Subtext: Conversations about Classic Books and Films

A close reading of Elizabeth Bishop’s map-like imagination as it shifts between wide views and intimate detail. They trace sensory shifts into smell, sound, and moonlit wildness. The bus journey becomes a space for shared dreams, memory, and a sudden animal appearance that upends reverie. Themes of scale, mortality, and maternal return thread through their lively discussion.

A close look at Elizabeth Bishop's map-like imagination and how maps shape poetic perspective. Short anecdotes about moose set a playful tone before a full reading of "The Moose." Careful attention to form, composition history, and Nova Scotia roots frames a scene-by-scene close reading of imagery, viewpoint shifts, and sensory detail.

A playful dive into The Mummy (1999) that treats curses like conspiracy theories and cinema as the embalming of the past. They contrast solvable mysteries with unknowable colonial anxieties and unpack resurrection as obsessive bargain. Bookish curiosity, romantic archetypes, and an undead taxonomy that links memory, guilt, and cultural haunting all get short, lively treatment.

They unpack the mummy as both colonial invention and romantic monster. They debate the film’s playful tone and why the creature rarely feels truly scary. They trace mummification, canopic jars, and preservation’s strange costs. They discuss love, obsession, and how museums and Egyptology reflect exploitation and origin myths.

A close reading of Waiting for Godot that probes expectancy, salvation, and why anticipation can be more meaningful than resolution. They trace the tramp comedy lineage from Chaplin to Laurel and Hardy and unpack suicidal banter as dark comic relief. Language, names, and shifting power dynamics get tight scrutiny. Pozzo and Lucky offer vaudeville parody, mortality, and a collapsing sense of time.

They toss around theories about who Godot might be and why expectancy drives the play. The conversation explores comic vaudeville beats versus somber staging and how performance choices reshape meaning. They probe repetition, nothingness, and theatrical suspense as themes. Biblical echoes, the tramp archetype, and meta-theatre readings round out their lively discussion.

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the cult classic “Withnail and I,” and whether our capacity for sublimation suffers less from the crisis of modernity than from our attempts to transcend it. Upcoming Episodes: Waiting for Godot, The Mummy 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 0:11 Wes: Welcome to part two of our discussion of Withnail and I. We just got done discussing Danny and some of his commentary and the parallel between the end of the friendship between Withnail and Marwood and the end of the 60s thought we'd move on to the character of Monty and ultimately to a little bit what I want to discuss about romanticism and the urban versus the rural divide. But I thought maybe we should just start with Monty, since he's such a great character. They go, so Monty's with Nail's uncle and they go to his place to get the key to the cottage. Their solution? They're going to solve everything by going out into the country. Little do we know, but behind the scenes, Withnail has actually kind of sold marwood to the uncle, who's promised him some action if they can get the key, which sets up Monty's coming out to the countryside to intrude on them. Yeah, every scene with Monty in it is just fabulous. And some of the dialogue, his pomposity and then, as you mentioned before, double entendre. So, for instance, do you like vegetables? I've always been fond of root crops, but I only started to grow last summer. I happen to think the cauliflower more beautiful than the rose. Withnail mentions geraniums. Monty says, little traitors. I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium. The carrot has mystery. Flowers are essentially tarts, prostitutes for the bees. There is, you will agree, a certain je ne sais quoi, something very special about a firm young carrot do help you anyway. 1:55 Erin: Yeah, what I love about his place is you look around the room and you realize that there's cauliflower in a vase rather than flowers, and then other vegetables are decorating the room in various places. 2:07 Wes: So. 2:07 Erin: Yeah, and it's very old fashioned English looking. So it sort of combines the brocade and the tapestries and the medieval looking England with gardening and having all these vegetables around and stuff. So he's sort of a synthesis of these wonderful English cultural touchstones in this one room. I think that when he says little traitors to Withnail's idea that he grows geraniums, I think he's calling Withnail a traitor for growing flowers. 2:39 Wes: Oh, I thought he was calling the geraniums traitors. 2:42 Erin: I wasn't sure about that. Yeah, the way that he said it, I thought it could be that. That they're traitors for growing geraniums. So there's something traitorous to one's sex about being interested in women. 2:54 Wes: Oh, yeah. 2:55 Erin: You know, that was the symbolic implication I took. 2:58 Wes: No, I think that's a good surmise. 3:01 Erin: One Withnail is going to be a pimp of Marwood just as he's a pimp, you know, over his geranium patch. Or whatever. But there's a lot about root vegetable. You know, I was thinking there's a lot about peeing in the film. There's a lot about time. We've covered all the. All the other drugs and stuff like that. But then there's a good bit about carrots. There will even be a marijuana carrot of sorts. Yeah. And he's cooking onions. He ends up killing the rats with onions. So more root vegetables. 3:29 Wes: Didn't think of that. Yeah. So when Monty comes out to the country, Right. So initially they hear him outside and they're afraid because they're worried about the poacher at this point, little do they know Monty is, at least for Marwood, the one that they should actually be afraid of. And then, of course, the, you know, they find out it's Monty ultimately. And then the next morning, our sense of what the cottage is, is transformed. I think it is almost like a rebirth because when they first get to the cottage, they've come from their squalid flat in London, Camden Town. And of course, they're telling everyone they're, you know, in the. And the boondocks that they're not. It's not the boondocks. That's not the right term for it. But anyway, in the countryside that they're not actually Londoners, so that they won't be hated for being Londoners. But what I think they would get, thought they would get out of that has turned out to be very disappointing. You get some scenes where Marwood can appreciate the countryside, but that's a very small part of it. They end up at a cottage that there's no heat and there's no water and they're burning fire furniture to get by and they don't have any food. And ultimately the farmer brings them a chicken they have to kill and then cook in the oven seated in a seated position. 4:48 Erin: But like unaccommodated man. 4:50 Wes: Yeah. 4:51 Erin: Poor bare forked animal. 4:54 Wes: Yeah. 4:55 Erin: This is. Again, they're a little shrunken down person. They can deal with it seems they could strangle a chicken. 5:01 Wes: Right. Although Withnail fantasizes about having shot it and then is very fond of the gun while they're there and they go out fishing to shoot fish. It sort of becomes a right. Survival's once again at stake. You get the sense in the beginning of the film it's desperate and their very survival is at stake because of the condition of the flat and the fact that they have no money. And then they get to the countryside and it's the same thing. Although the contrast with how things go once Monty's there. Making them breakfast in the morning gives you the impression that, okay, this is self imposed. They just bring the squalor and the deprivation with them. They're at a perfectly fine cottage. It is what it is. It's in the countryside. But the sense of it having been so dire is really about them. So in the morning, there's Monty making up a really nice breakfast. And they, of course, could have just gone, I guess, grocery shopping at any time. 6:00 Erin: Well, that's. That's the one thing. Yes, definitely, and certainly they could do much better. But I also wondered how much of it had to do with the lack of money and preparation, not understanding what was in the cottage or what wasn't in the cottage. Monty's come up with a bunch of things in the car, it seems, but, yeah, they're just. They're just sort of hopeless when Monty's there. Just immediately becomes really cozy and lovely and. Yeah. And I think there's something too, about. As I mentioned, Monty's apartment in London is. Or his house in London, I guess, is a fantasy of Englishness. And then they come up to the cottage and the cottage has portraits of George V and Mary of Teck on either side of the fireplace. So there's a. It's an older England that they've gone into. They go into the Crow and Crown, I think it is. It's the pub where they meet the. The poacher and the old English army man, who himself is, you know, very much a type similar to the. The guy I love in the Brendan Fraser Mummy, the 1999 mummy, which we should cover on the podcast at some point. It's one of my favorites. You know, the old guy, the old military man who's living out this fantasy, still believing that he's engaged in a war or something like that, who lies 7:12 Wes: about having been in the military. 7:14 Erin: Withnail with nail. Yeah. 7:16 Wes: And he says, oh, yeah, I could tell. And then, yeah. Asks where he's stationed. He's like, Ireland. He's like, oh, crack at the Mick. 7:24 Erin: Crack at the Mick. Which I take to be, you know, there's, you know, Withnail's stories, which he repeatedly invents, do show tremendous aptitude as an actor. He's always playing a role or putting on a kind of a disguise. But then also, the way that Withnail sort of advances the plot or the improvised plot twists that he comes up with do seem very associative. I took that to mean that he or I took the Ireland idea as being Adopted from the Irish guy that had confronted them in the pub in Camden. So that he's getting back at the Irish somehow by imagining this military past where he used to just. Right. So there's a wish fulfillment element to all of his little improvisations, no matter how ridiculous they are. He also says he's currently a journalist and that they're doing a story on the. On the town and small town life. 8:20 Wes: Right, right. 8:20 Erin: And then later he says that they're going to set a movie there, which is, you know, kind of more on the nose wish fulfillment. 8:26 Wes: But we are multi millionaires. 8:29 Erin: We're multimillionaires. Right. Which maybe Withnail is. He just can't access any of the money because his father's alive, withholding it from him. 8:38 Wes: Yeah. We get the sense that he's going to end up all right financially if he's still alive. And in a way, like his uncle. Right. His uncle had aspirations as well when younger and now he's fine, he's gotten his money from somewhere, but. 8:51 Erin: Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah. So maybe Monty is more psychologically, perhaps, just as threatening to Withnail as to Marwood. Not quite, but almost. Oh, yeah. So in the crow and crown, there are pictures of Elizabeth and Philip on the walls and there's an image of her coronation garb. So that would be the 50s. It is like they've stepped back in time. So there's something. If they're flat is the 60s and they have to escape the flat in order to find someplace that hasn't been destroyed by them in some way. 9:24 Wes: And I think that's pre modern. Right. So this is part of the romanticism. It's modernity and the urban are alienated and I'm going to find less alienated situation in the countryside with the simple folk and in being connected to nature and in a way going back in time. Which sounds like the point you're trying to make. Yeah. 9:50 Erin: It's as if the fantasy of the 60s, we're sort of seeing the reality of it. I mean, it could be that this is representative of 69 and therefore the failure of the promise of the 60s. Or this flat represents the entire decade and the fact that it's actually been downhill from the social fabric. And yes, the sort of fanciful or the loose grip on reality that the military guy represents, but still functioning and connected to real life in terms of just active, practical things like farming. That the 60s are being represented maybe as some kind of aberration in all of this. 10:29 Wes: Well, I think that the countryside doesn't turn out to be such a great thing after all. And partly, as I mentioned, I think they bring their problems with them, of course, but also we get the sense that the natural, which is supposed to be better, turns out to have its own sinister undercurrents. So, right, the bull, there's the randy bull. So it's not all great being out there in nature. There's a sexual power to nature which can be persecutory. The natural is about what grows and ultimately about the sexual. Monty is interested in carrots not just because they represent penises and not just because he's obese and likes to eat, but. Right. He's interested in the romantic connection to nature, which is also a kind of connection to sex, I think. So they're going to be just as fearful of, say, the poacher, although he turns out to be more benevolent and initially afraid that the poacher is trying to break into the house and all that stuff. But what I'm trying to say is that. And in the figure of Monty himself, I think you get romanticism as representative as having the sinister exploitative undercurrent. So just to give an example of some of Monty's great speeches, where right in that breakfast in the morning, it seems like everything is now coming up roses. Everything is transformed. It feels like the vacation that they wanted might be coming together because they have a nice breakfast. But then we start to get Monty's stuff. He says the old order changeth, yielding place to new. And God fulfills himself in many ways. And soon, I suppose I shall be swept away by some vulgar little tumor. Some vulgar little tumor. I love that. Oh, my boys, my boys. We're at the end of an age. We live in a land of weather forecasts and breakfasts that set in, shat on by Tories, shoveled up by labor. And here we are, we three, perhaps the last island of beauty in the world. Sounds a little bit Matthew Arnold esque. 12:34 Erin: Let us be true to one another. 12:36 Wes: Right, Right. Yeah, exactly. And he's going to hit on Marwood. What else from the countryside? When they're walking in the countryside and he's talking about they do their thing where they want the finest wines known to humanity of a grapevine. So later at dinner, surrounded by trees in nature, one feels a glorious stirring of the senses, a rejection of the poisonous inhibition and a fecund motion of the soul. All the glorious trials of youth, dear boy. Because Marwood makes a comment about the fact that the squalidness of the cottage interferes with the pleasure. He's like all the glorious trials of youth, dear boy. When I was a lad, I'd rocket off on my tandem with Wrigglesworth and we'd just ride and ride and at night we'd find some barn and fall asleep with the perfumes of nature sighing on our skin. Yeah, just great, great stuff. But in the end, right, all of that, what does Monty represent? He's given up on ambition, he tells us, but he looks at it with a certain kind of nostalgia and resignation. He's nostalgic also about the loves of his youth and he's representative of what might happen to Withnail after giving up. But also I think he's representative of the sinister undercurrent of romanticism and the countryside, which is that it's not all just carrots and roses, carrots and geraniums. 14:08 Erin: It's also stick. 14:09 Wes: There's, you know, the natural world is dangerous, it's violent, it's driven by sexual instinct. All of that stuff comes out in Monty. 14:18 Erin: He's a bit sad, you know, the way that he leaves and all of that. I mean, he's been humiliated kind of because of Withnail. But, you know, when I say, let us be true to one another, he does have a kind of. His singular moral code seems to be faithfulness and so lets Marwood off the hook because he doesn't want Marwood to be unfaithful, untrue. 14:38 Wes: I mean, he does try to rape him, essentially, 14:44 Erin: but he has stopped. 14:45 Wes: I mean, he does have some burglary, 14:48 Erin: he does have some, some more than natural, you know, he has some guardrails. Yeah, I thought, I thought a little bit about, about the fact that they're in the Lake District and what role Capital R Romanticism is playing here. Because one would think that this is a place which historically, for the last couple hundred years anyway, hasn't been totally devoid of artistic types. You know, I love the moment when Withnail yells up at the sky in that kind of Caspar David Friedrich beautiful vista, where he says, I'm gonna be a star. So I don't know what to make of all of that or that, that particular moment where rather than appreciation of the grandeur of nature, he feels defiant and he's going to be part of the cosmos in a purely self serving way, which then the idea of a star comes back in the Hamlet soliloquy at the end of the film where it turns sour for him. But yeah, he has a delusion of grandeur in this moment. That he's going to get the better of all of these men who have been oppressing him, you know, as if, like, you could fight a bully with this idea that you're gonna be a famous actor. But, yeah, I don't know. I was trying to reconcile all of that, what Wordsworth and Coleridge have to do, maybe with Marwood and Withnail, if the two of them are like a degraded version of Wordsworth and Coleridge, who themselves were friends living in the Lake District, who ended up having, you know, sort of difficult at times, artistic relationship. The King Henry in Penrith is another great pub name that they go to. Another historical English emblem of masculinity. If it's Henry VIII or some other Henrys, but especially Henry vii, they've gone into town to buy Wellington's. But then, of course, they take the money and immediately squander it on booze, which seems, you know, really. They really seem beyond help to me in that moment because I realize they want to get away from Monty and just be without him for a while. But he has all that great wine back at the cottage, so why they would need to immediately squander this money on more booze is. It's a frustrating moment for me. So anyway, they go to this pub, the King Henry. They get kicked out. They go into the Penrith Tea Rooms. And then it's just old people. It's just all these old people that are having tea and want them out and they're trying to stay, saying that they're multi millionaires, that they're working on a film up here. The owner wants to call the police on them and says, we'll keep them here until they arrive. The police arrive. Marwood and Withnail just then just walk out. They just get away because they can't possibly be held back by these old guys. So Monty shows up in the. 17:38 Wes: In the car. 17:39 Erin: Yeah, in the Rolls, which, you know, maybe they are multi millionaires. Maybe you should have given them some cakes. 17:47 Wes: Withnail says, we'll be back. 17:49 Erin: Yeah. Have you been to the Lake District? 17:52 Wes: No. 17:53 Erin: I've been to some towns like this in England and in Scotland, and if you go into some of these places, there is. It is just like an older clientele. 18:01 Wes: Dodgy older. 18:03 Erin: They're great for that reason, but I never came roaring drunk into one, so I never had a bad time. 18:10 Wes: Have you ever gone roaring drunk into a stodgy establishment where you shouldn't be roaring drunk? 18:17 Erin: No. 18:18 Wes: Yeah. I can't remember if I. You know, I probably did, but I can't remember. 18:23 Erin: That's a great thing about these things. They take care of themselves. The embarrassment just goes away. 18:29 Wes: I know my friend Lebec and I used to quote that bring us the finest wines known to humanity. Frequently. 18:38 Erin: Yeah. And then this interesting thing with Monty happens where he admonishes Marwood, which I think must be for squandering the money, you know, it must have been. 18:49 Wes: Yeah. Monty's very upset with them. 18:51 Erin: Must be because they're so drunk. 18:52 Wes: Wellingtons and. Yeah, being drunk. 18:54 Erin: Yeah, yeah. Because they were going to tell him the story that. Oh, don't worry, we'll just tell him there was a farmer's conference and there was a run on these Wellingtons or something, so. So we couldn't buy them, so we had to squander the money. But I think when he picks them up, they must be so drunk and so out of it that he could tell what's really gone on. And so, yeah, so the suggestion is that Marwood is leading Withnail astray, which made me wonder if Withnail was leading Marwood astray throughout the film. He's certainly getting him into bad situations because of his big mouth. 19:23 Wes: I see Withnail as the bad, bad influence. 19:26 Erin: He's causing problems for Marwood. But is he actually. He's not successfully leading Marwood astray? I wouldn't say. 19:34 Wes: Well, Marwood says, what about the Wellingtons? And he says, bollocks to the Wellingtons. Right. So, yeah, there are many instances where Marwood is sort of. There's a bit of a survival instinct and you know, from the beginning of the movie to the end. And it's reflected in the fact that he actually gets an acting part. He's the one who comes to realization they can't keep going on this way. And he's going to go out and get tea. And there's a funny. When they get to the cottage, there's a funny point where he's like, okay, we're going to separate into fact finding groups. Groups of one. You'll deal with the water and I'll deal with the fire. Something like that at least has some interest in practical problems and in solving them. But yeah, he frequently just. It seemed to me he'll just do. He's very fearful. And that terror, as I mentioned, comes across from the very beginning of the movie. And you see it. It's a great comic effect in both the them. But like with the guy, the Irishman who calls them ponces, just the level of fear that Marwood gives off in the bathroom looking at the graffiti, worried about being raped ultimately. But, yeah, it seems to me he operates from the position of fear and is being carried along by Withnail's libertine, debauched attitude towards life, which is something Withnail can probably afford, as you mentioned, in the long run, more than he can from a financial perspective. He's got to do something, right? Withnail, in a way, can go on to be his uncle. Right? 21:13 Erin: Yeah. But I think there's something about Marwood which is really, despite Withnail getting him into scrapes and things, which is constitutionally impervious to Withnail. I mean, remarkably so. And maybe that is ultimately down to the class difference, too, that Marwood has to be more practical, has to be more scientific word he uses, or is more keyed into reality. The thing I really don't get about Marwood is why he smiles so much at Monty, which seems so unnecessary and needlessly encouraging from the beginning, when Monty is reaching around him to get into the bags. Why he doesn't just step away out of Monty's way instead of physically allowing himself to be put in this really compromising position is very. 21:59 Wes: Yeah, Withnail calls him out on this, right? 22:01 Erin: Oh, yes, yes. Yeah. 22:02 Wes: Marwood says, I got a cramp in the mouth from grinning. Stop smiling at him. I can't help it. I'm so uptight with him, I can't stop myself. But he does a lot of that. When the Irish guy comes up to them, I think they both give off. They do that smile of terror, like this terrified smile thing where they're just deer caught in the headlights and they don't know how to do anything but smile. 22:25 Erin: Well, Withnail's way of dealing with that kind of terror seems to be to out submissive himself out, you know, like he's going to go all the way in the submission direction and sort of fawn, like when he says he has a heart condition, you know, he's going to make himself into the wimpiest wimp in the world, you know, to try to get the guy to leave him alone. And then I think Marwood learns from that. He learned something about that tactic, maybe from Withnail, but one would think that he would be a better actor and he would understand. Obviously, Withnail has created a situation where Monty believes something about Marwood, which isn't true. And in the end, Monty's humiliation is all on Withnail's head. And yet, at the same time, Marwood has also been needlessly encouraging him with this, like, weird smiling throughout the entire every single one of his interactions with Monty. And he doesn't just step out of the way. He doesn't just act as though it would just be a normal thing to step out of the way. And so it's a little frustrating to see his resignation or passivity or when he's complaining about being too high and he gets kind of whiny. It's a moment where, again, I kind of break sympathy with Marwood. I think that for somebody who has gotten an acting part as a. No, I guess not as a soldier. That was the part that he originally went for, was the soldier, but instead he's gonna be the lead, which maybe is, you know, head soldier. But anyway, somebody who was able to successfully get this part, one would think that he would have a little more gumption, is what I'm trying to say. And yet ultimately his passivity doesn't stand in the way of him getting the part. 23:56 Wes: Well, it sounds like. I mean, he wasn't necessarily passive in that aspect of his life. From my point of view, I don't find either of them sympathetic except in a comedic sense throughout the movie. I'm not. They're both so absurdly terrified of everything and everything's an emergency, you know, running out of wine. You know, as Withnail says, we've got some very distressing news. We're out of wine. As he's pouring himself the last cup of wine. 24:26 Erin: Well, but Marwood is the one we're supposed to identify with to a certain extent. Right. We get his interiority. We. 24:31 Wes: Yeah, a bit more. But I think your point is well taken. It's kind of hard to. He's got some of the seeds of more of a more realistic orientation towards the world and towards a bit of a survival instinct and something that's working against self destructiveness. Right. Withnails is a force of pure destructiveness and self destructiveness. And Marwood seems to have been very induced by that and is almost as bad in many ways. Not as angry, not as envious and more passive than. Than Withnail, but in a similar psychologically abject state. Right. We don't see Marwood transformed as a character. We don't get to really see the arc. It all happens behind the scenes. He's planted the seeds with an audition, and in the end he gets the part and cuts his hair and leaves. And so that's the moment where he actually does something that's not completely passive. He's going to leave with nail and he's not going to even let him walk him all the way to the station. That's the first time I think he really genuinely asserts himself in the film. 25:41 Erin: I think there is a slight moment of transformation when Monty leaves and leaves that note for them and Marwood reads it and feels quite sorry for him. 25:50 Wes: Oh, yeah, yeah. 25:51 Erin: He tells Withnail, you'll suffer for this. What you have done will have to be paid for. And then it is immediately paid for by the knock on the door, because it's the telegram telling him, Right. That he's gotten the part. 26:04 Wes: Good point. Yeah. When he tells off. Yeah, that's the big. 26:07 Erin: Yeah, yeah. 26:08 Wes: It's a big deal. When he really, really tells off Withnail. Yeah, that is a big change. 26:13 Erin: Yeah, you're right. Then he cuts his hair and refuses the drink, says that he doesn't have time. Right. This is another return to the time motif because Withnail has been driving furiously to get to London. He keeps saying that he's making time over and over again. Again, this idea that if he speeds in the car, you know, this connection to speeding. But of course, as always happens, you have to pay for it. Just like the description you read in part one of Marwood talking about speed, that eventually it catches up with you and seeps through your pores or something like that. In this, in the same way, Withnail is stopped by the police. And then ultimately, of course, getting arrested takes a lot more time, so you might as well have gone the speed limit or something. 26:57 Wes: Richard E. Grant had never. I don't know if he had never had a drink, but he had never been drunk and was a teetotaler. 27:03 Erin: Oh, no way. That's so funny. 27:06 Wes: Yeah, so Bruce Robinson, the director, writer and director of the movie, had him, insisted that he experienced being drunk. And so they got him very drunk until he vomited. You can see there's a little 20 minute documentary online if people want to look at it and see the actors talking about all of this. Yeah. So Robinson, in that documentary, talks about what a great job he thought that Grant did, pretending to be drunk and then pretending to be drunk, trying to pretend to not be drunk. Like when they get stopped by the cops. And he gives that look to the. Just the look on his face that he gives to the cops. And when he says, I've only had a few ales, they open the door and he practically falls out of the car because he's leaning so heavily in the door. So sorry to interrupt you, but I wanted to put in that little tidbit about. And Richard E. Grant is so great in this. 27:55 Erin: Yeah, he Is. Yeah, yeah, he says, you know, Marwood says, I'll be late. You know, I have to go to the station. I'll be late. And Withnail says, there's always time for a drink. This is the final part of the film, and Marwood insists that he doesn't have time. So he's gotten out of the tractor beam of. Withnail squandering time or, you know, wasting time. He's been able to not. Not waste time anymore and get out of this cycle or whatever. And then with Nell, ends with a Hamlet soliloquy which begins, I have of late, but wherefore I know not lost all my mirth. So there's this idea of lateness and having run out of time inherent in the beginning of that speech. And then he talks about the roof fretted with golden fire and how that's all nothing, so that he seems to have lost his. This is almost like his parting speech where he, like Monty, knows that he will not play the Dane. And being a star, being the golden fire and the hanging firmament is not going to be possible for him or no longer meaningful to him. 28:54 Wes: It seems man delights not me. No, nor women neither. Nor women neither. Speaking to your point about the lack of women in the film and any romantic interests for that matter, I don't 29:06 Erin: mean to make too fine a point of that, but I think there's something really sinister about that. The lack of interest in women or discussion of women at all. 29:13 Wes: Well, it goes along with drinking lighter fluid. There's a whole collection of related sinister things. 29:20 Erin: Right. What goes along, too with, I think, creative stagnancy. I wanted to talk because him saying this speech, I guess, to the wolves reminds me of the various. Just of the names in the film. So we never get Marwood. Right. It's just on. I looked it up. How come the character's name is Marwood in this script that you sent me and it appears on a telegram. That's the only way that we know that his name is Marwood. 29:47 Wes: So the original screenplay has Marwood as the name, but I don't know if they put that in after the fact. But as you can buy it, like, if you buy the original screenplay, it'll say Marwood. It was on movies and materials related to the film during promotion. I don't know. But, yeah, it's purposefully. It doesn't come up in the movie. Is it really on the telegram? 30:08 Erin: I don't know. It just. That's what AI thinks. So take it, you know, for what it's worth. 30:14 Wes: Yeah, I think that might be a question. But anyway. Yeah. Purposefully. Right. Yeah. We don't. He's just I. Not Marwood. 30:21 Erin: Right. Well, you know, it's interesting because it is a. Like Withnail. You know, it's kind of a compound name. And so it got me thinking about names because the M is, you know, Withnail is, in a way, that upside down version of Marwood, just with the m and the W, I mean to say. And they're both. They're both compound words. 30:40 Wes: And then nail on wood and. 30:42 Erin: Yeah, right, right. Yes, that. And then also the farmer. Remember when they're trying to say, oh, don't you know, Montague Withnail, who lives in this cottage? And he's. He says, no, that guy. I think his name is French. And he calls him Adrian de la Touche, which is really, really good. But anyway, I looked up all of this because I was just interested in. So Montague means pointed mountain. And the transliteration, even in the closed caption on the Criterion Channel's version of Withnail and I, which is how I watched the movie, the transliteration of 31:21 Wes: Sisters with your captions. 31:23 Erin: No, no, I turned. No, I don't watch anything with closed caption. I turned it on to make sure that I got this right. And so he says, I. I seen a fat man, London type, queer sort. I think his name's French, or summit. And it transliterates his accent as S U M M I T. So his name is Montague. Right. Which means pointed mountain. And then the transliteration is Summit, which is really apt and then I looked up De la Touche. Touch. What would. What's that about? So it means of the touch and touch, or Touche means small patch of trees of the small wood or thicket. So Marwood and Adrian de la Touche. And, you know, there's some clever things going on with Marwood's relationship with Withnail and with Monty, even this imaginative name that the farmer has given Monty. It seems suggestive of what's going to happen, but only if you know what Marwood's name is. So it's kind of like a little in joke, maybe in the movie. Oh, and the other. Sorry. The reason why I brought this up is because Withnail is also experimenting with different stage names. 32:33 Wes: Oh, yeah. 32:34 Erin: He says at one point, he suggests that Desmond Wolf. And I thought that was indicative. Again, because there's so much symbolic masculinity going on in the various root vegetables and other things that Woolf was a desire to maybe put on A more. More masculine identity, more aggressive, perhaps. Marwood tells him it's too like Donald Wolfit, who was a famous English stage actor. And then later he suggests another name. So he seems to have borrowed Marwood's Donald and suggests Donald Twain. But then I just looked up, I was like, what's the origin of the name Donald? And it turns out that means world ruler, which, there's a lot to be said about that, that I prefer not to go go there. Who knew that Donald Duck, for instance, had to take one, had such a. An imposing meaning to his name. But, yeah, in the end, he's Desmond Wolf would be. Desmond Wolf is giving his soliloquy to the. The caged wolves in the zoo. 33:37 Wes: So in spite of all his rage, he's still just a Desmond Wolf in a cage. To almost quote one of my favorite songs. Are you Smashing Pumpkins fan? 33:49 Erin: I. I appreciate Smashing Pumpkins. I wouldn't call myself a fan. It's not really my cup of tea, but I've had a lot of people try to get me into it, so I've listened to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins, but. 33:59 Wes: Yeah, yeah. Had to be able to embrace your melancholy side. 34:03 Erin: No, I do not by smashing any type of gourd, though, in my own ways. 34:11 Wes: What's the difference between a gourd and a root vegetable? 34:14 Erin: They don't grow underground. They grow on top of the ground. 34:18 Wes: Okay. All right. Well, on that note, that's a suitable place to end the well, to quote Withnail. We can't go on like this. We'll have to stop. So. 34:31 Erin: All right, thank you. Thank you.

It’s 1969, and as drug guru Danny tells us, “the greatest decade in the history of mankind is over.” There will, he says, be many refugees, and the film’s implication is that Withnail—who combines self-importance and lofty ambition with substance abuse and urban squalor—will not be one of them. Marwood, by contrast, has seen the writing on the wall, in the form of the salacious tabloid stories that, while they threaten to outcompete the world’s attention for the arts, ultimately can’t be used to excuse the pair’s failure to find work as actors. Countering this attentional collapse perhaps requires getting serious: leaving bohemian pretensions behind—and along with them, as Marwood finds out in their jaunt to the countryside—a backward-looking romanticism that can be used as a cover not just for artistic paralysis but upper class predations, both economic and sexual. Wes & Erin discuss the cult classic “Withnail and I,” and whether our capacity for sublimation suffers less from the crisis of modernity than from our attempts to transcend it. Upcoming Episodes: Waiting for Godot, The Mummy 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 0:11 Wes: It's 1969, and as drug guru Danny tells us, the greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. There will, he says, be many refugees. And the film's implication is that Withnail, who combines self importance and lofty ambition with substance abuse and urban squalor, will not be one of them. Marwood, by contrast, has seen the writing on the wall in the form of the salacious tabloid stories that while they threaten to out compete the world's attention for the arts, ultimately can't be used to excuse the pair's failure to find work as actors. Countering this attentional collapse perhaps requires getting serious, leaving bohemian pretensions behind. And along with them, as Marwood finds out on their jaunt to the countryside, a backward looking romanticism that can be used as a cover not just for artistic paralysis, but upper class predations, both economic and sexual. Today we discuss the cult classic Withnail and I, and whether our capacity for sublimation suffers less from the crisis of modernity than from our attempts to transcend it. This is Wes Alwan. And this is Erin Olonick, and you're listening to Subtext. Okay, Erin, I didn't ask you before I suggested this movie whether you had seen it or not, and I was curious about whether you'd seen it and whether you liked it, but I thought I'd wait until the podcast to learn that. So, yeah. So what's the answer to that? 1:46 Erin: I was trying to figure out if I had seen it before and my memory. I don't think I'm making this up. I think I tried to watch it and got repulsed and stopped watching it because of the whole matter in the sink thing. But I really liked it and I thought it was hilarious. As long as you don't eat anything while you're watching it, I think it's okay. But the curve at the beginning was just getting over the few gross things going on, which all kind of happen at the beginning of the film. But did you see this, like, around the time that it came out, or what's your experience with it? 2:19 Wes: I saw this in the 90s. My friend John Lebec showed it to me. I think we should dedicate this episode to John Lebeck, who liked the character that Withnail is based on, passed away young, and I think in some ways there are situations. I lived with Lebeck and he was my best friend for a long time. There were times in my life where I think we didn't quite reach the level of Withnail and Marwood in terms of squalor and dissolution. But I think we were trying. We were trying to get there. And I think there's a kind of romance in that or there's a romanticization of that, and maybe that has something to do with its association with being a down and out artist. It's much more romantic if you can make the artist part of that work. But otherwise it just becomes, well, what is it they're feeling in the beginning of the movie? You know, terror, I think at least Mara would nail is more angry, I think. But anyway, this kind of story, yeah, it does have an appeal to me. I'm a big fan of Orwell's down and out in Paris and London, for instance. I don't know if you've read that there's another book called Keep the Aspidistras Flying by Orwell, which is the same sort of quality. The down and out story, it's not quite like this, but Bukowski, I think we talked about this before and you're not a fan, but his stories can be very much like this. They're autobiographical and it's about him being a boozer and trying to be a writer. 3:56 Erin: But. 3:56 Wes: Yeah, so I think part of the thing I was trying to think about rewatching this was. And it has been a long time, I think I saw it in the 90s and I saw it again at some point. I think this is the third time, but it's probably more than a decade since I've seen it. But I was trying to think, what is it that's so appealing about a story like this, if it is appealing to people? And then what is it that can appeal to people about putting themselves in this state, in this position? And then the larger question of how this is related to 60s counterculture, because, of course, it's set in 1969 and they've come to an end of an era. And the final stages of this relationship, I think, in a way are meant to represent the end of the 60s and everything, the good and bad of it. 4:44 Erin: Well, what I find appealing about it is just the dialogue. There are just so many funny lines. The hysterical moment where the police officer screams, get in the van. 4:54 Wes: Yeah. That is. 4:59 Erin: I had to pause it because I was laughing so hard. 5:02 Wes: Just completely loses it. 5:04 Erin: Yeah, yeah. 5:05 Wes: In the shrillest. Yeah, the shrillest possible voice. Completely loses control of himself. 5:13 Erin: Good cop, crazy cop or bad cop, crazy cop. I don't know what. What they're doing there, but for me, the film seemed to be less about this idea of what it means to be an artist per se, and instead this hopelessness about becoming a man, that there was no route to maturity, that the future had been foreclosed for Marwood and Withnail in some way. And I think their particular artistic endeavor. So acting is about that same process. It's also about adopting another identity. Of course, they're male actors, so it's a male identity putting on another man or another life or another role, and therefore, perhaps training oneself in what it means to be that other man or in what it means to be a man in general. And then that's played upon, it seems, with these gay jokes that pervade the film with the idea of being maybe subject to other men or under the influence of other men, or even this actorly idea of putting on another man becomes this kind of joke in which they're putting on Monty. Monty himself is a former actor, I suppose. I don't know. Maybe. As I say that, I'm thinking, well, that really is about the artist's life. What probably just characterizes it more than anything is that one is subject to outside approval regard. Very little is under one's control when one is an artist. So. But I was more interested in this idea of manhood, masculinity and feeling like everybody wants to, yeah, screw you over and what that might mean. And kind of turning that into a joke about all the meanings of that phrase, which I'm putting politely, more politely than the film does. 6:58 Wes: Yeah. I think there's something there about the way in which a certain kind of aesthetic relationship to the aesthetic and to artistic ambitions leaves one vulnerable. Right. They get called a ponce. That's a big deal. By the Irishman in the bar. What's the name of the pub again? 7:17 Erin: There are so many great pub names. There's the King Henry, the one with the two Cs. 7:23 Wes: It's the mother black cap. They're called ponces at that point. Jake the poacher says to Marwood that he's a prancing tit and that he wants working on. Although the poacher turns out to be a bit more benevolent than they thought and ends up bringing them a rabbit in the end. So there's a certain amount of paranoia. I mean, there's a lot of paranoia in this, but there's the realistic, what turns out to be persecution by Monty, or at least towards Marwood. Monty turns out, really is after him sexually, even if it's going to mean burglary, as he puts it, which is great. But I Think there's two components there. One is being a bit more upper class. And so being a ponce. That sort of slur is not just about sexuality, although it is. It's about being a limousine liberal. That's actually a very poor way to put it. Or maybe it's more after the times, actually, at least the times in which the movie was made, that sort of accusation. But it's about being effete and not manly. So I think that's the relationship. That's the sort of position that being actors puts them in. It's not a manly thing to do. It's more feminine. I think that's the idea. Part of the movie is about the dangers of the romanticization of that sort of aspiration. You know, when we see Monty in the countryside, he has all these romance, right. The countryside itself, when they take that trip, there's supposed to be something romantic about it, right. In the larger sense, it's getting into the countryside and into a rural scene. Wordsworth and Keats and all that. And Monty himself has all this flowery talk, but it's a cover up for lust. It's a cover up for sexual persecution. And that's what romanticization of this sort potentially opens you. Opens you up to. So I think you're right. Yeah, it's about. There's a lot about masculinity and homosexuality. And I'm relating it here to the larger idea of being a vulnerability created by a more aesthetic attitude rather than practical attitude towards the world. 9:44 Erin: Acting not being a manly thing is doubly implicated here, both because as an artist you're not working with your hands, but also the particular trappings of being an actor. Doing things like putting on makeup, which Monty does at one point. The idea of playing dress up and then this idea of adopting another man's identity somehow almost as if it's like a. I don't know. I was. I was trying to think through that a little bit, this marriage that happens as an actor when you're assuming someone else's identity. So you stay yourself or you're using your own body as the kind of the vessel for maybe another man's identity. And so there's something perhaps inherently homosexual about that. But I think in every single episode in this sort of episodic film, there is some anxiety about male rape or about being bested by a man or in one instance, a bull. In every single part of the film, it happens over and over again. And when they're not explicitly talking about that, it's displaced into carrots and meat and other symbolic terminology. But the movie also has. I mean, we get Dani as someone who's their age, but also predominantly, they're just interacting with older men. Also the farmer. The farmer is sort of more closer to their age than some of the other men in the film, but predominantly they're interacting with older men when they're not interacting with, you know, the Irish guy at the pub or the poacher, like these bigger, scarier, more obviously manly type of guys. And there are no women in the film of their own age whatsoever, which is one of the first things I notice. They yell at those schoolgirls with. With Nell, yells at the schoolgirls out the window, scrubbers. Other than that, you don't see any women of their. I mean, not including that, you don't see any women of their generation. You only see those schoolgirls and then the older women, like, in the tea rooms in Penrith and the farmer's mother. So it's a world devoid of women and they're just really, really scared of the advances of men. And then in the cafe with the first scene where Marwood puts the kettle on and then goes down to the cafe, he's looking at the headlines in the newspaper and the first headline we see is, moment of fulfillment for local boy who became a woman. You know, the pipeline is boy to woman, nude. It's not boy to man. Right. There's no. This is the. This seems to be the crisis. How do you grow up and become. How do you become a man? Is the central idea, maybe, that Marwood and Withnail are struggling with. Are you. You can't really become a Monty. Monty has a whole history of montiness that obviously Marwood and Withnail don't share. You can't become the old drunk military man in the pub, and they're not capable of becoming Jeff Woad or the poacher or the big burly Irish guy. What is their route to manhood? Which is a weird thing because they both look old to be thinking about that, but whatever. 12:56 Wes: Yeah. Well, I want to focus a little bit on this news theme because I think it's the way the film starts and there's a relationship here to art as well, insofar as the news is what competes for attention with the aesthetic from others. People who are reading newspapers are not reading books. And in particular, it has to do with this salacious news. Right. So there's the woman becoming a man. Then there's the nude au pair's secret life. That's another headline These are real headlines apparently from the time and the way Marwood narrates this. And this is one of the great. There's just so much great dialogue, as you said, and some great voiceover as well. He says 13 million Londoners have to wake up to this. The murder and Albran and rape. And I'm sitting in this bloody shack and I can't cope with Withnail. I must be out of my mind. I must go home at once and discuss these problems and discuss his problems in depth. I thought it was these problems. It's written here as his discuss his problems in depth. When he gets home, Withnail is reading the news. And let's see, Curse of the Superman. Yeah, before that. There's just so many great lines in this I hate to skip over, but my thumbs have gone weird. I'm in the middle of a bloody overdose. I feel really dreadful. And then with nails, so do I. So does everyone. Look at my tongue. Gray yellow sock. And then goes on to talk about this curse of the supermen. People taking steroids to win competitions. Athletes like Jeff Woad. So in a world exclusive interview, 33 year old shot putter Jeff Woad, who weighs 317 pounds, admitted taking massive doses of anabolic steroids, drugs banned in sport. He used to get in bad tempers, says his wife. He used to pick on me, but now he's stopped. He's much better. In our sex life and in our general, the sex life of course comes first. And then, Jesus Christ. This huge thatch headed, this huge thatched head with its earlobes and cannonballs is now considered sane. And then Marwa would saying, please, I don't feel good with nail. That's what you'd say. But that wouldn't wash with Jeff. No. He'd like a bit of pleading add spice to it. In fact, he'd probably tell you that he was going to do what he was going to do before he did it. I'm going to pull your head off. No, please don't pull my head off. I'm going to pull your head off because I don't like your head. As you mentioned, this sort of paranoia about it's not just about sexual assault but it's about violence in general towards other men. Comes up quite a bit and this is just one of the instances of it. But it's connected here to this idea of the salacious events of the world. And so I guess I'm trying to draw a parallel. I'm trying to draw a connection here between the idea that being an artist makes you vulnerable to not just criticism, but to violence of some sort. And then the other idea here is that news of the salacious events of the world like this, in a way, is competition for attention. And so there's the potential to write. The real vulnerability for the artist is criticism from an audience or the disinterest, lack of interest from an audience. So that's also the kind of threat 16:34 Erin: that's being described here in this Jeff Wode instance. There's the idea too that you have to be a superman to get ahead. You have to be more than human somehow in order to achieve any kind of success in this world. And also inherent in that is this idea that you have to cheat because he's taking these, these steroids. But he's also already this huge guy, Withnail points out. Imagine the size of his balls. So there's always this, you know, imagine getting into a fight with him and that's then when he says, you know, he sort of does the imaginary dialogue. But this idea of sexual prowess is repeatedly linked with being superhuman somehow, or gargantuan. And Withnail and Marwood are kind of on the losing end of that. It occurs to me that even the poacher has a moment of being literally superhuman when he's, when he's pulling, you know, he pulls the eel out of his pants. And then he also has. He looks bigger than he is because it turns out he has, underneath his jacket, he's being sort of puffed up with the pheasants. It's almost like he has these prostheses that are making him more than human, more than just a normal man. And I. You know what's interesting too, in this, in the scene looking around the flat, they have these kind of Georgian style paintings on the walls. They almost look like Romneys. When Withnail is talking about the imaginary conversation with Jeff Woad, he walks over to the mirror and you see there's an illustration of kind of a medieval king sitting on the mantel that's sort of propped up against the mirror. And then there are also postcards of what look like palaces, probably. And it occurs to me that, you know, as you point out, this is also an anxiety of class. Oddly that though Withnail, not Marwood, I suppose, but though Withnail is upper class, that somehow leaves him vulnerable to the more vital, you know, working class men that could beat him up. And come to think of it, the king as an image of that is. Is also really interesting. This model of this medieval king with a Long sword. You have to be. You have to be at the top of the heap. Right. You have to be the king among aristocrats and therefore superhuman in that kind of way, almost to escape being seen as a feat somehow. 18:51 Wes: Yeah. So I sent you a kind of transcript of the movie, including some scene descriptions. And I don't know who did that. It's of the movie as shot and the original screenplay, as always, is different. But there's a lot of great writing in the original screenplay that doesn't make it into the transcript that we have and can't even be shot. So, for instance, despite the squalor, the room is furnished with antiques, heirlooms and other quality stuff. An indescribable melange of stuff crowds a low table. A large Victorian globe of the world soars above bacon rinds. So, okay, so all this stuff can be shot. I don't remember the bacon rinds. But anyway, objet d' art and breakfast remains compete for space. Then he says Dostoevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs. That's the part that can't be shot. 19:46 Erin: That's in the scene description. 19:48 Wes: That's in the. Yeah. So he put it in there knowing, of course, this is supposed to not. You're. If you read a screenplay book, they told. Tell you you're never supposed to write stuff like that. That belongs in a novel. Right. It can't be shot, so it doesn't belong in there. But of course he put it in. 20:03 Erin: Well, it's conveys something to the scene dressers. 20:10 Wes: Yeah. He was also a novelist. Bruce Robinson, the writer and the director. And he was nominated for an Academy Award for adapting the Killing Fields. He wrote and directed how to Get Ahead in Advertising. Have you seen that? 20:25 Erin: I haven't seen it. I've seen the Killing Fields. 20:27 Wes: He worked with Truffaut as an actor. He was also an actor. He was in Romeo and Juliet by Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian director. And part of this movie is based on that because apparently Zeffirelli sexually harassed him on set. I think we were forced to watch that Romeo and Juliet version in high school. 20:48 Erin: Everybody. 20:48 Wes: Yeah. Despite a mysterious topless scene. Yeah, well, Juliet gets topless. Right. It's like the weirdest thing. 20:55 Erin: Stories of, like, teachers just standing in front of the television screen during that. I think that's kind of a universal experience where they, you know, they like. It happens, whatever. Or you get somebody standing in front to try to block the screen for a minute. 21:13 Wes: A Lot is based on his personal life, as I've already mentioned. He really did have a roommate, much like with nail, who did drink lighter fluid at some point. And he said he's basically compressed what went on for two years into a couple of weeks. But I mention all this just because I think you've gotten that the sense in which the talk about Superman has something to do with the idea that they have to be supermen in order to get ahead. I forget how you put it. But in any case, part of this is about ambition. They, like Jeff Woad, are on drugs and they in a sense are pushing themselves to the limit to see the limits of human performance. There's something the Olympics being a bum. 22:03 Erin: Yeah, that's great. That hadn't occurred to me, oddly enough. 22:08 Wes: And once again the news is directly competition. So Withnail says at one point where he says, you've had an audition. Why can't I have an audition? This is a recurring theme with him. He's always envious, you have soup. Where's my soup? Turns out to be coffee that, that Marwood is eating with a spoon. In any case, he'll end up saying, the only program I'm likely to get on is the fucking news. So this is another point where we get this implied competition with salacious events of the world and with these manly supermen who are nevertheless cheating. So how are you going to get ahead under those circumstances? When I was going over my, you know, after, after watching it again and going over the transcript, I thought, yeah, it's really. There's a really interesting feeling of complete desperation and paranoia and imminent catastrophe, like the world is going to end. Which again I think, you know, part of that's meant to capture the end of the 60s, but it's really about ambition. I think, you know, they complain a lot in the movie about where they are with their careers not getting parts and you know, their trying to be actors. But you get the sense that this is kind of a portrait of ambition itself. Regardless of how one is actually doing in the real world with one's aspirations, there's a kind of desperation and potential internal psychological squalor that can crop up in relationship to one's ambitious ideals. Right. So you might neglect yourself and everything practical in life in order to, right, devote yourself to being an actor or an artist or intellectual or something like that. More generally we might neglect our well being in the service of some grandiose self conception of ourself unrealistic aspirations. So the drug addled squalor that they're in is kind of an extreme case of that. But it's sort of. One could take it as representing this real bifurcation that happens within people, even within a psyche between an abject shadow self, as Jung would put it, and more grandiose, manic self related to the idea of the powerful great person that one might be. Or if you're completely psychotic, that you think you are godlike. Yeah. 24:47 Erin: They're taking drugs puts them in something of that kind of position perhaps. Right. Because there's the repeated idea of time in the film and that they're toying with time by taking these drugs that they can throw away a day if they want to. Right. Doesn't Marwood say that at some point we'll go, we'll have a drink and then we'll take some drug. I can't remember what it is. Some kind of antidepressant maybe. 25:12 Wes: Let me read this. It's about Marwoods doing a voiceover. Speed is like a dozen transatlantic flights without ever getting off the plane. Time change, you lose, you gain. Makes no difference so long as you keep taking the pills. But sooner or later you got to get out because it's crashing. And all at once those frozen hours melt through the nervous system and seep out the pores. Is that what you're thinking of? Such a great. 25:36 Erin: I was thinking of that. But as at a contrast to this moment, which I think I found. It's actually Withnail who says it. This is the plan. We'll get in there. This is when they're about to go into the mother black cap. We'll get in there and get wrecked. Then we'll eat a pork pie. Then we'll drop a couple of Sermontill 50s each. Means we'll miss out on Monday but come up smiling Tuesday morning. So they're planning on missing a day and just being. I think that's. That's what's going on there. That they're just going to be blacked out for a day. So there's the speeding up. Slow. 26:07 Wes: Hear about the drinking game associated with. 26:09 Erin: Yes, I did. Yeah. That's like the number one thing that came up on the search for. With nail and eye Lord try to 26:15 Wes: match with Withnail drink for drink. And at one point he orders. What is it? A quadruple whiskey and a pint or something anyway. 26:24 Erin: Right? 26:24 Wes: Yeah. You kill yourself if you really try to do it. 26:26 Erin: Yeah. But this. 26:27 Wes: Sorry. 26:28 Erin: Yeah. This. This idea of. You know. I think part of what you're suggesting about the news also. Also gets at this, right. There's a finite economy of time and attention, and. And you're trying to take a piece of that. And it occurs to me, too, that actors are among the unluckiest artists in that when you're not acting, you really do have nothing to do. You're just killing time between parts. It's not like if you're not being published or you're not getting your painting sold, that you, you know, your paintbrush is taken away from you. You could still keep working. I mean, it's difficult to do because it's difficult to work, you know, when your ego is being destroyed by not getting any kind of recognition whatsoever. But you can technically still keep going and keep working. But if you're not being cast in something, then you just. You can't do anything at all. And so this feeling of things being. I think you said there's a sense of dread hanging over the film and things kind of being over, or the idea that they're running out of time and the suggestion that it's because of the end of the 60s. I think that's true. But there's also the fact that the friendship is over. Right. Like, before the movie even starts, the friendship has basically ended. Because it seems like the dread from Withnail anyway is about knowing somehow that this audition is going to bear fruit for Marwood in some way, and so that has already caused the rift. 27:54 Wes: Did you sense that before the end of the movie? Cause I didn't. Yeah, I wasn't paying enough attention. So the ending caught me unawares, I guess. Yeah. 28:05 Erin: I think this is the tension between them from the beginning and the idea that Marwood is trying to establish sympathy or a connection between them by saying, we're in the same boat. And Withnail rejects that repeatedly. It's not just because Withnail's an egomaniac, though he is, and feels uniquely that he's suffering uniquely and. And uniquely entitled, though he does feel that way. It's also, I think, that he sees the writing on the wall, so he knows that Morwood is going to succeed and is on the way to some sort of success. I think that's part of it. It's like they start a clock on the end of the friendship, starting from the beginning of the movie. And. Oh, and there's also the fact that withnail is turning 30. There's the suggestion that one only has enough time to play Hamlet. Right. And Hamlet is, of course, about. Partially about dithering and wasting time and not dealing with time the way one should. And Monty says there comes a time when you realize you're never going to play the Dane. 29:07 Wes: Do you mind if I read it? 29:08 Erin: Please. 29:09 Wes: It is the most shattering experience of a young man's life when one morning he awakes and quite reasonably says to himself, I will never play the Dane. When that moment comes, one's ambition ceases. Don't you agree? It's a part I intend to play, Uncle. Which, of course, he does at the very end of the film when he does that speech. But that's a really good. I didn't think about that. Yeah. The relationship to time and dithering and even the irony of Monty saying you wake up and realize you're out of time to play Hamlet. 29:44 Erin: So, yeah, what does that mean? You're never going to get the opportunity, or you've aged out, or both. But really it means both. And with nail is turning 30. When you're far away from somebody up on a stage, you can get away with being a lot older than the part that you're playing. So presumably With Nail does have maybe 10, if not 15, if not 20 more years to play Hamlet, depending on how ridiculous the casting director is. But spiritually, maybe. 30:12 Wes: How old was Branagh when he played Hamlet? 30:15 Erin: Too old. 30:16 Wes: Seemed a bit too old. Yeah. 30:18 Erin: Yeah. Everybody who plays it on. On screen, you know, they. They've established themselves in it, which means they've been playing it for a long time, and by the time the screen adaptation comes up. So there's this idea that you could play with time. You could play with time when you're young and taking all these drugs and drinking all this, all these tremendous quantities seems to go hand in hand with this idea of youth. And youth seems to be something that you have to inherently squander. Something of that, I don't know, quality goes on in youth or is essential to youth that you're squandering it. And the 60s and youth culture and all of that is also running out. So I think, as Danny says, at some point they have to come down from the. From their trip with the end of the decade, and it's over now because they're selling hippie wigs at Woolworths, you know, so there's been some sort of. Some frozen in amber quality that's happening to the 60s, where it's possible to buy the trappings of the decade now in a store almost as a kind of costume, as a Halloween costume, or maybe as a, you know, a costume for an actor to then play the part of the 60s hippie. 31:27 Wes: Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about Danny and then this connection that he makes between the end of the friendship and the end of the 60s. Right. So Danny is there. Maybe let's talk about the connection first, and then we'll get more into Dany's character, which is great. So Danny says to Marwood, you got the pirate man? Marwood says, I got a different one. They want me to play the lead. And then Withnail says, congratulations. And then they move on, or Dany moves on. Where exactly have you two been? Marwood Holliday, in the countryside. We don't know at this point that Danny is going to now eulogize the decade, but it's also, of course, a eulogy for the friendship. So Danny says, that's a very good idea. London is a country coming down from its trip. We are 91 days from the end of this decade, and there's going to be a lot of refugees. So of course, Withnail is one of those who's going to get left behind. Not everyone's going to be able to make the transition from. How do you characterize the 60s counterculture and youth culture and the kinds of aspirations it represented? And with, I would say, libertinism, sex, drugs and rock and roll and all that stuff. And in the end, the promise of all that didn't really pan out. And it's a sad moment. Right. Likewise, the end of the friendship of Withnail and Marwood is sad. And those two forms of sadness get connected. Anyway, Danny continues, they'll be going around this town shouting, bring out your dead. Reference to Monty Python. In fact, it's a reference to Monty Python, but It's set in 1969, before the Holy Grail movie was, in any case. Yeah. So going around this town shouting, bring out your dead. Which, of course, is where Withnail is at this point. And then they learn that they're going to be evicted. And it's partly because of what Danny's done with the landlord. Some bald geezer starts coming on really bald with me, it's a callback to the beginning of the film where he has a theory of baldness and uptightness. Is that it for Danny's eulogy? That and the idea when Marwood says he's not going to smoke any more grass, Danny says, that is an unfortunate political decision reflecting these times. And then finally Withnail says, what are you talking about, Danny? And Danny says, politics, man. If you're hanging onto a rising balloon, you're presented with a difficult decision. Let's go before it's too late. Or hang on and keep getting higher, posing the question, how long can you keep a grip on the rope? They're selling hippie wigs and Woolworths men. The greatest decade in the history of mankind is over. And as Presuming Ed here has so consistently pointed out, we have failed to paint it black. 34:20 Erin: I was having trouble reconciling Danny's hatred of bald men with his hatred of wigs. But I guess they're one and the same. You gotta just grow your own hair. 34:30 Wes: Yeah. What does he say about it? It's like the. Let's see. I don't advise a haircut man. All hairdressers are in the employment of the government. Hair are your aerials. They pick up signals from the cosmos and transmit them directly into the brain. This is the reason bald headed men are uptight. It's funny too, because Robinson based this character actually off a hairdresser. His hairdresser. Yeah. 34:53 Erin: When he calls a judge's wig a far out looking hat and when Withnail tells him it's a wig, he's like, no, no, this was more like a long white hat. It's like, yeah, it does look kind of weird. 35:05 Wes: It's a story about the coal man is what he calls him. Yeah. Where he goes to court and he's wearing. He has a fancy get up and then. Yeah, but that. Yeah, that's a good point. Calling the. Yeah. Not realizing that the judge's wig is actually a wig. But yeah, I just also too wanted to say a bit about Danny because in a way he's representative of. 35:28 Erin: He's a real hippie. 35:29 Wes: Yeah. But he's kind of a sage of sorts or a drug guru. The idea that somehow drugs can enlighten you, which I guess is, you know, it's an idea very much associated with the 60s and give you some special sort of wisdom. But of course, in his character he just comes across the way he's delivering his lines, which are just slow and it's obviously high. He's drug addled. But there's also supposed to be something sage about him. And he has a lot of other great lines of his own. Like St. Peter preached the epistles to the apostles looking like that. Referring to Marwood's not having any clothes on. There are various points where he's acting in a sage like manner, like saying he doesn't advise. Right. When he. That quote I just read about not advising a haircut or his theory of bald men. And then the kind of precision that he uses when he talks about drugs. So, for instance, when he gets in this fight, this fight with Withnail, and says, don't get uptight with me, man, because if you do, I'll have to give you a dose of medicine. And if I spike you, you'll know you've been spoken to. If I'd medicine you, you'd think a brain tumor was a birthday present. And then ultimately challenging Withnail to take this drug, which he calls phenodehydrochloride Benzorax, which I looked up and is not real street named him the embalmer. And then later on, Marwood says, give me some Valium, I'm getting the fear. And he says, you've done something to your brain. You've made it high. If I lay 10 mils of diazepam on you, you'll do something else to your brain. You will make it low. Why trust one drug and not the other? That's politics, isn't it? So all these kind of sage sounding. On the one hand, he's so laid back, it's like Daoism. Yeah, he's a slacker. On the other hand, there's this precision. Talks about the law, gives advice, uses technical name for drugs. It's this interesting synthesis, this interesting combination of those two trends. So I thought. I just wanted to point that out about Danny because he's such a great character. 37:50 Erin: He's also emblematic of the boy at the same time that he is a sage, this sort of 60s youth who. I mean, he does have a lot of pretty insightful things to say sometimes, but he keeps himself in a state of suspended animation almost with these. With these drugs. Like, he talks about retiring and going into business, which I really love that, that phrase, which is paradoxical or. Or eboric or something. And Withnail says, I thought you were in the bottle industry. Which is great because there's this idea that he's going to retire from the drug business, which is he's going to put away childish things like being in the bottle industry, which obviously there's this suggestion of. Of the baby bottle inherent in selling. Whatever. Selling prescription drugs out of bottles or selling contraptions to get yourself out of drunk driving charges by keeping pee in a bottle or. Right. Whatever. Whatever it is that he's involved in. And that. That kind of confusion also comes up later when he talks about papers. And he had just been talking about rolling a joint. So he has joint papers. But then he really is talking about the eviction notice. So there's a kind of double Meaning there. But anyway, he says, no, I'm gonna go into the toy. The toy industry. That's the grown up thing he's going 39:07 Wes: to do with a doll that craps itself. Yeah, yeah, great point. 39:11 Erin: The toy idea is really rich. I mean, there is a. There's a lot in the. In the movie about peeing oddly things. Things happen when people pee first. There's this idea, you know, he also has a voodoo some point that its head comes off and it has pills in it. There's this idea of Marwood and Withnail and Dany of only able to. Only being able to deal with things that are smaller than themselves. Right? So when they're going to fight the rat and they get all charged up about fighting the rat, they have this vigor about that because they're about to confront something that's smaller than them rather than repeatedly encountering, as they do, men who are bigger than them who might fight them. So there, there's this sort of, you know, Russian doll quality where you're picking on whatever is smaller than you. And so this interest in dolls and the shrunken down thing seems to be related to powerlessness and needing to deal with something smaller than oneself. Also there's this really interesting sort of gendered quality to this too because he says, like, oh, little girls love these dolls. They can take care of these things. They can clean up after the messes that these dolls make and they even enjoy it, Right. 40:23 Wes: If they like dolls that pee themselves, how much more are they going to like dolls that crap themselves? 40:30 Erin: Right, Right. But also, Marwood and Withnail have made just a disgusting. Just a shithole of their, of their flat. Right? And they are incapable, it seems, of cleaning up after themselves. And the women that are missing from the movie, is it their job to clean up after these men that are like children that can't clean up after themselves? You know, there's. There's something. Is this a message about why women are missing from the film or what. What role women would be playing in their lives if they had women? Or. I don't know, it's. 41:01 Wes: Would their flat be cleaner if they had girlfriends? 41:04 Erin: Yes, of course. Yeah. I mean, and they would be. And not only because the women are cleaning up after them, but because they would have to. They would, yes, clean up for the sake of the women. Right? 41:13 Wes: They would. They would have to. 41:14 Erin: So, yeah, so there's something. He's not thinking about women his own. Even Danny, right, isn't thinking about women his own age. He's thinking about these little Girls and giving them dolls almost in the interest of training them to grow up to clean after people like that, you know what I mean? Like, there's a strange hole at the center of the film where age appropriate women should be. And everything is geared in one to one extreme or the other. Children or elderly people, or people at least like Monty, a generation older than they are. So in other words, Dany is a sage, but he's also just as stunted as Marwood and Withnail in certain ways. 41:53 Wes: Don't get me wrong, Robinson based him on a hairdresser that he thought of as a complete idiot. 41:58 Erin: Yeah. No, I love Danny. 42:01 Wes: I mean, he's such a great character, but even the way he speaks supposedly is. Right. That's Robinson's direction to the actor who plays Danny to emulate that speech. Exactly. And the slowness of it and the accent and everything. 42:15 Erin: Well, he manages a lot of syllables. 42:18 Wes: Yeah. Seems like it became sort of a trope. Right. I've seen this character now many times in movies, Right. The idiot sage drug addict who's somehow precise and knowledgeable and yet drug addled and idiotic at the same time. 42:39 Erin: I was thinking of this even with Monty, his speech about being a boy and on the tandem bike with his little school chum. I was thinking that. Oh, the character of Gil Chesterton, I think is his name in Frasier. The gourmand who has the cooking or the restaurant review show. And he's always talking about romping with his school chums in Surrey or whatever. 43:02 Wes: Oh, that's funny. 43:03 Erin: That character probably was. You know, couldn't exist without Monty. 43:08 Wes: Well, let's talk about Monty for the second half. 43:11 Erin: Sure. 43:12 Wes: For the first part of the second half. And then you. I think we could use him as a segue into this theme that I raised about city, you know, the urban versus the rural and the romance of going into the countryside and the way that doesn't actually pan out for them. So, yeah, we'll talk about in part two. So we've reached the end of part one. patreon.com subtextpodcast or directly on Apple. If not, you can wait a week for part two. All right, thank you. 43:52 Erin: Thank you.

Photography is a technology of contradictions. It is at once mechanical and mysterious, even magical. It furnishes evidence of presence while being a token of absence. It can show us proof but can’t, without accompanying narration or context, make us understand. And perhaps most perplexing of all, it is an imperialistic technology which, paradoxically, atomizes the world and democratizes all events and experiences, making each viewer of photographs the owner of a facsimile-world in his or her head. Wes & Erin discuss two essays from Susan Sontag’s collection, “On Photography,” “In Plato’s Cave” and “America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly,” and ask what constitutes photography’s “ethics of seeing,” and whether Sontag suggests an alternative comportment towards the camera, the subject, and the photographic image. Upcoming Episodes: Withnail & I; Waiting for Godot 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 0:12 Erin: Okay. Welcome to part two of our discussion of two essays from Susan Sontag's collection on photography. We're covering In Plato's Cave and America Seen Through Photographs Darkly, which I've been bringing in a little bit primarily, but we've just been talking about In Plato's Cave. And I want to continue talking about the implied ethics, I want to call it, of Sontag's critique of photography by speaking of the ways in which photographs inure us. I think Sontag is very subtly setting up a shadow of that in which she's implying that there might be a different relationship to photography which we could somehow inculcate in ourselves. I wonder if we can use this essay, in other words, to spin out some theories about what Sontag would say is a more ethical relationship to the photographic image. I think there's a suggestion in a couple of places what that might be. Well, she has this idea, as we've already covered, that there is something aggressive and therefore imperialistic about photography, and also that it flattens and democratizes the world at the same time. And therefore, in a strange sort of way, I think her middle Ground, or what she might be very subtly advocating for, is a kind of aristocracy of images. A word which I'm not sure I'm totally comfortable using. And I don't want to put words in her mouth, but a curation of images which suggests a kind of hierarchical relationship. So the place that I'm getting this. And you'll tell me if I'm crazy for drawing this conclusion, but the place that I'm getting this is when she talks about. Photographs are themselves packaged. They're a way of packaging the world, and they somehow invite packaging. And then she talks about a photograph working well in a book. Because unlike a painting, which is not smooth and not printed out, a photograph already is smooth and printed. So when it's reproduced in a book, it keeps much of its essential quality. And she says, but still, the book is not a wholly satisfactory scheme. For putting groups of photographs into general circulation. The sequence in which the photographs are to be looked at is proposed by the order of pages, but nothing holds readers to the recommended order or indicates the amount of time to be spent on each photograph. Chris Marker's film, a brilliantly orchestrated meditation on photographs of all sorts and themes, suggests a subtler and more rigorous way of packaging and enlarging still photographs. Both the order and the exact time for looking at each photograph are imposed. And there is a gain in visual legibility and emotional impact. So that's where. That's where I'm getting this curation scheme from. You have a bunch of photographs in a book. You might open it up and flip through, and you're almost, you know, your eyes are kind of glazing over. You're not really looking at anything. You're not giving an equal amount of time to distinct images. And so she's implying that when photographs are in a film in which each photograph is given a set amount of time by some. Some director or some curator of these images who's forcing you to look at just say one photo for 15 seconds and then the next photo for 20 seconds. That this creates a different kind of relationship to the image and the person who is making this film. Curating this selection, determining the order, determining the amount of time allotted to each individual photograph is doing you a service, it seems. That's kind of what she's implying about this Chris Marker film, in which there's an imposed order. And she says, as a result, a gain in visual legibility and emotional impact. So to me, that implies that there is a better way to consume images. And that is by having someone who presumably knows More than we do curating that experience of images. For us, there might be some sort of curatorial relationship which is better than our current democratized, willy nilly relationship with images. Do you see where I'm getting this aristocratic. 4:24 Wes: Yeah. So there's not a lot in this essay that's positive. You know, we'll get to the way it concludes in a second. Which seems pretty globally negative. I mean, right? There are hints of the positive when she says, for instance, that after looking at Holocaust photos, I felt irrevocably grieved, wounded, but a part of my feelings started to tighten. Something went dead, something is still crying. So that's actually just a mixed picture right there. Grief, I think, would be a positive effect and would serve the ethical. Right. So one question is, to what extent can photography serve the political and the ethical? To what extent can it arouse conscience? And then to what extent does it arouse all these other feelings, like manic defenses in the sense of possessing the world and that other stuff? And the point that you're focusing on, which I think is early on in the essay. Right. Gets at the fact that a more curated relationship to images could have a more positive effect. And then we have to ask ourselves, you know, what kinds of effects are we thinking of? Are we thinking of the aesthetic, the moral, the political? Do we need them to be sequenced for us and into film form? Or is it enough to be in a museum and to have photographs by great artists? Of course, she's going to have quite an interesting critique of Diane Arbus in the next essay, and I've only read the first two essays of this book. So given that you've read the whole book, is there a more expansive, positive picture that she gives for photography? 6:02 Erin: Okay, no. And I think that's why I'm interested in trying to find the flip side of this critique. It might be that it simply just opens up a whole other can of worms, like who gets to curate? Who decides? Is it simply that there is some aristocracy of artists implied by this, say, this film director who's curated these images and set times for them? She finds this effective. So is it that artists are the ones who can curate these for us? Well, not really, because then she also has Arbus as an artist photographer. She's selecting subjects and choosing what to photograph. And Sontag has problems, as do I, with some of those selections. So I've set a sort of impossible task for us, which is to try and figure out what Sontag might have said or might be saying in some sort of shadow, of this essay, about what a positive relationship to photographs might be. Yeah, so it's all speculative, but there is an idea of refusal as well, of refusal of looking or a refusal to inure ourselves, which seems implicit in the. At the end of Plato's Cave and the discussion of understanding, the way the 7:14 Wes: essay wraps up, which is actually quite negative. She makes a few different negative points about photography. One is so on my page 16, she'll say the ethical content of photographs is fragile. And they're fragile because the pathos of pastness kind of swallows them up. She'll say the particular qualities and intentions of the photographs tend to be swallowed up in the general pathos of time past. So whether it's a photograph from 1900 that might have had some emotional effect back then to us, just might look old timey. And the old timeiness of it is more interesting to us than whatever pathos is there in the subject matter of the picture. And then she gets into the sort of incorporation of photography into institutions of control, like with the police, for instance, or bureaucracy. We photograph, we have to have a photographic id. And despite all that, she'll say there's an informational value to pictures in those bureaucratic contexts. But for most people, she'll say the informational value of pictures is on the same order as that of fiction. And she compares a tabloid like the Daily News to Le Monde, which runs no photographs. And the suggestion here is that by giving us pictures, the tabloid, in fact is farther away from truth than just the written word. And I think there's something to that. So that's what I take as the first of a kind of one, two punch at the end of the essay, a negative view of things. And then the other is more generally about photography fragmenting the world and getting at, I think, what you were. You just mentioned, which is the kind of foreclosure of genuine understanding because it makes the world seem more available than it actually is. We give ourselves the illusion of knowing things by way of the camera, the photograph. But we're denying the depth behind that surface. And so for that reason, I think she says, this is page 18 in my book. Basically, they can never give us political or ethical knowledge. So while it can goad conscience, it can finally never be ethical or political knowledge. The knowledge gained through still photographs will always be some kind of sentimentalism, whether cynical or humanist. You know, there's a little bit of positive light here, the idea that it can goad conscience, for instance, in certain contexts. And we're also not, you know, we're not hearing about film, you know, except for that part that you noted about putting still photos in sequence in a film. Is film better? I don't know. 10:06 Erin: I think it is. I think it is. She does call television a stream of under selected images, right? Each one canceling out the one before or something like that. And so that under selection seems to kind of exonerate it in a way and also make it less interesting. I should say that I think there could be more positive. I read the first four in the book for the purposes of the podcast. I've in the past read the whole book, so I could be just not remembering a more positive. She does say in one of the essays, for instance, I remember that photographs don't teach us about surprising things that are ugly. You know, they don't surprise us really with ugliness, but they can surprise us with beauty. So that they could be a way to find more in the world, which is surprisingly beautiful. So that would be an example of something I could think of which is a positive statement about photography. But for the most part, the relentless criticism. And she's someone who enjoyed film, and film has a bunch of implications which make it fall outside of the critiques that she levies against photographs. Like just the mere fact that if it's a. If it's a film with a plot, it's not purporting to be an image of something real or of something that really happened. I mean, it is insofar as those actors really were all standing together in a room. Maybe not anymore, but it used to be evidence that they were all standing together in a room. But I think it has just a vastly different set of moral qualities about it. But she says only that which narrates can make us understand and that we need narrative. Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks. All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no, Strictly speaking, one never understands anything from a photograph. And then later in the paragraph, only that which narrates can make us understand. So this. This very idea that we need narration is, I think, what I'm getting at here when I'm describing that she's implicitly making this argument that aristocracy is some kind of middle road. That can help, because I think that's. That's the implication of needing a narrative who is only that which narrates can make us understand. Well, what is going to narrate to us, what narration are we going to receive? Who is going to be the one who narrates? That's very opaque to me. But it seems we do need a narrator. There are people who by implication here are in some sort of privileged position to be able to narrate these images to us. 12:40 Wes: Yeah, I think that's important. So in a way, we need a point of view. And the photograph might give us the idea that we have a view from nowhere, in a sense, but also because it can't give us all the context and it can't give us a narrative and it's outside of time in a sense. Or it doesn't cover an expanse of time. It doesn't give us the ability to fully understand, which is not by itself a problem, except that it gives us the illusion of understanding because it's. Look, there's reality. 13:09 Erin: Right, Right. And so this is where everybody is the king of their own kingdom of mental images, determining which is making up meaning from within that image world. Even though the possibility of finding meaning in a given image is entirely dependent on it being properly narrativized so that we might superimpose meanings on images which aren't really there. 13:34 Wes: She gives this great. Just around the place where you read. The camera's rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses. In contrast to the amorous relation which is based on how something looks, understanding is based on how it functions and functioning, takes place in time and must be explained in time. Only that which narrates can make us understand. I hope I didn't just reread exactly the same quote. Maybe it's worth rereading twice. So that's very important. Understanding requiring an understanding of function and therefore requiring the inclusion of time and the need for narration. 14:14 Erin: And this refusal idea, which I should tip my hand a little bit more and explain that. The reason why this stuck out to me and why I suddenly wanted to think about a positive ethics of relations of our relationship to photography is that I got into a kind of argument with somebody a couple of weeks ago when I said that I didn't like to expose myself to certain images. 14:38 Wes: Why they can't see you. Just kidding. 14:42 Erin: And I was concerned about being inured to. I mean, specifically, we were talking about Game of Thrones and I just said that I really didn't. I knew about the kinds of things that are in Game of Thrones and I did. And I realized this is obviously like dwarves, we've just been taught. Yes, exactly. 14:59 Wes: That's why you can't look at Diane Arbus either. 15:02 Erin: Exactly. No, but, you know, we were talking about that show, and I said, oh, you know, it seems like it would be a really interesting show to watch, and I just can't. I'm really hypersensitive to this. Like, I've tried to basically maintain my sensitivity by not exposing myself to certain images because I do not want to desensitize myself. And this person thought that in doing so, I was coddling myself, essentially, and that I had a fundamentally immature relationship to the subject matter by not seeing these things, which I really disagreed with. And I. You know, all of that came back again. Somehow the Sontag came up at this interesting time where I had just had that conversation, and I thought, well, what she's really advocating for here is something similar to what I was arguing, which is a kind of hygiene of vision. Her idea seems to be that the worst thing we could do is not intervene in a situation which requires our intervention. So having a camera in our hand, I think, for Sontag, can be problematic in that there might be a situation which needs our help or our intervention. And by holding a camera, we might not be able to intervene and help someone. We might simply be in a voyeuristic relationship to, say, a mugging. I don't know. So we should be in a position where we are able to help the person being mugged instead of just standing there going, oh, this is great. I'm capturing a mugging live on my iPhone, you know, and I'm going to broadcast it to my followers. So I think that what Sontag is saying is that we need to be able to intervene, and that is what is negative about having a camera. And that part of our ability to intervene or to even recognize that something that is happening is wrong or bad or whatever ugly or something is not being inured to those occurrences by simply being inundated with lots of examples of that so that we are no longer able to even determine that, you know, this is a very extreme example, but we're not even able to determine that a mugging is bad, right. So that we can't even intervene in the mugging because we don't think it's particularly bad, because, well, we're inundated with images of muggings every day, so it's a normal thing. So we might as well just photograph it instead of intervening in some way. Again, that's a silly and sort of extreme example that I'm using just to illustrate what I think her point is. So something about, I think, not desensitizing ourselves seems to be important to Sontag, so that we maintain our sensitivity to things which deserve that sensitivity, so that we can be properly morally outraged when confronted with real moral outrages, and so that we can intervene when a situation needs our intervention. I think that is ultimately what she's saying, must be preserved from the jaws of photography. But that may not be accurate and I may simply be interpreting this so as to win the mental argument that I'm still having with this person. Right. Well, I think, I mean, I think 18:09 Wes: clearly she's, you know, she's pointing to this double edged sword of the. There's the capacity of photography to arouse the conscience and then. But it can also inure us, as you're pointing out, and she points out, but. And it does that in the same way it shocks us. But then if we get shocked enough times, we can be inured. And then. So the question is, do I avoid all exposure? Do I try to titrate it? Do I try to get just the right amount of exposure? Or do I atrocity. Do atrocity porn all day? This is kind of a dilemma with the news, right? 18:48 Erin: Yes, exactly. 18:49 Wes: And it doesn't need to be photographic. I think, unfortunately, even when there's narrative, in the case of the news, it can be bad for us. So I kind of have a compromise where I look at it a little bit, but then I try not to linger over it anymore just because it's not because I have self discipline, but just because it's gotten so depressing. But it frees up a lot of time. So I want to maintain some awareness, but I don't want to harm myself by doing that. I don't want to just have my head in the sand. But on the other hand, I want to protect myself. 19:19 Erin: Just to bring in the essay here, she says to suffer is one thing. Another thing is living with the photographed images of suffering, which does not necessarily strengthen conscience and the ability to be compassionate. And that's really important is, I think for her is to strengthen that conscience and the ability to be compassionate, to be able to act, to be able to intervene. It can also. This is Sontag again. It can also corrupt them. Once one has seen such images, one has started down the road of seeing more and more images. Transfix images anesthetize an event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been if one had never seen the photographs. Think of the Vietnam War. But after repeated exposure to images, it also becomes less real. And I think that is a problem. She Goes on to talk about pornography and the anesthetizing that. That happens when we. When the shock of pornography wears off. And then she says in these last decades, quote, unquote, concerned photography, that is, you know, photography which is designed to arouse our ethical function by showing us atrocities that we should be outraged by. Concerned photography has done at least as to deaden conscience as to arouse it. Yeah. So again, this sends me into, you know, this, this question of, okay, then, what is the proper amount? What is a proper comportment to images? Which sends me down that sort of aristocratic rabbit hole. Who's going to be responsible for determining what is the correct amount of exposure by the masses to these images? To a certain extent, it's. It is media corporations. 20:53 Wes: It's not going to be the sovereign. Plato in Plato's Republic. I was thinking about the argument between Plato and Aristotle earlier when you're talking about Game of Thrones, because the Platonic argument is that you could be corrupted by identifying with the person or the God doing the immoral thing. You get infected with their passions and your soul can be. Your character can be corrupted by it. And I think there's a point to that. And then the Aristotelian argument is actually. No, there's a cathartic effect. I can identify with characters, even characters doing crazy, violent things without necessarily being contaminated by them. There's a more complicated psychological relationship. I think they're both right to some extent. 21:36 Erin: Well, I think that's about the narrative element of Game of Thrones, whereas I'm concerned more with what Sontag is talking about here. I don't want those images in my head. 21:44 Wes: Yeah, well, that's a good distinction. Yeah, that's an important distinction. I was going to add to that. I do think the. It's an important point that they're talking about ancient Greek plays. Right. So there's an important visual part of this, including the masks. But leaving that aside, I think narrative is a problem too. And this came up in one of my first subtext episodes, which you were not on, but it about Slaughterhouse 5. And there's a worry in that novel about can you write about any of this without actually sensationalizing it or glorifying it in some way? Can you do that with war? Because war is exciting. And so even for narration, I think it becomes a problem or remains a problem, let's put it that way. I think narration helps. Well, let me give another example. When I was an animal healthcare reporter, worked for the Animal Healthcare magazine, I wrote a very Positive. I'm sure I've told this story before, but I wrote a very positive profile of someone who started one of the first animal cruelty sections within a police department. Yeah. She wasn't happy with the profile because it was fictionalized. Not because I put in any wrong facts, but just because I created a narrative. I created a story out of it, tried to make it interesting to an audience. And that by itself, even if everything is. We fact checked. We had a fact checker calling people. That by itself is distorting. That's kind of why I said you need a point of view. You need someone to be an essayist. I think in the end, whether they're doing that with photographs or with words or with a documentary. And that's the other thing I was thinking about when you were talking about sequencing in time. And you can write. Documentaries will include photographic stills often, and then contextual narrative around it. Think of something like Ken Burns, and then you have the right music, you got it all. 23:33 Erin: Great actors to read out letters. 23:36 Wes: Good voice, good narrators. Such good voices. The problem she's identifying doesn't go away. There's something better about the idea that one is involved in an essay. One is involved in making a point or having a point of view. And that it's not just a view from nowhere. I take a picture of my cat. Yep, that's my cat. She really exists. That's objective reality. But if I take a picture of her posing. Because she's also a model supermodel and she likes to pose. Yeah, that's an opinion. I mean, it's not an opinion that she's a supermodel. That's a fact. Or that she's beautiful. But it's. The particular posing in the photograph is an opinion. And that's a segue to chapter two, America Seen Through Photographs Darkly. Because it. Or to the second essay. Sorry, because it. Right. Part of the point is that Arbus is. She's got an agenda. She's got a certain opinion. And it's a kind of leveling thing where everything is made grotesque, whether it's actual freaks or just suburbanites. And this kind of condescending attitude towards suburbanites is something you interestingly see in contemporary streaming shows. Isn't it quaint that people are so normal? Aren't they cute? 24:55 Erin: Yes, that's right. 24:57 Wes: But it starts from. And I mean, it's such a great essay, but it starts from this. She traces it back to kind of. To Walt Whitman's idea of a democratic embrace of all experience, where I Think the point is to lift up ordinary life and say, oh, isn't everything majestic in some sense? Or isn't everything a manifestation of God or whatever? So it's in the same tradition, but it's actually leveling down rather than leveling up. But at least we know there's curation to that. But at least we understand, even if we don't like that project, that we're engaged with someone who is engaged in that kind of what you'll call surrealist project. For depicting America as a surrealist nation. 25:42 Erin: The hyper selection of Arbus work really suggests a distinct point of view, much like the HBO imperative to deliberately show things as disgusting as they could possibly be for the purposes of titillation. But they I was most interested in. In her analysis of Arbus character, she ultimately ascribes a naivete which is both coy and sinister. She says in the photograph's acceptance of the appalling. This is at the paragraph beginning. The most striking aspect of Arbus's work is that she seems to have enrolled in one of art photography's most vigorous enterprises, concentrating on victims, on the unfortunate, but without the compassionate purpose that such a project is expected to serve. She talks about Arbus's aggressiveness toward the public, which has been treated as a moral accomplishment. This is just a fabulous essay. I love this essay. I think this is the best thing ever written about Arbus, who, if she did bother you before, will certainly bother you after you read this. Yeah. So the naivete of these photographs, Sontag says, is both coy and sinister, for it is based on distance, on privilege, on a feeling that what the viewer is asked to look at is really other. Sontag says that there's a deliberate desire on Arbus part to inure us, to deaden our response to this kind of thing or to show us things that are shocking. And then the comportment that we have, say, in the art gallery, I mean, you know, we can imagine being people in the early 60s encountering this in a gallery. We're supposed to not be horrified by this or not show that we're horrified by this. Right. We're supposed to actually affect total nonchalance in the face of some very disturbing 27:32 Wes: images like that nudist camp woman with the apron. Yes, yes, topless, but except for an apron, because you don't want to spill coffee on yourself. You want to get coffee all over your thighs. I don't know. 27:48 Erin: Right. 27:49 Wes: There's times when clothing is just necessary. Okay, maybe not stay warm, but she 27:55 Erin: calls this a Self willed test of hardness, both on the part of Arbus and I suppose on the part of the people who look at Arbus photographs. And that ultimately the intent that people like Arbus have in going out and collecting these images of pain is not to feel more, but to feel less. And that too seems to be part of an inherent part of Sontag's say, moral vision, such as we can piece it together in these two essays, which is that we should be trying to feel more, not less. So I would say that this deadening is for Sontag a very negative thing, that we should be trying to preserve some kind of sensitivity. And because she says here, here, here is the key, it works out not as a liberation of, but as a subtraction from the self. A pseudo familiarity with the horrible reinforces alienation, making one less able to react in real life. I think that's as much kind of the moral key for Sontag as any sentence in here. So that subtraction from the self is what happens, I think, when she's saying, when we expose ourselves to these deadening images, we actually have less self as a result of this. In a way, it's what you're describing with the belief that being photographed takes away part of your soul or something like that. This is Sontag's transmogrification of that idea. 29:16 Wes: There's a part just for the one that you're focusing in on, where she talked about. Whitman preached empathy, concord and discord, oneness and diversity, psychic intercourse with everything, everybody plus sensual union. When he could get it is the giddy trip that is proposed explicitly over and over again in the prefaces of the poems. This longing to proposition the whole world also dictated his poetry's form and tone. Whitman's poems are a psychic technology for chanting the reader into a new state of being and then a little lower, meant to get readers psychically airborne, to boost them up to the height where they can identify with the past and with the community of American desire. But this message of identification with other Americans is foreign to our temperament now. So yeah, with Whitman you get this impetus to merger in a way with the past and with others, this impulse to oneness. And that's precisely what you're not getting with Arbus. The monsters that she's photographing are not inviting you to identify with them. Right, Since a lot of them are ugly. People can go look at her, her photography, but it's basically like trying to create a freak show out of everything, even out of maybe a normal couple standing there, depending on the way things are framed. So there's a kind of anti humanist message here, according to Sontag. 30:48 Erin: Yes. And Arbus doesn't want you to feel distance from that, though that's what's really interesting. Is this not. What was the word you used with Whitman? 30:58 Wes: Identification or merging? 31:00 Erin: Identification or merger. You're not supposed to feel that identification at all. But what's aggressive Sontag is saying about the photos is that she doesn't allow you to feel any distance from them. So it's like you're in close quarters with the other. And it's designed to make you feel this intense discomfort for that closeness and for the way in which these people are being photographed. And yet that feeling, that otherness, very intensely is part of it. So it's a sort of anti merger. You're put up close and it's designed to induce this reaction of discomfort, embarrassment, pain, shock, all of these things, which words which I think Sontag uses to characterize the experience of being in contact with these images. The most interesting observation, I think for me in the whole essay is when Sontag says that Arbus's interest in freaks. This is on page 43 in my Picador edition. Arbus's interest in freaks expresses a desire to violate her own innocence, to undermine her sense of being privileged to vent her frustration at being safe. I love that. That's. I think that's really key. I think a lot of people are reacting against safety by trying to, say, manufacture instances in which they remain safe but which feel unsafe to try and shock themselves into some. What they perceive as being some sort of more authentic relationship with the world. Anyway, I found that to be incredibly insightful and fascinating and it was somehow recognizable to me. It's psychologically revealing about Arbus, but it also reveals something about maybe what we might call the false promise of photography, which is to give us a sense that we've experienced something outside of our comfort zone in a way which is prepackaged and which doesn't actually come with any of the attendant, say, moral lessons that real experience might provide. Do you know what I'm saying? So there's something, I think illustrative about all of our relationship with photography in the character analysis she does of Arbus in this moment. Though it's also very specific and interestingly revealing about Arbus particular character. 33:12 Wes: Yeah, she says that the photographs in a way are too cool for school. It's like the compassionate response to them is supposed to be irrelevant. We're not supposed to feel horrified. Right. When we look at the Pictures, we're too cool for that kind of thing. And one might see that as a kind of way to destigmatize and to level experience and say, well, nothing is really freaky or everything is really freaky. But I think she sees it as a kind of unsavory inurement to reality. Right? 33:42 Erin: Yeah. 33:42 Wes: She contrasts Arbus kind of middle class or privileged, maybe upper middle class, yes, quite privileged Jewish existence and this enhanced desire to seek out a kind of corrective for that, to seek out some sort of adversity and violate her own incidents, sorry, innocence and you know, overcome the sense of being privileged. 34:08 Erin: I think everybody is suffering from this to a certain extent in the modern era because we don't actually have enough friction in our lives. And I think we feel the lack of what we might call experiences that are meaning making or character building because we're not suffering in the ways that previous generations have suffered. I mean people are certainly, they're suffering in different ways, but ways which are maybe less legible to us than what we're used to or what we think of in our minds as being acceptable or historically ways in which we might develop ourselves. And I think people feel the lack of that and they try to create those almost like self impose that suffering through a variety of other means. And so I think that is a little bit of what Sontag is getting at here. This is the way that Arbus is trying to do it by taking these close up shots with, with these people who look freaky and forcing us to look at it and be uncomfortable. And then we're supposed to just sort of look at it and act very nonchalant. And I remember being in a, I remember being in a museum with a, with a friend of mine from college who had none of the, I guess, training and nonchalance that people usually get at some point than going to museums or just, I don't know, learning, learning some sort of disaffected behavior from the people around them. And so we went into some modern art exhibit. I don't even remember what it was, but I just remember her going, oh my God, you know, like, like really loudly having these reactions and calling a lot of attention to herself. And now of course reading this, I'm like, of course, you know, she was actually doing the exact right thing. And probably Sontag would approve of that reaction because it's proof that she hadn't been anesthetized. She's actually having a real authentic reaction rather than a put on of, mmm, yeah, you're looking at something horrifying and you're supposed to just shrug your shoulders and walk on to the next image and brush it off. I think to a certain extent Sontag is saying we should maybe refuse to do that or we should recognize the falseness in doing that at least. 36:12 Wes: Yeah, there's a cynicism to it. And this maybe we can give listeners a taste of the way she ends the essay. Bringing it back to Whitman and making equivalences between freaks, mad people, suburban couples and nudists is a very powerful judgment, one in complicity with a recognizable political mood shared by many educated left liberal Americans. The subjects of Arbus's photographs are all members of the same family, inhabitants of a single village. Only as it happens, the idiot village is America. Instead of showing identity between things which are different, Whitman's democratic vista. Everybody is shown to look the same. Succeeding the more buoyant hopes for America has come. A bitter, sad embrace of experience. There's a particular melancholy in the American Photographic project, but the melancholy was already latent in the heyday of Whitman esque affirmation, including Stieglitz. So I'm skipping a little bit. So the Whitman esque appetites have turned pious. The photographer now patronizes reality photographers with less ego and magnetism. than Stieglitz gradually gave up the struggle. They might continue to practice atomistic visual stenography. The atomistic visual stenography inspired by Whitman, but without Whitman's delirious powers of synthesis. What they documented was discontinuity, detritus, loneliness, greed, sterility. So it ends in a way on the same note as the last essay with this movement towards atomism. Right. We started out with Whitman's leveling, being about a movement towards unity. And this is still a leveling, but it's more about we all end up the same level as our own little freaky disconnected atoms, rather than being somehow ennobled together. 38:03 Erin: I mean, it just gets worse from here. Right. There's no stopping this train. So maybe I've been wrong all along to look for some sort of alternative or instructions for a solution. 38:17 Wes: America has been discovered as the quintessential surrealist country. That's the one that I wanted to get to. This idea of succumbing to surrealism. 38:28 Erin: Yeah. 38:28 Wes: So quite pessimistic. And it sounds like from what, you know, the rest of the book, there's not much optimism. 38:36 Erin: Well, I mean, yeah. Though I don't want to give listeners the impression that these aren't exhilarating and really fun essays to read. 38:43 Wes: Yeah. I mean, I think you're doing well as a country if you have a writer like this. Yeah, she's amazing. So. Yeah, that's why I talked about a point of view in the essay. In the end, this is an argument for being a great essayist as opposed to a stenographer. And photography lends itself to stenography. 39:05 Erin: Right. 39:05 Wes: All right. Any last words before we put America to bed? No. 39:10 Erin: No. I love that. Sontag herself is the solution. That's music to my ears. 39:18 Wes: All right. Thank you. 39:20 Erin: Thank. You.

A lively dive into Susan Sontag’s ideas about photography as both proof and illusion. They probe photography’s paradoxes, from memory prosthetic to democratic atomizer of experience. Conversations touch on smartphones, selfies, moral distance created by cameras, and whether images can stir conscience without narrative.