Episode 279: The Greenhouses We Burned Along the Way (Lee Chang-dong's "Burning" Pt. 2)

[00:00:00] Very Bad Wizards is a podcast with a philosopher, my dad, and psychologist Dave Pizarro,

[00:00:06] having an informal discussion about issues in science and ethics.

[00:00:09] Please note that the discussion contains bad words that I'm not allowed to say,

[00:00:13] and knowing my dad, some very inappropriate jokes.

[00:00:17] Oh, you guys like to tell jokes and giggle and kid around, huh?

[00:00:20] Giggling like a bunch of young bros in a schoolyard.

[00:00:24] Now let me tell a joke. podcast, Last Hope, the strong one, the one who had too strong a will to get COVID. What happened? You know, some combination of immigrants and Biden, in fact, two people in my family got it before me and I was like testing negative tests. I was like, I'm a fucking superhero.

[00:01:41] I was just like so I'm glad we did. You said something to me as I was stressing about the way we should embrace the way we just kind of

[00:03:00] go through movies practically scene by scene

[00:03:02] and not fight it.

[00:03:04] Yeah, right, yep, deep dive.

[00:03:06] Like I don't know any other way.

[00:04:02] on the strength of that. Oh my God.

[00:04:03] Did you see the article?

[00:04:05] I saw it, I saw it, you put it in this lack

[00:04:06] and I couldn't help but start reading it.

[00:04:07] Like I was supposed to be paying attention to dinner.

[00:04:10] Stay tuned listeners, we might have to devote

[00:04:12] like four episodes to that.

[00:04:16] I love that it's in Dallas.

[00:04:17] It's not in my office.

[00:04:19] I was so thrown off by that.

[00:04:25] All right, so we have a bunch of topics as usual. I argue the opposite or whatever it is that he argues. But when it comes to the mind, like the understanding, again, I forget what we argued, but he teaches this intro side class and he really gets into the nuts and bolts of like, does it make sense to say that the mind can be explained by appeal to lower processes? And I think we all know,

[00:05:41] like that we both probably think no.

[00:05:45] But I think he thinks yes.

[00:05:47] I'm sorry if I'm fascinated by elephants and the depth of their social and emotional lives.

[00:07:02] And I would be really interested in learning more about that. Their evil is even more evolved. They're not destroying. And they evolved like a weird smile on their face so you think that they're fine right before they attack you. And they're so pissed about like SeaWorld like doing those things. That is not something that happens. Yeah, they're like Aquaman. It's like a kinemani Christo with the dolphins.

[00:08:20] They're just waiting.

[00:08:23] All right, you're next.

[00:08:24] So, okay.

[00:08:26] Schopenhauer is one of these things we keep threatening

[00:08:28] that we might do.

[00:08:29] Yeah. I can already tell that this is my favorite book, even though it's very hard to get. And like, unless you're willing to pay like $250, but Social Science as Sorcery by Stanislav Andrzejewski. I've been reading about it. I've been trying to figure out how to get it,

[00:09:40] looking for like PDFs of it.

[00:09:42] Listeners, if you have it, please send it to me,

[00:09:45] whatever I'm willing believe me, I spent like probably 45 minutes trying to figure out how I get my hands on this book. So Donald Westbrook recommended High and Low by Cura Shao. I literally right before we listened, I had pulled that up on Wikipedia. Before we recorded. Right before we recorded, I didn't, like I don't know anything about this movie, but I love Toshiro Mifune, the actor.

[00:11:03] Sorry, sorry, Toshiro Mifune.

[00:11:05] There.

[00:12:04] sounded intriguing. I know nothing about Ken Liu. Have you ever heard of Ken Liu or this story? No.

[00:12:05] Okay, I'm gonna look into it then before I commit to having it on my list. Maybe I'll just read it.

[00:12:10] All right. I think this is on your list. Jesse Graham, friend of the podcast, suggested The

[00:12:16] Passenger and Stella Maris, his two last novels by Cormac short. I'd be down to put it on the list anyway. Ronald Olding suggested Flannery O'Connor. Oh, definitely. This is on my list. Yeah. A good man is hard to find. A good man is hard to find, but I'm sure there are other stories that would be perfectly fine as well. But I started thinking about it because Cormac McCarthy clearly was inspired by Flannery O'Connor. Yeah, totally. I think that should go on the list.

[00:13:41] I would love an excuse to just make us actually do it.

[00:13:45] Yeah.

[00:13:45] I love that story. I love the Flanl and he made a side-inger seem like Hemingway. I like that. All right, I'm not putting a kibosh on Husserl, but you look at it and tell me if it's any good, but maybe not for this list. Yeah, I guess that's the same thing. All right, do you have any more?

[00:15:01] I feel like we've talked about this so often because I think we talked about the movie

[00:15:05] once but never as an episode, but. I think, yeah, he put it in the comments, right? Yeah, he did. Yeah, let's do it. If the people speak, so Tripper. It is one of my favorites. I mean, I liked it. I enjoyed it, but like, I don't know how, like you would do it for an episode. That's why I think it's a good bonus episode where you're not like under the pressure. We're not under the huge pressure of our main episode. Okay, I have a few other ones.

[00:17:40] Fathers and Sons by Turgenya Evv.

[00:17:42] It's a short novel, which I haven't read it in like 20 years. Okay. Sans Soleil, the Chris Marker one. I just want to throw this out there. Like he did like those two movies, essentially.

[00:19:01] La Jette, the like 35 minute movie

[00:19:03] that was the inspiration for 12 Monkeys.

[00:19:06] And then Sans Soleil, It's just Roger Deakins just interviewing all these people like actors and directors that he's worked with he interviews Joel Cohen And didn't even know like you would you it. Oh my god. I didn't know he had a pocket I've got so many things with him. Oh my I was more into the seduction of clarity. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Let's look at those. Yeah, I did. I actually looked at that article and I know the book. I think the book is a possibility. All right. All right. So we got to put it down. We got to split it down. Actually, we didn't mention that Stephen Reed said we should do Stalker.

[00:21:42] Yeah, I agree. We should.

[00:21:45] And yeah, and we have. But we really are going to do it. I'm very excited to do that. Okay, Elephant Souls, which I'm down for. Fathers and Sons, that would be another... That's on nihilism. That's a very kind of Dusty Efsky thing. Yeah, tell me what's Fathers and Sons. It's a novel by Turgenev. That same period that Dusty Efsky's writing about where you have these

[00:23:00] little nihilists running around. But they're real nihilists. They're not big Lebowski nihilists.

[00:24:01] Or Fran and Zui. I mean if Nikki has a zoo-

[00:24:03] She literally has a tattoo that says Seymour from-

[00:24:06] Oh yeah, from a perfect day for a banana fish.

[00:24:10] I mean I'm down to put Fran and Zui on there as the sixth.

[00:24:12] Because I think we'll either do Ambruges or Banshees.

[00:24:15] Yeah, right.

[00:24:16] All right, let's do that.

[00:24:17] Okay.

[00:24:17] Denial of Death, Do elephants have souls,

[00:24:19] Shopenhauer's pessimism,

[00:24:20] Philanery O'Connor, Good Man is hard to find,

[00:24:22] Fran and Zui.

[00:24:23] All right.

[00:24:23] All right, sixth.

[00:24:25] There we go.

[00:24:25] We will be right back to Very Bad Wizards. This is the time of the episode that we like to take a moment to thank everybody for all of their support. We just did an opening segment with all of our listener suggested episodes and that's one big form of support that we really appreciate because we rely on you for ideas.

[00:25:41] If you want to message us, we always appreciate that.

[00:25:43] If you want to reach out to us, you can email us at verybad of you who are on our Patreon. But it's not just pure charity on your part. If you join at $1 or an up per episode, you get all ad-free episodes, and you get compendiums, little volumes of beats that I've put together. At $2 and up, you get access to all of our bonus material,

[00:27:02] including a large back catalog, tonsler. So let's start from scratch and talk about the second part of burning. Yeah, now that we're refreshed, let's, and not at all worried about the fact that it's like. Well, a lot of things happened in these past few days.

[00:28:23] You know, Valentine's Day has passed.

[00:28:27] That All-Star Game, boy, thought offense. out so immediately he's covered in manure and clearly goes takes a shower we don't see it and now you have just one like an all-time great sequence here of them coming to his house it's like golden hour evening late afternoon light they brought food like that's a cool thing to do if you're just going to show up at somebody's house is bring food it's very

[00:29:43] bad to do that there's just these beautiful shots like these wide shots of them sitting They smoke and he, of course, is gonna cough like crazy when he first does it. I love this dynamic where he and Jaime are like on the same wavelength, where Ben is kind of just doing his relaxed, cool, swavnous, but they're actually enjoying it and it's funny.

[00:31:01] And they're connecting here

[00:31:04] and these big wide shots where you see all three of despair. And like you said, the music stops. She keeps dancing for a little bit, but then she starts crying. So at first I thought that the music was non-diegetic. Like I thought this was just soundtrack music. Is it not? Well, that's what I want to ask you. This was the dumb detail that I want to ask you because on my second viewing, I realized that Ben is standing by his car because he went

[00:32:26] over to the car and I think that's like, we get her character filtered through Jeon Tzu, but this is what we think she is, at least from our perspective. She is both liberated, but also trapped. And she's full of life and energy and excitement,

[00:33:40] but also like despairing and borderline suicidal.

[00:33:44] Right, and this is, you know,

[00:33:45] the sunset that she was describing in the restaurant when he was like seven or eight years old, burn his mother's clothes. And obviously Ben doesn't give a shit about that. Like why would you think that Ben is gonna? Yeah, he's high, you know? It's clearly like he has not that much experience and he just starts telling him like something that I don't think he would ever tell anybody. Exactly. Yeah.

[00:35:00] What Ben takes from that is burning.

[00:35:01] Oh, burning, that's interesting.

[00:35:03] I burned down greenhouses.

[00:35:05] And they have this conversation, again, That base in my heart. Rings to my bone. So why do you think greenhouses? Instead of barns. Instead of barns. I have literally that question for you. Okay, so I read, I read, I can't take credit for this, somebody proposing that because the word for greenhouse in Korean is literally plastic house. Oh yeah, I read this. That this is a call to plastic surgery

[00:36:21] and sort of this kind of girl that he finds.

[00:36:23] Yeah, which is also like the second girl.

[00:36:26] Yeah, that sounds right. I don't get this at all. I had that question for you. So the most that I could make of this is that he is somehow personifying death by this. Like I'm everywhere. Or I'm a dog. Like at once, but yeah. And somebody, this is a real stretch. Somebody said, oh, his black Porsche is like the black horse that death rides on. But death actually rides on a pale horse.

[00:37:41] Sorry, Reddit dude.

[00:37:43] Sorry Reddit dude.

[00:37:45] Nice try.

[00:37:46] But I don't know,

[00:37:46] because I was puzzled by, it's a bit hard to see and I was jealous of your TV, your whole, your new OLED. This was a big win for the movie Palace, seeing this movie on this. Yeah, it's beautiful. Okay, not a good sequence for Jeong-Soo when she wakes up, she comes out, like actually right at that kind of crisis moment where he's like almost ready to fight.

[00:39:02] He's like, I just told you that she comes out, they

[00:40:03] This is the pantomime I was doing for you. And now it's like you're turning against me.

[00:40:05] And I think it is, it's like the final betrayal.

[00:40:07] There's a line later in the movie where Ben says to him,

[00:40:11] she trusted you the most of anyone in the world.

[00:40:15] She knew you would always be on her side no matter what.

[00:40:19] And it's not true.

[00:40:20] He wasn't.

[00:40:21] Like in the times where she needed him most,

[00:40:24] he exactly didn't take her side.

[00:40:26] He didn't like, it's me or him, make your choice right now. He can't do that, but he also can't be the friend. So it's again, it's like that kind of limbo. It's funny, we don't get that much of Jung Soo psychology. Like, weirdly, I feel like I've learned a lot more about Jaime and Ben. Because he always has that kind of gaping, like, not vacant, but just kind of confused look. And

[00:41:44] you feel like there's a lot going on, Cross like it doesn't work for me as like a real interpretation of the movie But there's definitely things like that, you know, that's him with as a kid looking with great joy

[00:43:02] He's constantly going to these greenhouses in the rest Ben says, I don't think we said this, that he's gonna burn down a greenhouse near, very near him. He's already chosen it. He's already chosen it and it's gonna happen soon. So he keeps going to these greenhouses to see if they've been burned and then none of them have. And he keeps returning. Yeah, he's a Philip Marlow, so he makes a map. Yeah, he makes a map for the,

[00:44:20] and he keeps returning to this one greenhouse

[00:44:22] and actually going into it,

[00:44:24] once almost lighting and on fire.

[00:44:25]