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Episode 113: Do Some Weed, Then Do a Murder — Reefer Madness (1938)
Join Alex in a solo episode as he has some fun with the day this episode goes out to the public: 4/20! The film explored is the oft-ridiculed Reefer Madness (1938), a propaganda film against the drug marijuana. Originally, it was meant to be an education film for parents so that they may notice the warning signs produced by a church group. The film earned cult status when it was shown in the exploitation film circuit in the ’30s & ’40s, earning immortality when efforts to preserve its historical status were undertaken in the 1970s. The film exaggerates and completely misidentifies the effects and consequences of marijuana use, using this phony information to invoke fear in ignorant viewers.…
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Episode 064: Sex, Drugs, and Psychoanalysis? A Dangerous Method (2011) with Sheila Thomas
Join Alex and guest host Dr. Sheila Thomas as they chat about the connection and the eventual schism of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg’s psychological thriller (?) A Dangerous Method, based on the book A Most Dangerous Method: The Story of Jung, Freud, and Sabina Spielrein, and the stage play The Talking Cure. The film stars Michael Fassbender as Jung and Viggo Mortensen as Freud, with Kiera Knightley as Sabina Spielrein. Spielrein enters Jung’s life as a woman with hysteria (not a real disorder), but that turns into an affair with Jung, as he grapples with expanding psychoanalysis into something bigger than what Freud says he wants (lol, to be “empirical” and a “science!”).…