(Pop) Cultural Marxism
In (Pop) Cultural Marxism, a subseries of the Podcast for Social Research, BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary and Isi Litke (and special guests!) will be exploring the “fantastic form” of pop-cultural commodities—from film and television to toys and games to objects of every conceivable consumer variety.
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 13: Things of the Year 2024 — Part I
12/31/2024
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 13: Things of the Year 2024 — Part I
In episode 13 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi ruminate on a largely dismal year in pop culture. Kicking off with a discussion of unexpected developments in the world of health insurance, the conversation turns to a number of broad trends that characterized culture this year: AI, long production cycles, platforms—rather than cultural works—as objects of cathexis, IP art, and the use of IP as trans-media anchors. Along the way, they discuss social bandits, collective effervescence, Leiji Matsumoto’s Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, the Criterion Closet truck, Sony’s push into the television space, Jon Chu’s Wicked, and 2024’s revealing box office numbers. In the second half of the episode, Ajay and Isi discuss the year’s highlights (Metaphor: ReFantazio [GoTY], Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, Lies of P, Mati Diop’s Dahomey, Shuchi Talati’s Girls Will Be Girls, a performance of book 1 of The Odyssey by Joseph Medeiros, Edward Berger’s Conclave, Todd Phillip’s divisive Joker: Folie à Deux, the second season of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire, and True Detective: Night Country) and lowlights (Denis Villeneuve's Dune 2, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers, and a whole lot of "just okay" television)—with more to come in a follow-up episode after the holidays!
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 12: Megalopolis — or, the Decline and Miraculous Resurrection of American Empire
11/15/2024
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 12: Megalopolis — or, the Decline and Miraculous Resurrection of American Empire
In episode 12 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi tackle Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024). Kicking off with a review of a few recent pop-cultural engagements—including an assemblage of classic vampire films (Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), among them), Mubi’s restoration of The Fall (2006), Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, and a pair of streaming series about professional wrestling—the conversation turns to Coppola’s reactionary would-be summa about an architect attempting to construct a techno-futuristic utopia on a plot of land in “New Rome,” an alternate-world New York City as played against Roman and early American history. Along the way, Ajay and Isi discuss Neri Oxman’s faux-ecological contributions to the film’s central animating macguffin, the mysterious “megalon;” the film’s antipathy for the marginalized masses; its protagonist as synthesis of Caesar, Robert Moses, Walter Gropius, and The Fountainhead’s Howard Roark; accidentally timely narratives of the “good guy” billionaire pitted against the “bad-guy” billionaire; and the ecofascist inclination to marry the romanticization of nature with authoritarian techno-optimism. Among the topics at hand are Coppola’s disturbing, “secretly autobiographical” efforts to reaffirm himself as auteur, his baffling postmodern pastiche, the classic right-wing themes of patriarchy as a sign of order and non-normative sexual expression as a sign of decline and decadence, the film’s shocking ugliness, and how Megalopolis’s strange incorporation of current events betrays “a baby boomer [having read] a bunch of airport history books.”
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 11: Civil War
05/21/2024
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 11: Civil War
In episode 11 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi examine Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024). Kicking off with a handful of pop culture news items—including the Met Gala, the death of Steve Albini, A24’s Stop Making Sense tribute album, and Apple's alarming iPad Pro commercial—the conversation turns to Garland’s provocative and uneven drama about a group of photojournalists traveling through a war-torn United States. Ajay and Isi discuss the perils of directors commenting on their own works, the film’s inadvertent critique of combat photographers, “Portland Maoists,” Garland’s allusions to significant 20th century photojournalists (Robert Capa, Lee Miller, Gerda Taro, the Bang Bang Club), reactionary aesthetics, and the vernacular of American violence. Central to the conversation are perennial questions about the mediation of war through film and photography; the circulation and reception of images of violence; and how to make a film about war that neither glamorizes nor sentimentalizes it.
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 10: It's Not Easy Being Green (Under Capitalism)
03/08/2024
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 10: It's Not Easy Being Green (Under Capitalism)
What does culture look like in a "sustainable" world? In episode of 10 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay, Isi, and guest Rebecca Ariel Porte examine the problems with "green" technology and consumption—which, it turns out, do little, nothing, or less than nothing to sustain the environment—and talk about the kinds of cultural forms, from literature to architecture to games, that are not only sustainable in terms of ecology and society but also aesthetically compelling and beautiful. How does genuine ecological sustainability depend on social sustainability for artists and engineers and other creative workers, and promote far richer aesthetic expressions? Why is so much "Green"-branded work—in everything from the builtworld to fine art—anything but? What forms of aesthetic creation not usually thought of as ecological, are actually sustainable in every dimension? How does our current unsustainable social and ecological society constrict imagination and creative effloresce? And how would even a modestly more sustainable world, actually enable and support such creative flourishing? Looking to both current and historical examples, Isi, Rebecca, and Ajay review art installations like Walter De Maria's The New York Earth Room and the MOMA's Emerging Ecologies: Architecture and the Rise of Environmentalism; architecture from the "PR-architecture" of projects like "Oceanix" to the actual sustainability found in works like Võ Trọng Nghĩa's "Farming Kindergarten"; unexhausted forms in music (from Bach to Stravinsky, pop music to the vast world of jazz) and in verse, such as the ghazals of poet Anthony Madrid; film, tv, and even videogames, whether low-powered and low-tech (as with recent critical and commercial successes like Hades (Supergiant) or Stardew Valley (Concerned Ape)) or high-powered and high-tech (and highly popular), like Zelda, Elden Ring, and more. How is production—from emissions to mineral inputs, exploitative assembly and "crunch"—key to understanding aesthetic exhaustions? How does unsustainable ecological design and an ever accelerating model of production stifle creativity and promote ever narrower, more costly, and less interesting work? How does a model like streaming—and other modes of supposedly "dematerialized" distribution—actually obscure ecological damage while simultaneously making aesthetic production more difficult for artists and aesthetic consumption less compelling for everyone? What is the "trickle up misery" of "defensive architecture"? In the face of a capitalist ethos that always insists on creativity as bound to a logic of “bigger, faster, better, more,” the conversation explores the ways in which working, creating, designing, and engineering within limits has produced some of the most exciting aesthetic forms and experiences, and how the necessity of ecological and social limits can act as the "enabling constraints" of a far more compelling aesthetic life than the all-too-real dystopia of today.
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 9: Things of the Year 2023
12/22/2023
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 9: Things of the Year 2023
In the final episode for 2023, Isi, Ajay, and Joseph address the vexing nature of End-of-Year lists—and then go through the vexing process of assembling our own! Isi leads us through our year in cinema; Ajay, the year in games; and Joseph, the year in television, culminating in three top picks (and some honorable mentions) for the year in each category. Discussions range from the surprising success of cinematic restorations to films which shape, subvert, and show the optical unconscious; games of visceral pleasure, systemic fascination, and astonishing simplicity; and the politics (and possibilities) in contemporary anime and the anxious and wonderfully character-driven year in television. Proceeding in part through negative examples (Oppenheimer and Final Fantasy XVI receive perhaps the harshest treatments), the cast ultimately records in the world of film: 1. Stop Making Sense (2023, remaster); 2. Killers of the Flower Moon (2023); and 3. May December (2023), with honorable mentions for How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) and The Boy and the Heron (2023). In the world of games: 1. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023); 2. Armored Core 6 (2023); 3. Super Mario Brothers Wonder (2023) / Pikmin 4 (2023), with honorable mentions for Star Ocean: The Second Story R and a whole slate of tiny games for Panic's "Playdate" lo-fi handheld: Questy Chess, Omaze, Zipper, Casual Birder, among others. In the world of television: 1. Rap Shit (2023); 2. Beef (2023); 3. Attack on Titan (2013-2023), with honorable mentions for the live-action adaptation of One Piece (2023) and our collective 2022 hangover shows: Peaky Blinders (2013-2022) and Ozark (2017-2022). Stay tuned in for talk of the unbearable “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, what makes old action movies so good, unsustainable labor practices in the world of commercial game production, and making a “Breaking Bad” that is actually good. Wishing you all a critically reflective holiday season from PCM!
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 7: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — Baroque Beauty and Playing Mourning
07/21/2023
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 7: The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom — Baroque Beauty and Playing Mourning
After a brief hiatus, Ajay and Isi are back with another episode of (Pop) Cultural Marxism! In episode 7, they sojourn amidst the splendid ruins of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the much celebrated 2023 game from Nintendo's EPD development group, directed and produced by Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Eiji Aonuma. Before delving into the series’ past and present iterations, the two spend some time catching up on what’s new at the movies—including the expected summer blockbusters, relative degrees of quackery, and other matters. Then it’s on to Nintendo and its quasi-mercantilist business model, the awe-inspiring complexity of the latest entry in the Zelda franchise, leading to excurses on Situationist psychogeography, flânerie, combinatorial aesthetics, architectural reasoning and silent film techniques. Taking up Tears of the Kingdom as a kind of Trauerspiel in the Benjaminian sense, they explore the dialectical tension between humor and mourning, diegetic and critical knowledge formation, comparative religion, and the beauty of works that are incomparably more than the sum (or multiplication) of their parts. Stay tuned for answers to burning listener questions on the game’s environmental (or extractivist) dimensions—with reference to Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke—and the (fairly incomprehensible) class structure of Hyrule.
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 6: Everyone Enjoying Everything All the Time
04/04/2023
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 6: Everyone Enjoying Everything All the Time
In episode six of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay consider the cultural imperative du jour, "Let People Enjoy Things"—and offer an alternative: not letting people enjoy things. What underlies the collective impulse to not criticize? What is the purpose of criticism? And how does the injunction to not criticize misunderstand the relationship between the self and representation? Are critics cheerless? Why are we anxious for our art (are blockbuster movies so fragile)? Why, in this moment, are we seemingly so driven to seek out cultural experiences that console? Isn't critical engagement in itself a pleasure? As Isi and Ajay explore the anti-critical impulse (with a detour into the present and future of the Oscars), they take up objects ranging from Best Picture winner Everything Everywhere All at Once (and the—rather ardent—discourse surrounding it) to Florian Sigl's The Magic Flute, Kate Wagner's Baffler essay "Don't Let People Enjoy Things," Franz Kafka's retranslated diaries, the video game Like a Dragon: Ishin!, A.O. Scott's New York Times exit interview, aesthetic debates reaching back to Adorno, Benjamin, and Lukács, and much else besides. (00:00) Intro (19:49) First break (20:27) Let's talk Everything Everywhere All At Once (45:39) Let People Enjoy Things? (1:18:34) Second break (1:19:00) The Academy Awards and what they signify (1:46:43) Parting thoughts
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 5: Avatar: Cinema's Watery Grave
04/04/2023
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 5: Avatar: Cinema's Watery Grave
In episode 5 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay dive deep into the spectacle of James Cameron’s latest blockbuster Avatar: The Way of Water, touching on questions of cinematic language, the ironic celebration of nature through its destructions, papyrus fonts, visual and narrative incoherence, Final Fantasy (and being unfair to it), Ridley Scott, Moby Dick, Heidegger’s question concerning technology, Prehistoric Planet, windmills, colonialism, György Lukács, Eiji Otsuka, Sontag's “Fascinating Fascism,” dubs vs. subs, 64-bit water, underwater motion capture, the shock doctrine, the movie's mildly eugenic obsession with sexualized (yet sexless) bodily perfection, James Cameron's legacy in crafting so much of the style of contemporary "cinematic universe" form, even the bizarre Manhattan mall where Isi and Ajay watched the movie. And, of course, lots and lots of water.
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 4: 2022 Cultural Year in Review
02/24/2023
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 4: 2022 Cultural Year in Review
In episode four of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay, Isi, and Joseph review the year 2022 in pop culture via the prism of five topics and trends: “open world” (and cinematic universe) fatigue (for example, Assassin’s Creed: Vahalla, Sonic Frontiers); the plague of remakes and cultural nostalgia (Top Gun Maverick, Wednesday, Interview with the Vampire); cultural paranoia (true crime TV and paraphernalia, including the “In Case I Go Missing Binder,” Nextdoor, Tár); liberal fanfiction (Handmaid’s Tale, Bridgerton); and the substitution of moral judgement and “forensic judgement” for actual aesthetic analysis (explainers, the backlash to critique,, deciphering). Do open worlds lend gravitas to video games—or do they just create sameness? What are the pastoral impulses behind farming games? Is the mania for remakes confirmation of Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”? Is Tár a product of cancel cultural panic? What is “plastic representation”; and how does representational fantasy like Bridgerton erase the very historical knowledge that makes social critique possible? And finally, what explains the urge to explain it all? How does ambiguity provide potency to art? The podcast closes with a discussion of Ajay’s, Isi’s, and Joseph’s favorite 2022 things (whether actually released in 2022 or just personally discovered): , Yellowjackets, Hades, Azor, The Banshees of Inisherin, Station 11, and Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Ajay’s 2022 GOTY and theorized allegory for communism).
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 3: Elden Ring: Endless Purgatorio
02/24/2023
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 3: Elden Ring: Endless Purgatorio
In episode three of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi welcome fellow faculty and Joseph Earl Thomas to talk about Elden Ring, the acclaimed 2022 RPG videogame, directed and created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and Japan’s FromSoftware studio (alongside some “worldbuilding” by Game of Thrones writer George R.R. Martin.) After a few preliminaries (a revisit to Andor and discussions of the recent Sight and Sound “best movies” poll, Pokemon, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 as communist allegory, and more), the talk turns to Elden Ring‘s “endless purgatorio,” its “nihilistic” setting, its “open-world” structure (just how “open” are open worlds?), the meaning and limits of agency in videogame play, taking pleasure in difficulty, “affective difficulty,” why videogame playing might be like dancing (with reference to BISR’s late Jeffrey Escoffier), affect theory (and feeling bad about killing), gender, playing dress-up, and much more besides.
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 2: Stellan Skarsgårdian
02/24/2023
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 2: Stellan Skarsgårdian
In the second episode of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay continue their explorations of the “fantastic form” of pop-cultural commodities. This time around, they take up the latest addition to the Star Wars universe, Tony Gilroy’s television series Andor. Their talk touches on topics large and small, from animatronic garbage droids, ordinary social life in the Star Wars universe, and the petty middle managerialism of empire, to labor militancy, Wagner’s Ring Cycle, early Hollywood genre conventions, and much more (including a detour through dance).
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(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 1: Elves and Dragons
02/24/2023
(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 1: Elves and Dragons
Introducing Episode 1 of the new Podcast for Social Research subseries (Pop) Cultural Marxism, in which Ajay and Isi (and special guests!) will be exploring the “fantastic form” of pop-cultural commodities—from film and television to toys and games to objects of every conceivable consumer variety. In the premier episode, they turn their attention to the genre of fantasy, and in particular to the recent prequels to The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Listen in as they discuss, among other things, Amazon aesthetics, “the liberal imagination,” beautiful failures, faux and real political realism, gif-able moments, Tolkien for neofascists, mimetic regression, billion-dollar budgets, and potential affinities between fantasy and socialist thought.
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