Subtext: Conversations about Classic Books and Films

A poem about a map opens North and South, the first collection of the great twentieth century poet Elizabeth Bishop, and since, maps have been associated with her poetic vision—at once telescoping and binocular—and with the polarities and preoccupations of her work. The map’s privileged, sweeping, bird’s eye view of the earth is also hand-held, man-made, intimate. Depending on i...

A poem about a map opens North and South, the first collection of the great twentieth century poet Elizabeth Bishop, and since, maps have been associated with her poetic vision—at once telescoping and binocular—and with the polarities and preoccupations of her work. The map’s privileged, sweeping, bird’s eye view of the earth is also hand-held, man-made, intimate. Depending on i...

The very apparatus of the mummy’s tomb—his body locked in box upon box, his organs apportioned to canopic jars, hieroglyphic inscriptions on every surface—suggest the complexity of the undertaking. What might these two strands of the mummy’s DNA—in Shakespearean terms, part-Antony, part-Cleopatra—reveal about the relationship between colonizer and colonized, and abou...

As a cinematic monster, the mummy seems less an embodiment of revenge against colonial forces than a figure invented by colonialism itself. On the one hand, the mummy represents mystery, romance, magic, and the East. His wrappings suggest to the imagination that he’s not just dead, but wounded—ripped from a lost time and a broken narrative. Conveniently for the colonizer’s psyche, the...

Who is Godot? Whether God, objet a, or an abstraction from any object that is supposed to resolve dramatic suspense, it is clear that Vladimir and Estragon imagine him to be an agent of salvation (even if they can’t remember exactly what it is that needs saving). Perhaps the name is meant to satirize any states of expectancy—aspirational, libidinal, political, or religious—insofar the...

Who is Godot? Whether God, objet a, or an abstraction from any object that is supposed to resolve dramatic suspense, it is clear that Vladimir and Estragon imagine him to be an agent of salvation (even if they can’t remember exactly what it is that needs saving). Perhaps the name is meant to satirize any states of expectancy—aspirational, libidinal, political, or religious—insofar the...

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://subt...

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 th...

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 even...

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 even...

Are Mozart’s gifts a glitch in divine accounting? Or are his flaws attendant on or even the result of his genius? And how can we account for the glitch in Salieri’s design, which permits longing to go unanswered by talent? Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the 1984 film “Amadeus,” directed by Milos Forman.

Upcoming Episodes: Susan Sonta...

If an understanding of music implies a love of structure, perhaps the musician’s relationship to his art mirrors the one he has with authority, both human and divine. Salieri, whose father was a man of commerce, sees God as a kind of bank manager who records prayers and sacrifices as payments on a long-term loan of musical talent. Salieri’s economics work just fine until the arrival of Moza...

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and its sustained reflection on how political power is constructed, located, and legitimated.

Upcoming Episodes: “Amadeus,” Susan Sontag’s “On Photography.”

Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail&rdquo...

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and its sustained reflection on how political power is constructed, located, and legitimated.

Upcoming Episodes: “Amadeus,” Susan Sontag’s “On Photography.”

Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail&rdquo...

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and its sustained reflection on how political power is constructed, located, and legitimated.

Upcoming Episodes: “Amadeus,” Susan Sontag’s “On Photography.”

Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail&rdquo...

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and its sustained reflection on how political power is constructed, located, and legitimated.

Upcoming Episodes: “Amadeus,” Susan Sontag’s “On Photography.”

Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail&rdquo...

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” and its sustained reflection on how political power is constructed, located, and legitimated.

Upcoming Episodes: “Amadeus,” Susan Sontag.

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

Brutus is an honorable man, but Caesar is Caesar: at the beginning of Shakespeare’s play, his name is near the point of becoming synonymous with dictatorial power, and his every wish, as Mark Antony points out, has the substance of a command. For the rebels who oppose him, this identification of political authority with personal will is a perversion of republican institutions, and a form of corru...

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of the 1949 classic film “The Third Man,” about friendship and betrayal, and about the stories we tell ourselves in order to love, survive, kill, or even die.

Upcoming Episodes: “Julius Caesar.”

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