(post)script: Post-Apocalypse

Listen to more episodes of (post)script at Patreon. Wes & Erin continue their discussion of “Apocalypse Now.” Wes apologizes for asking Erin to watch something so disturbing, and we further discuss dueling conceptions of the arts, one Platonic and the other Aristotelian. We agree that “Apocalypse Now,” despite being challenging, is an aesthetic masterpiece. What about the narrative? Wes argues that it is very close to not having enough of an arc. What it does most successfully is to convey a kind of surreal, psychedelic mood, one that is meant to capture the insanity of the Vietnam War (and perhaps war in general), and so constitutes its critique. We end by reminiscing about watching “Notting Hill” together. But we fail to talk about an obvious hypothetical, which is how Hugh Grant would play Kurtz. It’s one thing to have a poetry-spewing Brando put your head on a stake. But nothing could evoke a horror more pure than being subjected, in your final moments, to Hugh Grant’s pseudo-bumbling, self-effacing schtick, somehow performed so adorably as to win you over to the sad necessity of your own obliteration. Next episodes: “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and then “The Wizard of Oz.” Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Thanks to Nick Ketter for the audio editing on this episode. Transcript 0:00 Erin: Welcome to Postscript, the subtext after show where we talk about things related and unrelated to the week's episode. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. 0:07 Wes: And this is Wes Alwan. We just got done talking about Apocalypse Now. Sorry. 0:14 Erin: No, I'm glad I saw it. I'm glad I finally sat down and saw the whole. I'm glad that you tortured me in this way. It was the necessary sacrifice that you had to make to get. 0:23 Wes: Yeah, exactly. 0:26 Erin: You were trying to spread democracy to me by showing me this. 0:29 Wes: Yes. 0:30 Erin: Trying to colonize my brain. How many ways can we make stupid jokes about this? Okay. 0:37 Wes: Yeah. So I'm glad you're glad that you saw it. 0:39 Erin: Yeah, sure. 0:39 Wes: You know, I think that went well. There are a lot of really interesting questions to talk about with that movie. And it wasn't just a matter of repeating ourselves with what we talked about in Heart of Darkness. Actually, there's a lot of new interesting territory there. 0:52 Erin: Yeah. And I think I. You know, I hope I didn't say anything too extreme or things that I'm going to live to regret by saying, like. Like this is immoral or what. I didn't mean it's strictly immoral. I was just kind of interested in exploring what happens when you take that and put it on film. 1:08 Wes: Yeah. I mean, it's a classic question. Right? So I think. And it led to a lot of good discussion, I think. 1:13 Erin: Good. Okay. I'm glad you think so. Because I don't know, sometimes with me, you know, things. I'm so emotional and I'm so swept up by things in the moment that sometimes I become obsessed with something or I have a real strong reaction to something. And then later I'm like, why did I. Why was that so extreme? Why couldn't I just look at this more objectively? 1:32 Wes: Well, maybe. Maybe you're just a Platonist and you're just. It's not about being emotional, but being so rational that you. Maybe you want to protect us. 1:40 Erin: I've never been accused of being too rational. 1:42 Wes: Protect us from the arts. 1:44 Erin: That's true. Yeah. 1:46 Wes: I mean, it's a real problem. It doesn't. I don't know how you resolve that dilemma of. This is about education. This is about influence. This is about what builds our character. Every stimulus is important. And like I said, I think there's the Platonic critique and then I think there's the Aristotelian defense of a more ironic detachment from the effects of. To the mimetic. Right. It's not just about the imitation. The fact that we. That the arts and the arts are in. He's thinking about tragic poetry, specifically that there's an imitation of the world, a representation of the world, but it's the fact that it induces imitation in us. And for Aristotle, this is very important. We are imitation machines. We are built up out of imitations and identifications. So Plato's critique is very strong. If we are. We are subjecting ourselves to these identifications with bad people, we might become bad people. And Aristotle gives a kind of like quasi therapeutic explanation of this in terms of catharsis and the sort of inevitability of these darker sides of ourselves and the need to do something with that. Maybe sublimated, I'm not sure. But yeah, two different approaches, which I think both have to be taken seriously. Yeah. 3:00 Erin: And I think. I don't know, sometimes I don't mind playing a role on these podcasts that I don't even necessarily agree with, but saying things that I feel like need to be said or. I don't know, I feel like people don't think enough about the ethics of what they say. They don't question things enough. Not the people who listen to this podcast. But, you know, you can excuse anything. 3:21 Wes: It's just this is a. This is. I'm consuming art or a story or entertainment, however you want to put it. 3:27 Erin: Right. And people don't even think of the. I mean, consuming pornography, if anything, is like celebrated at this point. So. And people don't think about the fact that we just have unprecedented access to these images of extreme sex or extreme violence and in ways that no other culture has ever had to face before. And what effect does that have on us? I think pop up ads on the Internet are immoral. I find them extremely offensive. I do, I do. I find them not only extremely ugly, but intrusive and offensive. I find television commercials be ugly and intrusive. 3:58 Wes: What about podcast advertisements that we read? 4:03 Erin: Yeah, as long as I read them from an aerial position and don't have to directly engage in the weeds, then I'm okay with doing it. 4:10 Wes: There you go. 4:12 Erin: No, I don't know. So I'm all right. Being the weird prophet of disaster. 4:17 Wes: I once got myself into some trouble with friends by arguing that culturally, maybe it's a little more politically incorrect now, but, you know, a public cultural obsession with athleticism and fitness and a healthy diet is perfectly acceptable. But if you talked about that in terms of high culture or the quality of your entertainment, people would just think that's snobbery. So, like I think I said Something like, you know, we are spiritually fat. We, you know, we consume the equivalent of Cheetos and act like that's enough. Not that there's anything wrong with Cheetos. I mean, in moderation, as long as there are other parts of your diet. But the question is if it's just ethically inert and irrelevant, right. To be reading good books or to watch good films and to be very conscientious about what you expose yourself to and to the proportion of your diet that is empty calories, so to speak, and the proportion that is more nutritious. It's about education. And there are political implications to this. You know, the old liberal arts argument is that to have good citizens and a good polis, a good political arrangement in life, we need people with a certain kind of education. Speaking of advertisements, I'm just. I'm advertising my. This is just an advertisement now for liberal arts and for my, you know, one of my hobby horses, but one of my religions. But, yeah, that's the idea. This is about education. I think if people reframed these questions about our entertainments and our leisure time in terms of the concept of education and character, maybe that's something we should do. I don't know. 6:07 Erin: Well, I think by that same token, I mean, in a lot of ways, Apocalypse now is the most. Even on the one hand, I expressed kind of a form of condemnation, though that's too strong of a word. I also think it's probably in the way that you're describing spiritual fitness or whatever. I think this film is the most morally nutritious I've seen in a long time. On the other hand, you know, I mean, in terms of consuming things that don't just make us feel good, but which challenge us in some kind of way or, you know, viewing films not purely as entertainment. I mean, I admitted at the beginning of the episode that I've just been consuming cotton candy. Escapist films. And there's an argument to be made about whether or not all films are fundamentally escapist or what. 6:49 Wes: Yeah. 6:49 Erin: What constitutes entertainment. 6:51 Wes: Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 6:52 Erin: I don't think I'm alone in this, though. I mean, it's a feature of times like these, you know, difficult pandemic times or the Great Depression. Far more difficult, where people seek escapism. And scary or challenging movies tend to only be consumed in times of relative prosperity and good feeling. Hence the failure of the Oscars this year, as I think a lot of people have pointed out. Yeah. And I don't think there's anything wrong with escapism. And I don't think there's anything unartistic about. When I think of the Great Depression. I think of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies as being, like, the height of escapism and beauty and wealthy people dancing. And I think those are, like, some of the most artistic movies of the 30s. So, yeah, I've lost my train of thought. The point being, this is good for me to watch, though. It raised a lot of questions about whether it was good for me on one level. I think it was also nutritious in the way that you're describing on another level. 7:43 Wes: Yeah, well, I think I wish I had actually said this in the actual episode, but I think it is a masterpiece. Technically, it's masterfully done. I mean, the audio, the visuals, and the sound are just incredible. I mean, after watching Hearts of Darkness in the making of it, I was just like, I'm shocked at how you even get that out of his wife. Coppola's wife did that documentary and had a camera on what they were doing and just looking at the footage that she shot and thinking about how, wow, how they transform that into the actual movie. It's much more mundane, you know, when you see it before the. Before the editing and all that. Or maybe it's just that it's also video recorded. But so it's brilliantly done. And I think it's. I don't know, you know, is it emotionally effective? It's suspenseful enough. It's on the verge of not having enough of a narrative arc, actually. George Lucas criticized it for that. He was originally supposed to direct this, but they couldn't. And I think Coppola was going to be the producer, but initially they just couldn't get it made. And then by the time they got some interest after Coppola started what's his company? Zoetrope. 8:51 Erin: Zoetrope, yeah. 8:52 Wes: Got some interest. And then Lucas was busy doing Star wars, and Coppola kind of assumed that that meant he could direct it. But I think Lucas felt kind of betrayed by that. But it's funny to see him interviewed about this and just sort of to archly kind of say, he's like, francis likes to be very intuitive when he films and not be very organized and just go out and kind of shoot stuff. And when you do that, sometimes you don't really end up with a narrative arc. So, yes, this film is episodic, and it's setting itself up for a disappointing payoff, obviously, because we know he's just Going there to kill Kurtz. And then how do you make that satisfying at all? And I think it is kind of, you know, when people say they're not happy with the ending. I think from a plot standpoint, that's understandable. It's just. It's not a plot exciting plot payoff. When you watch a film like this, you have to be more interested in the aesthetic. You have to be more ready to be wowed by the visual representations, by the sound, and also by the like. The thing that I think is conveyed most successfully and is one of the things that makes the film great is just the sense of the surreal and the kind of the psychedelic quality. And that's the critique of the war, right? The critique of the war as a form of insanity that's conveyed very well. You get drawn into that. It's almost a meditative, trance like experience. And there's a good quote from Roger Ebert about this. He says in his review, I think this was a later. Not the original review that he wrote, but something later. But he said Coppola also well knows, as demonstrated in the Godfather films, that movies aren't especially good at dealing with abstract ideas. For those, you'd be better off turning to the written word. But they are superb for presenting moods and feelings. The look of a battle, the expression of a face, the mood of a country. Apocalypse now achieves greatness not by analyzing our experience in Vietnam, but by recreating in characters and images something of that experience. So as a kind of raw experience, it's really hard to say anything about. 11:07 Erin: Right. 11:08 Wes: These are things that they involve the unsayable, ultimately. And that's what can make a medium like this great. It's a tool for capturing what can't be spoken, ultimately. 11:18 Erin: Right. That's a real sign of a masterpiece, too. The perfect use of the medium means that you shouldn't be able to express it or describe it. Like that dancing about architecture comment that somebody made about. I can't remember the quote now, but yeah, I also wish I had. I hope I said this in the episode, though. I do think it's like one of the greatest films I've ever seen, and it's totally a masterpiece, despite all of my criticism or explorations. 11:44 Wes: Right. 11:44 Erin: But to discuss another film of equal moral heft and brilliance. We did watch Notting Hill together, 11:52 Wes: which 11:53 Erin: has been more my satisfying. I don't know about that. 11:57 Wes: Really? 11:58 Erin: I don't know about that. 11:59 Wes: Wait, did we talk about this? 12:00 Erin: No, I agree with you, actually, I do, and I don't. I Actually, like I said as we were watching it, I find a lot of that movie to be so manipulative that I'm not. I don't know if I'm on board with that. That ending part where everyone's like doing tai chi in the park and the kids run past and oh la la, it's such a beautiful day and look, Julia Roberts is pregnant. 12:19 Wes: Yeah. Well, you wanted to end it at the press conference, right? 12:24 Erin: Yeah, yeah. What is it with me and wanting to end things like three minutes before the actual ending? 12:30 Wes: Well, you could just stop watching at that point and that would be the ending. 12:34 Erin: That's true. I've just self edit everything. I already do that. By closing my eyes at all violent parts of movies, I've forced myself to watch every moment of Apocalypse Now. 12:45 Wes: Hey, I think that maybe we could get rich off an app where you pre edit the movie in the way that you want to watch it. 12:51 Erin: Yeah, there you go. 12:52 Wes: Or have a robot do it. You know, have the software do it like it knows you and your preferences and then just custom edits the film. 12:58 Erin: For me, that would be the black bar. Do you remember that in 30 Rock where. 13:02 Wes: No. 13:03 Erin: He's trying to impress the new owner of NBC, who's that? Cable town smarmy family guy. And so he uses Kenneth's idea for putting the black bar at the bottom of the screen so that you don't see any dirty parts. And just like, cut. He cut off the half of the bottom of the screen and he demonstrates it by filming test footage of this couple who are saying to each other, like, look at us, we're totally sexing each other right now. But you can't see anything as you can just see their shoulders and the bottom of the screen is blacked out. 13:32 Wes: That's great. 13:33 Erin: Oh, gosh, why do I keep. I'm referencing 30 Rock all over the place in these past few episodes. 13:39 Wes: Bad and Arrested Development. 13:41 Erin: Well, my two ur-texts for Eliot and Kurtz, it's Frazer's The Golden Bough and that mythology. For me, it's the mythology of Alec Baldwin and J. Walter Weatherman, as you said. 13:53 Wes: So Hugh Grant is, you know, he's kind of a phenomenon in his own right. What is it about his hair? 13:59 Erin: His hair, as you said, his hair is a phenomenon. 14:02 Wes: Is kind of humble, adorable without being effeminate. I don't know. 14:06 Erin: I find that also to be at times a little on the irritating side. 14:10 Wes: Yeah, me too. He is very on the edge of being irritating, but I think somehow he manages to pull it Off. That's what I find somewhat interesting about him. Well, what I love in without an English accent. Forget about it. 14:23 Erin: Oh, totally forget about it. Totally. One of the things that occurred to me as we started watching Notting Hill, I thought, oh, you know, what we should have watched was Sense and Sensibility. The Emma Thompson Sense and Sensibility. Have you seen that? 14:34 Wes: I have, but I would gladly rewatch that. I would gladly watch almost any Jane Austen adaptation. 14:40 Erin: Yeah, sure. Well, yeah. And I think that Sense and Sensibility adaptation, for an adaptation with a traditional movie runtime, the ability that Thompson had to compress that in her script and make it into like a perfect 2 hour and 1020 minute movie is like really remarkable. So I think that's like the best traditional feature film runtime adaptation of an Austen book. But I was thinking about that and then I was thinking about how in Sense and Sensibility, because of his, like Hugh Grant playing the character of Edward Ferrars, it's actually kind of the perfect encapsulation of his personality because of the something fundamentally ineffectual at the core of that that causes Elinor to suffer because he can't get his words out. 15:27 Wes: Interesting. 15:28 Erin: Yeah, because he is too affable. 15:30 Wes: Right. 15:31 Erin: It actually chips away at his morality. 15:33 Wes: That's very interesting. 15:34 Erin: I don't know, it's just occurring to me now, but I think that's what I find irritating about it ultimately is self effacement. A blind for something hollow in the center. 15:45 Wes: Right. By the way, did you see the most recent Emma? 15:48 Erin: I have not seen it. 15:49 Wes: I liked that a lot. How about Love and Friendship? 15:51 Erin: I loved that. I loved that. 15:53 Wes: We should do that sometime. 15:54 Erin: Yeah, I'd love to see that again. I saw it a few times when it came out on Amazon Prime. 15:58 Wes: Okay. I only saw it once. 15:59 Erin: I'm due to watch that again. 16:01 Wes: So next time we are going to do the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock just because we are inspired by Kurtz, who highly recommends that poem. 16:09 Erin: I take all his recommendations, T.S. 16:11 Wes: eliot fan. And we are going to do the wizard of Oz, which is actually Willard's favorite movie. 16:23 Erin: He seems to see the man behind that curtain, didn't he? 16:25 Wes: There you go. I'm glad you made that. I wasn't even thinking about that. That's a great connection. 16:28 Erin: It just comes out, I don't think. Wes. 16:30 Wes: Well, we do a lot of comparative literature stuff on this podcast, so I'm sure there's going to be a lot of interesting comparison and contrasting of wizard of Oz and Apocalypse Now. 16:44 Erin: Oh, God. 16:45 Wes: The ruthlessness of Dorothy. 16:48 Erin: Don't ruin this for me. You know. You know what this means to me. 16:53 Wes: She essentially is Marlow. 16:55 Erin: Oh, God. Don't take my Judy away. 17:01 Wes: Okay, you can't forget I ever said that. All right. Thank you. 17:06 Erin: Thank you.