Very Bad Wizards Episode 23: Straw Dogs (with Yoel Inbar)
May 27, 2013
Yoel Inbar, visiting Wharton professor and moral psychologist, joins to apply honor-culture ideas to Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs. They probe the film’s notorious rape scene, the meaning of the climactic siege, and whether standing up to insults is rational today. Short debates touch on escalation risks, habit-forming boundary setting, and how law and honor shape violent responses.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Weigh Grad School With A Spreadsheet
- Consider opportunity costs before committing to graduate school and assess realistic job prospects.
- Yoel advises making a spreadsheet of options and odds rather than relying on naive optimism about academic job markets.
Optimism Helps But Can Harm Low Odds Endeavors
- Optimism and confidence can improve outcomes but may harm people facing very low baseline odds.
- Tamler warns that telling students the brutal truth about academic market odds can sap the fragile motivation they need.
Small Slights Escalate Into Catastrophic Violence
- Straw Dogs frames marital tension as a clash between an inward intellectual man (David) and a local culture that values overt toughness and reputation.
- The film uses repeated incidents (cat lynching, window staring, stolen underwear) to escalate disrespect into catastrophic violence.