High Brow/Low Brow 001

"High Brow/Low Brow 001" was originally released on February 18, 2019. **[You can listen to it here].** This episode is 1:06:45 long.

## Official Episode Description

It’s pilot three of three! Now that we’re teetering on the edge of uncertainty, with only a couple Super Special books left before we need to find something new to podcast about, we’ve got one last podcast concept for you to check out.
This week, Tanner and Bolphunga the Unrelenting are trying something a little different. We’re calling it High Brow/Low Brow and it’s an exercise in drawing suppositional insights from a text or body of work in an effort to elevate that work to a level of discourse fitting the standards of academia. Which is to say that we talk about dumb stuff like comic books in a smart way. Oh, and vice versa.
This week, we’ve prepared two selections:

* “The Waste Land” by T. S. Eliot
* The first three trade paperback collections of Geoff Johns’ run on the Green Lantern comics, including:
	+ Green Lantern: Rebirth
	+ Green Lantern, Vol. 1: No Fear
	+ Green Lantern Corps: Recharge

## Music Credits

* “Sonatina No. 1 in C Major - I. Allegro” by Aaron Dunn
* “Song Groove (Abortion Papers)” by Michael Jackson
* “The Waste Land” (Audio Recording) by T.S. Eliot
* High Brow/Low Brow Theme Song: music “Grizzly Bear Sharktopus” by Holy Coast, lyrics Tanner Greenring

## This Week

Jack selected a T. S. Eliot poem. Tanner selected some Green Lantern comics.

### T. S. Eliot

* Jack made it his mission to read this poem at the end of college and know all the references.
* The first thing that you read after the title is ”some Greek shit, it’s that Cthulu talk” opines Tanner. Jack clarifies that this is the epigraph from Petronius (Satyricon).

in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα
τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω.”

* Jack learned Greek because of this poem.
* Jack and Tanner argue about the point of the poem.
* ”Fear in a handful of dust”; Evelyn Waugh novel
* Sibyll is bummed out that you can’t smoke in bars any more, that they took Four Loko off the market
* ”You also made me read this long essay by some dork named Hugh Kenner.” Tanner describes how Hugh Kenner and Ezra Pound both told him not to look up the references, (“It’s under my ‘Ezra Pound seems like a cool dude’ header”).
* Jack references Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Tanner references a video-game retelling of that book: Spec Ops: The Line.
* Tanner talks about how helpful it was to hear T.S. Eliot reading this poem and Alec Guiness reading the poem
* First line is subversion of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
* Jack references how this is like Home Improvement, talking to your neighbor over the fence.
* Musical references: “Abortion Papers” by Michael Jackson (Jack Googles) and “Brick” by Ben Folds Five
* References to Hamlet.
* Tanner’s favorite section is Chapter Three, where everyone dies and it’s “rhyme-y”; “perfect iambic pentameter”.
* The Fisher King legend
* T.S. Eliot’s notes: in the time, books needed to be 32 pages and the poem itself was only 19 pages.
* The Last Crusade
* Not with a bang but with a whimper - The Hollow Men; “my words echo thus in your mind” - The Four Quartets
* Tanner points out that a lot of Jack’s references are actually lines from T.S. Eliot, which were probably lifted from Chaucer to begin with.

 ### Geoff Johns’ first three Green Lantern trade paperback comics

* The first three trade paperbacks from the series: 15-20 comic books
* Sector 2814
* There are many Green Lanterns: Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, John Stewart, Kyle Rayner, Alan Scott
* Jack’s favorite Green Lantern: Kyle Rayner (Tanner: “You’re the only person in the world whose favorite Green Lantern is Kyle Rayner.”) Jack’s favorite is Guy Gardner.
* Aristotelian and Kantian conceptions of virtue
* John Stewart is most famous from the DC Animated series.
* The second and third are reboots and fun stories; the first is messier but the one that Jack found most interesting.
* Parallax, the embodiment of fear; evil cyborg Superman
* The Spectre: a graphic disquisition on the difference between retributive and redemptive justice; Jack finds parallels to Kant
* Parallax, Hal Jordan, and The Spectre all inhabit one body - conflict with three personas.
* None of the Green Lanterns like Batman because he’s Fear.
* Jack describes the books as being about boys, even the bad ones, confronting their feelings.
* The New Guardians
* Jack would like to be called Bolphunga the Unrelenting<refhttps://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Bolphunga\_The\_Unrelenting</ref>
* “Read a man’s integrity by how he wears his jacket.”
* Tanner’s origin story re: Green Lantern in his life: got an invite when working at Major Media Company to interview Geoff Johns and Jim Lee
* CW series “Arrow” is about Green Arrow

## Notes

* Tanner and Jack describe this pilot as arising out of their own caricatures from the previous podcasts.
* Tanner references “meta-enabling”.

## Signoff

And I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

## References & Links

1. ↑ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land
2. ↑ https://www.dccomics.com/graphic-novels/green-lantern-rebirth-2004/green-lantern-rebirth
3. ↑ https://www.dccomics.com/graphic-novels/green-lantern-no-fear-0
4. ↑ https://www.dccomics.com/graphic-novels/green-lantern-corps-recharge-2005/green-lantern-corps-recharge
5. ↑ https://musopen.org/music/performer/aaron-dunn/
6. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu
7. ↑ https://www.shmoop.com/the-waste-land/epigraph.html
8. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A\_Handful\_of\_Dust
9. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_smoking\_bans\_in\_the\_United\_States
10. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four\_Loko
11. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart\_of\_Darkness
12. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spec\_Ops:\_The\_Line
13. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqvhMeZ2PlY
14. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hcj4G45F9pw
15. ↑ http://footprintsoflondon.com/2014/09/literary-london-the-month-that-links-chaucer-and-t-s-eliot/
16. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home\_Improvement\_(TV\_series)
17. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcM1dIRbbH4
18. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt5EHAqhR1c
19. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher\_King
20. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana\_Jones\_and\_the\_Last\_Crusade
21. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Hollow\_Men
22. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four\_Quartets
23. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Space\_Sector\_2814
24. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Green\_Lantern\_(Hal\_Jordan)
25. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Green\_Lantern\_(Guy\_Gardner)
26. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Green\_Lantern\_(John\_Stewart)
27. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Green\_Lantern\_(Kyle\_Rayner)
28. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Green\_Lantern\_(Alan\_Scott)
29. ↑ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-virtue/
30. ↑ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant-moral/#VirVic
31. ↑ https://dcau.fandom.com/wiki/John\_Stewart
32. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Parallax
33. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/Cyborg\_Superman
34. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/The\_Spectre
35. ↑ https://study.com/academy/lesson/retributive-justice-vs-restorative-justice.html
36. ↑ https://greenlantern.fandom.com/wiki/New\_Guardians\_(The\_Blackest\_Night)
37. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow\_(TV\_series)
38. ↑ https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=meta-enabling

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