Episode 95: Demon Seed: On Doris Lessing's 'The Fifth Child'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 31 March 2021

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Doris Lessing's uncategorizable oeuvre reached strange new heights in 1988 with the publication of her short novel The Fifth Child. The story couldn't be simpler. In the England of the 1970s, a couple determined to live out a dream that many of their generation have rejected -- the big family in the old house with the pretty garden -- conceive a child that may or may not be human. From that moment on, the boy, their fifth, becomes the alien force that will tear their dream to pieces. Profoundly ambiguous and unsettling, The Fifth Child is a weird novel that raises questions about parenthood, family, and the impenetrable depths of nature. Header Image: The Changeling by Henry Fuseli (1780) Additional music: "Fast Bossa Nova: Falling Stars" by Dee Yan-Key REFERENCES Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child Doris Lessing, Shikasta M. R. James, weird fiction author Anne Rice, Interview with the Vampire Weird Studies, Episode 67 on “Hellier” Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets David Icke, conspiracy theorist Deros, underground beings from the fiction of Richard Sharpe Shaver Hieronymus Bosch, Dutch Renaissance painter Weird Studies, Episode 86 on “The Sandman” Slavoj Žižek, The Puppet and the Dwarf Louis Sass, “The Land of Unreality: On the Phenomenology of the Schizophrenic Break” Louis Sass, Madness and Modernism Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life Richard Thorpe (dir.), The Wizard of Oz Frank L. Baum, The Wizard of Oz Weird Studies, bonus episode on Adventure Time James Hillman, The Soul’s Code Doris Lessing, Ben in the World Roman Polanski (dir.), Rosemary’s Baby Richard Donner (dir.), The Omen Donald Cammell (dir.), Demon Seed 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. This is Phil.
0:53.1	Thanks to the Weird Studies Reddit and Discord fan communities, I am getting to know a little better what our fans are like,
0:59.5	and I have discovered that they are off-puttingly erudite and clever.
1:04.2	This makes me uneasy.
1:06.3	Such people are not easy to fool, at least not for long.
1:10.5	The moment of my unmasking as a fraud draws ever closer.
1:15.3	Anyway, one such irritatingly intelligent listener noted
1:19.1	that all this time, J.F. and I have been calling the decadent Welsh mystic
1:23.6	who wrote the white people, Arthur Mocken, rhymes with Poppin and Lachan.
1:28.3	But our listener said it's more like Mackin, so, okay, I want to mention Mackin's notion of ecstasy, which we discussed at length in episode 87, mostly in the context of Mackin's aesthetic treatise hieroglyphics.
1:42.3	Ecstasy is a somewhat elusive quality, or perhaps simply eludes definition.
1:48.7	It is the ne plus ultra of art for Mackin, the thing without which writing is mere words on the page,
1:55.5	soulless, trivial, and unable to outlive its own day.
1:59.1	A true work of art can take place as easily in 70s suburbia as in Valhalla.
2:05.1	But regardless of the era in which it's set, the true artwork always dwells in some eternal place.
2:12.0	In that place, Odysseus is always blinding the Cyclops.
2:16.2	Stack-A-Lee is always killing a man for his hat,
2:19.3	and Roy Batty tells us again and again that all these moments will be lost in time like tears
2:25.6	in rain. In this place, we find ecstasy. I should note, though, that ecstasy can be a lot less
2:33.8	fun than it sounds.
	...

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