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The Laser Age
'Mighty Joe Young' with Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa
Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa, a film studies professor at Seattle University and author of The Celluloid Specimen: Moving Image Research into Animal Life joins The Laser Age to discuss the 1949 film Mighty Joe Young, A kind of companion piece to King Kong made by most of the same team, the film features a far gentler giant ape hero, a depiction that reflects the different era in which it appeared, one in which many of the blank spots on the map had been filled. Schultz-Figueroa is an expert on the subject of animals on film. The Celluloid Specimen, which is available to read for free, explores the films made by mid-century scientists, specifically the animal research films of Robert Mearns Yerkes, Neal E. Miller and B.F. Skinner. Yerkes is particularly relevant as his primate studies were informed by and helped inform ideas about eugenics and the notion of nature consisting of a hierarchy of species, notions you can see in the film. It's not all grim talk about misguided 20th century science and racial politics: we also talk about what a nice fella Mr. Joe Young is and the craft of Ray Harryhausen. (This is the second in a five-episode season devoted to giant animals.)
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1. 'Them!' with Dan McCoy
25:03||Season 2, Ep. 1The Laser Age is now up and running again with a slightly tweaked approach. Going forward, we’ll be doing five-episode seasons, if that’s the right word, built around a theme. First up: giant animals! Dan McCoy of The Flop House was kind enough to revisit one of the most influential giant animal movies: 1954’s Them!5. 'RoboCop' with Donna Bowman
38:53||Season 1, Ep. 5RoboCop: Who is he? What is he? Scholar, pop culture writer, and longtime Paul Verhoeven fan Donna Bowman joins The Laser Age to discuss RoboCop, Verhoeven's ultraviolent 1987 sci-fi satire about a police officer's second life as a cyborg law enforcer. Did it offer a vision of things to come? Is it a vessel for Verhoeven's particular notions of what an American Jesus might look like? Why not both?And this marks the end of the first run of Laser Age episodes. We're going to take a short break before releasing a new batch of episodes. You might even call it a new season. You might even say this season will have a theme. We'll return soon to kick off a five-episode run focusing on films about giant animals from apes to lizards to rabbits. (Yes, rabbits.) If you want to watch ahead, we'll be starting things off with Them!, the quintessential 1950s giant bug movie. Look for it soon.4. 'eXistenZ' with Scott Tobias
27:13||Season 1, Ep. 4Throughout the 1990s, film after film explored the possibilities of the then-new concept of virtual reality. The trend reached a seeming peak in 1999, with the release of the semi-forgotten The Thirteenth Floor, the anything-but-forgotten The Matrix, and, like a shadow cousin to those big-budget studio efforts, eXistenZ. With his first film taken based on a wholly original idea since Videodrome, David Cronenberg put his own spin on the notion, one informed by Philip K. Dick, existential philosophy, and his own abiding obsessions with sex and the slippery nature of reality. Film critic Scott Tobias, a name doubtlessly familiar to readers of The Reveal, joins this episode to discuss the film.3. 'Night of the Comet' with Jen Chaney
25:06||Season 1, Ep. 3Released in 1984, Thom Eberhardt's sci-fi comedy takes a (mostly) lighthearted look at the end of the world via the story of two teens who survive a visit from a deadly comet. Jen Chaney, critic and author As If!: An Oral History of Clueless, joins the podcast to discuss a decidedly '80s teenage wasteland.2. 'Visit to a Small Planet' with Noel Murray
34:23||Season 1, Ep. 2There were few bigger movie stars than Jerry Lewis in 1960, the year he released three films: Cinderfella, his directorial debut The Bellboy, and this adaptation of a popular Gore Vidal play. Lewis plays Kreton, a traveler from the other end of the universe who drops down to Earth, talks to dogs and cats, jams with beatniks, and generally stirs up trouble. Longtime film and pop culture critic Noel Murray joins us to discuss a semi-forgotten entry in Lewis' filmography with a longer-lasting influence than you might expect.1. 'Silent Running' with John Hodgman
56:58||Season 1, Ep. 1SERIES PREMIERE: In 1972, special effects genius Douglas Trumbull made his directorial debut with a story of conservation, space travel, robots... and murder. In this premiere episode of The Laser Age we're joined by author, actor, and podcaster John Hodgman to explore a vision of the near-future rooted in the early 1970s.