Episodes

  • EP6. The Little Mermaid (1989) Your Voice Is a Commodity and Ursula Is Buying
    Jan 29 2026

    Deterritorialize your childhood. We are descending into the abyssal depths of Atlantica to map the flows of power, voice, and commodity in Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989).

    In this episode of We Only Make Chaos, we bypass the molar structures of "happily ever after" to examine Ursula’s cavern as a Body-without-Organs—a zone of pure production where the State’s territorialized desires are liquefied. We explore why King Triton’s trident is the ultimate phallic signifier of Sovereign Law and how Ariel’s voice is transformed into a commodity fetish within a patriarchal capitalist assemblage.

    Ursula is not the villain; she is the only merchant honest enough to show us the coercive nature of the social contract. Join us as we explore the Creative Nothing and the revaluation of values beneath the waves.

    Key Concepts Discussed:

    • Schizoanalysis and Desiring-Production (Deleuze & Guattari)
    • The Unique and Its Property (Max Stirner)
    • The Grain of the Voice (Roland Barthes)
    • Sovereign Power and the State of Exception (Giorgio Agamben)

    #TheLittleMermaid #Schizoanalysis #DeleuzeAndGuattari #MaxStirner #Ursula #FilmTheory #PhilosophyPodcast #DisneyAnalysis #CulturalCritique #PostStructuralism #PoliticalPhilosophy #Ariel #TheLittleMermaid1989


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    30 mins
  • EP5. Interruption - Blue Violence (A short story)
    Jan 26 2026

    This is a special interruption featuring the short story Blue Violence—a chronicle of a relationship that breathes in the friction of the edges, where reality breaks and the fun finally starts.

    The story follows a woman who hunts for compositions like a predator stalks a kill and the man who acts as her ballast. It is a narrative told in violent slashes of pigment, the stinging weight of shared hallucinations, and the specific kind of damage that only comes in shades of azure.

    In this episode, we explore:

    • The Schizz and the Ballast: How love functions not as a contract, but as a collective assemblage of desire between a nomadic subject and her anchor.
    • Production over Sublimation: An analysis of the creative act as a desiring-machine—illustrated by the hunt for a specific, sparkling blue and the crisis of its absence.
    • The Tactile Real: Why the slug to the shoulder and the slap in the dream are essential intensive affects that prove the reality of the body against a grey, domestic backdrop.
    • The Playground Analysis: Observing the different poles of desire in children—from the paranoid-fascist ego of the screaming boy to the schizoid grace of the girl hanging upside down to decode the air.
    • Molecular Requirements: The movement from the molar exhaustion of the creative struggle to the molecular need for salt, fries, and the blue bruise of a fresh encounter.
    • In Blue Violence, we find that identity is a clumsy production, and truth is found only in the sting of the encounter.

    This episode serves as a thematic bridge between our deep dives into cinematic structures and our upcoming explorations of nomadic thought. If you are new to the show, this story provides the aesthetic baseline for the philosophical concepts we deploy each week.


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    17 mins
  • EP4. Road To Perdition (2002) - The Road that Never Leaves Home
    Jan 26 2026

    In this episode, we deconstruct Sam Mendes’ 2002 film Road to Perdition. While it presents itself as a classic road movie, we argue that the road never actually leads anywhere. Instead, it functions as a treadmill that redraws the same Oedipal triangle—father, son, and the Great Father—across the Midwest.

    We move beyond the surface-level gangster tropes to examine how the journey of Michael Sullivan and his son is not an escape from patriarchal violence, but a re-inscription of it.

    Key Theoretical Maps:

    • The Despotic Assemblage: How John Rooney fuses the Church, the mob, and the family into a single machine of obedience and guilt.
    • Pseudo-Deterritorialization: Why the road to Perdition is a striated space of bank ledgers and logistical networks rather than a true Line of Flight.
    • The Fascism of the Heart: Analyzing the child’s libidinal investment in the father’s violence—the process where the boy learns to desire the Father more deeply by attempting to flee him.
    • Maguire as the Capture Apparatus: The hitman-photographer as the bridge between the gun and the camera, turning living flows into static death-images.
    • The Residual Oedipus: Why the film’s ending is a total victory for the Father, as Sullivan’s violence is purified and internalized by the son as a moral core.

    Is there an outside to the paternal law? Or is every highway simply a hallway in the Father’s house? Join us as we trace the circular geography of Michael Sullivan’s final drive.

    References & Further Reading:

    • Deleuze & Guattari – Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
    • Deleuze & Guattari – A Thousand Plateaus
    • Michel Foucault – The History of Sexuality, Volume 1
    • Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams
    • Wilhelm Reich – Character Analysis

    Join the Chaos:

    If you are interested in the intersection of schizoanalysis and cinema, subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications. We do not offer solutions; we only map the traps.

    #RoadToPerdition #Deleuze #Guattari #Schizoanalysis #FilmPhilosophy #Oedipus #MicroFascism #CinemaStudies #TomHanks #SamMendes


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    34 mins
  • EP3. The Anarchist Cookbook (2002) – The Domesticated War Machine
    Jan 26 2026

    Welcome back to the We Only Make Chaos podcast. Today, we step away from the literal manual of destruction to analyze the 2002 film The Anarchist Cookbook as a blueprint for the Apparatus of Capture.

    In this episode, we explore the tragic trajectory of Puck, a philosophy student who attempts to find a "Line of Flight" in the heart of Dallas, Texas. We move past the surface-level rebellion to dissect how the State—operating not through the police, but through the "Small State" of domesticity and emotional capitalism—effectively dismantles the revolutionary War Machine.

    🧠 In This Episode, We Map:

    The Failed War Machine: Why Johnny Red’s collective suffered from entropy and "Micro-Fascism," turning a nomad's dream into a paranoid hierarchy.

    Jody as the Seductive State: How the Dallas elite uses "Cold Intimacies" and affect to re-territorialize the nomad.

    Molecular Maiming: The makeover scene as a chilling process of "Molarization," where clothes and social etiquette become the new coding of the body.

    The Illouzian Synthesis: A look at how emotional capitalism turns rebellion into a commodity and the rebel into "Human Capital."

    The Final Betrayal: Why the film’s "happy ending" is actually a total victory for the grid, as the War Machine is privatized into a harmless suburban romance.

    Is the nomad ever truly free? Or is every escape route already monitored by the persistent grid of the Dallas elite? Join us as we trace the "clotting of desire" and the professionalization of the rebel.

    📖 References & Further Reading:

    Deleuze & Guattari – A Thousand Plateaus / Anti-Oedipus

    Eva Illouz – Cold Intimacies: The Making of Emotional Capitalism

    Foucault – The History of Sexuality

    Kulzhanova – Human Capital: Genesis and Evolution

    🎧 Join the Chaos:

    If you’re looking to de-territorialize your perspective, hit the Subscribe button and turn on notifications. We don't provide the answers; we only provide the intensities.

    #WeOnlyMakeChaos #Deleuze #Guattari #Schizoanalysis #EmotionalCapitalism #AnarchistCookbook #PhilosophyPodcast #FilmAnalysis #DallasElite


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    28 mins
  • EP2. The Trouble with Harry (1955) – Why Your Small Town Needs a Dead Body to Finally Function
    Jan 24 2026

    We are un-plugging the Hitchcockian apparatus." This is a map of the flows of desire moving through the Vermont soil. Harry is not a character; Harry is a Body without Organs—a smooth surface upon which the villagers project their molar anxieties and territorial impulses.

    In this session, we track:

    The Desiring-Machine of the Shovel: How the repetitive burial/exhumation cycle creates a rhythmic production of guilt and joy that bypasses the State-form (The Law).

    Territorialization of the Corpse: The struggle to claim Harry's space vs. the nomadic flight of Jennifer and the Captain.

    The Aesthetic Glitch: Why the Technicolor saturation acts as a "line of flight" from the grey reality of 1950s domesticity.

    Break the frame. Stop interpreting. Start plumbing the connections. The corpse is a catalyst for the deterritorialization of the nuclear family.

    References:

    Copjec, J. (1994). Read my desire: Lacan against the historicists. MIT Press.

    Deleuze, G. (1985). Cinema 2: The time-image (H. Tomlinson & R. Galeta, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.

    Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1983). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (R. Hurley, M. Seem, & H. R. Lane, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.

    Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.

    Modleski, T. (1988). The women who knew too much: Hitchcock and feminist theory. Routledge.

    Wood, R. (2002). Hitchcock’s films revisited. Columbia University Press.

    Žižek, S. (1992). Everything you always wanted to know about Lacan (but were afraid to ask Hitchcock). Verso.

    Keywords: Desiring-production, Hitchcock-machine, Lines of Flight, Nomad-Thought.


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    32 mins
  • EP1. Kalifornia (1993) - The Extraction Machine
    Jan 24 2026

    A cross-country trip into the heart of the American shadow. This week, we dissect the 1993 cult classic Kalifornia, exploring the distance between academic fascination with violence and its visceral, chaotic reality.

    "I'm interested in the why. The social conditions, the childhood trauma, the fracture points that make a person kill."

    In this transmission, we follow Brian and Carrie’s cross-country "murder tour" as they pick up a pair of hitchhikers who happen to be the very thing they are studying. Kalifornia (1993) isn’t just a road movie; it’s a collision of worlds—the detached, intellectualized curiosity of the urban elite versus the raw, uncalculated nihilism of the rural "Other."

    Key themes explored in this episode:

    The Tourist of Trauma: How Brian (David Duchovny) treats serial murder as a map to be followed, and why that distance collapses when Early Grayce (Brad Pitt) enters the car.

    The Visual Language of Decay: Analyzing the cinematography that transforms the American landscape into a gothic wasteland.

    Class and Performance: The contrast between Carrie’s photography—trying to capture "truth"—and Adele’s heartbreaking attempts to perform "normalcy" amidst abuse.

    The Collapse of Logic: Why the film remains a vital critique of the true-crime obsession that has only grown more pervasive since the 90s.

    Transmission Personnel: Hosted by squidxiii.

    Film: Kalifornia (1993), Dir. Dominic Sena.

    References

    Baudrillard, J. (1988). America (C. Turner, Trans.). Verso.

    Davis, M. (1998). Ecology of fear: Los Angeles and the imagination of disaster. Metropolitan Books.

    Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). University of Minnesota Press.

    Foucault, M. (1977). Language, counter-memory, practice: Selected essays and interviews (D. F. Bouchard, Ed.). Cornell University Press.

    Foucault, M. (1978). The history of sexuality, Volume 1: An introduction (R. Hurley, Trans.). Random House.

    Plant, S. (1997). Zeros and ones: Digital women and the new technoculture. Doubleday.

    U.S. Department of Defense. (1991). Base realignment and closure report. U.S. Government Printing Office.


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    30 mins