two different metaphors here. And now they are coming together, I guess. Right.

37:08 Erin: I guess it's related to this bridegroom knocking at the door thing. Right. So we have this connection that goes all the way back to Song of Songs, where we have the door of the citadel or the door of the bride's chamber kind of being collapsed into. I guess I was looking for something, like, inherently similar, which is a little bit ridiculous. Right. Between a city, a woman, somehow. There's the rape of the Sabine women, which, of course, is. Anything that talks about an abduction with this kind of wording is probably inviting that reference in, you know, the city being founded on those abducted women. So maybe there's something there.

37:48 Wes: You're trying to save this mixed metaphor.

37:50 Erin: No, but I think it's the door. I think it's the door. Right. The battering of the door, ultimately. Is it the door to the chamber? Right. Is it the door to the city? This door contains all doors, all things that separate us between our sort of hardened hearts and the God who wants to enter there.

38:06 Wes: Yeah. In the beginning, we get something that sounds like rape, and then we get the pillaging being asked, you know, okay, come into this town. Take it back. And then the third thing, we're now talking about marriage and divorce. So we get a more legalistic turn, in a sense. Right.

38:24 Erin: Yeah.

38:24 Wes: Less violent, a little bit more civilized. Although, again. And he does say, imprison me, I guess, for the crime of marrying. Marrying your enemy.

38:34 Erin: Well, before we get there, I just wanted to say, you Know yet dearly I love you that turn, I'm wondering, is this a little bit performative? Is this. I mean, this is quite a shift. Suddenly it's like, oh, but actually, I. You know, it's like he's trying to woo God in this moment. I guess I'm just. I'm wondering if that's meant to be taken as a rhetorical, sort of self consciously performative move. No, but really, I really love you. I really do. You know, that kind of thing.

39:05 Wes: Yeah, he's been usurped by another. So in other words, you know, to the extent that. That's, again, about one's passions, right? So being usurped by sinfulness or by passion, by emotion, sex, violence, whatever. And despite eating, to be so radically transformed, there's love. There's a seed of that impulse here in love. So there's more than just the sinful impulses. And, you know, this goes back to the erotic stuff here too. Right. There has to be love for all of this to work. Right. Not just love of earthly things, but love of God.

39:36 Erin: That's right. I think this is also doing a really good job of sort of dramatizing the waffling that happens when you're trying to work your way back. Like you're doing something that you know is wrong, but you can't quit it. You know, this moving back and forth, like, no, no, I really want to do this thing. I don't want to be doing that. Like, I know what I need to do. And that sort of like, you know, which Dunn is doing here. Like ransoming for yourself. You know, like self negotiation. What do I really want? What do I really care about here? No, but really, I love God, you know. No, but he's abandoned me. That kind of thing is, like, really well dramatized here. And this also relates to. Maybe here is a good place to say it, but the performativity of this, too. I mentioned earlier that I think that in some ways this is really not a humble poem. Those ways are the ways in which Donne really evades kind of taking responsibility for his own sin. And so I'm wondering if the performativity here of no, but I really love you is complicated by the fact that he wants God. He's acknowledging God's superiority. He's wanting God to come in, take back the city, take him back. But the extent to which this whole usurpation has occurred, you know, it's like, oh, well, gee, things are really bad here. Don't know how that happened. So there's not a huge acknowledgment of the part that he's played. Like, all of that is kind of sublimated in favor of this idea of God coming in and just rescuing him from himself. But what exactly he needs to be rescued for? Of course, it's hinted at in the last line. Right. And based on the other poems we

41:01 Wes: kind of know and his history.

41:02 Erin: Yes.

41:03 Wes: So he's been having a lot of fun, Poor John Donne

41:07 Erin: Dunn. Rhymes with fun.

41:09 Wes: And then after he had all his fun, then he decided to become religious.

41:13 Erin: That's what most people do is the convenience way to go, basically. I'm just saying that this is not someone doing a mea culpa, doing a confession, per se.

41:21 Wes: Right.

41:22 Erin: Yeah.

41:22 Wes: That's really interesting. Yeah.

41:23 Erin: This is someone who's like, hey, come in here and deal with this. And oh, by the way, I really love you. Thanks a lot. Appreciate it.

41:29 Wes: You know, so I'm a philanderer, so philander me. So I can stop. You do to me what I've been, and that's the only way I can stop. Yeah. Never chaste except you ravish me. So just to emphasize what you're saying, I think it's really interesting that it's not an expression of guilt over being sinful. It's an expression of. It's a complaint in a way to God that he's not doing enough to overcome that by force.

41:57 Erin: Right.

41:57 Wes: And in a way, it's an abdication of reason, or it's a suggestion that reason is not good enough and possibly an abdication of the power of free will. So it has that element that you're pointing to of passivity and helplessness, which is not precisely where one wants to be, even if one is acknowledging the parts of faith that are not rational.

42:16 Erin: Right, right. On the one hand, arguing with God is a classic tradition in Judaism and Catholicism. Right. Actually, this is another connection to Teresa of Avila, who argues with God.

42:27 Wes: Yeah. There's a job like element to this, I think.

42:29 Erin: Yeah, for sure, for sure. But on the other hand, this is not really the way to approach. Right. This is not the way to do

42:38 Wes: it, but yeah, to be imprisoned and to be ravished, one appreciates the sentiment and the kind of desperation of it. But ultimately it's not a model for.

42:47 Erin: I think that's fine. Ultimately, it's the demand. It's like, you're not doing enough. I know better than you. Also, my reason is crap. I don't know anything. Put it this way, it's not the traditional Prayer, it's not the way that one is traditionally taught to pray. And the lack of acknowledgement and responsibility for his own sin is probably the biggest part of that. But the other big part of it is this, this demand of God, which isn't to say that God can't handle this, it's fine, but it's just not the way that one would normally approach the divine with a request. Not just because of the metaphors or whatever, which actually I think the metaphors are one of the more standard elements of this. Not standard in a, oh, I was expecting that kind of way, but it is trafficking and biblical themes.

43:33 Wes: So there's the demandingness of it. And then the thing that I was pointing to is the tension between the aspect of faith, which maybe depends on it's about grace or it's about ecstasy and the irrational. There's that, but there's a tension between that and free will, which implicates rationality to some extent. So to ask God simply to overwhelm one's free will, to make one's choices and to do all, it takes the concept of the relationship to God too far. Maybe theologically I don't think it can be. Or at least there's that tension. Right. It makes sense in a way, but there's almost like a hysterical, the hysteria to the poem.

44:14 Erin: You're reminding me of something that, you know, especially with this, like divorce me untie or break, like asking God to do something that is, I suppose divorce is permitted in Judaic law.

44:24 Wes: But yeah, no big source of contention. You know, a lot of things happen because of Henry VIII wanting to not so long ago get a divorce.

44:32 Erin: Yeah, but you're reminding me of Rasputin of all people.

44:35 Wes: Right.

44:36 Erin: Have you heard this idea that Rasputin's heretical idea is that he might have borrowed some things from this religious sect which it's actually been proven that he was not a part of. But he, either through that sect or through his own heretical one man system, you know, that he was trying to get people to join. He actually had this belief that he should sin greatly. Like it's a fascinating idea, but that it was a good thing to sin. And the bigger the sin the better because the more infused with grace and forgiveness you get as a result of that sin. So, and this is actually refuted by Paul in Romans 6 because he talks about the fact that like when you sin, but then you come to God for forgiveness, you get this infusion of grace and you get, if you have some big sins, right Then God gives you this big infusion to like counteract that. Maybe I'm misremembering or sort of like overemphasiz. But then he says, but does that mean that you should sin a lot? Like, no, of course not. Right. But Rasputin ignores that cult leader type of. Exactly. He is a cult leader. That is exactly what he is. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for, his cult. But there's something kind of fascinating about. I mean, there's something insane about that because Rasputin is insane. But there's this idea that maybe that's too tangential. I don't know why that crossed the windscreen of my. Or the windscreen. The windshield of my mind.

45:56 Wes: No, I, I think it makes sense because this is, you know, this is what happens in a cult. People want to, you know, and often religion gets accused of this in general. But it's in a cult, people want to abdicate their freedom and give up their minds. You end up, or at least the women end up being taken advantage of by the cult leader. Right. And are ravished. And are. So I think it's spot on to worry about that connection. And that's the tension I was pointing to at the point where this is a request to God to be deprived of one's mind. It becomes a problem.

46:30 Erin: Yeah. And I think that Dunn is saying, like, I need the big guns come in with the full troops.

46:34 Wes: I'm just a little too good looking.

46:38 Erin: Yeah, that's right. That's a really good point.

46:41 Wes: He'd been not as good looking. I think it would have gone easier for him.

46:44 Erin: But yeah, I think there's something about that. Like, especially because he's kind of proposing that God do things to him, metaphorically speaking, which are like, literally speaking, sort of ungodly. And also the fact that he's sinned a lot, so he feels like he needs this like, big infusion of grace. Like there's something that maybe is also. Is this connection to this cult y idea that I'm thinking about, which is that the greater the sin, the greater the grace and forgiveness. And he really wants to be like overwhelmed with that. So go out and sin people.

47:11 Wes: Look, everyone's. Everyone needs their own particular connection to God. And in the case of a Don Juan, you know, you need the Don Juan God. You need the ravishing. The ravishing God for the ravishing man.

47:24 Erin: That's right. Well, I was going to say that he has two choices. Like he can either be beaten up by God or he could join A fight club. And that would be like.

47:32 Wes: Right.

47:32 Erin: Two ways to drum it out of him.

47:34 Wes: I said Don Juan. I should have said Dun Juan.

47:36 Erin: Dun Juan. Yeah.

47:39 Wes: Terrible. Although he was known to make. Or was it him who made some puns on his name and poems and letters. I think he did. But then others did, too.

47:46 Erin: It's that time honored tradition.

47:48 Wes: What's done is done. In reference to the marriage.

47:51 Erin: That's great.

47:52 Wes: Of his employers.

47:54 Erin: Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. That's good.

47:57 Wes: All right, so what are we going to discuss in Postscript?

48:01 Erin: Well, the final couplet. I don't think we quite got all the way there. Or did we?

48:04 Wes: Okay, we'll finish up any loose ends with this sonnet and then maybe we'll discuss another random.

48:12 Erin: I have some connections to make to the flea, actually.

48:15 Wes: Oh, were you thinking of the fleas?

48:16 Erin: That's the obvious. Oh, yeah. Well, I think, you know, the flea is not unlike a rapist.

48:23 Wes: Yeah, well, I love the. I love the argument in the flea. And we're not going to tell you anymore. We're going to.

48:29 Erin: Yeah, let that be enough of a teaser.

48:30 Wes: We're going to make you listen to Postscript if you want to know what that's all about. All right. Thank you. You.

48:36 Erin: Thank you.

48:38 Wes: Thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com AirwaveMedia.com.

A recusant Catholic turned Protestant, a rake turned priest, a scholar, lawyer, politician, soldier, secretary, sermonizer, and of course, a poet— John Donne’s biography contains so many scuttled identities and discrete lives, perhaps its no wonder that his great subjects were mortality and death. His Holy Sonnets, likely composed between 1609 and 1610, and published posthumously in 1633, are a collection of 19 poems written after the sea change in Donne’s subject matter from the secular to the sacred. They reflect his anxiety over his conversion to Anglicanism and his eventual decision to enter the priesthood, and meditate on salvation, death, and the wages of sin. Erin & Wes discuss Sonnet 10 in this series, “Death Be Not Proud,” an address of Death personified, whose power gradually diminishes beneath the force of Donne’s dazzling poetic rhetoric.

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0:00 Erin: Hey everyone, just want to let you know that my other podcast, the Partially Examined Life, will be having a live show in New York City on April 15th at 7pm we will be discussing Dostoyevsky's the Brothers Karamazov. You can get tickets whether to come in person or live stream it on the [email protected] live. And on another note, for Subtext, we have a listener survey and it would be a big help to us if you fill it out. It only takes a few minutes and your feedback will help us improve the show and find new sponsors who actually interest you. By filling out the survey, you'll be entered to win a $500Amazon gift card. To fill out the survey, go to surveymonkey.com r airwave.

0:47 Wes: You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. A recusant Catholic turned Protestant, a rake turned priest, a scholar, lawyer, politician, soldier, secretary, sermonizer, and of course, a poet. John Donne's biography contains so many scuttled identities and discrete lives, perhaps it's no wonder that his great subjects were mortality and death. His Holy Sonnets, likely composed between 1609 and 1610 and published posthumously in 1633, are a collection of 19 poems written after the sea. Change in Dunne. Subject matter from the secular to the sacred reflect his anxiety over his conversion to Anglicanism and his eventual decision to enter the priesthood and meditate on salvation, death, and the wages of sin. Today we're discussing Sonnet 10 in this series, Death, Be Not Proud, an address of death personified whose power gradually diminishes beneath the force of Donne's dazzling poetic rhetoric. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and this is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So Wes Dunn is a great love poet, of course, but I would argue that I think he's a great poet of death. That might be his greatest subject matter. And when I put quotes around that term, great poet of death and put it into a Google search out of curiosity, I saw that Whitman is supposed to be the greatest poet of death. For my money, he's not even the great American poet of death. That would be Dickinson. But I don't know. I mean, I guess there are a lot of contenders for that title. And I was thinking a lot in preparing for this episode about the relationship between poetry and death, or at least things that are sort of death adjacent. Poetry and grief poetry and mourning, the elegy, of course, being one of the great poetic forms. So I'm curious who you think is great on death if you have an answer for that. And maybe why death is so present in so many poems as a way to start us off.

2:57 Erin: Well, the first person I thought of was Shakespeare. And then I was thinking, well, that's kind of an obvious and lame association. But then in thinking about poetry and death, I thought of the phrase undiscovered country. Right. Is that the right?

3:11 Wes: Mm.

3:12 Erin: And the way in which something that is puzzling and paradoxical and ineffable, a nothing can be grasped. I mean, on the one hand, there's the terror of death, the inevitability of death, the death of loved ones and life and sorts of things that make good subjects for poetic reflection. And I guess the question is what the point of that is. Maybe it's therapeutic or something. But then the other aspect is just that it's because it's something that can't be represented in any direct way as an experience. Right. You can describe a dead body, but it has to be gotten at in this more indirect, metaphorical way. So I think this type of subject, I guess, love and death are really the most. There's a lot of opportunity there, I guess, let's put it that way.

4:03 Wes: Right. I'm thinking a little about maybe about Keats as an anti death poet. I can't decide if someone is a death poet or an anti death poet. And I think maybe that tension reveals something like maybe anyone who writes about death is also in the act of writing about it, is staving it off, obviously. And I do think that love and death, or especially sex and death, are pretty closely linked. I think that, you know, this sort of emotional climax in a poem, or even like the beats inherent with each line and the turn back to the beginning that happens at the end of each line of a poem. It's very reminiscent to me of like, the climax contains within it, like the diminution or the demotion, demise itself. So we have these peaks and valleys, maybe a bit dramatic to say that those are sort of like, I don't know, flights of fancy or great vivacity or vitality, to use words, connected with life. And then the dying off of the end of the line or the dying at the end of the poem, as it were, is connected with a kind of death. So I think that waxing and waning, or that ecstasy followed by evacuation, you might say, is very close to love and sex. Of course, you know, these things very much mirror, I think, our experiences of not just of life's up and down kind of trajectory, but also the fact that we have at the end the eternal death waiting for us, not just the end of the line or the end of the poem that it kind of predicts.

5:40 Erin: I would add to that the use of metaphor, especially the metaphysical conceit. Right. Which Dunn was accused of and criticized for. But this bringing together very different things is one as the metaphor for the other. And then maybe the introduction of paradox, too. But the use of metaphor, and we've talked about this a little bit on the show, but is in collapsing distinctions is evocative of merger, of the collapse of distinctions and things just kind of dissolving into oneness. Right. You could say that one could think of the whole world sort of being reduced in that way to these metaphorical commonalities and distinctions falling apart. And so there's merger, which is evocative of like an early symbiotic relationship with the mother, something prior to separation and individuation. And on the other side of that, there's the kind of dissolution of distinctions that you get in death. And the merger. Right. With the natural environment, with the body, at least. Right. And if you're religious, whatever it is that an afterlife means in that context, perhaps some kind of merger or union with God or heaven or something like that.

6:54 Wes: I am really interested in that. I'm also thinking just about the sort of merger of form and content, like, inherent in poetry or in the poetic line. And I just. The more I looked at the form on the page, you know, I was thinking about the sonnet as a kind of a coffin, right? Like a box. Something that's been famously commented on many times. Like Wordsworth has that great sonnet, nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room. This idea that the sonnet itself is this little membrane that keeps all its contents within it. And we have this merger too, within the sonnet of the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean forms that Donne is working with. Right. And which. Which is also like this mashup at this time is not particularly uncommon. And it's true of several of the Holy Sonnets, I think. But it takes advantage then of these two turns because of this mashup. So there's like. There's the turn in the. In the traditional place after the eighth line. But then there's also this turn right before or right in the final couplet in this very typically Shakespearean kind of mood, so that you have two climaxes in the po. It's self contained, it's box like, coffin like. But it also has a lot of movement within that. And A lot of different kinds of registers coming together.

8:13 Erin: Interesting. Do you want to read it?

8:15 Wes: Yeah. Okay. This is one of the many poems that I had my students recite in school. And sometimes I would have to hear this, like, four times a day. So I have this one memorized. All right, here we go. Death be not proud. Death be not proud Though some have called thee mighty and dreadful for thou art not so for those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow Die not, poor death, Nor yet canst thou kill me from rest and sleep which but thy pictures be much pleasure Then from thee much more must flow and soonest our best men with thee do go Rest of their bones and souls delivery. Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings and desperate men and dost with poison, war and sickness dwell and poppy or charms can make us sleep as well and better than thy stroke. Why swell' st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally and death shall be no more. Death thou shalt die.

9:20 Erin: Very nice. Exactly the way I would have read it. So you get this personification of death, but also his addressing death directly and giving death a command. This is like this imperative mode. Was something Dunn did, I guess, in several poems. And there's one with the sun. Right. Go away, go away sun. Is that what it's called?

9:48 Wes: Unruly, busy sun, son, go away, Come back another day. Busy something fool. Unruly son, Busy, unruly fool. Die something. Anyway. Yeah. I love that poem.

10:02 Erin: Yeah. In this case, there's also the. There's the accusation of death being proud, which is a curious and unexpected accusation, I think. Right. It's not what we would think of as the first thing to dislike about death, even a personified death. So I think here it's hard for me not to think immediately of death as in the classically personified death. And the shroud and with the scythe and all that stuff. And going around touching people and bringing them off to. So that kind of personification of death. That death is a kind of meager creature, in a way. Silent. And if you pull back the cloak, just bones. And here the idea that his death has swollen and proud. And I suppose, the. So conscious of its own power, I guess, so over the psyches of human beings. So we go from our own. The pivot is from our fear of death to. Not directly to the idea of an afterlife for an eternity. But instead, the fear of death is counterposed with this attack on the pride of the personified.

11:17 Wes: I just love the fact that this imperative at the beginning is a negative Rather than a positive imperative. So just thinking about how crappy this poem would be if it was like, death, be humble. You know, something like that, right? Like, the negation, I think, identifies it, brings death down. It sort of removes, like, a kind of power there from the adjective that we want to assign to death. And it's sort of killing death, like it's killing our sort of beliefs about death. Even if they are, as you say, and I think they are unexpected beliefs that he's putting into our mouths a little bit. I think it's this very negation. The two nots that we get from the beginning are kind of already performing what's gonna happen in that last line. It's already kind of killing death a little bit with just the way that the phrases are structured. And I'm thinking, too, like, what you say about being proud and being puffed up and swollen, as death is called in the third to last line. That made me think about the fact that images of being puffed up, of being swollen, that are inherent in pride, are also, like, literally. I mean, I can't help thinking this just because Donne is such a bodily poet. But I'm thinking about, like, a swollen corpse. And since death in this poem, what's so weird about the movement of this poem, which we could obviously talk about, and maybe you agree, maybe you don't, in the end, it's transformed into something that isn't even death. Or it's repeatedly evacuated, displaced somehow, as in these negations. But by the end, I feel like it's been transformed maybe into something. And so that image of a swollen corpse is really interesting because that in itself is not death. That's like someone's body. It's death maybe working on that body in some way. Death is definitely acting on this body, but it's also, like, literally sort of replacing, like the. The only image that we can have of death is of its action on an actual human being. So the personification is sort of immediately being, in my mind, kind of twisted into a diminishment of death's force. Because really, the only way that we can conceptualize it as you're saying, is, like, to visualize the human being affected by that death.

13:28 Erin: That is spot on, in my view. I just did a little free writing, rewriting of the poem as an exercise. I thought, well, how would I attack death? And at one point I said, these agencies are life's agency, and you master only the effect. Slave to the lawfulness of matter and form, the way they wind down. I Suspected I would just reveal something about Dunn's poem by doing that, which I think you just did, which is to say even the beginning, by personifying death, you've defeated death because you've created a creature, right? And everything happens within this terrain of life, and terrain of life, everything happens within that frame, right? So someone dying in a way, that's a thing of life, right? Those are biological forces and natural laws at work. And you know, and if you have to depict death as a kind of. To think about death, you have to depict it as a kind of creature or ghost in a way. But it's still. It's a humanoid form and it gives you some sense of the predominance of life or the greater power of life in a way. And then finally, I think the way you put it was effects, right? Death is the effect, but it's not an agency or a power in a way, right? The power is what happens within life. It's part of the rules of life, right? Which is that for whatever reason, reason, the imperative of a living thing is to die, whether of an old age or through an accident. But again, those are the forces of life at work, even in their own termination. And then the effect is death. And that lack of power sort of parallels the nothingness and the difficult even imagining. How do you personify something that is nothing, right? least as far as we can speculate within our own experience. Either one is. Believes in an afterlife and think that experience continues in some form, or one posits a nothingness that is inconceivable. So this complete cessation of experience, that's great.

15:31 Wes: You're even making me look at the second line. Perhaps I'm overreading, but those last three hard beats that are great art. Not so now I've just put a square around art. Not, you know, I know of course art is just the antiquated form of are. But now I'm seeing it as, you know, not art. So we have this idea that some. I've heard some people out there call you mighty and dreadful. And I'm thinking about this in relationship to overthrow, which it's yoked to in the next line. It's just like, is Death supposed to be a king? Is Death supposed to be. Or a usurper? Is it supposed to be an army? What other things are mighty and dreadful that would be. Or in other words, what kind of collection of images is that supposed to call up for death personified, I wonder.

16:22 Erin: Well, I'm trying to think if it's Just a strange way to think about it or not. We think of death as dreadful. But it's not until you start thinking poetically, I think, that you start thinking of it as this mighty force. Or at least rhetorically. And I think he even talks about death a lot that way in his later writings. Just skimmed some of his sermons. And he just got more and more preoccupied with death, I think, as time went on. And seemed quite morbid about it. Despite the religious hope that it's supposed to be vindicating. But I think, you know, again, we're prone to think of that dreadfulness. But the power part and the pride. The pride part is the consciousness of power. And then the mightiness is power here. So you're trying to deflate something that. Or I guess convince Death that he's not all that. You know, I guess if you were right to write this more straightforwardly. The approach would be to say, hey, everyone, don't worry about Death. It's not so bad as long as you're not a sinner. Or as long as you atone and are saved, or something like that. And the one you would be trying to persuade is human beings. Right. Instead of Death himself. And the argument would be, it's the thing that we get at the end is that there's an eternal waking. That death isn't what it seems to be. So then, you know, the question is, what is the significance of saying, okay, it's not human beings I'm directly trying to persuade in this poem, but Death himself that he's not so mighty and dreadful?

17:53 Wes: Do you mean almost in like a talismanic kind of way like this is done talking to his own mortality.

18:00 Erin: I'm just thinking of the conceit of the poem as personified death. And speaking to that persuading that. I keep wanting to call it a creature, although that's not a good word, but that being. But yeah, I mean, I think speaking to his own morality. What are you thinking there? That sounds promising.

18:16 Wes: Well, I'm thinking about the fact that in the fourth line, when we finally get Death acting in a Truly. It's when Death actually kills the speaker kills Dunn himself. I think that overthrow is a violent word, but to me it's a bit abstracted. Die earlier, die not poor Death, nor yet those you think thou dost overthrow. Die not poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. Overthrow feels to me a bit abstracted. Die almost like emphasizes Death's victims there. There's a bit of passivity. And so it highlights what death does. As a kind of byproduct of sorts. This happens to people rather than death actively working on them. And this is one of the interesting things about having a personified poem about a subject which could also be a verb. So, of course, overthrow and death too, here are tied up in further sort of evacuations of death's power. So there's like this misapprehension, right. You would think that it's mighty and dreadful, Right. You think it overthrows you, but it doesn't. And then the negation, the repeated knots. But here, finally, we get death actually killing someone, and that is the speaker himself. So Dunn is the one who's. Who's taking the blow, as it were.

19:38 Erin: He's saying, nor yet canst thou kill me.

19:41 Wes: Right.

19:42 Erin: So what are you just thinking? The image is evoked of.

19:46 Wes: Yeah, the landing on me, I think, is really evocative there. Like, of course, on the one hand, as you're saying this is a persuasion of death, it's also being performed for an audience of readers who are hopefully going to find the object being that they find the threat or the promise of their own death to be diminished, their fear of it to be diminished. But I think by doing that, what's interesting about the poem and what Donne understands really well about poetry is that you have to kind of like, put yourself on the line in every poem. And, you know, he's, like, very good at the performative. I think this is why he was such an effective speaker and sermonizer. And so he. I like the fact that it lands. The sentence lands on me. That's significant for me.

20:39 Erin: Well, you were pointing to the word overthrow, which I think is interesting because it turns us to a martial metaphor that sheds light on mighty and dreadful, so. Or it sheds a new light on that. And it reminds me of Sonnet 14, Holy Sonnet 14, which we'll be doing next. But where sexual and martial metaphors are kind of combined. The idea of a God reaching us by sort of overthrowing our citadel. So for those whom thou thinkst, thou dost overthrow. So the image I get connecting those two things, mighty and dreadful and pride and overthrowing someone riding into war. It's hard not to think of Game of Thrones now with the White Walkers.

21:25 Wes: I was thinking of Helm's Deep when you made the reference to batter my Heart. I was like, right, they're the orcs. Like, God is the orcs trying to get into Helm's Deep.

21:34 Erin: Anyway, sorry, but, you know, so zombie creatures who are also regal and proud and warlike and proud of their warlike effectiveness. Right. So you can. An army, a horde, let's say, might think of itself as death incarnate. And the. I'm thinking of Apocalypse Now, Death from above. Right on the helicopter and Lt. Kilgore. So this position of being the personification of death, I think warriors and soldiers, and even maybe we do this ourselves in our daily lives in various ways, but thinking of ourselves, thinking of our own effectiveness, or thinking of the ultimate form of effectiveness as lying in the capacity to deliver death to others. So for instance, it's one thing to induce admiration in others. That's one form of power. And the whole idea is to make the consciousness of the other submit and serve our own self consciousness or our own sense of being. But the ultimate power is to just extinguish the other consciousness. Especially if it is not in line, if it doesn't share the right values, if it's, you know, other different, if it's disrespectful, if it doesn't flatter one's pride. So going from that martial metaphor, we get people that think it overthrows die. Not so. So we go back to death overthrowing. It sounds like overthrowing a regime or a king, something like that. Right. But now we go back to just you think you overthrow them, but they don't die. There's a little bit of a lack of a parallel parallelism there, but. And you can't kill me either.

23:10 Wes: We are the kings, the people that death tries to kill. But we're still sort of kings in exile or something. I don't know.

23:15 Erin: I like that. No usurpation. So then the question is why what that means? Why, of course, literally death does kill me. What does it mean then?

23:25 Wes: Before we move on? I'm really stuck on this third line for its sound and its rhythm, even more than its sense. And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts, because I literally don't. I've been trying to puzzle this out. I find that third line to be really indelicate or something. Like we have all of these one syllable words until overthrow, obviously. Three syllable word and it's like almost silly for those whom thou thinks thou

23:54 Erin: dost overthrow, but of th sounds, say thou, say thou, thinkest thou five times fast.

24:01 Wes: But yeah, then we get that really interesting reversed foot in the middle of that line. Think' st thou where the stress is not where it should be, or it's consciously reversed so that the emphasis is not on thou or death, but on thinking. It's reduced in the sort of imagination as well as in the sense of

24:27 Erin: the line, is it a double stress? Thinkst thou troche? Is that what you would call it or.

24:33 Wes: Yeah, troche would be stressed unstressed. You're saying it's a spondi.

24:37 Erin: Spondi. Spondi. Spondi.

24:39 Wes: Yep, spondi. I think it's trochaic.

24:41 Erin: Okay.

24:42 Wes: Because then thinkst thou dost overthrow. Yeah, I think it's a trochee. That's how I would read it anyway. Because it's. Because it's a qualification for those whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow. I think thinkst is actually the highest point of that line.

24:55 Erin: Right. I agree with that. Yeah, definitely.

24:58 Wes: So it diminishes the vow that follows it. And if you kind of like are running up to thinkst it a little bit makes even the stress of the thou preceding it to it dwarfs it by comparison.

25:11 Erin: This is the type of use of a more natural speaking sound that done was criticized for. Right. By Johnson and others. And as I guess it's inklings of modernism. Right. T.S. eliot was a big fan. And it creates different rhetorical possibilities, I think. So it's apt to the attempt to persuade to thinkst. Right. Thinks you think, but it's not true. So to have that tenting there right in the middle of the line.

25:36 Wes: But you're not bothered by this series of single syllable words seems kind of plodding to me.

25:43 Erin: Or those whom thou thinkst thou dost. Yeah, I guess I didn't notice that it's all one syllable until the last word. Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm bothered by it. But what bothers you?

25:56 Wes: Well, even in the following. Well, because it's sort of ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. You know, it's a little bit chimy. Like for instance, in the following line. Actually, now I'm just noticing the following line consists entirely of single syllable words and yet we don't notice it as much.

26:12 Erin: It's almost like because it's broken up, there's some pauses or the cadences there.

26:17 Wes: That's right. That's a really good point. But also I think that weirdly for me, the alliteration in the third line is calling attention to a kind of choppiness, even as the th sound would seemingly serve to make it a little bit more smooth and mellifluous. Instead it calls attention to something about the line that's almost silly to me.

26:39 Erin: Yeah, I mean, I see what you're saying. You get more. The first two lines Sort of cadences mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so. And more typical. I guess it's typical iambic pentameter, right. And then you get this weird, choppy, differently stressed line that runs. That goes much more quickly. So it's like a sudden burst of machine gun fire. And then you're back to the cadences again.

27:03 Wes: Perhaps the idea that the sort of conclusion of the line logically occurs in the following line means that this is like, you know, speeding to overthrow. And then only in the next line do we get that nice cesura that will kind of relax us a little bit. Die, not poor death.

27:21 Erin: Yeah, the whom, the pronoun doesn't get its verb until die. Yeah. So poor death.

27:28 Wes: Poor death. So then we have from rest and sleep, which. But thy pictures be much pleasure. So of course, the only sort of notes I made on that line are the connection to Lady Macbeth. The sleeping and the dead are Buddhist pictures. And then the fact that we get rest and sleep, which sort of subdivided there. I find that interesting, but I don't have anything to say about it.

27:55 Erin: Yeah, I mean, it is always interesting that sleep is very. It's one of my favorite things.

28:01 Wes: So same when I can get it.

28:05 Erin: This speaks to what's terrifying about death, right? Which is loss of consciousness forever. Loss of experience, as I was putting it before. This weird story that we're a part of that terminates and we can't even, you know, we can't even be spectators to the termination or what comes directly after. But which speaks to an element of curiosity, you know, why want more? What is it we have lost? I think. Who is the philosopher who first made this? Epicurus. The argument of Epicurus was that no one could die because at the point of death, right? There is no one. So you can't be injured by death because there's no party anymore to the event. So Wes dies once Wes has died. You speak of Wes being dead in a metaphorical way, but not in a literal way, because the subject, Wes, has disappeared and there's no entity to ascribe the property dead to. So we can't be harmed at that point. Which is a. That's a much more abstract philosophical route to go that evades the strategy of appealing to an afterlife. But although I think the two have weird crossover, which I won't go into now because I can't articulate it or express it, what I'll say is I'll allude to this and this. This is related to discussions on the partial examined life about personal identity. And this question of death. But there's weird paradoxes involved in personal identity and death speak to the impossibility of death, which I can't. I'm not going to be able to give a good explanation of that, so I won't. But. So in other words, the idea of being eternally alive or impossible to extinguish is. It's not just predicated on belief in an afterlife. I'll just say that. So I think there's something deeply ingrained in us which thinks that this termination of experience is in some sense impossible. So I kind of got us off track there on the whole sleep rest thing.

30:09 Wes: I really. I want to put a pin in this Epicurus quote. I really like that because at the end of the episode, if I may, I want to recite something as well from Donne's Meditation 17, which I think will shed some additional light on that or be in conversation with it. Not the famous part of. Pretty much all of Meditation 17 is really famous, but not the most famous part about Ask not for whom the Bell Tolls, but a different part that I really love.

30:35 Erin: So I'd like to pause for a moment to ask you to fill out a survey that will help us to get to know you, your interests, and what you think of the show. Please support the podcast by taking our short [email protected] R Airwave. It only takes a few minutes, and your feedback will help us improve subtext and find new sponsors who actually interest you. There is even a place at the end to tell us anything you want. Plus, as my way of saying thank you, you will be entered to win a $500Amazon gift card. Again, that's surveymonkey.comr airwave, or click on the link in our episode notes. You know, he's pointing to an interesting paradox here about the pleasures of sleep and rest and the fact that. The strangeness of. The fact that we fear cessation of consciousness when we kind of welcome it at various times, and we're also beset with it constantly. There's a lot that goes on, you know, if you think of the limitedness of our stream of consciousness and attention and things that we don't notice and that might fade. You know, the feeling of my. Of the chair against my thigh right now, which. It's an experience when I attend to it. I know it's been there all along and it registered in some sense, but if I hadn't just drawn attention to it, that I would never, you know, that would have gone off to oblivion. Oblivion. And remained in my preconscious or whatever you want to call it. And we have this little. This is kind of a William James thought, but this little spotlight in our stream of consciousness that's very narrowly focused. And we're constantly losing experience to the past as well. So death is a constant, right? It's as experience. Like, what can you say about 10 years ago, about 20 years ago, that is no longer. We can say something about our memories, but only vaguely, right? We can't re. Experience those things. We know that we had such experiences. We might be able to bring back a little bit of it, but only in this very vague way. And then as far as who we were, you know, you reach a certain point in your life, it's like, that was a different person. I'm linked to them in memory, but that person, in a way is gone. So anyway, I'm just trying to think of all these ways in which there is this death in life. The point here, of course, for Donne, is just that let thy pictures be is that we get. You think you're scary. Well, we get. We actually. What you do for us, for the most part, or at least, you know, in your kind of pictures of you that occur within life is actually provide pleasure.

33:09 Wes: So that's great. I'm thinking too, about. I guess I got at that a little bit sort of accidentally in my intro. But this idea that, like, if you have many phases to your life, as I think you and I both have, having different experiences or different sort of reinventions or. I mean, in short, Madonna is the true expert in death. But basically the different types of lives that you might lead may arguably, if I'm understanding you correctly, acquaint somebody like us who's had many different phases and sort of reincarnations, if you will, in our own lives, than someone arguably, who hasn't. You know, not that we're superior in any way, right? But like, that maybe those types of experiences help to demarcate one's life in ways that might be more invisible to someone who, like, stays in the same job and, you know, the way any kind of interminable experience really does seem to last forever, and time has relatively little meaning when one is engaged in something for a long time. Is that. Am I taking that too far?

34:14 Erin: You know. Yeah. I'm thinking of this hypothetical now in which, yes, if we were doing the same thing every day forever, then that remark I made about losing the past would be less true. We would always be reinforcing the same Thing over and over again. I'm thinking now of repetition, compulsion and psychoanalysis, AKA death drive, which is just repetition without progress, stasis, which is possible within life. Not to say that everyone doesn't do a bunch of career changes. Isn't that position really, really. We're talking about growth. We're talking about psychological growth, personal growth, career growth as well. This is another interesting accusation or argument against the power of death that one might make to personify death, which is just that. Look, the engine of progress is the leaving behind of the past, is the death of the past and the death of the former self or the death of certain qualities one once had, right? What if you get over a hang up? If you. If you change as a person therapeutically, you leave some portion of your identity behind. And it's one of the reasons it's so hard to do because that part of you just doesn't want to die. That's scary, right? So even if it's maladaptive and painful, that it'll fight to stay alive within you and it might feel like death to. To try to give it up.

35:32 Wes: So I think those are excellent points. And I'm thinking. I'm thinking about the fact that we get two rests in this poem as well. We get a lot of yoked images, double images, rest and sleep, rest of their bones and soul's delivery. And I'm thinking about that delivery of the soul as being related to what you're saying. And also a little further back to that Epicurus quote as well, that this is just a release into which you become something different. Not to pack too much in here, but I'm also thinking quite a bit about line 7 and this only the good die young kind of reference here, right? Which is a proverb that, whether through Billy Joel or some other means most people have heard of. And I was wondering about the origin of this. This idea that only the good die young or that, you know, good people tend to die first soonest, whatever the case may be. And I found interestingly that it's. There's a section of this in the Greek anthology, which I have, and I looked it up. It originates from a story in Herodotus, history. There's a section I could read from. Okay, so this is gonna be really bad because I don't know how to say any of these names. Like, they're particularly opaque to me. But in the Greek anthology Cleobis, Cleo and Bis and Byton or bitten B I T O N. Wow, these are reaching far back.

36:59 Erin: The neanderthal Greeks in their mythology. Yeah, I'm not familiar with them.

37:04 Wes: They enabled their mother, Cydippe, C Y D I P P E, the priestess of Hera at Argos, to sacrifice by putting their own necks under the yoke when the oxen delayed. You could see this is right out of the Greek anthology. So this is quite a sentence. So they replaced the oxen that Sidope was going to sacrifice.

37:24 Erin: Why did they do that?

37:25 Wes: They were missing. The oxen were missing. So these youths hitched themselves to the cart to carry their mother to the festival for the goddess Hera. They say she was so pleased that she prayed to Hera that the highest human happiness possible for man should befall her sons. Thus she prayed and that night they died. So this idea that like the greatest thing that can happen to you is that you. So I have another source that I found online. Yeah. At the temple, the grateful mother asked Hera to reward her sons with the greatest gift anyone might receive. Whereupon her sons lay down to sleep and never woke again. And so this story, the original proverb, which is whom the gods love dies young. Or you know, something like the best people go first. And so I'm thinking about proverb, you know, tells us that if you're loved by the gods, you die young. And this idea that the story itself contains sleep and the idea that you go to sleep and then you just never wake up, and that this is a blessing by Hera, but also it links sleep and death pretty closely.

38:29 Erin: So only our best men with thee do go. Yeah, I'm trying to think, what is the origins of that thought? I mean, I know that when I was much younger and lost a loved one, I think the feeling was it's kind of a misanthropic thing too. But I being around other people and thinking, well, this person who died was so much better than them.

38:50 Wes: Yep.

38:50 Erin: Why did she die? I guess when you think of someone who has died, there's that element of idealization as well. Once someone is gone, they become the best. Right. They become corporeal. Actual human beings with all their flaws just can't compare to that. So maybe that's. I'm just trying to give an off the cuff psychology of it because I haven't thought about it. Made me curious. And then you might think of, okay, best men with thee do go. I think originally reading the poem the first time, I was thinking of people who go to war. The most valiant, the bravest end up at the front and get killed. And the people who are in a leading Role and taking the most risks in whatever context. It doesn't even have to be war, but. And then blessed in a way. Best and blessed, but in the sense of luckiest. Right. So maybe there's that connotation as well, which I think you were getting at, which is just that it's our best and also our luckiest to go with you because they get to rest. Although it's a strange way of putting it. Rest of their bones, since there's a potential double entendre there. And then Sol's delivery, which just turns death into a courier. Now,

40:00 Wes: I know all I could think of. Doordash. Yeah.

40:03 Erin: Death in little brown shorts carrying a package with a soul in it. So death has now become a link between two worlds, between this world and another, where the best people are and continue on.

40:20 Wes: Yeah. I'm thinking, too, that there's something inherent in the original story from Herodotus about these two boys, that they were willing to carry their mother to the sacrifice and they were willing to debase themselves, in a manner of speaking. Right. By putting themselves in the position of the oxen, the beasts of burden. Obviously, that has, say, Donne, who probably was very familiar with these classical pieces and coming out of a Christian tradition, of course, that would have a lot of Christian resonance. And so I'm wondering about that. The Christological implications of this idea, which, of course are kind of inherent through the whole poem. And, you know, the end we get the sort of transposition of 1 Corinthians. This idea that death is a portal, that it affects a transformation which is ultimately triumphant, I think is obviously inherent in the, say, the genealogy of this poem from both the Judeo Christian and the sort of Greco Roman side here. So in the following line, death then becomes a slave, and it's a slave to the master in this equation are further sort of personified things. And then actual men, kings and desperate men, fate and chance are clear to me. Kings are to a certain extent, clear to me as well. Desperate men is really interesting. Yeah.

41:42 Erin: Well, I was thinking of murder and. Right.

41:45 Wes: But also suicide, in which case desperate men would be slaves to themselves, which is really fascinating.

41:52 Erin: I like this idea that in a way, it's like a kind of Platonic question about abstraction versus or universal versus particular. Right. Death is instantiated in the doings of human beings. Only can be what it is through those doings. Whether it's, you know, it could be people killing each other. Could be chance. Could be just falling down in the shower, getting a disease. It could be, you know, Microscopic organisms or just old age. But. So maybe human doings is going a bit too far in that sense. But it's, you know, the worldly, worldly doings. It's not Hades or it's not death's world which controls all these things. Again, that's just the receiver. The kind of death that sort of picks up the garbage. Sorry, that's a bad way of putting it. The effect death receives, the effects of things that actually happen in life. And all the power is in life. You know, if someone's killing or even killing themselves. The agency is a. Of a living person doing things within life. And it's not something that death is doing. And in fact, death is slave to it all in the sense that there would be no undying if these things weren't. Death would not have any work to do, any garbage to pick up if all this stuff weren't happening. So we get the idea, you know, when the world finally ends and there's no more dying to be done than death, you know, as per the last part of the line of this, death will also die.

43:20 Wes: I like that garbage idea, too, because we have this littering at this point of the poem with lists. You know, stuff just starts to really pile up like bones. So we get this list there of four things. And then in the following line, line 10, we hear who Death also, like, hangs out with. Poison, war and sickness. In fact, they're his. He doesn't just hang out with them, they're his roommates. And that, I think, is pretty straightforward to me. But in line 11, we get what I. Again, I don't know if I'm overreading or if I'm just, like, staring at this piece of paper for too long. We get. And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well and better than thy stroke in the following line. But we get. For me, I feel like there's a little bit of reflection of line 10 into line 11 sonically, if not in terms of meaning. But maybe there's something we can make out of this meaning. So we get poison in 10 and poppy in 11. And then we get the most tangential connection, war and charms. Which I think there's something in there. And then we get sickness, dwell and sleep as well. So poison and poppy, war and charms. I think that's not just in my imagination, right?

44:32 Erin: No, no, no, no, no. Yeah, that seems right.

44:36 Wes: And then sickness and sleep. So I'm interested in, you know, if this makes sense in sort of reading the collection of former items on the list with the latter items, I mean,

44:47 Erin: we go from poison to poppies. I mean, if you think about what's happening with poppies or charms and the. The effect that they have, sleep, this is all. Again, it doesn't transcend the framework of life. It all happens within life. And the power lies with the poppies. And then the. The effect is sleep. But death is not the agency in poison. Again, death is the receiver, so to speak. The agency is still, you know, poison or war or sickness. And death dwells with them in the sense of. But if he's the roommate, he's the moocher, he's living off of their labors.

45:28 Wes: He's Kramer. I like it.

45:31 Erin: That's right. Bursting into the apartment and getting the cereal out. So the counterpart there is sleep, but death sleep. Both effects of something and those things that create the effects of the powerful things. And so there's no reason for either sleep or death to be proud. But the distinction is that the idea of dwelling with those things with death is a very passive. And it is that way only because, again, death is an abstraction that transcends the frame. And sleep happens within the frame. Right. Sleep is a real thing that creatures do on an ongoing basis. And dying is a process and activity of the being. Dead, unlike being asleep, is not itself a ongoing process and an activity. It's the termination of all of that. Again, so it lies outside of the frame in this very confusing and paradoxical way. So I think this turns the paradoxical nature of death against itself. And that's why I was referencing Epicurus. It's much more clever than just an appeal to an afterlife. It uses the inconceivability of death in a way against. Against itself.

46:40 Wes: So this latest comment that you've made is littered with Princess Bride references. I just have to say, I mean, and inconceivable is really the inconceivable, the cherry on top of the sundae. Because I'm like, of course. Right? I mean, death is a binary state. You can't be only mostly dead, right? Yeah.

47:00 Erin: Oh, God, that's so funny. Yeah, I'm just being that guy. You really are thinking I was being clever.

47:09 Wes: No, no, not at all. Well, that's a combination of Billy Crystal's character and Wallace Shawn's character right there. The two, arguably the two best characters in the film. Not forgetting Carol Kane as Billy Crystal's wife. But anyway, yeah, so we have. And better than thy stroke, which I like there for that, obviously, for that double meaning, we have the stroke of the bell, the Bell tolling in the middle of that line. But also, I suppose, an ax falling.

47:34 Erin: Yeah.

47:35 Wes: Or sword separation of having a stroke.

47:39 Erin: Just kidding.

47:42 Wes: The separation there, I think. Like that stroke, when that stroke falls in the middle of that line. Arguably, that is the moment when death truly dies. Rhetorically in the poem, perhaps.

47:52 Erin: Well, I'm thinking of the scythe there as well. Right. So if you think of death personified and the reaping, the. The act of reaping, so. And so they make us sleep better. There's this again. There's this comparison between sleep and death and the idea that sleep is better, but also that, well, is there. They're more effective. That's interesting, actually. It's like saying the poppies have a power and effectiveness that your stroke doesn't or isn't. You see what I'm getting at here?

48:21 Wes: Yeah.

48:21 Erin: It's a little bit confusing. Is it the sleep that's better or the agency of the things causing sleep or death?

48:29 Wes: I think ultimately the grammatical antecedent would be sleep, but.

48:33 Erin: Yeah. So a better sleep. Right, of course. I mean, this is like the clear reading, which is just to say, look, you're not the only one who can make people sleep. But there's a kind of sleep which is better. Doesn't quite fit with the idea of waking eternally. I mean. Right. In a way, death should be the better sleep from a religious standpoint.

48:58 Wes: But my reading in line 12 is that the word stroke and that semicolon there, that in fact kills death in that moment. Death personified in that moment. And then the second half of the line is actually the swelling of the now dead corpse. So this is the killing of death himself or the person that death has killed. And then we get this communal.

49:22 Erin: So it would mean. On one reading, it would just mean pride. Why swallowest thou, then? Why are you proud? But then on. I see on your reading, it's also.

49:29 Wes: Sorry, I'm skipping ahead to the vague secondary reading.

49:33 Erin: The other meaning would be swelling corpse. Interesting. I didn't think of that.

49:38 Wes: Yeah. So, you know, the death is murdered. And now it's, you know, before, at the beginning, when we were talking about death being proud and swelling. Right. It's always sort of being replaced by. Imagistically, it's being evacuated and replaced by the actual human body that it affects. Whereas here, arguably, there's a sort of like triple meaning, because I think swelling recalls death being proud, of course, and the human corpse. Right. But it also. Perhaps this is the moment where death itself dies and death becomes a Corpse, a swelling body. And then in the following couplet, we get the pronoun we, the collective pronoun. So it's almost like maybe I'm, like, really taking this too far. I don't know. Or maybe there's a reading like this out there somewhere. But the last two, it's almost this effort for a chorus of mourning. Right. One short sleep passed. We wake eternally. So then it becomes a matter of, instead of individuation, killing me or death itself, death as a guy, as a singular person, death is killed. And then we all collectively wake eternally. And then death becomes. There's still that individuation of personification that occurs in the very last line of the poem, but also the larger concept of death. Right. So there's a kind of move toward the collective, in other words, in these last two lines of the poem, in which death writ large shall be no more. And that D is not capitalized. Right?

51:10 Erin: Yeah, that's important. I think what's being evoked here. Right. Is the resurrection. Right. And the end of the world. What is that called? Armageddon.

51:25 Wes: Sure.

51:26 Erin: What is the part?

51:26 Wes: I just know it involves Bruce Willis. Revelation.

51:29 Erin: Revelation. Thank you. Yeah. Thinking of an asteroid or whatever it is.

51:36 Wes: No, that's what killed the dinosaurs.

51:40 Erin: Yeah. So the end of the world. Revelation. And so there's some point where we're no longer just talking about individual human beings anymore, but humanity as a whole and maybe biology as a whole. Right. All living things. And the end of time, maybe, per se as well. So even matter. And at that point, there's no more small D death, individual dying to be done by. By individuals. And so capital D, death has nothing more to do. Right. It's a slave to all of those happenings. It's a slave to what happens within that framework of the world. And when all that stops, death dies. So getting at this dependency of the personified death on everything that's happening within existence, being life, whatever you want to call it.

52:30 Wes: And I like the fact that short sleep replaces death there. So really death isn't even really death. Like, you know, not only does it die, but it's not even really itself. I think at this point, it's totally lost any kind of power, even in its own meaning. It's just replaced by sleep. And then I, like earlier you said it results in an eternal waking. You use that phrase. And I think that sounds to me like way more terrifying than death itself.

52:58 Erin: Yeah.

52:58 Wes: As someone who's also an insomniac, you

53:01 Erin: know, how are you Gonna pass all that time in heaven. That's the problem.

53:04 Wes: Right, right. Well, yeah, and we've talked about this before, about the eternal being terrifying inherently. But, yeah, just the fact that in the end, again, it sort of transformed into something which is not death and then not itself. Kind of the opposite of death and then death itself, which is, of course, as I mentioned before, a reference to 1 Corinthians. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death as the enemy. In that line, too, actually shed some interesting light on those earlier lines as well.

53:38 Erin: Very good.

53:40 Wes: Yeah. So in relation to Sonnet 10, I was also thinking a bit, as I said before, about meditation 17 from devotions on emergent occasions. And as I said, you know, the whole thing is really famous, but this one part is my favorite part. And I've also kind of memorized this part as well. So not the for whom the bell Tolls part, or even the no man is an island part. This just like. Amazing. Meditation 17 is amazing. It's like an album with only number one tracks. All mankind is of one author and is one volume. When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators. Some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand is in every translation. And his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. I was thinking about this. Now you'll see why. I was thinking about this when you mentioned the Epicurus idea here, where, again, death is sort of displaced as he is in Sonnet 10, you know, God as this great author of man who's merely employing these tools of translation. And these tools are not death itself per se, but they're these synonymous actors, you know, acting on behalf of death, or like what we call the. You know, the roommates of death before these individual causes. Age, sickness, war and justice. So he even includes this sort of criminality, you know, sort of capital punishment element here as well, which is really interesting. But I just think it's beautiful. I love this part of meditation 17 even more than I love Death Be Not Proud, which I really love, just because of this idea of all of God's work as being a great library, I think is fabulous.

55:46 Erin: Yeah, this idea of translation is really interesting as a way of thinking about what happens. Translation into a better language.

55:55 Wes: That's right. I love this idea, ultimately, that death is just translation. And I think just as someone whose greatest wish for many years is just like read Tolstoy in the original Russian. I love this idea of the afterlife, not as this eternality that we've been talking about, but as a great library in which you can read everything in the best possible language. That's really wonderful.

56:18 Erin: Yes. Once again, please support the podcast by taking our short listener [email protected] or click on the link in the episode notes.

56:31 Wes: Okay, well, I think we're gonna move to Postscript now. I know we are going to talk about tar, the great Tar. Tar on Tar. We've both seen the film and we wanted to have a little bit of a informal chit chat about that movie. Doesn't have a lot to do with Dunn, but next time we will be back with more Dunn poems or a poem. We haven't decided yet, but we'll have a part two coming up soon.

56:57 Erin: Great.

56:57 Wes: All right. Thank you, thank you.

57:00 Erin: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media Podcast Network. airwavemedia.com once again, please support the podcast by taking our short Listener [email protected] Airwave or click on the link in the episode notes.

Roman Polanksi’s 1974 film “Chinatown” seems to have little to do with its titular neighborhood, which is the setting for only one horrible and final scene. Chinatown functions instead to represent the traumatic moment that drives this story just because it is hidden from view—a place indecipherable even to the hard-boiled private investigator who has seen it all … the place he doesn’t go … the place that bothers him to talk about … the place where inaction and evasion are the only ways to avoid causing harm. Wes & Erin discuss what Chinatown has to do with “Chinatown,” and how the theme connects the seemingly disparate themes of police work, political corruption, water rights, and incest.

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0:11 Wes: Roman Polanski's 1974 film Chinatown seems to have little to do with its titular neighborhood, which is the setting for only one horrible and final scene. Chinatown functions instead to represent the traumatic moment that drives the story just because it is hidden from view, a place indecipherable even to the hard boiled private investigators who has seen it all. The place he doesn't go, the place that bothers him to talk about. The place where inaction and evasion are the only ways to avoid causing harm. Today we discuss what Chinatown has to do with Chinatown and how the film connects the seemingly disparate themes of police work, political corruption, water rights and incest. This is Wes hall one.

0:56 Erin: This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext.

1:03 Wes: So, Erin, it's a movie that nothing really plot wise happens in Chinatown until the very end of the movie. And in the original screenplay, that's not in there. Polanski changed some things and said, well, we got to have a scene in Chinatown. If you're called the movie Chinatown, you gotta have at least one scene in Chinatown. And we learn almost nothing about Chinatown. The one thing we learn is that Jake Gittes, or a few John Houston, Mr. Gittz, that he used to work there, something bad happened there, we learned. We just get hints of that. So why is it called Chinatown?

1:44 Erin: I was thinking about that a little bit too. And Jake's casual bigotry, which prevents us from really, or for me anyway, from really developing any firm sort of liking for him. I think we're in sympathy with him for quite a bit of the film. But he's crude and he tells that really nasty joke, which is really stupid. And so I think these things are supposed to trouble our sympathy with him. But anyway, so it seems for him to be a symbol of this kind of corruption, some sort of moral invasion, I suppose, which again, I tie to his sense of bigotry. The fact that he has to return there seems, because it's set up in the dialogue of the film, that he tried to help a woman there and he just ended up hurting her. And this seemed to be the scene of his original sin as a cop as far as the film is concerned. And so because of the circular nature of the film, perhaps it's inevitable that he ends up back there for this final confrontation and that history repeats itself.

2:47 Wes: It's history repeating itself. But if we knew more about that history, it could be a more poignant repetition in the end, right? I mean, It's a horrifying repetition. But if this movie were being made today, you would have seen some flashback at some point to the event to which this is referring. They wouldn't just let that go, and they wouldn't trust the audience to pick up on these little tidbits about what happened in Chinatown. This scene where they're. I forget if they're already in bed. Is this before they sleep together or after they've been chased out of the nursing home? Is that it? And they're having a talk, and Evelyn says, does this usually happen to you, Mr. Goose? And he says, what's that, Mrs. Mulray? Well, I'm only judging on the basis of one afternoon and an evening. But if that's how you go about your work, I'd say you're lucky to get through a whole day. By the way, when reading this screenplay, it actually comes across as more funny. It's a great film, but it's an even better screenplay in a way. And it makes me want. We can talk about that later. It makes me wonder about what Polanski was doing with this. But anyway. And he says, it hasn't happened to me in some time. And she's like, when was the last time? He's like, it was in Chinatown. He was working with the district attorney. And she goes, doing what? And he says, as little as possible. She says, the district attorney gives his men advice like that. He says, they do it in Chinatown. And then she says, it bothers you to talk about it. And then they start tending to his nose a bit. And then after that, she asks, so why does it bother you to talk about it? Chinatown, he says, bothers everybody that works there. But to me, it was. You can't always tell what's going on there.

4:30 Erin: Yeah, that's a really significant line, I think.

4:33 Wes: And then he says, I thought I was keeping someone from being hurt, and I actually ended up making sure they were hurt. This is, like, the one place where we get a bit of intimacy, human intimacy, and also transparency, and also some about what's going on underneath everything. Right.

4:50 Erin: Well, it seems that Chinatown is, you know, it's a state of confusion or a place in which things aren't as they seem, both for Jake and for us, because I think we're so often in Jake's position as the viewers.

5:02 Wes: Yeah, he's in every scene, actually. And everything is shot from his point of view. Polanski purposely did that. We see a lot of his back

5:09 Erin: and shoulders when we read the evidence, up to a certain Point exactly the way that he does. Especially because the movie has set both of us up. It set Jacob in his profession, and it sets as people who are watching him in his profession and people who've been to film noir before, to think that this is another straightforward case of adultery. I was really interested this time around in Jake as a character, why he's so rude to the Chinese workers in Mrs. Mulray's house. The gardener and one of the maids, he's nasty to them. And so it seems to me like this idea of Chinatown as a place of moral corruption for him. And, you know, and we never really quite understand why that is or what connection like Chinatown as an idea has with Chinatown as an actual place or Chinatown as a place where Chinese immigrants might live. And that seems to me to be like a really interesting complication in a character who I think we're supposed to like. And I just wonder what to make of that alongside the fact that he's able to weaponize antisemitism against the evil nursing home owner, so that he's sort of able to cleverly use to pull one over on the guy. So he has this awareness of that. But this Chinese bigotry is something that really this time around just troubled my perception of his character.

6:29 Wes: Yeah, I want to come back to that. Let's talk about his characterization and whether we're meant to like him. But just on the topic of Chinatown specifically, you're pointing out something I think is really important, which is that we're not really given any associations for Chinatown other than the fact that he used to work for the District Attorney there and the fact that something bad went down there, and the fact that it's supposed to represent some sort of inscrutability. When he says it bothers everybody who works there, you can't always tell what's going on there. That's one of the very few moments where you see much vulnerability from him. Right. And even the way Nicholson delivers that line, there's something poignant about it, but it doesn't tell us anything else. And of course, I'm sure many critic, many literary critic has talked about, well, the Orientalism of this idea that there's something inscrutable about Chinatown. I went looking for associations like what was Chinatown in LA in 1937? We know the, the film is set in 1937 because of a. You get a glimpse of that in the newspaper. But interestingly, Chinatown didn't exist in 1937. It had just been demolished. There's a two year period where it did not exist because it was demolished for some station or something. Before that, it was almost like a red light district. It was a very seedy, crime ridden type of place, apparently, or at least that was the reputation. And then what it was after that, I think it was really something quite different. I'm not sure. I didn't. I didn't get to that. But in this film, we really just know two things about it. We know Jake's association and then we know that the help live there. Right in the way Jake formulates it. Chinatown is basically where good deeds go to meet unintended consequences, right? He was trying to help someone. In that very attempt to help her or help this person, he got them hurt. Do we know it's a woman in this first case?

8:35 Erin: He says so explicitly at some point.

8:37 Wes: Okay.

8:38 Erin: I don't know if it's just a matter of a pronoun, but he does okay.

8:41 Wes: When it comes to inscrutability, despite the orientalism of that, it is true, right, that what it represents is a kind of unassimilated cultural pocket, or a partially assimilated cultural pocket. So something that is foreign even on home turf, something almost that's undigested, it's got a language that an investigator can't understand. It's hard to tell. Apparently what Jake means is it's hard to tell who's a criminal and who's not. And again, the reputation before the demolition was a kind of seedy red light district. And also it puts a policeman or an investigator in the position of almost being like a colonial occupying policeman, interestingly enough, on foreign ground. So as an investigator, you can't get plugged in to this in the same way. In a way, what an investigator is doing, it's partially social, right? So lieutenant homicide investigator for police department. Ideally, they're plugged into a community in some way so that people will talk to them or at least they have informants, right? They have the necessary relationships and there's even, you know, often some social connection to the. Whatever criminal element is there. So what someone doing that job in Chinatown faces is a culture that he basically can't navigate. So he's essentially flying blind as an investigator. It's hard to tell what's going on, as he puts it. The more interesting significance is the contrast between that and whatever crime is going on in this sort of immigrant neighborhood where there's essentially an underclass, right? You contrast that to the crime of the powers that be and of the founding fathers. This reminded me of the Godfather, where you have immigrants trying to make it in a new place. And in the Godfather, right. The idea is that the justice system as it stands can't do them justice, and so they invent their own. So there's organized crime, and I assume there's supposed to be organized crime in Chinatown that Jake found incomprehensible. The screenwriter Robert Town actually called Chinatown the American nightmare, as opposed to the American dream. So the American dream. Right. Good intentions are supposed to get you everywhere. You work hard, you play by the rules, and you get ahead. A place like Chinatown, let's say, maybe puts the lie to that. And then there's the larger association to the fact that LA itself was kind of built upon this original sin of stealing water from the Owens Valley from ranchers. Basically, LA agents from LA pretended to be ranchers and farmers and purchased all the land and diverted the water. That really happened. That's not unusual. Right. So there's always this, like, for states, and there's this foundational violence at the origins of things. That's the way societies at some point in history got organized. And maybe it persists in some form. So the inevitable amount of corruption in the government and legal system. So that's what I wanted to put on the table, is just that contrast between crime within an immigrant community being policed by people like Jake, and then the corruptions of the powers that be, which he sort of inadvertently gets involved in investigating in the film.

12:11 Erin: It's occurring to me while you're talking the significance of Curly. I'm wondering about Curly's relationship with his wife and the fact that they seem to live in a nice neighborhood and have been relatively assimilated. It's one of the geniuses of the film that Curly returns to serve a purpose.

12:28 Wes: Mm.

12:29 Erin: You know, like in film noir, it might be typical to see a privatized office in action in the first act of the film, where you'd have, you know, someone coming in, maybe like a sample client before, you know, the main client comes in. And so we think that Curly is just a character set up to show us exactly what it is that Jake does and Jake's sort of manner with him. And so we think that it's pure exposition, I suppose. Though there are some great things in that opening scene that.

12:55 Wes: Yeah, don't eat the blinds. I just had them installed.

13:00 Erin: It's so good. You know, so there's a lot, of course, about sight in that first scene and other things that we can unpack a little bit later. But you don't really know anything about Curly and his background. And then when Jake goes to his house later and Curly serves that practical purpose and we see the wife with the black eye, it becomes obvious that Curly is Italian and that his wife is maybe not Italian. You know, she could be Italian, but she's blonde. And that I wonder now, in light of this conversation, if that interesting cultural difference. He drives up in a neighborhood which could be anywhere, right? It's obviously not in some kind of Little Italy or Chinatown or whatever, you know, it's more suburbanized. But then he walks in and it's like a multi generational household. And there's all this stuff going on in there, which makes it to me obvious that it's an Italian household. And also that his wife is potentially not Italian. And I'm wondering if that transgression, that adultery of the wife is somehow related to that ethnic difference. I feel like now there's something there. And it didn't occur to me until now. And I don't think I even said to myself out loud, oh, Curly must be Italian. I think it was just something that like was flickering in my subconscious as I, you know, as he walks into the house. It didn't, it didn't occur to me. So I really. This is really not even a half baked thought. I wonder about that and the connection with adultery in that relationship.

14:27 Wes: So it sounds like you're relating adultery to cultural difference.

14:31 Erin: I don't know, like no one gets married expecting their wife to commit adultery. It's not as though adultery is an accepted thing in any culture. But it seems as though this wife of Curly's is maybe out of place within this household and maybe even among her own children and her in laws who I think are also sitting around the table. It reminded me of a woman under the influence which came out in the same year. And so the desire for her to have the affair, it seems like a desire to flee the cultural space in hindsight, like a desire to flee this Italian family. A desire not to be assimilated within the pocket, even if that pocket is itself assimilated into the suburban neighborhood. Does that make any sense?

15:14 Wes: Yeah, I mean, and then there's the question of domesticity and domestication and the effect of that on freedom. So one is assimilated into domestic life at a certain point and one is assimilated into relationships through mutual influence. People change each other and so there's a natural impulse to rebel against that. And I think adultery is part of that. This is important, right? Because seemingly he's just investigating these. It's not crimes, right. It's personal indiscretions. It's unethical behavior. So he's gone from the realm of investigating criminal acts to this twilight zone or hybrid realm. He's not a policeman. He can't go out and say, hey, I'm arresting you for adultery. Or, you know, let's take this to the district attorney. It's just giving the information to the aggrieved spouse.

16:07 Erin: That's interesting because one is, as you say, a legal crime. The other is still a crime of some kind of moral nature. So in one instance we have a way with the justice system of dealing with that quote, unquote, immorality. In the other instance we don't. And I'm wondering if the nebulousness of that is reflected in Jake's character where we have this person who on the one hand, I think, conceives of himself as being a good guy, of having a moral code, as these Raymond Chandler noir detectives often do, but who, on the other hand, has these very obvious flaws and who is not extending maybe his moral awareness or his moral capacity equally to everyone. Which you would hope that a cop would do that because he's part of the arm of the law. You would hope in an ideal world that he would not go after one person based on their cultural background over another. Obviously, this is. This is a problem that human beings have. It's as if the nebulousness of Jake's position as a private eye is a literalization, perhaps of the nebulousness of his own blinders or even casual racism or bigotry of some kind, as expressed when he was a cop and which he carries over with him into that realm.

17:30 Wes: He's no longer doing investigations that have to do with the law per se, right? Criminal law and things that can actually be enforced. He's in this nebulous realm of the ethical. And there are no ethical police or investigators. The enforcement can only be within the relationship. And of course, you see, right. Curly is like his wife, I think, is a black eye, right? So Jake at the end sees the consequences of what he's involved in. And this is. There's always the possibility of extra judicial punishment. And there are other noir films, I think, right, in which this becomes a big issue. Like Cupola is the conversation in which the protagonist. It's a big problem about what's going to happen with his surveillance. Is it going to get people killed? And it has gotten people killed in the past and will get people killed in the future. And one wonders about the relationship between that and Jake's having apparently gotten someone hurt in the past.

18:25 Erin: So conversation also came out in the same year. I just want to say, you know,

18:29 Wes: and the other thing, it's a fall from grace, apparently. I think he must have been on the police force or. I don't know if he can be an independent contractor for the DA or how that works, but I assume he had a job with the city that he lost. Maybe their investigators just attached to the da, But I assume that it's the police. He's had some fall from grace, and now he's suffering in that position doing something which is itself a little bit morally suspect and can lead to unforeseen, just as naturally, the kind of thing sharing surveillance with aggrieved spouses that can lead to unforeseen consequences. The very thing that he should be avoiding. Right. He should be avoiding anything that might do that, not worsening his situation by getting into even murkier territory with this stuff.

19:17 Erin: My understanding of his background, and it's entirely speculative, is that he left the police force willingly because he was disillusioned by whatever happened in Chinatown. I don't necessarily have any evidence for that, except for the fact that I think it's within his character to want to become a private eye and to exert the kind of retributive justice that maybe he couldn't exert as a cop. Like, he feels as though he's sort of restoring the moral order now in some sort of meaningful way. Also, the fact that he's interested in publicity and wants to have his picture taken makes me think that he was not dismissed in some way from the police force. He turns towards the camera and gives his information to the camera. When, oh, I forget what scene. I have this image of him turning around. He might be with Mrs. Mulray and she's walking ahead of him and he turns towards the cameras and is happy to have his picture in the papers. And so I think that if he had been dismissed in any kind of public way or that would have been a matter of public record, if there was some shame associated with his dismissal, then he might not be so eager for publicity. He makes a comment that publicity is good for his work.

20:30 Wes: Yeah, it was probably not he didn't get fired, but that he was disillusioned. It sounds like the trauma of getting someone hurt has something to do with that. This movie, in a way, really is about trauma and about the repetition of that. The tendency of someone to take something traumatic that happened to them and instead of evading it, repeat it, right? This is something. We'll talk about incest later. He's in a very Oedipus like role because he's ensuring that the very thing that he's trying to avoid is actually going to happen again. So what I was thinking of was, if I'm right and you're leaving the police force because you don't ever want to have this traumatic thing happen again, and maybe you say to yourself, all right, I'm never going back to Chinatown. And maybe you blame it on Chinatown, you know, and the inscrutability of things there and the cultural disconnect. And then, of course, you end up right back in Chinatown at the very end of the film. But you say that, and then you say, well, what am I gonna do? And you say, well, obviously, I just have to be a PI it's somewhat safe because it's not about crime per se, and I have some control and I don't have to go to Chinatown and this and that. It's lower stakes. You know, you can see the cynicism, right? The way it's characterized in the beginning. This screenplay is often taught as, like, one of the greatest of all time. So after Curly is trying to eat the blinds in the beginning, Gittis says, all right, enough is enough. You can't eat the Venetian blinds, Curly. I just had him installed on Wednesday. Curly responds slowly, rising to his feet, crying. Gittis reaches into his desk and pulls out a shot glass, quickly selects a cheaper bottle of bourbon from the several fifths of the more expensive whiskeys, which I did not get that from watching the movie until I read that. And I'm like, okay, okay, that's a. There are a lot of great little touches like that characterization, you know. And at the end of this, Curly says, I think I'll kill her. Again, we get pointed to the fact that this low stakes thing into which Jake has cynically retreated is not as low stakes as he thinks. He can get people hurt. He can get people killed by doing what he's doing, and he has to block that out to some extent. In the next scene, he purported. Mrs. Mulray, just forget about it. Leave it alone. It's not worth it. So he's even trying to dissuade people from using his services, but if they persist just a little bit. Okay, all right, let's do it. Here's my. Here's my fee. Before we move on to the next thing, I want to just bookmark one thing that I know that we will definitely have to talk about. I wanted to connect this to what you were saying about adultery and you were getting at a cultural element of that. But seemingly he's investigating adultery ultimately, and then it becomes official corruption and then it becomes incest. So there's a kind of circle that it goes through. And then there's some relation here to cultural difference in Chinatown, as we've been talking about. But I think we can hit those connections a little bit more towards the end of how it is that incest and water and official corruption and all that stuff actually relate. Because on the face of it, it looks just like a kind of random thing, you know, for him to think that he's investigating official corruption and end up. Which he is. But the more significant thing ends up being the incest of the father. Right. So the father has committed Noah Cross. Right. Speaking of water and the Bible and two crimes, and one of them turns out to be the more important one. But yeah. Did you want to say some more about that first scene in the characterization of Jake?

24:01 Erin: There are a few things that I'm interested in that opening scene. First, that Jake is full of cliches. He says a lot of meaningless stuff. You know, he says to Curly, when you're right, you're right. He says, let sleeping dogs lie to the fake Mrs. Mulray. Which is, I think, unintentionally, he's being funny there. I don't think it's his intention to be funny, you know, because it's idea that her husband's having an affair. So he says, let sleeping dogs lie.

24:28 Wes: Let me just say one thing about that. So he's telling her to let sleeping dogs lie. You're better off not knowing. That's what he's really trying to tell himself.

24:37 Erin: Right.

24:38 Wes: At least that's the message for him that he's not heeding. So in a way, he's his own soothsayer doing this Oedipus thing whereby he's achieving his fate by trying to avoid it. And I think, you know, the fact that these are cliches is important in that respect because cliche reveals that he's not thinking. It can reveal repression.

24:58 Erin: And I'm even thinking of the idea of the cliche as a form of idiom within the language. So he's reading, and we're reading this opening scene as a typical noir scene. We're reading him as a typical private eye. We have this, of course, the motif of sight throughout the film. So we have these images that are presented to us in the first scene, which are very obviously of Curly's wife having an affair, they're not graphic, but they're rather affronting. I like that.

25:27 Wes: I was going to make a dumb joke.

25:28 Erin: Go for it.

25:29 Wes: A backing. Okay. All right. So that is funny.

25:34 Erin: No, because I had to guess what the joke was, and it was. Oh, my God. Anyway, the idioms that he uses, I'm connecting to the language and the visual language of the film is what we come to expect in film noir. You know, even the Venetian blinds themselves, that Curly. That Curly eats them is funny, but it's this desire to be blinkered or blinded in some way with these blinds, of course. Like, it's in the word, but it's this desire to not know the terrible thing, to keep oneself sequestered or in the dark.

26:04 Wes: He's installed the blinds, and someone is trying to chew them up.

26:07 Erin: He's installed them. Right. And of course, there's irony in this, because it's his job, it's his way of making money, is to let them know the terrible thing. And so we see that there's a kind of generosity in that or a kind of desire to keep people from truths that will harm them. But I think it's related to this idea of idioms which protect us from difficult emotions, perhaps, and which also keep us in expected modes and patterns of behavior and speech. And so when the Chinese gardener, when he goes to Mrs. Mulray's house, says that the water is bad for the quote, unquote, glass. I'm trying to tie this idiom idea to the fact that Jake is then presented with an unusual use of language, which is a result of the language barrier between them, or this reinvigoration with the language, with someone who's not a native speaker using it in interesting ways very often. Like, the last thing you learn when you're learning a foreign language is the idioms in that language. So you're constantly potentially surprising the people around you with the things that you might say in their language. You can't get into those grooves with any kind of ease that other people. It's invisible to them. And so the moment of recognition when Jake realizes what the gardener is trying to say and the fact that it's actually revealing something that was hidden to him in plain sight.

27:32 Wes: Right. And it turns out to be glasses. Right?

27:35 Erin: So it's glasses, but also the fact that the water is salt water, so it's bad for the glass. So he's making fun of him because he's not using the right word. Or because his accent is preventing him from saying his R properly. So he's being really a jackass, you know?

27:51 Wes: So it's a case in which the cultural difference draws his attention to a clue that he wouldn't have seen it without having noticed that difference.

28:00 Erin: And then there's the triple meaning of, well, why is the water bad for the grass? He doesn't realize it until he returns to the house in the third act of the film, when the gardener gives a little bit more information that salt water is bad for the glass.

28:14 Wes: Ultimately, he puts all those clues together to accuse Mrs. Mulray of killing her husband, when it turns out it's actually the glasses belong to her father.

28:24 Erin: But that's another cliche. He and we as filmgoers expect her to be the villain because she's in the role of the femme fatale. So again, we're reading a kind of idiom into the genre, into the clues that we've been presented with. The only time that this really, I think, just doesn't quite work where we might. And you can argue if you had a different perception. But the only time where I obviously think like, okay, Jake is reading this situation wrong is very early in the film when he first sees Mr. Mulray at the. What is that? The public hearing? I don't remember exactly what the nature of that event is supposed to be. I think it's a public hearing where Mr. Mulray comes up to the stage and starts talking about the water and the dam and all that stuff and how the dam is not gonna hold. Looking at him, I'm like, this guy is not having an affair. I can just immediate tell. I don't know if that was the case for you.

29:14 Wes: Yeah, yeah.

29:15 Erin: Of course we've seen the movie before, but Jake has been primed to see him as an adulterer, obviously, because his wife is saying that he potentially is an adulterer. And maybe we're, like, curious. We're trying to figure this out, but to me, it's obvious that he's not. And it's obvious when he's with the young daughter that that is not a girlfriend, but I don't know.

29:36 Wes: Yeah, I don't know. It's been so long since I first saw it. I don't know if I got that or not. I think it's just confusing when on your first scene of the film, you're like, what is going on? Like, he's arguing with this woman. My impression when I first saw it was it just wasn't clear. But One is inclined to believe. Yeah. That he's not really having. I mean, the movie sets you up to be inclined not to think that adultery is actually what the real substance of all this is.

29:59 Erin: Well, actually, it's occurring to me right now, the fact that Mr. Mulray is accused of adultery with this girl would actually implicate him in incest. It's a misunderstanding. Of course. They think that she's another woman. Really? She's his stepdaughter. I never thought of that before.

30:17 Wes: Right. It's unclear what he knows. Right. We never learn. Who does he think she is, does he think?

30:24 Erin: I think he knows because Mrs. Mulrae said that he took care of her after it happened and I think raised the daughter. Right. Oh, maybe he doesn't know that it's Noah's. Is that what you mean?

30:35 Wes: Yeah. Does he know it's a daughter of incest? I'm not sure, but I think if

30:39 Erin: he did, then things would be different.

30:41 Wes: So he breaks off the relationship with Noah, and so I assume. Yeah. Thinking about that, I think he's friends and partners with Noah, and then they stop talking. So I think maybe the implication is that he does know. But I wanted to go back to something you were saying about language and the blinds, because eating the blinds, right. That's not a real thing people do. It's just a saying, isn't it? So that's not a cliche, but it's a figure. Figure of speech is kind of brought to life by Curly, who's literally eating the blinds and being told not to. Does he actually bite the blinds at one point? I think he does.

31:17 Erin: I think he does.

31:18 Wes: Yeah.

31:19 Erin: So that's when I should have known he's an Italian.

31:22 Wes: And one more thing, you know, that you were making the association between blindness and blinds, you know, and Jake is supposed to be an investigator and trying to see things, but he's significantly turns out to be blind. And his investigation makes him blind. Right. Accusing Mrs. Mulroy, that the clues come together in a way that keep him blind. But I wanted to point to, you know, one more connection to Oedipus, which is that Oedipus, right. Starts out in the position of investigator as well. The city is sick. Do something, Oedipus. You're the leader. Figure it out. So he becomes a private investigator, and really, of course, he's looking for himself. And then in the end, he blinds himself because the thing that he finds is too difficult to bear and to see. And you get the same association with the kind of City wide sickness here with the whole water thing and the official corruption.

32:12 Erin: That's good. I was wondering about. And maybe this is where we can kind of make our transition into this idea of incest. Because I was associating Jake, of course, with this damaged sight, his inability to see clearly. The most obvious Oedipal at the end of the film is of course, when Mrs. Mulray has one eye shot out. And this is prefigured with a ton

32:37 Wes: of things, you know, the speck in her eye.

32:38 Erin: Yeah, the speck in her eye. Curly's wife's black eye. Even Jake gets when his nose is cut, which is funny, you know, because he's nosy. He gets a black eye on that side, which makes sense.

32:48 Wes: Polanski. Polanski does it to him. Yeah, right. Polanski is the very diminutive thug.

32:56 Erin: Oh, I guess like the fish on the plate, you know, because it still has its head on and, you know, it has the eye on one side of its head. We can only see the one eye.

33:05 Wes: Yeah. Noah says, I'm sorry. Is that okay? I believe they should be served with their head on.

33:10 Erin: And this has nothing to do with anything, but I just. It has to do with bad sight, but it doesn't have to do with the one eye thing. I was thinking about that Mar Vista Rest Home. It means sea view. But it's also potentially, if we take Mar, its English language, meaning it's bad damaged view, bad view home. So anyway, you know, we get all these images of broken glasses and, you know, whatever. At the end when Evelyn's eye is shot out, that sort of identifies her as the Oedipus. And of course, she's the one who's been involved in this incestuous relationship and she's the victim of the film. But how does she then relate to Jake? You know, are all of these symbols merely just externalizations of Jake's psyche in his sort of Oedipus role? Or can we save them from just being victims of Jake's imagination? Here is Evelyn her own sort of Oedipus figure.

34:00 Wes: Yeah.

34:01 Erin: And does she have her own kind of arc rather than everyone just being part of Jake's continual disillusionment in Chinatown? What is her Oedipus or Oedipal role in this film?

34:14 Wes: I think your point is well taken. She's seen that she herself is the one who's seeing the thing that one ought not to see. And so she loses her eye in the same way that Oedipus loses his eye So I think you're right. It applies more aptly to her. But we can speak more generally about trauma, right? So trauma, what does it mean? What is it above and beyond pain? What makes trauma worse than pain or something different or more significant than pain? And the difference is that pain has a history. Pain slides into the past, and trauma is forever present. And part of the reason it's ever present is because the quote unquote thinking of Freud here, psychical apparatus itself is modified or damaged, right? So the eye is a very good metaphor for that. The ego, for Freud was at its most basic level, it's about movement and seeing and navigating the world, navigating reality. And one's ability to do that is fundamentally damaged by trauma. So Freud was thinking specifically about soldiers who came back from war shell shocked and were just having these horrific dreams. And why would anyone have those dreams? Why wouldn't the psyche just be primed to avoid that? Right? We're primed to avoid what's painful and to do what's pleasurable. Why would we keep inflicting that on ourselves? And why do in our lives we have what he calls a repetition compulsion to repeat these painful and traumatic things. And in Jake's case, it's the compulsion to repeat the circumstance in which he hurts someone, even if the trauma actually hasn't happened, right? So even if one has not been the victim of incest, one literally, one can to some extent be the victim of it psychologically with, like, an overbearing parent, for instance. But even beyond that, there's always the threat of it. There's always the taboo. People's lives and psyches get organized to some extent around that taboo and the prospect of trauma. In Jake's case, right, his eyes are damaged from the beginning of the film. In Oedipus Rex, right, Tiresia says, I'm blind, but I can see. I can see what needs to be seen, right? The truth, what's of significance. And you have eyes, but you can't see. So the damage to seeing is caused by this desire to. You want to evade knowing about it. So instead you act it out, you repeat it. And so, yeah, so symbolically, the physical blinding acts out the metaphor in the way that curly eating the blinds enacts that metaphor, that figure of speech. I don't know if any of this

37:04 Erin: is making sense, but it totally does. It's difficult because the crime in this film is so heinous. It's difficult to think about, like, what the psychic solution is then, you know, like how do you stop the cycle from occurring? Like, what should Jake have done? This dualism where we get good and bad eyesight, we also get the bifocals, Noah Cross's bifocals. This idea of taking both the short and the long view. Like, he's interested in the future. He wants the future so he knows what's going on in the present because he's able to control the police force. He's able to, you know, he's successfully enacting his corruption on the city. But it's toward this larger picture of how he wants the future to be or this grander vision. And I'm thinking about this in relationship to being two things at once, having two things at once. And because of the heinousness of the crime of incest, it's difficult to tie these things together in a way that's satisfactory to me. So Jake, you know, on his face we have like the good side of his face and the bad side, which has been marred by the knife. We have the two types of water, the salt water and the fresh water. Again, we have this bifocal thing, seeing up close and seeing far away at the same time. And then we have this idea of like the sister and the daughter. This is where it becomes difficult for me because I'm like, okay, well, it's not like both good and bad. That's just like, you know, that's terrible to connect those two. But two things occurring at once. That Evelyn could be telling the truth about a relationship which is both her sister and her daughter. And I'm wondering how that maybe connects to the significance of incest in the film and the idea that something can be. Obviously incest is disgusting, the crime is heinous. But I'm saying that it connects to this idea of. And maybe good and bad is the wrong terminology to use here, but good and bad seems to be one element of the system of opposites in which the film is sort of working. The grammar of the film and the images of the film are working in. So I don't know how to connect those things. But I'm.

39:00 Wes: Let me go back to. You started out with progress or the idea of Noah with his bifulcos, looking to the future. Noah Cross, very apt biblical name, in part because of the water, the flood, but also because that's paving the way for the future. Right. He's going to take everyone on a little ride into the post diluvian world. But yeah, go ahead.

39:24 Erin: Right. And also just that he stands across or astride generations nasty Sorry, go ahead.

39:30 Wes: Right, yeah, good point. This focus on progress. Right. On future, looking towards the future. This is a variation in a way on investigation. Right. So progress is anti incestuous. Let me start out with that. Because it's the opposite of regression where regression is becoming an infant again and going back into the mother's arms. Right. So to speak. And progress is an attempt to break away from that. And sometimes it's manically such, and sometimes it backfires such that what seems like an attempt to break away from the familial fold actually returns one to it. And in Noah's case, as a perpetrator of incest, you can imagine that he's engaged in his own repetition. And so what does he do? He's paving the way for the future by stealing water, which is highly symbolic of incest on a number of levels. Right. Associate water with birth and with the maternal life force. So he's stealing life force and he's stealing the forces of creativity, including the forces that on some larger level have created him. You try to overpower, right. Incest to ultimately represent, overpowering the forces that have created you. Right. Taking them on for yourself. There's a connection here to hubris and ultimately. Right. This is connected to corruption and to taking advantage of one's own. You're taking advantage of these farmers. Ultimately, it's a system that takes advantage of the people. Right. The government citizen relationship is something like a parent child relationship. And when the government is corrupt, it's like the parent that takes advantage of the child. But what I wanted to get at, and I'm not sure how this connects up, you started the whole idea of good and bad with the idea of the fact that he's, he's looking to progress, I think on the good side of things. And I think if I'm right about that, that's spot on. There's this anti incestuous vector which ironically and inevitably this is the edible thing, gets co opted by incestuous forces. So progress should be non regressive, but instead it becomes stealing water. This is what happens to people with malignant narcissism and ambition. Overweening ambition, ambitions should lead you out of the familial fold. But symbolically, if they become overweening and obsessive, they can really symbolically be a way to return to the. The mother that can have incestuous significance. That's part of how I wanted to connect the concept of incest to water and to the idea of official corruption.

42:10 Erin: I'm thinking too about the idea of a cover up, which I think connects with what you're saying a bit. I haven't fully formulated this, so I

42:20 Wes: was drawing a connection between progress in the sense of expanding LA by making water available to it, growing it, nurturing it, and then what Jake is doing. Right. So Jake is investigating things and nominally that brings things to light and it's progressive. Right. Communication is progressive as well, or can be, because it brings things to light, it opens things up, it can lead to growth. Let's put it very simply. That's what ideally an investigation. But in his case. Right. It turns out to be also to be regressive and it's a more dangerous position to be in because it's looking backward. It's the same thing in therapy. It's like you're supposed to be making progress and you have to think about the past a bit and to do some investigation. But if you get caught there and if it becomes part of the repetition, then it's a problem.

43:13 Erin: Well, I'm thinking about so many images of water bursting out in the film too. Even the fact that the dam that burst prior to the events of the film, which killed a lot of people, is the Vander Lippe dam. And that word lip and the fact that so much of what's in the story is the character's attempt to contain it. But, you know, eventually it bursts out, like Evelyn not wanting to tell the truth and finally, you know, admitting it in this burst of again, of language in which she has to explain, or she doesn't really explain, but she has to say, she has to make the connection between. That this girl has both relationships to her. Obviously the water being released in that flood which catches Jake in at one point or even when he's in the barbershop, there's that steam coming from the car outside while Jake is getting a shave. And so it seems like nothing stays covered up in this story about progress. Like everything has to be bursting out all over in the final scene when everything happens, you know, out in the middle of the street, because we know that Cross wins and that he will go on to be successful in his various evil deeds. You know, in the end we know that it doesn't matter. Like he's had the police in his pocket, so his corruption can basically be naked at this point. Like there is nothing to cover up anymore. It doesn't matter.

44:32 Wes: Yeah.

44:33 Erin: And maybe that speaks to his futurity and the fact that the progress that he wants to make doesn't require covering things up. That a cover up implies regression, I think, is what you're saying. And he doesn't need. He doesn't have need of that. He can, like the water, just burst forth and keep doing what he's doing.

44:51 Wes: So he can be relatively brazen about official corruption he's involved in. Right. I think that's your point. But he's also. It's pretty brazen for him to try to be the father of the incest daughter as opposed to leaving that alone. Yeah.

45:06 Erin: In the effort to hide her, to go to Mexico to flee so that he doesn't get access to her. He can then, in the middle of a street and in front of a bunch of cops, just grab the daughter and walk off with her.

45:16 Wes: Right. And have them horrifyingly shoot her when he's the villain.

45:23 Erin: I'm wondering, though, about the connection to Jake getting his proverbial hand slapped when he's trying to uncover secrets, like Noah, as if there's a figure of this forward progress. He does get shot in the arm, but otherwise escapes unscathed when it comes to getting what he wants. Jake fools around and finds out, as they say, you know, like, he's nosy. And as a result, he gets his nose cut. And then he has to wear the thing for the rest of the movie. Wear it openly. Same thing with Curly's wife. Right. Like, she then has to walk around with a black eye because of the knowledge of her adultery being learned by her husband. I'm just wondering about that. Like, if his whole business is to uncover these secrets, crimes and everything, why does he have to walk around with a big gash on his nose? Why isn't Noah's hand slapped at the end? Why doesn't he get arrested?

46:16 Wes: Yeah, Noah suffers the trauma of seeing his daughter killed, but it's unclear. It seems like, yeah, he's not gonna suffer any criminal penalties, so there'll never be any official punishment for what he's done. Having Jake walk around with a bandage on his nose for the whole movie is great. He's snooping around, but the nose and the eye are playing a similar role in this context. His snooping ability, his ability to be nosy, I think, as you've already pointed out, has been compromised. And there's the implicit threat of castration, which is what you get for incest. Castration is just the punishment for incest. So the implication is that he's in search of this incestuous circumstance in doing it. He's compulsively doing it as part of a repetition, and it's going to lead to the same traumatic result as it did last time. Ultimately, that's the real the death of Evelyn is the trauma that's prefigured by the nose cutting or the nose cutting is a warning. Right. So he might have heated it. Shall we go to Postscript and let's say what else we have to discuss. I want to talk a little bit about this idea of doing as little as possible in Chinatown and the significance of that.

47:38 Erin: And also we haven't really talked about Evelyn's character or the other Mrs. Mulray.

47:44 Wes: And you could say maybe a little bit more about film noir, which you're going to know a lot more about than me. And then. Yeah. All right. So thank you, thank you. And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com airwavemedia.com.

It’s a play full of contradictions, secrets, lies, and unspoken rules. It’s a play decidedly for adults, but about a child—an imaginary one, no less. It takes place on a college campus, but it is absent of students. And it’s about “fun and games” and “playing pretend,” but its games are harsh and shocking, and playing pretend involves vengeance and even murder. Wes & Erin discuss Mike Nichols’s 1966 film “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”, adapted from Edward Albee’s 1962 play, and ask what it has to say about the nature of game and play itself, as well as what might be generative on the one hand or contraceptive and inhibiting on the other about our relationships with our spouses, our parents, our children, and our work.

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0:11 Erin: It's a play full of contradictions, secrets, lies, and unspoken rules. It's a play decidedly for adults, but about a child, an imaginary one, no less. It takes place on a college campus, but it is absent of students. And it's about fun and games and playing pretend. But its games are harsh and shocking, and playing pretend involves vengeance and even murder. Today we're discussing Mike Nichols 1966 film, who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Adapted from Edward Albee's 1962 play, and asking what it has to say about the nature of game and play itself, as well as what might be generative on the one hand, or contraceptive and inhibiting on the other, about our relationships with our spouses, our parents, our children, and our work. This is Erin Olonek. And this is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, as a way of getting started, I thought I would ask you, because I've been thinking about it, and I don't really have an answer, but I was wondering if you have an answer to the question, what is a game? What constitutes a game?

1:18 Wes: Hmm. It's a big question.

1:21 Erin: This is a really. I know it's a tough one. Obviously, enjoyment doesn't have a lot to do with it.

1:26 Wes: Can I define fun instead? Since it's fun and games?

1:30 Erin: Yeah, yeah, let's. Let's do fun first.

1:32 Wes: Let's do one of the words. I'm just kidding.

1:34 Erin: Oh, okay.

1:35 Wes: What is a game in this context? What is a game in general? It's funny because we're reading Wittgenstein from my other podcast. And so the idea of a game is something that's important to him, specifically the idea that language is a game. Certain rules, certain moves that you're allowed to make, and certain moves that you're not allowed to make. There's some sense in which it's moving away from the idea of just language, that, you know, it's playful and unhindered, but there's some sense in which it's guided by something, that there's stakes, that there's something to be lost in one, that there's such a thing as fair play. You know, I didn't actually give this a lot of thought in preparation, but I would say the one thing that occurs to me is supposedly there's a game or a set of games going on between Martha and George. And George thinks that by mentioning their imaginary child, Martha has violated the rules of the game, and so he's going to have to get her back, do what it seems in the end, it's more meant to be a cure. But anyway, what were you thinking with

2:39 Erin: regard to this in relation to your last point? I think, too, that she has violated the rules of their particular game, it seems. But then that kind of launches them into a different game. Or then it's like the wheels come off and they're playing a more vicious. They're taking the bumpers out of the gutter and playing just like raw bowling at that point.

2:58 Wes: Yeah, it seems no holds barred from the very beginning. Right. Where is the game in this? Where are the rules?

3:04 Erin: I'm wondering if that's a. I don't want to say a flaw metaphorically. I'm just kind of wondering if it's not quite as well defined as it could be in the text and in the film. I mean, I pretty much just watched the film because it basically is the play. I think that the play is a lot funnier than the film, or at least a bit funnier than the film. And this is something I read about in the very brief chapter in Mike Nichols biography by Mark Harris. I just quickly glanced at it this morning, and this is something that Mike Nichols, I guess, is on record saying that he decided to make the film less funny than the play adaptation. The play. They were getting like a big laugh every couple of minutes. And Nichols felt that because a film audience can't respond in the moment to laughter like that, that he would have to sort of drain it of some of the laughter and make it a more serious film.

3:55 Wes: I read the play as well after watching the film. So I had seen the film at least twice before, watching it again in preparation for the podcast. And those two times I was much younger and I was just mesmerized by it, by the wit, by the language, and my overall feeling was very positive. And then I saw it performed live once, and I think Kathleen Turner was playing Martha.

4:21 Erin: Oh, you saw that production. Okay. Yeah, I really wanted to see that when it was at the Long Wharf.

4:26 Wes: Yeah, I think that was in D.C. that I saw that.

4:29 Erin: Yeah, it was at the Long Wharf in New Haven for a brief stay. And it was in D.C. for a brief time.

4:34 Wes: Okay.

4:35 Erin: And I think it was in LA for a bit, too. But while it was in New Haven, I really wanted to see it and never got the chance. But I knew my cousin went to see it, said it was fantastic.

4:42 Wes: Yeah, it was really great. This time I was like, oh, my God, this is brutal. This is absolutely brutal.

4:50 Erin: Yeah, it's like a root canal of a film. It's an endurance test.

4:55 Wes: Remembered it that way. So I don't know what changed in me that it just. I still enjoyed it, of course, but it just was hard. Hard to watch. But one thing I will say is that I also read the play for the first time in preparation, just as. Instead of taking notes during the film or watching the film a second time and taking notes, I just read the play and took notes. And most of the play is in the film. I don't know how that works because the play apparently is three hours and the film is two hours and something. Maybe the film goes fast. I don't know how they fit most of the play into the film, but you can see how a lot of the lines in the play could be read in a softer way or in a way that's more tongue in cheek. Right. So that you could get a more playful relationship between Martha and George. And maybe that's the way stage productions generally go. So that could be it. It's hard to read the play after you've watched the film and not just hear Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor going at it in their specific way, which they do so well, but you can see how that softness might be introduced. But going back to your thing about the game and, you know, I think you were saying it's too. Maybe it's not well defined enough. The rules aren't well defined.

6:07 Erin: I think part of that is the genius of the play. It's the flexibility of the truth. Right. Just for my own part, I'll say that I read the play and saw the film in high school, and I think that was a very bad idea. I think I was much more concerned at 15 or 16 that this might be a relationship that was more common than, of course, than it actually is.

6:29 Wes: That's what the future holds.

6:30 Erin: Right. Right Now I realize how uncommon and crazy this is, and maybe we have lax divorce laws to thank for that. But anyway, of course, the Burtons were no strangers to those divorce laws. But anyway, yeah. I think watching it now, oddly enough, the thing that it reminded me of a lot this time around was Kiarostami's Certified Copy. I don't know if you've seen that film.

6:52 Wes: No.

6:53 Erin: Okay. It's with Juliette Binoche and a fabulous actor who's also an opera singer whose name escapes me right now. And I think that was his first film, too. But anyway, it's a very interesting film. And it's not anything like this in terms of tone, but it's A film about the relationship between these two people. And I don't want to spoil anything, but it's kind of not what you think it is. Or it sort of evolves or takes on different qualities over the course of the film. I really recommend this to our listeners. And I think. I don't know that other people have thought to make the connection between these two things. Or if it's just the fact that I really love Certified Copy. And it occurs to me right now, maybe there is more of a connection than I realize. But it's a film in which you think that these two people at the beginning are meeting for the first time. They just meet on screen, and you see them meet and then the relationship unfolds. But in fact, that may not be the case. And you're never quite sure about the nature of the relationship. And it goes in very strange directions and fascinating directions over the course of the film. And so I was just thinking about the ways in which Kiarostami might have had Virginia Woolf in mind and might have been indebted to that. What I'm trying to say is the fact that we don't quite know what game they're playing puts us, of course, in the position of. What is it? Nick and Honey. Even though we don't ever hear the name Nick in the play or. Sorry, in the film, in the play it's Nick. So it kind of puts us in their position right where we're kind of trying to figure this out as it's going along. I don't know how clear the rules of the game are to George and Martha themselves. And maybe the fact that we're not privy to that. It's not just putting us in the position of Nick and Honey, but it's also putting us in the position of being outsiders in their relationship, which is true, I think, of any relationship, that only the people in it knows how it functions. So I have two questions that arise from that, which is, is there a purgative element to game playing? And therefore, is the purgation that happens at the end or something like a purgation or catharsis? I think there's direct mention, at least in the sections of the play. Oh, exorcism, exorcism. So is there something purgative or is something exorcised at the end of the play? And can that coalesce with the idea of game playing? And can we say that there is a winner or a loser here? Because I was interested in that element of what you described. A game fundamentally as having, you know, winning and losing the stakes of the game.

9:12 Wes: The question of whether it's Purgative. You're reminding me of the time I was playing Settlers of Catan with my siblings and was getting taunted by one of them because there's a lot of trash talking when we play and it went too far and I stood up and I swept the pieces off the table, destroyed the game. So it can be purgative to dramatically end the game, which is a move that happens outside of the game. It was a move within Settlers of Catan that involves sweeping the pieces off the table. And so I think that for what's Purgative here, in the end, the two rules that we seem to know solidly as an audience are that it's not right for her to mention the imaginary child. And it's not actually, we know a few. It's not right for her to talk about the book thing. Whether that really happened to him or that's his fantasy is unclear. So we can talk about that later. But you can't talk about the imaginary child, you can't talk about the book, and then he's not allowed to kill the fantasy child. It would have to be a mutual decision. Unless the rule is that once she's crossed the line, he can legitimately cross the line. So you have me thinking about this question of Purgative now in terms of whether that. Does that happen in other sorts of games? Does that happen in the sorts of games that people play in relationships or just in social life in general, which are generally much less dramatic. Right. There's still self deception and illusion, but it's not like having an imaginary child or friend or something. Or does it always involve stepping out of the game and maybe into, so to speak, reality? Because there seems to be some association here between illusion and game playing. But anyway, as far as the rest of the rules go, it's really hard to figure out what the rules are because it shifts so much and their relationship is just all over the place, right?

11:05 Erin: Yeah.

11:06 Wes: One minute they're being nice, one minute they're being nasty. You don't know if they're being fake nice. You don't know if they're being fake nasty. All of it seems to be happening, but it's never clear when they're doing it. And it does all seem to be pre approved in a way or natural. Right. It just seems to be part of the course of things that they do this. So they're not surprising each other with their behavior very often. Even though it's surprising.

11:31 Erin: Yeah, to us.

11:32 Wes: So that's the purgative part. And then I think the other question. I'm not going to keep talking, but we can have this other question in mind as well as we go forward,

11:40 Erin: which was, is there a winner and is there a loser?

11:43 Wes: Right. Yeah.

11:44 Erin: You're making me think about a couple things. The idea that this is less a game and more something else. I don't know what, but perhaps a performance. Right. So you're making me think that they know the beats, they know the moves of the other person. It's kind of like an improvisation game, but with certain guardrails up. They seem to kind of generally know where the other person might go, but they're not sure at any particular moment which card they're going to draw. They each have, like, a set of. I'm really mixing my metaphors here, perhaps because it's really hard to define this, but they each seem to have a hand, you know, filled with, let's say, cards that have particular moves on them that they tend to make as individuals. And the other person doesn't necessarily know which card George or Martha is going to play at any given moment, but they kind of know what's in the other person's hand. So I'm wondering about the element of performance in that as well. And I'm also thinking maybe to just kind of set us up into a, you know, diving into the play here. I was thinking about this first moment quite a bit, the. What a dump. The Bette Davis impression. And I was thinking about that in relation to a game show. I don't play very many games. I'm not a game person. But oddly enough, I love certain game shows, especially classic game shows. And since I was a kid, I've loved watching what's My Line? And I, for some reason, have been on a. A little bit of a kick with that. And so for the past week or so that I've been home for Christmas break, I've been watching episodes of it with my family. And, well, I've kind of now gotten them hooked on it. And we've been watching, like, you know, maybe four or five episodes a night instead of watching a movie or something. So I've been thinking about. And that has celebrity guests, and it has. You know, there's kind of an odd bit of crossover here. But I was thinking about the opening moments and Martha repeatedly asking George, you know, what's that from? Come on, you know. You know, like, she's insisting that he knows the answer to this. That it's there, that he just has to flip through the mental files and find the answer. What's really funny about that is that she doesn't know. It's kind of like she's testing him. Or she's asking him, like, come on, you know, for the $5,000 answer, what is the name of this film? But she also does not know. And so she's asking him this because it's something that's kind of like bothering her. But it's also set up as this kind of game show format. It's also clearly a dynamic in their relationship where she either expects him to know the answer and alleviate her mental block, or she expects him not to know the answer, which seems more likely because he suggests it's Chicago, which is a ridiculous suggestion. And then she can belittle him for not knowing the answer or for giving a stupid answer. I don't know what could be said about that. Or if I'm making too much of this game show idea just because I'm primed for it.

14:26 Wes: Yeah, no, I like that. This is something that, you know, how much has happened before. How much is, you know, I was talking about how much are they surprising each other versus acting out roles that have been acted out in many times before. And that seems to be a lot of what's happening is acting out these agreed upon roles almost like a sadomasochistic role playing, except it's not happening in the bed.

14:47 Erin: It does once or twice, but not always with George.

14:51 Wes: Yeah, well, he's a voyeur at a certain point. Yeah. But they've decided which couples do that. It's okay to be mean to each other. I mean, many couples go down that route, and not as dramatically as this, but they are willing to engage in a certain amount of ongoing. Kvetching is not the right word.

15:10 Erin: Needling.

15:11 Wes: Yeah. And complaining to each other. And then the question is, when does it become disrespect? The point where disrespect maybe is the breaking the rule of the game thing. Ultimately some sort of thing that's going to set the really set the other person off versus staying at low level. Banter. Banter isn't the right word either. Maybe I'll think of it. But with this first scene, you have me thinking of like what a screenwriter would be thinking when they're trying to. So what's going to happen is you have like a very messy place and for some reason they haven't cleaned it up in expectation of guests. But then it turns out the Guests are coming at 2am and they weren't expected in a sense, at least not by George. But Martha probably expected him because she sort of set it up. It's almost like a kidnapping in a way. It'll turn out so they know the place is a mess and a dump. I guess the audience can know that on the stage to some extent. You could make it look that way. It's not so much a dump as it's cluttered. So how do you convey the character reaction to that in an interesting way where they're not doing simple exposition in a clunky, on the nose way or, you know, you don't just have Martha coming in, why didn't you clean this place up? Or. Which would be dumb. So instead you get this very interesting. Instead of fighting about the mess, they're fighting about the film. About the film that he can't remember. And as you pointed out, why are they fighting about this? She can't remember that either. He's berating him for not being able to remember. And what does she want from him? Why does she want him to be able to remember that? I mean, I think it comes out that don't, you know, anything? And it's the idea that he's not that into movies. He's not that into contemporary culture. You know, he thinks the movie is Chicago, which is ridiculous just because she mentions Chicago. So he's an old. Even though he's younger than her in spirit, he's an old fuddy duddy who's into his books. And so maybe that's our introduction is her. You know, ultimately we know she wishes he were more of a man of action. Right. Having some sort of spine and ambition, whatever it would have taken for him to taken over the college from her father, which seems to be the original plan. So that's the way ultimately that he's failed her, or it seems that that's the way. And so this complaint about the film becomes an indirect way about him not being able to remember. The film becomes an indirect way of complaining about that. So it's a cool opening in that it sets all of that up, right? With a seemingly trivial third object. But yeah, and it's playful.

17:40 Erin: I think it's important to note a couple of things. First of all, I think they in the film adaptation have been careful to take out the references to the fact that George is younger than Martha. I think because it's a little too unbelievable in the film to argue that even though Taylor's wearing a lot of age makeup and Stuff. She's unbelievably, I think, maybe 32 or 33. During filming. It was released when she was 34.

18:02 Wes: She gained, like, 30 pounds for the role.

18:05 Erin: Yeah, but the eye makeup and everything, like, that's one of the reasons why it had to be in black and white. Was because the makeup that they had to put on her to make her look like she was in her late 40s was so highly colored and everything that they had to shoot it in black and white for it to work. So I think they remove that. And I imagine that they are supposed to be just a mirror image of the slight age difference of what, two or three years between the younger couple. I don't know what role that's having in the play. I think this idea that she's older, even if only slightly older. And taking a kind of shrew wife slash shrew mother role towards him. I think it makes it less interesting, that insistence when he says that he's younger than she is. The thing I wanted to say about that, too, that opening idea with the Bette Davis film. I think it announces also kind of a dynamic which we're gonna see repeated with the younger couple as well, of this frustrated housewife. Beyond the Forest is a film. It's from 1949. So even in 1966, I think that would have been considered an older movie. Like, maybe. Actually, I always wanted to say like an 80s movie. But now the 80s is, like 40 years ago or something. So I keep thinking of the 80s as being 20 years ago. And it's not anymore.

19:18 Wes: I looked at the clip, by the way, and Bette Davis doesn't really sound like the imitations. She doesn't really do that. What a dump in the highfalutin way that Martha is remembering it.

19:28 Erin: But she's doing a Bette Davis impression and a kind of late Betty. She's doing a contemporary Bette Davis impression. But sort of like into the past, of beyond the Forest.

19:39 Wes: Right. Projecting that into the past. Okay. And Bette Davis almost was gonna be in this role.

19:43 Erin: Right.

19:44 Wes: Doing an imitation of Bette Davis.

19:46 Erin: I think Alby, even after he saw this film, was disappointed that she wasn't in it. Which I find hard to believe. Because I think that Taylor's performance is, like, actually so incredible. Yeah, it's a little crazy, actually. I was just thinking about the ways in which the dynamic that Martha described between Bette Davis character and Joseph Cotten's character in beyond the Forest is kind of like a mise enabeam of what's happening in George and Martha's marriage. And then it'll be repeated, of course, in Nick and Honey's marriage. So there's also that kind of establishment. So this sort of innocuous moment, which at first, for someone who doesn't know anything about the play or the film, might look like an ordinary pedestrian, slightly venomous, but not really tiff between the two, really is loaded with a lot of exposition right up front.

20:36 Wes: Very expertly done.

20:37 Erin: And a couple of things I noticed. Taylor says. She's describing the film and she's saying that Bette Davis comes home from a hard day at the grocery store. And Burton says she works in the grocery store. And Taylor, I should refer to them by their names. She says she's a housewife, she buys things. But there's this establishment of this idea of being a housewife as a hard day's work. And particularly in the way that Martha is emphasizing, like, you know, it's maybe the hardest job of all, which maybe we wouldn't argue with, but there's something there. And then she says something about. She does that sentence where she repeats modest three times. She comes home and something about. She walks into the modest living room of the modest cottage that modest Joseph Cotton has set her up in. And it's another, like, loaded phrase to set her up. Right. And it makes me think of a game, too. Right. Setting up the pieces of a game and then watching it all kind of unfold. So later, when this is a first private conversation between George and Nick, when Honey leaves the room to go to the bathroom, George says something like, we're merely exercising. We're working what's left of our wits. I was just thinking about that idea in relation to this first scene, this first moment. Because neither of them can remember what this film is. It doesn't really seem like an exercise. But of course, that's also a homonym for to exorcise something. So I'm just. I'm wondering basically, if this opening scene contains pretty much all the elements of the entire film or play within it.

22:07 Wes: Yeah, I think there's a lot. There's a lot packed in. There's a wonderful climax to that interaction. That part of this first scene that involves the movie, which is. George says, are they married? And she says, yes, they're married to each other.

22:22 Erin: Yeah.

22:22 Wes: And then she does the what a dump Imitation again. And then George is like, oh. And Martha goes. And the timing in the movie is absolutely perfect. This is the climactic moment. She's discontent, which, of course, seems to be telling us that Martha is discontent, which sets us up for a more ordinary type of conflict between the couple. Because I think what's going on really transcends discontentment. It's not, oh, I'm a housewife and the place is a dump. And discontented. There are elements of that. She wanted him apparently, to be more ambitious, but there seem to be other clues that go against that. And I'm not saying it goes either way, but, for instance, they've practically kidnapped this young couple. And by that I mean, right, They've been at some kind of cocktail party with Daddy, with the father, the president of the school, and here's a new professor and his wife. And at 2am they're going over to have drinks with Martha and George. That can't possibly have wanted to do that themselves. Maybe they did, but.

23:27 Erin: Well, I. I don't know. Honey kind of did.

23:29 Wes: And. And Martha says, this is to make Daddy happy. Did Daddy really want her to do that at 2am the way things pan out, it makes me suspect that you could, on one reading, say Martha and George are in cahoots, right? Mm. To screw things up for Nick and Honey. Because ultimately, Nick will say, you've damaged me. I'm sure you remember that. He ought to be worried about Honey because Honey has just run into the bathroom after George has revealed that he knows about her hysterical pregnancy. And Nick is like, you've damaged me. And George is like, okay, well, rearrange your alliances, buddy. It really sounds like. And Nick, right, is being groomed to take over the presidency of the college. So on the face of it, it looks like Martha has invited Nick and Honey over to humiliate George and to rub it in his face that here's this up and coming young man, right? Biologists could be a eugenics product, you know, Superman, ubermensch, who's gonna actually do what you couldn't do. But George, at least, right, is milking him for information that he can use against him. And it's unclear whether Martha is part of that. She might be part of that or it might be unconscious. But do you see what I mean? Did she really want him to be the biologist, or did she want him to be the historian? Did she really want him to take over Daddy's spot, or did she want to keep him from taking over Daddy's spot?

24:50 Erin: Sure.

24:51 Wes: I think that's kind of ambiguous in the film. And so the word discontent here at the very beginning, it could be quite ordinary, as it was in the movie being referenced, or as it can be in these relationships, or it can be something out of the ordinary, which it may be here. And at the very least, this. Something very out of or the ordinary is going on.

25:12 Erin: Right. You're making me think a couple different things. First of all, that idea that this could be a much more quotidian film, this had never occurred to me before you said that. But someone who didn't know anything about the play might go to this film thinking that it was some kind of. What are they called? Kitchen sink drama. A lot of these things coming out of Britain, these sort of realist films where it's like, you know, someone is trying to make their way in the world and they're beaten down and they're in an unhappy marriage and they're. You know, exactly what you describe. And of course you have two. Elizabeth Taylor was British born, though not by heritage. And of course, Burton is from Britain. And so this might be something where they're just struggling to pay the bills and yelling at each other while one of them continually screws up his job or something like that. You're making me realize maybe the set of Betrayed Expectations.

25:59 Wes: There are so many trite ways it could play out that have played out a million times in dramas and. And movies.

26:05 Erin: Yeah, it's so clever the way that they. And really beyond the Forest, which was a failed film, is kind of an early version of that kind of thing that had this full flowering. And even with the black and white cinematography, because a lot of those movies that were made in England, the kind of high point for that was like late 50s, early 60s, they were being made in black and white. So I could just imagine somebody going into this theater not knowing anything about the play and thinking that they're just going to see this struggling working class couple or something and how their innocence might have been stolen by this film.

26:34 Wes: Yeah.

26:35 Erin: Anyway, the brilliance of what you're saying about the biology thing is also making me and Martha's efforts maybe to impede his advancement less than to try and encourage it or help him develop. Makes me think about the fact that, first of all, they're living on this house on campus, and yet they could scream at each other and no one hears. Like, this is a campus that is conspicuously absent of children. Right.

26:58 Wes: It's filmed at Smith, right?

27:00 Erin: Yeah. In the middle of the night, I

27:02 Wes: guess, but I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah.

27:03 Erin: Yeah. But it's conspicuously absent of these kids. Not children, but these college kids, kids that are a little bit older than their imaginary child. And kids are of course, the question of this whole thing, I think that ties into what you're saying about biology, so maybe we can shift into that a bit. But this idea of is it wanted, is it not wanted, is it impeded, is it nurtured or cultivated? Is related to this Honey question of. Which maybe ties back into Martha, which is, did they actually want a child? And that's why they have to have this imaginary child. I think that's the reading that we're probably supposed to take from the film, but it's twinned with this idea that Honey is deliberately trying to avoid having a child. She does not want to give birth

27:45 Wes: and George accuses her of having aborted. Yeah.

27:48 Erin: Yes. So, though at the beginning. And a lot of stuff that Nick's character says at the beginning, of course, unravels, and he becomes far more honest over the course of the night, which is one thing that the game, whatever this game is, seems to achieve. That might arguably be said to be a net positive, that he becomes more and more honest about his failings and his true intentions over the course of the evening or the night. But he does say at the beginning that they're waiting to have a kid, and he does seem to believe that. I think this idea that Honey is secretly having these abortions is hidden from her husband, of course, and so are her feelings of anxiety towards having a child. In other words, I think she is also convincing her husband that she wants to have a child and yet, unbeknownst to him, is having these abortions and doesn't actually want this. We'll call it, a biological project of theirs to advance. Yeah, I'm wondering about that connection. And also about the ways in which Nick and Honey are mirror images of George and Martha and the ways in which they are something quite a bit different. Like, we have this theme with Honey of illness, which, of course, Martha is this earth mother, as she calls herself, who's never been sick a day in her life, according to her husband. And then we have the same kind of principle of a sort of reversal in George and Nick, in which Nick is the younger, more idealistic, as you say, the Ubermensch. And George is obviously someone who looks as though he's been. He's had the life sucked out of him and is maybe the less healthy in his marriage. Yeah, I don't know what we can say about that.

29:27 Wes: Yeah, we should think about this being a historian versus being a biologist. Opposition that's set up, of course, in the beginning. Martha thinks he's a mathematician, which is really Interesting. The biologist represents a few different things in the film. Being a biologist, for one thing, it represents his physicality, his fitness, the fact that he has a hard body, the fact that he played doctor at a very young age with honey, so that nothing was a mysterious, there was no mystery when they got married. And the fact that he's a ubermensch and specimen, blonde haired, blue eyed Superman and according to George's interpretation will be looking to the future. And he's. He's the future person in the sense of the one who's being groomed to take over, take over the school, but take over, you know, one might think society or culture in general. George will make several speeches suggesting that civilization is going to pot. So the very first part, before I refer us to the text on some of the stuff, I just want to say that with the math thing we can talk about it maybe at some point. But what did Martha want out of a mathematician that she can't get out of a biologist? Right? She'll say, you're right in the meat of things. He seems to relish the idea that he's a biologist. It's a very good opposition to George. A mathematician would have been something different altogether. Still. And that's not a humanities person, right? Thank God. But still more abstract and not as of this world or a person of action.

31:02 Erin: Perhaps the mathematician knows the right answer faster. I mean, maybe not about a movie, right? Because maybe a humanities person would be more likely to. No entertainment type facts, right? But maybe he would be able to come up with the answer quickly because he has something that provides an answer, provides a solution. It's right there.

31:21 Wes: And also he's a realist, right? So Alby himself said the song who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? That's about who's afraid of doing without illusions. And of course in the end they have to give up this particular illusion. And there's another point where George will say people who can't abide the present either look to the future or look to the past, right? So he's absorbed in the past. Nick is about on George's interpretation of biology looking to the future and eugenics and things like that. And the mathematician is in this Platonic abstract world, so one might say the present, the mathematician is the one who can abide the present state of things because he's the only one who can be in this eternal realm.

32:05 Erin: Then you're making me think too, that if the mathematician can abide the present and he turns out to be a biologist, which is much More future directed then that would represent a disappointing lack of immediacy to Martha. In other words, she wants the mathematician because she wants someone who's in the present, not someone who's either in the past or the future. Though the future is better than the past. I think.

32:25 Wes: George says Martha is seldom mistaken. Maybe you should be in the Math Department or something.

32:31 Erin: Well, maybe if he was in the Math department, then he would have been able to have an affair with her instead of just hoping for some future consummation.

32:38 Wes: Yes, it's just a right line, right? The right line is the erect pointing straight up rectitude, maybe in terms of that. Straight lines and rectitude versus undependable biology.

32:52 Erin: There you go.

32:53 Wes: Bodies that may be soft or not, but often if they're drinking too much. But anyway, what I was going to point us to was just the way George's interpretation at the very beginning when Nick says he's a biologist and he says you're the one who's going to make all that trouble making everyone the same. Rearranging the chromosomes, not zones. Zones or whatever it is. And then Nick corrects some chromosomes and George goes on to talk about science fiction. And you people are rearranging my genes so that everyone will be like everyone else. Now I won't have that. It would be a shame. I mean, look at me. Is it really such a good idea if everyone was 40 something and looked 55? You didn't answer my question about history. So that's the introduction to that. And then there's this idea put into circulation that George couldn't take over the History Department. He's in it, he's not it, he's not identical to it. And Nick will one day run the Biology Department and may run the History Department as well if he becomes the president of the school. This comes up again. So when Martha comes back after her and Honey have been away, and Martha comes back later dressed up, then there's that shotgun scene. And then you get Martha being corrected about Nick being a biologist. And she's pretty resistant, right, to accepting that even though Nick is there. No, Martha, he's a biologist, he's in the Math Department. And then Honey says biology. Maybe only Honey is present at that point, I'm not sure. And then she says she can't be expected to remember everything because she has to keep track of all the teachers and their goddamn wives. But she's like, he's a biologist, good for him. Biology is even better. It's less abstruse going to this distinction we were making between math and biology. And George is like abstract abstruse in the sense of recondite. So anyway, biology is even better. It's right in the meat of things. And then Nick reenters and she says, you're right at the meat of things, baby. I love that. So whatever she wanted, she finds a way to interpret this in a way that serves her impulses. And then she says something which suggests she might have known he was a biologist all along, which she tells Nick that Georgie boy says you're terrifying. And he says, I didn't know that I was. And then Honey says, it's because of your chromosomes, dear. So I'm a little unsure of that if maybe something wasn't revealed to make that make sense. But it seems like the suggestion I got was that Martha and George had actually talked about this before and talked about the whole chromosomes thing and the whole biology thing. I might be wrong about that.

35:32 Erin: This is presumably after Martha has crossed the Rubicon by bringing up their imaginary son with Honey, who of course we don't yet know is imaginary. But George says, there's one thing in this whole sinking world that I am sure of, or if there is one, it is my partnership, my chromosomalogical. Chromosomalogical partnership in the creation of our blonde eyed, blue haired son. That seems to me in itself to have a kind of what you're talking about, a kind of retraction within the assertion.

36:01 Wes: This is just occurring to me, but you're making me think about the relationship between reproduction and generation, right? And fantasy, also artistic creativity, but fantasy here normally, right, Having a baby has something to do with the chromosomal partnership. But here it has to do with being willing to enter into this fantasy together. Or maybe this delusion or illusion together. Maybe it's psychosis and that's the way they have produced the baby. And there's lots of talk about the baby's eye color, right? And you know, earlier on, Nick suggests she doesn't know what chromosomes are. And Martha says, I know what chromosomes are, sweetie. I love them. And George says Martha eats them for breakfast. She sprinkles them on her cereal. It's very simple. Martha, this young man is working on a system whereby chromosomes can be altered. Well, not all by himself. He probably has one or two co conspirators. Genetic makeup of the sperm cell changed, reordered to order actually for hair and eye color, stature, potency, I imagine hairiness, features, health and mind. It's important because Martha later on will say that he can only see specks, he can't see minds because of this microscope. Most important, mind. All imbalances will be corrected, sifted out. Propensity for various diseases will be gone. Longevity is assured. We will have a race of men, test tube bred incubator born superb and sublime. The cost of that, he thinks, right, is that there's going to be less diversity. First of all, it's going to involve what he quote unquote regulation, where you're involuntarily sterilizing people and then loss of liberty. But also history, which is my field, history, of which I'm one of the most famous bogs will lose its glorious variety and unpredictability. I and with me the surprise, the multiplexity, the sea changing rhythm of history will be eliminated. There will be order and constancy and I am unalterably opposed to it. I will not give up Berlin. So there's something forward looking about having a child, right? About giving birth to the next generation, which is going to take over. And that's what George apparently is slated to do with the school or was not anymore. And why not? Because he tried to do something creative, right? He tried to give birth to a novel. But the forward lookingness, the next generation, the quasi eugenicist, it's not really eugenicist project, but you know what I mean. The gene, the chromosomal partnership of having a baby together, that's been denied George and Martha. And they can do it in fantasy. And they do it even to the point where they're designing their own kid. What he looks like, his eye color, right? They'd have that big disagreement over eye color. Is it blue, Are they blue? Are they green? It's like a eugenicists type of disagreement. And then that extends into these fantasized disagreements about why he was messed up, why he was troubled, why he left home. And George is claiming it's because Martha was incestuous and baiting him at 16. And Martha says it's because George is a failure, you know, and they're having like what seems to be a serious fight over and accusations over something that an it or a hymn that really doesn't exist. But anyway, I think what you, you know, what you just pointed to is really important. This parallel between George's idea that biology means eugenics and their failure to have a real baby and only be able

39:22 Erin: to do it in fantasy is the motivation here. Do we accept the conventional understanding of this play, that it is out of a desire for a child that must have Been thwarted by a failure of biology of some kind. Right. Infertility in one or both of them, which they're compensating for.

39:41 Wes: I think that's the most probable reading, which is that they wanted to have children and couldn't because one of them is infertile. Although it's kind of suspicious that there are no accusations floating around about that.

39:55 Erin: I know that's exactly what I was going to say.

39:58 Wes: That's not the case. So I love that about this place. The suspicion is aroused. George is not the only one who's suspicious. Suspicion is aroused that one of them. I even suspect it might be the fact that neither of them wanted a kid. That's just my gut feeling is that neither of them actually wanted a kid or they were ambivalent. And you see this in Honey, right? I don't want kids. I don't want a baby. I don't want to be hurt. And then later on at the very end, I do want a babe.

40:24 Erin: Yes. Well, only because she's boozed up and she's affected by Martha's little story about the kid who, you know, you thought was not as attractive because he had dark hair. But then, hooray. Here's Wander a topic of discussion which makes me roll my eyes. But the other element of this which I'm wondering about is of course, the parental relationships. There's something very Tennessee Cat on a hot tin roof about every time Martha or just Elizabeth Taylor says the word Daddy. It makes me cringe.

40:54 Wes: Right.

40:55 Erin: There's something big.

40:57 Wes: Daddy, just what makes you so big? All I can think of. That's all I can think of when someone says Daddy.

41:04 Erin: I don't know why she's always a daddy's girl, but she is. There is something, it seems to me, inherently thwarted about her ability to have a child with George because of the fact that she is still being infantilized by her father. It's odd. She and Honey are kind of physical opposites. Taylor is with the gained weight especially. She's extremely voluptuous. As I said, she calls herself an earth mother, which is an odd thing for someone who's not a mother. Whereas Honey is more of what we would expect someone who is not yet sexually mature to look like in terms of a body, just on a basic level in terms of body type, because repeated mention is made of her slim hips which are supposedly going to prevent her from giving birth.

41:51 Wes: And she acts like a little girl in many ways too.

41:53 Erin: Yes, she does. I think there's evidence of this too, in the Fact that George hasn't been able to give birth, proverbially speaking to his novel, and there's obviously some issue with his parents. But there seems to me to be something infantilized about the two women and therefore contraceptive about the fact that both of them have these overbearing father figures. And it's related to me, ironically, with Martha and perhaps logically with Honey, related to a kind of inherent lack of sexual maturation, something little girlish about their relationship with their fathers that then impedes their relationship with the husband.

42:36 Wes: Yeah, I think that's very good. And I think that might be why Martha perhaps doesn't actually want George to be president of the school and why she may have worked actually to prevent that, but also seems to be working to prevent Nick or George is at least, maybe she's involved, maybe she's not. But one of the results of this whole thing is that they have the goods on Nick if they want to use them, if they want to sabotage his rise. So.

43:04 Erin: But that's very funny turn of phrase,

43:05 Wes: so to speak, assuming that he can perform, that he has some performance next time and not just potential. But as Martha puts it, before we

43:15 Erin: move on to a discussion of what's going on with George and his parents and this friend of his and Bergen, et cetera, et cetera, before we move on to that, which I think is really important, is there something we can say here about. I'm sure you were reminded, as was I, of the Graduate and of your vampire thesis with Mrs. Robinson in that film. Is there some connection we can make here between Martha and Nick in that regard as related to their sort of lack of conception. It seems to me that of course, you know, there's something inherent in the Mrs. Robinson relationship with Benjamin that even if she is still, and she should be still able to have a baby, of course, that seems to me to be an inherently anti conception kind of relationship. And I'm wondering if there's a relationship we can draw not only between, of course, the obvious vampiricism with George and Martha and the younger couple, but something in the fact that the sexual relationship between Martha and Nick is thwarted and how that might mirror, what do I want to say, antiseptic relationship between Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin. I don't know if there's something there.

44:23 Wes: Yeah, it's interesting. Speaking of the game again, George. So on the one hand he seems to act like she's going too far if she sleeps with Nick. It's more subtle in the movie, but in the play, Martha And Nick start fooling around on the couch. And then George comes in, pretends not to notice and just pretends to read sitting there. And Martha's getting unhappy that he's not being jealous. And he's like, no, you two go ahead, don't bother with me. I'm just going to read. And then she's pissed off and that's why she ends up taking Nick upstairs. And then even more so in the play than in the film, the suggestion is that they definitely did not consummate because he couldn't.

45:04 Erin: Yeah, the film, it's actually pretty muddy.

45:06 Wes: He couldn't get it up.

45:07 Erin: Yeah, yeah.

45:09 Wes: It's muddier in the film, I think. Which is funny because you think the film seems to try to soften this in a way. But then it seems harsher to me because they don't want to show the make, you know, the two making out. Except, you know, he's seeing something through the window. But they don't want to do the voyeur thing. This kind of sick, perverse George being a voyeur thing sitting there in the same room. But you know, of course I did think of. This is Robinson. Yeah. Are you trying to seduce me, Martha? I don't know. You know, I did think too of, okay, she's 53, he's 46. Maybe closer in the film than the play. But two middle aged people, they have this young couple over. What the hell?

45:46 Erin: Why is that? Wouldn't they welcome this young couple?

45:50 Wes: Well, I mean, yes, if it were a normal interaction and not at 2am Maybe, you know. Right. But the whole attempt to seduce in various ways. Yeah, seduce in various ways. And it's not just her seducing Nick. It's the whole thing is a seduction. It's getting information out of Honey, getting information out of Nick. It's almost like exposing these youngsters to a primal scene. Even if that primal scene is just they're fighting, they're exposing themselves. In a sense, it's exhibitionism. They're exposing this kind of fighting which would happen in private. I mean, yes, people do it in front of others. They can't help themselves. But they've raised fighting to the level of an art form. Right. And they're putting on a performance for these two youngsters. So I didn't think a lot about this parallel, but of course I saw it. I don't know if you have any other thoughts on this older generation to younger generation relationship and how it played out in the Graduate versus how it plays out here.

46:47 Erin: There's an element of initiation, which is similar to what you were pointing out in the Graduate episode of a sense of a warning. All the Dynamics, as between Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin letting the new couple know what they're in for at this college. Basically, the element of performance is interesting because, again, it makes me think, like, okay, again, it's more of a game show. Literally, those two words together as a kind of portmanteau. It's more of a game show that they're playing than a game, per se. They need an audience in some essential way. It's not enough for them to put on this performance without them. But another thing that I was thinking, and maybe this is just asinine and I don't know, maybe it's a bridge too far, but I'm thinking, like, when would you actually have someone over at 2:00 clock in the morning? And it would only be if the party that was going on was so great that you didn't want the party to end. Or it would be on a kind of a special occasion kind of night, like at a wedding, when you would then go out after or, you know, keep the party going until the wee hours. The only real instance I can think of is a wedding.

47:50 Wes: Well, this is why it's so strange in the beginning, right? So George doesn't know the couple are coming over. So Martha is foisting this on him at 2am I think she's foisting it on the couple as well because they don't seem all that enthusiastic about being there. It looks to me like they feel. Nick and Honey kind of feel obliged. And then they try to excuse themselves and leave as soon as they get there, given what's going on. But they feel obligated. And at a certain point, Martha's going to say, you know, you're the houseboy. You're going to do what I say because I'm the daughter of the president and you want to get ahead. This is why I called it a kidnapping. And I think it's kind of that way from the beginning. They've been kidnapped and taken to this or, you know, come over to this house for a kind of initiation that I don't think Daddy knows what's going on with these initiations, a regular thing.

48:39 Erin: But anyway, that's why I think there's something, thematically speaking, antiseptic about this relationship, because it is a kidnapping. It is, of course, Nick bears a striking resemblance to their imaginary child. And there is something very Oedipal going on with the two of them, of Course, in the actual Oedipus story, the mother and son do conceive with each other, but in this instance, it seems to be something that can't have any kind of consummation. By its very nature.

49:08 Wes: We definitely hope that they haven't consummated. And I think it's important that it seem like they haven't consummated. Because for all the cruelty that happens within the play, that really does break the rules. I think it breaks the rules not just for the audience, but it would break the rules for Martha and George. Maybe she is sleeping around with everyone, and maybe I'm wrong about that. But this is another one of these muddy areas. Where is the idea of her infidelity? Is that part of the fantasy or isn't it? You know, you could ask that about any aspect of the play. But it seems, at least in this particular situation, that he accuses her of going too far, and therefore he gets to kill off the kid. But there's too far and there's too far. Right? There's. You broke the rules, therefore I'm changing our fantasy life.

49:55 Erin: Yes.

49:56 Wes: And in order for us, you know, it's purgative, like, so we can actually be closer and it can just be us. If that works. And then there's, you broke the rules, therefore this relationship is over. Right. Those are two very different things. And so we can always ask. Yeah. What are the rules that would break the actual relationship? He thinks she's breaking a lot of rules that allow him to kill off an imaginary boy. But apparently she didn't break any rules that would lead him to end the relationship. Because by killing off the imaginary boy, it's like a renewal of vows, which is actually a phrase that George uses at some point in the play.

50:32 Erin: You're making me consider a couple of things here. First of all, the insistence of at least Nichols and I think probably also Alby, that this is a couple that is dysfunctional because they love each other so much. I don't know that that's absolutely, terribly clear in the play. But part of the baggage of what the Burtons bring to this is, of course, a kind of a. Like, even as they're being really vicious to each other, just because they have so much physical chemistry with each other. That comes across for me very well in the film, considering also the Burtons kind of baggage. I'm thinking about Martha's infinite variety, as it were. To use the Cleopatra thing, of course, we have to for the Burtons. And the fact that she is. I don't know what I want to say about this, but it seems important to say that she is so changeable. She has so many different registers. Burton has. Obviously he's a great actor. I don't mean that he can't have more than a few registers. But the character of George is somewhat limited compared to Martha's or Taylor. As Martha's volatility, her ability to be sort of low class, but then go into this high class mode at times, which seems right to me. She's discontent, but she's also the daughter of a college president. It's almost like she's slumming it with her own behavior. Or she's creating. She's inventing the slum around her that she wants to live in. I'm thinking about that in relationship to generation, to a generative impulse. What makes the fact that we don't know whether or not they've had this affair murky in the film is the offense that George takes and the way he is hurt by the suspicion that maybe they did consummate it. So he is offended. Then I'm using this word offense, like offense. Who is on the offense and who is on the defense in this game? It seems to me that George is continually on defense because he is more limited in his modes of attack. And so he has to shut down. It's like Martha is creating more and more possibilities, more and more varieties, and he has to start kind of closing down possibilities in order to almost like what, I don't know, direct them. Put his arms around the relationship and kind of hold everything in. Hold the pieces in that Martha continually kind of wants to explode. I'm thinking about this, as I say in relationship to the way that their characters function and the fact that Martha seems to be able to shapeshift much more than George does. So is that part of the dynamic of this relationship? Martha wants to continually explode things. George has to shut them down in order to keep her tempered and to keep the relationship in a kind of positive tension just between the two of them, you know what I'm saying? Is this important?

53:16 Wes: I mean, that sounds right. I mean, at one point she says, George is out there somewhere in the dark. George, who's good to me and whom I revile, who understands me and whom I push off. Who can make me laugh and I choke it back in my throat. Who can hold me at night thinking, you know, you used the word hold there, right? Who can hold me at night so that it's warm and whom I will bite. So there's Blood. Who keeps learning the games we play as quickly as I can change the rules. Who can make me happy. And I do not wish to be happy. And yes, I do wish to be happy. George and Martha. Sad, sad, sad. She's talking to Nick here.

53:53 Erin: I love that speech. That is like Shakespeare, just a little more of it.

53:58 Wes: Who I will not forgive for having come to rest, for having seen me and having said, yes, this will do. Who has made the hideous, the hurting, the insulting mistake of loving me and must be punished for it. George and Martha. Sad, sad, sad. So this is the way at least she sees it, right? I think the way you were describing it, accurate or not, seems to be the way she sees it. Where he's adapted to her variability and to her makes it sound like self loathing here. In a way that he can keep her in the relationship in a way that maybe others have not been able to keep her. Even if that means playing these sick games, unfortunately.

54:37 Erin: Right.

54:38 Wes: What you were saying before is she's always. Yes, she defines the game. She's always ahead because she always has more on him. Right. She knows the book story, the Bergen story, and she can reveal at will the fantasy child, which he does not want revealed. You know, you would think she might be the one who would be ashamed of that, right? In some way, but it's not. It's him. So he wants to learn the games, play the games to keep things between her and him going. But he doesn't want the game to be overexposed, maybe through some of the details of the game to be made public.

55:14 Erin: And she's also insidious. I mean, she's working behind the scenes. The big thing that changes the nature of this entire night happens offstage when she tells Honey about the child.

55:25 Wes: Yeah.

55:26 Erin: The thing that the whole play hinges on, we don't even see. And then Honey's the one who reveals it. She's the one who sort of gives birth to the child in the conversation. And you're making me realize kind of the, you know, the idiocy of the maybe of this whole pretense, which, you know, I mean, you don't want to look too closely at it, of course, but, you know, Hani just brings it up like, oh, and what about your son? You know, like, totally normal. And it's like, okay, well, what did Martha expect to happen? Like, obviously this is all part of her plan. Right? And by the end of the night, they will know. Not to bring this up in company with other people at the college, but it seems that Martha has mentioned this in some sort of totally innocuous way in the other room, which we're not privy to, that makes Honey think it's perfectly fine to just mention it in front of everybody else. And it's like, of course, if they ever brought this up to anybody else at the college, it would just be dead in the water. Or like, what if they then went to the president of the college and started talking about his grandson? You know, I mean, the whole thing is crazy. It seems like the rest of the night must happen, if only in order to shut down the fact that Martha has innocuously introduced this fact, which has to be drummed out of everyone before they could be sent off to go and talk about this to everybody else. This is a small college, and everybody talks. There's a lot about what's unspoken and what isn't. One of the things I was thinking of when I mentioned the fact that Nick becomes more honest over the course of the night is that George will mention the playing of musical beds, as he calls it, that happens in the college. And Nick acts suitably disturbed by that fact. And of course, later we find out that's exactly what Nick is intending to do in order to advance his career. So there's an interesting tension here, as in any polite society, between spoken and unspoken truths and the things that everyone seems to know and the things that you're seemingly not supposed to talk about. So in a way, Martha seems to be dramatizing a kind of an essential fact of any closed community, like a college campus or something like that. I don't know.

57:28 Wes: Speaking of the end of the night, it's 2:30am and I have guests coming over, so. So we're going to move it to Postscript. The after party. Yes, with our guests, Nick and Honey.

57:39 Erin: Now, I keep thinking that you're saying milk and honey.

57:43 Wes: Yeah. That's interesting, because, of course, George and Martha reference to Washington and his wife. And then I think Nick is actually supposed, according to Alby, was a specific reference. But now I forget what the reference is to. But anyway, maybe we'll remember that and share that with you on Postscript, if that is an enticement. But we will talk about Bergen. Is it Bergen and Coke, what that's about. And a little boy shooting his mom with shotgun and then killing his father. Very exciting stuff and what that means. Anything else that we need to talk about?

58:19 Erin: I think that's enough intrigue for one Postscript.

58:21 Wes: Okay.

58:22 Erin: All right.

58:23 Wes: So that's what we're gonna do. All right. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com airwavemedia.com.

Wallace Stevens was an ungainly insurance executive, but his poetry is serene and secularly reverential. In particular, his poem “Sunday Morning” seems to suggest that the rhythm of the natural world—if we give it enough rapt attention—is as good as any chant or prayer. But can a return to nature worship solve the problem of nihilism, once monotheism has been eclipsed by modernity? Are memory and desire as permanent heaven, and can the poet become their high priest? “Sunday Morning” is a poetic dialogue about these questions. And whether or not we’re satisfied with its conclusion that the world is nothing more than an “old chaos of the sun,” the poem itself is an orderly and beautiful form of communion.

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0:11 Wes: Wallace Stevens was an ungainly insurance executive, but his poetry is serene and secularly reverential. In particular, his poem Sunday Morning seems to suggest that the rhythm of the natural world, if we give it enough rapt attention, is as good as any chant or prayer. But can a return to nature worship solve the problem of nihilism? Once monotheism has been eclipsed by modernity, are memory and desire as permanent as heaven? And can the poet become their high priest? Sunday Morning is a poetic dialogue about these questions and whether or not we're satisfied with its conclusion, that the world is nothing more than an old chaos of the sun. The poem itself is an orderly and beautiful form of communion. This is Wes Alwan.

0:59 Erin: This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext.

1:04 Wes: So, Erin, to make ends meet, if you ended up getting a job, let's say as an insurance executive, maybe at the Hartford Accident Indemnity Company. It's a cool sounding name, right?

1:16 Erin: I had an internship there.

1:17 Wes: Are you serious?

1:19 Erin: No.

1:20 Wes: Oh, my God, how naive I am. All right, well, I guess it's within the realm of possibility. You are from Connecticut, but I was going to try to make a joke about being attentive to risk or something, but anyway, no. So if you get a lucrative job, let's say paying $350,000 a year in today's salary. Today's money. But then you also became a Pulitzer Prize winning poet. I like the alliteration in that. Pulitzer Prize winning poet. Would you be tempted to quit your job or would you just, like Wallace Stevens, keep that job forever and ever?

1:57 Erin: I would keep the job because of my expensive interest in lifestyle.

2:06 Wes: Interest in money is stronger than my interest in poetry.

2:09 Erin: That's right. No, actually, realistically, I would 100% quit the job. I wouldn't be in a job like that in the first place. But it's kind of. Yeah, it's kind of amazing to think that he was maybe America's most practical. Certainly like the most practical modernist. Well, there was Williams, who was a doctor, but that's a lot different than being an insurance man. So I think that speaks to, like, the mystery at the heart of Steven's personality. I feel like I can't quite figure him out. I can't figure out the marriage. Certainly maybe I can, and I just don't want to figure it out like that. He was just like unhappy in his marriage and it was boring and he kind of didn't know what to do. Yeah, but, yeah, it's odd.

2:51 Wes: He's an interesting character because apparently he was very sto, too. So his boss once said, unless they told me he had a heart attack, I never would have known he had a heart. Ooh. So apparently he was quite a reserved person. Unless he was drinking, in which case he would get in fights with Frost and Hemingway. Once I actually got into a fist fight with Hemingway. These sorts of things happen while he's on vacation in Key West. But otherwise quite reserved. The kind of guy who composed poems on scraps of paper while walking to work. And then asked his secretary to type them up. He also turned down a. After he won the Pulitzer Prize, he was offered a faculty position at Harvard, which he turned down because it would have meant quitting that job. So the background that I got on him, I didn't ever get a firm. It must be somewhere, because he has journals and prose writings as well. I imagine somewhere he must have said why it is he kept the job. But you can kind of see it in his poetry. There's this sort of commitment to reality, maybe, let's say, and to the concrete. And he seems like the person who might have become unmoored without the day job, without being able to be locked down by that. Because there's also a very expansive quality to his poetry. And the tendency towards abstraction. And this weird balance between that expansive tendency and being anchored in sensuous detail and concrete detail.

4:24 Erin: I think that's really right. How I understand him is as a guy who just lived for his vacations. But, yeah, I think that tethering that you're describing is probably really apt. Michael Hoffman, the great poet critic who's one of my professors at University of Florida. He had, like, a really. Just an amazing character analysis of all of all the poets that we've read, of course, which, of course, is very much in evidence in his reviews. He's famously perceptive, but he thought of Stevens as being this, like, big, fat guy who loved life and loved. Like. Loved to eat and loved, you know, loved all those kinds of sensuous pleasures. So that makes him seem kind of jolly too. But there's, like, a dark side to that as well. But, yeah, you see that come out so much in Harmonium. And then you think, how could an insurance guy have written this? I don't know. It's crazy.

5:12 Wes: Yeah, exactly. So we should say for background. This was his first book, Harmonium, in which Sunday Morning appeared. It had appeared in Poetry, the journal poetry, in 1915, but didn't appear in a collection until 1923. And this is when Stevens was 44 years old. He had been writing poetry since he had been at Harvard and studied, I think, with William Carlos Williams. Is that right? No, studied with Santayana and apparently very influenced by Santayana's book, Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. And then after he left Harvard, he was actually a writer in New York for a little while and then decided to do something practical. Went to law school and then ultimately got this job as an insurance executive, which he kept for the rest of his life. So, you know, I'm always fond of those late bloomer. It's not really Late bloomer story, but you'd always say, okay. He published his first book when he was 44 years old. So I guess he worked very consistently. And then he. Eventually he felt like he had enough to put together. The way he put it was he was picking a crisp salad from the garbage of the past. The way he put it to his editor when he put together Harmonium.

6:29 Erin: That's great.

6:31 Wes: There are a lot of great poems in that collection, including in the first publication, a pared down version of Sunday Morning with some stanzas missing and reordered by his editor, which is just, like, so shocking to think about.

6:44 Erin: I thought that was in Poetry. That was that Harriet Monroe.

6:48 Wes: You're right.

6:48 Erin: Yeah.

6:49 Wes: Wait. Yeah, the full thing appeared in Harmonium. Yeah. Sorry. Yes, that was the initial in Poetry. Right. Yeah.

6:55 Erin: Mm.

6:57 Wes: All right. So shall we get into Sunday Morning?

7:01 Erin: Let's do it.

7:02 Wes: We'll do our usual thing where we'll read a stanza and then talk about it. You want to start with the first one?

7:09 Erin: Sure. Sunday morning 1. Complacencies of the peignoir and late coffee and oranges in a sunny chair and the green freedom of a cockatoo upon a rug mingle to dissipate the holy hush of ancient sacrifice. She dreams a little and she feels the dark encroachment of that old catastrophe As a calm darkens among water lights. The pungent oranges and bright green wings seem things in some procession of the dead winding across wide water without sound. The day is like wide water without sound. Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet over the seas to silent Palestine, Dominion of the blood and sepulcher.

7:53 Wes: Beautiful. My experience of his poetry is, and especially this poem is immersively beautiful. What's your overall?

8:02 Erin: Yeah, it's beautiful. And it sometimes sort of resists being pinned down, like there is a lot of abstraction, like you say, you know, it's not rhymed, but it still reminds me, like, so much of this poem, of course, is probably heavily influenced by Keats. And so these sections, I noticed that they have 15 lines in them. They're like a sonnet plus, you know, sonnet plus one line, which is really nice. And then that puts me in mind of Keats's To Autumn, in which I think we talked about this. He sort of has that, like, overstuffed sonnet in each one of the stanzas of that poem. And yet.

8:35 Wes: And the ending, sorry, will sound like a direct variation to Autumn.

8:38 Erin: Right, right, right.

8:40 Wes: Stanza with the poem.

8:41 Erin: Yeah. With the birds. Yeah. Yeah. But there's still, at the same time, like, it's not, I don't know, firecrackery to me, as some of Keats. Like, there's a placid.

8:50 Wes: Oh, yeah.

8:50 Erin: You know, and a dreaminess, which I think is fitting for the subject. This opens with just a woman sitting in a chair, and she's sort of chillaxing on a Sunday morning, and her mind wanders and we sort of wander with her. There's a feeling of calm and it's troubled, like wind on the water at certain points, but very smooth kind of sound.

9:14 Wes: Just the first word. I really love. If you could say, well, what are the great first words of poems as opposed to the great first lines of poems? This has got to be one of them. So complacency, in the plural and whatever satisfactions are associated with sleeping in late and being lazy on a Sunday. And in this case, of course, not going to church, which is very significant. Relaxing in the sun. And there's kind of a hint of class and luxury with the peignoir and leisure. But there's also, in the word complacency, there's another connotation which is just that there's some sort of impending danger. Right. If you get too complacent, you might get. What's the word you might get? Smacked. I don't know. You might be surprised by something. Yeah.

10:00 Erin: That's really nice. And also the kind of. I think it combines so many senses, because also in complacency, there's a sense of, like you say, the negative sense that something might creep up on you, but also a smugness or a kind of self satisfaction. And the whole poem is about trying to take satisfaction from just the self or from just the qualities that are being offered right here in this opening image and to fashion some kind of existence out of that or some kind of higher order, which is a troubling project.

10:35 Wes: Yeah.

10:36 Erin: Causes a lot of hedging.

10:38 Wes: Yeah. I mean, we can Say if we want where we're headed, the poem will tell you explicitly too. It's not a matter of interpretation, but we're headed towards the attempt to establish a post Christian neo pagan religion to find some sense of meaning in the wake of that. The other thing that really draws me into the poem are the very charming rendition of coffee and oranges and the cockatoo. The green freedom of the cockatoo where I think of. In light of thoughts about religion and sin and knowledge of good and evil. There's a connotation of naivete to the greenness and freedom associated with naivety. Right. Pre lapsarian, pre self consciousness in animals. And the image I have is of the cockatoo having its wings out but walking, which is an interesting image because it's a bird that's been uncaged and there's freedom in that. But it's not using its full freedom. It's not flying. It's not exerting itself. It's sort of stumbling around in a comic way. At least that's the way I. Way I've always imagined it.

11:38 Erin: That's nice. I really like that. Yeah, that's the way I've imagined it too. But I never thought about the idea of extended wings because you want to get that nice swath of green. So the wings would have to be a bit extended. That's nice.

11:50 Wes: You know. And then we wonder about her freedom in relation to that. Right. There's a freedom to this level of leisure and satisfaction, the complacencies. But then isn't there. What kind of freedom? Is she uncaged? Isn't she? So.

12:03 Erin: Yeah. And these colors, you know, the oranges in the sun are orange and the lighter orange maybe are yellow and the brown of the coffee and the green of the cockatoo. She's thinking she's not free of this compulsion maybe to think of herself as doing something wrong here by not going to church. And they all dissipate the holy hush of ancient sacrifice. Do cockatoos make noises? I mean, they must like chirp and stuff like that. But they're not like parrots.

12:28 Wes: I was thinking about the same thing. Because the dissipation of the hush implies noise. Although I think it's visual noise and probably auditory noise as well.

12:37 Erin: Yeah. And it's sort of backwards. It's interesting. This florid color scheme is sort of matched by some kind of sound. Or maybe they're just really loud colors. Right. And what are they dissipating but silence. It's an interesting Usually silence is what dissipates in noise, but not the other way around.

12:53 Wes: Right?

12:54 Erin: Yeah. So there's something happy and exuberant about the image, erasing the sort of dour silence maybe.

13:02 Wes: Right. The hush involved in holiness. And of course, the ancient sacrifice, meaning Christ's crucifixion. Right. Mm.

13:12 Erin: It's as if the poem is narrating her a little bit, maybe. I mean, it's describing her, but also we get this holy hush of ancient sacrifice. And then, oh, she dreams a little and she feels the dark encroachment.

13:23 Wes: Right.

13:23 Erin: It's as if the poem has kind of punctured this or the scene, or maybe she has remembered it, been called back to what morning it is. And then she gets this flood of realization. Right. Oh, I'm not at church and now this old catastrophe is encroaching upon me. And so the old catastrophe is itself also the. The crucifixion.

13:45 Wes: Again, this sort of reminds me of Freud's there's no no in the unconscious. So she's thinking in a self satisfied way about how she doesn't need to be at church and this is all she needs.

13:56 Erin: Right, Right.

13:57 Wes: She's thinking about how she should be at a church and she's feeling guilty.

14:01 Erin: But yeah. And there's a kind of. I mean, there's so much doubling in this poem. But here already we get ancient sacrifice and old catastrophe. It's like it comes back around, you know, we're dissipating the ancient sacrifice. But yeah, like you say, we get it as a kind of a negative construction, like we're not thinking about this. And then again it comes up in like, oh, no, we are thinking about this. So it appears twice. Because her thoughts keep circling around and around throughout the entire poem.

14:26 Wes: Yeah. What induces the encroachment is this reverie that she goes into, which you would think the reverie would be the culmination of the satisfaction that she's feeling. Right. Relaxing, being in the sun, being in a state of pleasant reverie. And here it's more like an anxiety dream. Again, he uses the word dream, not daydream, not reverie. So there's some ambiguity as to her waking state. She's awake, but maybe it's closer to sleep than the average daydream. And then anxiety rears its ugly head and the catastrophe. So on the one hand it's the crucifixion. So catastrophe is an interesting word. I mean, it's got a negative connotation often. And in this case, so there's the catastrophe of Christ's suffering, of the killing of Christ. But of course on the other side of that is supposed to be salvation.

15:22 Erin: Right.

15:22 Wes: And then there's the more neutral description of just catastrophe in terms of the big turning point. Right. Historically there's BC and then there's AD that line. Things are very different on either side of it. And then of course there are other associated catastrophes, turning points that are parallel, like again the fall and then the development from animal sentience into human self consciousness. So again, it's an interesting encroachment because she's moving into a state of. In the dreaming of lower consciousness. And then it's consciousness, it's a higher level of consciousness and self consciousness that intervenes.

16:04 Erin: Well, you're making me think too that this almost predicts the end of the poem in a way, or the mere use of the term old catastrophe already contains within it the seeds of disbelief that will be sown over the course of the poem. Because it's really not a catastrophe if you're a Christian.

16:20 Wes: Right.

16:20 Erin: I mean, a catastrophe would be what, the murder, the killing of an innocent man, of a good man, but not someone who is then a God and is then. Right. Resurrected. And so it can only be a catastrophe, I think, if stripped of the resurrection as a concept. And the resurrection of course is what proves Christ's divinity.

16:39 Wes: Yeah.

16:40 Erin: So there's already a sense of like, if it's just a catastrophe, then Christ really isn't God. Yeah, it's already in that.

16:47 Wes: And if you're anti religious, as Stevens is, although it's a bit complicated ultimately. But the adventure of Christianity and its dominance of the world, including political dominance, is catastrophic. And you could point to religious war and everything that follows as well, if you're thinking in that anti religious vein. So it's not just about being separated from nature. Right. The sort of pro pagan theme of this poem, wanting to return us to the experience of nature as a kind of secular religion. But it's also about the political and social consequences of Christianity historically.

17:29 Erin: The next line is as a calm darkens among water lights, we get that same kind of doubling. First the hush is dissipated, then the calm returns. And I get this really strong mental image of, I want to say maybe in a Lord of the Rings movie or something, you know, where everyone's like happy and having a good time and they're eating their, their fourth breakfast or whatever it is, and then all of a sudden, you know, maybe one of those ring wraiths comes out of nowhere and then Everything, like, you know, the sky gets clouded over and everyone immediately stops laughing. And there's this hush that happens, and everything gets still and dark and. Yeah, it's very cinematic for me.

18:06 Wes: I was actually looking up water lights. I was like, what the. You know, it's not night, so it can't be, like, lights floating on the water. And then so I was like, is this some kind of thing that I don't know about? Of course, it's just Steven's coinage. And I think he's thinking about the light being reflected off the water. Right. And maybe sparkling. And so there's an interesting image of the. Something sparkling. There are sort of dark recesses to it or the dark recesses of waves. And then one can become focused on that darkness. So the calm becomes something different now in the beginning, and I think it's associated with complacency. And now calm starts to have a sinister tinge to it.

18:47 Erin: Yeah. So we get this transformation of even the happy things around her and the colors around her becoming a kind of funeral procession winding across wide water. And these are maybe the two most difficult lines in the poem for me. Almost a repeated line. The day is like wide water without sound. And she passes over the water. I'm wondering if there's supposed to be a chime here with Christ walking on water. She makes an imaginative flight.

19:12 Wes: The encroachment turns into her actually walking and imagination over walking to Palestine. You know, she's gonna wrestle with the idea that she can give up Christianity in a way, but it begins with a pilgrimage. Begins with a journey in which she imitates Christ by walking on water.

19:29 Erin: Oh, that's great. I love that.

19:30 Wes: Yeah.

19:31 Erin: And then she goes to silent Palestine. This is really. Things that are silent are very bad. Dominion of the blood and sepulchre. There's no resurrection here. I think I might have mentioned this in a previous episode, but there are always, like, two types of Christians. They're the crucifixion Christians and the resurrection Christ. And this is very much. Stevens is very much a crucifixion Christian. There's nothing happy.

19:53 Wes: Yeah. So I think she's leaning against. But the dominion of the blood and sepulchre. I mean, you could think of it as the blood of Christ, but you could also think of it as the blood of religious and ethnic warfare. Right. That's long afflicted the area. And then the sepulcher, Christ's tomb. And then the question was, whether was he really resurrected? The answer is going to be the negative. And the negative at the end of the poem, that's going to be her insight, her realization. She's going to answer that question. The negative. I like this idea, too, of the procession of the dead across the winding water. And then the day is like white water without sound. The kind of expansiveness of her day becoming this expansiveness of pilgrimage and inquiry. So, inner pilgrimage.

20:36 Erin: Nice.

20:36 Wes: So each stanza now is going to pose questions. And later on it'll be. I think from the four stanza on, it'll be quotation marks or she'll say things. But here it's still the poet channeling or the narrator channeling her point of view. So why should she give her bounty to the dead?

20:54 Erin: Right. Yeah. The turn of her mind, immediately recalled from Palestine to present. Should I read that stanza?

21:01 Wes: Yes.

21:02 Erin: Okay. 2. Why should she give her bounty to the dead? What is divinity if it can come Only in silent shadows and in dreams shall she not find in comforts of the sun, in pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else in any balm or beauty of the earth, things to be cherished, like the thought of heaven, Divinity must live within herself. Passions of rain or moods in falling snow, grievings in loneliness or unsubdued elations when the forest blooms, gusty emotions on wet roads, on autumn nights, all pleasures and all pains, remembering the bough of summer and the winter branch. These are the measures destined for her soul.

21:45 Wes: Yeah. So the question is, whatever is to be gained by religion? Her sense is that it takes her away from her bounty, you know, which turned out to be her current comforts in the sun and all the rest of it, her bounty of the cockatoo, even though it's now it's just the green wings and the fruit or a form of bounty that she would have to sacrifice that if she were to go to church, turn her. Or turn her attention to religion. And of course, you know, religion generally calls for certain sacrifices in terms of pleasure here maybe there's an invocation of giving up, of youth or virgin sacrifice, something like that. That may be a bit of a stretch, but giving her bounty right to the dead. And then there's the larger. And we discussed this, James Joyce's the dead. There's a larger sense in which we, in adherence to norms and in the effects of culture, the influence of those things, we sort of are sacrificed to the previous generations. We are no longer just creatures of instinct, but we follow the rules of the dead. The dead pass that onto us. The second part of the stanza is interesting because she begins with Divinity living in herself. And then we get a lot of stuff about the environment and the weather or nature.

22:56 Erin: Yeah. All her emotions seem to be this divinity in herself. So the emotions are the response to the outside world. They're all passions of weather. Like having seasonal affective disorder or something like that.

23:13 Wes: Yeah, there's this sort of collapse of distinction between inside and outside. Gusty emotions on wet roads. So at a certain point the emotions become the wind, for instance, there's moods in falling snow and then there's passions of rain. Yeah. So this collapse of distinction between inner emotional state and the natural world.

23:36 Erin: Yeah, I like this turn that happens really after line seven. The first half of that stanza really repeats the words and images from section 1. We get the silent shadows and dreams again. We get the wings and the fruit and everything. But then line 8, Divinity must live within herself. We finally get this new direction. So we move forward. And then we get rain and snow. I marked this out. Spring and fall and then winter and summer in the last two lines. So we get a whole kind of year compressed from lines eight to 15.

24:10 Wes: Yeah.

24:11 Erin: And there does seem to be a permeable membrane between the seasons, the moods, the passions, whatever that are happening inside her and whatever is going on outside. Which is interesting to me because so much of. At least in the Catholic liturgical year, you know, so much of the calendar is so attentive to. And so much of very old religions are attentive to the seasons and the passing of time and sort of like the marking of time in the seasons. So there's a stripping away of that. Where then what we have left is just the seasons. You know, we don't have like the Easter, for instance, the Easter celebration of new birth and eggs and bunnies and things coming out of hibernation. Now we just have those things themselves without the sort of associative. What for Stevens or this narrator would be sort of associative baggage.

25:00 Wes: Right. Divinity living within herself is interesting, I mean, because it sounds like it could be something that you read in a self help book. Right. God just lives in you or the divine lives in you. But it speaks to a transition from the divine as guaranteeing a kind of moral order, so being a foundation for morality and for a certain set of values, as Nietzsche put it, and Nietzsche was influential on Stevens, and you can see it in this poem, because it's a question of what you do after the God is dead, after the prospect of nihilism raises its ugly head. So the divine can be regulation of the moral order. But the divine, in the sense of a more pagan divine, has to do more with the regulation of the natural order and seasons and those cycles. And there's a connection between that and our inner lives and the regulation of our emotions, which is not unconnected to the regulation of the moral order. Right. And this is a pagan and Nietzsche idea as well, which is that we replace morality in the Christian sense with a kind of virtue ethics in which we cultivate various excellences, or we develop this ability to have a certain type of psychological integration. I mean, ultimately its legacy is psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. But the idea of the divine being in oneself here becomes this, I think, an idea of self regulation, which in psychoanalysis has something to do with the internalization of the things that a mother does for a baby. Right. Mentalization and something called mirroring. But we integrate maternal function into ourselves. And that's almost like a sort of pagan thing. Right. So instead of God the Father laying down the law, it's the maternal earth mother saying we regulate our behavior according to the concept of psychological integration, or something like that. So anyway, sorry, I won't do too much of that, get us off track with that kind of speculation.

27:01 Erin: But no, I think that's good because it does come up later when we get the mother of beauty. So shall we move on?

27:07 Wes: Yep.

27:08 Erin: 3. Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth. No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave large mannered motions to his mythy mind. He moved among us as a muttering king magnificent, would move among his hinds. Until our blood, commingling virginal with heaven brought such requital to desire. The very hinds discerned it in a star. Shall our blood fail, or shall it come to be the blood of paradise? And shall the earth seem all of paradise that we shall know? The sky will be much friendlier then than now. A part of labor and a part of pain. And next in glory to enduring love. Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

27:49 Wes: This to me is the most difficult stanza of the poem.

27:53 Erin: It might be my favorite, though, I don't know. Yeah, I especially love the last part. But Jove or Jupiter, right? Born entirely of gods, not at all human in the way that Christ is human. He didn't have a mom. He didn't have a growing up land like Palestine for us to travel to on this earth. And I love this idea that he's huge and moving among us like a king would move among deer.

28:20 Wes: This is interesting because I was very confused about that. The idea of him moving amongst deer. And what I found. Is that what Stevens, I think, meant is he's using a. And this is something he would do. He's using this in an archaic way to mean, like subordinate peasants, basically.

28:39 Erin: Okay. That's what I thought too, because I looked that up and it said, yeah, that could be old English peasants.

28:44 Wes: Yeah. And I think there's evidence in the. I don't know, his correspondence or other. I think that is the critical decision, is that that's what he meant.

28:51 Erin: But. But I like the idea of deer, though, because then we have the idea

28:54 Wes: of a hunter, which is initially the way I interpreted all this. I did a whole big thing where I was like, on board with the whole deer thing and I was like, okay, he's a hunter, he's. But go ahead.

29:03 Erin: I just like the idea too, that we're just fodder for this myth. Like Jupiter is always coming down and raping maidens and turning people into things. Right. Yeah. So we're just.

29:12 Wes: That's the way I read that as well. Yeah. And that still holds. Yeah. I don't think the deer thing leads the reader astray. So he could have meant both, really, Because I think when we talk about the star, I think that's going to be ambiguous as well, or polyvalent polysemus between the planet and maybe the star that led the apostles to Jesus. But the inhuman birth is important because it's not. So Christ was a real human being, whether you're religious or not. And Zeus has much murkier origins. That's why there's this mention of mythology. So no Sweet Land gave large mannered motions to his mythy mind. He moved among us as a muttering king. The muttering is because there's less distinctness because he's not a historical being. It's almost like it's a matter of rumor or it's not as impressed upon us or distinct. Right. There's a different relationship where there was, you know, for the ancient Greeks and Romans, to their gods, it seemed like a much more, say, casual relationship.

30:18 Erin: Right.

30:19 Wes: I don't know if that's fair because, of course, there's temples and there's sacrifices. There's evident, of course, they took it seriously in a sense, but it's hard not to look at that from the perspective of Christian civilization. Think. Well, I don't know if they took it all that seriously.

30:32 Erin: Right. The importance of Jupiter beginning as an idea.

30:35 Wes: Yes.

30:36 Erin: Right. So the idea of an invented God, something that we've just come up with so that even when the sentence continues and we add to that the incarnational theology of Christ, it still seems to have this origin in God as being just an idea that we've come up with, you know, now we've added flesh to it, now we've elaborated on the idea, we've made the idea better, but it is in fact still just an invention of our own humanity.

31:01 Wes: Yeah. For Jesus there's a feedback loop between the people, his hinds, right. His followers, his flock and his self conception. It's almost the idea that large mattered motions. I don't know if this is right, but who Jesus became as a prophet, proselytizer, who he was to his contemporaries, to the apostles is self fashioned. And ironically, Jupiter is not self fashioned in the same way. If he's a product simply of myth. Right. If he's simply a product of human beings, there's the political element to this. There's Palestine being under Roman rule and the prospect of liberating themselves from Roman rule and everything that goes into that. So then there's this amazing image of the blood commingling and the requital of

31:49 Erin: desire as if Jove becomes man. Yeah. And we have the idea of the virgin birth in here.

31:55 Wes: So Jupiter moves among us until our blood commingles with heaven. So what is the desire being requited? It's a desire for the divine, but it's requited in the sense that the divine is really brought down to earth. Right. I don't know. The gods are humanoid and they have human passions. And maybe ultimately by locating Jupiter in the heavens, in a star which turns out to be a physical entity, there's sort of a deflationary aspect to that. So discerning Jupiter in a star actually so finding God or finding out that God is in nature, but paradise is here. And then the inverse reading, I think you could say, well maybe this has something to do with Christianity.

32:38 Erin: Yeah. So you're saying that the requital is desire for what?

32:42 Wes: I mean it's the desire of the hinds for something in relation to heaven and the divine and Jupiter.

32:48 Erin: Right. So it seems to be the compensation for the fact that Jupiter is too far above the hinds and therefore there must be some loss or the difference has to be made up in some way. There's a demand to have a more human God, to have someone closer to

33:06 Wes: us, or there's some way in which the pagan pantheon requites desire for the divine that's different than the Christian. The other reading for Christianity is that it has something to do with God incarnate in Christ. Right. Or something like that. So there's the union of the Christianity itself involves this union of the human and the divine, the synthesis of the human and the divine in a personage on earth. And then the parallel here is a synthesis of is Jupiter ending up as a star? So I'm not sure. I'm wondering if both those readings go in parallel. But he's looking forward now to a paradise that's non Christian, that's not this severe distinction between the earthly and the heavens is what he calls the indifferent blue. Or maybe the indifferent blue is just the dividing line, but a friendlier sky that's more connected to what happens in daily life, to labor and to pain, and the idea of this paradise on earth. So there seems to be a contrast between shall our blood fail or shall it come to be the blood of paradise? As if it's almost like are we going to lose our nerve? Or can we follow this pagan requital to the bitter end? Let's pause to talk about our sponsor for this episode. Masterclass With Masterclass, you can learn from the world's best artists, icons and leaders anytime, anywhere and at your own pace. You can learn songwriting from John Legend, storytelling from Neil Gaiman, and screenwriting with Erin Sorkin. With over 180 classes from a range of world class instructors, that thing you've always wanted to do is closer than you think. So the most recent class I took was Screenwriting with Erin Sorkin. Sorkin is the writer behind West Wing and the Social Network and A Few Good Men, known for his really incredible dialogue. Even though I've read quite a few screenwriting books, it was really enlightening to hear him talk about what he considers the most important principles of screenwriting. And it helps focus things. For instance, the course helps you develop a compelling story by making sure it's centered around characters, intentions, what they want, and the obstacles to those intentions. There are also lessons on story ideas, developing character, the film, story arc. And one thing that's really great about this is you get to be a fly on the wall in group workshops where Sorkin has given writers assignments and then they workshop those scripts. He also simulates a writer's room for a TV series, so specifically the West Wing, he sits down with writers to brainstorm episode ideas for the for the series. So I highly recommend you check out Masterclass this holiday, give the perfect gift of an annual Masterclass membership and get one free. Go to masterclass.com subtext today. That's masterclass.com subtext terms apply. Okay, now Back to the show.

36:12 Erin: I see that as maybe something about just accepting that this existence that we're currently in is just a precursor to some sort of heavenly, truer afterlife. So that would be the blood failing, and then the opposite of that would be accepting that we are in the paradise now and the blood is the real thing. I don't know if that's right, but that's the way that I. Because there's so much compression here now. He's sort of pointing to this future prospect. There's kind of no present here. It's either past or future. So shall it come to be the blood of paradise? Can we become gods ourselves? Can we have divinity within ourselves and just accept that the blood that we have in this present moment requires no sacrifice? This is the heaven. This is the only reality that we will know. And therefore we have to make of this earth a paradise ourselves. Is that.

37:07 Wes: Yeah, I think that that sounds right on.

37:10 Erin: And shall the earth seem all of paradise that we shall know goes with that. But then the idea is, it's so interesting. Like, the friendly sky then becomes a matter of imagination and just perspective. And this is my favorite part, maybe, of the whole poem, because it's the reversal of what we might think. So in a Christian world, we would imagine that the sky would be friendly to us because there's actually a God up there, right opposite. The dividing line, as you say, between us and God is the sky. But he imagines the opposite. He imagines that the sky is indifferent to us and it actually divides us from God. So it prevents us from seeing. And in that way, it's like a wall that we feel sort of antagonistic towards almost because it prevents us from seeing whatever we perceive to be the TR reality behind it. Instead, if there's nothing behind it, then it becomes friendly. Like, if there's no cognition or something that's kind of operating this divider, then it becomes friendly to us.

38:12 Wes: Part of the unfriendliness of the division is just that it's otherworldly. It's not of this world. It's something that we can only look forward to and only after death. Right. If we're thinking of now, heaven in paradise, you know, and there's the sense of the indifference of God within the natural world, unless you believe in miracles. Right. So that's another element of this sharp division in which the indifferent blue actually cuts us off from the divine. Whereas if we are finding the divine within ourselves, and then our right and labor and pain, and then above it was the emotional States and concert with the natural world. That's sort of an intimate experience of the divine. Now, of course, I think Christians would themselves talk about an intimate experience of the divine, but this is not a miscomplacent experience or Steven's experience. Hmm, I don't know. Did I get any of that wrong?

39:15 Erin: No. That's good. 4. She says I am content when wakened birds before they fly test the reality of misty fields by their sweet questionings. But when the birds are gone and their warm fields return no more, where then is paradise? There is not any haunt of prophecy, nor any old chimera of the grave, neither the golden underground nor isle melodious where spirits gat them home, nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm remote on heaven's hill that has endured as April's green endures, or will endure, like her remembrance of awakened birds or her desire for June and evening tipped by the consummation of the swallow's wings.

39:57 Wes: This image is really nice of the reality testing birds. I assume their sweet questionings are. They're chirping, right? You know, we know while Stevens was familiar with Freud, so I assume when he says test the reality, he's thinking about reality testing, which would be Freud called the reality principle, as opposed to the pleasure principle. Reality principle says you can't always do what's pleasurable because you might get punished for it, even if that's just getting burnt if you put your hand on the stove. So this idea of the birds doing something like that before they take off, like that sort of pausing, it's almost as if there's a reflectiveness to the birds. The fields are misty, so they're about to take off, and weather conditions, they're gonna have to fly on instruments, so to speak, they're not gonna be able to see. So I really love that.

40:52 Erin: Yeah, I love that too. I wanna make some connection to the sky at the end of the previous section. I don't know if that quite works. We also have in this almost like an image of plumbing the depths, like plumbing the ocean, to test how deep it is or how far they could fly out, or is it really there? And so they're sort of testing the friendliness of the sky.

41:20 Wes: It's a navigational problem ultimately that they have and they, like her, are figuring out where to go. It's of course, a much simpler navigational problem, not a spiritual one. And it's one in which she can take satisfaction. I think when you read these lines, you understand that contentment, right? What it means to be so Contented by seeing this happen with the birds, the reality testing, the questionings, being able to look at the birds through that lens, as almost engaged in reflective activity, as if they reveal a teleology to nature. Right. As if they reveal some sort of design, ironically, given the theme of the poem, but some sort of purpose to things or maybe universal intelligence or something like that. So it's that contentment that she begins with, and that seems to be the ideal, right. That that could be the pagan way, is just to be content with that sort of experience. Make that one's religious experience. But now she's worried, right? I don't know if I can do that. You know, when they're gone and they return no more, where is. Then I lose paradise. Paradise becomes this transient thing rather than something eternal. So it's not fulfilling the same function. That idea of paradise, you know, the function that it serves in a religion like Christianity, cannot really do that if it's an earthly conception of paradise, because it involves becoming. It involves not just comforts and complacencies, but also death and pain.

42:54 Erin: So in the quoted section, then, she's again kind of swinging back around to doubt, you're saying. So the transience of these birds and even of the fields means that her paradise is under question here. She can't just be content with this. So the rest of this stanza responds to the question that she poses by saying that it presents all of these afterlives, these potential paradises of ancient myth or of Christianity that one could conceive of. And none of these, he says, or the narrator says, has endured as April's green endures. And it all hinges on her remembrance of these birds and her desire. So her perspective, her desire are what keep these birds alive, if I'm understanding this correctly.

43:44 Wes: Yeah.

43:44 Erin: Not even these paradises, which I suppose if the paradises aren't real, then they don't endure because they weren't there in the first place. So the only thing that does endure is her thought. Her thought and her desire within her.

44:00 Wes: Well, even if they did exist, I think he's saying they can't really do the thing that they purport to do, which is an interesting idea. Right. So I think we'll get more about that idea as we go on. They can't really do as well for us as memory and desire can do. And ultimately as becoming and even death, which turned out to be essential. Later on, he's going to imagine what paradise would be like. It's very Keatsian, I think, reminiscent of the Urn, right. Imagining everything like what's on earth but frozen. When you analyze paradise, it stops making sense in its eternalness. Its eternalness becomes a contradiction, the paradox. We wonder how that's actually going to serve us. So, yes, those things will not be able to endure as April's Green endures, right? So in the same way, in the relevant way, in the way that's actually relevant to what we want out of paradise. So remembrance and desire turn out to be the constant things, right? Those things are essentially about change. Because you remember things because they're gone. They've come and gone. They're an element of becoming. And that what you're left with is the memory. So that it's not a reality that persists, but something within the mind, within consciousness. And the same thing for desire, right? Even if we don't possess the object of desire, the desire is the thing that stays with us. The object is objects of desire come and go and satisfaction wanes and, you know, increases and decreases and all of that stuff. But those sorts of vectors within consciousness, backward looking and forward looking, are the things that stay with us. And it turns out those will be. I think the argument will be those are the only ones that will be relevant.

45:47 Erin: Yeah, it's so fascinating because there's an allowance made for subjectivity or even like the subjectivity is built in to this conception of what the actual paradise is. Because we think of April's Green enduring. You know, so often our memories are tinged with unreality. So often we remember things as being better or worse than they actually were. We remember them in this kind of heightened state and desire too. Like we remember things or we experience things in the present as being heightened from their actual reality in some kind of idealization. It's interesting. It's like he's found a way for the subjective experience which is so transient and which is maybe based in unreality, like some kind of fundamental unreality. Something that is not the way it really was. That is the thing he says, that actually endures, that actually sustains us. Not the seasonal change, right? Because seasons are over quickly and they may not be particularly splendid in some years compared to others. And we might remember them as being more splendid than they really were. And I don't know if you experienced this, but every single time the colors change in the fall, everybody, it seems over the age of 50, says, this wasn't anything like in my youth, you know, like the leaves just don't. They're just not as beautiful anymore. You know, they used to be so spectacular, the foliage and now it's just. It doesn't compare. And this past year it actually was really splendid. And everyone was really reluctant to say that it was really as beautiful as it was when they were kids. You know, it's just interesting to me that he makes allowances for that subjectivity. So it really is the mind itself, like the workings of the mind itself, even if it's making something better out of a reality, that is the thing that endures.

47:37 Wes: Yeah, I think that's very good. You're reminding me of Tintern Abbey. And apparently Wordsworth was some influence here on Stevens as well. And in Tintern Abbey in particular, I could see that. So we got the transition, that poem from nature as, you know, what does nature give us? There's sensation. We talked about good character and then ultimately contemplation. I mean, when he was younger, it was just more about being randy. Right. Wordsworth's poem. And then later on it becomes the memory of nature that stays with us. Right. To deal with life's drudgeries and distractions. Many shapes of joyless daylight, the fever of the world, all that stuff. So his love of nature goes from being about sensuous desire in his youth to being more about these elevated thoughts and about spirit and morality. And he's coming back to that scene, enjoying nature in a different way, partly as a function of seeing it through his younger self's eyes from a mature perspective, but then also seeing it through his sister's eyes and the idea that now she has a seed of a memory that will help her through life's hardships and will help her mature. So I think, am I making a relevant association here?

48:58 Erin: Yeah, I think so.

49:00 Wes: There's a quasi romantic quality to this poem because of this idea of what nature can, you know, what can nature do for us?

49:08 Erin: I think that Wordsworth in that poem is more high minded than this is. I think Wordsworth is still more interested in the objective natural experience and yes, of like taking pleasure in that, but only like in some sort of real sense. I would say that the narrator here cares about the natural in the sense that it sparked the remembrance. But the extent to which that can become unmoored from the reality of what was being remembered. Like if you looked at a picture and said, okay, this is what it was really like, and here's how I'm remembering it, and maybe the remembrance looks like it's gone through an Instagram filter or something, then he would be okay with that Instagram filter where I think, like Wordsworth would be suspicious of that filter.

49:53 Wes: I get what he's saying.

49:54 Erin: Yeah. Steven seems to be saying that the filter is really what makes it. And it doesn't matter how many filters you put it through, because the subjectivity of the experience, that's the pleasure. It's what you make of it. Whereas I think Wordsworth is far more bound to the actual natural beauty. I don't know. Maybe I'm carrying that too far, but

50:13 Wes: I think that's a good point. I think I'm thinking about, how does the world of becoming serve the world of permanence? Because that's how he's trying to answer her. Paradise is here now, but how can a world of becoming serve that? And Stevens, or the narrator is asking her to reconceive her conception of permanence as rooted somehow in becoming, but via subjectivity. Right. The permanence happens in memory and desire. And I thought I saw some of

50:40 Erin: that in Wordsworth, but, yeah, I think that's right. But I think Stevens is just taking it a step further, like I say.

50:48 Wes: Yeah, yeah, I agree. All right.

50:50 Erin: Five.

50:50 Wes: Yep.

50:51 Erin: Okay, five, she says, but in contentment I still feel the need of some imperishable bliss. Death is the mother of beauty. Hence from her alone shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires. Though she strews the leaves of sure obliteration on our paths, the path sick sorrow took, the many paths where triumph rang its brassy phrase or love whispered a little out of tenderness. She makes the willow shiver in the sun for maidens who were wont to sit and gaze upon the grass relinquished to their feet. She causes boys to pile new plums and pears on disregarded plate. The maidens taste and stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

51:33 Wes: Love it.

51:34 Erin: Yeah.

51:34 Wes: If there's anything that's quintessential Wallace Stevens, it causes boys to pile new plums and pears on disregarded plate.

51:42 Erin: Yeah, that's great. That is even the absence of an article which seems to be pretty.

51:47 Wes: Yes. Yeah.

51:48 Erin: Characteristic.

51:49 Wes: What is the line from the Emperor of Ice Cream, the roller of big cigars bid him whip and kitchen cup concupiscent curds or something like that.

51:58 Erin: Yeah, yeah, Very similar.

51:59 Wes: I think one is evocative of the other. But this was a line, actually, that his editor did not understand and he explained it to her in a letter. And what he said about it. Let me just read that.

52:12 Erin: Yeah.

52:13 Wes: So he says to Monroe, his editor, disregarded refers to the disuse into which things fall that have been possessed for A long time. I mean, therefore, that death releases and renews what the old have come to disregard the use, inherit and make use of. Which I thought was pretty clear, because at this point, it's a cycle of life. Your parents stop using a plate, and then you use that to seduce other people by piling it up with fruit. You dust it off. You get it out of the dusty cabinet, you dust it off, and then you get yourself a boyfriend or girlfriend with it. All right, maybe that's not as funny as I thought it was.

52:52 Erin: Oh, so the parents have disregarded it because they've long since. You're saying they've long since put away their good china or something.

52:57 Wes: What's fallen into disuse by the leaves. Right. The leavings. In a way, it's a mundane point which Wallace Stevens actually acknowledged. He said something like, you can put this stuff in poems, but if you were to spell it out literally, it sounds trite, which is just that death paves the way for new things. He's going to claim death as the mother of beauty and strews the leaves of sheer obliteration on our paths. Our plans, in a way, come to naught, or things come to an end. So the path Sig sorrow took. But even our triumphs and our love, those pathways through life, get strewn with leaves of alliteration. So even within life, before we actually die, we experience all these losses. But those leavings, those losses, those leaves become the basis for new life, new experience, et cetera, et cetera.

53:58 Erin: Yeah, it's just such a fascinating. I mean, I think death is the mother of beauty is probably the most famous line from this poem. Right?

54:05 Wes: Yeah.

54:06 Erin: What's fascinating about the line is that beauty is not beautiful in itself. The thing that creates the beauty is not, we would think, it's not the fact that it's pleasing or symmetrical or somehow there's some inherent quality of it that is making it beautiful in some way. It's the fact that it's transient. The fundamental quality of things that are beautiful are things that will stop being beautiful someday.

54:34 Wes: Yeah, I like what you're pointing out with transience because it's also that beauty is a flowering. Right? Beauty is a certain point in a process, growth and degeneration. And degeneration is necessarily the other side of that. So in order to have beauty, you need becoming, and then becoming implies death. This appears in philosophical theodicy where you're trying to justify Augustine. Right. You try to say how God could allow evil, and you say, well, actually, evil is just the necessary component, the good is not possible without it. So the positive is not possible without privation. And here it's the same sort of thing. And then. And then also, you know, on a very literal level, animals eat animals and the dead leaves fertilize the ground. So the cycle of life is a real natural thing with it. What flowers? And the next generation comes out of the death of the previous generation.

55:33 Erin: Right, that's good.

55:34 Wes: The way the stanza is structured, it's. Although Death does all those things, you know, alliteration on our paths, she also. She makes the willow shiver in the sun. For Badens who were wont to sit and gaze upon the grass relinquished to their feet. That's an interesting image. Right. What does this mean exactly? The thing that we get next is much clearer. So death is what causes boys to pile plums on plates and try to seduce the maidens and distract them into passion, even though they're walking on the death. The littering leaves, they are now distracted into desire. But the line before it is a little less clear.

56:12 Erin: Why is the willow shivering? Is it the appearance? Is this a willow at its full sort of height of not flowering but, you know, of leafing, and therefore the sun is kind of dappling it and it appears to shiver and therefore it's sort of prefiguring in that shivering, the moment when it will lose its leaves and look bare is sort of punctured with fall or death in the middle of this height of dappled beauty. Yeah, it's the opposite of, you know, nor ever can those trees be bare. Right. Like on the Grecian urn. But that very shivering prefigures the time when it's going to be bare and it's cold because it has no leaves on it. Yeah, I don't know if that's stupid.

56:54 Wes: Yeah, no, no, I like it. But I'm still bathed. I thought I had. And I thought I had more to say about this too. I mean, what you're saying makes sense, you know, like the shivering. It sounds almost like the shivering that the maidens would do in response to the desire of the boys.

57:11 Erin: But there's something of the pathetic fallacy in this. Maybe because maybe it's shivering in response to the whisper, like it's shivering with desire or something. Yeah, in response to the whisper, the line before it. Yeah, it's responding to what's going on around it. Or maybe it is literally shivering because of the movement underneath their movement. They're talking, they're whispering, whatever. Or maybe literally shaking the willow branches. The leaves on the branches that are hanging down. So that their movement is causing the tree to move.

57:47 Wes: I don't know if the willow is bare of leaves. Willows do get bare of leaves. Leaves, right. It's a naked willow. So of course it's shivering because it's fall, I guess leaves are falling. So what it seems to evoke is the idea that the leaves are somehow a gift to the maidens. It becomes the things that they stray upon later with passion. Or something like that.

58:14 Erin: I like the idea that this is willow, though. Because I can't think of any tree that when it loses its leaves, looks more spectral, you know? I mean, it looks like a naked umbrella. I don't know. It's just a great choice of tree.

58:29 Wes: It's interesting. You're reminding me of something Stephen said about. This is from his Opus Possumus, his later prose writings. All of our ideas come from the natural world. Trees equals umbrellas anyway, so I like that. That you got that out of that.

58:51 Erin: Well, Welden Keys has. This doesn't have anything to do with anything. But I recommend this to our readers. It's one of my favorite poems. He has a great poem called the Umbrella. Which is kind of like an essay poem. That explores all the different umbrellas throughout time and history and nature. And it's just a fabulous poem.

59:10 Wes: Very cool. All right. And I would say, before we move on, just one more thing. I like this idea of the grass being relinquished to the feet of the maidens. Surrendered right by nature, in a way.

59:21 Erin: Yeah. It's going to bend with their weight.

59:23 Wes: Right.

59:23 Erin: So it's like.

59:24 Wes: Yes, that's one of the things that I thought of. Yeah. I thought, you know, in a way, it goes both ways. It's like. It's as if it's been relinquished. In the sense of it's being pushed out of the ground grown for us or for the maidens. But also. Yeah. It's relinquished in the sense that it's

59:38 Erin: bends, underweight, it's falling on its sword for us.

59:41 Wes: So we get leaves and shivering and grass bending. And nature is very nice, even when it's death operating. Anyway, let's move to six.

59:52 Erin: Six. Is there no change of death in paradise? Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs hang always heavy in that perfect sky? Unchanging yet so like our perishing earth with rivers like our own that seek for seas they never find the same receding shores that never touch with inarticulate pang why set the pear upon those river Banks or spice the shores with odors of the plum. Alas, that they should wear our colors there the silken weavings of our afternoons and pick the strings of our insipid lutes. Death is the mother of beauty, mystical within whose burning bosom we devise our earthly mothers waiting sleeplessly. Every time I read a new stanza, I'm like, oh, this one's actually my favorite.

1:00:36 Wes: Yeah. So this is like. All right, here's our Ode to a Grecian Urn stanza. It's going to end with Ode to or to Autumn. But am I right about that? Isn't this explicitly.

1:00:47 Erin: Oh, yes, definitely. And, you know, the Grecian urn has some expectancy in it. I mean, maybe there's something scary about the Grecian urn, but this is like showing that kind of the Grecian urn turned into a nightmare. The Grishane urn is right on the brink of fulfillment. So it's not quite as scary as this. Right. The people are bending toward each other and they're almost going to kiss. Right. So it's frozen in the perfect moment right before the kiss. This is like an eternal kiss where you're frozen there and your lips are getting chapped and it really sucks. Right?

1:01:24 Wes: Yeah, very good point. And so you're frozen not in the state of heightened desire prior to consummation, but in the state of consummation.

1:01:35 Erin: Yeah. So the nightmare here is the idea of eternality. Is that a word? But also expansiveness, infinite expansion. So the infinitude of paradise includes, like, if there are rivers there, then the rivers are going to go on forever. Right. Because it's infinity. So if a river is just running down to want to be emptied into some sea, some ocean, and a river is in an eternal space that goes on forever, it's never going to find that ocean, which is a terrifying thought. Like, there is no terminus.

1:02:13 Wes: So this goes against my reading of perpetual consummation, actually, because this is a state of desire that never touch within articulate pang.

1:02:24 Erin: But it's desire and consummation at the same time. I know what you're saying, but also it has to be that this is also the height of consummation, because there's no death.

1:02:33 Wes: Yeah.

1:02:34 Erin: Grecian urn is sort of like pre death. And this is post death.

1:02:38 Wes: Yeah, no change of death. That's a great phrase.

1:02:42 Erin: There are seas, but the rivers go on forever. And the seas go on forever.

1:02:47 Wes: Yeah.

1:02:48 Erin: The difference here is infinitude. I think maybe you're revealing something that is a contradiction or maybe the inherent contradiction in thinking of a space in which there is perfect fulfillment, but also it goes on forever because we can't conceive of it. So maybe you're revealing this sort of impossibility, whether it be of imagination to conceive of such a space or of such a space to exist, period. If you're not a person who believes in this.

1:03:16 Wes: Yep, I think that's right. When you think about it, the paradoxical nature of it starts to become clear. So paradise, if you think about it in these human terms, trying to transfer over earthly delights into paradise, it doesn't make sense. But why do we need to do that? Can't we just say, well, we don't really know what paradises exactly in terms of a Christian paradise.

1:03:40 Erin: What this is making me think of is I might have mentioned this on a previous episode. I'm not sure, but I studied English Gothic architecture in England and I would go around and look at all these different churches all over the south of England. And one of the things that becomes clear when you're going through those churches is that hell is really, really easy for people to imagine. I think this is still the case, but this is the reason why Inferno is read so much more frequently than Paradiso. Because Dante had so much fun coming up with Hell. And Paradiso is a little. It's not as fun, but you can see in the stained glass windows or in the tympanums of these churches, you could see the hell is just incredibly florid and fun and amazing. I mean, it's not fun, but it's like terrifying and wacky and there are all sorts of crazy things happening. You know, think of a Bosch painting where you have somebody's head.

1:04:31 Wes: You know, you meet a lot of

1:04:32 Erin: interesting people coming out of their own. That's right. That's right. And then you see the. Maybe on the opposite side of the building or something like that, you'll see the depictions of heaven. And heaven is just the worst. You know, heaven looks like maybe like a version of hell. Everybody is like, lined up. Heaven is like an eternal queue, you

1:04:49 Wes: know, it's where all the infuriatingly nice people are.

1:04:53 Erin: Right. Well, not only that, but it just looks boring. Yeah. And everybody's all orderly and everything is just, you know, because the rule followers part of the problem is the A

1:05:03 Wes: student

1:05:07 Erin: part of the problem is that. Yeah. So maybe it's not attracting a great class of people for interest's sake, but also because we can't imagine happiness that goes on forever. We can't imagine heaven anywhere near as intricately and disgustingly as we can imagine. This sort of eternal torment, which seems to always have. Maybe because, you know, on Earth we have so many different varieties of making people upset or whatever, but it's really difficult to imagine. And so heaven, which is supposed to look like where we want to be, looks like a really dour bad time. Where everyone's just, like, standing around and holding their hands clasped in front of them and just, like, just singing or something, and that's it. So it's very, very hard to imagine. I think a banquet is the most frequently probably used simile for heaven. Like an eternal banquet. That seems like a little bit of a party. It's tough.

1:06:03 Wes: Yeah. And I just think it points to Steven's point here. Which is that pleasure and satisfaction and beauty are necessarily. Or the appreciation of beauty are necessarily cyclical things. It's hard to make sense of them except as involving the pain and pang of desire. And then a temporary fulfillment and then that fulfillment wearing off. And there's also the role of novelty. And so if you are always sated, if it's eternity, an eternity of being content without the cycle of the up and down cycle, the becoming, then, yeah, that will sound boring to us.

1:06:44 Erin: It's also whether because of our own limited imaginations. Or because this is the only kind of heaven we can imagine. Like when I say it's most frequently compared to a kind of eternal banquet. Of course, a banquet is an earthly idea sort of being transposed into heaven. And Stevens is imagining that heaven is kind of like this eternal garbage dump. Which takes all of our things that we've created on Earth and sort of, like repurposes them. So he imagines it as a place where whatever we spent weaving on Earth, it shows up in heaven and it's there forever. Or our lutes, this is very Keatsian, of course. But the lutes that we were playing that we invented on Earth. Are then going to be transformed in heaven to be up there forever. I don't know what that means. I don't know if heaven is stealing from us on Earth or something. We come up with the stuff down here, and then it goes up into our imaginative garden in heaven forever. Or if I'm carrying that too far, and if he's just trying to say that what gave us pleasure on Earth because of its kind of transience, like the silken weavings of our afternoon. So the things that we just, like, killed an afternoon making. Have no specialness in Heaven. Because you can't kill an afternoon in heaven. You can't sort of while away. You can't while away the hours pleasantly playing on your loot when you should be doing your homework. I think it works both ways, but I like it as an eternal garbage dump. I just came up with that.

1:08:17 Wes: I mean, I think he's saying something about the nature of certain subjective states or certain states of mind. So pleasure and desire and the appreciation of beauty, they're interweaved with pain, and yet we don't want to get rid of them. So if we think of paradise as this pain free environment, then we do away with those things that are important to us. So desire is obviously painful. Right. In the sense that we lack the thing that we want. And there's a sense in which beauty is something that can't be fully possessed. Let's talk about those last three lines, by the way, in a second. But I think the idea is that there's something inherently painful about all of this stuff. And that pain doesn't get through the pearly gates, doesn't pass the threshold. So we lose out on all of these things that are necessarily interwoven with pain. So death is the mother of beauty, mystical within whose burning bosom we devise our earthly mothers waiting sleeplessly. Devise our earthly mothers waiting sleeplessly. What does that mean?

1:09:24 Erin: The most difficult word. And that of course is devise.

1:09:27 Wes: Yeah.

1:09:28 Erin: So we invent. I looked it up and in a legal sense to devise. And I think of this because it's Steven's, that maybe the legality might shed some light here to leave real estate, say to someone in a will. I mean, maybe that has nothing to do with this devising, which just means inventing.

1:09:46 Wes: Or there's our earthly mothers. I take our earthly mothers to be our literal mothers. Am I right about that?

1:09:51 Erin: Yes.

1:09:52 Wes: And they are obviously not devised by us in any literal sense. They devise us. Right. How is it that we're devising our.

1:10:01 Erin: There's kind of a bullseye quality to this. Right. Which I've already kind of pointed out at other points of the poem. Like maybe the willow shivering in the sun is because it's starting to shed its leaves. Or the dappling of the sun is prefiguring this moment where it will have no leaves. The bullseye quality is that. Or maybe the Russian doll quality seems to be that within death we're imagining our mothers waiting for us, waiting up for us. There's a kind of stalled moment, or there's like a Moment of eternity there. Like a mother maybe waiting for her child to come home and is really nervous. And so there's a kind of eternal quality at the heart of death. Which is dilated and sustained in this moment. But I'm not sure how that. How those two things are working together. But I'm getting the sense that there's, like, death. There's eternal in the death and death in the eternal.

1:10:57 Wes: I mean, it sounds like this has something to do with the way we imagine our mothers. Or the way we are related to our mothers. Right. Which is not just through the physical biological relationship. But we, in sense, have taken them inside of us psychologically. Or at least we have a fantasy of them. Maybe earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly waiting up for us. Being a watch, being a guardian angel. And that fantasy, somehow, which seems to be a form of beauty here. Right. An instance of beauty is this relationship to the mother. Imagining her as something beautiful. And so we don't get that without death. Which is to say, the whole biological cycle of mothers giving birth and then. And the mother dies. And then the new generation become mothers and fathers and so on. Right. The concept of motherhood implicates the cycle of life and death.

1:11:50 Erin: Yeah. Are these pregnant mothers, like, they're pregnant with possibility. Or are they mothers from whom we've been separated on earth? And so we divide. Like, there's a desire in death that we have actually to die. And be reunited with those who are absent from us. Like, that's the promise. And obviously, it's a promise unfulfilled. But it's a sort of fantasy. I mean, for Stevens, it's a promise unfulfilled. But there's a sort of fantasy of reunion, reunification, reconstitution, which death keeps alive for us.

1:12:19 Wes: That's an interesting reading. Because it's, you know, in the womb, there's theoretically a sense of merger. Right. And then developmentally, we have to separate and individuate. And what Lacan calls jouissance. And it's not unrelated to death drive. And Freud is this desire to return to that merged state. Because it's completely without desire and without any tension. So there's normal desire. There's a typical desire for temporary satisfaction or some more modest satisfaction. And then there's the desire to go beyond that and something more transcendent. And to merge with the mother. Which is almost like returning to death. And may have something to do with our religious impulses, that particular fantasy. But I was thinking about this simply in terms of, you know, that the argument here would be it's only in a world of becoming and hence death that we get the cycle of generation and degeneration, so that we get mothers. Right. So, hey, you. You enjoy having a mom. Well, can't do that in heaven, because that's not really, you know, there's no one being born in heaven and enjoy having the. Yeah, so I don't know if that's too literal a reading, but I think

1:13:33 Erin: this could be read all of those ways and probably more.

1:13:36 Wes: Yeah.

1:13:37 Erin: Yeah.

1:13:38 Wes: Okay. So are we ready to transition to Postscript?

1:13:42 Erin: I'd say so, yeah.

1:13:44 Wes: I know there's going to be a lot of very disappointed listeners, but I do have to say that this next stanza is kind of disappointing on my point of view. The seven stanza, the weakest. But anyway, yeah, so we are going to. If you want to listen to this, please subscribe to Postscript. Our after show. We will cover Stanza 7 and 8.

1:14:07 Erin: Thank you, thank you.

1:14:09 Wes: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com AirwaveMedia.com.

Before she settles down to life of homemaking, security, and insurance policies with Bruce Baldwin in Albany, star reporter Hildy Johnson has one more story to write for her ex-husband and ex-boss Walter Burns, editor of the Morning Post. Hildy must write up an interview with convicted killer Earl Williams that will grant him a last-minute reprieve on the basis of insanity. The ingenious angle she finds to prove he’s insane: Earl listened to so many soapbox speeches in the park about the socialist concept of “production for use” that when a gun was placed into his hands, he had to shoot it.

Howard Hawks’s 1940 film “His Girl Friday” knits together two plots from two very different genres. One is a romantic comedy that intends to reunite its main couple in something like wedded bliss. The other is a dark drama of murder and corruption, complete with a gallows lurking just outside the window and a suicide attempt that takes place on screen. Yet Earl Williams and Hildy Johnson’s fates in their respective plots are twinned. Both are, in a sense, looking for their own reprieves. And Hildy has her own production-for-use dilemma. What was she made for—the life of a newspaperman, or the life of a housewife? To what kinds of production should we devote our own lives? What are we made for—risk and adventure or security and insurance? Wes & Erin discuss.

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0:11 Erin: Before she settles down to a life of homemaking, security and insurance policies with Bruce Baldwin in Albany, star reporter Hildy Johnson has one more story to write for her ex husband and ex boss, Walter Burns, editor of the Morning Post. Hildy must write up an interview with convicted killer Earl Williams that will grant him a last minute reprieve on the basis of insanity. The ingenious angle she finds to prove he's insane. Earle listened to so many soapbox speeches in the park about the socialist concept of production for use that when a gun was placed into his hands, he had to shoot it. Howard Hawks's 1940 film His Girl Friday knits together two plots from two very different genres. One is a romantic comedy that intends to reunite its main couple in something like wedded bliss. The other is a dark drama of murder and corruption, complete with a gallows lurking just outside the window and a suicide attempt that takes place on screen. Yet Earl Williams and Hildy Johnson's fates in their respective plots are twinned. Both are, in a sense, looking for their own reprieves. And Hildy has her own production for use dilemma. What was she made for? The life of a newspaper man or the life of a housewife? To what kinds of production should we devote our own lives? What are we made for risk and adventure or security and insurance? These are the topics for today's discussion. This is Erin Olanik. And this is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, I've been dying to talk about this film with you for a long time, partially because it's one of my top two favorite movies of all time, but also because I'm really curious to hear what you have to say about the sort of philosophy of the film and particularly this idea of production for use that the whole film to me seems to hinge on. Have you read a lot of Marxist ideas about production for use, or have you heard a lot of soapbox speeches in the park when you were wandering around at night during the Depression or

2:20 Wes: something like that before I tried to murder someone.

2:22 Erin: Right.

2:23 Wes: Well, I went to school where they make us read significant parts of Das Kapital. And then I kind of wrote my master's thesis in grad school on Marx and Nietzsche. So I'm supposed to know something about Marx.

2:39 Erin: You're kidding. But more on I knew Nietzsche, but I didn't know Marx was in the middle.

2:44 Wes: Yeah, my conception of ideology, so very focused, actually. And then we've also done for the partial exam in life, we've done some marks. So I can't claim to be an expert on the economic side of things, actually. But I was glad in your introduction that you featured production for use. Because this is one of the things that I looked up and thought about and tried to make sense of in relation to the film, what it's doing thematically.

3:09 Erin: Well, please explain it to me, because my 50 or 60 or 70 times of watching this film, it's still kind of opaque. And I'm guessing that they're making very liberal use of the phrase production for use. That is not being used in a traditional Marxist or a strict Marxist sense.

3:25 Wes: It's pretty foundational to communism. The idea that is, instead of accumulating capital, instead of producing things for profit, they are produced directly in proportion to social need. If any listeners want to email us and correct me on any of this, go ahead. But so that, for instance, instead of having. Developing a surplus, going through economic cycles of boom and bust, right? There's too much supply or where there's too little supply. And maybe when there's too much supply, there's not demand for it, even though there are people who are in need because they simply can't afford it. Now, supposedly market forces, right, are supposed to adjust the pricing until it does become affordable. But anyway, the idea, I think it has something to do with the production of things in a capitalist society. It's not in proportion to what's actually necessary. It's more about producing profit and capital accumulation for capitalists. So the idea in the film is that Earl hears something about this and this was kind of an idea, I think, that was talked about by Eugene Debs, for instance. It's this kind of idea that you would hear about at the time in speeches. And so the idea is that Earle, and this is the idea that Hildy invents for him, that he's listened to a speech about production for use, someone on a soapbox in the park trying to convert people to socialism or communism and has had the idea that this means that if there's a gun, it's gotta be used, right? It's gotta be put to use. And so that's what he does when he realizes the analogy is, I can't keep bullets in the chamber and leave the gun unused. Maybe in the same way that it can't accumulate capital or store something up. Everything's gotta be expended relative to the moment, the concerns of the moment. So it's a really interesting parallel to draw because I Think, you know, as we talk. You already brought up in your introduction what it might mean socially. Right. For their relationship.

5:21 Erin: I'm just thinking, too, about the fact that Hildy, in the snippet of that interview, write up that the other reporters in the press room read aloud once she sort of vacated the typewriter for a while. Also draws the parallel to the Gallows. So the funny thing about Earl Williams reprieve is that it's subverting the Gallows own production for use, as defined by Hildy's interview. So she says something like, you know, the Gallows too, has its own production for use, and tomorrow morning, Earl Williams is set to be hanged. Which is a kind of a funny idea that seems like somehow related to almost a subversion of what you're talking about with the gun and its relationship to this idea of, like, bullets and capital. Like, the gun seems to be an item that's like, almost accidentally snuffs out in the expenditure of the bullets and sort of like keeping things moving through the market, if you will. Whereas the Gallows is like a total dead end and something that both Hildy and Earl Williams have their own respective gallows that they're trying to escape from. It's an odd comparison to draw, I think, because it seems to me to be like the end of production for use. You know, maybe the Gallows is like the most capitalistic structure in the film.

6:27 Wes: Interesting. Yeah. At that point, they're reading from her unfinished interview and this is worth quoting, and she's straight up lying. It's worth.

6:36 Erin: Yeah, for sure.

6:37 Wes: It's worth reminding yourselves of that. It's completely fabricated the story. But she's also tainted Earl to believe that it's his story.

6:45 Erin: But the very fact that he accepts this story also, though, kind of proves that he's insane, which proves the basis of her argument. So she is being honest in a deceitful way.

6:56 Wes: Right. And so into this little tortured mind came the idea that the gun had been produced for use, and use it he did. But the state has a production for use plan, too. It has a gallows. And at 7am Unless a miracle occurs that Gallows will be used to separate the soul of Earl Williams from his body, and out of Molly Malloy's life will go the one kindly soul she ever knew. This is kind of almost like a structural or systemic idea at this point, like, you know, reversing the causality. It's like we need Gallows because we have to have deterrence for capital crimes. Right. And we had A way to deal with criminals. But the idea is that if we make the gallows, inevitably they'll be used. Making them as part of creating the social environment in which they would have to be used. Or maybe we'll find people to use them on whether they're guilty or not. You know, that kind of idea, that the making of it somehow mandates the use of it, which is the idea that Earl had about his gun, which is. Which is not quite what production for use means for socialism. It's the perversion of that. So the underlying idea seems to have to do with. It's about whether we can keep things in reserve. So whether. If you have a gun, can you keep that power in reserve? Or does it need to be used as quickly as possible or something like that? Can you hold on to some kind of awful or violent power like that and have it truly wait until it's ready to be used? Or is it naturally going to be premature? Is its use naturally going to be premature or naturally going to be unjust? So there are perils to the accumulation of power, violent power, including the power of the state, which is founded on violent power. The ability to arrest people and imprison them and execute them. Power corrupts. Or will it naturally be to its unjust use? Or can it be accumulated and kept in reserve for the times when it is actually necessary? And so I think the same thing with capital, right? That the idea is that there's something, I think the capitalists would argue capital accumulation is a good thing. It helps create businesses and you hire employees and so on. But the counterargument is that it will necessarily create class divisions and unjust conditions. So the only way to prevent that. You can see how the parallel is kind of breaking down. But anyway, sure, but the way to prevent that is to prevent that accumulation of power or capital or whatever in the first place. To have the creation or the production and the use more tightly wedded to each other. So that there's just. Hey, when the occasion arises when I need something, it's supplied for me. And it's not building up in quantities that will allow exploitation to occur by the people who control those quantities or the people who have the power.

9:52 Erin: It's really interesting. The way that this relates to Hildy is purely on the basis of a kind of word association then, but not necessarily anything having to do with the logic behind this. But maybe the softest version of this concept is sort of like nothing should go to waste regardless of this sort of like power being stored up or Whatever. So insofar as it applies to Hildy, it's like having to do with the fact that her journalistic power is too great and not that it's going to be stored up in some. I mean, maybe it will be. And then she'll sort of like explode in newsprint all over Bruce after a few years in Albany. But just the idea that this is something that should be actively used, it shouldn't go to waste. This muscle shouldn't atrophy. It's something too precious or important, but not in a scary sort of punitive way, though it could be put to that use as well, I suppose.

10:41 Wes: Yeah, I think that's right. And that's one of a number of layers to this. I think there's a positive case being made here for some sort of social version of production for use. And the way I see that is that what goes on for us socially. I'm thinking of production for use as a way of describing their banter. There's a kind of openness there, right. So they don't stir up their feelings and hide them and engage in romantic niceties and. Or even any sort of normal social politeness. Right. Their banter. And this is like Much Ado about Nothing. Their banter puts them in place of having certain emotions and then immediately discharging those in a certain way. Which is not to say that they're honest with each other, because there's all sorts of, on another level, deception going on. But they kind of know from the beginning of the film where things stand, right? He's made it clear that he wants her back and maybe that's her is tongue in cheek. He wants her to marry him again. Or does he want her back for the paper or does he want her back for themself? There are all sorts of questions, but their ongoing irritation with each other, right, all of that, in a way they wear on their sleeves. So that, to me, is production for use, as opposed to the other model is to keep secrets, to repress, to not be as forthcoming about one's feelings, which is pretty typical socially. Right. We engage in a lot of social deception and at the political level, that's happening with the governor and the mayor. And all the political machinations involve a similar thing at a political level, which is hiding information, keeping things hidden. And the press is supposed to undo that. They're trying to expose people. That's another production for use example. Instead of letting information capital accrue in secret to the benefit of the people who are in power, you expose it, you get the information out, you get it flowing, you get it into the social bloodstream, so to speak.

12:32 Erin: I love that idea. That's genius.

12:34 Wes: Thanks. That's why I do this podcast. Get your compliments.

12:40 Erin: That's fantastic. Well, no, but you're. I mean, sorry, you probably.

12:45 Wes: No, no, no, go ahead.

12:46 Erin: You know, in regards to the romantic element of this, you're exposing a kind of difference for me between the nature of this relationship and the one that we covered in the Awful Truth with Cary Grant and Irene John, where there's a lot of secrecy and, you know, and part of this exorcism of that remarriage plot is to have a kind of a new sense of openness and honesty with each other. And I think that this is related to a kind of class difference probably. Right. Like Grant and Dunn in that film are high society. And there's more feigning, there's more sort of like natural deception in polite ways of interacting with one another that Walter and Hildy can completely do without because they're straight talking newspaper men, you know, and they don't have to hide behind these niceties. And so everything is just sort of free flowing. I mean, Walter never really tricks Hildy. It's just a matter of what he's going to do to get her back. But she knows not to trust him at every turn. Even those deceptions are just another form of open communication, at least as far as their relationship works. He's deceiving other people, but it's all kind of for her benefit, right?

13:50 Wes: Nominally, she's tricked because there's counterfeit money or this or that, and she's getting calls from Bruce in jail, but she already knows from the beginning that that is what's going to be happening. And he's going to be trying to do that stuff and she's going to. She's trying to outplay him, but she knows he's going to be making those plays. But meanwhile, she's keeping Bruce in the dark about that's what's going on, right?

14:10 Erin: Oh, that's not hard to do, right?

14:13 Wes: Oh, shucks, I didn't know.

14:15 Erin: I could see. He's wrong for you, Hildy.

14:20 Wes: Yeah. So with him, interestingly enough, there's more capital involved in that relationship, so there's more idealization. For instance, and he's very idealizing of her and it's very cute, you know, him running around with this umbrella because it might rain or is it raining? I don't know. I think.

14:37 Erin: Yeah, that is the Worst, Walter makes

14:40 Wes: fun of him early on for that. You can see every time she answers the phone and it's him, she responds very sweetly and with genuine affection. And it's something that can arise in the context of this very sweet, not cynical man who's idealizing her and she's appreciating, enjoying it and says that directly this is what it means to be treated as a woman. And there's too much openness, for better and for worse. But I think the argument of the film is probably ultimately for better. But there's too much openness with her and Walter for that. It could still be romance, potentially. Right. And then you have to figure out what kind. But that type of relationship is too much openness for that. There's too much capital in that and there's too much production for use in their relationships. Which comes across as cynicism. Right. Like the cynicism of this hard boiled press reporters. And I don't know if this is like the first movie to do that, to create this trope or not.

15:40 Erin: Well, this is a remake, right?

15:42 Wes: I mean, the front page. Yeah. Does the front page create that trope or does it predate that?

15:46 Erin: But yeah, yeah, I think it pretty much solidified it in the public imagination at any rate.

15:50 Wes: Yeah, yeah. So the play itself and then the earlier movie based on it. But yeah. So I'm trying to say is that that cynicism of the press, which is of a kind, in a way, with the cynicism of the powerful people they're trying to expose. And it's almost like it's unnecessary. It's unfortunate that they have to be as hard boiled and cynical as they are, but that's just what comes with their job of exposing these people. Their illusions are destroyed. They can't idealize power and government, the system. They have to be disillusioned in a way. But on the other hand, they're serving these ideals, which are ultimately progressive. Right. Where is society going to go? The only way to improve is to have this critical process going on. Thinking of this at two different levels. The personal relationship between Hilde and Walter, and then there's the economic, and then there's what goes on socially with the press and people in power and all that stuff.

16:40 Erin: I wonder what the relationship is, though, between appreciation and idealization. Because certainly Bruce idealizes Hildy, but he does not appreciate her. Walter does. He's capable of appreciating her more deeply.

16:54 Wes: He genuinely knows her.

16:55 Erin: Yeah, right. You're reminding me of something that Cavell Says, for the benefit of our listeners, we should say that I love this book, Pursuits of Happiness, which I think I've heavily referenced, at least in the Awful Truth episode, if not more, because I just adore that book so much.

17:08 Wes: Yeah, you did. Yeah. And that's why I have it and looked at it again for this episode. But.

17:13 Erin: Yeah, but Cavell writes about these comedies of remarriage in this book, Pursuits of Happiness. He's the one who comes up with this term comedy of remarriage. And so in his essay on his Girl Friday, which I know really well, though I haven't read it as recently as you have, this is something that he gets really right about Hildy, which you're noting in her appreciation of Bruce's sweetness and idealization of her. She is better equipped to appreciate Bruce, of course, than Walter is. Walter sees nothing to appreciate, but what he gets right. What Cavell gets right about Hildy, I think, is the fact that she genuinely wants what Bruce is offering her. She is genuinely conflicted about what to do here. This is not, you know, in the awful truth order of, like, using Bruce as some kind of pawn to torture Walter and get Walter to love her and appreciate her more, because Walter literally cannot love and appreciate her more as much as he is capable of is what he gives Hildy. So she's not using him to make Walter jealous or anything like that. This is a life that she genuinely desires. And that conflict within her is what makes her such an interesting character. And to see that sweetness and that desire for idealization, I think really bears out Cavell's point.

18:19 Wes: And she uses this phrase, I'm gonna be a woman, not a newspaper machine. I'm gonna go have babies and take care of them. She says this in a climactic moment to the other reporters. I'm gonna live like a human being. The word home is associated with this as well. She wants a home. She wants children. And even at a certain point at lunch where Bruce is having second thoughts for her, he's like, well, actually, are you sure you want to quit? And then he comes back, he gives his own retort, which is, well, no, this is your chance to have home and be a human being. So obviously, they've both been talking about this a little bit to get it right. She's used this phrase, being a human being around Bruce as well. And they formed the kind of united front about the explanation for the choice that she's making. Right, which is a career versus domesticity type of choice. But it's also, as you're pointing out, it's a legitimate dilemma that we all face. Adventure versus domesticity, family versus career. And in this case, someone who can a greater amount of, at least for now, this sort of romance and idealization, but less fast and loose communication. Maybe there's some ideal level of communication which is not as hard boiled as between Walter and Hildy. But you get the sense that Bruce will never be able to understand her in the way that Walter does. And for that reason he's always going to be less cynical than Walter about his relationship to her. He's always going to be more idealizing. This is a real choice and it's not even clear what the right choice is. These are both facets of her character and what she wants.

20:01 Erin: Both require giving something up, either choice. But I think that Bruce's idealization of her is of an odd sort because he doesn't really even understand what makes her so wonderful. Like what is it that he actually loves about her? Like Bruce, in a way is the most mysterious character. Why does he get hooked up with this woman? Well, I think he's excited by her, right? Like he says, he never knows what she's going to say. Part of that is because of his sort of incredible naivete and his inability to understand her. So she provides, I think maybe some excitement for him, some way for him to jazz up this life of his. And the film is rather cruel to him. You know, I love that scene where he's in a clinch with his mother as the door closes. You know, that's pretty great. The mama's boy destined to lose the girl. But otherwise, like, what does he love about her? The fact that she's a doll faced hick underneath the newspaper business transformation that Walter has affected. I don't know.

20:57 Wes: Well, let's reconstruct this movie. They met in Bermuda, right?

21:00 Erin: Yes. During her post divorce trip.

21:03 Wes: Right. So she didn't get a chance to have a honeymoon, a real honeymoon trip. So she gets a divorce and then treats herself to whatever the divorce equivalent of a honeymoon, post divorce equivalent of a honeymoon. And that's where she meets this guy. So on her solo honeymoon.

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22:55 Wes: You know, he's got to know that she's quite different probably from the women he's dated. Has a much different life. You know, he's like the country bumpkin again. You know, the same sort of character that he.

23:05 Erin: I guess he's like that guy in the movies.

23:07 Wes: Yes, like that guy in the movie. Yeah. That's a great fifth wall moment. Of which there are a few. Right? Is it fifth wall? Is that the right phrase?

23:16 Erin: Fourth wall.

23:16 Wes: Fourth wall.

23:17 Erin: I don't know how many walls there are.

23:18 Wes: I don't know why I'm going to fifth. But other than her being an attractive woman, there's got to be something about him that's interested in someone who's different than usual. And she's from Chicago, I guess. And he's from where?

23:31 Erin: Albany.

23:31 Wes: Albany.

23:32 Erin: Home with mother in Albany too.

23:35 Wes: Yeah. So the only other thing I would say about this is he's constantly just getting duped and taken advantage of through the whole film. Right. Repeatedly being arrested, being robbed. It's almost like he's the victim of a scam or a sting or something in which both Hildy and Walter are actually cooperating. And they're not after his money or anything like that. They're just after the mechanism of their reunion. So if I'm going too far with that.

24:03 Erin: But no, I think you're right. And I think Cavell will even say that what she needs from him is clear right from the very beginning of the film that she's sort of participating in the winning back of herself to Walter, which is a really interesting idea, which isn't a set way to read the film, but that they're both cooperating in her means of return to the paper.

24:24 Wes: Yeah. So what she finds in Bermuda is not the next guy, but the way back.

24:29 Erin: Right.

24:29 Wes: That's where the whole scam begins. The shared scam that they're cooperating. And then she shows up to the office to say, you gotta stop calling me so much. Which is bullshit.

24:38 Erin: Right.

24:39 Wes: To the office, right before she's about to get married, you know, the day before she's leaving to get married. To do that. She's just letting him get started on his side of the scam, and then they can make things unfold together.

24:51 Erin: In talking about what it is that Bruce doesn't necessarily love her for or understand about her, we might get at what are her gifts. This is what's really interesting about the film. There's this dichotomy between being a woman or being a housewife and being a newspaper man.

25:08 Wes: Yeah, I'm a newspaper man.

25:11 Erin: Right. So Hildy is a brilliant reporter. Like, she's a brilliant writer. And I think that what makes her so brilliant is actually her femininity. She wears it rather loosely. But being a woman in a man's world gives her a kind of an ESP that other people don't have. In addition to the fact that she's obviously extremely smart. And this production for use thing is really genius. So she's smarter than everybody else. But she's also, I think, more perceptive and more compassionate than everyone else, which I think makes her special. It makes people open up to her. It makes her get scoops because she has a relationship with the subjects of her interviews or articles, whatever, that is going to be fundamentally different than the man's harsher relationship with those subjects. She has compassion for Molly. She has a certain amount of compassion for Earl, which the other reporters are emotionally divorced from the subjects of their writing. And so they can't see them on a deeper level. They can't get the deepest angle on these people. So, like you say, it's not obvious what the right choice is. I would say, of course it's obvious that you always have to go with Cary Grant, no matter what, even if he's playing the bad guy. And also I do think that his appreciation of her therefore is rooted in her being a woman in a way. I mean, obviously they have kind of a sexy relationship. He loves her as a woman and not just as an employee. But I think that the extent to which she is his best employee is as much related actually to her womanliness, if you will, as it is to her good solid workmanship, her newspaperman quality. I don't know. I mean, would you agree with that?

26:48 Wes: I do. And I think I was thinking while you were talking about that when you watch the film, especially as someone like with my level of knowledge about the era, which is low, and films of that time, and you're thinking, wow, this is like the gender dimensions or however you want to put it. Nothing is made of that in the film, right? She's just this go getting reporter and one woman among a bunch of men and holds her own. But the film never hits you over the head with that. It never makes a thing of that. Exactly. Oh, this is the long suffering female reporter in a room full of sexists. And of course, to whatever extent they're sexist, there's evidence for that, right. The way they treat Molly, which is horrific, terrible, and they make nothing of her being a woman either. So it's really interesting the way that's done and it makes you think what's going on here as far as the role of a woman in a workplace, especially like that, which wouldn't have been as common and obviously isn't since she's the only female reporter. Right. But yeah, I think going back to what you were saying about part of her skill comes from being a woman. In the beginning, Walter is worried about this guy getting executed because of what it means for his paper. This is a very typical thing in, in the film, like ethical concerns just get translated into concerns about the self interest of the profession or the paper. So the paper, in a way, right, they're supposed to hold powerful people to and to be doing something on behalf of justice. But that often gets confused with just getting the story and getting notoriety, entertaining people or inducing interest in people. There's a point even where, you know, Walter is talking about comparing the story of Earl's escape, its level of importance to the war in Europe or to local human interest stories and trying to say where it belongs. So we're meant to question the degree of importance or the way in which everything that appears in a newspaper starts to take on the same level of urgency. It's a high level of urgency. But it's cheapened in a way, because it's all about stimulating the reader in certain ways. And we could say the same thing about social media. So her idea is to actually get to know Earl, is to do that interview to create an opposition between whatever she discovers in that interview or whatever she plants in that interview and between what the psychiatrist is going to say so they can say. How does she put it? Because she uses the word goofy.

29:14 Erin: Do you remember that alienist says he's sane interview shows he's goofy?

29:18 Wes: Yes.

29:19 Erin: I think is the line from memory.

29:21 Wes: You put these stories side by side, what the alienist says and then what the interview shows, and you get that contrast, and it maybe becomes a chance at saving his life as well, but only for the purpose of saving the paper or maybe for exposing the corruption of the powers that be or something like that. But I'm just trying to expand on your idea of the benefit of being a woman here. But you could say this sort of idea and the idea for the interview and how she's going to elicit his goofiness, whether one thinks that's ethical or not. You could relate that to her greater focus on empathy being in the other person's head. Right. By comparison, all her male coworkers or colleagues, not even coworkers exactly, are focused on the surface, let's say. Maybe that's the way to get it. It's about surface focus versus something deeper. But maybe you can elaborate on that.

30:15 Erin: I don't know.

30:15 Wes: Am I getting at what you're talking about?

30:17 Erin: Yeah, yeah, I think that's nice. I think that relates to this idea of Walter and Hildy both being the most, to use film technique terms like deep focus. People in the film because they can see several layers deeper than other people can, which makes them so well suited to each other. Like the one who looks at the world and sees it the most surface level is Bruce. And then there's kind of like an angle that the other newspaper men in the press room from other papers are employing for the particular ends of their own papers, allegiances, you know, political and otherwise. But they're not quite so interested in getting at the heart of something, the reality of something. It seems to me that Hildy is. And sort of, to a certain extent, Walter. I mean, I think that he's in this Earl Williams thing because of the benefit to the paper and the idea of wanting to oust this current political regime that's in place. But I think it's because he believes that this political system Currently in play, rather, the party and the people currently in power are actually corrupt. And so I think there's something a little bit deeper to his motivations.

31:18 Wes: Yeah.

31:19 Erin: To just give him a little bit of credit. Because I think otherwise. I mean, he doesn't care when someone jumps out a window in front of him, you know? But I do think that he cares about the truth. And I think underneath it all, maybe he does think he's doing some kind of public service. This reference to the unseen power that watches over the Morning Post. To a certain extent, he believes God is on his side.

31:39 Wes: We should talk about that concern for the truth. You know, the number of different moments in the film. We see the other reporters just outright lying, even with stuff that's just happening right in front of their eyes. Right. So as Earl is caught, it's already an amazing story that's unfolding in front of their faces, right?

31:55 Erin: Yeah.

31:55 Wes: Earl's coming out of the desk and it's right there. And they're reporting it in real time and they're making shit up.

32:02 Erin: Right, Right.

32:02 Wes: Fabricating stories. And there are many instances of that in the film. So you get the sense that even with the press, right. Which their job is to production for use, in a sense, and getting things out there, exposing things, not letting things accrue in secret. But unfortunately, it becomes hard to distinguish that the truth from whatever it is that maybe titillates or something like that. Right. So to reveal is to titillate. And therefore, it seems like everything titillating must be revealing when it's not. And we can accuse Hildy of this as well, although it's just more sophisticated. Right. Because she even does that thing with Molly. Right. So they've all fabricated the story, and maybe it's true, you know, but Molly denies it, that she's somehow involved with him. It makes a juicier, more interesting story. And she does that as well, saying, you know, Molly will lose the nicest person she's ever known. Or something like nicest soul she's ever known. And then, of course, planning. This whole idea about production for use in Earl's head is also deceptive in a way, and dishonest. But I think you're right. Both her and Walter have a more interesting relationship to the truth. There's still an interest in the truth in some sense with them, whereas with her colleagues, they would never have the imagination to do what she did with Earl, planning that idea. So maybe it's literary truth. Right. She's coming up with a theme and a narrative that makes sense. That's more interesting than just, oh, Walter the socialist and Molly his girl. They found something more interesting in it, whether it's there or not.

33:35 Erin: Well, I think this is related to Hawkes's kind of values as a director. He's a really interesting director in that he's probably directed more great movies in the widest variety of genres than any other major Hollywood director. And what kind of unites all of them is he has a very workmanlike attitude towards his films. And all of his films are about work. And the highest value you can aspire to in a Hawks film is like doing your job well. It's like professionalism, you know? And so Hildy just does her job better than the other newspaper reporters do, you know? And I think part of doing your job well under these circumstances is actually uncovering the truth. Finding it and uncovering it, rather than just putting your own papers, gloss onto true events. So to the extent that she uses deception, it seems to me to get at the truth in a deeper way. Like you say, a more poetic truth, but a truth of a certain order which is more true than the scene you describe when Earl comes out at the desk and all the different newspaper reporters are writing, dictating vastly different stories into the phones. So I think this is related to Hawkes's own concern about what it means to be good. To be like a good person means to be good at your job. I don't know about the moral implications of that, but within the universe of his films, that is a source of morality.

34:52 Wes: Interesting. I didn't know that.

34:54 Erin: He's really interested in gender roles and therefore in gender role reversal, which is why he loves tomboys and he loves women who can keep up with men. And so that kind of plays into Hildy as a figure as well. I was really interested in this time around watching. I was interested in Sweeney, the guy that they're constantly using as the excuse. And what an interesting absent figure Sweeney is. He's this writer who could maybe do what Hildy does. And Hildy calls him the best man you've got on the paper for that sob sister stuff. He's this sort of like, absent, feminized figure. So this, like, feminine, coded writing that Sweeney is good at is just like a pale imitation of the writing that Hildy can do, you know? And then, like, what's the excuse for why Sweeney can't perform this writing? It's because, like, he's going to have a baby, right? And then later the baby Becomes twins. And of course, you know, it's all made up. Walter has just sent him away on a vacation, which is kind of funny. Like, Hildy wants the vacation, Hildy wants the babies. What does he do? He sends Sweeney on the vacation, gives Sweeney the babies and says, you know, he's not around to write the female coded articles that Hildy has to write.

36:01 Wes: Yeah, it's really interesting what you're saying to this idea about morality for hawks having something to do with being good at one's job.

36:08 Erin: Yes. But I think that there's something about, maybe even Cavell says this, like something about Hildi being lucky. I recall the idea that when she's around, that's when this magic moment happens of Earl Williams puncturing the actual space of the press room. The story comes to her. I don't know what that means. I haven't really thought about that. But I'm just thinking that there's something like supernatural maybe about Hildy's abilities.

36:32 Wes: Yeah, he does refer to that really interesting shot, which I think he relates to German realism, where she's walking into the prison to see, and he's in that cage. So you get this very high angled shot looking down as she's entering. And this is what Cavell says about it. The high angle entrance shot is first of all a reflection of the woman's expansion of consciousness. She can see the whole of the situation as we can see the whole of Earl's cage, including its top horizontal bars, emphasizing a prisoner's absolute loss of privacy, of subjection to visibility, as if to being filmed. I don't know if that's what related to. I don't remember the lucky part, but I read the article and I'm not going to remember a lot about what

37:13 Erin: Cavell had in front of me.

37:14 Wes: I would like if I couldn't say. I couldn't even summarize what Cavell said in it. But there is something about the idea of an expansion of consciousness that goes back to. And it's not unrelated to being good at her job. And it goes back to the sort of whatever higher truth is being gotten at, despite this deception, because the truth is actually really mundane. The truth is probably that he was given a gun and accidentally discharged. So then there are two stories that can be fabricated. One is that he's a socialist and he did that as a political act. And meanwhile, it's an African American cop. And the African American vote is very important. So this guy must be hanged or he's a loony and the thing that, of course, is closer to the truth and may even be true is that he is a loony. He is goofy. Is any accident an accident, in other words? Right. One of the problems with the news is that if something really is just random, it doesn't make a story in a way, and you have to weave it into a narrative, and then you falsify that as soon as you do so. Then in this case, it becomes a choice of narrative. And then there's the question of saving this guy's life, which is also in observance of a higher ethical truth. So just repeating what he says, Right? Oh, it was an accident. It was an accidental discharge. Putting that in the newspaper again is not going to do anything for this guy. So we can speak to her motives as well. So what she writes, she's deceiving Earl, she's tricking Earl. And as Cavell points out, it kind of runs in parallel to Walter being a trickster who is tricking her, although she's not really being tricked. Right. So she's able to take something that cannot be given sense, cannot be really given a narrative without being falsified, and she's giving it the closest approximation of something untrue. But it's the truest thing that you can get and still be a narrative. Right. The idea that he's insane because there's an element of sensationalism to that. People can be interested in that. They can't be interested in an accidental discharge, but they can be interested in someone who's lost their mind and it could save his life.

39:22 Erin: So you're reminding me of the sort of unholy bargain that gets Hildy into this in the first place, which is to receive a kind of, I guess you could call it like a form of alimony from Walter to get paid in the form of buying a life insurance policy in order for her to do the story. I mean, there's a lot that could be said about that. But just at the lunch table, he is able to appeal to at least Bruce's sense of the stakes of this story as being a man's life by saying, you know, that Earl Williams face is going to come up in his mind when they're at the preachers will

39:51 Wes: be on your hands.

39:52 Erin: Yeah, right. Well, he says something really interesting like, his face is going to come between you, which is exactly what happens. But this is another thing about Walter.

40:00 Wes: Yeah. He says, sorry, Earl Williams face will come between you tonight and the rest of your life.

40:05 Erin: Yeah, yeah. He knows what the right thing is, even if he's using it for his own nefarious ends, like, you know, he knows that it's a bad thing that this guy be killed, that it's an unjust thing, and he uses it to manipulate Bruce and through Bruce, to kind of manipulate Hildy. Right. Which she knows she's being manipulated, but he knows what the right thing is. And I think in a way that makes him also more like Hildy than the newspaper men in the press room who, like, really don't care whether or not Earl Williams dies. So there's something, I think, a little bit more human or humane in Walter. But to switch gears, talking about the cage scene, I want to talk about two items this time around that really kind of fascinated me. And maybe we can get some sort of symbolic resonance out of them. And thinking about the cage, it reminded me that I was really reflecting on Hildy's pinstripe suit in the first part of the film, which is, like, totally insane.

40:59 Wes: Yeah.

41:00 Erin: And how that relates her maybe to Earl a little bit, because I think she and Earl as parallels to each other are really interesting. And the more I thought about it, the more parallels revealing. But the suit is absolutely crazy. And it reminds me of Irene Dunn and the Awful Truth or a lot of these screwball comedies where these women wear incredibly wild outfits, which are supposed to signify that they're capable of breaking out at any moment into sort of devious or dangerous behavior. Behavior anyway, not befitting a prospective housewife. Right. There's something professional about it because it is a suit. And there's something like newspaper manny about it. Like, there's something of newsprint in the outfit with these sort of stripes. And there's, like, freedom, too. I was thinking this is like a professional career for a woman which, particularly in 1940, on several different fronts, economically, societally, et cetera. This woman's business suit represents freedom on a basic level. So there's a sort of, like, freedom of consciousness that it implies that we might free to behave in wild ways. There's also freedom of a kind of social mobility sort for a woman in 1940. But of course, she's also, like, wearing bars. You know, she's caged like Earl Williams, and she has to kind of find her way, I think, out of this mental cage. I started to see the suit as being the symbol of both, like, freedom and imprisonment and a sort of visual depiction of her own ambivalence about what her life should be, what choice she should make. She's sort of stymied by this decision. And I think this ambivalence actually plays out, like, in certain scenes. I. It's just amazing how I've seen this film so many times and yet I notice something new every time. It's so rape. Rewatching and this latest viewing, I noticed, you know, the scene where she comes into the press room for the first time and she's telling them, like, she's gonna go into business for herself is how she calls it. Gonna make her farewell appearance by writing this paper. But she's getting married tomorrow and they're kind of like making fun of her. Like, can you imagine her washing diapers and beating rugs and whatever else they're saying? So they're talking about her being a wife and mother, and then suddenly a bell goes off that signals like a fire. And I never noticed before that the fire is in a school. So she's talking about being a mother. And then there's this, like, school full of children that's potentially up in flames. And its only interest to her is as a potential spot for, like, a good scoop. You know, she's like Pavlov's dog with this fire bell. It just triggers this ingrained newspaperman's response of excitement towards what anyone with maternal or paternal feeling would find horrifying. And then this is immediately followed by the sound of the gallows outside the window. Because they're like, whatever. They're practicing for the hanging. And Hildy asks, what's that? And she's like, interested. She starts walking towards the window to see. And even as she's like verbally asking, what is that? Even as she, like, walks over to the window, one of the men says, you know, it's going to be a pretty good hanging tomorrow. And she says, not interested. But of course, like, she is interested. Like, her body is moving towards the window and she's wondering what's going on with interest even as she's claiming out loud to not be interested. I felt like the suit is a sort of like expression of that where there's this stop start quality. Like it's giving her this mobility. But, like, the bars are kind of holding her back.

44:12 Wes: Yeah, I like that. It's a busy kind of frenetic. You know, if you look at it, it almost looks like a. I don't even know what you call it, you know, with the black and the white stripes. It's like you're hypnotized by it or something.

44:23 Erin: Yeah, yeah.

44:24 Wes: But, yeah. Why do they say zebras? Have stripes? Do the flies get confused when they're trying to land or something? But, yeah, I like that. I think you're getting at the kind of conflict between the bars that hold one back versus the activity. The freneticness that's kind of trying to come out. Because it's both at the same time. It's funny because on one of the posters, at least, it's got her in a yellow. Or is it even her? It doesn't even look like her.

44:48 Erin: But I know it's totally, like, has no relation to her. Yeah.

44:52 Wes: Evening gown. Which, as far as I remember, she never wears in the film.

44:56 Erin: Yeah, yeah.

44:57 Wes: And Cary Grant is kind of looking down at her almost like God from the skies or something in a condescending way. And then it says she learned about men from him. Exclamation point. Yeah. Right.

45:11 Erin: Clearly they're trying to advertise a different movie than.

45:13 Wes: It's ridiculous. Yeah. It has nothing to do with them.

45:17 Erin: This is their newspapery lie that's trying to sell the truth to people in a different package.

45:21 Wes: It's like they're taking the title literally. A Girl Friday would be the girl that you have on Fridays. Meanwhile, you're not committed. Is that right?

45:29 Erin: I think it's Man Friday. So I think it's supposed to be that she's his lackey.

45:34 Wes: Yeah.

45:34 Erin: But also helps him out of jams. I don't know. So. But I think that's an interesting read, taking that literally.

45:40 Wes: Okay, so what is it in the slang of the time? What does it mean? Like, it's a Man Friday. That's the original.

45:45 Erin: I think it's from Robinson Crusoe. His assistant or his friend on the island is Friday. Right. So if you're somebody's Man Friday or Girl Friday, you're their assistant. You help them get out of scrapes like a loyal servant.

45:56 Wes: Okay.

45:57 Erin: Which, of course, is very true in this running after him with his suitcase.

46:01 Wes: So is that made up about having a Girl Friday who's just on the side or something?

46:07 Erin: I don't know.

46:07 Wes: But okay.

46:09 Erin: That's a really interesting idea, though. Idea of taking that literally is. Yeah.

46:13 Wes: So of course she's not in either way. She's not in that servile position, actually. So the title is entirely ironic, but the poster has not caught on to that.

46:26 Erin: It's hilarious.

46:27 Wes: What would she be doing in an evening gown?

46:30 Erin: Nothing. In this film.

46:31 Wes: Yeah.

46:31 Erin: It's like a workday girl, not a weekend girl.

46:34 Wes: Yeah, exactly.

46:35 Erin: The other thing I was thinking about in relation to this pinstripe outfit and her ambivalence or something. Is the desk as another symbol? I mean, obviously the telephone is the most obvious symbol in the film, but there's a lot, I think, that's been written about that. And maybe the desk, too, I don't know. But this desk is really interesting because it's like a play on the production for use argument. Like, what is a desk for? Well, here it's used for getting a scoop. It's used towards newspapery ends, even when Earl Williams is hiding in it. I mentioned before about this idea I had of him puncturing the newsroom. Like when the news comes to you. When the news happens in the press room.

47:13 Wes: Yeah.

47:13 Erin: And this is like double symbolized. When he actually crawls into the roll top desk. I love that Cary Grant calls him a mock turtle.

47:21 Wes: Um, can you do the accent?

47:25 Erin: No, I don't want to.

47:27 Wes: Get back in there. You mock turtle. Turtle.

47:30 Erin: I can. I can do it, but I don't want to. So it's like a funny moment, of course, but also I was thinking about the fact that this is like his coffin, you know, and if Earl is a kind of a proxy for Hildy and vice versa, what are we trying to spring Hildy from? Death for her represents, like, the death of her. Her journalism career represents marriage. So this body in a coffin in the middle of the newsroom that they're trying to spring Earl from takes on this, like, double significance of this coffin represents you're gonna die. If you go to Albany, you're gonna. Everything that's interesting about you is going to die. And so there's something ridiculous about it, which makes it funny. Just like there's kind of something ridiculous maybe about the idea of Hildy beating a rug, especially in the outfits that she wears. But I don't know what else can be made of that. But I'm just kind of thinking along.

48:17 Wes: It turns out to be the desk of this guy, Roy G. Bem. Is it Benzinger?

48:22 Erin: Benzinger. Doesn't have to rhyme. Doesn't have to rhyme.

48:26 Wes: Yeah. I love that he's trying to get him out of there and has convinced this guy that he's going to give him a job and seems like, write a story for me from the point of view of the escaped man. Get the sense of the animal.

48:37 Erin: Animal. Kind of a Jack London style.

48:42 Wes: All right, let me get my rhyming dictionary. It doesn't have to rhyme. Doesn't have to rhyme.

48:46 Erin: It's my favorite line in the whole film, of course,

48:51 Wes: but yeah, it's a great irony to have the actual story be hiding inside your writing desk incarnate.

48:57 Erin: Of course, the only ones who know it are Walter and Hildy.

49:00 Wes: Yeah.

49:01 Erin: Oh, and Bruce's mother, but she doesn't quite know what she knows.

49:05 Wes: Yeah. And then when he gets out again, the reporters can't even see what's right in front of their face. They start fabricating stuff. They don't pay an awful lot of attention to him before they get on their phones and start wiring and fake stories.

49:18 Erin: That's interesting. They can't deal with the reality in front of them the way that Walter and Hildy can, even just in terms of finding a practical solution for this guy being in the newsroom, they're able to figure it out, Earl.

49:27 Wes: They make him as uninteresting and as timid. Right. As they possibly can. And even at the psychiatric examination, he could have been an interesting character. He could have been like Hannibal Lecter mask. He could have been a firebrand socialist. He could have been anything. But instead, he's just the guy that the psychiatrist and the sheriff are talking co. Callously about how his life is about to end. And all he can do is say, I'm tired, or something like that. What does he say exactly in that moment? I'm awful tired. Yeah, I'm awful tired. So he's not inherently interesting. And to open up that they've got their guns pulled. Right. Waiting for this supposed criminal to jump out of the desk and do who knows what. But ultimately he's really. Despite the fact that he stole a gun and. And escaped. Okay, that is interesting. He's ultimately harmless. Right. He's a mock turtle. So the reveal is inherently anticlimactic. Once you open that up and see this timid little guy in his coffin, and that's when the fabrication starts.

50:33 Erin: Well, you're making me think that even stealing the gun really doesn't make him all that interesting. He's still a pawn in the narrativizing efforts of the sheriff to try and recapitulate the story as they want to tell it. The state has a narrative about him too. It's that he did this sanely and in cold blood. Right?

50:52 Wes: Yeah.

50:53 Erin: On the basis of that narrative, they're hanging him. So when they try to, during his examination by Egglehofer the alienist, and Sheriff Philip B. Hartwell, B for brains, they tried to replay what occurred on the basis of what they want to have happened, not on the basis of what actually happened. So they too have their story to tell about him. And then in their story, he becomes the cold blooded killer, discharges the gun. But actually, even that redoing of the story, the truth asserts itself. Right. Because the gun accidentally goes off even in the examination process, demonstrating that the gun went off accidentally and that it does go off accidentally.

51:34 Wes: Let's see. So the sheriff gave his gun to the professor, who gave it to Earl, who shot the professor in the classified ads.

51:43 Erin: So many ass jokes.

51:44 Wes: No. Ads. Yeah. Do they say. Do they figure.

51:48 Erin: Well, maybe there's a similar kind of question.

51:50 Wes: Yeah. Did it go off accidentally or not? And then.

51:53 Erin: Right, right. But the truth there probably is also rather mundane. It probably did just go off accidentally. Again, they were literally playing with a gun.

52:01 Wes: And then he ran and he had the gun while he ran and.

52:05 Erin: Right.

52:05 Wes: Yeah. He was pretty easily disarmed by Hildy.

52:10 Erin: Right. Well, you just have to be a newspaper man, Take that gun away, put it to your own use.

52:17 Wes: So maybe we should make the transition to Postscript. What do we want to talk about?

52:22 Erin: I could think of a couple things, but the machinations of Walter aren't all that interesting. I suppose in the postscript we could talk about background on the film and our personal relationship to like, we can make it a more personal postscript if we feel as though we've gotten through everything we want to say for the.

52:38 Wes: Yeah.

52:38 Erin: For the movie.

52:41 Wes: Yeah, let's do that.

52:43 Erin: Okay, good. And the only fan letter I ever wrote. That's a teaser.

52:47 Wes: Okay, that's good. Yeah, that'll get some subscriptions.

52:51 Erin: So. Fascinating. All right, thank you, thank you, thank

52:57 Wes: you to everybody who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com Com.

Dr. Faustus expected more from his education. After a lifetime of study, his professional options—philosophy, medicine, law, and theology—all seem disappointingly ordinary. He is of course not the first to have this experience. At a societal level, the promise of knowledge is power, especially once it has become technology. At an individual level, what education seems to make us is an insignificant part of a formidable machine. For Faustus, the only way to make book learning great again is to extend it to the domain of black magic. And yet all this seems to earn him is an all-expenses-paid European vacation—notwithstanding the perk of having Mephistopheles as tour guide—to be followed by eternal damnation. What’s the point of selling your soul to the devil? How do we avoid subordinating our own search for meaning to the desire for power? Wes & Erin discuss Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus.”

Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail

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0:11 Wes: Doctor Faustus expected more from his education. After a lifetime of study, his professional options, philosophy, medicine, law and theology. All seemed disappointingly ordinary. He is, of course, not the first to have this experience. At a societal level, the promise of knowledge is power. Especially once it has become technology. At an individual level, what education seems to make us is an insignificant part of a formidable machine. For Faustus, the only way to make book learning great again is to extend it to the domain of black magic. And yet, all this seems to earn him is an all expenses paid European vacation. Notwithstanding the perk of having Mephistopheles as tour guide to be followed by eternal damnation. What's the point of selling your soul to the devil? How do we avoid subordinating our own search for meaning to the desire for power? This is Wes Alwan.

1:03 Erin: This is Erin Alonic.

1:04 Wes: And you're listening to Subtext. Okay, Erin, we're back.

1:11 Erin: We are back.

1:12 Wes: It's been a summer hiatus. Now we're ready to get going again.

1:17 Erin: It was hard to drag myself from the pool and talk about this.

1:21 Wes: That's right. It's been all shits and giggles all summer long. But, yeah, we were gonna do His Girl Friday. And then we started talking about Marlowe's Faustus. Because you were taking a course on it for school, and you really. I don't know if you loved Marlow in particular or that it was just the teacher.

1:43 Erin: I'm still in the middle of this class, so I feel like this is a sort of clandestine operation. Which is actually befitting of Marlowe. But the class is great. It's this Renaissance drama class. We're just focusing on Marlowe and Johnson. I did Dr. Faustus. I was really intrigued by it. And unfortunately, we had to move on in the class. So I thought this was a way to kind of prolong my ecstasy. The 24 years that I'm planning to devote to Dr. Faustus. So his Girl Friday will have to wait. But of course I will. I love His Girl Friday.

2:15 Wes: Well, it's important to have, I think, Dr. Faustus under our belt before we move on to His Girl Friday.

2:20 Erin: It actually probably is foundational.

2:23 Wes: Yeah. But it's funny. So, Marlow, I knew little about him, except that maybe the spying stuff. And also that he got stabbed in the eye. Right. He apparently tried to stab someone. He got stabbed with his own knife in his eye in a bar fight. And that wasn't the first bar fight he had been in. I think there was a Warrant out for his arrest at the time for being in a bar fight. And he was also known for being. He'd been accused of being a atheist and a blasphemer. The other thing I knew is that I, you know, I just glanced at the play and thought, well, why read Marlow when you could read Shakespeare? And just in the past, when I've looked at passages from the play, I wasn't that excited by it. And this time around, reading it, by comparison to Shakespeare and all the wordplay and what goes on in Shakespeare, it's definitely less exciting. And then I watched the Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor performance, which is silly in many ways, but it's also quite gripping. Then little snippets of other performances, and then reread it while taking notes and then just reading passages to myself. I developed a much greater appreciation of Marlowe's talent doing all of that.

3:31 Erin: The class that I'm in is not very well populated, to say the least. And this professor that we're taking from is normally known for being, you know, the Shakespeare guy. So I think there was some disappointment when the course listing was released and he was focusing on Marlowe and Johnson. And I was kind of delighted by that. Not because I don't love Shakespeare, and not because there isn't so much in Shakespeare that still, of course, escapes me, that, you know, whole plays that I haven't read, obviously, or just the fact that there are just incredible riches there, even within the things that I had read. But I had this attitude like, you know what? This is great. As an opera lover, you go to the opera, and if they're doing La BOHME for the 120th time, you kind of want to shoot yourself. You know, I would rather see something different every once in a while. And so that was kind of the attitude I had going in. And then the first day of classes really intrigued me when the professor said something like, with Shakespeare, we get these problems of attribution because, you know, everyone's always trying to prove that somebody else really wrote certain plays because of the fact that Shakespeare has this incredibly kind of negative capability, which we've talked about in other episodes on Shakespeare plays, in which he sort of contains dozens of people inside of him. So the professor said, you know, Marlowe and Johnson, no one could ever mistake them for each other or any other playwright for their style. They're so particular in their style. And that, I think, just was really intriguing to me to read a playwright who is so himself from the same era, sort of like anti Shakespeare. It's something that's interesting to me right now in thinking about my own work. And what makes a style and what makes somebody individualistic and recognizable immediately. What makes someone even easily subject to parody? It's a concept that I'm interested in on a lot of different levels.

5:17 Wes: Or self parody.

5:19 Erin: Exactly.

5:20 Wes: Which is what I run up against frequently.

5:24 Erin: No, self parody is really revealing, I think. One's ability to do self parody, I think it's very rare.

5:29 Wes: Yeah. It's the unintentional self parody that I'm good at. So Marlowe has a particular, identifiable style. Is that the idea? Because he seems very vanilla to me.

5:41 Erin: Yeah. He has, I think, a set of subjects, maybe. I mean, this would be a conversation that would encompass more plays than Faustus and also probably more than I've read yet. I'm still in the thicket of the Marlowe section of this course, and so I'm still kind of trying to piece everything together. But Marlowe is the way that I've been led to understand him. He's someone who just doesn't give a crap about anything or anyone. He's out to get you. He will destroy you. The plays kind of destroy everything in their path. We read his play Tamburlaine. Basically, the plot is that Tamburlaine is this great conqueror. He comes into a kingdom and he's like, I'm gonna beat you. And the guy's like, no, I'm gonna beat you. I'm better than you. And then Tamburlaine just, like, whoops their ass and then moves on to the next place. And the same thing is repeated over and over and over again until he's just conquered, like, the entire world. Like, the trajectory of the play is just climax after climax after climax. And Tamburlaine as a figure is this kind of evil but sexy destroyer who you kind of, like, want to see just, like, stomp on the little Lego set that somebody has painstakingly erected and just like, bam, step all over it. And so the fact that he's this incredibly magnetic hero, but at the same time, you know, whether he's killing Muslims or Christians over the course of the play, the allegiances of an English, Elizabethan era audience would have been really turned upside down and over and over again watching something like that. That's kind of how I see it. Like, he's destroying theater as he is writing these plays. He's destroying our expectations of theater. He's destroying almost like a narrative arc of theater. He's destroyed. He's destroying And Faustus, destroying the concept of the morality play, which was sort of the chief play up until the Renaissance era, that was the chief genre. So I just finished reading the Jew of Malta and I still have a bit more to go with Marlowe, but that doesn't speak much to style, but it does to kind of an overarching vision of what Marlowe is doing.

7:47 Wes: And the morality play, I think it started out as the portrayal of biblical stories and then it developed into their characters representing, say, virtues and vices. And there's a less to be learned

8:01 Erin: from the play, really the beginning of theater in England. They're didactic, they're allegorical. So the whole point is the battle to save the soul. I think the term in class that was used was the psychomachia. Just like soul battle. Right. So really, really obvious, very silly character names. I think the most popular play or the origin of them all was Everyman. I think the character's name was Everyman. Right. And there are like characters like knowledge and good works and all that kind of thing. And I think that where that morality play got kind of turned inside out a little bit already is with the rise of Protestantism and specifically Calvinism, where this is like your chief form of entertainment. But then you have to kind of ask yourself, okay, who are these morality plays for at this point, when we no longer have this battle for the soul that's inherent in other denominations of Christianity, but within Calvinism, you know, you have either you're divinely elect and you're going to heaven no matter what. Right. Or you're a reprobate and you're going to hell. What's the point of these morality plays except as a kind of like self torture for the person watching it, wondering whether or not they're picking up on. They've been given, you know, as a member of the elect, the divine insight to pick up on the incredibly obvious allegory within the play and therefore sort of confirm their own sense that they are in fact a member of the elect. Or I don't know. I mean, it can't possibly convert a reprobate because they're a reprobate.

9:36 Wes: For partially examined life, we just read Erasmus and recorded on Erasmus. So his Praise of Folly was published in 1511 and he had a bit of a public fight with Luther over the concept of free will and Luther who? You've probably read some Luther, right?

9:53 Erin: Oh, yes, and Erasmus actually.

9:55 Wes: Okay. And Erasmus is great. So he's a Catholic who wants to reform the church from within. And he's much more humble and good natured and rhetorical and bent than Luther. And Luther is just a insane radical. So they had a. You're speaking my language about free will. And I looked at both of them and I'm like, oh my God. And you know, Erasmus is trying to be nice and Luther is like, you know, screw you. Very contemptuous, very arrogant. But what I was going to say about that is, you know, I got a sense of, you know, the debate over free will. Protestantism, I think. So for Lutheran, this leads into Calvinism. But the idea is that there's no free will and getting into heaven is not a matter of good works, it's a matter of faith. So religion becomes less about or not, maybe not at all about perfectibility and self improvement and one's virtues. It becomes about something else. And Erasmus is much more on the. In a way, there's a pagan strand to it. Right. Because there's a virtue ethics involved, but also it's sort of a more moderate version of Catholicism. Right. So pare down the excesses, the things that had been happening that, you know, it wasn't just Luther who was critical of them, but you know, with indulgences and this whole game of what you're going to do to save yourself or your loved ones from hell.

11:14 Erin: Oh, absolutely, yeah. It's sort of like weeding the materialistic garden, I would call it. This reliance on the material had really gotten out of hand with, you know, famous things like indulgences and blah, blah, blah. You know, indulgences exist, like that's still a concept within the Catholic Church, but you can't pay for them anymore. It's still an interesting. And you know, I mean, depending on your belief system, if you're a Catholic, it's an incredibly useful concept. And I don't mean to say that

11:39 Wes: flippantly, but this is more like the organized crime version. You know, it'd be a shame if something happened to your soul. Right, I'm gonna go ahead and I'm gonna need 10% every month. But yeah, right.

11:52 Erin: With the unchecked power of the church and the sort of growing, the level to which these had become excesses and needed reform, which, as you suggest, you know, Erasmus and others. There was a movement in the church called the Counter Reformation which refuted the Reformation theology and also cleaned house from within, you know, because this was a problem that Catholics of course too recognized. At least Catholics of goodwill recognized that this had become a problem. But this reliance upon the material, right, like sacraments, just A general sort of mediation between you and the divine, which is very important to Catholicism on a certain level, became very upsetting for Protestants. They wanted to mark their division with Catholicism with a total lack of dependence on anything like, you know, the material or any kind of mediation. And so it included doing good works. Basically the idea that anything could get you to heaven of your own will. Or even just. Catholics don't believe this either. They don't believe that your own will can get you into heaven necessarily, but that rather you're working with God, you're accepting God's grace in order to perform goodwill. So it's not like you can, through your own might and strength, climb your way up the ladder to heaven. It's obviously in cooperation with God's grace that any good can be done. This is pretty standard Christian idea.

13:09 Wes: What are you thinking of? The word synergy?

13:12 Erin: Yes, synergy.

13:13 Wes: Right.

13:14 Erin: In synergy with God. Yes.

13:17 Wes: We can leverage the trying to think of what the corporate speak would be

13:21 Erin: the adverlingus of how to sell thee. What I'm getting at is just this idea that within Calvinism you can't do anything good. You're either saved or you're not. And the process of discovering whether or not you're saved is through this really deep and intense, constant and very punishing self analysis and textual analysis of the Bible. Like if you can read the Bible properly, it's because God's given you the grace to read the Bible. It's because you're saved. And you can be tricked basically into thinking that you're saved when you're actually a reprobate, which is a terrifying prospect for people. And I should just say that to our listeners, all of this is, I think, directly related to Faustus. That's why we're talking about it. We'll get there.

14:03 Wes: It is important. And the other thing I want to say too, and this I think is also important background of the play. Because people may wonder in the beginning, what's all this stuff about him being unhappy with philosophy, medicine, law and divinity. You know, one of the other things that happened during the Middle Ages is the rise of Scholasticism, including the influence of Aristotle. And the point Erasmus was writing in his opinion, there were a lot of ridiculous sort of arcane esoteric theological quibbles. And so a focus on highly analytic and logic chopping types of arguments to do with theology and religion, which he of course contrasts in praise of folly to the simplicity of the apostles and of Christ. So there's a question there about the relationship between Engaging in these very intellectual activities and being religious. And then the other part of that, part of the innovation of humanism is to revive not just the more analytical ancient texts, but to revive the influence of more rhetorical texts, history and literature and that sort of stuff. And so you see it in the way that Erasmus writes. And it's very pleasing and well written. It's an essay, it's not a philosophical treatise. You know, one more thing to say is that is of a piece with his idea that so he'd done some time as a monk, done some time, so he was worried about empty ritual and ceremony that was devoid of any, like, real subjective content. The idea that, you know, you could just kind of, in a very rote, unthinking way, perform certain acts or ceremonies and that that was what your relationship to God consisted of. This is all about, you know, one's mental and spiritual comportment, whether that's being undermined by over intellectualism or undermined by the ritualistic or something like that. So, yes, it sounds like we're running off on a tangent, but this is all going to come up in our discussion. Just one more piece of background that I think you can probably feel him better than I am is the source of this legend for Marlowe. There was a German, so apparently Faust was a real guy, or Faustus was a real guy. Then it became a kind of. Obviously it's not real as it's presented, but became a kind of legend. And then it was put down by someone in German, and I forget when that happens. And then it was translated into English by someone who took a lot of liberties with that. But that's the source for Marlowe of this.

16:49 Erin: Yeah, that's right. And I think that'll get us right to the start of the play as Elizabethan era attendees going into Dr. Faustus, just knowing that we're familiar with the Faustus legend. And so they would be as well, they would know this. They would know the basic outline of the story. It was common knowledge at this time. So that's really important. They are going to a morality play about someone who they know in the end, you know, spoiler alert, will be damned forever. So then one might argue why then go to see this? What is the point here? What is the narrative arc in which something is a foregone conclusion? And it's about a guy who's really, really bad and does bad stuff. Is this going to edify us as potential members of the elect? Is that possible? If one is elect, do we actually care Whether or not Faustus achieves salvation at the end, are we rooting for him? And if we are, then are we rooting for a reprobate? And does that make us bad? And does that make us reprobates? It's a little bit of a brain teaser. A different term I was thinking of for that, but I'll call it a brain teaser.

17:55 Wes: Yeah, it's funny, in my second reading, I had the intrusive thoughts having to do with contemporary sitcoms, as usual. And I thought, wouldn't it be funny if the comic relief were actually at Faustus expense? And you could do a sort of office version of this where Wagner, instead of going off and doing the silly things that he does, he does the equivalent of kind of looking at the camera every time Faustus says something stupid or something like that.

18:25 Erin: Faust would be Dwight, of course, and Jim would be Wagner, right?

18:28 Wes: Well, no, I was thinking, yeah, Jim would be Wagner. No, I was thinking of Faustus as Michael Scott.

18:33 Erin: Oh, sure.

18:34 Wes: So he's the boss. And the way this starts out, he has this very inflated self conception, this kind of mania or grandiosity, however you want to put it. And he's doing something that we are, at some point, we're all tasked with doing this right. If we go to college, if we are getting an education of any kind that's going to serve some sort of professional purpose later on, which is like choosing something, making a choice, specializing. That's like his dilemma in the beginning. And because of his grandiose state of mind, nothing is actually good enough for him. So starting with philosophy, it's a very grand thing. It's something that if you want to be grandiose, a lot of people can do that and go there for that. Or really any academic, right. Humanities specialty, you can convince yourself that what you're doing is awfully, awfully important. Doing something with ideas, something or something artistic, something that's going to change the world, deeply affect people. And then you can give that same sort of rationale for law or medicine. It becomes slightly more different and more practical. Right? But the idea is that you can heal people, you can make lots of money, you be respected. I'm unclear on the actual situation. It looks to me, okay, this is someone who's just gotten a degree, who's making this sort of decision. But you can correct me if I'm wrong about that. And then the final step is divinity. So of the professions that he's considering, the fourth one is divinity. And he rejects that as kind of being depressing. In a way that's reminiscent of what you've been talking about, Right? So it's what will be, shall be. In other words, we're all destined to sin. And therefore, we're all destined to an everlasting death because of that sin. The turn is to magic from that. That's what gives us real power, honor, omnipotence, like education is disappointing in a way. Because it really doesn't live up to any kind of grandiose promise. But, yeah. What did you think about the way this began? You know, what ails Faustus?

20:40 Erin: I think you're right that there's something ouroboric. About the structure of the whole plot. And about this first scene in particular, too. Where he's sort of now deciding on what his specialization is going to be. Only after he's received how many doctorates. You know, he has this whole speech which seems completely counterintuitive. Again, it's a kind of foregone conclusion. He's already studied all of these things and mastered them, according to him, Right? He studied law, divinity, and medicine. Mastered them. And he's like, no, I'm not going to do any of these things. You know? So it's a performance at the very beginning. It's a sort of performance of rejecting each one of these things. And then at the end, I think the desire is to actually get away from the studying of something. And actually do it. He studied divinity. Now I want to be divine. This is all just empty scholarship. I want to actually be on the ground, you know, doing my divine deeds. To go back to the very beginning, to go to the prologue. We get this chorus that is describing Faustus's situation. It gives us the whole history of Faustus. We get his infancy, he's born. First they say they're going to speak for Faustus in his infancy. Then he's born. Which is an odd kind of ouroboric kind of thing. Anyway. So we hear that he was born in Rhode. And he goes to Wittenberg. Which is the center of Protestant reform at the time. And becomes this great scholar, gets all these doctorates. And then we have his downfall. So the prologue says. Till swollen with cunning of a self conceit. His waxen wings did mount above his reach. And melting heavens conspired his overthrow. For falling to a devilish exercise. And glutted more with learning's golden gifts. He surfeits upon cursed necromancy. Nothing so sweet as magic is to him which he prefers before his chiefest bliss. And this the man that in his study sits so we get this comparison to Icarus, but some other things in here that are really strange. Like, I mean, the most obvious line here is and melting heavens conspired his overthrow. So the heavens themselves thought that he was getting too high and are conspiring against him, rather than his own pride taking him up too high and his own self destruction, you know, at his own hand, if you will. The heavens are basically the actor that is condemning him. So the height is theological excellence, it's theological learning. And then the punishment, the thing he falls to is the devilish exercise. The punishment is magic or necromancy. So it's like the God is the one who sends him down to the devil. Yeah, there's already, is this his fault? Is this just the way that it is? This is the way that it works when you're a reprobate.

23:25 Wes: So the irony is that theology should be getting you closer to God, but it's doing precisely the opposite.

23:31 Erin: That's right.

23:32 Wes: The other point I think you're making is that so in the Icarus myth, you fly too high and the sun melts you and the sun is just. Yes, you can think of the sun as a God, but in this case, this is purely a matter of one's own action and then some kind of natural consequence of that action. But here it sounds more like the displeasure of the gods at hubris. More like a Promethean thing, Right?

23:55 Erin: Yeah. And there's even a few lines above that. When he's studying divinity, there's this idea of the fruitful plot of scholarism graced. So he's gracing the fruitful plot of the university with his talents. But of course, we can't help but hear the sort of Garden of Eden echo in that. It's as if any undertaking in theological studies is going to result in your downfall. You know, it's all a trap designed to just usher you off to hell.

24:20 Wes: It's funny because divinity schools these days, as far as I can tell, have a reputation. Right. Just for harboring atheists, essentially.

24:28 Erin: That's exactly right.

24:29 Wes: I wonder if it's a similar kind of stereotype at the time, and I think Marlow was subject to that. Not that he went to divinity school. Right. But I don't know if something that was attributed to him by someone else who had been arrested, but I'm not sure.

24:44 Erin: Do you mean the sedition thing with Elizabeth, where he was plotting to overthrow the government, but it was because he was a counterspy?

24:51 Wes: No, it was. He was accused of having denied the divinity of Christ, for instance, and a lot of other blasphemous things.

25:00 Erin: Right. Well, this is, I think, the problem of, you know, something we've touched on in many other episodes, the problem of classical education is, you know, that it might just make you an atheist and sort of undermine the whole project. At least a classical education promoted by a Christian society, it could have the opposite effect.

25:19 Wes: In a way, it's a spiritual competitor. Right. So one can see the life of the mind as a kind of spiritual practice as it was before the. At least in some forms, as philosophy before the advent of Christianity. Then you can either make it the handmaiden of Christianity or maybe Christianity gets second billing eventually. Right. Which is part, I think, of the criticism of the Scholastics that was being leveled by Erasmus. So one can be overwhelmed by the scaffolding that you're trying to build in order to make a connection to God. Yeah, maybe don't do that. Do something else.

25:57 Erin: Well, I think there's a suggestion here, though. In his opening speech, he talks about all the things that he's rejecting. And at the end, when he's describing why divinity doesn't serve, I think there's a suggestion that he's a bad reader. He's not quite as intelligent as he thinks he is. Or, of course, the other way to read this is that he hasn't been given the divine insight in order to read things specifically, you know, the Scriptures correctly, precisely because he is a reprobate. So like he says, he's looking at Jerome's Bible and he reads stipendium peccati mors est. Right. The reward of sin is death, he says. He translates it for us, you know, the wages of sin is death. The second half of that line is, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

26:41 Wes: Ah, okay.

26:41 Erin: He's deliberately leaving out the second half of these things. Same thing with this other part of the Bible that he quotes from John. He provides the translation. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and there's no truth in us. The line that follows that is, but if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And I think an audience in the Elizabethan era being relatively well versed in the Bible, or maybe not. I don't know. Maybe I'm overestimating this, especially because of what would still be very low levels of literacy. But still, I think the Bible, many parts of it, were learned by rote, especially the New Testament, maybe an audience would know that he's deliberately leaving out God's promises of salvation. Or if not deliberately leaving them out, then maybe that's the thing. Is he a bad reader? Is he just rejecting what he doesn't want to see? Or is he actually a reprobate and God is literally not allowing him to see the second half of the line. He's setting him up for failure.

27:40 Wes: He's focusing on the inevitability of sin and human imperfection. And then he's cutting out the part where there seems to be a possibility of redemption. Right, so it's just eternal death and we sin and that's it. So what are the different reasons he rejects all of these? Right, so philosophy, it's just. You know what? We're just going to learn logic, it's empty. And we're going to learn how to argue better. What's the point of that? Medicine. I've already mastered that. But in any case, I think the main point is making people healthy. Okay, but what about.

28:15 Erin: But they're going to die eventually.

28:16 Wes: Yeah, they're going to die anyway, so what's the point? And then it's not raising them from the dead or giving them eternal life. And then law. I think his study fits a mercenary drudge who aims at nothing but external trash. Too servile and a liberal for me. So you might think of law in relation to justice as something extremely grand, but from the inside. And this is kind of the way any job is, right? It's just work, and it can become drudgery like anything else. But also, I think that part of the implication is here that you get caught up in what Shakespeare called the fine quillets of the law and all these fine distinctions, endlessly multiplying distinctions, and all for the sake of doing something with petty human concerns like inheritance law, which I think is the thing he mentions. And then with theology, it sounds like. And so I'm trying to relate all these. Maybe you can help me see the arc here, because I didn't fully think it up. But with theology, it sounds like there's no insight available. Or the final insight in theology is that redemption is impossible or that we are powerless or something like that. So ultimately, what he's rebelling against is the sense of powerlessness, you know, in light of his desire for omnipotence. And in the end, you know, what he wants is. This is what's disappointing about education, is that thinking and action are not the same things. And our thoughts don't directly affect the world, although part of being grandiose and having omnipotence of thought is having kind of the unconscious belief that they can do that. And that can lead to very debilitating conditions like ocd, where people are worried that their negative thoughts are going to affect their loved ones directly. But the truth is our thoughts don't have that power. The world is on the verge of a point where it'll be almost as if that's the case. Right. Science looks awfully magical these days, the kind of power that science affords. So there's something prescient about all these concerns and Dr. Faustus and with Frankenstein and all these thoughts about alchemy and magic in relation to. Also in the Tempest, in relation to science. I think there's a premonition here of what is actually going to happen with the relationship between thought and technology and what happens in the world. It's going to get very, very amped up. Right. But even allowing for that, none of these disciplines that we spend all our time devoting ourselves to is anything like being directly active in the world. It's too abstruse and isolated and in our minds. And I could go on about that, but yeah, I think that's inherent. Part of the dissatisfaction and it's one of the downsides of self consciousness per se. Right. We're no longer in the moment and merely acting creatures. We can get caught up in our own minds and in the minds of others, in what they think and in culture and in. And then the other part of this is just the more education we have, is it powerful or is it just arresting? Does it lead to more indecision and inaction and less courage and less vitality? The kind of critiques that Nietzsche will make, but that Erasmus has already made, that kind of stuff.

31:28 Erin: Yeah. It's not enough to study God. We have to want to be God. We want to make a difference in the world.

31:34 Wes: I just want to make a difference.

31:35 Erin: Divine acts. Yeah, exactly. Like I think what he talks about with the law and divinity are very closely related. Like he quotes matters of inheritance out of Justinian's law. Right. If two people are bequeathed the same thing, then one person will get the thing itself and the other it's equivalent cash value. This type of.

31:52 Wes: So it's petty.

31:54 Erin: It's petty. And Justinian, of course, his law, his Roman law was deeply influential in the creation of canon law within the church. Right. There is a sense of circling the drain here, you know, thinking about the little tiny things. I mean, God's grace is often Thought of as a kind of economy, right. In which we have, like, the wages of sin is death. You know, we get grace as a kind of infinite economy. But still, thought of in economic terms.

32:19 Wes: Marx would call it commodification, maybe, or fetishization.

32:23 Erin: Yeah, well, and this is a. Largely because, I mean, in stuff that we understand. It's a way that we use to think about how God works in our own limited way. But, you know, just someone who's not imbued with the right spirit, shall we say. This all would then look very, very empty to him. It looks like external trash. And trash is a word that Marlowe uses in a lot of his plays. He really likes that word. My professor is just such a great line. So I have to have to give him credit. Said something like. Magic is the belief that nothing is external trash. Magic is the belief that everything has meaning. Reminds me very much of what you've said in the past about conspiracy theories. This is, I think, intricately related. So in a world in which Faus's studies have demystified the world for him. They've reduced even God to a case of paltry legacies. Is my soul consigned to heaven or to hell? You know, as it depends on which fast track I'm on. And it's all very denatured and demystified. When one has studied this so intensely. Magic is that reinvigoration of a kind of divine spirit. It's this idea that everything might be coated with some sort of secret, hidden meaning. And I think that is what is attractive to him here. He reduces things to lines and circles, signs, letters and characters. Aye. These are those that Faustus most desires. So he wants to kind of reduce the meaning of the word. To just the things that make up the word. The letters and the lines that make up the word. Which we would think is like going backwards. But it's a sort of magical remystification. Whereby even the process of reading becomes suddenly foreign to us. And it's imbued with a kind of mysticism. I don't know.

34:02 Wes: Yeah.

34:03 Erin: No, there's the suggestion, too, that the magic book that he's reading. Maybe it's just the Bible. You know, to a reprobate, maybe the Bible just looks like a bunch of squiggles. Or maybe he's just taking the Bible and turning it upside down or something like that. There's a duality, I think that's a constant theme in the play. In which the two things that look like opposites. Are actually maybe the same thing. You Know, maybe a magic book is just a bible. You know, a lot of this conjuring stuff, you know, he's using the sort of biblical Latin to get these demons to appear. And he sells his soul to the devil in the same way that someone who's really, really cynical would say, well, if you're a Christian, you're just selling your soul to God.

34:42 Wes: So you're making me think again about. Well, you're really elaborating what I was calling omnipotence of thought, which is to say magic has a lot to do with the idea that we might, or the wish that we might use our thoughts to directly affect the world. And I mentioned ocd. So for instance, that's something in which people engage in kinds of rituals or even you could call them spells. Right. And everything is imbued with significance. So you know, step on a crack, break your mother's back. Some people really do avoid stepping on the cracks and. Or you know, unless I flip the light switch up and down 10 times when I walk into a room, one of my parents is going to die or something might symbolically contaminate me. I might have mentioned this before, but there was a show on A and E called. It was about ocd. I think it was just called Obsessed or something like that. But there was a guy on there who every time he saw a certain type of car, he had the idea that he was contaminated. And then he had to ritualistically pretend to wash his arms. Not actually wash his arms and hands, but just go through the motions of that and would have to do that for some indeterminate amount of time. It's a really horrific and debilitating and often the ritual is not enough or it doesn't last very long. But yeah, I like what you were saying about magic is this idea that everything is imbued with significance. So nothing is external trash. And what does external mean there? Right. Is that just accidental or not essential or not meaningful? That's what I was thinking. And I think your point hammers that. Hum.

36:19 Erin: Yeah, it doesn't get to the heart of things. It's extraneous.

36:22 Wes: There's real power in thinking and in particular mental development. And being a student, which is great. Right. Runs completely against the stereotype, for instance, of a professor who's completely impractical. But so from this section as well, maybe this is worth reading. These metaphysics of magicians and necromantic books are heavenly lines, circles, scenes, letters and characters. Aye, these are those that Faustus most desires. Oh, what a World of profit and delight, of power, of honor, of omnipotence. Is promised to the studious artisan. This mention of studious artisan.

37:02 Erin: Makes me think poetry is another way to get at this. But, you know.

37:07 Wes: Yeah, say something about that.

37:08 Erin: He doesn't want things to be inert. He wants to create. Rather than just study what's already been. Or memorize kind of dictums about ways. A sort of cookie cutter way to understand the world. This is what he dislikes, especially about the law. Or what he says about logic. You know, is to dispute. Well, logic's chiefest end. Affords this art no greater miracle. He wants the miracle of the thing. Turned into some transformation, some creation. This is obviously like being godlike. Is to create something out of nothing. Out of the materials one already has. But to effect some sort of transformation on the world. And I think creativity of any sort is sort of aligned with this. I think the studiousness of Faustus. Which involves memorizing case studies. And applying them over and over again. Okay, this one is like this one. So this is how we're going to rule in this particular case. Because here's the precedent for it. And you're just sort of like stamping something out over and over again. And that same sort of issue with scholasticism. It's like, okay, well, you know, they have a problem with this element of God. But if we apply this to that. Then here's the result we get. There's something dead and anti creative about that, in his view. And he wants the thing reinvigorated. And whether that be turning the scripture upside down. And reading some garbledygook out of it. And therefore proclaiming magic words. Or rearranging words into something that has a little spark of magic. Like a poet would. I think those two things are pretty closely related.

38:40 Wes: And there's what a poet does at least just thinking of metaphor. And the assimilation of different ideas to each other. But the idea that one thing can stand for another metaphorically. And that one might extend that to a great degree.

38:57 Erin: That's kind of a divine economy in and of itself. Right. It's like if you connect two things together. Then you get more than the two things. You get a third thing. It's like you have an excess. Which is more than just this paltry economy that Faustus dislikes. Of dividing things up. Rather, it's like a multiplication that happens. You create something extra.

39:18 Wes: Yeah. And I think it speaks to the idea that ultimately. There's a hidden unity to the world. Right. So this is one of the things that metaphor kind of reveals, is that there are these deep structural isomorphisms, let's say, between things. And speaking of magic, you might have the idea that it's like a voodoo doll or something, right? So I make a doll that looks like the thing and I pierce it. That other thing will feel pain. But that in poetic imagery, there's some control over the target of the metaphor. Or. I don't know. Before, in Much Ado About Nothing, we were talking a little bit about metaphor as a kind of argument, as a way of convincing yourselves of things. Thinking of someone as being stained, impure and stained because of a illicit relationship or something like that. But, yeah, I think that's something for further thought, the relationship between metaphor and magic. But the other thing, you know, speaking of this whole idea of a possible underlying unity. So after he goes on, the angels come and nag him one way and the other, the good angel and the evil angel. And then after that, he's fantasizing about. Sorry to just skip over the angels like that, but it shows you where I'm coming from. But he gets excited by the thought of becoming a magician. You know, I'm glutted with conceit of this. And what he's fantasizing about in particular are spirits being able to fetch him anything that he wants or do anything he wants. Examples of fetching include, like, getting him gold and pearls and fruits from all over the world. And then there's knowledge. So some of there's fetching, there's doing and there's knowledge. So knowledge, like philosophy and royal secrets and the doing part, it's really like construction and landscaping and fashion and war and political office and like war technologies. That's the way it all breaks down in my notes. But construction, meaning, like putting a wall of what around the city? I forget the material. But the other thing that happens in there is this phrase that he uses, resolve me of all ambiguities. So how I'm blooded with conceit of this. Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please? Resolve me of all ambiguities. Literally, meaning, answer all his questions. But also, I think the implication. I mean, it is for contemporary reader. I think it would be for reader back then as well. But just to the resolution of ambiguity in the world and in one's thoughts, the resolution of any ambivalence.

41:49 Erin: It's a really interesting line that I hadn't noticed previously, because according to him, he's already resolved all the ambiguities, right? So it's strange that there's something that remains that still needs to be worked out, still needs to be cleared up.

42:02 Wes: Yeah. Knowledge plays a curious role here because it starts out with him being dissatisfied by all these academic pursuits and then it's like, okay, I want omnipotence and power, and some of that means getting rich. It's going to mean sex, some of it's going to mean war or building things, transforming the environment. But then here, knowledge is still playing this role. What's the point of knowledge if you can just magically do everything you want? Anyway, I thought he had shown that knowledge was already pointless, in other words. Right, and then now he's fantasizing about a spirit reading him philosophy. What? I'll have them read me strange philosophy. Yeah. I thought you just decided to leave academia and do a tech startup or something.

42:50 Erin: No, anyway, right. And influence policy and tell the secrets of all foreign kings. Yeah. It seems like what he's interested in knowing, he wants to just eavesdrop. He just wants to know what other people are talking about. Not necessarily towards any particular end. I mean, ultimately, the irony of this play, what makes it really, really funny, is that here, as you say, he's imagining all this various great deeds that he's going to perform. In the end, he basically sells his soul to the devil for a couple of cute magic tricks, one of which is a Looney Tunes skit where he beats up the Pope.

43:28 Wes: Well, also, he's basically a tourist. It's basically he won the big vacation on the Price is Right.

43:35 Erin: Right, Right.

43:36 Wes: So what does he do? He goes around being a tourist, he gets to play some pranks and apparently there's 24 years of this. I don't know how he'd do that for 24 years. But I had this in my notes as well. I thought this was incredibly ironic, what he ends up actually using his time for. What else does he do?

43:55 Erin: Right, he asks for a wife and he just gets a devil with fireworks in her hair, which is fantastic. Then he's like, this isn't a wife. And, yeah, odd work.

44:04 Wes: Which is great to hear Richard Burton say that, by the way. In that version.

44:08 Erin: I've got to see that. I can't believe I didn't. I haven't seen that yet because I heard about it. Because doesn't Elizabeth Taylor play Helen of Troy?

44:15 Wes: Yeah, and it's a bit ridiculous, I'm sure. You know, they have to, like, shoehorn her in as much as they can. And of course, she has no speaking part at all. And it's weird, but it's still great. It's still worth seeing.

44:26 Erin: That's so funny. Yeah. So they play a prank on the Pope. He gives someone horns. Wagner seems to be able to do about as much magic as Faustus. Without any of Faustus training, though maybe he's picked up a bit eavesdropping on his own.

44:42 Wes: And then Robin picks it up from Wagner. Right. So he's able to do a little bit as well. Yeah, it's like a pyramid scheme or a plague.

44:50 Erin: Faustus brags about how he's cured plagues, but he seems to have started another one and. Yeah, and then he does this whole thing for the emperor where he reproduces Alexander and Alexander's paramour.

45:01 Wes: Okay. So he gets to hang out with famous people. He gets to be famous and hang out with famous people. That's another aspect of this.

45:07 Erin: Yeah, he's like that David Copperfield guy who gets to go, you know, like, is he actually that great or is he just there to play for the birthday party for some rich person's kid? And then, you know, that speaks to the sort of anti creational aspect in some of these metaphors that you mentioned. Like when he says, magic that hath ravished me. And you also mentioned earlier in that same speech how I am glutted with conceit of this. Or in the prologue, when he says. Or when the Korra says that Faustus is swollen with cunning of a self conceit. So this idea that he's just pregnant with himself. Right. Like he's not actually creating anything new, he's not doing anything worthwhile. He's just sort of like playing with himself, basically.

45:53 Wes: Did it not occur to him to write a book or do something creative?

45:57 Erin: Right. Well, and then these things that he's producing out of thin air, like Helen of Troy or whatever, they're not even really.

46:02 Wes: They're just holograms, basically.

46:04 Erin: Exactly.

46:05 Wes: He invented the TV or something, you know? Right.

46:08 Erin: And if we think about what it literally is. I mean, it's. What it literally is is a man, an actor, dressed as a devil dressed as a woman. You know, like, if we think about the staging of this too, it gets pretty recursive.

46:22 Wes: Yeah. The one other thing. So we mentioned being famous, hanging out with famous people, being a tourist going to Rome, playing pranks. But the other thing, after he signs away his soul, which we can talk about that scene too. But the first thing he wishes for is a wife. And that's when the hot horror comes in, you know, that's Like Mephistopheles has to. Is that the first time we've said the name Mephistopheles? I think it is, because I trip over. Well, it's interesting. Say it three times and Michael Keaton shows up. But why is it important for Mephistopheles to distract Faustus from having a wife? But then the other thing he does is he wants to know things. Right again, definition of. He wants a definition of what hell is. And then, actually, that's before he wishes for a wife. Then he wants to raise spirits. This comes up a number of times, like, can I raise spirits? Can I raise spirits? I want to raise spirits. That's what I want to do. And then, does he raise any spirits except for Helen? I guess he does, right? He does. Alexander. But anyway, as a party trip.

47:22 Erin: But does he? Does he? Or is it just devils?

47:25 Wes: Right, exactly. But then after the raising spirits question, he's like, okay, well, why don't you give me a book on astronomy and then also give me a book on botany? So again, we get this same collapse back into. First of all, there's a question of why Mephistopheles can't just, with a wave of the hand, give him omniscience and let him know all that without him having to read inefficiently read books in the same way that he would have to do if he were still being a student or being a teacher. So I found that very interesting, that it's like, wife, raising spirits, astronomy, botany, let's go. Okay. I want all the money in the world. Give me a private jet. Yeah.

48:04 Erin: In the end, he doesn't even really get to rule over any country or, like, none of the things that he wanted. And the speech where he describes everything that he would do, none of that happened.

48:13 Wes: And then for some reason, when he goes back to Wittenberg, in the end, the options are walk or take a horse. It's like, what? Haven't you guys been, like, riding around through the air, you know?

48:23 Erin: Yeah. That's a really interesting scene. I wrote a whole paper on that, so I have a whole, really thing about that. But before we get there, give the elevator speech.

48:31 Wes: Okay. Yeah.

48:32 Erin: No, let's go. Right. Well, actually, elevator speech is a good term. I'm happy to skip there. Except just prior to that, I think, like, I don't know if you had this experience, but for me, it's just really, really hard to keep track of everything that happens in the play because it's just the same thing over and over again. The scene will start, and Faustus will be like, oh, man, I shouldn't have done this. I'm really upset. Then the devils are just, like, distracting him. Or he gets yelled at for saying God's name out loud. And Lucifer's like, don't do that. You should only say my name. And he's like, you're right. You're right. It's fine. It's fine. Everything will be fine. And then they do some magic trick. And then the scene ends. And there's a little, like, comic scene in the middle with Wagner or Robin. And then the whole thing starts all over again. And so by the time you get to the end of the play, you're just like, wait, what happened in what scene? Like, I was getting Alexandra's paramour confused with Helen of Troy. Like, I don't know if you had that experience, but I just feel like it's really hard to keep track of what happens when. And I wonder if it even matters.

49:30 Wes: The first time. It's just all a jumble. I mean, it's just like, okay, I might as well not almost not have read it. And then the second time, I'm sitting down and I'm just writing down all the notes, and I'm, like, structuring them. So I have a better sense now of the overarching quote, unquote plot, if you want to call it that. Right. There's very little. I think I read in some of the secondary reading I did for this. I think someone said, well, this is a play that has no middle. Yeah, that's here. I'm selling my soul to the devil. And then it's, oh, shit, I sold my soul to the devil. Now I'm going to hell. And what happens in between, again is just quite. Doesn't live up to the grandiose. Before he sells to the soul of the devil, he calls in Valdez and Cornelius, his magician friends, to show him how to do it. These books, thy wit and our experience will basically make us all rich and famous and omnipotent. And then you have to ask the question, well, why haven't Valdez. Cornelius. Not done that for themselves already? Yeah. What do they need Faustus for? I love these incongruities because I don't think they're just accidents. They're forms of irony. That's why the whole office version of this comes up. Because there's an element of confusion. These people are actually quite confused. And by some kind of luck, they get the devil conjured up.

50:52 Erin: Yeah, exactly.

50:53 Wes: Well.

50:53 Erin: And the devil makes a Point of saying. Mephistopheles makes a point of saying. Becomes kind of on his own accord or something.

51:00 Wes: That's right.

51:01 Erin: They kind of accidentally conjure him.

51:04 Wes: Yeah. Mephistopheles uses that phrase per accidens saying, well, no, you. Faustus didn't make me do anything. I can only follow Lucifer's instructions.

51:15 Erin: Yeah. He does this kind of, like, logical reasoning with Faustus. Which is pretty funny. He seems to know just as much scholastic logic as Faustus does. But what you're talking about here. I think it's kind of the hallmark of the play. This idea of, like, why does any of this have to happen? Or, why does the play even have no middle? Or, you know, I said before, like, this ouroboric quality to the play. Everything is a foregone conclusion. You go round and round in circles. And you don't really get anywhere. Even just like in the very beginning, after the prologue. Faustus enters already in his study. Like, how does that happen? How is it possible that he could, like, enter but already be there? You know, the same thing with the prologue. Sort of like speaking for him in his infancy. For Faustus as an infant. But then Faustus has to be born over the course of the prologue. Like, there's something just really strange about this. And so in the sequence where they're walking in act for scene one. Where they're walking from the court of the Emperor Charles V. Back to Wittenberg. Something happens there where they're kind of performing the paradox at the heart of the play. They have to walk back a distance of many, many miles. And yet they're there. And Faustus enters into his study. In the course of, like, 40 lines. Where they're walking. So there's this part where Faustus says. Now, Mephistopheles. The restless course that time doth run. With calm and silent foot. Shortening my days and thread of vital life. Calls for the payment of my latest years. Therefore, sweet Memphistopheles, let us make haste to Wittenberg. And then Mephistopheles says, what? Will you go on horseback or on foot? Faustus says, nay, till I am past this fair and pleasant green. I'll walk on foot. So seems like a relatively uneventful little section of dialogue. But as I dug into it, I realized how strange this metaphor is. So this is the restless course that time doth run with calm and silent foot. So he's imagining, I guess, his life as, like, a track. Maybe a path that extends in one direction. Like through the woods or something.

53:14 Wes: Or.

53:15 Erin: Or even better, a Track that's sort of circular, like a running track. So that's his life and time is running on it. But that's kind of odd because the track and the ground, the set thing, the thing that's sort of in the earth, the permanent thing, is Faustus. Life and time is the impermanent thing, the runner that's going along it. That seems strange. These metaphors don't even add up. The runner then is shortening the length of the track by running on it. How is that possible? And then he says the thread of vital life, too. Okay, so he's imagining his life as being the thread of the Fates, which, fine, that's a common metaphor, but don't we all have in the Greek mythology, isn't it, that our life, the threat of our life, is a set length, and our life only ends when the Fates cut the thread with the scissors, so it's also shortening the thread of his life? Well, that's really strange because our life has a set length. But also if they're shortening the thread, then aren't they making cuts to the thread which should themselves be fatal? So nothing kind of adds. And then it calls for the payment of my latest years. So what is it doing? It's like the track of one's life is calling for its own shortening. If you actually dig into so many of these metaphors, they don't actually make any sense. And somehow you kind of get to the end. You just arrive at the end without kind of knowing how you got there. So something similar is happening, I think, in the course of the play where, like, we're seeing the whole term of valensus servitude, this 24 years. It's happening within the span of, you know, however long it takes to stage this play. Two or three hours. Like, we think we're seeing 24 years, but it's really down to the space of a couple of hours. In fact, like the end of the

55:03 Wes: life, very little actually happens.

55:05 Erin: Very little happens. And really the majority of the time is spent in the last hour or so of his life, right? Like the end is magnified and magnified. Nothing really happens. They don't really get anywhere. So I kind of describe this just

55:19 Wes: some second act hijinks, right?

55:21 Erin: They're walking on a magical treadmill. Everything is kind of squeezed. And then somehow they're at the end. The figures of speech are squeezed together. The action of the play is kind of all squeezed together. And then somehow it's the end of his life and he has to be dragged down to hell.

55:36 Wes: Yeah.

55:36 Erin: It's so strange. The metaphors are performing the plot of the play.

55:41 Wes: Interesting. This is what you wrote your paper on?

55:44 Erin: Yeah. Can you tell? I'm so excited about this one little part of the. No, but it explains so much of this bizarre wordplay that happens over the course of the play. Or even just like in the prologue, or the fact that he's pregnant with himself. He's arrived already here, he enters already on the stage. There's something you might call it stillborn about the play and about Faustus as a character, which I think speaks to this idea of him being a reprobate. The foregone conclusion of the state of his soul, the fact that the people coming to the play already know what's going to happen to him. I think all of that is kind of tied up in this really clever kind of magic trick that Marlowe plays. By tying this all together over the course of a couple of hours.

56:29 Wes: What are some versions of Faustianism that afflict us? As I've said, you could read self consciousness as a kind of bargain with the devil as well, and as what it means to fall or something like that. But if you were to think about this kind of thing in more mundane terms, maybe you would think about the pretensions of the intellectual or the artist. Someone who thinks they're going to write a great novel or write something that's going to change the world. And I think ultimately thinking about myself and my own ambitions. What's the point? What's the point of all this? Go through that Faust thing in the very beginning. Why do any of this. And I think for people who are. Let's just think specifically about writers, you use that phrase, make a difference. People do want to make a difference, but not in the same way as someone who's going to go out and start a non profit organization to feed the poor. It's a different kind of difference. It's a little more grandiosely oriented because it's about influencing people. And if you're writing political columns, it might be as simple as I don't want to convince people of the right political opinions. But if you're writing poetry or novels, it could be, well, I just want to entertain people. But it could also be, well, I want to improve people. Ultimately I want people to be less stupid. I want them to not be so idiotic. And that will actually reduce a lot of the crazy, horrible stuff that happens in the world. Right. There's a kind of conceit or hope or dream that if we educate people, we civilize them, and that some of the things that afflict the world, like war, for instance, would be less common. Or, for instance, that if I educate people in a certain way, then that is important to living in a liberal society that has just laws and doesn't break down in chaos and. And those sorts of things. So it's a fantasy of enlightenment, of enlightening the world. And maybe, you know, for a philosopher walking out of the cave, figuring out what the truth is, bringing it back in, I think the idea there is improvement of people. And if you look at that psychologically, part of it is just to make them more worthy of love, of our love or whatever relationship we're going to have with people, because people are so complicated and ambiguous and. And our relationships to them are ambivalent and ambiguous. So if you can perfect your objects of desire or the people to whom you're related, then they can become worthy of relating. And this gets back to the phrase of the Faust phrase, resolve all ambiguities, which is to say, to resolve the ambiguity of having the imperfection of human relationships and the way they're fraught with conflict and loving people despite their faults and all of that stuff. So this speaks to some of Faust's manic motive, right? Which is to avoid mourning the imperfections of others and hold on to something ideal. So his omnipotence is not just about the literal level of wanting knowledge or riches or any of that stuff. It's about wanting to hold on to this ideal relationship to people, which is like the idealized relationship to our parents, but also has something to do with our, if we're believers, to our relationship to God, right? So in a way, he's trying to, I don't know, maybe substitute the world for God or something like that.

59:49 Erin: That sounds like eternal life, right? Like just the desire, like medicine is not enough for him because he wants to live forever. So that would be the substitution of the world for God in a way, right? Like the riches that are supposed to be waiting for us in heaven he doesn't quite believe in, right? So he would want an internal stay on earth. He would want to continually make a meal out of his earthly life, like the feast that never ends. But that's the way that heaven is usually thought of traditionally, as like an eternal feast. Instead, he wants to create that on earth for himself out of a kind of. Like what you're saying, out of a kind of knowledge of. Almost like eating the earth. Is that going too far?

1:00:27 Wes: No, No, I think that's good.

1:00:30 Erin: But then we might say that what is Marlow then doing in creating this play? Is he attempting to edify us by telling us, hey, don't sell your soul to the devil? Is that the message here? And is that a message people need to hear? Don't put anything in writing. Seems to be the lesson.

1:00:49 Wes: Why the devil needs it in writing is another question.

1:00:52 Erin: But, yeah, right. Let's actually go to that scene.

1:00:54 Wes: Yeah. So this is act two, scene one. So we just had an interlude with Wagner and Robin where basically, Wagner impresses Robin into magical service. Kind of a replication of the relationship between Faustus and Wagner. You're going to be my helper. So then this is at the point right at the beginning of Act 2, Scene 1. Faustus is going to say, now, Faustus, must thou needs be damned, and canst thou not be saved? What boots it then, to think of God or heaven? Away with such vain fancies and despair. Despair in God and trust in Beelzebub. Now go not backward. No, Faustus, be resolute. Why waverest thou? O, something soundeth in my ears. Abjure this magic. Turn to God again. I was like, huh? Where have I heard this abjure this magic before?

1:01:47 Erin: Right.

1:01:47 Wes: Tempest. And, yeah, this breath of magic, what is it, this rough magic I hear? Abjure.

1:01:52 Erin: Drown your book, Faustus.

1:01:54 Wes: Yeah, exactly. And then we go on to. He turns away from that, and he has the idea that, well, God loves thee not. God doesn't actually love me. And we get a little bit of the good and bad angels struggling to.

1:02:07 Erin: I love that. What's a bad angel?

1:02:08 Wes: Yeah, right. And then he develops this idea that, well, nothing can hurt me. Religion is basically foolish. It's lunacy. Think only of honor and wealth, and nothing can hurt him if he has Mephistopheles by him side.

1:02:24 Erin: Mephistopheles says that if you want me to wait on you, you'll have to buy my service with your soul. Sort of paraphrasing there.

1:02:31 Wes: A deed of gifts with thine own blood for that security craves great Lucifer. Why the legalities. And this is something that Lucifer and Mephistopheles are going to use to keep Faustus from repenting. Right. They're going to say, well, you made a deal. You signed a contract. It would be unjust. They appeal to the concept of justice. It would be unjust for you to try and get out of it, even though the good angel is telling Faustus that actually, if you just repent,

1:03:00 Erin: you

1:03:00 Wes: can still save yourself.

1:03:02 Erin: Yeah, It Seems like Lucifer is just as much of a Justinian as God is. Both of them have the higher law of law, and, I guess capitalism or something. You have to buy this.

1:03:16 Wes: Higher law is interesting. It's an interesting phrase because there's no overarching authority to enforce a contract between the devil and Faustus. There's either force or there's the law based on society and a monopoly of force by the powers that be. So the government enforces the contract, but we're just enforcing our own contracts. It doesn't make much sense. There's a legal agreement outside of any really legal framework. So it's one of the oddities. Any kind of sell your soul to the devil story. I think the irony is pretty obvious.

1:03:51 Erin: This gets to the kind of scariness of this sort of Calvinistic predestination problem. Right? Because the higher law is God's law, supposedly. And therefore, it's like you have to be damned. Like, the thing that's enforcing your damnation is God in a weird way. Like, it's a very strict economy. There's no sort of supernumerary economy of grace that can save you from the brink. I mean, we might even question when he's at the beginning of the scene, he hears this voice, abjure this magic, turn to God again. Like, is that the voice of grace? We don't know. Does he have a chance at salvation? We don't know. But it seems like, yeah, like this contract law, which is higher than Lucifer's law, is that, like, higher than God's law, too? Or is it God's law basically saying, you have to sell your soul to the devil? It's a sort of logical hiccup

1:04:38 Wes: that security craves Great Lucifer. It's like the contract is security. It's like, well, if you don't live up to your end of it, I'm going to take this piece of paper to who? Who are you going to show it to?

1:04:50 Erin: Lucifer.

1:04:51 Wes: And then Faustus asks some questions I think we all might want to ask about how any of this makes sense. It's really questioning the whole mythology around all of this. Right. That's what Marlow, I think, is doing, or questioning maybe the utility of it. So Faustus will say, what good is my soul to Lucifer? And Mephistopheles response is, basically, Lucifer likes misery and company, and the more people he can get down into his kingdom, the more soothing it is to have other people suffering with him so he doesn't have to suffer alone. Yeah. So very, very interesting response.

1:05:28 Erin: Maybe this is a delaying tactic. He then asks, have you any pain that tortures others? I go, well, tell me about that. Are you in pain? Maybe he's trying to buy some time.

1:05:39 Wes: And to his credit, Mephistopheles is honest. Right. Lucifer will later on say, oh, hell is full of delights. But when he distracts him with the seven deadly sins pageant. But here. Yeah. Mephistopheles is very upfront.

1:05:53 Erin: We sort of feel sorry for him. It's like, are we supposed to pity the devil?

1:05:56 Wes: And we should remember he's dressed up like a friar the whole time. Because in the beginning, there is so much fan service. Yeah, right, right. Exactly.

1:06:07 Erin: Yeah.

1:06:09 Wes: It's a nice little joke, but at the expense of Catholics. But it sends Mephistopheles off, and he's like, I'm not going to have you be looking like a devil all the time. That's weird. Let's just dress up as a friar, and then we can go to work. Yeah.

1:06:22 Erin: It's interesting. He doesn't want to face the reality of it. He has to dress it up in something that will satisfy a Protestant audience.

1:06:28 Wes: Yeah. Faustus says that's a more suitable look for a devil is the garb of a friar. Yeah.

1:06:34 Erin: Yeah. But there's something about like he's not ever really facing the reality. In spite of the fact that he has a demon in front of him, he continually denies the existence of hell. I think he maintains the sort of pagan idea that hell isn't really a place of torment, Even though he has the testimony of Mephistopheles standing right in front of him, Telling him that he's gonna be tormented down there. Then there's this really funny and kind of odd moment where he's trying to write the contract in his own blood, but the blood keeps clotting. It keeps clotting and then running, Clotting and then running. And Faustus is kind of trying to write meaning into the clotting of his blood. He says, what might the staying of my blood portend? Is it unwilling I should write this bill? Why streams it not that I may write afresh? So he's wondering if there's some divine will in his blood. Clotting and not being able to write. And then when the blood runs so that he can write with it, he's like, oh, okay. Well, this does mean I should write. I should give away my soul. Finally, he says, faustus gives to thee his soul. Ah, there it stayed. Why shouldst thou not? Is not thy soul thine own? Then write again. Faustus gives to thee his soul. So he's like, sort of unable to write it. And finally he's like, you know what? I should just be able to do this, because isn't my soul my own to give away to whoever I want? So he's sort of reading maybe some divine intervention and this idea of the blood clotting. And then finally he's like, you know what? I'm the one who has the authority to give away my soul as I want. And that gets the blood flowing enough that he can then write it for himself. So he seems to be the divine actor in that little fanciful moment.

1:08:08 Wes: So after that, he asks Mephistopheles, where is Hell? And Mephistopheles gives this answer, under the heavens. And this is really like the first request right after he's actually signed the contract. He does mention previously raising up the spirits, actually, when he gives this very legalistic speech about, okay, here's what I get for signing the contract. Here's what Lucifer's going to do for me. Which is a kind of funny little legalistic speech. But then it's Mephistopheles, ask what thou wilt. And then, where is Hell under the heavens? And then Mephaustus objects to that. And Mephistopheles says, hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place. For where we are is Hell, and where Hell is, there must we ever be. This is one of the cooler lines in the whole play. And it's something that gets paid off later. And first of all, here, Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed in one self place. For where we are in Hell, and where Hell is, there must we ever be. And to conclude, when all the world dissolves and every creature shall be purified, all places shall be Hell that is not heaven. At which point Faustus says, well, he thinks Hell's a fable, which is a really odd thing to do to say when you are talking to a devil. Why would the Hell be a fable any more than the Devil? And Mephistopheles says, I think so, till experience changed thy mind. And then Faustus, pain in the afterlife is an old wives tale. Mephistopheles says, well, I'm actually a counterexample to that. And Faustus is surprised. So, you know, basically like even while you're here walking and disputing, you're in Hell, this is kind of paid off. Later on we get more about Hell. So, yeah, I thought that was one of the More interesting, let's talk about what hell is.

1:09:53 Erin: This is Miltonian, Right. Doesn't Lucifer say, which way I fly is Hell myself am Hell? Something like that. What can we make out of that? I don't know.

1:10:03 Wes: So it's a little bit of a theological discussion in a way. Right. That's happening within the play. And part of what's happening is the very first thing that Faustus wants after signing away his soul is an answer to some theological questions, which is a very interesting reason for signing away his soul. That's really the core motive. It's like, because that's, you know, hey, divinity didn't really solve any of these, you know, studying theology didn't solve any of these questions for me. So why don't I go ahead and consign myself to eternal damnation and then I'll get the answers that I want about God and the devil and hell and this and that.

1:10:42 Erin: Yeah, this is another sort of like putting the cart before the horse kind of element of the play. Yeah. So that's the first thing that he asks then, is to get knowledge of what hell is. That's really interesting because I thought it was the wife.

1:10:56 Wes: Yeah, the wife happens right after that. Yeah.

1:10:59 Erin: Yeah.

1:10:59 Wes: We unfortunately are like, faustus are running out of time. What's the fancy way he says it? Someone's running and there's a thread. And I forget

1:11:12 Erin: the restless chorus that time doth run with calm and silent foot is running out of time.

1:11:16 Wes: Yes, the hour is going to strike soon. And all the yes, whatever deal we've made that's allowing this podcast to come to fruition, we're going to have to pay. But anyway, we're going to transition into Postscript and Discuss, have another 20 minutes or so of discussion there. And we are going to get finally to this final one of these final, I mean, I guess the final scenes. One of them where Helena Troy appears and then the other one where he does a lot of complaining before he finally is damned.

1:11:48 Erin: But bummer.

1:11:52 Wes: All right, thank you, thank you,

1:11:56 Erin: thank

1:11:56 Wes: you to everyone who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com Shows like Food, with former New York Times food journalist and best selling author Mark Bittman, and Movie Therapy, in which Siskel and Ebert meets Dear Abby. AirwaveMedia.com.

Who is to blame for Mary Tyrone’s morphine addiction? Is it Mary herself? Is it Edmund, her younger son, after whose difficult birth Mary was first prescribed the drug? Is it Jamie, her older son, who caused the death of the brother that Edmund was born to replace? Is it the doctor who prescribed morphine too readily? Or is it James, Mary’s husband, who hired a third-rate doctor because he was too cheap to pay for his wife’s proper care? James, in turn, will have his own story to tell of familial suffering and a miserliness acquired from a childhood fear of the poorhouse. To ask who is to blame for Mary’s addiction, or for the alcoholism that seems to plague every other Tyrone, is to ask who or what is responsible for our own suffering. Are our woes self-created—or at least self-perpetuated? Or is suffering something visited upon us by caregivers, the legacies of nature or nurture that we are powerless to control? If so, whom do we have the right to accuse? Wes & Erin discuss.

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0:11 Erin: Who is to blame for Mary Tyrone's morphine addiction? Is it Mary herself? Is it Edmund, her younger son, after whose difficult birth Mary was first prescribed the drug? Is it Jamie, her older son, who caused the death of the brother that Edmund was born to replace? Is it the doctor who prescribed morphine all too readily? Or is it James, Mary's husband, who hired a third rate doctor because he was too cheap to pay for his wife's proper care? James, in turn will have his own story to tell of familial suffering and a miserliness acquired from a childhood fear of the poorhouse. To ask who is to blame for Mary's addiction or for the alcoholism that seems to plague every other Tyrone, is to ask who or what is responsible for our own suffering? Are our woes self created or at least self perpetuated? Or is suffering something visited upon us by character caregivers? The legacies of nature or nurture that we're powerless to control? If so, whom do we have the right to accuse? Today we're discussing Eugene Oneills Long Day's Journey Into Night. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. This is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, in one of the several editions that I own of this play, it turns out Harold Bloom wrote the intro in one of them. Bloom kind of surprises me in his assessment of the play, which he thinks is the greatest American play, but only kind of by default. There's a little reluctance. He says, okay, so if Eugene o' Neill is our greatest American playwright and this is his best play, then, well, I guess this is America's greatest play. And he seems to think that the power of the play lies in the stage directions, in the bits of business that o' Neill really writes quite a bit of in between the lines of dialogue. So I guess I'd kind of extrapolate from Bloom's point to say that maybe there are very few if any memorable single lines of dialogue in the play, which is sort of surprising. It's not like maybe Streetcar to use another play that we've talked about on the podcast, which has a couple of those really memorable moments, at least that the movie has made famous. So I guess I just kind of wonder if you agree with that, if you think that this is America's greatest play by default, and where you think what is great about this play if the lines aren't particularly memorable.

2:47 Wes: Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I had that thought that it's Very unplay, like dialogue in a way. Even though the speeches are often quite long. There's honestly not that much poetry to it, I guess, is the way to put it. Even though Eugene o', Neill, he was a poet and like Edmund, the play, I'm sure, as people know, is highly autobiographical. And many of the names have not been changed, although he's switched his name and made himself Edmund in the play and made the dead brother Eugene. And of course, this wasn't supposed to be published or performed. It wasn't supposed to be performed at all. Right. It wasn't supposed to be published until 25 years after his death, which his wife did not honor that request. So I honestly had trouble enjoying this, let's just put it that way, which surprised me. And I haven't read this since high school and all I remembered from high school is that there were people drinking in the play. It's just like, all right, there's going to be people drinking. So this surprised me. Nothing resonated from my memory. And as I read it, I just kind of felt sucked down into the quagmire of misery. And there's not much that's pleasurable to kind of redeem that you're just kind of stuck with these people and these very plain speeches. There are some impassioned, just a few, just a handful of impassioned, touching speeches in this, but a lot of it is just bickering. And it took me, it was a slog for me to get through it.

4:34 Erin: In all honesty, I felt that way too. I also hadn't read it since high school either, and I remember being ecstatic about it in high school, which I don't know what to attribute that to at this point. Maybe because it seemed like such a grown up play and I was probably about 14 when I read it. I think that the, you know, the strange thing about the lack of memorable dialogue too, is the fact that so much of the dialogue is repeated. So you would think that some lines would kind of, you know, raise their heads above the parapet and be memorable for that reason, because so many of the accusations are sort of traded or someone will say something that later, another character, it'll come out of their mouth. And yet I think maybe it's because it's also sort of plain spoken that even those repeated like, you recognize them, oh, someone said that before, but after the play's over, you can't say, oh, that's, you know, I remember that line. And so I think that ultimately the effect is, is just extremely cumulative. So the power of the play maybe comes in that sort of snowball result where at the end we feel weighed down and we feel like the powerlessness of the family to change and all that stuff. So I think that's part of it, too. Is that the slog of it, which is very purposeful, or must be. It doesn't really reward you until maybe the very. And then it's a funny kind of reward. Did you watch any adaptations of this?

6:02 Wes: I watched a little bit of the Katherine Hepburn, and I watched half of a Canadian 1996. It's the one I liked the best, by Wellington.

6:14 Erin: Oh, I knew you were gonna say that. That one bored me to tears. I had to turn it off.

6:18 Wes: I just thought it was the best in terms of acting. But I also. Yeah, it wasn't captivating, but neither was the written play. And I did watch bits of the Katharine Hepburn. And maybe if I had just let myself get into the Katharine Hepburn, it would have been more engaging if I'd given that more of a chance.

6:37 Erin: That's another reason, I think, why I was struck by the play as a kid was because I did watch the Katharine Hepburn version. And though I wish that Frederick March, who played it on Broadway, was playing James Tyroman in the film, I'm not a Ralph Richardson fan, particularly. I think Robards is great in it. And Kate is just. I think, from the very beginning, she's playing the character with so much tension that wasn't there for me in the Canadian production. So she's sort of immediately riveting. And I think it's a fantastic performance. One of her best. And it takes a lot of the boring stretches on the page and makes them really captivating. Maybe just because she's so captivating and she's so sort of oddly gorgeous in the film. You know, she looks both. You know, she looks super young in certain stretches and super old in others. She seems to be able to shapeshift or something. So that was really effective. And I think Mary is the. Obviously, that's the prime role. I saw a couple of clips also on YouTube of Laurie Metcalfe, and I thought her interpretation would have been really interesting to see on the stage.

7:42 Wes: Which one is that?

7:44 Erin: It was just a stage production. And so the clips were of. They must have been used to either, like, they did a broadcast performance, the stage one, or it was just used to promote the play, something like that. But I thought her interpretation was really interesting. And then I saw the same thing with a Jessica Lange production, which I thought was much less Interesting. I could kind of predict what that was going to be like.

8:09 Wes: I saw a little bit of that. And then there's the one with Jack Lemmon and what's his face from House of Cards.

8:15 Erin: Yeah. Kevin Spacey.

8:16 Wes: Kevin Spacey. And that looked good. I just can't abide Jack Lemon.

8:21 Erin: Sorry, what?

8:25 Wes: Yeah.

8:26 Erin: Wait, what?

8:26 Wes: I don't know, it's just.

8:28 Erin: But I thought you love Jack Lemmon because. Jack Lemmon.

8:31 Wes: When did I say that?

8:33 Erin: Oh, I don't know. Well, I thought you liked the Apartment and.

8:36 Wes: Well, the. The Apartment, Yeah, in the Apartment. But otherwise, if he's in a. When he's in plays. I don't know, I haven't. Like in Kenneth Branagh's the Hamlet. Can't abide him either.

8:48 Erin: Oh, wow. Well, that's. His other great role is the. What was it?

8:53 Wes: The guard. Right, the guard. Yeah. Yeah. He's. Yeah. It sounds like the cumulative effect for you was that you enjoyed the play by the end of it.

9:05 Erin: I'm also interested in this assumption that it is our darkest play, which is something that Bloom says in the intro as well. I mean, to compare it to Streetcar. There's certainly a lot of dysfunction in the play, of course, but there's also a lot of love in the play. And maybe I'm reading in the facts behind it. There's a certain self evident biographical element which if you know anything about Eugene o' Neill at all, you know this is about him. And if you know that Edmund is a proxy for Eugene o', Neill, then he obviously did beat tuberculosis and go on to write this play. Right. So there's a certain kind of triumph that's sort of embedded in that. And then there's the less evident biographical element which you would have to dive deeper into the biography to know. Which, okay, yes, Jamie drank himself to death, but I think the mother actually did beat her addiction to morphine. And I think that was in the play, takes place in 1912. I think the mother beat the addiction in 1914, something like that. And also for a good chunk of his adult life, o' Neill had a reasonably good relationship with his father. And of course, none of that is evident in the play itself. But I guess just the fact that these people do love each other, that is obvious to me. And they do sort of will the best for each other on a certain level. Of course, the tension in that is most obvious when they're sort of like telling Edmund he shouldn't be drinking because it's not good for him, and then they're Sort of like rewarding him with a drink at every turn, you know? So there's this disagreement about what is good for you.

10:39 Wes: There's no harm in it just as an appetizer before dinner or a tonic.

10:44 Erin: Right. It might improve your appetite in moderation.

10:47 Wes: Of course, if you do that 50 times during the day.

10:52 Erin: Yeah.

10:53 Wes: Then it's going to spoil your whiskey. Dinner during the night.

10:59 Erin: That's right. Then Edmund checks into the clinic or whatever and discovers that he has the world's only case of quadruple tb, tttt,

11:07 Wes: bbb, or who knows, you know, the alcohol may have destroyed it.

11:13 Erin: Yeah, that's right. That's right. It's like drinking Lysol anyway. So, I don't know. I mean, maybe that's kind of dumb of me to. To think that this isn't so dark, but I just. I think the end of Streetcar, you know, when Blanche is being carried off is a heck of a lot sadder and more disturbing ultimately, because nobody cared about her. I don't know.

11:38 Wes: Was Mary not lost at the very end of it?

11:42 Erin: Yeah, but they're really sad about that. I don't know.

11:47 Wes: I mean, she is. There are some Blanche like qualities to her. At least that's the for sure. The experience I had during this, though. One of the things that happens a lot during the play is the alternation between different states. You were kind of getting at this with the whole idea that there's a lot of love. So people are quickly alternating between on the one moment saying something affectionate and then on the other saying something really cruel or mean. And in Mary's case, you get some of that. And then you also get her alternating between states of being kind of detached and carefree, especially under the influence of morphine, and then being more openly distressed. And then you have her alternation between sitting at home and hating people and wanting to be alone, not wanting to be around anyone. And then as soon as they arrive saying, I was so lonely. It's such a good thing you're back. I had to hang out with horrible Catherine just to not be lonely. So this is one of the things in the play that it's kind of crazy making. It's hard to experience is this alternation back and forth between affection and meanness. I mean, hey, at least they communicate as family, right? No one's unclear about where. It's not like it's all repressed underneath the surface. Everyone's saying what's going on in their head.

13:24 Erin: Yeah, it's like one big long family meeting.

13:27 Wes: Exactly. So for better or for worse, everything is very out in the open. On the other hand, something is in a fog, right? Fog is a major theme of the play, especially in Mary's case. But I think this applies to everyone. There's the attempt to not be seen. So Mary, she wants to be able to have her habit to do the drug, but to get everyone to ignore that. And she's constantly troubled by the idea that people aren't ignoring it or can't or they're suspicious of her. And you know, her big thing with the hair, which I guess her hair gets unkempt when she's using so she's worried about it falling down. And then that's sort of connected to her larger concerns about getting old and the ugliness of her hands and getting too fat and things like that. So her physical appearance is a tell in a way. It's a tell for her age and it's also a tell for her morphine use. And what she seems to prefer or demand of others is that they simply just not notice it, that there kind of be a fog in between the family members and people just refuse to say anything. So maybe that. And then of course there's the fog effect of the drug its on her psyche. It's like a family that just can't leave some things unsaid. And so you get this attempt to ameliorate the effect of that by introducing intoxicants. And for her it's morphine in particular. But you could apply this to the other guys as well. You know, what is it they're doing with the alcohol? Is that the cause of the family dynamic? I mean obviously it's not just the cause, but it's the effect of it as well. They're trying to handle something with the drugs and alcohol. And I was thinking it has something to do with desiring to be less frank. In a way it's like trying to undercut the natural frankness of their relationships. But that's kind of an unformed thought. I don't know. What do you think of that?

15:36 Erin: Yeah, it's sort of like the longing for repression or the idea, the wish that they could repress things. They seem to want to dampen everything, including from each other, and yet they're addicted. They're addicted to drugs that seem to make them loose lipped. I think someone at some point says in vino veritas, that line is in the play. So there's one line I remember. But anyway, you know, and there's something funny about that too, because they're not drinking wine, of course, but you know, the morphine sort of like lets the cat out of the bag for. For Mary's craziness, right. She goes on these, these flights of fancy which you can tell that the other characters find extremely embarrassing. You know, she starts reminiscing about her childhood and all this other stuff, you know, the veracity of which is sort of consistently questioned. But at least this is the idea of her, to herself and her history that she wants to rehearse. And then we have the men who are also drinking quantities of things that make them start to open up. And the fact of addiction itself is also something that's very, very difficult to hide. You know, you are making yourself vulnerable in those ways too. And so I don't know how to tie all that together. It seems to me also to be related to this class difference which then at the same time like they're living in a house which we know is dilapidated, at least on the inside. I don't know if mention is made of the outside of the house and how much people know of James miserliness that at least among the men, seems to be another open secret in the town. But it seems to me like there's a desire for them to be. Or that rather that the desire that they have to repress all of these problems is somehow aspirational, like class aspirational as well. Or maybe I'm. Maybe I'm overreading.

17:29 Wes: Well, now I'm having two thoughts as you, as you speak, I was thinking about the way in which alcohol is used in the play with the father and the brothers and the level of denial involved in that. So with Tyrone saying he never gets drunk and with. At some level they understand it's a serious problem. But then you have this very light hearted. And these in a way are the most light hearted moments in the play when they're having a drink, when they, you know, it's like, oh, that's just how, you know, just one won't hurt. Steal some from the father's bottle, fill it up with water. And it kind of reminds me not to get too personal of my own childhood where there were decrepit conditions, but it was food. Food was the celebratory thing. So you had these sort of. It's really odd because there's a. Those are the moments in which they kind of rise out of the misery and it's almost like they're toasting to each other in celebration of some accomplishment, some non existent accomplishment. And Then the other thing you were talking about, class, I was thinking about, well, what is it that just led them from being so cut off from the world? In a way, Mary feels friendless and alone, and she blames that on Tyrone being a traveling actor. Right. So she never had a home. We should talk about home a bit, too. Home is a big part of this and what that means, and maybe we can make some connections to E.T. just kidding. But, yeah, they are cut off and they're stuck with each other. And I think that's part of the problem. They're too entangled in the family dynamic. They don't have enough connection with the outside world. And that's what's naturally foggy. Right. If you're too embroiled in the familial scene, it's hard for reality to cut through that. So because the mode of engagement of the males, the guys in the play, is, again, it's through bar rooms and drinking and that kind of thing. And that's not a real. And whores. It's not a real engagement. So they, in a sense, are just as cut off as Mary is. And why is that? Is it really just because of that itinerant lifestyle, or is it something else?

19:47 Erin: I think the reason why I'm thinking about this is because of that James Joyce class that I took this past semester. In it, I read a lot of helpful secondary literature about Irish culture and why certain patterns emerged within that based on things like the Potato Famine and how that was actually played out in terms of the way that society worked. And I know I mentioned this in our episode on the Dead, but Ireland at this time, so 1912, and this would have started, I think, right during or after the Potato famine, they had one of the lowest, if not the lowest, I think, marriage rate in the world, at least in Europe. And there was a culture in Ireland of men sort of not being able to marry for reasons that they felt as though there were many different reasons interwoven. But for the purposes of gravity, I'll just say because maybe they couldn't get food on the table or, you know, for work reasons. Right. And so there was a culture of men going to the pub and spending all day at the pub and only being with other men. And very often because they weren't getting married, they lived with their mothers. So they were trying to sort of escape women by having this sort of fraternal connection. It reminded me so much of the way that this family works. And, of course, Eugene o' Neill would have known this intimately. And it seems as though James Tyrone, the father, is still holding on to a lot of these sort of Irish dynamics. And so I wonder, you know, Mary is the only woman and she's extremely isolated for that reason among others. And what the morphine does for her is make her even more feminine, right. More childlike. It makes her kind of dreamier and it makes her reflect on feminine concerns basically on the domain of women. She thinks about her childhood fantasy of wanting to become a nun and be in a convent which would have been an all female environment of being at boarding school, which was presumably also an all female environment. And so I think there's something there too though I don't, you know, I haven't worked this out and I don't know what that is but it seems like part of the issue here is almost like the aggression and the sort of anti woman sentiment which is sort of most obvious in Jamie because of his inability to be around any other women except for these prostitutes. It's most obvious in him but I think it's also expressed in all the other men in the family as well. I can only imagine that the relationship to class is also tied up in this. Right. If you have a woman who's given a certain household budget or, or whatever with which to run a proper home that's like part of the requirements of being a certain class is having a place to entertain and having a woman to make up a home and to make people comfortable. That's just a basic of being any class, but particularly high class.

22:49 Wes: Yeah, that's really interesting. I think it's one of the brothers. I think it might be Jamie who when he's back from the whorehouse says something about men being nothing without the love of a woman. Do you remember that?

23:03 Erin: Yeah. Edmund asks him, what did you do uptown tonight? Go to Mamie Burns, presumably. That's the madam. Jamie says, sure thing. Where else could I find suitable feminine companionship and love, don't forget love. What is a man without a good woman's love? A goddamned hollow shell, Right. The two of them are laughing together and Edmund says, you're a nut.

23:25 Wes: Yeah, yeah. So it's really interesting of course, because there isn't actually any love there. Right. So in a way this is a parody, but in a way I think he means it. And then he tells the story of picking Fat Violet because he pities her and then wants to talk to her and then she's thinks of him as beneath her and then they end up kind of falling for each other or something. Like that. That's the way that story runs, but it's all fake. And what you were saying was making me think that these are men who. So Tyrone found a good woman and someone that he loved and someone who loved him. And he even says, at a certain point, this is why I think. I was thinking it might have been Tyrone who said this. But he says something like, his ambition was, in a way, enabled or was. You know, he was already successful by the time he met her, but she, in a way, anchored his ambition and her love, in a way, made his career. But she never got to be the homemaker. She never got to fully play that role because he was dragging her around with him, you know, to cheap hotels and all that, as she puts it. And then. So the brothers, for the brothers, it's even worse, right? They never. I'm just thinking about the extent to which. Yeah, all of this is a. Maybe the way to put it is there's not a strong enough feminine principle at work, and that's the source of all the disorganization and destabilization and chaos in the family. The feminine principle is far too weak.

25:09 Erin: I think that's right. There are lots of crossed wires in the play in terms of accusation and blame. I feel like almost everything that anyone says in the play is either is just blaming someone or accusing someone of the family problems. At one point, there's this idea floated that, well, the reason why they couldn't have people over or the reason why Mary doesn't have any friends is because of her problem. There's a constant desire to look at the genetics of Mary's morphine addiction. That is like what started it in the first place. There's this sense that, well, she couldn't make a home because Tyrone wanted her on the. On the road with him. Right. He wanted her to be a wife to him. And that's part of the reason why Jamie killed that Eugene, the middle child, because Mary wasn't there to watch over Jamie and to keep him away from that baby when he had measles. And it was because she was on the road with Tyrone. And so there's an interesting split there where he seems to want her around and he seems to have a desire for that femininity. However, it's sort of like he wants his wife around, but really she's supposed to be at home. That's her story, anyway, that she's supposed to be at home taking care of the children and running the. The proper home. So there seems to be a sort of Tension there. But anyway, I think all of this brings us to this idea of who is the one who's responsible for Mary's addiction? Who is responsible for it, in your view?

26:41 Wes: That's a really good question. Because it's who or what? Is it because of her hands, her rheumatism? Is it because of childbirth, which you could recast in a personal way, is because of Edmund in particular? He's to blame. Is it Tyrone? Is it his itinerant lifestyle and their essential homelessness? Or is it the psychological version of that? He's also not fully there. So you could talk a lot about Tyrone's problems and the legacy of poverty, which I think is connected to what you were talking about with Ireland and his stinginess and his inability to be generous, his inability to keep the lights on, which is not unconnected from the fog, his inability to shed light on the situation because it demands too much of him, because it's. Because he's too insecure about losing everything, about going to the poorhouse, not just literally, but spiritually, psychologically. So he, in a way, is withholding, and that's part of the problem. She talks a lot about loneliness, right. And that we can say that there's a lot of truth to that. Part of what people do when they're using drugs and alcohol is that they're trying to recreate the effect of human connection. They're trying to make the substance replace other people, which it can to some extent, because the effects of being drugged or intoxicated in some ways approximate the feelings that you get from human connection. But what you can't get out of that is the true sense of being seen by others and heard by others. You know, Mary talks a lot about, you know, I want someone to joke with, I want someone to gossip with. The drug can't do that. If the drug could do that, then it might be a full supplement to her lack of real connection to someone. Her and Tyrone do love each other, but in a way they don't have each other, despite all the frankness and people blaming things, blaming each other out loud. And I think this is connected to Tyrone's lack of generosity. But she's not receiving enough from him, let's put it that way. And then she's watching her sons follow in their father's footsteps, except they're not even successful, and there's not much she can do about that. She's using morphine because of the family dynamic. To what extent is she to blame for that dynamic? To what extent is it a Result of her character and personal problems. And to what extent has she just been unfortunate, Right? Just married the wrong guy and been sucked into the wrong situation? It's not entirely clear, but she thinks a lot about this. And when you read your intro, I thought about the fact that Mary is really onto this question of whether anyone is to blame. They're trying to figure out, are we alcoholics because we're just trying to deal with our mom's morphine addiction, or is she a morphine addict because we're alcoholics? Right? And then Mary is onto this question to blame as well. So, for instance, on page 45 of my edition, she'll say, this is Mary about Tyrone. All he likes is to hobnob with men at the club or in a bar room. Jamie and you are the same way, but you're not to blame. You've never had the chance to meet decent people here. I know you both would have been different if you'd been able to associate with nice girls instead of. You'd never have disgraced yourself as you have so that now no respectable parents will let their daughters be seen with you. She's always onto this idea that people are products of their circumstances so that no one's to blame.

30:16 Erin: So I think you can actually trace all of this back to Tyrone. There's a part of me that wants to say, okay, what Eugene o' Neill is writing is basically being an actor, being involved in playwriting and all this stuff. That is the original sin of this family in a way, Tyrone, because he is an actor. So I've been thinking about the implications of an actor at that time. And Mary makes this clear as well. Very similar to prostitution for women, right. And for men. I don't know what they would say about that, but of course not very respectable. And in the play, repeated mention is made of these hotels that are called one night stands, which is because they were in a one night stand show. Probably he did like One Night in a Town before they moved on. And so these are hotels which are not respectable, I think, because you only stay in them for one night before you move on. So there's an automatic association with prostitution, I think at that time, because maybe it would be more common to stay longer in a hotel. But she says at one point in a list, one night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains, leaving children, never having a home. So there's a connection here between the idea of prostitution, I think, and this idea of acting, which is more than just the, oh, an actress is no better than a prostitute kind of, you know, idea of the day and also about the mechanics of the way that this life functions, really, which I think is part of why it had a negative connotation to begin with. But I think the effect of this is that, in essence, Tyrone's job splits the atom of Mary's identity. So if we think at that time of what being a woman would mean, it would be being a wife and a mother. And then this is something that she says to a lot, right? She wanted to have a home and be a wife and a normal wife and mother. Well, the kids are at home, it seems. They seem to be born in hotel rooms. Other people are taking care of them because of the fact that Tyrone is on the road and Tyrone wants his wife with him. So he's sort of separating the mother part of her from the wife part of her. And it seems to me that the reason why. I mean, he is very in love with her but the reason why he would want his wife on the road with him is because he wants to sleep with her. So, in a sense, Tyrone's profession, in addition to bringing shame onto him in the eyes of some respectable people, also sort of makes her into a theater person and therefore gives her this sort of stain of prostitution. And because he's so unwilling to pay for her to be sort of like set up he's willing to appoint to do the bare necessities for her. But because of his profession and because of the fact that they're not really settled, Tyrone is not really married. He's not really seeing her as a full person. And so you can argue that the first instance of prostitution or of having these unhealthy relationships with women that Jamie seems to have, it's really in Tyrone and Mary's relationship that this is modeled. I don't know if I'm going too far there with that parallel.

33:28 Wes: No, no, that sounds right.

33:29 Erin: Or how we can tie that back to Mary's morphine addiction, except for the fact that she feels that she is being used. I think she is being used like a drug by Tyrone. I think that Tyrone is ultimately responsible. Of course, he has this whole story about his father. And I'm sure if we asked the father, he would have a whole story to tell about all the evil things that happened to him, some of which I think, you know, I'm sympathetic to. But I think ultimately it's this fact of being an actor which is really funny. Of course, in a play, what I

34:00 Wes: put in my notes is that the morphine addiction, in a way, is it's an attempt to. Kind of a failed attempt, obviously, to remedy her attachment with an itinerant husband. Right. So he wanders in his profession. He does it characterologically. He's another one who jumps back and forth, hey, he's amused by the pig story. He's outraged by the pig story. He has these artistic proclivities. Not proclivities, but he's very successful actor and artist, and yet he's withholding and stingy and obsessed with money and real estate. And so those sorts of contradictions. But then the biggest way that he wanders is booze. He takes himself, even when he's not traveling as an actor, he takes himself to the bar room, or presumably when he's with his wife, he takes himself away with the alcohol. So ironically, so she's doing the same thing. The morphine takes her away. But the odd paradoxical thing about that is each of them, in a way, is trying to re establish a connection by means of the substance. Like I said, it gives that faux connection feeling that I think is ultimately connected to home. So the morphine is the last ditch, desperate attempt at creating a home, at creating some sense of home, creating some sense of stability and some sense that not everything isn't constantly in motion and moving, but that people are somehow anchored. And I think that anchoring is connected to shame. So she's, in a way, trying to vindicate her shame by being unseen. And again, there's the paradox here is because by using the drug, she's more seen, she's more surveilled, people are more suspicious of her. And precisely what she wants is for them to pretend the problem doesn't exist. But I think the attempt to be unseen, in the sense of in a fog, is connected to the shame of them not having a being able to entertain. Right. Them not having connections to the outside world and real friendships and the reputation of Tyrone around town because of his stinginess and his bad real estate investments and all that. I haven't fully thought that out. So I'm trying to make a connection between her husband's evasiveness and lack of home and then the desire to remedy that with the morphine. And I'm trying to figure out how the morphine does that. The very basic explanation, again, is that it creates that feeling of connection. But I think there's more to be said about that.

36:41 Erin: Well, I wonder how you're making me think of another really interesting fact about Tyrone, which is the stable identity of his most recognizable role. Right. We know that this Has a basis in fact that Eugene Oneills father played in the Count of Monte Cristo so many times that he actually wrecked his own. His own reputation. Right, right. Wow. Really?

37:04 Wes: 6,000 times he played that? Yeah.

37:06 Erin: Wow. Yeah. So that he actually damaged his own reputation as a serious actor because he went after this cash cow. But that also your use of the phrase stable identity made me think there's maybe another addiction or something. Or it comes from a kind of addiction to being cheap because he knew that he could take advantage of this money making opportunity and just play that role to death. It also kind of presents as maybe a kind of morphine or alcohol addiction in that this. Playing this role seems to have similar effects. I don't know if that's too much of a stretch, but I'm curious what you think about that fact of his personality, which I find really interesting as a symbol, though. I don't know of what.

37:49 Wes: The fact that he got into the rut of playing this part over and over again because of the financial success.

37:56 Erin: Yeah. He's spoiled his own talent like one would do if they were an alcoholic and they spoiled their potential. It functions like an addiction.

38:06 Wes: Yeah, I think that's right. I think he is addicted to the attempt to get security right. Not to end up in the poorhouse by being stingy, not keeping the lights on, acquiring property, being a cheapskate, sending his son to the state sanitarium. And of course, he can never get that feeling of security. This is something too. I know from my own father, even though I didn't grow up with him, I met him when I was 21 or 22. Someone who grows up in extreme poverty, they never get over. Nothing is ever enough to make one feel secure again. I have a little bit of that myself. In his case, it's pretty remarkable that he was able to become an actor to do something. Usually from that situation you're like, all right, I'm going to be a doctor, I'm going to be an engineer. I'm not going to be an actor and risk poverty again. I'll never risk that again. But then he made it work. So he made it work on the one hand. But given his characterological propensities and his desire for safety, he somehow turned that into an act of stinginess. The stinginess is connected to just repeating the same play over and over again, not moving on because there's solid financial reward in that and everything else becomes too risky. So you mentioned earlier the arts being a kind of original sin in all of this. Right. So the sons are bequeathed not just the alcohol, but the interest in being an actor or a poet or a playwright, all that stuff, which is a very ungrounded, impractical sort of aspiration that I'm trying to make the connection now to.

39:54 Erin: And I think there's something funny too in the fact that Tyrone is able to turn it into a kind of family business. Right. That is Jaime's profession, is it? That he's an actor, but sort of a second rate actor. Of course, now we're used to, you know, nepotism in Hollywood and everything. But back then that would have been, I think, kind of silly. And I think even if one's father is an actor, the hope would be that the child, at least in 1912, would get into a more stable profession and kind of make good and become a doctor or a lawyer or something. Right? Or am I getting that wrong?

40:25 Wes: Yeah, I think you're right. I had kind of taken this a little bit off track by talking about the arts, going back to your point, as the arts as original sin. But you had emphasized before that this idea of the repetition of the play as addiction, which I like. And I was also connecting that to his stinginess and his desire for security. And the way in which Mary's morphine and their alcohols kind of an attempt to create some sense of connection and some sense of home. All of those things are connected. The stinginess is part of that too. This is all about security in the end. It's weird because you would think that a family that's just so self involved in a way. What's more home like than that everyone's at home with each other for the whole summer. And there's way too much time spent together, probably, you know, despite the guys going out to the bar. But strangely enough, that kind of is a home wrecking thing. Home depends on these connections to outside society, which is part of what Mary wants. Right. She can't have a home unless she has friends and she's entertaining people. There's gotta be some sort of commerce between the home and the outside world. If it just becomes its own sort of black hole and nothing escapes, there's no real connection to the outside, then that no longer is home. It's so home, it's not home.

41:50 Erin: Right. I think there's something too, in this. Well, this will take us to Connecticut. The idea that this is a summer home. And so there's still a kind of transience in those instances in which they are at this house. The engagement will always end like Staying in a town for a series of performances, a limited engagement. And I think the parallel to, I guess, another deep irony is the stinginess of Tyrone and buying up land. Right. So having tons and tons of land but no home is also, I think, ironic, too, because he's buying up the land in this. It's in Connecticut. Right. It's around where the summer home is. And at least his connections are in Connecticut. And so he's buying up probably land on which there are summer properties. So that, too, has a kind of duality to it, which I think is expressed, as you said, in all of the characters sort of thinking two ways about things or behaving two ways about things, which is like a lot of land and no home. And where is the land? Well, it's in a place where people are only there temporarily. He's not building a sort of ancestral dynasty or anything. And I think there's something, too, about the location of Connecticut here. Connecticut can mean lots of things. In our Awful Truth episode, I talked a bit about how do you want

43:03 Wes: to reveal your personal connection to Connecticut? I mean, I know you have before, but.

43:07 Erin: Oh, I should, I guess.

43:08 Wes: I don't think you've mentioned that you're from Connecticut.

43:10 Erin: Oh, right. And I'm currently call.

43:13 Wes: You are speaking from Connecticut speaking.

43:15 Erin: That's right. The very place you are.

43:18 Wes: Inside the house. This podcast is coming from inside the house.

43:24 Erin: That's right. And of course, you can go to the house where all of these events actually really took place. It's the Eugene o' Neill house at the Monte Cristo cottage, because it was built by the count of Monte Cristo. And for some reason, we're all proud of that. It's kind of funny. People should read the play more. But anyway, the implication in the Awful Truth episode of Connecticut is that it's sort of the playground of people who are in New York who want to escape to the country. It was called the country to people in New York. It's also, for a lot of people, I think it's kind of a liminal space between New York and Boston. And what I see in Connecticut in this play is definitely that liminal space. It's the foggy place, right? It's the place between places. This is the New London area. So it's not a place where you would go to put on a show. There wouldn't be any place nearby where you would have an engagement. Like, for instance, having a home just outside of New York City, like in Fairfield county or in Westchester, someplace like that. This is A foggy place that's kind of nowhere. And it's also not really a summer place associated with the rich and famous of the day. It's almost there, but not quite so this is the far eastern coast of Connecticut, very close to Rhode island and to Newport, but not there. Right. And at this time the Vanderbilts and all those rich families had built those enormous palatial summer homes in Newport which you could still visit to this day, which were very, despite being summer homes, were very permanent in which no expense was spared. They're sort of aspirational, if you will, by being in that kind of direction. But then with this dilapidated place, had Tyrone wanted to, he probably could have poured money into some big Newport home and then they would have been very respectable and they would have been able to entertain all these other very wealthy families, these dynasties. And so there's something I think about this location which to me seems really perfect. Of course it's the real location, but it seems like a wonderful sort of poetic justice that that is the real location for its symbolic meaning.

45:37 Wes: So the way Edmund puts this is just to go back a little bit to what you were saying about him buying up property. So Tyrone and Edmund are bickering about whether he did enough to help cure Mary of her morphine addiction. And the idea is that also that he sent her to a cheap doctor who was just going to prescribe morphine to her instead of really addressing the problem. And that's why she got addicted. And then he wasn't willing to spend the money to send her to a specialist who could really help her kick the habit, but just sent her to this quack who kept telling her to have willpower. And then so Tyrone says, what did I know of morphine? It was years before I discovered what was wrong. I thought she'd never got over her sickness, that's all. Why didn't I send her to a cure? You say bitterly, haven't I? I've spent thousands upon thousands in cures. A waste. What good have they done her? She's always started again. And then Edmund says, because you've never given her anything that would help her want to stay off it. No home except this summer dump in a place she hates. And you've refused even to spend money to make this look decent while you keep buying more property and playing sucker for every con man with a gold mine or silver mined or any kind of get rich quick swindle. I just wanted to reinforce the point you were making about this odd thing that Tyrone is doing. He could be putting money into making a nice home and into giving Mary what she wants. Instead of doing that, he's doing this thing which is directly adjacent to that, buying up all this property. It's still home related and house related activity, but it's misdirected, it's oblique to the central question. So it's almost as if he's trying to address the home concern, but is doing it in a self undermining way or can't directly address it.

47:32 Erin: And I think this is related to the way that he's spending money, supposedly thousands of dollars, but probably in drips. So that in the. And he might have generously given all the money up front for her to go to a nicer place. And in the end it would have come out the same. It's kind of like a poor person's way of dealing with money, which is you kind of have to sink a lot of money into something right up front and get the best possible treatment you can get. Instead, he's trying to maybe treat symptoms or treat things with as little money as possible. And therefore in the end it's the same expense. Right, but he's just looking at it as a miser would, or as someone who's maybe raised in a very poor home in which they're so reluctant to spend any small amount of money that they might have. Of course he has a lot of money. Right. But he still has this poor person's mindset. But you're leading me to another thing that I wanted to talk about, which I think maybe is the most fascinating. Blame accusation. Genetic hereditary kind of entanglement, which is at the end of the play when Jamie admits to purposely being a bad influence on Edmund. Sort of like purposely spoiling Edmund for the world or purposely screwing him up.

48:48 Wes: Edmund is Jamie's Frankenstein.

48:50 Erin: Right, Right, His Frankenstein. So the last pages of the play, Jamie gets super drunk and he starts to confess to Edmund. He says, not drunken bull, but in vino veritas stuff. You better take it seriously. Want to warn you against me. Mama and Papa are right. I've been rotten, bad influence. And worst of it is I did it on purpose. Edmund tells him to shut up. He says, I don't want to hear it. Nick's kid, you listen. Did it on purpose to make a bum of you or part of me. Did a big part. That part that's been dead so long that hates life. My putting you wise so you learn from my mistakes. Believed that myself at times, but it's a fake. Made my mistakes look Good. Made getting drunk romantic. Made horrors fascinating. Vampires instead of poor, stupid, diseased slobs they really are. Made fun of. Work is a sucker's game. Never wanted you succeed and make me look even worse by comparison. Wanted you to fail. Always jealous of you Mama's baby, Papa's pet. So here we have this idea that he's made Edmund something outside of Edmund's own will, which is related, I think, to Tyrone's tracing his miserliness back to his childhood poverty and to his father, who abandoned the family when he. When James is only 10. So this is of a different order, I guess. I don't know if we can classify these various problems that the family has, but this one seems to be of the hereditary order, of the thing that's inherited, that you have no control over order rather than something else. I mean, maybe that's what all of these addictions or issues ultimately amount to, is something outside of these people's will. But I don't know that I believe this. Or we could still then argue. Well, Edmund accepted all of it, of course. Is this silly, or what do you think about this moment?

50:45 Wes: It's interesting because I had just been looking at what happens right before that, where Jamie is taking credit for turning Edmund on to literature. So you've been getting a swelled head lately about nothing. About a few poems in a Hicktown newspaper. This is all very autobiographical again, by the way. He really was publishing poems in the local newspaper. Eugene o'. Neill. But then he goes on to say, why shouldn't I be proud? Hell, it's purely selfish. You reflect credit on me. I've had more to do with bringing you up than anyone. I wised you up about women so you'd never be a fall guy or make any mistakes you didn't want to make. I love the slang in this, by the way.

51:29 Erin: It's so silly.

51:30 Wes: Ajax, I'm Lies to the world. Is there anything that ages worse than slang? It's what sounds cool in its time, and it just sounds like the quaint thing in retrospect, but anyway. And who steered you on to reading poetry first? Swinburne, for example? I did. And because I once wanted to write, I planted it in your mind that someday you'd write. Hell, you're more than my brother. I made you. You're my Frankenstein. And then he goes on to talk about having been purposefully a bad influence. So in a way, supposedly he gives Edmund his aspirations, but also undermines those aspirations or influences him in a way that undermines them. Which is not an uncommon family dynamic. Setting up the goal, setting up the aspiration, but then having an undercurrent of envy, which this is usually parent, child, relationship and undercurrent of envy, such that you incept your offspring with a self destruct mechanism to ensure that they will actually never succeed. So the conflict over success gets acted out in the child. And of course, it's an odd thing for Jamie to say about turning him on to literature and poetry, because it's the father who's the artistic success. It's hard to take Jamie seriously there. And I think it's also hard to take him seriously about doing things on purpose to make a bum of you. Of course he didn't do it on purpose. There's truth to it. It's on purpose. In a sense, he's honestly identifying the underlying psychological dynamics of envy and being a bad influence. That's absolutely true. But he's making it more arch and more intentional and more sinister than it actually is. So he's trying to pretend that he's not also embroiled in the circumstance and along for fate's ride. But Jamie, of course, is being swept along by all these circumstances and forces as much as Edmund is. So we are all the Frankensteins of fate and our formative influences and especially our parents. But everything else that's happening, if you want to bracket out the concept of freedom and look at human beings purely as functions of external forces in the environment.

53:59 Erin: Yeah. So is this a case of. Is Jamie just a case of overactive self awareness wiseness? He's right. Right.

54:08 Wes: Hey, man, he's hip to the world. But of course, not really.

54:13 Erin: Right. But in terms of how aware he is of the effect that he might have had on Edmund, and he's taking upon himself things that ordinarily never rise to the conscious level in most of us, well, this is the moment at which I was like, oh, okay, so Jamie did kill that middle child. He did do it on point.

54:29 Wes: Right, right. Eugene. He killed Eugene.

54:33 Erin: Right. And then of course, you can argue. This is so tangled, then you can argue, well, the only reason why Jamie was supposedly successful in poisoning Edmund is because the parents weren't around. Right. Because of the fact that the father was taking Mary away and himself away, and Jamie himself didn't have a proper sort of formative influence. The issue of the father having the artistic aspirations that he bequeaths to Edmund, that's an interesting one because, I mean, first of all, o' Neill has these odd heroes and Swinburne and certain other poets, they seem to be of a very different order than what the father's interested in. So I'm associating, and I think maybe we're meant to, Shakespeare with James's Catholicism and also with his Irishness. Somehow there's that really funny moment where he says that Shakespeare was an Irish Catholic. So Shakespeare and the God of Catholicism and Ireland are all sort of yoked together in these sort of old fogey almost superstitions that James has, at least the way that Edmund and Jamie seem to view it, whereas they're into the cool, subversive stuff like Swinburne and Baudelaire. So Edmund's desire to be a poet, even though the father's an actor and knows all these Shakespeare roles by heart, Edmund wanting to be a poet or a playwright, oddly enough, seems to be in rebellion against the father being an actor. And as I say that, it occurs to me, it's really interesting because the rebellion is what. Wanting to rise up and kill the. Of course, there are a lot of Greek elements of this, right. Greek tragedy and elements of the play. So Edmund wants to rebel against the actor father by becoming the playwright and forcing all the actors to do his bidding. And it's a sort of desire to have a Frankenstein's monster. Right. To influence people in the way that Jamie has supposedly influenced him.

56:35 Wes: Yeah. To transcend creaturehood and become the creator.

56:39 Erin: Right. Which is fascinating, too, because then it has to do with what we've been talking about, which is this idea of hereditary what's inherited and what's picked up through nurture or a combination thereof.

56:51 Wes: Yeah, exactly.

56:52 Erin: Yeah. Edmund wants to assert that dynastic impulse and to affect other people, maybe the way that he has been affected or infected by bad influence.

57:03 Wes: This desire to escape creaturehood and become the creator is sort of integral to artistic aspiration. It's about freedom, in a way, and the desire to be more than merely a creature. And Frankenstein is about how that goes wrong. Right? So Victor Frankenstein creates a monster precisely because he thinks he can become a God. And so if we become too arrogant, if our ambition becomes overweening, then instead of escaping creaturehood, we become monstrous. We make ourselves monstrous. And that's part of the danger of being an artist. Being an artist can be a very dangerous thing. And this is what you see with isolation and drugs and alcohol here is integral to that. It's interesting because you use this word, poison, right? Jamie poisoned Edmund. He's claiming he poisoned Edmund, where poison is about being a formative influence. And you could say in the same way our parents poison us, our fate poisons us. Everything that happens to us to alter our character is a potion or a poison in some sense. Sometimes it's a potion, a good potion, sometimes it alters us in a. In a good direction. But that made me think of the ways in which these substances are also attempts at escaping creaturehood. They are substitutes for formative influences. So they call Mary's morphine poison over and over again, even as they poison themselves with alcohol. So you could think of people intoxicating themselves as this attempt to wrest the reins away from fate, right? To say, I'm going to be the one who poisons myself. I'm going to be the only influencer here, even if it just means being under the influence. At least I did it to myself. And there is that feeling of freedom because of the disinhibition. There's a feeling of freedom that comes with that. So, anyway, I thought that was really interesting. At some point, I want to talk about. So Edmund tells us what drinking is good for. So I want to get to that.

59:21 Erin: At some point, I'd like to turn to drink as well. You're reminding me of this talk of poisoning, and we're using names like Edmund and James, and it's all very Shakespearean to me. And it reminds me, too, of the famous. A famous essay by Auden about Falstaff in which he talks about the effects of alcoholism in men versus women and how in men, you know. So James even makes mention of this. And Jamie's developed a little bit of a belly from drinking. So Auden will argue that in men, the alcoholism makes them put on weight, and it's a desire to basically be pregnant, gives them a pregnant belly, gives them like a kind of surrogate womb and something to nurture in that motherly way. And so he. You know, of course, Falstaff is an example of this, right? We have a mental image of Falstaff with almost like a pregnant belly from drink. And in women, it makes them typically. Auden says it typically makes them waste away the desire to, like, lose the excess and to winnow themselves past a point of, you know, the ability to. But, you know, it has the opposite effect. They don't want to bear children, you know, they want to kind of erase themselves in a way. Morphine is having similar effects on Mary where the idea to not want to be a creature or to lose one's creaturehood, as you say, she gets thin on the morphine, and she also is escaping into the Past and into a kind of girlhood, which I think is also related to this. Right. Into one's girlhood would be into a point before which one had children and also maybe before which one was capable of having children as a woman. And of course, TB is. It's a wasting disease as well. And Edmund is very much his mother's child. So there's something kind of ironic or a little bit twisted about the way that this expresses itself in Edmund, who is also very thin and yet who will become the playwright, the creator. But I think it relates to your point. We can look at what Edmund says about drink.

1:01:18 Wes: Yes. This desire to waste away. It's like going back to the position of potentiality, like with Hedda Gabler, killing yourself so that you can keep all your possibilities open.

1:01:29 Erin: Right.

1:01:29 Wes: I don't want to choose a major, so I'm just gonna go ahead and obliterate myself. But similarly. Right, yeah. Going back to the point of childhood and where she could have been a piano player, she could have been a nun. And back to the point where all the experiences that one have in life haven't scarred you or marked you and haven't altered your character in such a way that you become more and more set in your ways and more and more a product of those influences that have created you, that have made you. So, again, escaping. There's an element of escaping creaturehood. And I think Edmund kind of pretty directly talks about this. This is when he's having a conversation with Tyrone at the end, and there's this toast that he gives repeatedly during the play. So this is saying, here's how. So Edmund says to Tyrone, forget my condition. And then he raises his glass and he says, here is how. And I mention this kind of celebratory aspect, right. To their drinking and that particular toast and the celebration there. It's a celebration of forgetting. And again, the forgetting of one's condition is the forgetting of one's troubles. But again, I think it's an attempt to transcend formative influences. The toast is supposed to be about good luck, but this is kind of a cynical appeal to the mechanism of luck. What is the connection between drinking and good fortune, good things happening in the future? Well, really, it's just about obliterating one's consciousness of all the bad things that happen. So it's a cynical take on that. And then he goes on to talk about. After quoting Dowson, he will talk about the fog being where he wants to be. So he'll say, halfway down the path, you can't see this house, you'd never know it was here or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted. To be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor where the road runs along the beach. I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea, as if I had drowned long ago. As if I was a ghost belonging to the fog and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damn peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost. He sees his father staring at him with mingled worry and irritated disapproval. He grins mockingly. Don't look at me as if I'd gone nutty. I'm talking sense. Who wants to see life as it is if they can help it? It's the three Gorgons in one. You look in their faces and turn to stone. Or it's Pan. You see him and you die. That is inside you and have to go on living as a ghost. It's two pages later that he will be quoting Baudelaire to say, and I think this is important because we're wondering about the function of alcohol and drugs in the play. And Edmund is going to straight up try and tell us, or through Baudelaire, he's going to give us a thesis about. A bit of a thesis about this. So reciting Baudelaire, he says, always be drunken. Nothing else matters. That is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth. Be drunken continually drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will but be drunken. This kind of goes to our discussion of escaping creaturehood and becoming the creator, gaining some element of freedom. But here we get three different methods for that lumped in together, right? Is it going to be alcohol and drugs? Is it going to be being an artist, being a poet? Or is it going to be by virtue of being a good person? Which just to put in a philosophical point here, the philosophical tradition is associated with freedom, both with happiness but also with freedom. As in, it's in acting ethically that one is truly free. But the alternatives are it's in being an artist that one is truly free, or it's in being intoxicated that one is truly free, where freedom again includes some transcending of influence, but also being an influencer, being a creator.

1:06:12 Erin: In artistry, though, it seems as though there wasn't too much freedom for o', Neill, because I was reading that he died in a hotel room. So he was born and died in a hotel room. And he made mention of that fact and said, look at me. Here I was, I was born. I was born in a hotel room and now I'm dying in one.

1:06:30 Wes: I think he said, like, I knew it.

1:06:31 Erin: Right, right, right.

1:06:33 Wes: I knew it. I knew I was gonna die in a hotel room, just like I was born in a hotel room.

1:06:37 Erin: Right. And of course, how perfect for someone who wrote Long Day's Journey into Night, because here his escape into art has only become the sort of reanimation of all of these ghosts from his past. So maybe even in the drunkenness of art, there still is no escape, at least if you're Irish. So.

1:07:00 Wes: Well, let's talk a little bit more about autobiographical art maybe in our, in our postscript.

1:07:07 Erin: Okay?

1:07:08 Wes: All right.

1:07:09 Erin: Thank you, thank you.

1:07:13 Wes: And thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com AirwaveMedia.com.

In the beginning, Colonel Nicholson seems to be a stickler for principle, willing to die rather than have his officers do menial labor in a Japanese prison camp. In the end, his principles seem to be a cover for personal vanity. He is willing to put his officers to work building a bridge for his enemies, as long as it leaves him with a legacy. “The Bridge on the River Kwai” is a reflection on the meaning of work, and whether the ravages of time, if not war, imply that being happy in one’s work—to use a phrase repeated several times in the film—is nothing more than futility and madness. Is work the key to freedom, or is it inevitably a form of bondage? How do we distinguish the desire to be creative from the desire for prestige? When is destroying something more creative than building it?

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0:11 Wes: In the beginning, Colonel Nicholson seems to be a stickler for principle, willing to die rather than have his officers do menial labor in a Japanese prison camp. In the end, his principles seem to be a cover for personal vanity. He's willing to put his officers to work building a bridge for his enemies as long as it leaves him with a legacy. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a reflection on the meaning of work and whether the ravages of time, if not war, imply that being happy in one's work, to use a phrase repeated several times in the film, is nothing more than futility and madness. Is work the key to freedom, or is it inevitably a form of bondage? How do we distinguish desire to be creative from the desire for prestige? When is destroying something more creative than building it? This is Wes Alwan. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Erin, have you been happy in your work?

1:14 Erin: Yeah.

1:17 Wes: What does that mean? I think that's the standout phrase for me in the movie.

1:21 Erin: You know, I'm so delighted that that's what. I've seen this movie several times, and this last time I was like, I think this might be about work and the nature of all work. And then I was like, no, that's crazy. So I think it's funny that you picked up on that.

1:38 Wes: All right, I think we're on the same page about that.

1:40 Erin: Am I happy in my work? I don't know. Is anyone?

1:43 Wes: Well, isn't work all madness in the end?

1:46 Erin: Well, for sure.

1:47 Wes: We'll find out in this episode. So it's interesting because there are four places in which the phrase be happy in your work or some variation of that occurs. And it starts with Saito talking to the newly arrived British soldiers and telling them, let me remind you of General Yamashita's motto, be happy in your work. And then he dismisses the soldiers. And of course, they don't flinch until Colonel Nicholson tells them to stand at ease. And then the next time, again, it's Saito when he is upset with the lack of progress on the bridge. And then he gives a kind of theory about it, a theory about why it's not progressing. And he explains that to all the soldiers. And he basically says, the officers are lazy and they think they're too good to share your burdens. And that is not just. Therefore, you are not happy in your work. Therefore, the bridge does not progress. So he makes this connection between being happy in your work and the justice of whether the officers are gonna share in that. And then the third time, he basically bribes them with red box, you know, he calls them. Presents a token of regards for your efforts in the future. So let us be happy in our work. And then the final time, it's not Saito, it's Shears who says it. And he says it while they're cutting through the underbrush to go on their project to blow up the bridge. But they're walking with the female bearers and basically Joyce is hitting on one of them, calling her lovely. And Shears kind of walks by and says, be happy in your work. As you pointed out, I think this is about work. And there are different conceptions of work at work, including different conceptions in those instances. I think in the beginning, this idea, General Yamashita's motto, the idea is that they're going to keep busy. And that's one form of happiness. You're a slave, you've lost your honor. You're no longer a soldier. That's Saito's point of view. But you're gonna keep busy. And that's the beginning point. But then this concept of work evolves over or there are conflicting candidates for what it is to work over the course of the film. Right.

4:18 Erin: And one of them is the idea to sort of keep busy by being lazy or.

4:22 Wes: Exactly.

4:23 Erin: To actively work against the idea of work that someone is imposing upon you. Preferably by a way, to make it look like you're doing their form of meaning while you're also undermining it at the same time. So the wires get crossed there, you know? And then there's also the idea of sabotage as carried out by Shears and that little commando troupe and the commando mentality. Similarity to, like, play. I think there are a lot of parallels made between, like, oh, this is just a game to you, and so be happy in your work. Makes me think of work as being fulfilling, meaningful, fun. Making work enjoyable, maybe making it like a game, which is itself, I think, a parallel for war in the film too. Like the lack of seriousness involved in war or the play acting involved in war. So I think there are a lot of threads there. Like, one of the most interesting moments for me was when Shears is first going to the commando school. He's first been invited there. And there's that moment that I always kind of thought was silly where he gets attacked by that commando in training. And, of course, something similar to him had just happened to him in the jungle as he had escaped from the POW camp. And So I think for a long time I read that moment just as being indicative of Shears mental state that he's this tough guy on the outside. But obviously his recent experiences have had more effect on him than maybe he had realized or that the audience had realized. But, you know, looking at it again, I realized it was really clever for showing the extent to which so much of war is training for war and so much of training is this play acting among your fellow men. So you're casting them, like, in the role of the enemy and then sort of trying to sneak attack them, whatever. You know, I'm carrying out all these war games, right. And so those particularly slippery boundaries between, like, who is your enemy and who's your friend or who's your comrade, I think is related to this idea of work because they're joined by this play acting that's also inherent in this idea of sabotage and working against, like, appearing to be busy. I don't know how to tie those two things together, but I think they seem to be related somehow.

6:43 Wes: Yeah, it's interesting. A bit is made of who people were in peacetime, like what they did. So, for instance, Warden was a professor at Oxford, right. And Joyce, the Canadian kid, was an accountant. And something is made of the fact that it was really boring and repetitious. He checked figures that had been checked several times before and would be checked several times after him. There's a lot in this movie that's evocative of the potential futility of work or whether it's meaningful. This is one of the things that Nicholson wonders. Is there anything I done had an effect? Will it be remembered? And so the way Joyce's participation. Because they're not Warden and his commanding officer. Not sure that Joyce is the right candidate, but the idea is that, well, he's going to be engaged in something which is much more interesting than accounting by going on this trip to blow up the bridge. But I wanted to bring that back to your idea about how sabotage fits into all of this. Right. And destruction. Because we have, you know, nominally, the creative work that's done in the film is done by Nicholson to create the bridge. And then, you know, at the end of it, he is very proud of what he's done and seemingly. Right. That's the constructive thing to do. But it works against the larger project of the organization in which he's participating, the British army and the Allies and the war effort. So it's madness in another sense, as the medical officer Clipton puts it. So you have someone like Worden who's been a professor, and he has this kind of interesting relationship to his plastic explosives. Right. It's like he's transferred his professorial curiosity into playing with explosives. So I was trying to make a connection. I think you were making a connection between sabotage and play. So there's an element of kind of delight and absorption that you see in Warden's relationship to this work, which is ultimately going to be destructive. And he's done it several times before, so he's taken down a few bridges. It turns out you have to know something about engineering to do that, too. Just like in the same way that you have to know something about engineering to put the bridge up. You have to know where to place the explosives to take it down.

9:12 Erin: Yeah. I'm thinking about the moment with the plastic explosive where doesn't he sort of like, pretend to throw it or. No, he throws it up in the air and then Holden, or Shears, rather catches it and is really nervous about it. Right. So like.

9:25 Wes: And then he. And then he says, you know, yeah, it doesn't explode unless it's been ignited.

9:29 Erin: Yeah. And again, there's this idea of play acting or mime. And I'm thinking of this maybe in relation to. I'm wondering if it's useful in relation to your point about these soldiers former lives to think about play acting and war, even, like, in relation to, say, the draft. Like, this is a situation in which most of the men, maybe not most, but many of the men that find themselves in this war have been cast in this role through no initiative of their own. And so I think there's something here, maybe about the fact that any soldier is miming at being a soldier, sort of play acting. Like, I think of the moment with Joyce in the jungle when he has that moment to kill that soldier and they look at each other and that soldier looks like he's about 15 years old or something. And then, of course, there's the moment where you see the pictures and the necklace that he's carrying with him after he's been killed. You know, that he's just this little kid, basically, or just this normal, sweet boy. Well, I don't know if he's sweet. Maybe he's not.

10:29 Wes: But anyway, he's the enemy, Eren. He's the enemy.

10:32 Erin: I know, I know. And so this idea that you have this former life that you really are, and then you put on the guise of the soldier, and some people fill that role better. Better than others. Shears, of course, has also been play acting within the play. Acting, Right. Because he's also given himself a higher rank in the power vacuum of the POW camp when he realized that it was to his benefit to do that. And so I wonder if what Nicholson doesn't understand about war is that the element of play acting inherent in all of it and the element of sabotage, miming, of acting like you're doing something and really doing something else. Nicholson, it seems to me, sees everything in such black and white terms or in such serious terms that he's not capable of understanding the sort of idea of play or flexibility that seems to be inherent in the job itself, in the job of this play acting and also in the idea of being successful at war. You have to kind of be able to adapt play with new circumstances, not just read the script as written, but sort of improv your way out of situations. And so his lack of ability to act or to take things less seriously maybe is what makes him mad, but also sane. You know, according to. Obviously, war is madness. So it's a strange bind he's supposed

12:04 Wes: to be acting on rigidly, on principle. And, you know, there's these scenes with Clipton where he says to Clifton, you have much to learn about the army in response to Major Clifton, the medical officer. Again, you know, to his kind of shock or surprise that Nicholson wants to build the bridge for the Japanese and to do it well. The way Clifton responds to him early on is. Or actually, no, this is a little bit later on when I think Clifton questions him for a second time after the bridge has already gotten going and it's going well. And Clifton asks Nicholson, what's going on with Saito? How's he doing with all of this? And Nicholson says, he's been most reasonable since we took over. And then Clifton says, well, I wonder what he's thinking. And Nicholson says, I haven't the foggiest, and sort of brushes that off. And then Clifton asks, are you convinced building this bridge is a good idea? And Nicholson gives this speech about. He says, don't you agree the men's morale is high, that discipline has been restored, that their condition has been improved, and so on. So he switches back and forth between this position of being rigidly principled and then worried about his men. So early on, it's just about the officers are not going to do any work. We're going to follow the Geneva Conventions, the letter of the law. His rationale for building the bridge is initially, there's this idea that because he was ordered to surrender, he would be disobeying orders not to Build the bridge for the Japanese, which is absurd. Completely absurd.

13:41 Erin: I don't think that's about the bridge. I think that was just about the idea of not escaping.

13:44 Wes: Yep, you're right. So that's about escaping.

13:46 Erin: But that plays into your point.

13:48 Wes: On the one hand, there's principle and following the letter of the law and on the other, which is something that Shears thinks is absurd and opposes. And on the other, there's this idea that he can prevent his men from becoming slaves. If they can work on the order of the officers they can avoid being slaves and take pride in what they're doing and prevent disorder in the camp. The reason I'm bringing all that up is that both of those, in a way, are undermined. Because in the end, it turns out that Nicholson does have his officers work when it's necessary because they can't get the bridge done without it. And then at the very end of the movie, he's willing to betray his own side. So what we learn there is that this hasn't really been about principle or about his men, exactly. It's just simply about all the other stuff which he talks about which is his desire to leave a legacy or to do something meaningful to make a difference. What I'm suggesting is that his focus on principles and all the rest of it seems to be a cover for vanity or for pride, let's say, for something personal, at least. I don't know if you agree on

14:58 Erin: that, but I do. I think, also, though, and maybe this chimes with what you're saying too I do think that there's something here about Nicholson's sense of hierarchy as being paramount. And I think that's tied up with personal pride but in terms of a larger civic pride. So I think that his desire for the men to be happy is also working in tandem with his idea of hierarchy. Because he wants everyone to be, I think, content in their station. And he feels as though he is being a good leader when his men are fulfilled, when they're being inspired and all those things. Right? Because that's part of his job as a colonel to keep this order to make sure that the men are industrious and feel happy in their work. And so the way that I see the turn is that he sees an opportunity. So he wants to keep these hierarchies very strictly enforced in this region of lawlessness as a way of, like, preserving his troops pride and understanding of their own positionality. I think that when he sees the opportunity for the bridge to be constructed by these good ideal Englishmen. His sense of hierarchy is then transposed into being something on a much larger scale, which is almost like a proselytizing move on his part. You know, like it's going to be a lesson to these Japanese people that we're better than you or that we're more disciplined, that we could build a better bridge. So the idea of hierarchy from colonel over the men or the officers over the men, the officers not working, it becomes the idea of them as Englishmen being superior to the rabble in the jungle as he thinks of them. And so I think that then the completion of the bridge becomes a project of preserving his very British and colonial idea of what hierarchy means. And so I think there's a lot of personal pride there, for sure. And there is that interesting idea about leaving a legacy. But I think it's also tied up in this, like I said, civic or national sense of false pride that has to be exerted.

17:07 Wes: Clifton has, you know, earlier on expresses again some reserves about all of this. And Nicholson says, honestly, Clifton, there are times when I don't understand you at all. It's a fun part of the film that Nicholson treats everyone else as if they're crazy for even questioning his idea about the bridge. So Clifton says, well, you know, it could be construed as collaboration with the enemy, perhaps even a treasonable activity. And then Nicholson again gives these two different sorts of explanation. One kind of rule or principle based or law based, and then the other utilitarian. So the first one is, we're prisoners of war. We haven't the right to refuse work. And then Clifton says, I understand that, but why do we have to work so well? And this is what Clifton says. Must we build them a better bridge than they could have built themselves? If you had to operate on Saito, would you do your best or let him die? And Nicholson responds, would you prefer to see this battalion disintegrate in idleness? Would you have it said that our chaps can't do a proper job? Don't you realize how important it is to show these people this is the point you were getting at? I think that they can't break us in body or in spirit. Take a good look. One day the war will be over. I hope the people who use this bridge in years to come will remember how it was built and who built it. Not a gang of slaves, but soldiers, British soldiers, even in captivity. And then Clifton says, yes, sir. And then Nicholson says, you're a fine doctor, but you've a lot to learn about the army. So the concepts of principle and law are tied up with the idea of keeping order among the troops and giving them something to live for even in captivity, and making sure that they're not slaves, which is tied in turn to showing these people the point you were getting at kind of larger civic pride. And I kind of chuckled at the one day the war will be over remark because I had a kind of flashback to apocalypse now where Lt. Col. Kilgore gives a speech, and it ends with that line, right? It's saying, one day this war is going to end, and that's it. And he gets up. This is the classic trope on which that kind of satirical comment, towards which that kind of satirical scene is directed, where the war will be over one day, and then what do we want to happen afterwards? What are we going to have to show for it then? All this destruction? Because the way the war is, it's inherently not a creative act, but a destructive act. And being a captive and a slave essentially seems to hamper one's potential for real work or for real creativity. And you see, in Apocalypse Now, Kilgore's solution is to try to bring home into the theater of war and to surf and to do all that stuff, to pretend it's not happening, pretend they're at home or in California or wherever. And Nicholson's solution is to see if he can have a little society within captivity and to do something that's genuinely creative within a larger context, that is inherently destructive, and leaves him thinking, what is it all for? Unless I do something like this.

20:19 Erin: Yeah, you're exposing my kind of sympathy for Nicholson. You know, I was thinking about Billy Budd, too. I know. I kind of, like, argued for the Captain. Billy Bud.

20:29 Wes: Yeah, I thought of that too, actually, but. Yeah, go ahead.

20:32 Erin: Yeah. No, but the idea of there is something inherently more fulfilling about the kind of creativity that is building something that you think will last. Again, to go back to this idea of play acting, like, that's a form of creativity, too. Right. But it just doesn't look like much. Performances are temporary, you know, and, you know, stage performances are not recorded. And so it doesn't end up feeling like much, even if it does kind of exercise that creative faculty. You know, I'm talking about the idea of, like, maybe the men banding together and trying to actively sabotage in cleverer ways, which they already are doing, I think, while Nicholson is in the oven. Right. They're sort of working against each other on the bridge. But anyway, I'm thinking, too, about the idea of creativity versus destruction and how it might be related to the idea of Harry Cary and the clashing sort of codes of honor between Saito and Nicholson. Because they run very, very close to each other, of course. I mean, they're basically the same person in a way. I think Saito is, like, far more sympathetic, actually.

21:31 Wes: They even repeat each other's lines at one point, like it's madness to escape. They both have that line right after

21:36 Erin: one after the other and they call each other crazy.

21:39 Wes: Yeah.

21:39 Erin: But I think Saito is actually a more like a Shears kind of character or like the Warden in terms of his background. You know, I think Nicholson being a professional military man makes him, by degrees, kind of more insane than Saito, who we see have a very touchingly vulnerable moment where he cries over the. The bridge being completed by the English, which is, by the. Just unrelated to anything. It's hilarious to me. And I looked it up and other people have pointed this out that the Japanese can't build just as good of a bridge as the English. What is going on here? They don't have good engineers. Give me a break. They probably have much better engineers than.

22:16 Wes: Well, this was one of the complaints about the film.

22:18 Erin: Oh, really?

22:19 Wes: People found it offensive, and, of course, it's untrue. A lot of this is fictionalized. There really is a real someone who corresponds to Nicholson and his wife. And that guy, of course, did try to sabotage the bridge. And they would have thought of it as treasonous collaboration to do anything other than try to do that. So, yeah, completely fictionalized by. I think it's the novelist. Right. That's based on a novel by Pierre Boullay, who wrote Planet of the Apes, another one of my favorites.

22:45 Erin: Oh, he did? Okay. I didn't realize he wrote both those.

22:47 Wes: Yeah. So anyway. Yeah, but you were saying that.

22:51 Erin: Yeah, there are sort of conflicting ideas of honor which, as I say, you know, run really parallel but also conflict. So I think the mere fact that Nicholson and his men end up at this camp is the first place where that sense of honor, which usually runs parallel, clashes. So I think that for Saito, anyone who ends up in his camp is inherently without honor. Right. Because they haven't died.

23:14 Wes: To surrender means to have lost your honor and to no longer be a soldier is what he says. Yeah.

23:19 Erin: And then there's this idea of the fact that if you fail at your work, then the cost of that is your own life. That honor and life are dependent upon each other. And I think that's true for Nicholson. You know, the Ways in which Nicholson carries that out, I think look very different. And one can even make the argument perhaps that Nicholson himself has committed a kind of ritual suicide of his own humanity to military service, you might say. Right. He's mentioned that he's been in the service now for 28 years and he's been home for like 10 months of that time. You know, he's essentially put to death, if you will, any kind of outside reality or identity. Whereas Saito maintains, I think, a certain amount of humanity, outside interests. Like we learned that he was educated in England, that he wanted to study art. You know, he's a much more interesting figure and a more well rounded personality, I think.

24:17 Wes: I'm thinking he's got something in common with Mrs. Robinson, actually.

24:23 Erin: That's right.

24:25 Wes: I can see him sitting on the bed, rolling up his stockings, smoking his cigarette.

24:31 Erin: He was quite a good looking.

24:32 Wes: I wanted to be an artist. Well, yeah. There's so much that's interesting in what you said. They're so alike and they both seem to be so honor driven. And yet there are some differences and it's kind of complicated to untangle those differences. I still haven't. I didn't fully do that. So, for instance, do you lose your honor by surrendering or are you maintaining your honor by obeying an order? Which is what Nicholson seems to be, you know, suggested. Right. You follow the law. I was ordered to surrender. I did that so I can't escape. But for Saito, it's a loss of honor to actually surrender. You know, you could see those as both honor driven but in different directions. And then one of the things about Saito is it seems like his honor is more right. You mentioned the role of hierarchy and by implication obedience for Nicholson, but it's there for Saito in a different way. He has to get the bridge done because otherwise he's going to be in big trouble. What he says to Nicholson is, do you know what I'm going to have to do if I don't get this done on time? Nicholson says, what? And he says, I'll have to commit seppuku. You know, I have to kill myself. And then Saito says, what would you do if you were me? And Nicholson says, basically, I suppose I'd have to kill myself in a very nonchalant way. And then that kind of more obedient conception of honor shows up in his conception of work. Right. As being busy and being obedient. Something like that. So there's what it means to be happy and your work is different for Saito than it is for Nicholson. For Nicholson, it seems to have something to do with pride and one's creation. And then also the other stuff that you were mentioning, this kind of larger civic pride and the order of the community. And for Saito, it seems to have more to do strictly with obedience and following orders and fitting into a hierarchy. And then this shifts because my interpretation of why Saito cried, and I could well be wrong about this, but we'll see. You can let me know. My interpretation was that he had been humiliated by the way Nicholson took over. So basically he had to essentially give in to Nicholson. He was defeated by Nicholson because it was more important to get the bridge built than to win his battle of wills with Nicholson. So he gives in and says, okay, your officers don't have to work. And then you see at the first meeting, Nicholson basically runs that meeting and says, hey, you guys put the bridge in the wrong place. So we got to change that. And this runs the whole meeting. It's like he's in charge. And I saw Saito as being humiliated by that. And so it goes from being, I got to get the bridge built on time or I have to kill myself to once the bridge gets built, I have to kill myself because this is really humiliating. And so you see him preparing for that, right? He does his calligraphy, he cuts off his ponytail. I'm sure there's a proper name for that. He puts the knife in his vest, he takes it out at one point on the bridge. You know, he's preparing to kill himself once this is all over. Doesn't get the chance, of course, because he is killed. Ultimately, I think for Saito, the loss of honor involves the loss of command, which is something he simply can't avoid because the project of building the bridge overshadows whatever power he has in the hierarchy. Whereas for Nicholson, the project of building the bridge is his power and is supposed to be the thing that frees him and his men from being slaves. I don't think I've really done much work in untangling the two different conceptions of honor at work there. Or if they are two different conceptions, maybe they're just sort of expressing themselves differently at different times. So let's pause to talk about our sponsors for this episode, starting with AG1 by Athletic Greens. 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32:01 Erin: Yeah, I think all that's really good. I think too that they have, and this is slightly slanted away from your point, but maybe it's related. I'm thinking about their idea of waste. What is a waste? Because this honor that Saito has supersedes, Nicholson is only too happy to surrender when given the order to do so. You know, he doesn't want to waste any unnecessary deaths or whatever on something that isn't necessary. You know, he would rather just go to the POW camp. So for Nicholson, perhaps if he could see maybe a troop under Saito's command sort of go out fighting rather than obeying a surrender order, he would see that probably as madness, but also as a kind of a waste. I'm thinking about this in terms of something that Nicholson says about the men who escaped. He says, oh, three men dead and for what? So he's kind of implying that death is a waste. Yet he's also like willing to be shot by machine guns over the idea of not wanting his officers to work. And of course, the justification that Saito gives, which is actually kind of a good one. And as far as Geneva Convention or Geneva Code's violations go, having your officers do manual labor is pretty. Exactly. But Saito's justification for it is also good, which is related to this idea of waste, which is why should I feed people who don't pull their own weight in a POW camp? Why should I feed a bunch of officers who are sitting around doing nothing? Which, I don't know, I feel like that's a reasonable. I mean, I. Far be it from me to, you know, criticize Geneva Code, but I'm just

33:42 Wes: saying, yeah, they're lazy. They're mooching off the Japanese army.

33:48 Erin: Well, I mean, there's something to that, that limited resources in the middle of the jungle that, you know, you're not going to have these officers just sit around. So Nicholson, and he has that Great moment where the guns come out and he says to Saito, I'm warning you. It's like you're about to die. And he's still so arrogant. Like, he's warning him, like, what's going to happen. You know, it's only because of a plot intervention that he doesn't get shot. But anyway, it's just hilariously prideful.

34:11 Wes: There's almost a smugness to it. It's just. Oh, yeah, he's, like, infuriatingly stubborn, and

34:17 Erin: he's willing to let his. To be killed himself and to let his officers die on principle. But the idea of trying to escape when Shears has made it very plain that the odds of survival staying in the camp are worse than escaping.

34:32 Wes: And he also says you at least have to have the fantasy of escape or you go insane.

34:36 Erin: That's right. Which is another really important thing, because, you know, Nicholson seems to think that duty and just pure pride of being an excellent British specimen is enough to keep people alive. And I think Shears is far more astute about psychology, which is that the Union Jack can't keep you warm at night. I guess I can if you wrap yourself in it. But anyway. But the idea is that you have to have a life outside of that. You have to dream of an escape outside of that and see it as a possibility. You can't just be a perfect little worker drone and take pride out of that, though apparently Nicholson can.

35:13 Wes: Yeah, wrapping yourself in the Union Jack, metaphorically, figuratively, won't keep you warm. You would have to do it literally. But, yeah, it's interesting. What Nicholson does say about escape is that normally it would be an obligation. He just. He has an absurd rationalization. Right. It's actually an obligation to try to escape. That would be following the letter of the law. But then he introduces that absurd idea about how he's ordered to surrender. And that's when Shears confronts him with the. You intend to uphold the letter of the law despite the cost. And then Nicholson says, without the law, there would be no civilization. And Shearer says, there is no civilization here. And Nicholson says, well, we have the opportunity to introduce it, so drop the subject of escape. It really is crazy. It's madness. The one element of truth and sanity there is just that it's indisputable that he takes a bunch of guys who are undisciplined and behaving in more of the Shears way, the kind of cynical way, you know, at the beginning of the movie, Shears is basically robbing the dead of possessions and using them to bribe Japanese soldiers to pretend to be sick to get out of work. Right. Speaking of the whole problem of work, Shears whole project is to evade work. And he's so serious about it that not only does he escape, you know, where the chances of survival are almost nil, but he has to go on this whole journey where it seems like he almost dies several times and then just gets really, really lucky in his pursuit, ultimately of a life of leisure and getting women and all that stuff. And then of course, it backfires. But the one bit of method in Nicholson's madness is just that if he can get his soldiers to work, then he can give them a kind of freedom. He can allow them to transcend their captivity. And he looks to Shears at that point and says, are you with me there, Commander? And Shears says, I hope they can remain soldiers, Colonel. As for me, I'm just a slave, a living slave. And Nicholson's response is kind of funny because he's like queer bird, even for an ama. And then he stops himself and says he's been in isolation too long.

37:25 Erin: So you think that Nicholson's idea of work is good to a point, like in terms of a kind of work a day model. Right. It's suitably distracting, but can maybe only carry you so far because you need a sort of more long term project or something to be hopeful about, like the idea of escape or what have you.

37:44 Wes: What makes it madness to do a project like the Bridge? Why is that mad? On the one hand, it's because it's helping the Japanese, but on the other, it's because ultimately it is meaningless. It's going to be wiped out in some way or another. You know, if it's not wiped out by the war, it'll be wiped out by the ravages of time. In a thousand years, it'll be a different bridge. Right? So our work is not preserved ever. That's the mad thing. We do all these things to make our lives meaningful. You know, we want to be creative, we want to do everything else that makes life meaningful, love and all that stuff. But it's time will destroy all of it. So I think in a larger sense, all you can do is what Nicholson is doing, which is to ignore the fact that you're a captive of time and circumstance and the necessities of life. Right? That's the larger captivity in which we are all stuck. I think his worries about legacy are complicated. Right, because he thinks the bridge is going to. He puts the plaque up on the bridge. He thinks the bridge is going to be something that he and the soldiers can be remembered for. Which of course, as I'm saying in the long run is not actually true. We're stuck in the temporariness than the temporality of our creative activities. There's a really good interaction between him and Saito on the bridge. Where Saito is walking on the bridge, sees Nicholson leaning over the railing and then looks at the sky and sees the sun and says, beautiful. And he's referring to the way the sky looks. And then Nicholson says, yes, beautiful. A first rate job. I had no idea it would turn out so well. And then Saito just runs with that and says, yes, a beautiful creation. And then Nicholson says, I've been thinking tomorrow will be years to the day that I've been in the service 28 years in peace and war. I don't suppose I've been at home more than 10 months in all that time. Still, it's been a good life. I love India. I wouldn't have had it any other way. But there are times when suddenly you realize you're nearer the end than the beginning. You wonder, you ask yourself what the sum total of your life represents. What differences your being there at any time made to anything or if it made any difference at all, really, particularly in comparison with other men's careers. I don't know whether that kind of thinking is very healthy. But I must admit I've had some thoughts along those lines from time to time. But tonight, and then before he can say the positive part of it he interrupts himself and says, I gotta be off. I gotta get to some entertainment that the men are making for me. I love that scene because it says so much right from Nicholson misinterpreting Saito and bringing it all back to himself, to his struggling with the idea of whether the bridge is fulfilling the function that he wants it to fulfill, of making a difference by existing again, whether it's gonna leave him a legacy. And then the very telling part at the end, you know, where he cuts himself off and doesn't try to articulate the positive part of it because I think he's having trouble convincing himself of that.

41:03 Erin: So I love that scene too. I think that the other element of the long term implications of work besides legacy is the much more practical consideration, but also maybe nobler consideration of the fact that work is about supporting your family and your community. And, you know, there's this tension, which I think I've heard you speak on this before too, about the idea that you're working to support your family, but it also takes you away from your family and the ways in which being a soldier, like, especially in a foreign war, makes this really plain. And I'm thinking about how Nicholson seems to me, like, of necessity to be a man without a family. You know, I can't imagine him as being married or having children or anything like that and acting the way that he does, whereas it's very easy for me to. To imagine. And maybe he even talks about it. I know he talks about his parents, Saito, but it's very easy for me to imagine Saito having a family. And I think it's related to this idea of an impoverished form of or understanding of work. Whereas with Shears, I mean, there seems to be endless opportunities for shirs to get it on with people in the middle of the jungle, because that's what he's looking for. But it seems like the preoccupations of the soldiers in the scene that immediately follows the one that we're talking about, where the soldiers put on the show, it's about returning home to their girlfriends and their wives. And they're obsessed, of course, as a bunch of soldiers are cut off from women with pinup kind of images and

42:34 Wes: obsession, dressing in drag.

42:38 Erin: Right. And there's also, I think, other elements of family that are kind of expressed by that little performance. I mean, I think that also highlights the idea that these are just little boys playing at war. You know, you have the young Canadian soldier who can't kill the young Japanese soldier. Both of them look like little kids. And you have the Thai women who accompany them caring for them almost like their mothers. You know, I could think of the moment where one of them is putting on. I mean, it's like kind of half sexy, half. I mean, it's stupid. But when she's putting the mud on Shears body, like, he's not capable of putting on his own body paint anyway. But the men in Nicholson's command, when they put on the show, the end of that show, has that romantic scene that's, like, comic because the big tall guy is comically playing the woman and the smaller guy is the man. Yeah. And then in the end, the little guy, like, jumps into the bigger guy's arms and she carries him off. And so there's this idea of, like, the mothering bond that's kind of tied. That's like a mother kind of gesture, like carrying a baby or something. And Nicholson can, like, laugh at this and thinks it's funny and everything, but you get the sense that, like, he doesn't have these desires or something. Like he doesn't have a mother or a wife or. It seems like all of his desire is directed towards these stopgaps you know, of the daily distraction and building towards that legacy. Yeah.

43:59 Wes: Yeah. That's really good. He's so obsessed with this that he gives another speech. This is kind of the counterpart to the bridge speech that he gives to Saito. He takes another stab at those ideas right after that performance is over. I think I'll read some of this because I think this is another good one. You know, he says, I'm sure I speak for all of us when I say this has been an enjoyable evening. Most of you move on tomorrow to a new camp and new construction. It's a pity you won't be here to see the first practical use of the bridge. So that's a really interesting thing to say you know, since the practical use of the bridge will involve the enemy moving supplies in order to defeat the British and, you know, defeat the Allies, so. However, you'll be glad to know the completion of this link in the railway will enable us to transport the sick and the disabled to the new camp by train. Colonel Saito has kindly permitted me to stay behind with Major Clifton and the sick men and then we'll rejoin you in a few days time. Now that your work here is finished I suppose many of you feel somewhat let down. That is an amazing projection. Now, he's still wrestling with this idea of whether building the bridge has solved this problem. So I suppose many of you feel somewhat let down. That's quite understandable. It's a very natural reaction. But one day, in a week, a month, a year I wish I could do the Alec Guinness accent. I wish I could impersonate his voice here because it's so perfect for him. But one day, in a week, a month, a year or that day when, God willing, we all return to our homes again you're going to feel very proud of what you have achieved here in the face of great adversity. What you've done should be, and I think will be an example to all our countrymen, soldier and civilian alike. You have survived with honor, that and more. Here in the wilderness. You have turned defeat into victory. I congratulate you. Well done. You know, it's almost like Churchillian or something. A weird variation on that, of course, where they're gonna feel proud of the thing that's gonna help defeat the British. So it is, as I said before, I think it is madness but there's also. There's something to it. But then is there something to it that's sort of the letdown of having completed the project is the moment where you, you know, you go from being feeling proud to having a return to existential angst. That's what the show did for him, instead of making him think of love and family. Although he does mention that it leads him to ruminate, to further ruminate on whether the building of the bridge has helped him get over his career angst.

46:34 Erin: But it also maybe makes him uncomfortable and he has to return to the subject at hand because I think enjoyment is not something he's capable of. You know, he could laugh for a second, but then he has to get back to the. You know, he can't lose thread. Right?

46:48 Wes: His white whale.

46:50 Erin: That's right.

46:50 Wes: This pine bridge. You've spoken a bit about something that really didn't fully occur to me, which is the element of play and play acting and perhaps a connection to destructiveness. And I don't know that. I mean, we touched on it a little bit. Maybe there's more there to talk about. So there's Major Warden, the professor, and his love of explosives.

47:15 Erin: Once you work in a university, anyone would love explosives. Yeah.

47:19 Wes: Well, I was thinking. Yeah, there's something very academic about that. Right. It's like the. The critic. Right. Nicholson is the poet and he's the critic. So he's there to analyze the bridge and take it down. So very suitable to his position as professor. And also, it's something that's done and has to be done in the COVID of Night. Right. So he has to. It's like being down in the dusty cellar as a scholar poring over your

47:47 Erin: books or using a pseudonym in the paper when you destroy your enemy.

47:52 Wes: Exactly, exactly. So he's happy in his work in a way. I think I was trying to think about, well, who really is happy in their work in this movie? Is it Nicholson? Is it Warden? Warden, in a way, seems to be the most absorbed, kind of naturally, playfully absorbed. I was trying to make the connection to play here as well. So despite the comment about the critic, you could read this as there being something more flexible in true creativity, so tearing things down to start over or being willing to reorganize if something doesn't work. But anyway, that's just the kind of loose association I made to that. So I don't know if what he's doing is being the critic and the scholar or if what he's doing is inherent in its destructiveness. And inherently playful. But at the very least, that represents two more vectors for what it is that work means.

48:47 Erin: You know, being honest with myself, would I get more. Like, if I was in a situation in which I had no. No freedom to. To do anything else, would I take more interest in actually building something useful or in the work of sabotage? I think there's something that's, like, very difficult to sustain about destructive. Okay. The work of sabotage is, like, a destructive work, of course. Right. It's undermining. And, of course, like, you can't sustain that over a long period of time. Like, that's very, very difficult to do. I think that's why you need to have the active work of planning an escape to go along with the sabotaging of, like, the bridge construction, which one Nicholson is not willing to do. Therefore, he has to do something, like, active and creative, because otherwise the destructive element, the sabotage element, burns itself up and cancels itself out without that positive escape plan. So, like, thinking honestly about it, like, I would rather be involved in the work of, like, actually actively building a good bridge than in. For months and months and months putting up one thing and making sure that it's, like, built on sand so that in two days it'll collapse. So then you try it again. You know what I mean? So this destructive enterprise cannot be sustained over a long period of time.

50:09 Wes: Well, I think that's where Nicholson is right.

50:11 Erin: Right.

50:11 Wes: He's absolutely right. It is better for them individually. It's better for the men. It's better for the little social group that they have in that camp. It definitively improves morale and even the kind of characters of people. Right. Which have degenerated, and you can see they might naturally degenerate in captivity, especially if you're in the state of being sabotaging all the time.

50:34 Erin: I wanted to relate that to Warden, though, because I'm wondering if. Yeah. If there's a relation to this idea of captivity, not just in terms of, like, not having freedom, but sort of being limited in one's resources, you know, I guess for Warden, there's always another bridge to burn. You know, there's always something else to blow up. But I don't think that's an interesting enough.

50:56 Wes: Well, I think, you know. No, you're getting at something which I thought about, which I think is important, and I tried to give some thought to this as well, which is. So we've made a connection. Like, on first appearances. Warden actually seems quite absorbed in his work and quite delighted with it in a way, like playfully tossing Them, those explosives, shears. And with Nicholson, you get more of an obsession. And it's as if with Nicholson, it's more connected to pride, and with Warden, it's just more connected to the work, which is odd because it's so destructive. But you kind of have to combine all the different elements here, I think, to get a full picture of what work ought to be. So I think there's a place for all of these things, right? There's a place for Saito's conception of just being busy and being obedient to some higher order. There's a place for Nicholson's pride. There's a place for Warden's destructiveness and absorption and work. If you think of the destructiveness as having something to do with part of the larger process, you need the positive part, which is the Nicholson part. You need to be able to build things as well, but maybe you need to be able to destroy in the sense of rearrange and start over. And, you know, you need love and leisure as well, which is what it takes years to be representing. And then there's the Clifton Principle as well, which we haven't mentioned. But the medical officer has his own conception of work, which is repair. It's to repair people, to help heal them. So I think if you put all those things together, you could get a fuller conception of work. But each one apart is obviously not enough. And what kind of war, in a way, has a function of severing all those different components and letting people get stuck in one or the other? But of course, we all do that anyway. We may have all of those things, but get stuck in one or another at a different time. I become obsessed with a project and I'm just driven to do it to the point where it's no longer absorbing or enjoyable. Or I get focused on the pride part. You know, is this gonna get me recognition? Is this, you know, gonna be career building? Something like that. So anyway.

53:08 Erin: And yet it seems as though the film is kind of arguing that Shears idea is the best idea, too. And I like the fact that you point out that his pursuit of leisure involves a lot of work.

53:18 Wes: You know,

53:21 Erin: so he's sort of a one man ecosystem according to the way that the film draws his schematics for how he's achieving this because he's able to enjoy his leisure, because it takes a lot of work to get it. And there's something satisfying for him in that. Anyway, you're making me think of. Because of the destructiveness, you know, I'm thinking about how there would have to be, like, a great plan for escape, like a great creative plan for escape in order to carry out the project of sabotage at the POW camp and still give the men something, like, positive to do. Which makes me think that, like, the perfect companion film to this is, of course, the Great Escape. You know, thinking about the parallels, actually, as you were talking was really fascinating to me because they are also, in a sense, building a bridge. The men in the Great Escape. It's a film I love. I don't know if you like that movie too, but.

54:08 Wes: Yeah, yeah.

54:09 Erin: And the kind of destructiveness of the fact that, like, in the end, you know, spoiler alert. Like, pretty much everybody dies trying to do this is interesting, too. And they kind of know that they're going to die. But the ways in which that work of escape brings everyone together is kind of like that's sort of the ideal of what you can do in a POW camp that is creative and also not aiding and abetting the enemy, but the tunnel under the ground, too. It is kind of like a perfect mirror image of this bridge over the ground that's going to give passage to the Japanese soldiers versus the sort of, like photographic negative image of that. Just interesting.

54:47 Wes: Okay, is that a good place to end it?

54:50 Erin: I think so, maybe.

54:51 Wes: All right, we'll say a little bit more about the movie and our postscript, but yeah.

54:58 Erin: Thank you, thank you,

55:09 Wes: [email protected] subtext Also, this podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. airwavemedia.com AirwaveMedia.com.