Episode 96: Beautiful Beast: On Jean Cocteau's 'La Belle et la Bête'

Weird Studies

Phil Ford and J. F. Martel

Society & Culture, Arts, Philosophy

4.8 • 688 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2021

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jean Cocteau's visionary rendition of Madame de Beaumont's fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast," itself the retelling of a story that may be several millennia old, is the topic of this Weird Studies episode, which proposes a journey down lunar paths to the crossroads where love and death intersect. Drawing on Surrealism, myth, and the occult, Cocteau's 1946 film transcends the limitations of media to become a living poem, a thing that is also a place, a place that is also a mind. This conversation touches on the genius of the child, the mysteries of Eros, the monstrosity of consciousness, and the sorcery of cinema. Photo by Ivan Jevtic on Unsplash Click here to register for JF's upcoming course on art. REFERENCES Jean Cocteau (dir.), La Belle et la Bête Jaques Maritain, Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry Sergei Diaghilev, Russian impresario Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise (dir.), Beauty and the Beast David Thomson, Have You Seen? Bram Stoker, Dracula Johannes Vermeer, Dutch painter Philip Glass, La Belle et la Bête (opera) Game of Thrones, Television series Weird Studies, Episode 84 on the Empress Card Weird Studies, Episode 94 on the Moon Card 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.
0:20.8	For more episodes or to support the podcast,
0:23.3	go to weirdst, I'm J.F. Martell.
0:52.5	Jean Cocteau's cinematic rendition of the classic fairy tale,
0:55.9	La Belle and La Bette, hides its weirdness behind a thin yet bedazzling facade of glitter
1:00.8	and sentiment. The original story, which as Phil points out in what follows, may go back to the
1:06.6	very dawn of human consciousness, is like the lunar path we discussed in our recent episode
1:11.5	on the Moon card and the taro, a path beset by deceptions, illusions, and sorcery.
1:17.3	Unlike the Disney version that most of us are familiar with, Cokto's Beauty and the Beast
1:21.3	preserves that mercurial element, and that's what made it a perfect focus for what you're
1:25.9	about to hear, a discussion on the
1:28.0	intersection of love, consciousness, and the weird. Cookto's film, of course, is a great work of art,
1:34.3	and great works of art have a way of luring us to these strange places where things we assumed
1:38.6	were fixed and immutable start to move on their own and to change. That claim was the central conceit of my book,
1:45.7	reclaiming art in the Age of Artifice, which we'll be discussing in our next episode.
1:50.0	I bring this up because next month I'll be offering a course on the online learning platform
1:54.6	neural learning that's all about this. titled Art and Contemplation, the course aims to equip
2:00.2	its participants with perspectives and
2:02.1	tools for turning the exploration of artworks into a spiritual, divinatory practice.
2:07.7	The course spans eight live weekly sessions, 90 minutes each, and it starts on May 10th.
2:13.5	You can register by going to neuralarning.com. It'll be a trip, so I hope to see you there.
	...

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