Episodes

  • Sins of Omission in “On the Waterfront” (1954) (Part 2)

    Sins of Omission in “On the Waterfront” (1954) (Part 2)
    May 13 2024
    Wes & Erin continue their discussion of "On the Waterfront."
    Show more Show less
    35 mins
  • Sins of Omission in “On the Waterfront” (1954) (Part 1)

    Sins of Omission in “On the Waterfront” (1954) (Part 1)
    May 6 2024
    Terry Malloy and his fellow longshoremen on the New York docks are witnesses to union corruption under labor boss Johnny Friendly, but won’t testify against him because of his violent intimidation tactics, which ensure that union members remain “D and D”—that is, deaf and dumb—to any illegal activity. When Terry’s collaboration with Friendly results in the death of his friend Joey Doyle, and when Terry subsequently falls in love with Joey’s sister, Edie, he’s forced to reckon with this D and D policy, as well as his own passivity, guilt, and naivete. Wes & Erin discuss Elia Kazan’s 1954 film On the Waterfront, which might be said to dramatize the so-called “sin of omission” while asserting that its opposite, truth-telling, can be a radical and perhaps even a strangely physical form of heroism.
    Show more Show less
    41 mins
  • Consciousness Bemoaned in Philip Larkin’s “Aubade” (Part 2)

    Consciousness Bemoaned in Philip Larkin’s “Aubade” (Part 2)
    Apr 29 2024
    In the medieval tradition of courtly love, the aubade inverts the serenade. Where one heralds an evening arrival, the other laments a morning departure. In John Dunne’s famous poetic contribution to the genre, he chastises the sun for waking and so separating lovers, but consoles us with the notion that the power of the sun is ultimately subordinate to the imperatives of love. More bleak, Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade" seems to abandon this indictment on behalf of love for one on behalf of self-love, perhaps even on behalf of life itself. Morning awakens us to both workaday drudgery and an awareness of our own mortality. As a consequence, life is harder to live by the light of day, the consolations of philosophy and religion notwithstanding, and vitality is confined to the sorts of evening revelry that make waking all the harder. Wes & Erin discuss whether life (and love) can be reconciled with human self-consciousness and all that it entails.
    Show more Show less
    53 mins
  • Consciousness Bemoaned in Philip Larkin’s “Aubade” (Part 1)

    Consciousness Bemoaned in Philip Larkin’s “Aubade” (Part 1)
    Apr 22 2024
    In the medieval tradition of courtly love, the aubade inverts the serenade. Where one heralds an evening arrival, the other laments a morning departure. In John Dunne’s famous poetic contribution to the genre, he chastises the sun for waking and so separating lovers, but consoles us with the notion that the power of the sun is ultimately subordinate to the imperatives of love. More bleak, Philip Larkin’s poem “Aubade" seems to abandon this indictment on behalf of love for one on behalf of self-love, perhaps even on behalf of life itself. Morning awakens us to both workaday drudgery and an awareness of our own mortality. As a consequence, life is harder to live by the light of day, the consolations of philosophy and religion notwithstanding, and vitality is confined to the sorts of evening revelry that make waking all the harder. Wes & Erin discuss whether life (and love) can be reconciled with human self-consciousness and all that it entails.
    Show more Show less
    41 mins
  • Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 2)

    Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 2)
    Jan 15 2024
    Wes & Erin continue their discussion of Orson Welles’s "Citizen Kane." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com/subtextfree and use code subtextfree for free breakfast for life.
    Show more Show less
    48 mins
  • Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 1)

    Identity and Infamy in “Citizen Kane” (1941) (Part 1)
    Jan 8 2024
    It’s a film bursting with objects—the treasure troves of Xanadu, a snowglobe, jigsaw puzzles, a winner’s cup, the famous sled. Even the conceptual elements of the film’s plot are expressed tangibly. Kane’s mind-boggling wealth isn’t an abstraction, but a list of concrete holdings—gold mines, oil wells, real estate. And the news Kane controls and manipulates, when yoked to another noun, is something one can hold in one’s hands: a newspaper. Kane, too, is described as the incarnation of several abstractions. As his obituary tells us, he himself was “news,” as well as the embodiment of whole years in a swath straddling the 19th and 20th centuries. One might call him the American idea personified. But what these terms really mean and how they’re made manifest in Kane is hard to pin down. At times, he seems to be no more than a vast, empty planet around which objects swirl. What’s at his core, then? What did his life mean? One reporter searching for the secret of Kane bets that just one fact—the identity of “Rosebud”—would explain his whole life. Another suggests that it’s in the sum total of his possessions. Yet another thinks, curiously, that even Kane’s actions won’t tell us who he really was. So what, then, determines his or any identity? What’s the measure of a person? The objects they possess? The abstract ideals they claim to stand for? Their actions? Or something still deeper? Wes & Erin discuss possibly the greatest film ever made: from 1941, Orson Welles’s "Citizen Kane."
    Show more Show less
    46 mins
  • Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 6)

    Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 6)
    Dec 25 2023
    Part 6 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext.
    Show more Show less
    43 mins
  • Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 5)

    Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Part 5)
    Dec 18 2023
    Part 5 of Wes & Erin's discussion of Shakespeare’s "The Winter’s Tale." Thanks to our sponsor for this episode, St. John's College. Learn more about undergraduate--and graduate--Great Books programs at St. John's in Santa Fe, New Mexico and Annapolis, Maryland at sjc.edu/subtext.
    Show more Show less
    57 mins