Episode 101: Our Fear of the Dark: On Tanizaki's 'In Praise of Shadows'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 23 June 2021

⏱️ 61 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In modern physics as in Western theology, darkness and shadows have a purely negative existence. They are merely the absence of light. In mythology and art, however, light and darkness are enjoy a kind of Manichaean equality. Each exists in its own right and lays claim to one half of the Real. In this episode, JF and Phil delve into the luxuriant gloom of the Japanese novelist Jun'ichirō Tanazaki's classic meditation on the half-forgotten virtues of the dark. Get your Weird Studies MERCH! https://www.redbubble.com/people/Weird-Studies/shop?asc=u Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/weirdstudies Find us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/Jw22CHfGwp Visit the Weird Studies Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/shop/weirdstudies REFERENCES Junichiro Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows Chiaroscuro, Renaissance art style John Carpenter (dir.), Escape from L.A. Weird Studies, Episode 13 on Heraclitus Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction Yasujiro Ozu (dir.), Late Spring Wabi Sabi, Japanese idea John Carpenter (dir.), Escape from NY Jonathan Crary, 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep Eric Voegelin, German-American philosopher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Spectrevision Radio
0:03.3	Welcome to Weird Studies, an arts and philosophy podcast with hosts Phil Ford and J.F. Martel.
0:23.3	For more episodes or to support the podcast, go to weirdst. I'm J.F. Martell.
0:52.4	In 1980, the British post-pulp author James Herbert released
0:56.7	a seventh novel. Entitled The Dark, it introduced modern readers to a new member of the
1:02.1	monstrous family of cosmic horror, the sentient darkness. The villain in the dark is not of
1:08.4	the dark, it is the dark, an amorphous swath of non-being that is
1:12.2	undeniably, paradoxically, a being in its own right. Of course, in concocting this monster, Herbert
1:19.2	was drawing deep from the dark well of the past. The idea that shadows, especially anthropomorphic
1:24.6	ones, have their own substance and agency, maybe as old as the imagination itself.
1:30.3	Modern science, of course, never tires of reminding us that black isn't a color, that darkness is
1:35.4	nothing but a trick of light and effect. But all it takes is to pick up a paintbrush to know that our senses
1:41.7	don't lie. Van Gogh once wrote,
1:44.3	"'Suffice it to say that black and white are also colors,
1:48.4	for their simultaneous contrast is as striking as that of green and red.
1:53.1	In painting, film, photography, and literature,
1:56.6	darkness isn't an absence but a presence.
1:59.3	In one sense, Herbert is asking the question, and what if the aesthetic were the real?
2:04.8	The same question haunts in praise of shadows the essay we'll be discussing today.
2:10.5	Junichiro Tanazaki's lament for the disappearance of darkness in the modern world is more than the complaint of a mad old man,
2:17.3	a persona that the
2:18.1	Japanese novelist often put on in his interactions with the public. It is first and foremost
	...

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