Jack Considers a Christmas Reagan

Nice new bit of audio content for you today, mainly on the subject of guys called Orson.
From the Wrong With Authority stable, a commentary track for Orson Welles’ undervalued late masterpiece F for Fake, featuring myself and Daniel Harper. Download or listen HERE.
This commentary is basically a spin-off from an episode of They Must Be Destroyed on Sight in which I guested to chat about the same film – here. TMBDOS also recently did an episode on Welles’ finally-completed final film, The Other Side of the Wind, here.
Plus, we recently released a podcast in which Daniel and Kit chatted about Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game, and somehow managed to find new angles on it, despite it being one of the most discussed texts on the internet. Download or listen HERE.
Also, if you haven’t listened to the Wrong With Authority’s third ‘Trumpism’ episode, recorded after the mid-terms, but feel like subjecting yourself to five hours of our self-therapy, that’s here.
On the subject of Wrong With Authority, we still have two great new episodes in the can, being edited, and slated to be released soon (hopefully). There’s our next proper full WWA episode, hosted by Daniel this time, which will tackle D. W. Griffiths’ racist alleged-masterpiece of early American silent cinema Birth of a Nation, and a Consider the Reagan commentary on James Cameron’s The Terminator. Holly joins the team for both. Look out for those.
Speaking of Holly, people should definitely check out her new seasonal podcast series So Here It Is, in which she is joined by a succession of guests to chat with her about the tracks in the British Christmas music canon. One of the guests who has already been on is our friend Andrew Hickey, whose own new podcast series, A History of Pop Music in 500 Songs, is another absolute must.
(Oh, and I haven’t forgotten that I was meant to be reposting the Doctor Who commentary tracks I recorded with El. I’ll get back to that, probably in the new year.)
In other me-news, I’ve recently had something of a posting spurt over at my Patreon, and people who sponsor me for as miniscule a goddamn pittance as one measley dollar a month goddammit can exclusively access forthcoming posts of mine (fucking looooong ones too) on things like the TV show Legion (which I’ve perversely decided to find fascinating), Doctor Who and Brecht’s ‘Epic Theatre’, and Marx’s theory of capitalist crisis… as well as an audio snippet from the WWA episode we did on Anonymous in which me and the gang get drawn into a little chat about the ‘New Atheists’.
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Yet another strand of Wrong With Authority launches. This time it’s Carter Before the Horse. It’s basically just Consider the Reagan but earlier.
In this inaugural edition, James, Kit, and Jack watch Kubrick’s The Shining, and say things about it.
LISTEN/DOWNLOAD HERE
Beware Triggers, because we talk about the film’s themes, and they’re not pretty.
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This time, Jack indulges his unhealthy obsession with Anti-Stratfordianism, and forces James, Kit, and Daniel to watch Roland Emmerich’s 2011 self-funded passion-project Anonymous.
Anonymous; 2011; d. Roland Emmerich; w. John Orloff; starring Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson, David Thewlis, Rafe Spall, Jamie Campbell Bower, Mark Rylance, and Derek Jacobi; distributed by Columbia Pictures.
It lost about 15 million dollars.
Based on the wackiest version of the longstanding conspiracy theory that the plays of Shakespeare were secretly written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, Anonymous is both less entertaining and less plausible than the rest of Emmerich’s films, including the ones about aliens and giant lizards.
It was ‘controversial’ at the time, in the sense that everyone who knew anything about Shakespeare both ridiculed and denounced it, especially its attempts to market itself via ‘information packs’ provided to schools.
In the process of telling his dreary, plotless, and confusing shaggy dog story, Emmerich encourages some of the finest Shakespearean actors of our time to make utter fools of themselves. Not that some of them need all that much encouragement. The whole thing manages to be simultaneously totally insane, quasi-fascistic, and profoundly dull… which is quite a feat, in its way.
None of us were terribly impressed, it’s fair to say. But, in between Jack galloping off on his hobby horse for uncomfortably long stretches of time, we also delve into some of the interesting history and politics concerning Shakespeare, Anti-Statfordianism, and conspiracy theories generally.
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LINKS:
Jack has written a lot about Shakespeare in general here.
Here are some books which are either about, or touch on, this issue:
The Genius of Shakespeare by Jonathan Bate. Has an entire fascinating chapter on the ‘Authorship Controversy’. The rest of the book is periodically excellent too.
Contested Will by James Shapiro. Brilliantly discusses the ‘Authorship Question’, not so much in terms of its actual claims (though Shapiro does address them) but rather as a phenomenon in itself, populated by fascinating people and deserving of study in its own right. Shapiro develops many insights about scholarship, history, literature, and politics.
Shakespeare, In Fact by Irvin Leigh Matus. A legendary work of factual analysis. Forensic, witty, and merciless.
Here’s the Bill Bryson book James refers too. Boasts an amusingly irritated final chapter on the ‘Authorship Question’.
Shakespeare Beyond Doubt, Eds. Stanley Wells and Paul Edmondson. A compendium of essays commissioned by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust as part of their assertive response to Anonymous. Scholar after scholar examines every aspect of the issue. The definitive single-volume demolition.
The SBT also created this bite-size pamphlet – Shakespeare Bites Back: Not So Anymous – summarizing the main issues at stake. Free to download here.
Speaking of online resources, here’s the Shakespeare Authorship Page. Lots of links to lots of articles and essays.
The lecture excerpted in the podcast is part of a series by eloquent Shakespeare scholar and former actor Peter Saccio. …
Sorry about the dearth of content from me lately. I’ve been unwell. Capable of very little serious effort. I am very grateful for your patience, and especially the apparently inexhaustible patience of my dear friend Elizabeth.
Here are two recent episodes of Consider the Reagan, a strand of the Wrong With Authority podcast in which I and my friends James, Kit, and Daniel, comment on the 80s films – made during the Reagan years – which loomed large in our lives.
More of this sort of thing soon… because watching TV and being a smartass about it is about as much as I can manage right now.
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A year (or so) ago, the unthinkable happened. So, of course, we podcasted about it.
That was this. This is now.
This time, Daniel has called Kit and Jack back to the WWA recording bunker, joined by James too this time, to talk about what it’s like to have lived a full year since Trump ‘won’ the 2016 US Presidential ‘election’.
Show notes: Main Topic: Trumpism At One Year. Introducing the band. Non-productive news obsession. Alabama and purity. James praises his co-hosts. Corbyn and the soft left. #TheResistance. Misplaced catastrophism. The first few weeks. John McCain. The roles of the two parties. Kit’s personal and political issues. Don’t watch the news. Obligatory Batman reference. Bush and some weird shit. The Republicans and Obama. Activists. Discipline. Factionalism and the ACA. High floor in polls. “This is fine.” Easy versus hard. New normal in global capitalism. The bumbling chessmaster. Scarmucci. Pizza-eating billionaire. Republican Dave. Mocking the empty suit. Form and content. Natural charisma. “No-drama Obama.” The 2016 primary bullshit. Homeopathic socialism. “Gary Hart Would Have Won.” Women’s march. Drifting left on social issues. Obama was Republican enough. Back to Roy Moore. Hating pedophiles or women more. Mendacious media and epistemic closure. Elephant. C-span typography problems. Daniel’s guess for 2020. Intermission: turd-miners. What has Donald Trump done well? American imperialism and nascent fascism. Trump and Charlottesville. Twitter as a direct connection to the base. Trump and the media. The spectacle of wealth. Impossible to ignore. A plurality, not a majority. Foreign policy and American politics. Never anti-war. Non-ideological. “Lot of killers.” Trump as comedy. Adam Sandler billionaire. Steak and classism and tiny hands. Trump and mental illness. Trump versus previous presidents. Crisis? Sorkin. Bullet. Lucky. Conniving versus reckless. Empire. Russia. Predictions. Wrapping Up. “Old Man Trump.”
Oh… Jack is sorry for his mic problems by the way. His generous patrons just paid for a Blue Yeti, so hopefully the situation will soon be resolved. It’s just occurred to me. I will control a mechanical Yeti.
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At long last, here is the first episode of a new strand of the ‘Wrong With Authority’ podcast supergroup, in which we (sadly we were Murphyless this time, but we expect to be fully Jamesed-up in future episodes) record commentaries on the movies that shaped and misshaped us, movies released between the first inaugurations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush the Elder.
Who’d have motherfucking thought it?
In a very special pocast (albeit one recorded a month ago) Jane and James discuss Steve Thompson’s Doctor Who episodes. At length. Now, mind you, this was at midnight over here in the States, and I was well past my bedtime. Whereas James was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 6am over in the UK. So I would definitely go James’s version of the event, because my memory is hazy on the point. I think I kept talking about death. Yeah. That seems likely.
Grab the episode here.
And feel free to mock us to the high heavens in the comments. ๐…
Here’s Shabcast 11, featuring myself in conversation with Phil Sandifer.
This was recorded before Eruditorum Press went live, so events have overtaken it somewhat.
We discuss Doctor Who (before the start of Series 9), Susan, Gareth Roberts, Thomas Ligotti, God, Alan Moore, H.P. Lovecraft, Jimmy Saville, Frank Miller, Vox Day (because Phil just can’t help himself), Hegel, Marxism, technological determinism, the Situationists, Engels, evolution, revolution, the Anthropocene extinction, Jonathan Jones, and the existential terrors of the Right.
But the main attractions of the podcast are our discussions of Hannibal (which had just ended when we taped), True Detective, and the life and crimes (artistic and otherwise) of John Nathan-Turner.
Chatting about Hannibal, we coin the term ‘hannibalism’, decide how to do Buffalo Bill in 2015, and come to the conclusion that Hannibal himself is a Miltonic Lucifer in a gnostic universe created by a deistic god and, possibly, Hannibal himself.
Be aware of spoilers and triggers (note the references above to Jimmy Saville and JN-T).
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P.S. – Phil’s mention of “the fucking Thales idiot” refers to a passing right-wing pillock calling himself a ‘Philosopher DJ’ with whom Phil (and, to a lesser extent, I) had an argument on twitter, during which I (somewhat sarcastically) asked him what he thought about the tripartite anatomy of the Doctrine of the Notion to be found in Hegel’s Logic, whereupon he responded (after a few days) with some vague stuff about Hegel’s dialectic (which is a distinct thing), which is why Phil asks me about the tripartite anatomy of the Doctrine of the Notion during the course of the conversation (a question I don’t get around to properly answering, tragically for all of you Hegel-fans listening).…