Episode 223: The Hopeless Dream of Being (Bergman's "Persona")
Very Bad Wizards
Tamler Sommers & David Pizarro
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 October 2021
⏱️ 88 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
David and Tamler dive into Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 masterpiece Persona, a film about two (?) women, Elisabet, a famous stage actress who has stopped speaking, and Alma the chatty young nurse assigned to care for her at an island cottage. What happens when the roles we play as parents, spouses, friends, and colleagues start to feel like dishonest performances, an endless series of desperate lies? Can we escape to an inner sanctum of truth and authenticity? Or is that putting on another mask, playing yet another part, telling a different set of lies? We offer some tentative interpretations of this rich and baffling film. Get that boy a normal sized sheet!
Plus we share some thoughts about the Chappelle special…
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Very bad wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and a psychologist, Dave Pizarro, |
| 0:05.9 | having an informal discussion about issues and signs and ethics. |
| 0:09.4 | Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm out of allow to say, |
| 0:13.6 | and knowing my dad some very inappropriate jokes. |
| 0:16.9 | I've been accused of being a lot of things inarticulate ain't one of them. |
| 0:46.9 | You're a very bad man. |
| 1:05.2 | You're a very good man. |
| 1:07.6 | Just a very bad wizard. |
| 1:10.4 | Welcome to very bad wizards. |
| 1:11.6 | I'm Tamler Summers from the University of Houston. |
| 1:14.2 | Dave, I know the answer to this question already, but I want to |
| 1:16.8 | get you on the public record about this. |
| 1:20.0 | So what do you think of Ted Lasso season two? |
| 1:23.3 | Oh my god, I just finished the last episode. |
| 1:28.5 | Uh-huh. |
| 1:29.5 | I've never seen a show go from so good to so... |
| 1:32.0 | Like, I didn't even know there was that distance to travel. |
| 1:34.1 | Like, I didn't know conceptually that such a distance existed. |
| 1:38.4 | In quality. |
| 1:39.4 | In quality. |
| 1:41.1 | I thought season one was just touching heartwarming, everything we needed in the |
| 1:47.0 | misery that was, you know, the COVID years. |
... |
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