The Culture We Deserve

Welcome to the 100th episode of The Culture We Deserve -- we really need to rethink our lives. The novel Shy Girl was recently pulled from publication after accusations that the author Mia Ballard used AI during its writing. As arts and culture is infiltrated with LLMs and slop, it doesn't say great things about the future that Hachette, one of the world's largest publishers, can't tell AI from human creativity. But with our standards so low anyway, does any of this matter? What will save us from the slop machines? Jessa and Nico discuss how we recreate taste and high standards, how the institutions of academia, publishing, and music have led us here, and whether it matters if your fantasies are written by human or machine. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

Daughter of two members of the Weather Underground Hope Reeves went to the New York Times to complain that the Oscar winning film One Battle After Another wasn't an accurate portrayal of what her tenured professor parents accomplished. Beginning to worry that the media class literally can't tell the difference between reality and entertainment at the moment. But also, what is behind the nostalgia for 1968? A time of political failures, chaotic violence, and a total inability to bring about change? And what does this nostalgia for a failed era do to people who need and desire change, desperately? Jessa and Nico discuss our dreams of failure and the end of American cultural hegemony. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

Back in the 2010s, instead of political progress we got role models, little girlboss avatars to root for. Their happiness, we were told, was our happiness. Their success was our success. Well, now them most of them are divorced or bankrupt or hard launching polyamorous relationships that sound nightmarish and torturous, maybe it's time to think about actual political organization around issues like domesticity, equality, and social welfare programs? Jessa and Nico discuss Lindy West's new memoir, why we only get polyamory memoirs from women, and why polyamory is frequently offered as a consolation prize when actual political progress for women is stalled. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

With social media filled with AI-generated fake war videos and a war-hawk press eager for regime change and empire building, where does one turn? Jessa and Nico talk about how the death of journalism was not natural causes, it was murder. From venture capital "investment" to Bezos putting the Washington Post through the woodchipper as a gift to Trump to Bari Weiss running CBS news into a wall at high speed, it is beneficial to the select few so they can avoid accountability and oversight. Also: Paramount eats WB and the Fox Empire crackup. Shownotes and references: http://culturewedeserve.substack.com

Why are we so bad at criticizing or satirizing the wealthy? Is it because we think if we're nice to them we think they'll be less likely to kill us? From Succession discourse to bloodthirsty Taylor Swift fans to Jeffrey Epstein defenders, sycophants and fanboys protect, distract, and play down the egregious acts of the rich. Jessa and Nico discuss how the media protects rather than interrogates the ultra-wealthy and why the self-made man myth needs to die. Shownotes and resources: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

A new book about Tucker Carlson's life tracks how the conservative movement has cracked up over the past several decades, while also showing how one man was able to navigate (and monetize) the changes. But does Jason Zengerle's Hated By All the Right People understand where we are today? Jessa and Nico discuss how conservative media -- from print to cable television to Reddit -- has been evolved from respectable intelligentsia to Holocaust jokes, and whether Jessa can fix Tucker. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

Our major arts institutions are broke. The Met Opera has been reduced to begging for money from the Saudis, and meanwhile they can't sell out their theater even for premieres. Colleges are dipping into endowments, theater companies are shutting down, and the MFA Boston is laying people off. The cosmopolitan globalized art model is falling apart, and (now that Epstein is dead) no one has any new ideas except to head out to the petrostates hat in hand. Jessa and Nico look into the state of affairs, and wonder why we're here in the 21st century using 20th century ideas about what art is for and how to fund it. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

The American century is over, or so say the speakers at Davos. The United States has had hegemonic control over the rest of the world, its markets, its sovereignty, its culture. But now that might be coming to an end. Jessa and Nico discuss what that means for international culture industries, which have also been playing by America's rules for decades. Shownotes and references: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

It's France in the mid-19th century, and here we have a group of young men who can't decide how to get along. They waste time and money, they go to nightclubs and restaurants, they have affairs and declare themselves and each other artistic geniuses. Meanwhile, the political situation is crumbling and people are putting up barricades in the street. It's time for Flaubert's Sentimental Education, which examines the listlessness and indecisiveness of a generation coming of age in turmoil. Jessa and Joseph discuss how this in no way resembles the contemporary impulse to podcast through a breakdown. Join the discussion here: http://theculturewedeserve.substack.com

They debate the popularity of the 'suicidal empathy' idea and how it gets weaponized in culture wars. They interrogate a Nation essay about not reporting sexual assault and the limits of personal essays for complex policy. They weigh abolition versus reform for criminal justice and discuss practical alternatives to carceral responses. They also touch on arts funding, risk culture, and media-driven moral panics.