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The Sublime Mundane in Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin” Dec 16, 2024

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Where the repetitions of ordinary life threaten to overwhelm any sense of the sublime, the poet Conrad Aiken seems to suggest that they can be transformed into a way of being connected to it. The mundane order is, after all, just a part of the cosmic. When we get ready to go to work, it is on a “swiftly tilting planet” that “bathes in a flame of space.” The sun is “far off in a shell of silence,” but its light decorates the walls of our homes. We might wonder, in light of modernity’s crisis of faith, if the sublime is meant to replace the divine, and if so whether what Aiken calls “humble offerings” to a “cloud of silence” are enough. Wes & Erin discuss Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” and whether humanity’s religious impulses can be fully compensated with an aesthetic or ironic relation to nature and cosmic scale. Thanks to our sponsor GiveWell, an organization that would provide rigorous, transparent research about the best opportunities for charitable giving. If you’ve never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org, pick “Podcast,” and enter “SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast” at checkout. Upcoming Episodes: Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard,” Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Where the repetitions of ordinary life threaten to overwhelm any sense of the sublime, the poet Conrad Aiken seems to suggest that they can be transformed into a way of being connected to it. The mundane order is, after all, just a part of the cosmic order. When we get ready to go to work, it is on a swiftly tilting planet that bathes in a flame of space. The sun is far off in a shell of silence, but its light decorates the walls of our homes. But we might wonder, in light of modernity's crisis of faith, if the sublime is meant to replace the divine. And if so, whether what Aiken calls humble offerings to a cloud of silence are enough. Today we're discussing Aiken's morning song of Senlin and whether humanity's religious impulses can be fully compensated with an aesthetic or ironic relation to nature and cosmic scale. This is Wes Alwan. 1:31 Erin: And this is Erin O'Luanaigh. 1:33 Wes: And you're listening to Subtext. So, Erin, I didn't ask you before suggesting this episode. So I don't really know what you think of Conrad Aiken, how much you've looked at Conrad Aiken, what your experience is with Conrad Aiken. So I thought I'd just start out by asking that. 1:53 Erin: I'd never read anything by him until I read this poem, though I'd heard of him. And I also, I believe I took a picture of his bench in the Savannah cemetery for you. 2:03 Wes: Bonaventure. 2:04 Erin: Yeah, Bonaventure. Okay. Yeah. So I knew enough to know that he was from Savannah for some reason, maybe because of you. And I knew his bench when I saw it. And. Yeah, so this is my first encounter with his work. 2:18 Wes: Yeah, Conrad Aiken was a. Is from Savannah, my hometown, and he is a friend of a guy named Joe Killorin. Joe Killorin had gone to St. John's College and then Columbia University, where he's friends with Charles Van Doren, the guy who got into the quiz show scandal. They were both professors at Columbia at the time as well. And then when Van Doren was exiled, essentially because of that scandal, Killorin went back down south to Savannah to teach at a small community college. Is that what you call them? 2:51 Erin: It Depends. 2:53 Wes: Armstrong State College was the college he taught a sort of St. John style class. Great books, style, engaging for the students. And my mother and father met in one of those classrooms and both maintained friendship with Killorin throughout the years and kind of idolized Killorin. I think my older brother had a lot of respect for Killorin and was one of his students at one point. And this is the thing. This is really the reason I ended up going to St. John's and I kind of was imbued with the kind of educational, I guess, ethos that came from that. You know, it was reinforced at St. John's but it was there before I ever went to St. John's I was kind of raised to be a Johnny. And I think it's my bro. My older brother, really, I think, is the person I would hear from most about Conrad Aiken when I was younger. Which is not to say that I really read any of him when I was younger. And it was only later in life when I saw the poem we're reading for today in a Norton anthology, that I really read anything by him. And I liked it a lot. And you can see the influence of T.S. eliot. And those two were good friends as well. But, yeah, so I have a kind of a personal connection to him, which I probably colors my reading of his work. But, you know, what I've read I really like. I think if you look at some of the secondary literature, you know, if you look at criticism and commentary, you'll see that he's often accused of being a bit derivative, especially of, you know, people like T.S. eliot. And this poem in particular has echoes of the love song of J. Alfred Prufrock. But, yeah, I feel like he's a kindred spirit in a way. Just one other thing about his biography. He had this horrible thing happened to him when he was a child where. I don't know if you read about 4:36 Erin: this, but yeah, yeah, I did. 4:38 Wes: His father killed his mother and then committed suicide. And that was when he is 11 years old and he heard the gunshots and discovered the bodies. It was something that he generally did not talk about. And he briefly discusses it in an autobiographical. I think he originally called an essay, but something called Ushant. I don't know if that's how you pronounce it, but it led to, I think, quite a bit of soul searching. And so he was. He became interested in Freud and psychoanalysis, and I assume he had an analyst. Freud knew of him in turn and read some of his work and even offered to Analyze him, which Conrad Aiken turned down. But nevertheless, those type of psychological themes appear, are kind of a staple of his work. And we get maybe a bit of that in this poem. Anyway, what'd you think? 5:27 Erin: I really enjoyed the poem. I'm surprised that he's accused of being derivative. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't have much to go off of my understanding is that he has a huge body of work and of course this is just a tiny sliver of it. You know, there's another word for being derivative in poetry and that's just being allusive. And I would say that this poem is just highly allusive. And if he's also interested in psychoanalysis and various other things, then he's eating out of the same, you know, sources that everybody else in modernism is. So, you know, it would make sense that he would have these connections to Prufrock. I mean, of course the Prufrock is the first thing I thought of when I read this. There are plenty of other, I think, little Easter egg allusions as well within it and they're really cleverly done. And I also see this as being, you know, doing something, I think quite different from what Prufrock is doing. The way that it recycles certain images over and over again. And you know, the song quality to it, I mean, I think it's called. It was published separately as Morning Song. Morning Song of Senlin, is that right? 6:27 Wes: Yeah. So this is part of a. He published a book called the Charnel Rose and one of the poems is a 50 something page poem called A Biography. And this particular part of that longer poem is often. Yeah, I just, I think it's. It's taken out as an excerpt and called the Morning Song of Senlin. 6:47 Erin: I think, you know, it's. It's just more densely lyrical, I think, than Prufrock. I don't know if I could defend that, but yeah, the song qualities of it and the repeated lines and things that read as refrains. I think it just has a very different feel to Prufrock in certain ways. Even if thematically it might be exploring some of the same themes. 7:06 Wes: Yeah, I think comparison has been drawn between this character of Senlin and the character of Prufrock and maybe certain characters and other modernist poetry. You know, I suppose it's a very prototypically modernist character. It's Hamlet esque, maybe, or it's people who are indecisive, soul searching in some way, or maybe lost. So I suppose that sense comes across in this poem as well. Beyond the formal Similarities. Yeah. What do we make of the name Senlin? 7:39 Erin: Well, luckily, I have a note in my Norton anthology that tells me what to make of the name. The little old man that each of us must become. 7:48 Wes: Ah, yes. Okay. 7:50 Erin: Luckily, some of us are born little old men, but no. Yeah. So, like senile, right? Yeah. 7:59 Wes: Right. So it sounds like a. Yeah. Inversion of senile in a way. You know, it's funny, I didn't look at that note. We're looking at the same anthology. 8:07 Erin: Oh, yeah. And there's the note about morning song right there. I didn't think to look at that. Yeah, yeah. 8:12 Wes: I didn't look at any of these notes. You know, I think that. Yeah. So the name Senlin seems to take senile and jumble up the words at the end a little bit. You could think of it as getting old in the pejorative sense of the word or being old in the pejorative sense of the word. On the other hand, if it just connotes age, perhaps there's wisdom in that or perhaps one might just think of it in terms of senescence. Right. The process of dying and mortality in general. I think earlier on in the. You know, in Senlin a biography, he starts out younger. And so whatever. Whatever we want to say about age, it's more of a principle. Yeah. Maybe that's the way this note is put, this way in the anthology. The old man that each of us must become, or maybe one might say is inside of us or is the sort of telos or the end point to which our life is directed. The old human being. Shall we read it first and then. Yeah. It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning when the light drips through the shutters like the dew, I arise. I face the sunrise and do the things my fathers learned to do. Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops pale in a saffron mist and seem to die. And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet stand before a glass and tie my tie. Fine leaves tap my window. Dewdrops sing to the garden stones. The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree, repeating three clear tones. It is morning. I stand by the mirror and tie my tie once more While waves far off in a pale rose twilight crash on a coral shore. I stand by a mirror and comb my hair. How small and white my face. The green earth tilts through a sphere of air and bathes in a flame of space. There are houses hanging above the stars and stars hung under a sea and a sun far off in a shell of silence Dapples my walls for me. It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning should I not pause in the light to remember God? Upright and firm, I stand on a star unstable. He is immense and lonely as a cloud. I will dedicate this moment before my mirror to him alone. For him I will comb my hair, accept these humble offerings. Cloud of silence, I will think of you as I descend the stair. Vine leaves tap my window. The snail track shines on the stones. Dewdrops flash from the chinaberry tree, repeating two clear tones. It is morning. I awake from a bed of silence shining. I rise from the starless waters of sleep. The walls are about me still as in the evening. I am the same and the same name still I keep. The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion. The stars pale silently in a coral sky In a whistling void I stand before my mirror, unconcerned I tie my tie, There are horses neighing on far off hills, tossing their long white manes. And mountains flash in the rose white dusk, Their shoulders black with rains. It is morning. I stand by the mirror and surprise my soul once more the blue air rushes above my ceiling. There are suns beneath my floor. It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness and depart on the winds of space. For I know not where my watch is wound. A key is in my pocket, I and the sky is darkened as I descend the stair. There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven and a God among the stars. And I will go thinking of him as I might think of daybreak and humming a tune I know. Vine leaves tap at the window, Dew drops sing to the garden stones. The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree, repeating three clear tones. 12:18 Erin: It's very hypnotic. 12:19 Wes: Yeah, it really is. 12:21 Erin: So this is from a poem called Senlin, A Biography. And I was just kind of. I was reflecting on how I would categorize this poem. You know, I think you could call it a kind of a dramatic monologue. 12:32 Wes: Right. 12:32 Erin: Like Senlin is sort of speaking to us self consciously and the speaker of the poem is kind of. There's the speaker and then there's Senlin, and the two are kind of collapsed. Right. But it's very theatrical. I think there's a sense in which this is a character not giving a performance, but sort of performatively speaking to us and elucidating certain elements of his day that wouldn't ordinarily be spoken. So there's a theatricality to it. It's heightened, it's dramatic. But this character as a Kind of vehicle for Aiken or for Akin speaker, and the slippage between the two of them. And the use of the word biography is just interesting to me because it's a sort of, like, dramatic monologue which is quite different from a biography, you know, where we get the person actually speaking through the text. And it's also sort of autobiographical because the speaker, who is not Senlin, has, you know, perfect access to Senlin's consciousness. So I think this. How do I want to call it? Just this slippage, I suppose, between the speaker, Slash Aiken, and the Senlin character, I think, represents a kind of boundary slippage or the slippage of borders that seems to me to be such an important theme in the poem. 13:46 Wes: Tell me more about the slippage of. This is something I hadn't thought of, the slippage of borders being a theme. 13:51 Erin: I think I can kind of illustrate this better through examples within the poem. But basically there's a repeated idea of being encased in something. You know, there are a series of kind of sharp contrasts with. Right. Between what I call in my little marginal notes here, sort of like the indoor world, which I'm associating with the world of the domestic and the mundane, with the outer world, the world of the cosmos or even the world of nature. Right. And how those things switch with each other or permeate each other. Like they have a permeable membrane between them that seems to meet, for one, in Senlin's own consciousness. Right. So the very fact that he's in this interior world, tying his tie and yet having these kinds of, you know, grandiose thoughts about, you know, being on a marble that's spinning through a vast universe and is part of a vacuum. You know, like he's the sort of the meeting point between these sets of opposites. And so I see the blending and the ways in which different adjectives or nouns kind of shuffle and cycle through in different combinations as being also like a for…

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The Aesthetics of Death in “Beetlejuice” (1988) (Part 2) Dec 09, 2024

Show notes

Wes and Erin continue their discussion of “Beetlejuice,” and what its battle royale between conflicting aesthetic sensibilities—rustic, gothic, and avant-garde—has to say about the connections between love, mortality, and the many pitfalls of growing up. Thanks to our sponsor GiveWell, an organization that would provide rigorous, transparent research about the best opportunities for charitable giving. If you’ve never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org, pick “Podcast,” and enter “SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast” at checkout. Upcoming Episodes: Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard,” Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Okay, welcome to part two of our discussion of Betelgeuse. We had just got done talking about the aesthetics of death and then thinking about the way in which Betelgeuse himself, to the extent that he's in the model, adds a kind of gothic element to that. But maybe this is a good segue into talking about Betelgeuse himself and what it is he's doing in the film. Because in a way it feels quite random. And as you pointed out, he doesn't have that much to do in the film. He's not a huge presence in the film. Although when he's there, he's really there. So, yeah, what is the point of having this demonic creature? What purpose does he serve? 1:16 Erin: This is what I've been trying to figure out. I mean, he's basically the closest parallel that we could say is he's kind of like a bad nightclub act. He's like a Vegas, like a stand up. That's kind of his whole thing. He's very Vegasy in his taste and in his references. Definitely some active parallel going on there. There's so much we could say about him. The strangeness of the name, the fact that it invites mispronunciation, and yet it has to be said properly to invoke him. The look of him, the separation between him. I mean, let's say on the most basic level, if we're gonna follow this biblical thread, just this idea that he was Juno's assistant and then broke out on his own obviously has extremely biblical implications there. 2:05 Wes: Satan? 2:07 Erin: Could it be Satan? 2:09 Wes: Could it be? Yeah. Right. So in contrast to the rest of the afterlife. Well, maybe it's not such a contrast, but he plays this kind of demonic role, whereas much of the afterlife is simply this very mundane bureaucracy, which I think we'll talk about. And it's very interesting. But the demonic, I guess the demonic role he serves, I think it's perverse, Right? So Barbara, or someone even calls him a pervert at one point. So a lot of what he's doing, he's trying to kiss Barbara, feel her up, marry Lydia, I guess, because that will also get him out of there. So to the Extent that he represents something perverse, he represents one of the dangers for any human being in the process of maturation, which is that you get stuck or regressed. There's something infantile about perversity, and there's also something deathlike and aggressive about perversity. At a fundamental level, perversity brings aggression and death into the erotic, into love. It kind of mixes it in. Right. So sadomasochism is paradigmatically perverse. And you might say some of the aesthetic in the movie is suggestive of that. Right. So, yeah. So where love and sex get contaminated by aggression, that's where it gets perverse, and that's where he is. And there's also an element of cynicism. And so this is the way one might respond to the predicament that Lydia is in, that an adolescent is in. There are various suboptimal adult solutions that people end up in as a way of dealing with the disappointments of growing up. And one of them is cynicism, for instance. Another is perversity. Oh, there's also that. Right. I think at one point, Betelgeuse is like a flasher. He's trying to convince them that he can be scary enough to drive the Deetzes away. And they're like, show us. And we don't see it on camera, except we see maybe what look like insect legs, Right. So we see him from behind as he opens his coat, and then they're being shown something, and it seems like it's his guts coming out or insect legs coming out or something like that. But of course, it is very evocative of him being a flasher and flashing genitalia. 4:26 Erin: I was too innocent to get that. That's really good. 4:30 Wes: So it's a very good depiction of his perversity, you know, But I. It's pretty clear just with him, what he's trying to do with Barbara. Right. And the house and all that stuff. The danger, at a surface level, the danger in the film, is that Lydia will end up with him, like, literally as a husband, but that the deeper level, the psychological danger, is that she will end up with him in the sense of end up in that psychological position, let's say, or maybe in that social position in real life. 5:00 Erin: That was another thing I really didn't remember about the film is how much of the latter part of the film is driven by Barbara and how much of Barbara's motivation is protecting Lydia from Beetlejuice. That moment when he flashes them. It's sort of parallel to when Barbara and Adam are wearing the sheets. And Lydia's like, what do you got under there? Is it like Night of the Living Dead under there? Are you all like pussy and full of blood or whatever? She says. And what I love about them is they're so innocent that they've never even seen Night of the Living Dead, which is itself kind of indicative of the fact that they're people from the 50s or something. They're from an earlier era, a more innocent era. But, you know, what's underneath is normies. Like, maybe that's the scariest thing of all, is to just be normal. 5:42 Wes: Yeah. There's the great scene where Otho is going into the closet. Him and Delia are going to the closet, and Barbara's hanging there to try to scare them. And then they react to that with a fright that turns out to be. What they're frightened of is the bad style and the lack of closet space. 5:58 Erin: That's right. That's right. 6:01 Wes: Otho says, we just have to pray the other closets are bigger than. Delia says, my God, we just have to pray the other closets are bigger than this one. Yes, look. And then he pushes Barbara aside, Right. As if she's not. As if it's just a piece of clothing, and then gets out a tuxedo. Undress and says, ozzie and Harriet. What happened to these people? 6:21 Erin: Right, right. Yeah. The Ozzie and Harriet is great for that. Later, they're wearing bedsheets to be indicative of their wit and thinks that they're more like Tracy and Hepburn. But Ozzie and Harriet is right on the money. 6:34 Wes: They're ironic ghosts. 6:36 Erin: Yeah, they have to be. Nobody can be that boring. But that contrast of, you know, what's underneath, I think highlights something that you said, which is this idea that perversity is infantile or even that it's. That it's maybe regressed somehow. Betelgeuse and Adam and Barbara are kind of laminated to each other. The couple, by virtue of them not having. They're not regressed, but they haven't quite progressed. You know, they're like children. And Betelgeuse is having regressed into something quite childlike and infantile. 7:08 Wes: Yeah, they represent the innocent side of the infantile, and he represents the sexual and aggressive side. 7:14 Erin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And something about. Something about battling him and getting to the other side of that direction. You know, it's as though, as you're pointing out, they're worried about that possibility for Lydia, but they are also people in a precarious state because of their position. But Also kind of mentally, as being childlike, are perhaps also threatened by, or maybe even more profoundly threatened by Beetlejuice than Lydia is. 7:40 Wes: Yeah, I think that's right. So there's a kind of danger inherent in sublimation. Tragically enough, sublimation should be part and parcel of maturation and a way of channeling sex and aggression in constructive ways. But the danger in it. So we talked about this a bit. Or no, I guess we didn't do the Tempest. Did we do the Tempest together? 8:03 Erin: No, I don't think so. 8:04 Wes: That was a prequel to subtext. But in the Tempest, the Danger for Prospero. Right. So in a way, Prospero is like the playwright. He kind of has control over the characters in the play and the dangers that he'll take revenge on them, which would be part and parcel of a tragedy, but it turns out not to be a tragedy. It's kind of a trap, or it's a tragedy and a comedy. It's a romance. He spares them. He spares all of his enemies. Likewise, the temptation for the artist, or at least the playwright, is to over control the characters to the point that they're actually lifeless, that they don't have any vitality, and they don't rise to the level of the aesthetic or a good effective representation. Right? So, for instance, if you had a political opinion of one sort or another, and you had to make your readers or your watchers know that you disapproved of Richard iii, you couldn't really do justice to him as a villain. So in a way, one has to kind of become a bit amoral or agnostic in that mode. And so I bring this up because it's very similar to the Danger for Adam with a Model, right? When you're a kid, you're playing with dolls and action figures and maybe building things out of blocks and playing with dollhouses, and you're fantasizing and you're creating these narratives. You're very much doing the type of thing that, as an adult, may become more organized, right, into poetry and novels and writing and other forms of creative expression, but they can be contaminated if the fantasy isn't mournful enough. And what I mean by that is that Prospero has to mourn the wrongs that have been done to him by his enemies and get over it. And that way he can get his daughter married. And likewise, one, to get your play done and to make it something good, you kind of have to mourn and let go of some of the control of your characters. Let them come to life and be themselves. So what I'm trying to say here is there's something inherently positive about Adam having that model and having an aesthetic outlet, having an outlet in play. But there's also a danger in that. And the danger is that it could become an outlet for the perverse or an outlet for. Right. In Delia's case, the danger which has come to pass is that it's all about winning praise and acclaim and attention and recognition from other people. In other words, it gets submerged by the impulse for status and recognition. And so I think that's another, as you're pointing out. Right. Beetlejuice doesn't just represent a danger to, like a psychological danger to Lydia, to an adolescent growing up in the sense of the possibility of going down a more perverse path. But he represents it for the Maitlands in their attempt to remain innocent and loving and childlike in their relation to play, for which there are many, many positive things to said. But apparently something else has to happen there. And again, Betelgeuse represents that danger and he's in the model. So it's coming from within the aesthetic itself. The danger is inherent to it, even though the aesthetic arguably is a way out. A way out that has its own pitfalls. 11:28 Erin: Yeah, that really helps me understand his role. I think there's an interesting moment where Beetlejuice takes on Adam's clothing. He dresses in Adam's clothes. I can't remember in what context that was or why he had done that, but he mirrors Adam. 11:42 Wes: Yeah, it's like a black checkered button down shirt and khakis or something like that. Except that Beetlejuice has the belly coming out. 11:54 Erin: Right, right. 11:55 Wes: Alec Baldwin, of course, does not. Yeah, I forget that context too, that 11:59 Erin: Alec Baldwin doesn't have the belly. 12:00 Wes: Yeah, I'll give him a break. He's in the 60s. 12:02 Erin: Oh, I know, I'm just teasing. I, right off the jump, flirting with Barbara, he puts himself in the position of, you know, a prospective mate to Barbara, you know, asking. Asking Adam if, you know, a replacement for Adam. In other words, asking Adam if, you know, if he has a chance, if they were going to break up or something. So he's kind of putting himself in Adam's shoes. And if we're to go with this idea of the whole death plot, basically everything after minute eight in the movie or whatever, of being a kind of an extended dream sequence, Beetlejuice is kind of like Adam's shadow self in that this might be some sort of expression of like every inner impediment to maturation and being a father or whatever. Like, almost like he's too young for this, but almost like Beetlejuice is like an expression of Adam's shadow self that's having a midlife crisis or something, right? With the girls and the being disgusting and being kind of. Kind of sleazy and gross, and even the car and the, you know, it's all kind of there. I think it's. Insofar as we've identified maybe a link between Betelgeuse and Delia, I think this helps to kind of just further extend that, because you've already identified a link between Adam and Delia, and so that would make sense that there's alignment there. And Barbara is the one who's more interested in stopping Betelgeuse or more active in stopping him up to a certain point, and more interested in the projection of Lydia, you know, beyond normal, kind of like maternal instincts that she seems to already be displaying. 13:26 Wes: So she's the one who says, home, home, home. The thing that she failed to say right before they went off the bridge. But to get them out of the model, when Betelgeuse is basically harassing them, she'll say, you know, I'm not staying here another minute. Even though I think Adam is. Well, no, he's ready to go too, actually, at that point. But in general, he seems more keen on Betelgeuse's help, if I remember correctly. But, yeah, she says, hum, hum, home, and gets them. Teleports them back out of the model. 13:52 Erin: Obviously, Betelgeuse is also aligned with their state and that he's trapped in the model until they release him. Or he's trapped. Is it in the model? I mean, it's very. The physics of this don't make a lot of sense. I mean, he's also in the tv. He's somehow sending them flyers in the handbook, Right? 14:11 Wes: And then the door to the afterlife, or the netherworld, whatever you want to call it. Right? It's something they can draw on chalk on the wall. And it seems as if that's where Betelgeuse is. Or is he. I mean, is he out of there? You know, so it's unclear. But is he somehow stuck in the model? Or is the model just a portal into some area of that world? It's unclear to me. 14:35 Erin: I just have to say that when I was little, it seemed like Beetlejuice just lived in everybody's consciousness for s…

Full show notes at the publisher

The Aesthetics of Death in “Beetlejuice” (1988) Dec 02, 2024

Show notes

Adam and Barbara Maitland are dead, but their troubles have just begun. The farmhouse decor of their home is under threat from the pretentious modernism of Delia Deetze, and her plan to remake it in her own image could turn their post-life purgatory into earthbound hell. Solving this problem leaves them with an impossible choice between figuring out how to navigate an intractable netherworld bureaucracy, or seeking the help of a renegade demon whose perverse remedies are worse than what they’re supposed to cure. Their way out of this impasse involves teaming up with Delia’s step-daughter Lydia, whose goth style seems to lend itself to communicating with the dead. Wes and Erin discuss “Beetlejuice,” and what its battle royale between conflicting aesthetic sensibilities—rustic, gothic, and avant-garde—has to say about the connections between love, mortality, and the many pitfalls of growing up. Thanks to our sponsor GiveWell, an organization that would provide rigorous, transparent research about the best opportunities for charitable giving. If you’ve never used GiveWell to donate, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year, or as long as matching funds last. To claim your match, go to GiveWell.org, pick “Podcast,” and enter “SUBTEXT Literature and Film Podcast” at checkout. Upcoming Episodes: Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard,” Marianne Moore’s “Jerboa.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Adam and Barbara Maitland are dead, but their troubles have just begun. The farmhouse decor of their home is under threat from the pretentious modernism of Delia Deetz, and her plan to remake it in her own image could turn their post life purgatory into earthbound hell. Solving this problem leaves them with an impossible choice between figuring out how to navigate an intractable netherworld bureaucracy or seeking the help of a renegade demon whose perverse remedies are worse than what they're supposed to cure their way out of. This impasse involves teaming up with Delia's stepdaughter, Lydia, whose Goth style seems to lend itself to communicating with the dead. Today we discuss Beetlejuice and what its battle royale between conflicting aesthetic sensibilities, rustic gothic and avant garde, has to say about the connections between love, mortality, and the many pitfalls of growing up. This is Wes Alwan. 1:25 Erin: And this is Erin O'Luanaigh, and you're listening to Subtext. 1:31 Wes: So, Erin, tell me about your goth phase in high school. 1:35 Erin: Ah, it was short. 1:38 Wes: So short as to be non existent and infinitesimal. 1:41 Erin: Almost couldn't detect it. 1:43 Wes: Yeah, you wore black. All black that one day. 1:45 Erin: And then I'm still in a goth phase. That's all I do is wear black. Now, I think I told you that I have a friend who calls me the Italian Widow. That is like, you know, like the idea of, like a person who is just always in mourning for the rest of their lives, always wearing black. But no, I'm afraid I was never a Goth. 2:00 Wes: I was never a Goth. I was never cool enough to be a Goth. Which tells you a lot. 2:05 Erin: Well, that was back when it was. 2:07 Wes: That would have been leveling up for me. 2:09 Erin: Oh, oh, I see. I see. 2:11 Wes: I do have. We'll just describe them as friends and. Or family to make sure we don't incriminate anyone, identify them. I did have relatives, more or less distant relatives, who were goths. And I did not quite understand the psychology of that or what it was trying to communicate. 2:28 Erin: I think it was trying to communicate that they're Goths. No, but they. Yeah. What is it trying to communicate? That they're sad and they're deeper than the rest of us, and they're closer to the sense of their own mortality. There you go. 2:41 Wes: Yeah, I thought. 2:42 Erin: Yeah. 2:42 Wes: And of course, Winona Ryder does it very well and charmingly in this movie. I'm not sure it's always so charming in real life, but I think that's right. 2:53 Erin: She makes it cool. She makes it cool. 2:55 Wes: She does. Yeah. I thought about. Okay, so what is the goth aesthetic trying to communicate? What's the point of it? And I think you just got at it. Some people who are kind of leaning into the concept of adolescent depression, because everyone's at least kind of depressed sometimes at that point and making an aesthetic of it. And then also I see it as a form of adolescent protest against adult hypocrisy. It lends itself well to that in the sense that adulthood involves a lot of denial and deception. So even denial of death, denial of sexuality, at least at the level of adults are asking, making ethical demands on adolescents regarding sexuality that they probably, at one time or another, have not lived up to themselves. So that's what I mean by hypocrisy. It's kind of an effective aesthetic for adolescent protest, leaning into, as you put it, acknowledging one's own mortality. Because whether you think of it as adults or society in general, part of the deception in that involves people behaving manically and narcissistically in ways that are meant to sort of fend off the concept of death, to make people feel like they're going to be immortal or have some other feeling that avoids death. 4:10 Erin: Yeah. You're making me realize that Adam and Barbara's, especially Barbara's attraction to Lydia as a kind of a daughter figure is a strange one, because Lydia is a sort of. She's anti Adam and Barbara. She's the opposite of what they would ordinarily represent if they weren't dead. But because they're dead, it unites them in a strange kind of way. Right. But in life, Adam and Barbara were quite. And in death, they're quite square. They would not be the type to have a goth. Or maybe they would be the type to have a goth daughter who sort of revenge against their aggressive normalcy or whatever it is that they are. 4:44 Wes: I was talking to my brother about this, and he used the word wholesome. 4:47 Erin: Yes. Yeah, they are aggressively wholesome. 4:49 Wes: First of all, how do you remember the movie so well? And he's like, I've seen it a million times with my kids, so. And it's a word that I hadn't thought Written down. I was using the word kind of homely because I associate them at least, especially Barbara, with this idea of wanting to stay home and make a home and have this kind of homely rural aesthetic. Which is interesting in light of the fact that the major conflict in the movie in a way, is aesthetic. Right. Why do the Maitlands care about the Deetses moving in? Because Delia is going to transform the house into some kind of modernist avant garde monstrosity and they're going to be stuck living in that for 150 years, apparently. 5:31 Erin: I thought it was only 125. Okay, yeah, yeah, discount rate. That conflict really fascinated me. And the fact that the movie begins with the concept of a staycation, I think immediately puts Adam and Barbara into a position where they're going to die. There's something incriminating about, about people who want to have a staycation. Am I reading that wrong? Like they must be punished because they want to stay home. There's something really perverse about that, I think. 6:01 Wes: Yeah, I think they are being punished. And we get a lot of little hints about that. It's amazing how much is going on in this movie as far as these little hints and symbols, but in a way it forms the nugget of a kind of mild conflict between Adam and Barbara. They are very, very lovey dovey and wholesome and their relationship seems very romantic and loving and kind of new, despite the fact that they're married. Maybe it was a shotgun wedding. 6:29 Erin: Yet another pro marriage propaganda piece from Wes. Okay, 6:35 Wes: she wanted to stay home for the vacation and he obviously wanted to leave. That's something that comes out. And the critical moment where they go off the bridge, she's driving and she says there's no place like home. And she's about to say home, little wizard of Oz reference, but she doesn't get it out because Adam interrupts her to say, hey, avoid the dog or whatever, and then they go off the bridge. So, yeah, I think we're supposed to associate. Right. And then the punishment is to be stuck for 125 years at home. He even says right after they've died, she's cleaning the house and they're dead at this point and you got cabin fever. Meanwhile, he's less focused on being at home and you get the sense he wants to travel and he's into calypso music and other things like that. But he's also got his miniature model of the town. So anyway, yeah, it seems like there's an element of punishment in this and another kind of glimpse of that is Adam is rushing into the hardware store. And I guess it's their hardware store. It occurs to me now, I thought we didn't know what they did, but that's their hardware store. And he's getting a new brush for the Manchurian tongue oil that she has gotten him as a vacation, quote, unquote, vacation gift. And on the way in and out, he's ignoring an old man who kind of comes across as like a soothsayer figure. And I thought this act of oversight is somehow also a sin. It's a little bit unclear what it is or why the old man's asking him if he wants a haircut for his vacation, and then is going on about some other fellow who had long hair who had something to do with founding the town or something like that. But I thought, yeah, that's very interesting. 8:14 Erin: I hadn't picked up on the fact that Adam wanted to leave. He does say, are you sure you didn't want to go somewhere like. But I thought he's just as happy at home as she is, because their mutual presence for each other, the tongue oil for him to finish the furniture, his present to her, the wallpaper. They both seem happy to, like, be working on the house for him to be working on the model. Because he also, in addition to getting a brush for the tung oil, wants to buy something for the model. And I thought of the calypso music. I mean, I like what you're pointing out about this, that there's a hint of this for him. But the calypso music for me was evidence of the fact that they're both strangely anachronistic in a way. Their outfits are such that anybody could be wearing. You know, they're sort of anodyne, but they're also outfits that could be worn by people in the 50s. Calypso music I think of as a faddish 50s music trend. And they want to live in this town that seems kind of stuck in time, that they're maybe after the simple life or something like that. Right. They want to have this nice furniture or hardware store in this little town that is all about kind of small town living. You're right. He ignores that old man. He's probably used to. I got the impression that he's used to this old man kind of going on and on about things that maybe don't make a lot of sense. But that would be part and parcel of participating in the town life. The reason why you would go to a place like this or Want to live in a place called Winter River. I think it's Winter River. Or not Windy River. Winter. 9:37 Wes: Winter River. You should know it's in your home state. It's a fictional town in your home state. 9:43 Erin: Yet another Connecticut movie. I had remembered this taking place in Vermont because it was. 9:48 Wes: Well, it's shot in Vermont, the outside. 9:50 Erin: And it was shot of her eye. Yes. So I had forgotten that it was a Connecticut movie until watching this again. And I was like, everything comes back to connect. It is truly. 9:58 Wes: It's the crossroads of the world. 10:00 Erin: Connect. I cut. It's both everything and nothing. Yes. But the whole reason why one would want to move to a place like that is so that you could have these colorful characters like this guy who goes on and on and on, and you'd sit and listen to him, I guess. I don't know. Maybe they're over it. Maybe they've been there for too many years and this guy's too annoying. But, yeah, yeah, I saw them as being both homebodies in however incriminating degree that would be. 10:25 Wes: Yeah, I took the are you sure you wouldn't rather be on vacation in Jamaica? As a hint. So that's why I call the conflict very subtle and mild. So at a certain point, just looking at the screenplay and where vacation is mentioned, Barbara says, so clever. We're spending our vacation at home. So you get a lot of places where Barbara, in a way, is the advocate for that. When the real estate agent comes to visit, she's trying to sell their house, which is really odd. Sell their house against her will. And the rationale is that they don't have children and the house should have a family in it. She comes over and says, I heard you were on vacation, the real estate agent. So I guess she was hoping to not find them there. And then Barbara says, that's right. A complete vacation. I think that's right, Adam. Two weeks later on, he's saying to Barbara, this is in the car. Two weeks at home. The perfect vacation, which I do not take at face value after they've died. Barbara says, perfect start for a vacation after they. They've died. But they don't realize it yet. They're just wet coming into the house anyway. So the other. The other piece of evidence I'll add here is that she's focused on cleaning the house, on updating the house. He's focused on that model, which is very suggestive of childhood and play. So what is it about that model? What is it supposed to represent? I think it puts him in more of this aesthetic position. And it's in contra to Charles position with regard to the town. Right. Charles of Dietz is going to come and exploit and try and buy all the land and make money off it. Adam's relationship to it via this model is aesthetic. He wants to represent it and enjoy the representation and maybe kind of have a fantasy. It's like a physical, tangible fantasy in a way. A model like that, but also evocative of an architectural model of the kind that Charles would have it. And in fact, later in the movie he'll use it in a presentation. Right. To sell a plan of taking over the town. They're both kind of childlike. I think that's kind of goes into the wholesomeness as well. Childlike, goofy. Geena Davis is very good at doing that. The kind of winningly goofy quality. But she's a bit more focused on the house and staying home. And he's a bit more focused on calypso music and travel and then this miniature town. 12:45 Erin: Yeah, they're just this side of stupid, I think. And I don't know what this side is, but. So maybe they aren't stupid. They're a little dumb. Right. 12:53 Wes: Well, the afterlife is complicated. Yeah. They can't make sense of the book. 12:56 Erin: Yeah. In fact, and this is something I think that gives credence to the connection you make between Charles and Adam. They both accuse the handbook of reading like stereo manual. Like it's too technical. They can't understand it. Lydia understands it quite readily. So 15 year old wits against theirs doesn't come out well for them. I m…

Full show notes at the publisher

A Strange Fashion of Forsaking in the Poetry of Thomas Wyatt (Part 2) Nov 25, 2024

Show notes

Wes & Erin discuss Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee from Me.” Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Save up to 50 percent on your language course by going to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext50 and using code SUBTEXT50 at checkout. When you sing up for the seven day trial, you can attend three small group classes and one private class completely free! Upcoming Episodes: “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Okay, welcome to part two of our discussion of two poems by Thomas Wyatt. Last time we discussed Whoso list to hunt, which got us into kind of a hunting mood, but also kind of put us out of a hunting mood. I think it's, you know, it's difficult to say whether or not this seems like how we're going to be spending our Saturdays from now on, but the next poem we'll talk about is they Flee from Me. I think I mentioned in the last episode that this is written in rhyme royal, which I believe is a form that was invented by Chaucer. This is a rhyme scheme of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. This is a seven line stanza, so sort of like half a sonnet. And the rhyme scheme is A, B, A, B, B, C, C. So there's a kind of button at the end of each stanza with the CC rhymes that kind of come out of nowhere after the five lines of either A or B. Yeah, so there's a. I think there's something kind of similar here to, you know, we talked in the last episode about how Whoso list to hunt, which is a sonnet and mostly a Petrarchan sonnet, ends with that couplet that kind of prefigures the Shakespearean or English sonnet. The button at the end of the sonnet with the seven line stanza and the form of rhyme royal. I think there's something like that going on here too, where we get a little bit of A, but at the end of every stanza. And maybe we'll talk about how that's functioning in terms of the content of the stanza because I think they work together really brilliantly. 2:06 Wes: Yeah. Do you want to read it? 2:08 Erin: Sure. They flee from me that sometime did me seek with naked foot stalking in my chamber. I have seen them gentle, tame and meek, that now are wild and do not remember that sometime they put themself in danger to take bread at my hand. And now they range busily seeking with a continual change. Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise 20 times better, but once in special in thin array after a pleasant guise when her loose gown from her shoulders did fall, and she me caught in her arms long and Small therewithal sweetly did me kiss, and softly said, dear heart, how like you this. It was no dream I lay broad waking. But all is turned through my gentleness into a strange fashion of forsaking. And I have leave to go of her goodness, and she also to use new fangledness. But since that I so kindly am served, I would fain know what she hath deserved. 3:12 Wes: Bit evocative of an aubade. Am I wrong? The parting of lovers. 3:17 Erin: Yeah. Yeah. That's great. 3:20 Wes: So great. First two lines. They flee from me that sometime did me seek with naked foot stalking in my chamber. Is this a. Is this a many they or is this someone with they, them pronouns, or is this a neuter they? 3:38 Erin: Well, it's hard to say because he does, you know, that sometime they put themself in danger. So. So they do have a singular self in that line. But yeah, I think this is a horde of. Of women. You know, he used to really. 3:50 Wes: My notes say it could be birds. Could be women. Or deer. 3:54 Erin: Yeah, I think some people say squirrels as well. 3:59 Wes: Or horde of women. I like the way you put it. 4:01 Erin: Horde of women. Yeah, yeah. 4:04 Wes: The image of a. Of a naked. Naked foot, which works very well with any of these images, including birds, but in human beings it's quite poignant, right, because it's suggestive of someone who's seeking him out and they're in a state of vulnerability. And you know, there might be a beggar or poverty stricken. Right. So there's. Someone who's. Or they might have, you know, just been let out of the madhouse. There's someone who's been depleted by their desire. And in this case, right, he is the hunted. He's the one being stalked in his chamber. 4:41 Erin: That's right. Is there anything here of maybe this is one too far? Because if this were the case, I suppose someone would still have a stockinged foot and not a naked foot. But I thought maybe there was something here too about taking off one's shoes to disguise one's footfall. Like a sneak attack to stalk in that. In the sense. Yeah, I don't know if that quite works. 5:05 Wes: That's probably a more logical reading. 5:08 Erin: No, no, I don't think so, because it is a naked foot. It's not in their stocking feet or something. I like this idea of the. The beggar, because they are taking food from his hand. He has something to offer them. They're in some sort of depleted or lesser position. 5:24 Wes: I was also thinking of someone sticking their foot through his window to touch his face while he was sleeping. Wake up. Wake up. I told you not to do that. Told you not to wake me up that way. So, yeah, this transition from, okay, so he's the hunter, they flee from me. But at one time he was the one being sought out. So we have an interesting reversal. 5:50 Erin: Yeah. And it isn't quite a reversal again. I mean, it's complicated because they flee from me. I mean, that's like Frankenstein's monster would write a poem called they flee from 6:02 Wes: me, 6:05 Erin: you know, so that sometime did 6:08 Wes: never seek me out. More like me. And they were always terrified of me. 6:11 Erin: Exactly. 6:13 Wes: Interesting pump. 6:16 Erin: But. But running from him because. Okay, so the implication is he's fallen out of favor now they don't want to be seen with him. But that's not quite the same as he is at once the hunter and the hunted in his previous state. And now he's just a pariah. That's quite different from being the hunted. He might be hunted by someone not in the poem, which is making him a pariah to everybody. Everybody else. Right. But there's a sort of a third state, I think that that complicates this easy kind of dichotomy a bit. 6:48 Wes: So he could be talking about, you know, it doesn't necessarily need to be about lovers, at least this far into the poem. I mean, the imagery later on is much more obvious. But, you know, it could be a matter of his standing within the court. 7:01 Erin: Yeah. I mean, I think when I was a teenager, I was very confused by this poem because I thought that the first stanza was about him with a bunch of other men. And then I was confused as to why all of a sudden, then he's with a woman in his bedroom. Because not that I thought the first stanza was about anything homoerotic, but just that there was something about the men of power in the court, that these were the people that were seeking him out. I think because of the stalking and the aggressive language. 7:31 Wes: Yeah. The pivot point of the poem means we do have some flexibility in the way we read the first part because it could be about women, or a woman in particular, but it could just as much be about courtly life, because the pivot point is thanked be fortune it hath been otherwise. And then he turns to a thought of love. And there's the contrast there, obviously, but it doesn't need to be about the same person or the same circumstance. The contrast is in the emotion. But we'll get to that. 7:59 Erin: I guess it would have been easier if he just said, these girls flee from me that sometimes I. I would have been. I would have been more satisfied. 8:11 Wes: That's in his original version. Then he crossed down because he'd been cryptic. Was going to be better. 8:17 Erin: I know I like to push the meter, but this is too far. They. 8:21 Wes: Girls flee from me. 8:22 Erin: Yeah, Girls flee from me that sometime. Didn't you see? That's a. 8:26 Wes: That's good. 8:27 Erin: That's a. That's a very different kind of poem. 8:30 Wes: So I have seen them gentle, tame and meek. So we get, we end in the last poem, the concept of tameness in contrast to wildness. And we get it here again. So he's seen them tame, but they now are wild. 8:43 Erin: This is a little, again, a little frightening. I don't know why this tame, wild stuff is frightening to me, but it's also indicative to me if we're following through on the metaphor of learned behavior and memory in animals. I think I read somewhere once that cats have something like a 19 hour memory. It always seemed very unlikely to me because cats can go without seeing you for a day and remember who you are, but anyway, much longer. Yeah, yeah, I didn't believe that at all. But for animals that are less. I mean, cats really aren't domesticated. But for animals that are less domesticated, who knows how long their working memory is. And though they may be, you know, taking food from your hand one day, if you then don't see them for a while or whatever, maybe they wouldn't recognize you. Maybe they would, I don't know. But anyway, one thinks of the fact that this maybe something like an out of sight, out of mind phenomenon in an animal where they don't remember you anymore is implying something rather uncomplimentary about whether this be about like the nature of women themselves. I think there's something obviously of that in there. This idea of newfangledness and changeability and unreliability, but also about the fact that a real lack of gratitude in the Tudor court in which people could so quickly forget, like an animal that owes you nothing or that thinks it owes you nothing because it knows nothing of debt. You know, as soon as they're not getting what they want from you or they've been away from you for a while, they can just entirely write you off, forget whatever they might owe to you and put their allegiance elsewhere. 10:27 Wes: Yeah. So this is evocative of a breakup of some kind, whether it's with a lover or friend or friends or courtly allies, acquaintances. And those things can overlap, of course, and we get the stark Contrast between the gentleness of people when we are on good terms with them and their seemingly civilized nature and even courtly nature being very refined and curtsying and bowing and doing all that stuff. And the next minute they're chopping your head off. 10:59 Erin: Right. 11:00 Wes: They're wild and do not remember. And. And so the memory part seems to have something to do with attachment. Is the attachment feigned in the initial case, or is it just that people can be so fickle, they can put any attachment aside that they can be your friend one moment and not your friend the next? 11:19 Erin: Yeah. And I suppose I'm wondering, you know, I keep wanting to kind of turn this back around on the speaker and wonder, okay, what does the speaker feel he's owed? You know, the quid pro quo nature of this implies that the speaker believes that he's owed something. And, I mean, that seems true. You know, I just. I want to interrogate the speaker's attitude because I wonder to what extent he is depending on the nature of these relationships, he is entitled to the loyalty that he seems to desire. I mean, if we're talking about ratting someone out to their potential death, that's one thing. 11:55 Wes: Yeah. That sometime they put themselves in danger to take bread at my hand, and now they range, busily seeking with a continual change. So he has fed them in the past, and they put themself in danger to be fed by it. You know, it's kind of. It makes you think of the deer, Right. You know, you hold out the bread and the deer will come up to you, and. 12:15 Erin: Mm. 12:15 Wes: It's a dangerous thing for a deer to do. They don't know if you're a hunter or have bad intent. So that was then and now they range. Right. So it's evocative of a. Like a deer ranging as in eating grass. So it's a different. So ranging as in dispersing, but also taking sustenance from elsewhere, taking sustenance from the ground, busily seeking with a continual change. So this suggests inconstancy and maybe moving from relationship to relationship. Again, whether it's lover or benefactor or ally, however you want to see it. But it's evocative of fickleness, faithlessness, and movement outside of a particular dyad. Relationship dyad. 12:59 Erin: You know, if this is a hunter feeding deer, then what is his motivation here? What does this say about the speaker? Why is he giving out this bread? What's he getting from this? You know, it's clear what the deer are getting. What exactly is the speaker doing here? Is he encouraging the deer to. You know, it's a dangerous enterprise on some level. So that means he has to at least theoretically pose a kind of threat to the deer, which means he could kill them if he wanted to. Well, why doesn't he want to? 13:27 Wes: He could kill them or he could take sexual. You know, if it's women, take sexual advantage of them, get them killed by their maniacal husband. 13:39 Erin: Well, the. The murder of them would be the. The metaphor for. For sex. But he's not. Sort of. Not claiming that, but he sort of is implying it at the same time. I don't know. It's just. Yeah, I've never. I've never turned so hard on him. I've never. I've never turned so hard on him as in this moment now. I'm like, hey, what is this? What's this guy doing actually? What's his game? You know, because he's as canny of a courtier as anyone, so he seems now kind of to be bested in the very, very game that he was playing in the first place. I just want to point out here, for the purposes of discussing the rhyme royal, that, you know, danger here rhymes with chamber. It's supposed to be the B rhyme, but then we get kind of a slant rhyme with the C rhymes, right? So there's a twist. And now they range busily seeking with a continual change. So the turn does happen there in that final couplet of the stanza that kind of thematically sets it apart from the rest. So it uses the form to advantage, but it also has that connection back to danger. Now, maybe he's the one in danger, and we're meant to kind of see, see that connection? It almost looks like a CCC rhyme at the end. Anyway, I like the fact that as he's talking about them changing, we go into the C rhyme. So the form of the stanza is kind of performing the content. 15:05 Wes: Okay, so now we get a twist. Now we get a turn. Thanked be fortune. It hath been otherwise. So it hasn't always been this way. This whatever rift or whatever led to the picture we've gotten is of some connection that's been severed. It's not always been this way. And again, like I said before, you can read this as being directly about the same relationship or relationships, or you can think of this as another relationship altogether. So he could be thinking about courtly betrayal and then thinking of another lover, or he could be thinking of the same person. So it could have been otherwise with this particular person or people, or it could have been otherwise in the sense of there was a diffe…

Full show notes at the publisher

A Strange Fashion of Forsaking in the Poetry of Thomas Wyatt (Part 1) Nov 18, 2024

Show notes

As an advisor to Henry VIII and ambassador to France and Italy, poet Thomas Wyatt was something of a professional court-surfer, practiced in riding the peaks and troughs of royal favor. Such were his verbal and diplomatic gifts that, though twice accused of and imprisoned for treason, he was twice released. His poetry reflects all the intrigue, paranoia, airlessness, and downright cruelty of the Tudor Court, where a misplaced word or an ill-timed look might see you not just out of favor, but a head shorter. In two of his most celebrated poems—which might draw upon the affair he might have had with Anne Boleyn—certainty is suspect, irony thick, allegiance changeable, and hunters apt to find they’ve become the hunted. Wes & Erin discuss Thomas Wyatt’s “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee from Me.” Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Save up to 50 percent on your language course by going to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext50 and using code SUBTEXT50 at checkout. When you sing up for the seven day trial, you can attend three small group classes and one private class completely free! Upcoming Episodes: “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken’s “Morning Song of Senlin,” “Sunset Boulevard.” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:00 Wes: The sponsor for today's episode is Lingoda, an online language school with classes led by native speakers. Over the years I've taken an in person language class here and there. I've always wanted to learn French, but I've always had trouble moving to the next level because class is often conflicted with work or other commitments. Recently here in Boston, despite my pretty flexible schedule, every time I've looked for a French class, I I've had trouble finding something that doesn't conflict with work and ideally I wouldn't be committed to going the same day, the same time every single week. I would want more flexibility. Lingoda has given me that flexibility. It allows me to take classes that fit into my schedule no matter how complicated it gets and whatever level I'm at. There are multiple time slots to choose from for a human led class with a native speaker every day of the week. I don't have to commit the same day and time each week and I can go at my own pace, booking a class when I'm ready. And in my experience, it's really important in learning language to have a class led by a human speaker and not just to be doing drills on an app. I think Lingoda is incredible and I've been recommending it to everybody in my life. Lingoda teachers will help guide you through your learning journey, give you really helpful feedback and help you stay motivated. Lingoda offers three different learning paths. Lingoda Flex, where you can choose when and how many classes to take Lingoda teams, which offers eight or 12 week courses at fixed times with the same teacher and Lingoda Sprint, which is a two month learning challenge that accelerates your language journey. Lingoda is having its biggest sale of the year. Save up to 50% on your language course by going to try.lingoda.com and using code subtext50 at checkout. That's subtext5.0. When you sign up for the seven day trial, you can attend three small group classes and one private class completely free. That's try.lingoda.com subtext50 and use code subtext50 that's subtext50. 2:23 Erin: You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. As an advisor to Henry VIII and ambassador to France and Italy, poet Thomas Wyatt was something of a professional courtier, practiced in riding the peaks and troughs of royal favor. Such were his verbal and diplomatic gifts that though twice accused of and imprisoned for treason, he he was twice released. His poetry reflects all the intrigue, paranoia, airlessness and downright cruelty of the Tudor court, where a misplaced word or an ill timed look might see you not just out of favor, but a head shorter in two of his most celebrated poems, which might draw upon the affair he might have had with Anne Boleyn. Certainty is suspect, irony thick, allegiance changeable, and hunters apt to find they've become the hunted. Today we're discussing Thomas Wyatt's who so list to hunt and they Flee from Me. This is Erin O'Luanaigh, and this is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, I think we'll start part one of our episode with whoso list to hunt and then move on to they Flee from Me in part two. And as I'm sure you know, Wyatt is credited with bringing the sonnet into English by way of his really transformative translations of Petrarch. He was interested in many other forms as well, but, you know, he's really credited with bringing the sonnet over. I've just been reflecting on the fact that the English poetic tradition is built almost entirely on borrowed goods, you know, on forms from other traditions. I mean, I think one of the rare exceptions to this actually would be the rhyme royal stanza, which Chaucer originated and in which they flee from me is written. But yeah, it just occurs to me that English is a dubious sort of stolen, covetous, grasping kind of, you know, they're retrofitting various forms from other traditions into English and very often kind of making do. You could tell that the form is not native to the English tradition. Like in Terza rima, which is something that Wyatt also wrote in, in English, you know, terza rima, a form in which rhyme you have to do a triple rhyme, which is very easy to do in Italian, but which is very difficult to do in English. So it's not something that English take. I'm just thinking about how apt that might be for Wyatt's subject matter for the Tudor court in which all of this is being transposed into England at the time. They're sort of, you know, building the plane of courtly aspiration in the air as Henry VIII is kind of bankrupting the court to try and keep up with the grander courts of France and Italy and Spain. And there's something maybe a little bit false about the whole enterprise that Wyatt is kind of playing on. And I think it has something to do with this pilfering, this stealing things and kind of retrofitting them to you that don't quite fit. I mean, I think it worked out rather well for the English poetic tradition in the end, but it's just Funny that there's such dubious grounds on which the whole enterprise is built. 5:39 Wes: So it seems like he's playing with the courtly tradition, which by at this point is relatively old. How do we date the courtly tradition? 5:48 Erin: Is that at least to Eleanor of Aquitaine? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he's not interested in Arthurian legend, say, you know, he's more. Wyatt is very much a European continental oriented poet, as much as I think he admired Chaucer. So he's interested in playing, I think, on these courtly tropes. But whoso list to hunt in particular. Right. Is actually just a very, very loose, very subversive translation of Petrarch's Sonnet 190. So he's as much in the sort of Italian Petrarchan tradition as he is playing on the courtlier themes of the poem. 6:28 Wes: Yeah. So I think subversion is a good word. So he's taking a tradition which is rather idealistic about love, and he's introducing something dark into it. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's still, still an element of longing and romance. But it's more fallen maybe, and it's more. Well, I don't know if it's more overtly sexual. Well, I guess we'll get into that 6:53 Erin: in the poems, but certainly, I think. 6:55 Wes: Okay. And then in the background, as you pointed out, there's all the stuff with Henry viii and, and Wyatt himself. Right. Was imprisoned for a while, I think he was, for supposedly getting with Anne Boleyn, but apparently she was getting with everyone in town. So they executed five. Well, of course not. That's his insane mind, but Henry VIII's insanity. But five, five of them got executed and, and then plus Anne Boleyn, apparently it's possible that Wyatt saw it from the tower in which he was imprisoned. Crazy stuff. So, yeah, if this is even in a veiled way about Anne Boleyn, he's really doing something risky. 7:37 Erin: Yeah, I mean, you can always, you can always say it's a Persona poem. Right. The eye isn't. Isn't me. You know, I've never met this guy before. 7:46 Wes: Who's that other guy you already executed. 7:48 Erin: Right. It's covered so many Thomases, you know, one of them, they all get lost in the shuffle eventually. But it's super risky. Yeah, the, the very sexual nature, I think. I mean, I think it's safe to say that especially they flee from me, but also to a certain extent, who. whoso list to hunt is definitely such a radical transformation of the Petrarch, because, you know, in Petrarch it's all about Laura, or Laura, you know, being this like, chaste ideal, you know, she's the Beatrice to his Dante. Right. And so she's, you know, she's transformed into these animal figures, you know, the doe, the sacred doe. But it's almost like it might as well be, you know, it could all just be an allegory for, you know, the soul ascending to the divine or whatever the case may be. Right. So there's something very, very different in nature and in tone to what Petrarch is doing in his description of this pure white hind that appeared to him versus Wyatt as this exhausted would be lover going, ugh, you know, I can't run after this woman anymore is very different tonally. And yeah, I think it's definitely suggestive that it's not doing her any favors if it's implying that everybody is running after her and she has lots of opportunity, that's for sure. 9:09 Wes: When you say building the plane of courtly aspiration out of thin air or in the air, I think is what you said, do you mean in some sense they're trying to preserve that tradition even as times are kind of changing, or is this something new? 9:23 Erin: What I mostly mean is that the Tudors come to an English throne which they are conscious of being not highly regarded among European courts. I mean, they are the true backwater. Yeah. So they're trying to build up an artistic tradition. They're trying to be splendid and grand. They're trying to rival the courts of Europe. He was patron of many different artists, was, was always putting on these really lavish, over the top kinds of, you know, what we might now recognize as being nouveau riche gauche kinds of performances of courtly splendor. Because he was, he was really conscious of being, especially the Italians and, you know, but I think you're right to point out that word courtly is also being suggestive of a certain kind of English tradition. And I think that the Tudors are now at the point where they're using that tradition in this hyper aware, sophisticated, self conscious kind of way. Right, Yeah. 10:21 Wes: I was thinking of the word irony and the way the English Renaissance kind of introduces or not at least heightens that sensibility. You see it in Shakespeare especially. 10:33 Erin: Right. And it becomes a kind of a deadly game, you know, a really deadly game in the Tudor court in which everything is about this just really, really subtle and intricate pecking order in which everything is about performance, everything is about, you know, there's a lot of, you know, I think of like feigned sincerity when I think of the Tudor court, like these performances of being sincere, which everyone is aware are performances, and you get credit for how well you perform sincerity, just the layers of irony that involve being a part of the court, I think, were actually really kind of maddening, and I think implied that you just really could never trust anyone because you never knew who was lying to you, who would rat you out for an advancement, a favor or a position. And women, as well as men were doing this and very, very conscious of their playing, their identity in some way. You know, they were, in a sense, walking Persona poems. You know, their Personas were highly constructed. So, you know, I think they make us look us with our. With our Internet avatars and our, you know, the things that we hide behind on the Internet. I think they. They make us look pretty tame, actually, by comparison. But maybe that's overstating. 11:50 Wes: If you look at the bio for Wyatt, it's just a very matter of fact him being in and out of favor. One minute he's in prison, the next minute he's out. So with the alleged adultery of Anne Boleyn, he was in the Tower of London and then released, apparently because of his relationship with Thomas Cromwell. Later on, I think he was back in prison. Who was it? How did he get out of that one? I don't know. He was briefly in prison again. 12:16 Erin: I think it was Cromwell again. 12:17 Wes: Okay. I think Katherine Howard herself about to be executed had something to do with it. I don't know. 12:24 Erin: And this is what's so confusing about the fact that he's in and out of favor. The fact that he's in at all after a certain point is pretty remarkable because he was really Catherine of Aragon's man and then was in an odd position when she was kicked out. I think he favored Mary on the throne. 12:45 Wes: So by 1540, he was again in the king's favor as he was granted the site and many of the manorial estates of the dissolved Boxley Abbey. Reading from Wikipedia here, however, he was charged once more with treason in 1541. The charges were again lifted, but only thanks to the intervention of Queen Catherine Howard, and on the condition of reconciling with his wife, granted a full pardon, restored to his duties as ambassador. So it's almost as if these very, very serious charges that could get your head lopped off were really just political tool and could be retracted on a whim. You know, it could be used on a whim, but then retracted on a whim. Oh, okay. Well, I guess I still need you or someone else. Is intervening on your behalf. So. 13:29 Erin: Right. 13:30 Wes: You're not a traitor anymore until I say so. 13:33 Erin: This is what happens when your country is run by a violent psychopath. 13:37 Wes: It's good to be the king. 13:41 Erin: I mean, really, he's, you know, Henry viii. I mean, Katherine Howard is, you know, I recommend looking into her a little bit more to see. Exactly. It's easy to kind of think of Henry VIII as this, like, you know, jolly guy who's always eating a leg of mutton or whatever. But, you know, he was. He was terrifying. And Katherine Howard was a child. And, I mean, it makes sense maybe that she intervened for Wyatt if he was part of this entrenched Catholic contingency, actually, because she was from a Catholic family and, you know, she's like, a generation younger than Henry. So various things have gone on in the interim between Catherine of Aragon and. And Katherine Howard. But, I mean, Katherine Howard herself is one of the saddest stories of Tudor England. She was a child when she married him. She was still basically a child when he put her to death. And she was so terrified over getting her head lopped off. And this is something that I went and I saw this just recently. So I was just at Hampton Court Palace. I was just, you know, I've been so deep in Tudor lore lately. But, you know, one of the most poigna…

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Formal Meets Feral in “A New Leaf” (Elaine May, 1971) – Part 2 Oct 28, 2024

Show notes

Henry Graham belongs to the most exclusive clubs, dines regularly at the most lavish restaurants, drives a Ferrari, employs a butler, and owns something called a Montrazini—in short, he capitalizes fully on his inheritance, despite having little understanding of what “capital” actually is. The very ignorance of practicality that his wealth affords turns out to be his undoing, as soon finds that he’s run out of money and must bid goodbye to the high life—unless, that is, he can find a single, wealthy, isolated woman to marry and, for the sake of preserving his refined, hermetically-sealed existence, murder. Enter Henrietta Lowell. Similarly stunted by her own inheritance, she’s friendless, awkward, and utterly helpless: the perfect mark… But Henry soon discovers that protecting his own interests also means protecting hers, that competence can grow out of the exigency incompetence creates, and that practicing love for someone turns out to be just as good as actually loving them. Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the 1971 film “A New Leaf,” written and directed by Elaine May. Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Go to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext and use code SUBTEXT to save 20 EUR (or equivalent in your currency) when signing up. Upcoming Episodes: “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken (“Senlin” Section 2 of II. His Futile Preoccupations). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Okay. Welcome to part two of our discussion of Elaine May's 1971 film a new Leaf. Wes, I think we ended last time by talking about how the fern that Henrietta discovers and names for Henry is kind of like her. It's kind of like their surrogate child, but it's something in which he takes an interest and which represents some sort of progression on his part from things, inanimate things, to living semi animate things encased in plastic, but still formerly animate. And I think we also. So we wanted to talk now about this idea that Henrietta, who we haven't really focused on too much yet, that she is very repulsive to Henry at first because she's feral and primitive and what that might mean. 1:19 Wes: Yeah, So I think that, yeah, the question is, what helps him change and turn over a new leaf? And I think part of that is that he, in service of her, actually gets to confront the form of philistinism that he truly hates. And the representatives of that turn out to be Henrietta's servants and her lawyer and his own uncle. Right. So in a scene with his uncle where he's asking the uncle for the money, the uncle, very humorously is eating like a pig during that whole scene and just indulging himself. The servants are made to look like very seedy and self indulgent. And the lawyer, of course, is in on it. They're trying to exploit her. So they are genuinely exploitative. And they genuinely, I think, fall under the category of primitive and philistine. And so they kind of arouse in him a certain kind of contempt. And some of the energy that he is devoting towards murdering her is diverted to taking care of these parasites. Essentially at a certain point with the servants, I thought, you know what he is. You mentioned Roundup. And she's the weed that he's gonna get. It turns out they turn into those weeds. He becomes the poison, the Roundup that is going to get rid of the weeds, who are the servants. So that's an interesting redirection. And of course she's not A philistine in the same way, she's well educated, she's a biologist, botanist, intelligent, and certainly not exploitative. So I think my point is that we get in the beginning for him what is primitive or regressed. His interest in form is lumped in with a deeper contempt for philistinism more generally that shows up in his interest in art. So that what he's calling primitive and regressed in her is just all this form stuff. So that when she spills her tea at the club and the hostess is really angry with her and is laying into her, he can come to the rescue. Now, on one level, he's just. This is part of his plan to exploit her. And deep down he is. He's just as concerned about appearances and form as the hostess who's chewing out Henrietta. But on another level, the contempt for lack of form conceals a deeper contempt for the sort of the unrefined, unsophisticated exploitativeness of people like the servants. Henrietta's servants. 3:47 Erin: That's so great. Yeah. You know, I'm going to say something a little crazy, which I'm better able to locate. The fact that what I might love about this has a little something to do with, like, my love of religion, shall we say, which is a strange thing. But thinking about form and thinking this through, form extends to the marriage, the marital contract, right? A marriage takes a relationship and makes it formal. So because he's entered into this form of the marriage with Henry, Henrietta taking care of his finances means now taking care of her finances. He's inherited her and her baggage, and that includes all these servants that are taking advantage of her, right? And by virtue of the marriage, he now has to deal with this. So. So, so the money comes with problems just like anyone in a marriage, right? Comes with baggage, comes with problems. So he starts to take care of the problem and to. To destroy the weeds that are choking his financial interests. But this has the same effect as taking care of Henrietta, because they're her interests too, because of the virtue of the form, that is the marriage in which they are taking part. The same thing is true with all of his courtship of her. I mean, he's decided to enter into the form of a courtship which very quickly becomes the marriage, right? They only know each other for a few days before they marry. He's doing it to take advantage of her. But whether he was doing it to take advantage of her or because he wanted to legitimately be chivalrous, the effect for her is the same. You know, this is this is what people don't. Don't understand. I think about. About love, that like, you know, love is something about something like having good feelings and thoughts about somebody in your head. This proves that, like, you can love someone and absolutely hate them because the, you know, the expression of it is what matters. Right. The action is what matters, the outward form. And so, you know, so. So it makes me want to connect this idea to, like, religion and this idea of being a philistine. You know, we're all philistines, right? Because of propriety and standards of behavior, we all are good people. Not so long as we have no negative thoughts about anything. But so long as we behave ourselves and treat other people with respect, that is sort of obeying the form under which society puts us. And I think religion in particular, you know, and Catholicism in particular is accused of having a kind of inherent hypocrisy because of things like, you know, the Catholic calisthenics, as they call it, you know, kneeling, standing, sitting at various times of the Mass. Right. Having, like, making your body perform certain things over the course of the Mass. And then one is accused of being purely performative. But I think what, you know, what religion understands is that performance is like 90, 95% of anything. Right. And so the idea is that there is something pious about just looking pious. Like going through the motions carries you through 95% of, you know, it gets you very close to being there. So regardless of how you actually feeling or whether or not you actually believe or are, you know, your internal state comports with your outward state. I think what religions that are traditional in this way and that have these outward structures are for is to show you that no matter how you're actually feeling on the inside, you're still giving due. You're still paying a kind of tribute to reality that your body is assenting to, even if your mind isn't or something like that. I'm putting this very badly. Right. But I think you understand what I'm trying to say. 7:17 Wes: No, no, no. This is great. Yeah. 7:20 Erin: And it turns out that that's actually what matters and that actually following, you know, I think there was a. Like, I might have been Aquinas or somebody said that, like, you know, actually just going through the motions and putting your body in those positions, St. Augustine is. It proves. 7:34 Wes: So this. Yeah, you were reminding me of this in St. Augustine. Yeah. Sort of fake it till you make it. 7:38 Erin: Exactly. Because of the power of the physical. 7:40 Wes: Yeah. The power of ritual and going through the motions of someone who has faith until you can develop the correspondent inner. Inner experience that goes along with those ritual activities. 7:53 Erin: Exactly. 7:54 Wes: I think this is in his confessions and I think this is the way, by his own account, that he developed faith. I mean, I think it was very personal for him, if I'm not misremembering that. And of course it is. The over focus on rituals you pointed out will get Catholics accused of hypocrisy. And that of course is that the very origins of the Protestant revolution is a big deal. And even someone like Erasmus, right, who's getting into it with Luther and. And ultimately is not a Protestant, but is highly critical of the Catholicism of the time once some sort of reform, because of the sorts of things that monks do going around flagellating themselves or going through the motions, but being incredibly corrupt in their spare time. And the same thing with popes, right? The same thing that would had Luther using the printing press to make copy after copy of pamphlets that showed the Pope having sex with the devil or something like that. I forget exactly what it was. But so hypocrisy, you know. Yeah, that subject of hypocrisy is really interesting, as you point out, because we are all hypocrites in the sense that we all have these conflicting impulses and we can hate and we can love at the same time, you know, in a way. 9:06 Erin: Whereas a society, I think, laboring under the implications of the Protestant revolution, which became an entirely internalized mental process of constant self examination and asking oneself like okay, am I a member of the elect or not? You know, in Calvinistic strains of Protestantism, right. And that constant self inquiry of, you know, am I having the right kind of thought? Am I having that it became entirely mental and not at all registered in the physical. And I think to a certain extent there are of course things that are useful about. About self examination and all of these things that that perhaps represents. But that also means the constant fear that one is lab under a misapprehension about one's own salvation. And it doesn't live in the physical at all. And I think that in a way it can become a means of self torture. When all you have are your own thoughts to go off of. And when nobody has pure thoughts and when nobody can always think perfect things all the time because we're seldom, we are sometimes, but not all the time responsible for our thoughts. This can get us into a lot of trouble. This can get us into a place where we can even just outside of our responsibility to other people and our behavior. You know, it can cause us to be. Be in a state of despair just all on our own. Whereas some deference to the physical or the idea that the physical somehow matters, that there's something, that there is a physicality to faith, to sacramentals and various other things, take some of that responsibility out of our own heads and shows that there's something having to do with. It's not just faith. It's faith and works. Right. There's something outside of you that you can use to kind of get along when you're in a tough spot mentally, so long as you. You continue to do good things and pay attention to the forms, even if you're faltering in your faith, as we all do, you could use that to coast along, you know, until the feeling returns. Because our thoughts are so fickle. Right. So all of that to say that I think like this idea of marriage now as being something that, like, well, when I'm no longer feeling love or any kind of relationship, when I'm no longer feeling love, then the marriage is over. That, that. That somehow your thoughts are reality, that your feelings are reality. I think this puts the lie to that. The way that I view religion and obligations to people in relationships and stuff. I mean, I don't always practice this, but the way that I view it is regardless of how I feel, I'm going to still do the thing that I don't want to do. Right. I'm still like, that's what really matters. Whether or not I practice this is beside the point. Right. But the ideal is that no matter how you feel about someone, someone can anger you, but you're going to still care about them and not want to hurt them and take them to the airport if they need a ride to the airport, even if you're mad at them, you know, whatever. Whatever the case may be. Right. 11:45 Wes: I wouldn't take anyone to the airport under any circumstances. But that's just. That's just my. They can get an Uber. 11:52 Erin: Oh, wow. Okay. 11:53 Wes: See, this is why I can't be a Catholic. 11:56 Erin: No, but you know that. 11:58 Wes: Time to personally connect to Jesus. 12:00 Erin: Exactly. Yeah. 12:02 Wes: No, but, yeah, I think this is very well put. These are great points. There's a lot to be said for form, and there's a lot to be said for going through the motions, even though one might just think they are the motions. So here's another way to put it. So you might consciously think you hate someone, but if you're doing kind things for them, then you might be said to have at least part of you you could say that those kind things are quote, unquote, loving. It doesn't, doesn't need to correspond. It doesn't need to have the conscious feeling of love going along with it. Because the mind is much bigger than what's happening consciously at one moment or another. One can love unconsciously or non consciously. And one might think of love more deeply as something that is habituated into the character of a person or the comportment of a person. So that you. If you really want to know what's going on with someone, right, you look at their. You look at their behavior, they may not know that they're loving someone. In which case, because Henry doesn't know it through most of the movie, but we kind of know it. 13:10 Erin: That's right. 13:11 Wes: Well, before he does. So I think, again, just to get back to what you're saying, there's really something important about form. And so the fact that Henry is a stickler for form turns out to be very important. There's a scene with his uncle while his uncle is being disgusting with the food and cutting a banana with a knife and fork and doing weird things and questioning his ability to get a wife in such a short amount of time. Henry says, I can engage in any romantic activity with an urbanity born of disinterest. 13:44 Erin: One of the better lines in the 13:46 Wes: film, which is just great. But his disinterest allows him to power through the forms, right? And a…

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Formal Meets Feral in “A New Leaf” (Elaine May, 1971) – Part 1 Oct 21, 2024

Show notes

Henry Graham belongs to the most exclusive clubs, dines regularly at the most lavish restaurants, drives a Ferrari, employs a butler, and owns something called a Montrazini—in short, he capitalizes fully on his inheritance, despite having little understanding of what “capital” actually is. The very ignorance of practicality that his wealth affords turns out to be his undoing, as soon finds that he’s run out of money and must bid goodbye to the high life—unless, that is, he can find a single, wealthy, isolated woman to marry and, for the sake of preserving his refined, hermetically-sealed existence, murder. Enter Henrietta Lowell. Similarly stunted by her own inheritance, she’s friendless, awkward, and utterly helpless: the perfect mark… But Henry soon discovers that protecting his own interests also means protecting hers, that competence can grow out of the exigency incompetence creates, and that practicing love for someone turns out to be just as good as actually loving them. Wes & Erin discuss the 1971 film “A New Leaf,” written and directed by Elaine May. Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Go to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext and use code SUBTEXT to save 20 EUR (or equivalent in your currency) when signing up. Upcoming Episodes: “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken (“Senlin” Section 2 of II. His Futile Preoccupations). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Henry Graham belongs to the most exclusive clubs, dines regularly at the most lavish restaurants, drives a Ferrari, employs a butler, and owns something called a Montrazini. In short, he capitalizes fully on his inheritance, despite having little understanding of what capital actually is. The very ignorance of practicality that his wealth affords turns out to be his undoing, as he soon finds that he's run out of money and must bid goodbye to the high life. Unless, that is, he can find a single, wealthy, isolated woman to marry and. And for the sake of preserving his refined, hermetically sealed existence, murder. Enter Henrietta Lowell. Similarly stunted by her own inheritance, she's friendless, awkward, and utterly helpless. The perfect mark. But Henry soon discovers that protecting his own interests also means protecting hers. That competence can grow out of the exigency incompetence creates, and that practicing love for someone turns out to be just as good as actually loving them. Today we're discussing the 1971 film A New Leaf, written and directed by Elaine May. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. 1:39 Wes: And this is Wes Alwan. 1:40 Erin: And you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, what if I told you that A New Leaf was not the first movie written by Elaine May that we have covered on this podcast? 1:52 Wes: Really? Wow. That's crazy. 1:55 Erin: Now I'm putting written in quotes, but could you guess? 1:59 Wes: Nichols was her partner, right? Did she have a role in the Graduate? 2:03 Erin: No, I don't think so. Though I think her shadow looms over that film with a character named Elaine and various other things going on there. Various psychosexual mind games perhaps happening between Nichols and May. I'm just joking. 2:17 Wes: I know we didn't do Ishtar. 2:19 Erin: We didn't do Ishtar. Not yet. Not yet, but you're on the right track. It's Tootsie. As I think I've mentioned before, you know, I'm a huge Elaine May fan, so this recording is like a dream come true for me. But, you know, I'd known for a long time that she was an uncredited script doctor on several classics, including Tootsie. But I never really knew the extent of her contributions to that script until I read the recent biography of her that came out this year, Miss May Does Not Exist by Carrie Courogen, which gives a complete picture of what exactly her edits entailed. And it turns out that she's, she's basically responsible for most everything that's great about that film. I mean, she didn't just punch up dialogue here and there, she kind of overhauled it. I mean, she was single handedly responsible for the Bill Murray character in the film. She added all the poignancy to Teri Garr's character. But she was the type of person who never wanted credit and was always trying to keep her name off movies like the one that we're covering today. Sadly, as a result of this, little is known about the extent of her contributions to a lot of films. And yeah, so I don't know if we can quite say, I mean, it's pretty extensive, extensively covered in the biography, but I think it seems to be as much her film as whoever was credited as the screenwriter. 3:31 Wes: Who's the credit? Do you remember who's credited? 3:33 Erin: Murray Schisgal. I guess she didn't want to upstage him or be, you know, not be a good fellow writer by taking credit for something that she helped out with. 3:41 Wes: But yeah, the great Murray Schisgal. 3:44 Erin: Yes, of Schisgal and Ebert. 3:47 Wes: Schisgal and Ebert, yeah. Why was she so reticent about putting her name on movie scripts? 3:52 Erin: As a script doctor? I think she didn't want to steal credit also probably because, you know, she, she doesn't seem to be someone who wants to be very well known. Like she would not be happy that we're doing a podcast episode on a new leaf, a movie which she has, you know, basically disowned. 4:06 Wes: She disowned it? How? And well, how did she do that? 4:09 Erin: Well, so a lot of stories about making of her films is really crazy. So basically what happened was she had a three hour edit of this film. You might have noticed that there's, especially in the last third of the film, there is some strange ed choices made. Basically she had a three hour cut of this film that included I think two, maybe three murders that the Walter Matthau character actually carries out. So he actually is a murderer. And it was, it was like three hours long and she was editing it and the studio got so frustrated with her that they took the film away from her, edited it themselves and she ended up suing them. They took it to court and not since, I guess since Justice Stewart's verdict about Louis Malle's The Lovers from 1958 was the law so famously brought in to assess a film. So they played the Paramount. I think Paramount Studios is the one. Anyway, the studio played their edit that they had done and the judge was like, this is hilarious. You lose Elaine May. And so she was upset that she didn't get to do what she wanted with the film, and she basically wanted her name taken off of it, but. But it was too late at that point. But there's the element of her, I think, not getting to do what she wants to do with the films. Like, she always ends up having some studio wrestle it out of her hands or having not as much control as she would like. And then maybe there's just this idea that if something doesn't go well, you don't get blamed for it or, you know, you get to disavow it a little bit or. It seems to me like she just really cares about the work and she doesn't care about getting credit for things. 5:42 Wes: So her cut doesn't exist. It's gone. 5:45 Erin: It's. Sadly, it looks like it's gone. I'm still, like, crossing my fingers that someday it's going to turn up. But the conventional wisdom is that it's lost. But this is one of the mythic. Along with the film that Orson Welles lost on the train in South America. This is one of the great mysteries of what happened to this. Where did it go? And it might be just. Even if they find it, it might be deteriorated somewhere. I don't know if they're going to find it in some sort of properly stored place after all these years. 6:12 Wes: But what do you think of this cut? I thought it was. I thought it was pretty good. 6:16 Erin: I mean, this is one of my top 10 favorite films, so I'm a fan. 6:20 Wes: I think an hour and 42 minutes is the perfect length for a comedy. 6:23 Erin: I think so, too. 6:25 Wes: Although they're often shorter. Even shorter these days. 6:27 Erin: That's right. That's right. You know, I mean, it's an amazing. I mean, you can tell that it's been chopped up a little bit strangely in the last third. I think it explains some of the strange choices that are made with his sort of fantasy sequences where that crazy music plays. 6:45 Wes: Right. That does seem to come out of nowhere. Yeah. There's not much precedent for it. Yeah. 6:50 Erin: But I mean, for a first film and for a situation in which she was not supposed to direct this film, I mean, she was kind of strong armed into directing it. She didn't want to be a Director. This was 69, I think when she had taken a story from, I think, called the Green Heart, I want to say from like an Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazine article, and adapted it into the screenplay. And she was just looking to sell the screenplay. And at the time, there was a big, you know, this was like right before peak era era where the studios were reckoning with the fact that they hadn't produced a new woman director since Ida Lupino. And they were trying to push to get more women directors on projects to kind of improve their image as an industry. So they told her that she could direct the screenplay herself if she wanted. And they also figured that this would be a great way of paying her less, because whatever they were going to pay her for the screenplay, she would also get the same amount of money for being a director or something like that. So they would save money and look better. And I guess they must have gotten the idea because Mike Nichols, her former comedy partner at this point, had already made who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the Graduate and was successful as a director. From what I understand, she was widely considered to be the great genius. Between the two of them, Nichols is just this incredible wunderkind who just like conquered all before him. And then Elaine May walked into his life and made him look like an idiot compared to her. So she was the one who was supposed to have the great career, and she was kind of floundering, and so she was selling the screenplay and they were just like, okay, you have to direct it. And then she got Matthau and they wanted Carol Channing to play the Henrietta character. And Elaine May said, no, this is really the man's movie. The woman has to just disappear into her role. The whole focus has to be on the Matthau character. So Carol Channing would be wrong for it. They said, okay, then your only other choice is you can play it. So she was strong armed into directing, strong armed into starring in it, I think all ultimately for the bundle of the one fee that they had originally offered her or something. And so I guess she showed up on set and was like, barely knew what the camera was and just started directing this thing. And it went. They doubled the budget and went way, way over time filming. But in the end, it made money back and then some. I think it was a big hit. It was popular. Yeah, Got great reviews and people really enjoyed it. And Matthau was big box office draw at the time, so it did really well. But she was really unhappy because she didn't get to do what she wanted to do with it. 9:22 Wes: So it Got nominated for some Golden Globes, Best Picture, Best Actress, and also nominated for Best Adapted Comedy for the Writers Guild of America. 9:34 Erin: And I think Elaine May was the fourth woman ever to be a member of the Director's Guild. Just a crazy statistic. 9:42 Wes: Wow. So her other films are. Well, she directed the Heartbreak Kid. 9:47 Erin: Yeah. From a Neil Simon script. 9:49 Wes: Neil Simon. How is that? Is that any good? I love Charles. 9:52 Erin: That's fantastic. Yeah. It's definitely the best movie ever made off of a Neil Simon script. And it's very much a. With her kind of humor. So it's far less of a Neil Simon feel to it than most. I mean, it feels much more modern than some of the dated qualities of Neil Simon. She pretty much, like, eliminates whatever the downsides of a Simon's script tend to be. As much as I like him, it feels like the very first true cringe comedy. She's basically inventing cringe comedy. So it's a fascinating film for that reason. It's a great movie. 10:24 Wes: And then there is, of course, Ishtar. 10:26 Erin: Yes. 10:28 Wes: But apparently so just, you know, looking at Wikipedia. So she's writer and director for Ishtar, but she's got a co writing, uncredited co writer of Tootsie now. I see that. And Of Reds, which is really interesting. 10:41 Erin: Yeah. She was friends with Beatty. 10:42 Wes: Okay. 10:43 Erin: And Nichols used her on a lot of things. Like she did the Birdcage, which I don't know if you know. The Birdcage. That's another fantastic movie. Great script. Yeah. And then there's Mikey and Nicky, which was her third of her four films that she. That she directed. And that's another fantastic film. It's out with Criterion, and that stars Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, who were also big fans of hers and very supportive. And I guess John Cassavetes was always, like, trying to give her money so that she could do the project she wanted because everybody became a big fan of hers after A New Leaf. And that's just a fantastic, really dark film. She bats a thousand, basically. I mean, you know, listeners might be surprised to hear this, but I think more and more it's become part of the public conversation how falsely maligned Ishtar was when it came out, how, you know, the studios were planting negative stories about the reception of the film before it was even released. You know, Elaine May famously says that if any, if everybody who hated Ishtar had actually seen it, I would be a rich woman today. You know, so if you actually go and watch it, it's really funny. It's a really good movie. 11:46 Wes: Is it? I saw it in the theater as a kid. I can't remember how I felt about it, but my standards were lower. Is Ishtar the thing that led her? I mean, she didn't direct again after that, right? 11:58 Erin: Yeah, yeah, they basically tanked her. 12:00 Wes: Is that why is that? 12:01 Erin: Yeah, I mean, she. She didn't play ball with people. You know, she was always Heartbreak Kid was an exception. That seemed to be a movie that went pretty smoothly and was studio backed and was a big hit. And it was, you know, it was fine. Mikey and Nicky, there were problems with it going over and with her having crazy amounts of film that she had sh. Her like, you know, stealing footage and bringing it to her friend's garage to try and get the studios away from it. And, you know, so there were some issues there. And then Ishtar, yeah, it seems like that was really the final nail in the coffin. But I mean, there was a long break between Mikey and Nicky and Ishtar, so it was kind of like her last chance, I guess. I guess when you're a woman director, you get much fewer chances to screw up than if you're a man, unfortunately. And so she's not like most directors in that she doesn't really want to compromise. She doesn't really have great people skills or schmoozing skills. I think, like, she just is pretty uncompromising about her vision and that ends up causing her to run into problems.…

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Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 6) Oct 14, 2024

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Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Go to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext and use code SUBTEXT to save 20 EUR (or equivalent in your currency) when signing up. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:00 Wes: Let's take a moment to talk about our sponsor for this episode. Lingoda I've always wanted to learn French. I took a little bit in college, but I never really became conversational and over the years I've taken a class at a language school here and there, but I always had trouble moving to the next level making progress because class is often conflicted with work or other commitments. So I take a class and wouldn't have time again for a few months and then might try again. Lingoda is an online language school that solved that problem for me by allowing me to take classes that fit into my schedule no matter how complicated it is. Whatever level I'm at, there are multiple time slots to choose from for a human led class with a native speaker every day of the week so I don't have to commit to the same day and time every week. I can go at my own pace and book classes when I'm ready to do that. I've also never really had success with other language apps because they don't involve a human teacher, even though they're convenient. Lingoda offers the best of both worlds. I think Lingoda is incredible and I've been recommending it to everybody in my life. Lingoda teachers help guide you through your learning journey, give you really helpful feedback and help you stay motivated. Lingoda offers three different learning paths Lingoda Flex, where you can choose when and how many classes to take Lingoda teams, which offers eight or 12 week courses at fixed times with the same teacher and Lingoda Sprint, which is a two month learning challenge that accelerates your learning journey. Learn with Lingoda and tailor your learning path to your goals. Go to try.lingoda.com subtext and use code subtext to save €20 when signing up. You can use that for Lingoda Flex, Sprint or teams. Again, that's €20 off or the equivalent in your currency. By going to try.lingoda.com subtext and using 2:01 Erin: code Subtext, you're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 2:36 Wes: All right, welcome to the sixth and final part of our time discussion of Medea. We just got done talking about Medea deceiving Jason, convincing her to try to persuade Creon to let her kids stay. Really, it's a plan to of course, poison Creusa and Creon. Ultimately, after she persuades Jason and Jason leaves, the chorus realizes what's up, even though the chorus leaders seem to not really understand. But, but at this point, this is still on page 76. I think the chorus leader understands what's up and says, well, there's no more hope. The children will live. Or the bride Creusa is not going to live. And the antistrophe says she'll be persuaded by the brilliance of the gowns and quote, dress for her wedding in the company of the dead, which is a beautiful line. And she's a poor fool. She's a bridegroom of sorrow. So another nice image. And then we get a little generalization about human beings being deceived in your destiny. So we make all these plans for the future. Little do we know we're being poisoned. 3:45 Erin: Yeah. And that your own kids are going to be the agents. You know, this is an element too of the poisoning that I had neglected to mention in the previous part, which is the kids are the ones that bring the gifts too. So I mean, they don't know it, but children rarely ever know the damage they cause. But yeah, this idea of destruction coming from unexpected places, of course also to me points to what's going to happen to Jason in the end, at the end of Jason's life, not just at the end of this play. 4:17 Wes: Right. 4:17 Erin: Because isn't he killed by a falling beam from the Argo? So there's something about maybe that's connected to the children as well, that's sort of the. Of what one's legacy is or what one thinks one's legacy is. Might betray you, deceive you, might be used to false ends, or might be not much of a legacy at all. Or something along those lines. 4:39 Wes: A focus on legacy can become self destructive. 4:42 Erin: Even better. 4:42 Wes: Again, like the myth of Narcissus, because that's partly what is getting him into trouble here, is his ambitions. 4:51 Erin: Right. 4:51 Wes: The antistrophe Grieves for Medea, but it recognizes that what's happening to him is punishment for quote, unquote, lawless abandonment. 5:00 Erin: Yes. 5:01 Wes: Which is interesting. Of course, she's engaged in vigilante justice, but there is, of course, an element of justice to it. Her children ought not to have to suffer for her to get her justice. And perhaps we today would be less inclined to think of vengeance as a form of justice. But in any case, and I think this is part of the logic you were talking about earlier, there's a sense in which this is sort of the logic of Jason's behavior bringing down ruin upon himself. 5:33 Erin: Yeah. 5:34 Wes: The tutor, meanwhile, is confused. Tutor's not in on it. Tutor doesn't why. So why is she still unhappy? The gifts worked. 5:44 Erin: And I like this. The clueless tutor, just like, you know, Jason, Mr. Logic is called, as you pointed out, you know, you poor fool. Someone who's deceived and the tutor can't be taught. He just doesn't get it. Yeah. 5:59 Wes: And. And meanwhile, Medea has a really great line here. So the tutor says, then why these downcast looks, these tears you weep? Sorry. The tutor has delivered a message, which is that the gifts have worked and that the children won't be banished. I think I forgot to mention that. And then. So he expects her to be happy about that and she's not. And then he's like, was I mistaken in thinking my message a happy one? Your message was such as it was. I have no fault to find with you, the tutor. And then why these downcast looks, these tears you weep? And then Medea has a great line here. I have no choice, old man. None at all. All this is what the gods and I devised. I and my foolish heart. So you have three layers here of potential causality for action. There's the mythic layer, gods and fate, potentially. There's the psychological layer, my foolish heart. Right. I'm impelled by internal psychological forces. And then there's the free will layer. This is what I devised. This is my plan. This is my will. Wonderful, wonderful. Little bit of complexity that I think Euripides is obviously deliberately introducing there. How do we explain her behavior? Here are all the different options, and of course, they can be made to coincide. Right. So Eros is the God that corresponds to the foolish heart. 7:20 Erin: I love this, too. And it points to what she'll say on the following page, which is, I think, a very famous line, when she. The last thing she says, I think, before she kills the kids, which is, I am well aware how terrible a Crime I am about to commit. But my passion is master of my reason. Passion that causes the greatest suffering in the world. This seems to chime with that in that she's sort of acknowledging a lack of choice, which might be because this is the story and this is the way it has to go, because this is what the gods want. But also because she's overruled by her own emotion. And in a way it's like a legal defense. Like there's an argument that can be made here about provocation and the fact that she's maybe been provoked into committing this act because she can't control herself, because she's so upset. So it seems like it has. Like there are. Yeah, these layers kind of come into that. The sort of self justification statement for committing the crime as well. 8:21 Wes: Yeah. Now we get her wrestling with whether or not she's going to actually be able to do it. So we get the great little monologue which after the tutor is gone and she's just there with her children. So on top of page 78, line 1040, so she starts out the whole speech earlier by saying, oh, this stubborn heart of mine, what misery does cost me. It is all for nothing. Then, children, that I reared you. There's a lot of that that's very interesting to me in this. All the effort that you've put into creating these little beings. She'll be robbed of their company. And as she gets older, you will look no more at your mother with those eyes I love once you have passed on to another form of life. So it's a very poignant right. She has all these very tender feelings for her children. 9:12 Erin: So sick. Yeah. 9:13 Wes: Yeah. Oh, no, no. Why do you fix your eyes on me, children? Why smile at me with that last smile? Ah, the pain. What shall I do? My heart dissolves, ladies, when I talking to the chorus. When I see the shining faces of my children, I could not do it. Goodbye to those plans I made. And then a little later on, right, flips. And yet, what is the matter with me? Do I want to become a laughingstock by letting my enemies off scot free? So this is the struggle I was talking about between pride, humiliation and then love for the children. 9:47 Erin: This is literally when you read. I don't know if you can see, but I literally have goosebumps when you read. Why do you fix your eyes on me, children? Why smile at me with that last smile? Oh, yeah. 10:00 Wes: Smile at me with that last smile. Kids have got to be going. This doesn't sound promising. Last. 10:09 Erin: Well, is she Is she alone? 10:11 Wes: Last smile. 10:11 Erin: No, no, no. They are there. Yep. This is all addressed to them. This is so. It's actually so much worse. So much worse than them being on stage. 10:21 Wes: So off with you, children. Now into the house. I shall not weaken my hand. And then the next, you know, flipping again. Ah, stop, my heart. Do not do this deed. Let them be poor. Fool. Spare your children. And then, no, I will not leave my children to the mockery of my enemies. And so on. And then. Very poignant. 10, 70. Give me your hands, children. Give your mother your hands to kiss. Oh, hands I love so much. Dear, dear lips, my children, my pretty ones, with your face is so noble. Jason will say something very similar near the end of the play, actually, because he wants to touch them after they're dead and she won't let him. You have lost this world thanks to your father. And then the children go into the house. So the children, depending on how smart they are, either must be confused or they must know what's coming. 11:11 Erin: Gosh. 11:11 Wes: I know. It's terrible. 11:12 Erin: I'm sorry. This is so painful. 11:15 Wes: Wow. 11:16 Erin: It's so powerful. Yeah. And this waffling that she does. Doesn't Aristotle go after Euripides for this and say, this is why Medea doesn't really work? Because he, you know, Aristotle, in a moment of Jason, like, emotional perception, says she should just do it. Make up her mind, why does she cry about it when she, you know, decides to do it? Am I making that up? But he says that in the Poetics. I read it a few months ago. 11:44 Wes: Yeah. I don't know. That sounds right, though. I mean, that sounds familiar, what you're saying. Yeah. Which is weird, because this is. This, in a way, is the most psychologically realistic part of the play and one of the more probably more psychologically realistic depictions we get. 12:01 Erin: I mean, this is so this sort 12:02 Wes: of thing in the ancient Greek literature. Yeah. And it sort of feels very modern. Right. You could be reading something very similar in Shakespeare, for instance. Yeah. 12:12 Erin: I mean, she has to, you know, she waffles and stuff, but it's also. It's also a way of talking herself into it and psyching herself up for what she's about to do. It takes very seriously the. Rather than being unserious about the crime that she's about to commit by showing her waffling and such, which is, I think, Aristotle's part of Aristotle's accusation. And listeners can correct me if I'm wrong about this. Yeah. Take seriously the severity of the crime. She's about to commit by showing how one has to. To really self delude to do something this. This disgusting. And it really shows how disgusting it is. I mean, the. The ending lines. Oh, how I love to hug them. The softness of their skin, the sweetness of their breath, my darling ones. Oh, you know, it's really. 13:00 Wes: Yeah, it's very real. 13:02 Erin: Yeah, it's a little true crime documentary, you know. I don't know if you've ever watched one of these things. 13:08 Wes: I always think of the mother with the station wagon backing it into the lake or something. 13:13 Erin: Right, right. Yeah. And the. The diary entries where they're like, I loved them so much. You know, it's. Yeah, yeah, I love them so much 13:21 Wes: I had to kill them. 13:23 Erin: That's the way it goes, man, when you got to prove a point, you got to prove a point. 13:27 Wes: Women who love their kids to death. 13:30 Erin: It's like Darla. Is it Darla in the. In the Looney Tunes that. But I'll hug him and squeeze him and hold him tight where she holds the little animals until they can't breathe. 13:41 Wes: Oh, yeah, yeah. 13:43 Erin: Strangles them. 13:44 Wes: A little bit of Mice and Men there as well. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. So the chorus's reaction now is interesting. So we get a little bit back into the sexual commentary. Many times, or as they would call it today, gender commentary. Many times there now I have entertained thoughts more subtle and. And engaged in arguments more weighty than the female sex should pursue. Euripides hadn't heard of gender yet. We also have a me. We also have a muse, you see, who accompanies us and tutors us in wisdom. Not all of us, but a handful you might find among many who are not strangers to the muse. And I declare that in the matter of happiness, those mortals who have produced children are less fortunate, fortunate than those who have no experience at all of parenthood, and so on forth. So the childless are spared many trials and people with children are worn away each day by passing anxiety. So we get this interesting commentary from the course. It's a mixture of. On the one hand, there's the remark about. Medea has just made a remark about passion being the master of her reason. And that's a bit. The passion versus reason thing is touched upon, of course, at various points. And then there's a bit about the chorus's idea that when it gets into its own deep thoughts, into its reflection, that they are more weighty than the female sex should pursue. So this little bit of ironic commentary about sex and then the commentary about 15:13 Erin: parenthood you reading this aloud highlights for me the kind of interesting contrast between what's said and how it's expressed in a strange way. I mean, th…

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Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 5) Oct 07, 2024

Show notes

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Okay, welcome to Part five of our six part series on Medea. We had just gotten done discussing Medea's escape plan, which involves kindly old Aegeus from Athens, Athens to save the day, even though he apparently is not fully aware of her moral character. I know you want to defend her, but we'll fight about that later. I think where we concluded in the last part is I mentioned the aspersion kind of cast on Athens, or the shadow cast over Athens by the potential association of Medea with Athens, where Athens is representative of these new ideals, or I don't know how new they are, but they've become very important in light of Socrates at the time that Euripides is writing. So ideals of temperance and rationality and associated ideals and Medea, in a way I think represents more of the instinctual side. So if you wanted to really look at this play in the at the most general thematic level level, you might say what Euripides is doing is he's giving a critique of Athenian norms, Athenian mores, which is not unusual for him. And the critique is that the focus on rationality, on temperance, on the type of things that Jason thinks he represents. Although of course he's portrayed as foolish in this play. Overly focusing on that can make in fact make one foolish like Jason and doesn't pay sufficient respect to the instinctual side of human nature. And when you don't pay respect to the instinctual side of human nature, it comes back to kill your children by way of your Own hands. 2:22 Erin: I have my blood red nail polish on right now, too. To really drive the point, I just clawed into the. 2:29 Wes: For listeners. Yeah, Erin just showed her claws. Sorry, we're gonna call them. That was where we left off. And now I think we are kind of at the midpoint, the very midpoint of the play here and the next stage, as we move from the scene between Medea and Aegeus to her deceiving Jason, killing the royals, all that stuff. 2:51 Erin: At some point in one of the previous parts, I tried to make the argument, though, that there was something sort of hyperlogical and rational about Medea's infamous act. And I think in the end, it kind of, you know, as we were talking about with other elements of Medea's character, it sort of swings all the way around. So she ends up having it both ways. She ends up being a sort of figure of both masculinity and femininity, of logic and irrationality, of. But maybe you weren't really convinced by that, But I was looking at, you know, just after Aegeus leaves, which is, I think, where we're gonna pick up anyway, when Jason comes and Medea pretends to play nice. You know, I was reflecting on her performance of apology and pretending to be okay with everything, and I see this as being a really important prelude to the act of killing the children. So, you know, it seems to me that because Jason won't take her pain, her anger, her humiliation seriously, her sort of irrationality seriously, she has to find a way to be taken seriously. And that seems to involve the need to shock. Yeah, she must shock him. Wake him up in a way. And so to do this, I think she first, as a. As a prelude, dons the disguise of the agreeable, weak woman. You know, she says, what a perverse creature I am. Why do I madly resent those who have my interests at heart? Why do I view as enemies the rulers of the land and my husband, who is doing what is best for me in marrying a princess and fathering brothers for my children? Shall I not give up my anger? What is the matter with me? Are the gods not generous? Do I not have children? Have I forgotten that I am in exile and in need of friends? When I reflected on this, I realized the full extent of my folly and the futility of my anger. So now you have my thanks. Indeed. I consider you showed good judgment in making this new match for us. I have been the foolish one, you know. So she, you know, you're smart, I'm dumb, you're sane. I'M emotional and crazy, silly me, you know, and so she leans into this, you know, stereotype of womanhood to, I think, to make the shock of contrast all the greater when she then hits Jason with that surprise attack. And what's the most surprising, least stereotypical thing a proper woman, a proper wife, a proper mother would do, of course, is kill her own children. 5:13 Wes: Wait, why is that? Why is that most proper? 5:15 Erin: No, what's the most surprising, least stereotypical thing a proper woman would do? You know, so. So she pulls the rug out from under Jason and from out from under the stereotype that she momentarily leans into in order to provide this kind of contrast. 5:32 Wes: I think, yeah, she's displaying. She's displaying the quality, I would call it the quality of rukh ruthlessness, which one might think is quintessentially powerful or masculine. There's a question, you know, we could have a conversation about, well, how accurate is that? But one might think ruthlessness is. And that certainly is the quality, I think, willing to do anything to accomplish one's goal, no matter what it costs, even if it's one's own children. 6:00 Erin: I mean, she does it seemingly even though it hurts her much more than it hurts him. Him. But I'm interested in the logic of that, you know, in basically saying, okay, you want to treat me like I never happened. You want to throw everything away and start over, you want to erase my contributions to your life, then even if it hurts me more than it hurts you, I'll do it. I'll show. I'll carry out the consequences of your thoughts. And so, you know, in a way, what she does is a kind of hyper real, hyper logical conclusion to Jason's desire for freedom and for extricating himself from his oath. And at the same time, while being crazy, it therefore also takes seriously Jason's misogynistic beliefs about the craziness of women. You know, you think I'm crazy, I'll show you crazy. You know, I'm so crazy I will kill my maternal impulses and act as cold blooded as a man to get what I want. So it both plays on and against these misogynistic stereotypes by using her sort of crazy feminine insanity to show how strong and cool and unemotional a woman can be. So I do think she has it. She has it both ways with the murders. Thematically, it's really complex and fascinating to me both ways. 7:14 Wes: And you mean rational and irrational? 7:16 Erin: Yeah, I mean, and it's both misogynistic and anti misogynistic. 7:19 Wes: So it could Be rational. It can be rational relative, relative to a certain goal. 7:24 Erin: Right. That's what I mean. Yeah. 7:26 Wes: Right. So there's hypothetical reason, or what's called instrumental rationality, where it's just, if I do this, then this, and you figure out what's going to get you what you want. And what you want can be as crazy as I'll get out. But the rationality is in the method, and if it works, it works to get you what you want. So there's a question of the rationality of the means and then the rationality of the goals. And then when you look at the goals, you can think of Kantian terms, of Kantian categorical rationality. What do I have to do, regardless of whether it's going to make me happy, regardless of my goals? It's just morality and then morality in the more contemporary sense. And if you were thinking in terms of ancient Greek virtue ethics, happiness would be the ultimate goal. And the. That for Aristotle, to some extent Plato and Socrates, it involves a certain. Well, for Aristotle, it's activity in accordance with virtue. There's this close tie between one's virtue in this broader ethical sense than Kantian strict morality. So it could be courage, it could be magnanimity. These are the relevant virtues or forms of excellence that complete human character that constitute a good for human character. So the critique in terms of. Right, we're just talking about Aegeus and Athenian, the Athenian concept of rationality, the critique in terms of that sort of rationality as well. Is she temperate? Is her soul properly balanced? And the balance, right, is between. There's the rational side, and then the irrational side is double. For the ancient Greeks, it's. It's eros, it's love, and then it's honor or spiritedness. Thumos. And one of the interesting kind of lines of reflection in this play is if, if she is irrational, is this about love or is it about pride and honor? Because those two things are so often mixed up and. And as I've said many times, we often don't know which is at stake psychologically. We are often quite confused about that. That. Right. So if she loses, is she upset because she's losing Jason and Jason is just so wonderful, or has she been dishonored? I think it's really more about dishonor. And again, this is a theme for Euripides. Right. The Bacchae is all about Dionysus being dishonored. People don't pay him sufficient respect. He is also a representative of the instinctual. I think this is Kind of Euripides whole line of thought, which is quite ironic in that that's Nietzsche's critique of Euripides, is that he doesn't pay enough respect to the instinctual, to the Dionysian side of things. But leaving that aside. So anyway, just going back to. So, yeah, I think there are many different conceptions of rationality at work. And I think if you want to point to her rationality, she's got plenty of instrumental rationality once she's decided what she wants in accomplishing it. She's got a lot of rhetorical ability, the ability to persuade with Creon, with Jason, as we'll see here in a second with Aegeus. And I think maybe the rationality that you're pointing to, how do we categorize that? She's sort of exposing the destructiveness of Jason's logic. She's bringing that out in the open for him to see. So is that just revenge? What is that right, if we say let me show you what you're doing to me, or let me show you what you're like by externalizing the emotional dynamic, making it more obvious, killing the children. It's one very good way to externalize anyway. 11:13 Erin: Yeah, I like that. The exposure of the. Maybe, maybe the lie of logic or the consequences of logic. She's trying to expose what is corrupt in Jason's own behavior, what his behavior actually signifies. He's telling himself, right, that he's doing this for logical ends, but he's taking an irrational route, perhaps, or not irrational, I suppose, an immoral route to get to his end, which is, as we've already discussed to this, this higher status in society that he desires because he's a social climber. And it seems to me Medea, therefore, you know, if her goal is maybe a two pronged one, I think it's to hurt Jason because he has humiliated her, and also to show that she's not weak, which is basically an extension of revenge against the humiliation visited on her. So those I think are pretty rational ends for me. Okay, I want to hurt someone who hurt me. But the means by which she does this is irrational. So killing the kids so that she hurts even herself in order to get back at someone. 12:21 Wes: Well, why is hurting someone who hurts you rational? 12:25 Erin: Well, I suppose it's understandable. 12:28 Wes: Destructive. 12:29 Erin: Okay. Yeah, so. So you don't think that's rational at all? I mean, I. I guess I don't mean like capital R rational. I mean like it's. 12:34 Wes: Well, it's natural. It's natural to have that feeling. Yeah. Okay. 12:37 Erin: I mean, it's more natural because it's truer to a kind of a real emotion than Jason is being. And that. That's kind of. I think the contrast. One of the contrasts that I want to draw is that Jason is kind of lying to himself. And in a way, he's. We've already suggested this, that he's acting as though emotions don't matter at all. And though Medea's goals are kind, emotional goals, there's something truer, I think, about what she's trying to accomplish or. Or maybe not. I mean, you know, obviously they're. They're both terrible. Like, we've, We've already said this, but I think there's something of a corrective about what Medea does that is like a lesson that Jason has to learn in a. In a way. And she's. And she's. She's one hell of a teacher. So. So she functions as a kind of a thematic corrective to his banishment of. Of emotion and feelings from his considerations. Something like that. 13:30 Wes: Yeah. I mean, I think we have to. So for each of the categories, Eros and reason and Pride, Honor, spiritedness, whatever you want to call it, from the critical standpoint, we treat them as neutral. So we don't presume that rationality is the right way to go. We don't presume that love is the right way to go. Because presumably Euripides is critiquing the rosy picture of rationality that his contemporaries seem to have bought into. So he wants to look at the dark side of quote, unquote, rationality. And in that sense, maybe rationality, too much rationality, looks unreasonable because it's not plugged into social reality. Jason ignores that it's illogical to ignore the fact that someone is going to be hurt, that their pride is going to be wounded, and that they're going to be otherwise hurt by your own behaviors. You can have all the rationality in the world, but if you can't get into the head of another person, there's a data point, an important data point that's missing. Right. If you can't empathize fully, then you don't have the data right to. Or the premises to plug into your syllogism or algorithm in order to get the right output. So if Jason is disconnected from emotional and social reality, he can be as rational as he likes, and it's not going to do him any good. And maybe part of the lesson is to. Not just for Jason, but for all of us, is to Give us a very visual, very, very startling and concrete representation of those other sides of our nature and the fact that they cannot be ignored. And Jason's own goals, of course, are quite right. It's not as if. As if he's any different. Different from Medea in the sense that he may or may not be after a young hottie, may or may not be after love. He disputes that. He certainly is after his legacy. Right. So he's also after pride and honor. He says he's after security, which. That's his excuse, really. Right. I'm just trying to get security for both of us. Because his legacy in terms of children with the new wife, that doesn't help Medea any. And he can't harp on that too much. Look, I'm doing a great. Medea's only benefit out of the. He can get all kinds of status embellishment through his connection to the royal family. She gets nothing. In fact, she gets the opp…

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Love Dishonored in Euripides’ “Medea” (Part 4) Sep 30, 2024

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Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Ancient Greece’s most notorious battle of the sexes, and Euripides’ rumination on the question of whether the Athenian ideals of rationality and moderation sufficiently honor the instinctual side of human nature. Upcoming Episodes: “A New Leaf” (Elaine May), “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice” Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. Also from Wes: Curtain Times, a calendar of Boston theatre, classical, talks and readings. Follow:Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:19 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. 0:32 Wes: Hey, welcome to part four of our discussion of Euripides Medea. We just got done talking about Medea making her revenge plans and the chorus sort of thematizing that as a revenge of women against men, not just Medea against Jason. They're a bit conflicted about it. What seems to appeal to the chorus of women is is this idea of vindicating women. And that's the point where Jason enters and at this point we are on page 62 of the Davie translation. He's going to portray himself as this very calm and collected and cool and beneficent person, as opposed to her being out of control and crazy. Cast himself as practical and concerned about security and material well being and the willingness to submit to authority, in this case the king. She in turn will fight back by casting him as spineless, ungrateful for her help, and a violator of oaths. So which is it? Which one is it? Is he just a calm, practical guy or is he? 1:43 Erin: Wes, is now a good time to tell you that I'VE been radicalized by the chorus, so I'm taking over from now on. You can just be quiet. No. Yeah. Okay. I love when he comes in. 1:57 Wes: It's great. There's a surly temper. 1:59 Erin: Is incurable evil? Yeah. 2:01 Wes: Is that what you're talking about? 2:04 Erin: Yeah, he's quite. I mean, he's quite sarcastic. No, I'm envisioning all of this. Or. Or in my mind's ear, I'm hearing it as him being like, please, you know, continue to tell the world about that arch criminal Jason. Yeah, he's a piece of work. Yeah. 2:19 Wes: I. The. My. Yeah. I have this same reaction. I. When I see. Because sarcasm is quite rare in my experience in ancient Greek literature. And when you see it, it's like, wow, someone is being scathingly sarcastic. I mean, listeners can correct me if I'm wrong. People who have. Sure, there are people who've read more than I have, but that's been my. My experience of it. So I almost like, wow, that's quite something. Yeah. 2:42 Erin: It immediately makes him deeply unlikable. It's not fun sarcasm. This is not great. And, you know, we've been set up to, like, be really against this guy, not only because of the mythology, but because of the really clear sympathies of the other characters, not just Medea. So, you know, he talks of her speaking against the royal house. So again, we get. You know, we're getting a lot of metonyms all the time, but I really like when she sort of lays out her case and also tells him what she believes are his real motivations. So first we get a history of their relationship from her perspective. So I have. Oh, now I know what word it was. I have in the. In the margins. Preach. 3:23 Wes: Preach. 3:25 Erin: You owe your life to me. I wrote preach. 3:27 Wes: Okay, well, before you preach, I just want to say he ends his speech with this very. Don't silence Jason, Erin. Sorry, Jason shall not be silenced. 3:36 Erin: Slinking away. 3:36 Wes: But to say something critical, he. He ends his speech with this very smarmy, passive aggressive, you know. 3:44 Erin: Oh, yes. 3:45 Wes: Even if you hate me, I could never wish you anything but good. After berating her and talking about her stupid attitude and her, you know, surly Temple temper. Shirley Temple. It's a good choice. 4:00 Erin: That's an alcoholic Shirley Temple with, like, bourbon. 4:05 Wes: That's right. I have a Surly Temple. You want a Shirley Temple? No, I want the alcoholic version of the Surly Temple. 4:13 Erin: This is scotch, probably. 4:16 Wes: I'm feeling not so much like Shirley today, a little bit more like Surly Shirley. You can't be serious. Sorry. So I just wanted to set that stage for. Yeah, so go ahead with her side of this. 4:29 Erin: Yeah, that's a really important part. I have three exclamation points and several frowny faces next to him. This is really quite cathartic. And, you know, she. 4:41 Wes: She. 4:41 Erin: I love this. This moment right at the beginning where she says that she thanks him for his visit. She says, my heart will gain some relief once I have told you what I think of you. And further, my words will make painful listening for you. It's like, you know, all she really wants is closure. Right. This is. 4:57 Wes: And this is. Right. And this is analogous to poison, by the way. So this would be a better form of poison if he could take it. It might sicken him a little bit, but if he could hear it, it might persuade him and make the use of literal poison less necessary. But. Sorry, go ahead. 5:13 Erin: Yeah, so just to kind of outline this speech, she. She goes back through the mythology, you know, and talks about how I betrayed my own father, my own family, to come here with you to Iolkis under Pelion, showing more eagerness than sense. That's certainly true. Yet you have betrayed me, you unfeeling monster. More to back up your reading of him. You have taken a new wife, though we have children of our own. For if you still had no sons, it would be something I could forgive. This desire you have for a new bride, if you had a Henry VIII style motivation, maybe I'd be able to forgive you. But you don't. And then she knows that, or she feels that he no longer loves her and that a lot of this is motivated by his lust for Creusa. Because she says, you know, if I had. I can't. I will confide in you as if I had your love. In other words, I don't anymore. And she says, where am I to turn now? You know, I can't go anywhere. 6:03 Wes: Where. 6:03 Erin: Where shall I go? What shall I do? And he says, frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. And she ends. This is my favorite part. Maybe she ends by saying, oh, Zeus, why is it you have given men clear ways of testing whether gold is counterfeit, but when it comes to men, the body carries no stamp of nature for distinguishing bad from good. You know, along the lines of things we already said in part three? But, you know, I really like that she can't fall in love based on. Again, this works if he's really handsome and stuff, right? But like the body, basically, she's fallen in lust with him. And there's no way to tell your body. Okay. And this is not an emotionally astute man, so forget it. She's. She's a slave to her passions, and now she's regretting it. 6:50 Wes: Yeah. I don't know if the ancient Greek of what men is translating there, if it's anthropos, which would mean human beings in general, or I think, is it a Nair? A Nair would be the word for men, but so specifically. But yeah, but it's a really. Regardless, it's an interesting predicament that we're all in, which is that we are, in a way, trying to read the signs. We are engaged in the fortune telling or divination when it comes to other people. And the signs are supposed to be indications of character, and they are quite subtle and interesting. Right. It's. It's what they say, but it's also how they say it, the tone of what they say. And it's body language and facial expression. Everything that might stamp someone. Right. Is that the word she uses? 7:39 Erin: Yes. 7:40 Wes: You know, everything that might stamp someone as often. And often, of course, there are people who are good at. At portraying a character which is not really what's there on the inside. The truth in general, I think will out. Obviously, you know, the longer you're with someone, you find out eventually. But, yeah, really, really great line. And then his response, which. This is another great line. So he does have some really great lines. I must trim the edges of my sail to run before the tempest of your noisy protestations. God, I just. You just. Just for our audience, you just rolled your eyes. 8:18 Erin: Wes is writing all down. Like, next time I want to really insult a woman, I'm going to pull some of these out. I'm going to trim myself. No. 8:26 Wes: So great little. Great little metaphor. And I just imagine Euripides writing that and thinking, yeah, I'm good. 8:32 Erin: I'm good. I love when he says, where you did give assistance, it was of some benefit. 8:40 Wes: Yes. So, yes, great, great, great characterization in this dialogue. Yeah. 8:46 Erin: But in fact, in saving me, you gained more than you gave, as I shall tell. Stay tuned for more. In the first place, instead of an uncivilized country, your dwelling is now the land of Greece, where you have come to know justice and the use of law instead of being subject to force. Oh, really, Jason? This is justice? Thanks a lot. Where I come from, people at least stay true to their word. But I don't know, maybe you haven't heard of that in Greece. Okay, 9:13 Wes: this is good. You Should. You could do a rewrite. You could do. 9:16 Erin: I could do a dramatic reading of this entirely. Yeah. This is. I love this play. Like, there is not psychology like this. I don't think in any other, you know, Sophocles and Aeschylus, it's just not the same. This is why this is my favorite. He makes me so mad. And it's rare for me to have an emotional reaction like this to an ancient Greek mythological figure. Right. 9:39 Wes: He'll say, you know, you became famous for your special gifts here. Which he suggests is not something she could do in an uncivilized country, which I don't think makes much sense. But he says he acted like a true friend to her in getting married and to his children, which is an interesting way to put it. And then he says, look, this is a huge stroke of luck to be able to marry the king's daughter. I'm not doing it because I'm out of love or that I want more sons. I just want to live comfortable. And I want us to live comfortable. I'm doing it for us, honey. I'm doing this for us. It's good planning. So again, he characterizes all of this as just very practical, very ordinary. What are you worried about? You're just jealous. And then he makes his complaint against women. The world should be rid of women. There should be some other way to reproduce. 10:30 Erin: Well, first he yells at her to calm down. Every woman's favorite thing. 10:34 Wes: Really? Give me the exact line. 10:36 Erin: That's 5. 51. Medea reacts angrily. No, calm down. 10:41 Wes: Okay. Right. He doesn't. 10:44 Erin: This guy hits every single thing. And he even says, and I quote, the fact is that you women have reached the point where you think your happiness is complete when love smiles on you. But should some misfortune mar that love, you take all that is good and beautiful in life and turn it into grounds for bitter hatred. I mean, I just. I love the fact that he says, you women, you always do that. It's like an episode of Designing Women where. I don't know if you've ever watched 11:11 Wes: that show, but, like, not in a long time. But I never watched much of it. 11:16 Erin: Yeah, that is like one of my favorite. I feel like you would really love that show. Sometimes it's a little much, but one of the main characters played by Dixie Carter, Julia Sugarbaker, she always goes on these rants and she has her real life husband plays her boyfriend. And there's this exchange where they're arguing, they're having a battle of the sexes thing, and he's like, you women. And she just, like, gets enraged and starts going after him. And it's really fun. He's a great guy in the show and a great. It's not anything like this. They have a loving relationship. But. But the. 11:45 Wes: The. 11:45 Erin: For. I'm just saying the formula, like, for everything is right here. This is just such a strange sentence, actually, when you look at it. So what is he saying? You. When you think your happiness is complete is when you have love. But then if someone takes away that. That love, then you ruin your life and. And become really mad about it. It's like, well, that sounds logical to me. I don't know. You know, he's. 12:12 Wes: He's criticizing the idea of putting everything into the libidinal. 12:17 Erin: Right. 12:18 Wes: As opposed to what Freud would call ego instincts. So there's security, safety, taking care of oneself, practical stuff, being handy around the house. Jason's wearing a tool belt at this point. 12:30 Erin: Oh, please. She fixes everything. 12:33 Wes: And then there is passion. And so there's. Right. So there's this energy that's kind of pointed outward toward the world towards objects of one's passion, towards people in particular. And then there's questing, and then there's. Yeah. Social climbing and, you know, making sure they have money and can buy a Lexus and have high status in society and all that. So, you know, that's another aspect of the interesting conflict that's being represented here. And he's not just in this, in a way. He's not just abdicating love in her eyes. He's abdicating honor and oaths. Right. He's violating his oaths and behaving dishonorably and, of course, betraying her. She. And she uses this word honorable. I think there's something about the dishonor of it. Him trying to take, you might call it sleazy, but behavior which is essentially dishonorable and cast it as something. This is just ordinary practicality. And what are you talking about? That really enrages her. 13:33 Erin: Yeah, And I like the fact that there is also, you know, if we're to take seriously, which I do, the idea that what is also motivating this is lust for Creusa, then of course, that thread makes this speech hypocritical as well. And he's already invoked this idea of her own fame and her special gifts, becoming famous among the Greeks. He will repeatedly make claims to either giving her certain benefits, which he, in the process of this place, events, is actively undoing. 14:05 Wes: Right. 14:06 Erin: Well, I brought you here. You should be Grateful to me. Well, he's about to do something that is ensuring her exile. Right. Well, I made you famous and I made you your special gifts. Well, he's about to vacate this advantage she gave her by basically casting her to the four winds so that she'll become obliterated. Right, Right. So there's a hypocrisy here. When he mentions what he did for her, he's also, by that same token, undoing it with this action that he's taken. When he mentions the things that are wrong with her, they're also the same thing is also, at the same time wrong with him. And, you know, he. He is trying to have everything both ways. She is, too. I mean, she talks about how the criminal with a gift for speaking deserves the worst of punishments. Right. Of course. That's. That's her. You know, Jason isn't as good as a speaker. Well, he's just. 14:56 Wes: Yeah, she's responding to the I must trim the edges of my sail and all his. You know, at a rhetorical level, he's given a fancy speech, sure. 15:03 Erin: But of course, he's.…

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