The New Yorker Radio Hour - 2018 in Pop Culture

Episode Date: December 21, 2018

The New Yorker staff writers Jia Tolentino, Doreen St. Félix, and Alexandra Schwartz all cover the culture beat from different angles. They talk with David Remnick about the emblematic pop-culture phenomena of 2018 that tell us where we were this year: how “Queer Eye” tried to fix masculinity, and how that spoke to women in the #MeToo era; whether “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians” will mark a turning point in the representation of nonwhite people in film; and how, as Tolentino says, “A Star Is Born” was r“arguably the only event of the year that brought America together.” New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of the New Yorker and WNYC Studios. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. As we look back on 2018, I wanted to talk about the year in culture, the high points and the low points, the complicated and the problematic points. And we'll do it with three of the keenest observers I know, Gia Tolentino, Doreen, St. Felix, and Alexandra Schwartz, all staff writers at the New Yorker. and I asked each of them to come in with one big story for the year in pop culture. Gia, let's start with you. What did you bring in for us today? Let's talk about a Starsborn. Oh, that's please. The event that brought America together, arguably the only event of the year that brought America together.

It's the fourth remake of the 1937 classic. Round two was Judy Garland. Round three was Barbara Streisand. Round four is Gaga. Oh, I loved it. I loved it, too. and everybody loved it. Some people did not love it, but I loved it. I mean, but everyone kind of loved it.

But why did you bring us all together, Gia? What's your thesis on this? Well, I think it really all starts with the song. It starts with The Shallow, which every time I've heard it in public around people, like at karaoke or at a bar or at a wedding, for example, it's like the whole room is just, like, defibrillated by the melody. I mean, it is so good. I hope we can play a tiny clip from it.

It's that song. It's the centerpiece. If we play a clip, we need to play the primal roar. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We can play a little bit of the primal roar. So that just sends your heart a leaping. Well, you know, it was also one of the most sincere pieces of pop culture of the year. I mean, it was so straightforward. It was so sentimental.

And at the same time, it had this built-in camp value, even the movie itself wasn't campy, of, you know, Bradley Cooper out here looking like, you know, with a, face the color of, you know, a 400-year-old, like, leather saddle and Lady Gaga playing, you know, this fresh-faced ingenue, you know, the opposite of her actual persona. And there was so much camp value in the two personas that the main actors inhabited that it, we got, like, pure sincerity, pure irony at the same time. Great songs. Hard to argue with it. Also, can I say how good it feels to see an ingenue who's in her 30s? Like, I know, you know, it's, she's not 19.

David, you're giving me a look, but seriously. I'm just happy when somebody's in spitting distance. No, so what are the biggies this year? Doreen, do you have a nomination for things that brought us all together or thrilled you to death this year? I want to talk about

two movies in tandem being Black Panther, which actually did come out this year. I thought it came out three years ago because this year has been a decade long. We age more slowly, at least. We truly do. And John Chu's Crazy Rich Asians. And I think it's useful to think about these movies together because, A, they're two of the most commercially successful films, not only domestically, but internationally, which then ended up igniting these conversations about can you create juggernauts on non-white actors in the star system? And the answer, of course, has always been yes, but I feel like this year people really had to reckon with that. And what I also love about the conversation that these movies inspired was that these movies are basically total

fantasies, right? Black Panther is based on the comic and then Crazy Rich Asians is based on this fiction novel, but people were having serious, almost to the point of humorless conversations about, you know, can I see myself in the story? And, you know, on the one end for me, it's like kind of depressing because there have been such a dearth of stories that allow non-white spectators to even like think about the question of seeing themselves. But on the other hand, it's really exciting that we can have movies where the onus is not only on these audiences to support them, but also to kind of like critique them in these like fun and exciting ways. Well, what did you like and not like about those two films?

Well, I guess Black Panther, the question is, is this film advancing this propaganda of, you know, in an alternative history, all black people were kings when it's like the history is there. We were not all kings. And then there was also the weird thing of black Americans going to see this film in the theater in like dashikis that they bought on the 125th Street that came from China, you know? Right. And so obviously there's... It's globalism, Doreen. I've heard about it.

So the romance that audience has experienced with Black Panther, I would say a little bit more than Crazy Rich Asians, but they can be compared. It just really makes me feel enthusiastic. to see adults, to see young children, to see all these people come together and be, like, totally reduced to fan boys and fan girls. I kept thinking the same thing, too. Like, step two will be when these are not received pedagogically, you know? And for me, as an Asian person, it's like step three will be when the first movie about with a full cast of Asian people doesn't have Asians in the title. And I think wasn't the deal with Crazy Rich Asians that they had gotten offered more money to do it at Netflix or something, but they... Oh, I didn't know that.

I think that... Yeah, I think they wanted... Didn't they want like a big theater distribution? As a statement. Yeah, right. And I love that. No, but, you know, I heard this conversation

in the early 90s. Joy Luck Club came out. And there hasn't been one since then. Exactly. There's a lot Joy Luck Club. Here come the liberation of movies about Asians and Asian Americans and all the rest.

And it didn't happen at all. Yeah. Now, do you fear that that's going to be the case? Do you fear that that's going to be the case with Black Panther? Honestly, I don't think that there's any way that this does not inspire like an entire like cottage

industry of these films. Part of it also is that Because we're better people or because there's money to be made? I think there's a lot more money to be made and also these, we're talking about the industry system here. We're talking about producers, the fact that Kugler is directing this film. It is from top to bottom a black produced film. I think when you're

in these positions of power, you know, these are the people who are making decisions and the fact that there are a lot more people of color there than there were a generation ago. I think that's how you get you know, Black Panther Open this year and then you have Cree that's closing it. I think Cree just like went over $100 million

and it's not even that good of a movie. I'm afraid it's not. But that's one like Cougler passed it to his old classmate of USC, right? It's not even a, and it's, and this whole franchise is already solidified as this, like I can't wait to see the next three bad ones.

Like, I love it, you know? Now, Alex, you came in today to talk about queer eye, the return of queer eye. On Netflix. On Netflix, which like Black Panther came out in, February, but it already feels like it's been about 10 years in the culture, so many responses and think pieces and then counter think pieces. And it's been amazingly less than a year.

So I watched Queer Eye when it was first a series on Bravo about 350 million years ago. How is the new version radically different from the first? Well, I was very skeptical when I heard that Queer Eye was getting a reboot because the whole point of the first series, which I think aired, I think came out in 2003, and so aired maybe between 2003 and 2007, was kind of this idea of making queerness and gayness more tolerable to the mainstream American viewer. It was like the Will and Grace Project continued, but with a little more sass. And I thought, well, that is so outdated for 2018 America, not all of America, but for much of, you know, American culture has moved way beyond that. And it turned out that what this queer I did was basically flip the equation and make masculinity

and often white masculinity, the kind of exotic object that was being critiqued. I think part of the pleasure of queer eye first was this, it's sort of a fantasy of cross-cultural understanding. How does the show work? The show works. You have these five guys who are called the Fab Five arrive in, I think both seasons of the show, both of which came out this year, were in Georgia, kind of near the Atlanta area, but sometimes in rural Georgia.

And they arrive at the house of a person who in the show's terminology is called the hero to basically spend a few days with that person, look in. their lives, get their lives together. It means going through their fridge and throwing out all the stuff in it, going through their bathrooms and throwing out all the stuff there, just kind of getting them up a notch in terms of, you know, self-presentation. But I will just say that there was something at the beginning of 2018 felt so bleak. And to have this kind of fuzzy, friendly five guys pop out of a car and just run into your house and, you know, rearrange your life, There was something that felt very heartwarming about that.

And as far as the masculinity side of it goes, a big part of the show is watching women walk into their new houses and cry. They're just looking at these houses that they've been basically primarily responsible for and their husbands and boyfriends have suddenly, I mean, they haven't exactly redone the house, but suddenly things are looking up. This was a very soothing experience towards the beginning of Me Too to kind of see the women react in this way. It's funny that we all picked these like uplifting. You know, it's like Mrs. Maisel, right?

It's like this thing with this like possibly false like, you know, like televised Xanax. Yeah, exactly. Well, is that what's happening here? Is that the year... It's happening to me. Between me too and Trump is so miserable. It's so immiscerating.

Well, I have thought that, you know, so this year we've had, like, part of the appeal of the Star is born as well clicks into something about Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, about box. Lux about Susperia, like post Me Too, there is a certain kind of interest in female stardom and how it is manufactured and the cost of that stardom in different ways. And I think you can even put it in a broader context and see how 2018 has inherited the irony of the past decade and responded with like almost saccharine earnestness. Another show that I completely drown myself into all the time is a great British thing.

Oh, yeah. I've never seen it. Everyone has it. Oh, it's heaven. It's absolute heaven. Gia, you have to go home and watch every single episode. Yeah, I mean, I trust you guys, I will. It's people being nice to each other making things that taste delicious.

But you're making much more complicated things than muffins. Okay, here's my question. Does it make you hungry? The game pie, not so much, but the puff pastries? Will it be one of those shows that I'll be like, I need to, like, make a cake? Oh, absolutely. I tried to make a chiffon cake. How did it go?

Horrible. I've actually had the opposite experience. I felt totally relieved of any burden to ever bake. I just, I realize that there are so many people who are better at this in the world. And I can just buy what they make. And it feels really good. It's guilt-free. Does this influence your reading as well?

Or is it mostly a movie and TV thing? I have found, you know, there have been lots, like there was a wave of fiction this year that was dystopian, you know, like Handmaid's Tale, you know, version 3.0, like red clocks and the power and, you know, all of these. kind of on-theme female dystopias, and I found myself completely unable to read any of them or the so-called, like, Me Too, first wave of Me Too fiction. I found myself not, like, needing to use fiction a different way this year.

Right, because reading that kind of fiction, it requires a kind of, like, really active descent into the world, whereas I think we're all describing films and television shows that require much less of the viewer and that are almost passive experiences. Now, are there shows or movies that are coming around next year in 2019 that you're really looking forward to?

Veep is coming back. Can't wait. I've never watched Veep. Oh, Doreen. It's going to be so good. When you finally... Yeah, yeah, it's so good. I mean, Veep is...

Veep used to be my total comfort food because... Right, it might not be funny anymore. Well, during the Obama years, you could just watch the spectacle of crazy incompetence, and selfishness and know what a, you know, how outlandish it was. And as soon as reality overtook it, it became very cringy and comfortable for me. So I'm really curious to see what

this new season will be like. But I, in general, just adore that show. Well, it's one of the reasons that, like, S&L is just, it will never be funny until Trump's out of office. Yeah, I would really love to see S&L kind of go by the way. Are you, Dorian, are you fed up with S&L? I'm fed up with people pretending that S&L is trenchant in any way. Yeah. You think it's too? You think it's toothless? It's not quite that I think it's toothless. I just don't think that it actually... The show has always, obviously,

historically been so obsessed with itself and its own wit. But it's like wit is not the language that makes any kind of impression in the Trump era. That's something that, like, made sense for Obama, who was a king of witticisms and all this stuff. I think that, I mean, to me, everything they've done in the Trump era is just taking exactly what happened and then having S&L actors redo it as it happens. as it happened, you know? And it's like, it's, nothing changes. They can't intensify it because

it's already so intense. It's effectively, they're just replaying everything that I think it's, yeah, it's like what Tina Fey did with Sarah Palin, and now that turns out to be kind of every skit. But there also becomes a degree to which basically just completely transposing actual events, but with a tone of mockery is not a way of responding to actual events. So what I'm hearing is that you've all had it with the Alec Baldwin doing Trump. Oh, yeah. We thank you for your service, but please get out. Time to step down.

And everyone always talks about Alec Baldwin as Trump, but I think that it was Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer. That was like beyond being. Yeah, it was great. It was great. It was genius. I mean, it happened 17 years ago, but when it did, it was great. It seems like that. Right.

It seems like that. Thank you all. And we look forward to a better year, and God knows what the effect on TV and movies will be. Thank you, David. Gia Tolentino. Alex Schwartz, Doreen St. Felix. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. I'm David Remnick, and that's it for this week. And I hope you and yours have a great, great holiday. Please join us next week for The New Yorker Radio Hour. Until then. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado.

This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boteen, Ave Cario, Rianan and Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, Kalalia, David Krasnow, Caroline Lester, Louis Mitchell, Sarah Nix, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Emily Mann and Jessica Henderson. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.