Episode 111: What Is Best in Life: On "Conan the Barbarian"

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 24 November 2021

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A wish-fulfilment fantasy for pubescent boys of all ages, or a subtle disquisition on the ethics of a sorcerous world? John Milius' Conan the Barbarian (1982) manages to be both, although one may be easy to overlook. In this episode, JF and Phil leave the heights of Hesse's The Glass Bead Game with a headlong dive to the trash stratum. Their wager: that Conan the Barbarian, a film without a hint of irony, is a spiritual statement that is equal parts empowering and disquieting, and a prime of example of how fantasy is sometimes the straightest way to the heart of reality. REFERENCES John Milus (dir.), Conan the Barbarian (1982) Richard Fleischer (dir.), Conan the Destroyer (1984) Robert E. Howard, American writer, author of the Conan stories Jack Smith, "On the Perfect Filmic Appositeness of Maria Montez" Weird Studies #3: Ecstasy, Sin, and "The White People" H. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature" Fritz Leiber, American writer Weird Studies #95: Demon Seed: On Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child Dungeons & Dragons Weird Studies #20: The Trash Stratum (part 1, part 2) Masaki Kobayashi (dir.), Kwaidan Jerry Zucker (dir.), Ghost (1990) Roget's Thesarus of English Words and Phrases Maria Montez, Dominican-American actress 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 weird'm J.F. Martell.
0:52.9	After spending two episodes in the Imperian Heights of
0:56.4	Herman Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, Phil and I needed a change of pace. We wanted something simple,
1:03.2	bald, trashy. It was Phil who suggested we discuss a film that I happened to have tried to get my
1:09.0	wife to watch the night before, John
1:11.6	Milius's Conan the Barbarian, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Earl Jones.
1:17.6	Released in 1982, this film in its 1984 sequel, which we meant to discuss but never really
1:23.0	got to, are unlikely to spring to mind when you think of the weird.
1:30.5	And yet both of these films are drenched in the defining mood.
1:36.6	This may not be surprising when you consider that the films were loose adaptations of stories Robert E. Howard,
1:41.2	a master of the strange tale, wrote in the golden age of weird literature.
1:45.8	Juvenile sensibilities and questionable politics aside, both films, and especially the first one, partake of that atmosphere that Howard and his peers saw
1:51.3	as the quintessence of good storytelling. They pass with aplomb the test of the weird,
1:56.9	in the language of Arthur Mackin, the test of ecstasy.
2:05.5	At the beginning of the film, a young Conan is told by his blacksmith father that there's only one thing a man can trust in this world, his sword.
2:09.2	It'd be too easy to read this simply as a celebration of brutish self-reliance, even if it is
2:14.3	partly that.
2:15.6	In a fantasy story, no sword is just a sword. Think of all the magic swords
2:20.6	that throng are legends and fantastic literature, the talking ones, the thinking ones, the ones that
2:26.0	feel. A fantasy sword isn't simply an instrument, it's a being. The Canadian fantasist Stephen
	...

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