ArtsSociety & Culture

The Culture We Deserve

Jessa Crispin

Hosted by Jessa Crispin, The Culture We Deserve covers the state of the arts.

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24 episodes
weekly
Avg 1 hr 50 min
English

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S2 · E122
Friday · 1 hr 33 min
Monstrous Women
It takes a certain kind of deranged mind to look at the Lindsay Clancy case and think, "Well, we're never going to get a female president now!" but that is what a lot of the rightwing ladies have been doing. Everything is a Gender War now. Jessa and Nico consider how we think about men and women who kill their children, by looking at two films: Alice Diop's Saint Omer, based on the real life case of a Senegalese-French woman who drowned her baby daughter; and, The Shining, everyone's favorite Family Annihilator film. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E121
September 3 · 1 hr 44 min
True Crime Main Characters
Amanda Knox has written a memoir. And another memoir. And made a documentary. And another documentary. And a fictionalized adaptation of her life story. And she has a podcast. And now she's written a one-woman-show for Fringe. All while the family of the young woman who was murdered begs her to stop. The true crime industry gives a lot of young women the opportunity to endlessly create content about the one bad thing that happened to them. Or, near them? Because some of these women, like the BTK Killer's daughter, or now the granddaughter of Charles Manson, have monetized proximity to bad people while the survivors and the families of victims beg for privacy. Jessa and Nico look at the main character syndrome of true crime, and how certain women have built empires out of suffering and death. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E120
August 27 · 1 hr 50 min
The Love We Deserve
Everyone is looking for love, and no one can find it. That's the message from the inside look at matchmaking services, where both men and women are locked in an endless cycle of first dates and "there has to be something better." The rich men want women with degrees and robust fertility but no hobbies or interests of their own, and women want men who are six feet tall and at least half a million a year. Finally we find gender parity somewhere: both men and women are entirely delusional about what kind of partner will make them happy. Jessa and Nico discuss the dating hellscape, where the apps have gotten so terrible those who can pay (or put down a credit card) run to matchmakers, and romantic disappointment is a major form of reality show entertainment. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E119
August 20 · 2 hr 7 min
Everyone is a Book Influencer Now
Katie Porter, fresh off a loss in the California governor's race, has announced she is going to be a book influencer now. Come join her book group, it recommends all the same books that the others do, too! As President Obama releases a new podcast about books, Dua Lipa interviews Booker Prize winners, and the daughter of President Bush tells you which slop books to read, we have to ask, why is everyone a book influencer now? Nico and Jessa chart the evolution from the Parisian salon to BookTok and every horrific stop along the way, to figure out why, in a time when no one can read, having a book club is the chicest thing you can do. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E118
August 13 · 1 hr 49 min
But Does This Actually Advance the Plot?
The youths don't like sex in movies anymore. The director of the new romantic comedy One Night Only decided to cut a considerable amount of nudity and suggestive moments out of the film in order to cater to a squeamish audience. As eager as people are to declare horny movies back, due to the release of four erotically themed movies back to back (The Invite, ONO, Camp Miasma, and I Want Your Sex), Jessa and Nico consider whether this is a trend or a blip. Also: are any of these movies good or are they just older people expressing exasperation with the New Prudes? Also: how does this chaste approach to films relate to the filthy run of TV (Heated Rivalry) and books (the having sex with dragons thing)? Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E117
August 6 · 1 hr 53 min
Your Job is to Feed the Machine
About five years ago, there was a conversation between journalists who had done years of work under precarious conditions and the YouTubers who used that work to create monetized content that made them a ton of money. If someone spends ten years of their life covering a story, and then some 22-year-old reads a simplified version of that work to the camera while doing their make-up and makes 10x as much money for it, is this a fair distribution of resources? Now the conversation is about YouTubers being pushed out and losing income because of AI. Science YouTuber (a word thoroughly lacking in elegance) Hank Green was caught using AI to help with research and note taking, and his audience is furious. In the content industry, the demand is for authenticity, originality, and endless productivity. And AI -- the solution to all these problems -- is the siren whose song must be resisted. Jessa and Nico posit that in the future, the only job in the creative field will be feeding the machine. But what does the backlash say about creator anxiety? Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E116
July 30 · 1 hr 47 min
Elon Musk: Protector of the West
Elon Musk is going to save Western Civilization from migration, Sharia law, and Christopher Nolan films. He bravely offered up Grok as the tool to generate a woke-free version of The Odyssey, after spending months of his life complaining about casting choices and insults to traditional Greek culture. Jessa and Nico rehash how The Iliad and The Odyssey became culture war flashpoints, how Elon became such a RETVRN guy, and why weirdos look to the past to shore up their identities so they don't have to deal with what disappointments they all are. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E115
July 23 · 1 hr 20 min
The Films that Define the US
So that 250th anniversary thing was kind of a letdown, huh? A poorly attended (and even more dismally entertained) fair in DC, a fiasco of a July 4th celebration in Philadelphia, the only thing in the movie theaters being a new Minions movie... In this moment of disappointment, Jessa and Nico take the New York Times's lead in figuring out which films define America. Their list included things like Disclosure Day, Killer of Sheep, and There Will Be Blood, but J&N have a few additions. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E114
July 16 · 2 hr 5 min
The Beautiful Game
Jessa and Nico survey the World Cup discourse. Why and how do we love things that we know are corrupt? Why can't the United States stop itself from cheating every time it plays on an international level? Did the CIA send in Evangelical missionaries to convert everyone away from Catholicism to undermine the power of Brazilian football? And has globalized soccer created a monoculture, where all homegrown variety and innovation has been lost? Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E113
July 2 · 1 hr 47 min
Jackass: Can a Man Do Anything Without It Becoming a Statement About Masculinity?
With the release of the final Jackass film comes nostalgia and reverie. Because our media class is the way it is, it includes a lot of think pieces about masculinity. Can't a man just hit another man in the balls without it being theorized? Can scatological entertainment resist inquiry? Jessa and Nico also discuss Jackass's failsons: the YouTube pranksters, the violent and exploitative streaming show Fishtank, and fascism-curious podcasters. How did skateboarding subculture curdle into its current form? Also: Rick Rubin is CIA, right? Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E112
June 25 · 1 hr 52 min
The Language of Emergency
Everything is an emergency! There's genocide(s), environmental collapse, capitalism, patriarchy -- and it all has to be taken care of now! Revolution! It's the attention economy, baby -- and everyone wants your attention on the emergency because it is making them a lot of money. Jessa and Nico look at the off-putting and unpersuasive language of the Emergency and wonder if there's a way of talking about these issues in a more reasonable way. If everything is trauma, and trauma makes us helpless and overreactive, then how is anything going to change? Also discussed: Ezra Klein cozying up to the antichrist, the natural birth movement kills another woman, and Bosnia is probably not going to win the World Cup........... but maybe? Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E111
June 18 · 1 hr 51 min
The Politics of Dignity
We all agree that identity politics need to die, yes? They've been infiltrated and exploited by the wealthy and the elites, they led to years of scamming, and they have created a standstill where nothing can be done because nothing can be totally equal. But a return to the bad old system where various identity groups have their needs belittled and ignored would also be a mistake. Could the answer be a politics of dignity? As the Catholic church pivots toward human dignity as the center of their priorities, can we as political actors learn something from this? And is the Catholic Church now the new counterculture? Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E110
June 11 · 2 hr
Are People Lonely or Just Alone?
Lately social media has been inundated with the loneliness influencer, the people (mostly women) who glamorize and romanticize a cozy little life alone: frozen pizzas, a glass of wine, and a sweet treat eaten in front of a TV, snug in yoga pants or luxury sweats, in your perfectly gray urban apartment. Is this helpful for those still stuck in our loneliness crisis, teaching them to turn solitude into meaningful me-time? Or is this going to drive everyone insane and lead to the dying out of humanity as a species? Why not both? Jessa and Nico look at the so-called loneliness crisis to see how it got so gendered, whether it's a crisis at all, and how this is how American infrastructure wants us, atomized and confusing people on our screens for our friends and enemies. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E109
June 4 · 1 hr 20 min
The Pope Declares Holy War Against the Robots
The Pope's encyclical on the subject of AI inspired a flurry of headlines and quick takes, but then people got distracted. But did the Pope really say Death to All Clankers or was there something else going on there? Jessa and Nico look at this very interesting document, which continues the pivot away from individual sin and toward structural evil and asks if there might be something beautiful and dignified about the un-optimized, un-perfected, un-productive human life? What if there is a way to engage with the idea of the value of a life without focusing on metrics and profit? With the art world totally bought in to Silicon Valley and capitalism's worldview, with the Evangelicals dreams of apocalyptic disaster, and with universities functioning first and foremost as landlords and money managers, maybe the Catholic Church is the only institution offering a different perspective. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E108
May 28 · 1 hr 58 min
How to Be an Anti-Authoritarianism Grifter
With new books like "How to Be a Dissident," "Read This When Things Fall Apart," "How to Save Democracy," "Beyond Molotovs" and others flooding the shops, it's obvious that the anti-racist grift has morphed into an anti-authoritarian grift. Will the Yale professors really be able to save us? And what exactly do these books propose? Jessa and Nico sift through the new releases to figure out whether democracy will be saved one six-figure book deal at a time. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E107
May 21 · 1 hr 54 min
Let's All Go to Church
While America's religious revival is being a bit overblown, the fact is that the long decline in church attendance and religious belief is over and a new era of stabilization may have begun. The media focuses on the extreme end of this -- the Christian nationalists, the surge in Orthodox conversion, etc -- but much of this is about the return of the casual, non-fanatical churchgoer. The person open to being bored in a pew once a week rather than the believer who makes their faith the entirety of their being. Jessa and Nico discuss going back to church, what drove them away in the first place, and why the pope is back to being a central figure in political and religious life. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E106
May 14 · 2 hr
The Most Beautiful Job in the World
So we made a mistake. We thought, based on the reviews and interviews and podcasts and think pieces we saw, that the Devil Wears Prada sequel would be our topic for the week. Then we saw the film, and it was bad. Bad in that way that resists inquiry, lacking in substance to the point where you feel dumber trying to discourse about it. But we had no other things planned, so here's our episode about it anyway! Jessa and Nico discuss: why the fashion industry lacks sophistication, why media figures fell over themselves to praise and discuss this film that has nothing going for it, and why the media class will always run cover for the mega-rich -- even when pretending to satirize them. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E105
May 7 · 1 hr 35 min
Men's Media
If we didn't have manfluencers and bro podcasts and a mass media owned and operated by billionaires, what would a supportive media environment for men even look like? What are the ideas, problems, and possibilities that men have that are being ignored by the professionals? Jessa and Nico discuss how men's media differs from women's, how magazines like Esquire and GQ in the 90s helped create the reactionary culture men live in now, and whether the suffragettes having social media would have tanked the whole feminist project before it even got started. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E104
April 30 · 1 hr 40 min
Why Are All of Our Communists Millionaires?
Yes, we are doing Hasan Piker/Jia Tolentino microlooting discourse. Microlooting is one of those cursed words -- like latinx, like unhoused -- that accomplishes zero things, is politically alienating, and allows a group of millionaires to talk about "the rich" as some other group with zero self-awareness. If woke won't die, it's because our communist millionaires won't let it. But a millionaire-led discourse is why these conversations about contemporary ethics always dead-ends in the question, What is the best way to spend money? Jessa and Nico discuss why our rich love anti-social behavior (they always have! they are bored!) and why, ultimately, their class solidarities will probably always be with the Epstein class. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com
S2 · E103
April 23 · 2 hr 1 min
AI Losers
The New York Times recently cut ties with a freelancer after it was revealed he had used AI to assist in the writing of a book review. What is the source of the scandal -- that an underpaid worker uses technology to help him meet a deadline, or that your publication uses such a predictable structure in the work it puts out that AI can easily mimic the formula? The outrage that typically greets any use of AI comes out of a fear that maybe we don't need humans to write our book reviews, our movie scripts, our military propaganda at all. When filmmaker Steven Soderbergh announced he'd be using AI for a future project, there were immediate calls to boycott. But if anything, AI usage seems like a wake-up call to notice how we've created a gatekept, risk-averse cultural space. Jessa and Nico discuss artistic workslop and why everyone going into the trades isn't going to save us from AI. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

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