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1:17

I'm Stephen Meckath and this is the Slate Culture

1:19

Gap Fest, Swifties at the Movies

1:21

edition. It's Wednesday, October

1:23

18th, 2023. On

1:26

today's show, Taylor Swift, the era's

1:28

tour came to theaters and it really

1:31

conquered them this past weekend at the

1:33

BO. It's already the highest grossing

1:36

concert doc of all time. We

1:38

discussed the unstoppable juggernaut

1:41

known as Tay-Tay or whatever you want to call

1:43

her. And then the documentary Beckham

1:45

tells the story of the rise to superstardom

1:48

of David Beckham, the footballer. It's

1:50

a very candid and intimate

1:53

portrait of him and his ultra famous wife,

1:55

Victoria Adams, AKA

1:58

Posh Spice.

1:59

by Fisher Stevens, who is

2:02

anybody who is Fisher Stevens? Well,

2:05

I mean, everybody's going to say he's Hugo on Succession.

2:08

Yeah, he's one of these faces that achieves

2:10

sort of anonymous ubiquity. And

2:13

then all of a sudden, that role

2:15

in Succession is Hugo, this slimy, you

2:17

know, courtier, publicist,

2:20

was just amazing. And now he's made this kind of

2:22

great four part documentary Beckham. And finally,

2:24

has progress in the arts come

2:27

to a halt? We discuss a brilliant,

2:29

really, I think, really provocative essay by

2:32

the Times critic Jason Farago.

2:35

But first, joining me today

2:37

is Julia Turner of the LA Times. Hey,

2:39

Julia. Hello, hello. And

2:41

of course, Dana Stevens, who's the film critic for

2:44

Slate.com. Hey, Dana. Greetings.

2:47

Shall we make a show? We got some like pretty

2:49

juicy meat on the bone here.

2:51

Yeah. I mean, the headline is we made Steve

2:53

see the

2:54

Eras tour. So let's

2:56

get into it. I was hoping that

2:58

lead could stay buried forever, Julia.

3:00

But here we go. All right. Taylor

3:03

Swift, the Eras tour IRL in

3:05

real life, the bricks and mortar version of it broke

3:07

all kinds of concert records, you know, an arena

3:09

tour going all over, setting

3:12

off mini earthquakes, literal

3:15

and figurative wherever it went. It's now, of

3:17

course, a three hour concert film filmed over

3:20

three nights in LA. Which night

3:22

were you at, Julia? I was at the

3:24

very last night, night six. I was not at one

3:26

of the nights that was taped. Oh,

3:29

I kept looking for you. I mean, I had to do something

3:31

to pass the time. Anyway, it's the

3:33

concert is segmented by Eras in

3:36

her musical biography. I understand that they're

3:38

not entirely chronological, but sort of

3:40

chronological-ish from country

3:43

pop phase as a teen sensation

3:46

up through Red, 1989, Folklore,

3:49

on and on. Why don't we just listen

3:51

to a clip from the trailer? Let's

3:53

play that.

3:54

This

4:02

is the most extraordinary experience

4:04

of my entire life. We're

4:13

about to go on a little adventure together

4:15

and that adventure is going to span 17 years

4:19

of music. How does that sound? Welcome

4:24

to the acoustic band.

4:36

So Dana, I'm going to start in

4:38

the least, in some ways, expected

4:41

place of all. This is a movie.

4:44

You're a film critic. We all just saw

4:46

Stop Making Sense and discussed it. Is

4:49

it possible to even judge it as

4:51

a concert film, much less a film?

4:54

I'm curious what you think of that.

4:56

I guess my main response to this movie was

4:58

that though it is unbelievably long

5:01

as a concert movie should be, I

5:03

mean it's trying to capture the evening, I think a few

5:05

songs that she's saying were actually cut out for

5:07

running time reasons. For

5:10

this non-superfan,

5:12

somebody who maybe knows 30% of Taylor

5:14

Swift's music and has a

5:17

vague feeling of sort of abiding affection

5:19

for her and a few

5:21

songs that I love to sing along with but no real

5:23

relationship to her as a fan, this

5:26

kind of converted me. She is

5:28

a really charming

5:31

performer to

5:31

watch. Of course, this is sort of cannily

5:33

edited across several nights so as

5:36

to bring out the best moments of performance.

5:38

It's also, I noticed- Right, that makes no sense. Of

5:40

course, yeah,

5:41

yeah, yeah, which is I think the way to make a concert doc.

5:44

It's also, I think, cannily framed and edited

5:46

so as to bring out what is the best

5:48

in her as a performer and camouflage

5:52

some of her weaker spots as a performer

5:54

like her dancing, which is always criticized,

5:56

I think, in a somewhat unfair way, comparing

5:59

her to- people who are spectacular

6:01

born movers and dancers like

6:03

Beyonce. This is a whole different conversation,

6:05

but I think the idea that every female

6:08

pop star has to be an extraordinary dancer

6:10

is unrealistic and cruel,

6:12

a little bit misogynistic, and that men don't get

6:14

asked for the same things. Anyway, I'm going

6:17

all over the place, but I will say that I had a very

6:19

fun time. And I think that, for example,

6:21

if you're a parent who's feeling like, oh, God, I have to

6:23

go to this with my tween, I think you should embrace

6:25

it and try to have fun and

6:28

get into her music. It made me want to explore

6:30

some albums that I don't really know

6:32

that well.

6:33

All right, Julia, well, that sets up the

6:36

pivot to you, which is you did see it. How

6:39

different are the two experiences?

6:41

Well, it's an hour shorter, if you can believe that.

6:43

Oh, my God. So you're welcome. I mean,

6:46

I don't know that I've had a similar experience of

6:48

watching a filmed version of a thing I've seen

6:50

live.

6:52

It was interesting. I mean, I was

6:54

struck by the degree to which it

6:57

wasn't doing anything other than capturing

7:00

this tour. You know what I mean? It

7:03

was not about how humans unite

7:05

to make music in the way that's not

7:07

making sense was. I walked out, I saw

7:09

it with my son, and I walked out and was like, well, some making sense

7:12

is a much better movie. And he was outraged and

7:14

shocked and horrified by that view. But

7:16

I stand by it. But

7:20

the performance itself and the tour

7:23

is worth recording for the

7:25

phenomenon that it is and for what it

7:27

does demonstrate

7:30

about her skill

7:32

as a songwriter, her skill as a performer,

7:34

her skill

7:36

in designing

7:39

her output

7:42

so that it puts her

7:44

in a good light. I was

7:46

also struck by the choreography at the

7:48

show and in the film. I've

7:50

seen her twice in tour before the Eros

7:53

tour, and I think

7:55

she's grown, as people

7:57

do when they mature, to more peace with what

7:59

kind of music she's doing. of dancer she is and I feel like the

8:01

dancing this requires of her is smart.

8:04

I also feel like most of the movie she just does this

8:06

like loping strut in

8:09

time to the beat. Like I just kind

8:11

of want to walk like that forever.

8:13

It's just this like long leg

8:15

is like beat lope. But

8:18

Dana, one thing I feel like struck

8:21

me at the show and again at the film is the degree

8:25

to which she performs with her face.

8:28

Like she's, I'm curious

8:30

what you make of this but I had this moment thinking

8:33

about her a couple weeks ago where I was like, oh maybe she's like

8:35

a silent film person. Like there's this

8:37

kind of sense of emotive

8:41

pantomime and she's obviously very broad.

8:43

Like I think one of the essays we read about

8:45

this noted has some names in her dancing. She's literally like

8:47

holding the fake phone to her ear which is probably

8:50

an insult to silent film performers

8:53

to suggest that that's really what she's doing. But

8:56

I do think there's kind of a, she

8:58

dances with her face

8:59

mostly.

9:00

Yeah, she's funny. I mean that was something

9:03

that really struck me in her use of her face

9:05

which is probably comes across better right in

9:07

a movie than it would have on stage. Although

9:09

it looks like in this particular staging there were

9:11

two giant screens that were often showing her

9:14

face. So people did get to see those little you

9:16

know pantomime expressions you

9:18

mentioned. She has an emotional

9:20

connection with the audience that's really, really palpable

9:23

and that it also had a bit of humor

9:26

about it like this thing that she would do. I mean there must

9:28

be what 20,000 or more people

9:30

in that auditorium. And she does

9:32

this thing at one point where she sort of slowly

9:35

pivots around the stage pointing at the whole audience

9:37

and the wave of applause kind of moves

9:39

with her point. So she's basically communicating with each

9:42

person. Like this is about you. She'll

9:44

often do that in songs as well on the word you.

9:46

So point to some random person in the audience which

9:49

given Taylor's reputation for having

9:51

lots and lots of boyfriends was kind of funny. Like

9:53

what if they're all literally people that

9:55

you've gotten together with out there in the

9:58

audience. But anyway I found her. super

10:00

charming. And something that you only slightly mentioned,

10:02

Julia, but it's one of my favorite things about this concert

10:05

is the costumes. The costumes are

10:07

incredible and the costume changes are incredible.

10:09

And I know that's a big part of seeing a pop

10:12

star now, but I don't usually go to these shows.

10:14

I don't think I've seen in the modern era,

10:16

the 21st century, a huge pop

10:18

star stadium show. So, you know, the

10:20

idea that there's just a new costume for practically

10:22

every song or at least every set, and

10:25

that sometimes she changes into a new costume

10:27

behind, you know, a giant pile of umbrellas

10:29

that the core of dancers puts

10:31

over her. Just like all those funny, magical

10:34

costume changes were wonderful. So, whoever

10:36

designed all of these glorious, you

10:38

know, princess costumes and elf costumes

10:41

and all the different characters she moves through, kudos

10:43

to them. All right, Steve, you're over there,

10:46

like belching like Aetna.

10:47

You've offered several dyspeptic

10:50

grunts already. What's going on? Oh,

10:53

no, there's no dyspepsy at all. I'm totally,

10:56

totally at peace with myself. I am

10:58

the Gautama right now,

11:00

in fact. But

11:04

probably mispronounce that. So,

11:06

a couple things. One, I love the idea that she dances

11:08

with her face, and I think Dana's right. That's

11:11

an artifact of the Jumbotron. I mean, you

11:13

know, the scale of it is practically impossible

11:16

to describe. I mean, it's sort of like she

11:18

hosts the Super

11:20

Bowl night after night after night

11:22

on this tour. I mean, the sheer amount of

11:24

energy in all senses, like fossil

11:26

fuel extraction down to just her

11:29

stamina as a performer, is

11:32

in front of you the entire time,

11:34

right? You know, as a performer, as a

11:36

dancer, actually, weirdly, kind of, you

11:40

know, as someone sort of held hostage to her

11:42

image for three hours. I like

11:44

the way she moves on the stage. You

11:46

have to, it's almost as

11:49

a dancer, especially,

11:51

she's still a little girl in her room, right?

11:54

So, that connection that she makes with the audience

11:56

in the theater that I saw it at, which was largely full

11:58

on a Sunday afternoon. It's just incredibly

12:01

real. Like, there's nothing to gainsay

12:04

about it, really. I mean, to

12:07

gainsay it or to somehow poo poo is to be

12:09

like a person I do not want to be. Like, that's a

12:11

role I do not want to play. That was an amazing

12:13

thing to be present for. And

12:16

I think as a songwriter, and perhaps

12:18

this just is inevitably patronizing, she just strikes

12:20

me as still between

12:22

her teen and her room waiting for a boy

12:24

to call. I think some of the

12:27

best songs are tremendous pop

12:29

songs. And when you get to what I

12:31

think of her as her best,

12:33

most fertile period, which is, I would say

12:35

like, red in 1989, were both records

12:38

that did have tracks that landed

12:40

with me as pop masterpieces,

12:42

really. And they are just, they're

12:45

fucking bangers, those songs. They

12:47

belong on a stereo in

12:49

a kid's room and

12:54

in an arena. They're arena show bangers.

12:57

They're hooky. She was

12:59

born to sing them. No one else could

13:01

do it. And that part's extraordinary.

13:06

What I will say is that I

13:09

don't like things that play out

13:11

at that scale. And I feel

13:14

kind of flattened, if not borderline negated

13:17

by them. It's

13:19

to someone like me monotonous, but

13:22

I come back to it over and over

13:24

and over again. Absolute

13:26

magic of these really young

13:28

girls especially. It was up through,

13:31

it was all ages. But three,

13:33

four, five year old girls, they

13:35

had to stand up with their moms

13:38

and in the aisles and in the rows, it

13:41

just didn't matter and dance with their moms.

13:43

I mean, again, to gain say

13:45

that is to be a fucking kind of monster.

13:48

That person is the delivery system for

13:50

that. Who the fuck would I

13:53

be to ever say that's anything but kind of

13:55

amazing?

13:56

Yeah, it's interesting about the waiting

13:58

for the boy.

14:00

piece of it, Steve, because

14:03

I actually think

14:04

part of what's so

14:06

interesting and resonant about her work for so

14:09

many women and girls of so many ages

14:11

and fans of all genders is

14:13

actually that it's very rarely actually

14:16

about the boy. Like the songs

14:18

are quite conscious of the

14:20

limitations of that. And

14:23

Taffy Brodesser-Ackner wrote a

14:25

piece about going to the show that is not,

14:27

she did not get

14:30

access to Taylor and it is not the most

14:32

interesting critical essay I've read about Taylor,

14:34

but she does make the point. She tells the story

14:37

of someone who

14:39

is there to see Taylor and gets proposed to and

14:41

sort of the tension of like this doofus

14:44

boyfriend being like perfect on the night

14:46

she's been waiting for, I'll

14:48

make it about me and us. Instead of her

14:50

relationship with Taylor and sort of the

14:54

role that your romantic yearnings and unions

14:57

make in your life versus everything else and

15:00

the piece does kind of go into how many of the songs

15:02

are about female friendship or business

15:04

revenge or you know like her

15:07

whole kind of evolution

15:10

in thinking through her pain

15:13

as a public figure. I mean it's interesting characterologically

15:16

there are a lot of resonances between Taylor and

15:19

David Beckham who we'll talk about in a moment. But

15:22

yeah, I mean I will say I came away

15:24

from

15:24

the show

15:25

just really impressed by her as a songwriter

15:27

and I get it if the songs don't do it for you

15:29

but there's a, you know, I don't

15:32

think I would say this is my favorite Taylor

15:34

Swift song but the high point of the show for me

15:36

both live and in the

15:39

doc

15:42

is 22 from

15:44

Red which is the song where

15:47

she starts to be more outside

15:49

of her experience

15:50

I think. Like the

15:52

song about what it's like to be 22

15:54

that she basically wrote when she was 22 about back

16:00

on being 22, like her ability to be

16:02

outside of her experience

16:03

at the same time that she's living it and articulated

16:05

to all of us, I think it's really astounding.

16:20

The thing that watching her reminded me of was when

16:22

you see Paul McCartney. I think I said this

16:24

when I came back from the show and you were

16:26

joking that you don't think his work either, Steve, but like

16:29

she's just done

16:29

a lot for a person who's 33. It's

16:32

pretty fucking amazing.

16:34

The very last thing I wanted to say about this if we have

16:36

one more minute is just about its

16:38

performance as a movie in theaters. She

16:41

used a somewhat unusual method of contracting

16:43

directly with the AMC theater chain rather than

16:45

going through a movie studio, which Beyonce

16:47

is also going to do with her concert

16:50

release later on this year. That

16:53

was hailed as something that I don't think it's unique

16:55

to Taylor or she's the only person to have done it, but

16:58

it was a smart move for her both in terms of marketing

17:00

her own documentary and also

17:02

in revivifying the movie theater.

17:05

I think like the Barbenheimer weekend

17:07

where everybody was so shocked that people were dressing

17:09

up and going to the movies and making it an event, I

17:11

think this is going to be kind of one of the cinematic

17:14

milestones in terms of popular

17:17

reception of something in 2023. I

17:20

am all for that and I do hope

17:23

that people will go see this in the theater if they have any

17:25

interest in her or her music both because I think they'll

17:27

have a good experience and because I want movie

17:29

theaters to live.

17:31

All right, on that note, Taylor Swift,

17:33

the ears towards in movie theaters now. All

17:35

right, check it out. All right, let's move on.

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18:12

This episode is brought to you by The Big Flop,

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All right, before we go any further, this is typically in

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the show where we discuss business. Dana,

19:24

what do we have?

19:25

Steve, our only business this week is to tell

19:27

listeners about our Slate Plus segment. This week

19:29

at Julia's suggestion, we're talking about a really interesting

19:31

article from The Atlantic with the wonderful title,

19:34

Your Sweaters Are Garbage. It's by

19:36

the fashion writer Amanda Moll. I think we've talked

19:38

about her work before. This one is all about

19:40

the degradation of the quality of sweaters over

19:43

the years. Her piece argues that the sweaters

19:45

available today for purchase are no longer

19:47

as fluffy or as soft or as long-lasting

19:49

and well-constructed as they used to be. So we

19:51

will talk about sweater culture and our own

19:53

sweaters, whether this piece by Amanda Moll

19:56

rings true for us. If you're a Slate Plus member,

19:58

please stay tuned for that segment. at the end of this show.

20:00

And if you're not a Slate Plus member, what should

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you do? You should sign up right now at slate.com

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again, that's slate.com slash culture

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plus. All right, end of the show.

20:32

Okay, David Beckham grew up living

20:34

and breathing football, what we in this country

20:37

parochially call soccer. He

20:39

was a working class lad who for all his

20:41

brilliance on the pitch was otherwise very

20:44

shy, very modest kid, almost

20:46

sort of a socialized, spent his time in his

20:48

backyard with his dad on a soccer ball, or sometimes

20:51

for hours on end, just a soccer ball. At

20:54

a painfully young age, his life and

20:56

career got taken over by Man

20:58

U, Manchester United, one of the iconic

21:01

English football clubs. And

21:03

he went on to become a transcendentally gifted

21:06

player for them. Now a new Netflix

21:08

documentary tells this story with a special

21:10

emphasis on his relationship with Victoria

21:13

Adams, aka Posh Spice.

21:16

That story is just filled with so much

21:19

big canvas sports and celebrity world

21:21

drama. It's sort of a wonderful surprise.

21:24

So watch it, it's a candid and in my opinion, somewhat

21:27

moving portrait of a life filled with

21:29

pathos and heartbreak. At the end

21:31

of the day, also filled with contentment

21:34

and wisdom, it's directed by Fisher Stevens,

21:36

who as we said, is probably known to our audience as

21:38

Hugo on Succession. In the clip,

21:40

you'll hear the voices of Victoria and David Beckham.

21:43

They're talking about the early days of their relationship.

21:46

You will also hear the voice of David's former

21:48

teammate, Gary Neville. Start

21:50

with Victoria.

21:52

My manager kept saying, try

21:54

and keep it under wraps. Don't get photographed

21:57

together. So we would,

21:59

We would meet in car parks and that's not as easy

22:02

as it sounds. The first kiss I

22:04

ever had with Victoria was in the BMW in a car

22:06

park. Classy.

22:10

The truth is, he was on the phone to Victoria

22:13

every second and he would stay

22:15

on the phone until one o'clock in the morning. He

22:18

was in the bathroom with the light on all

22:20

night speaking to her. I'm like,

22:23

what the fuck are you speaking to her about?

22:26

What would you say? I don't

22:28

know. I think, have

22:30

you never done that though? Early

22:33

on in the relationship?

22:36

Julia, let me start with you. I have to confess,

22:39

I knew very little, I mean the barest

22:42

bones of that about this story of course

22:44

know who they are. But

22:47

his career as a footballer and how it related

22:49

to his personal life and his upbringing, this

22:51

was totally terribly incognito for me.

22:54

I found it fascinating. I'm really curious to know how

22:57

it felt for you to watch.

22:58

Is it embarrassing if I come in two weeks in

23:01

a row and say that I love the documentary

23:03

about the major celebrity that the major celebrity

23:05

had some hand and cause him

23:07

to exist? I'm right

23:09

behind you. So good.

23:12

I don't need to be a chump

23:14

but

23:16

I think that this

23:17

is a really excellent documentary

23:20

for a few reasons. One,

23:23

I'm impressed with the

23:26

way that Fisher Stevens, the director puts it all

23:28

together. I would

23:30

say one of my main takeaways is that it came away from

23:33

this wishing I could be friends with Fisher Stevens,

23:35

like just the sensibility that pervades.

23:38

There's sort of a ryness. There's

23:40

a subtle understated eye

23:43

for the joke or the revealing moment

23:46

that he lets kind of hang and

23:48

lets us look at and lets us come to our own conclusions

23:50

about. There's great use of music

23:52

throughout, sort of varied, surprising,

23:55

interesting mix of needle drops and

23:57

other types of music.

24:00

No Spice Girls songs that I've heard

24:02

through three and a half hours. I didn't watch that second

24:04

half of the fourth one. I was super impressed.

24:07

There's also a really interesting technique, whereas

24:09

the film interviews Beckham

24:11

and other soccer greats of his era, it

24:14

uses the, the, the most

24:16

arrow Morris style, they're

24:18

looking straight at the camera, but as they watch

24:20

their younger cells on screen, again,

24:23

without quite saying that that's what it's

24:25

doing, it's delivered in an understated way, but

24:27

you get to watch these

24:29

men

24:31

appreciate or agonize that the performances

24:33

of their younger cells, and it's really moving

24:36

and beautiful in terms of thinking about how athletes

24:39

perceive their own excellence and their own

24:41

failures. And it's just humane.

24:45

It's just really humane. It's humane about,

24:48

um, that comes upbringing.

24:50

It's humane about his tough dad. It's humane

24:53

about his relationship with his, uh, coach

24:56

at Manchester United. And it's humane about his relationship

24:58

with posh with Victoria Beckham,

25:00

who, you know, comes out as sort

25:03

of a complicated, interesting prickly person

25:05

without being villainized or, uh, demonized.

25:10

It has a lot of respect for their marriage

25:13

and for them, both as people. I just loved

25:15

it. I really loved it.

25:17

Yeah. Here, here, I'm totally with you. Dana, what about

25:19

you?

25:20

I liked it a lot more than I thought I was going

25:22

to like it based on something that I, my,

25:25

the most negative thing I will say about it. Well, sound very

25:27

familiar because I said it about the supermodels last

25:29

week. I think it is too long and I don't understand

25:31

why it's divided into the four segments

25:34

that it is. And there's a part of me that distrusts

25:36

that Netflix always does this. So this

25:38

is less about Fisher Stevens, who I agree does

25:40

an artful job framing this story

25:43

and, and getting some really intimate

25:45

interviews with a pretty closed off person, David Beckham

25:47

is not a big confessional guy, but he

25:49

has some pretty revealing moments with Fisher Stevens. And

25:51

that is great. Uh, the use of archival

25:53

footage. I agree that use of nineties music is

25:55

great. I learned a lot about it

25:58

because I knew nothing about the story before.

27:07

because

28:00

he marries that particular person, is

28:02

exactly the moment that sports goes

28:05

from being popular to being

28:08

mega. It goes from being driven

28:10

by, like, for example, that's the exact same era

28:12

that Michael Jordan wins his championships in

28:14

America and takes that sport to a completely

28:17

different level. And star

28:20

players go from stars to superstars in some

28:22

sense. And that it happens in England

28:25

because of Beckham more than any single figure

28:27

at exactly the moment that he has to

28:29

come face to face with how tiny his life

28:31

has been and how protected it's been

28:34

and how limited to the pitch it's been by

28:37

meeting this person that he falls in love with and

28:39

then having that relationship taken up by this

28:42

new global mega marketing machine

28:44

that I thought was very sensitively

28:47

handled because you have their cooperation

28:49

and because they were intent,

28:52

given their own backgrounds and who they are,

28:55

they were intent to live life actually

28:58

at a relatively human scale. I mean, they became

29:01

insanely affluent and famous.

29:03

And yet, I think, Julia, part of what's

29:05

so moving about it is that

29:08

they appear at least from

29:10

the documentary to be really

29:13

quite grounded and thoughtful

29:15

people. This guy seems to want to keep bees

29:18

and, like, tidy up his kitchen after they make

29:20

dinner at night. It's kind

29:22

of weirdly powerful.

29:26

Yeah,

29:27

I will also say that

29:29

I watched it with

29:30

the perfect level of soccer ignorance.

29:34

I watched it, again, with my son

29:36

who knows the

29:38

outcomes of all of these games because he's

29:40

a total child of the 2020s and

29:44

is a soccer nut who runs around

29:46

in the Liverpool jersey, like talking

29:48

to middle-aged men about Liverpool

29:51

games from the 90s and who dreams of going

29:53

to Liverpool. I don't even really

29:55

know how he became a Liverpool fan.

29:57

Anyway, so it's just, it's a great experience.

29:59

If you are like not

30:02

a soccer aficionado, it's so

30:05

full of suspense, too, because you're like ... And

30:08

the doc is canny about not

30:11

signaling too much whether it's

30:14

tipping that this was a stressful time on the field because

30:17

they're about to lose the big game or it's

30:19

a stressful time on the field because they're going to blow the first

30:22

half but then turn it all around in the second. It's

30:25

just, I don't know, strongly recommend

30:27

a certain level of American

30:30

soccer ignorance going in.

30:31

Yeah, actually that is one thing that I will say

30:33

that the documentary does really well for

30:36

a non-soccer fan and a non-sports

30:38

person like me is that it frames

30:40

why individual games are important and I guess

30:43

that's a place where the running time goes

30:45

to the show's advantage. It's

30:48

got so much space to spare

30:50

that we can set up, well, why is this particular

30:52

kick in the World Cup so important or why is this

30:54

qualifying game in the

30:57

whatever local England league because I'm going to have

30:59

the wrong language for it, why that matters

31:02

for the team, for his career, for

31:04

soccer history. It has time to set all those

31:06

things up. So instead of just sort of decontextualizing

31:09

and saying, oh, he's good, here he is doing another

31:12

good kick, we

31:13

sort of see exactly what's at stake in

31:15

that moment. That's

31:17

funny. I mean, I just ...

31:19

I think, Julia, I think maybe what you and I are both

31:21

really responding to in addition to just the suspense

31:23

of it is like the supermodel

31:25

documentary, there's this

31:27

totally

31:29

jarring but exhilarating experience

31:32

of a too young person suddenly going

31:34

mega at a scale that was actually

31:36

unprecedented. So there's not even some

31:39

sense of, oh, no one can really take a supermodel

31:42

aside and say, here, this is how it's done

31:44

because they didn't exist. And there

31:46

had never been a Becca more Michael Jordan before

31:48

because the sheer marketing muscle

31:51

and sophistication of the publicity machine

31:53

really wasn't fully developed until roughly 1990

31:56

and then they take it someplace new in that

31:59

decade. And it's something

32:01

about this sort of midlife retrospective

32:03

where they have extracted a very,

32:06

very, for better and for worse,

32:08

very human existence from this inhuman

32:10

scale that I think is so incredibly moving

32:12

about it.

32:13

It strains my like every

32:16

fiber as a journalist to say,

32:19

hey, actually these docs

32:22

where the subject has a substantial

32:24

say in what it is that

32:27

is released are good,

32:29

like it's anathema,

32:31

right? But I

32:33

think part of what these two projects

32:36

show is that if you are a very savvy

32:39

public person in the world, you

32:42

know that you can't release a doc about

32:44

yourself that is so kind

32:48

of airbrushed and featureless. Like that

32:50

will be a worse PR nightmare

32:52

for you, you know what I mean? To skip

32:54

things entirely. And

32:57

you know, I did feel like Fisher

33:00

Stevens quailed in some sense when

33:02

talking about the affair that Beckham

33:04

allegedly had when he was first with Real

33:06

Madrid and like it's quite clear

33:09

in both of their faces that

33:12

he did have the affair and that it was very difficult,

33:14

I think. But

33:16

he doesn't quite ask it directly. He sort of wants

33:20

the awkwardness and the sort of differentness

33:22

of Beckham's mean in

33:24

that moment say

33:27

what needs to be said is maybe

33:29

too subtle for some, but that was one big critique. People out

33:31

of the doc was that it kind of let them dodge

33:33

that question and I'm curious whether you guys thought it did

33:36

or did not.

33:37

Yeah, I saw that critique that

33:39

someone published that the idea that Fisher Stevens should have pressed

33:41

harder and asked that question. I think

33:44

it did not seem to me like a moment of puffery

33:47

and access journalism and that something was being

33:49

avoided in order to sit down with

33:51

Beckham. It seemed more like a

33:53

kind of coded exchange where Fisher

33:56

Stevens realized that because Beckham

33:58

is a private person and did not want to

34:01

get into the nitty-gritty details, that the most

34:03

he was going to get was that sort of, you know,

34:05

uncomfortably downcast moment where both

34:08

of them acknowledged that it was something difficult.

34:10

And I respected something that Beckham said at the end of

34:12

a sort of stammering response to one of

34:14

Fisher-Stevens indirect questions about

34:16

it, where he said, in the end, it's our

34:18

private life. And I

34:21

can completely respect that. I think it's close

34:23

enough to say, you know, this

34:25

was a terrible time and it was many

34:27

years ago and we got through it. And

34:29

everybody can take away from that what they want.

34:31

Yeah, I agree with that. Okay, it's Beckham,

34:34

it's on Netflix.

34:35

Hearty thumbs up from me and Julia,

34:38

rather wavering one from Dana, but check

34:40

it out. Love to hear what you think about it. Let's move on.

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10th. Tickets on sale now.

35:46

Okay, well, Jason Farago is

35:49

a critic at large and art critic for the

35:51

New York Times. He's written an essay for them

35:53

called, "'Why Culture Has Come to a Standstill.'"

35:57

It's kind of an amazing essay with lots of ins

35:59

and outs. quote a couple bits

36:01

of it to get us going. For 160 years we spoke

36:03

about culture as something

36:05

active, something with velocity, something

36:08

in continuous forward motion. What

36:11

happens to a culture when it loses that philosophy

36:13

even slows to a halt? We

36:15

are now almost a quarter of the way through what

36:18

looks likely to go down in history as the

36:20

least innovative, least transformative,

36:22

least pioneering century for culture since

36:25

the invention of the printing press.

36:27

Julia, I know you hate

36:30

the coinist arguments.

36:33

I'd be very curious to know whether you found

36:35

this one subtle and yet edifying

36:38

or just more of the same.

36:40

What do you think?

36:43

I really wished I could have edited

36:45

this before it was published.

36:48

Is that the worst and most condescending

36:51

answer of all? This essay

36:53

did infuriate me

36:55

but not because it's not smart

36:57

in some ways. It just

36:59

is structurally

37:01

circular and argumentatively

37:05

somewhat devious and I feel

37:07

like there's a better version of

37:10

it that is neither of those things.

37:14

Essentially, structurally, what the essay does is

37:16

say modernity, we

37:18

always believed in progress and discovering

37:20

the new, not

37:21

much interrogation of who the we is there.

37:25

Then it says, and now it slowed down

37:27

and there's not that much that's interesting anymore.

37:30

Then it says, of course you can always

37:32

say what about X, what about Y and

37:35

I have my own things I like but

37:38

nothing good has happened.

37:39

That's the part that's devious

37:41

as an argument. If you're saying what

37:43

about X and what about Y is an ineffective

37:46

rhetorical rebuttal to my argument that nothing

37:48

interesting has happened in culture, you knock

37:51

the knees out under your

37:54

potential interlocutor in

37:56

an unfair manner, I think. extremely

38:00

hand wavy about the idea that perhaps one

38:02

of the innovations of this century is that we

38:05

are letting other people tell their stories.

38:07

It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's just becoming

38:09

a tag on Netflix. How

38:12

reductive, how stupid, that doesn't count. Which,

38:14

what? Again, who is the

38:17

we that believes in modernity? And

38:19

then it's like, you know what, actually, modernity is itself

38:21

just a modern construct. And for many, many

38:23

years, people have just been remixing the past, we're

38:26

not necessarily trying to do anything new. So he

38:29

comes around at the end to like, the

38:31

construct I set up at the beginning is kind of a, you

38:33

know, never mind, art could be beautiful,

38:36

doesn't have to have forward

38:37

motion. So he arrives at the place

38:39

where he no longer

38:41

fears the thing he articulated at the beginning, which is

38:43

kind of a classic strong man structure. Yeah, I

38:46

didn't like it. You totally misread it,

38:49

though. He doesn't say nothing interesting is happening.

38:51

In fact, he makes a very careful argument where

38:53

he says this, he sets

38:55

up right from the beginning, as I read it,

38:57

that this was always a construct of culture,

39:00

highly specific to this turning point which

39:02

he locates with Manet, which is pretty

39:04

standard way of telling art history.

39:07

And it's about how a narrative

39:09

about culture in general was shaped

39:12

and how works were produced within that

39:14

overarching narrative, giving them

39:16

this kind of a larger storyline that

39:20

appears to have sort of petered out in the, in

39:22

the starting in the 1970s. It's a totally historically

39:26

situated argument. It's non normative in the

39:28

extreme. He said, paints do that. He strikes

39:30

me as utterly sincere that

39:33

diversity that that story featured overwhelmingly

39:36

white European men or Euro

39:40

adjacent men at the center

39:42

of it, that it's a great thing that diversified.

39:45

And then he just reiterates, really

39:47

doubles down on what I think the basic thing

39:49

is. Because the essay is a question.

39:51

The question is what has

39:53

been lost? Is anything lost? I don't know

39:55

that he necessarily thinks it is lost.

39:58

And at the end, he's like, it's all Fine.

40:01

It's a totally different paradigm for the creation of

40:03

culture, and we'll all live happily within

40:05

it. I thought it was very thoughtful and reflective

40:07

Dana. I had to interject.

40:10

I'm glad you came to its defense,

40:12

Steve, because first of

40:14

all, let me say that I think Jason Ferrago was a great

40:16

addition to the time. I think he's a fairly recent

40:18

addition. He's a critic who I'm always interested to

40:20

read. When we almost talked about but

40:22

did not talk about that Hannah Gatsby show at the

40:25

Brooklyn Museum, the Picasso show that she curated

40:27

that was supposed to be so terrible, one

40:29

of the reasons that I didn't want to talk about it is

40:31

Jason Ferrago had already destroyed it so

40:34

definitively in the New York Times that

40:36

there was nothing more to say, and I do recommend

40:38

people read that. It's just a great example of

40:40

a pan, whether or not you even care about the

40:42

subject matter. This

40:45

essay struck me as it's almost like

40:47

maybe he should write a book. I

40:49

think like Julia, I kind of approached it

40:51

a bit as an editor, although I have never been

40:53

a professional editor. A part of me wanted

40:55

to say, Jason, you've got too

40:58

much going on here. This is like a

41:00

thesis's worth of ideas crammed

41:03

into a few thousand words, and

41:05

you need to winnow down what you're actually

41:07

saying here, because among other things, he's

41:10

talking about every art form at once.

41:12

He starts off making this point about Manet

41:14

and Degas and this

41:16

painting exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum right

41:19

now, specifically, as you said, Stephen,

41:21

the modernity of Manet's painting. And then

41:23

he ends saying, and in conclusion,

41:25

Amy Winehouse is the one innovative

41:28

artist. I mean, I'm being hyperbolic.

41:31

He does not say she's the one innovative

41:33

artist, but he ends on an Amy Winehouse quote

41:35

and I'm talking about Back in Black, her album from 2006, as

41:39

this kind of one of the exceptions

41:41

to this rule that he's making that there isn't anything

41:43

new. And for one thing, it just sort

41:45

of seemed like painting

41:47

and pop music are two very different places

41:50

to begin and end your spectrum. But secondly,

41:53

who was Amy Winehouse, if not a recombiner

41:55

of everything, right? I mean, she's this sort of neo-soul,

41:58

beehive hairdo, which I know he talks about. I

42:00

guess I just don't understand how we ended up on Amy,

42:03

much as I love Amy Winehouse and that album.

42:06

There was a lot of cramming and

42:08

eliding going on to jam

42:11

all of these art forms into this essay.

42:14

But wait a second again, that's like, did you guys

42:16

read this? He says that Winehouse prefigured

42:19

that album,

42:20

prefigured a culture of the eternal present,

42:22

a digitally informed sense of place and system,

42:24

a temporality. She's the perfect

42:26

example and harbinger of the

42:29

trend, not the

42:31

one bucking it. I thought the essay was- Well

42:34

then maybe

42:34

that's the strawman ending that Julia was talking

42:36

about. I guess to me there was just a lack of clarity there because

42:39

it sort of seemed like you yourself are saying

42:42

that she's this recombiner as are

42:44

rappers and anybody who's sampling

42:47

things from culture to bring together, I mean, what sort

42:49

of a postmodern, we could broadly say like

42:52

not modernist, but postmodernist kind

42:54

of aesthetic. So she

42:56

embodies that, but yet she

42:58

is what's carrying art forward into the 21st century.

43:01

So does she represent then, if

43:03

it's not a declinist argument, as you say, then

43:05

she represents our affirming the

43:08

facts and satisfaction and contentment with

43:10

the idea that the future of art is just to

43:12

recombine. Is that right? What he's saying at the

43:15

end?

43:15

Yeah, I think so. I think that

43:17

it may have been tied to like

43:19

the rise of a fossil fuel economy. I mean,

43:22

he all but says this. He says that there was

43:24

an explosion of modernity itself

43:26

as an entirely new way of existing

43:28

in relation to technology

43:31

and nature. Thanks to what we were just, we

43:34

were able to create a total artificial

43:36

life world that basically replaced

43:39

nature and was endlessly innovative

43:41

because it was technologically innovative

43:43

so that the world you lived in in five or 10 years

43:46

was substantially different from the one you'd lived

43:48

in the previous five or 10 years. And art

43:50

was gonna have to account for this unbelievably,

43:53

like just unrelenting forward

43:56

temporal thrust by

43:58

itself becoming sort of avant-garde,

44:01

essentially, effectively, by definition. And

44:04

that was one moment. And now we live

44:06

so totally within this life world, right?

44:08

It has so enveloped us that

44:11

it doesn't have quite the same progressive

44:15

thrust. And to the extent that it does, it's

44:18

dark, right? It's black mirror in some

44:20

sense, right? We're at home

44:22

in this location in a way that doesn't require

44:25

a kind of gigantic compensatory

44:27

narrative of some kind from which to

44:29

derive meaning. Nonetheless, you're

44:31

highly likely to have been educated in that. You

44:35

couldn't be an art critic without saying,

44:37

there came Manet. Then there were the impressionists,

44:40

the post-impressionists, the Fovists, the Cubists,

44:43

pop, minimalism, right?

44:45

It was just that narrative,

44:47

if you don't know it, you can't possibly

44:49

go to an art museum and write intelligently

44:52

about what you see, even if you understand

44:54

that it was racist and

44:58

misogynistic in some essential

45:00

way. So to

45:03

me, Julia, it just

45:05

doesn't seem to me to

45:08

valorize this lost thing to

45:11

say it was once this way. It's disorienting

45:13

for some of us to have lost it.

45:15

I guess I just, that's

45:18

why I wish that it could have gone

45:21

through a few more rounds. Because I'm much more

45:23

interested in it as a personal loss.

45:26

And I think there's a, I mean, there's an

45:28

admirable ambition here of

45:30

setting yourself up as a critic at large, of being

45:32

someone who is like, I have surveyed the 21st

45:35

century from plays

45:37

to

45:39

Ukrainian electronic

45:40

music, to et cetera.

45:42

And I have found three works that are worthy of your

45:45

consideration. And

45:47

don't bring me your no buts. He's

45:51

trying to write this on a plane

45:53

of culture as a universal

45:55

and a constant.

45:56

He's trying to have it both ways. He's

45:58

trying to write it in the morning.

45:59

mode in which the whole

46:02

modern idea of art as progress,

46:05

he's trying to write from both within and without

46:07

that construct. So he's trying to

46:10

write in this glacial plane of like, this

46:12

is what culture is. And

46:15

then where he lands, it's like, oh, maybe the whole frame

46:17

was wrong. But for many of us, the whole

46:19

frame, not even was wrong, not even was

46:21

wrong. The whole frame was itself

46:23

a frame. It wasn't an absolute. It wasn't

46:26

the abstract. It wasn't universal. And

46:28

in fact, there have been many other ways to think about art for centuries.

46:31

And here we are at the dawn of a new century playing

46:33

with culture in different ways because of new technologies.

46:36

And it's going to mix up the narrative. That's

46:39

all true. And I agree, it's sincere. And I do

46:41

think he's a great critic. And I thank

46:43

God there's a critic of the New York Times who's

46:47

conversant in Ukrainian

46:49

pop and the whole of 21st century theater.

46:53

But

46:54

I think because he's writing it

46:56

on this Olympian plane, rather

46:58

than like one man's personal struggle with the

47:00

framework I was taught and how it doesn't seem to

47:02

apply to the moment and what that's making me think

47:05

and realize about the history of art, like he goes

47:07

back to Chinese painting, which again, is a

47:09

classic like, ah, what if you don't just think

47:11

the West invented everything? Frame

47:15

shift, right?

47:16

But it's also not

47:18

like, narratively a surprising move. And the piece really

47:21

is dismissive about some of what

47:23

for me have been the most powerful cultural

47:25

experiences of the 21st century, like, you

47:28

know, our museum studios and publishing houses can

47:30

bring nothing new to market except the very people

47:32

they want systematically excluded. If

47:34

resisting such market essentialism was once

47:37

a primordial task of the artist, today,

47:41

identities keep being diminished brutally into

47:43

a series of searchable tags. That's

47:45

not wrong exactly. But it's very

47:48

dismissive of, for example, what Dana

47:50

and I felt in that movie

47:52

theater in Australia, where we saw the Wonder

47:55

Woman movie. Like yeah, that's commercial. And

47:57

yeah, the Wonder Woman movie is not Amy

47:59

Winehouse. or it probably

48:01

won't be a museum in a thousand years.

48:04

But

48:05

that was really different. It felt really different.

48:07

It

48:08

felt like a change. It felt like a

48:10

step

48:10

forward. And I

48:12

think because the essay

48:14

is operating within and without the

48:17

kind of ideas of modernism at the same time, it's

48:19

like weaker than it would be if it was a more

48:21

direct personal

48:25

through line.

48:26

Now, I agree with all that.

48:29

Yeah, I think I'm more on Julia's page probably

48:31

than Steve's. But I don't feel dismissive of

48:33

this essay. I feel like it wasn't quite ready for

48:36

prime time. But like Julia, I'm glad somebody

48:38

is out there thinking big thoughts and trying

48:40

to publish them in the Times. I will say

48:42

to zoom in on something micro and his many

48:45

macro points that he makes, a couple

48:47

of things he says about movies illustrate that he doesn't

48:49

really have a tremendous knowledge

48:52

of even just recent cinema. And

48:54

the two that I wanted to point out is that he talks

48:57

about new techniques, new cinematic techniques introduced

49:00

in the 21st century. And two of the examples

49:02

he cites are not at all the

49:04

first time that that thing was done. Like he talks about

49:07

Ang Lee's movie, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime

49:09

Walk as the first film shot

49:11

at 120 frames per second. The Hobbit

49:13

films way preceded it by, I think, five

49:15

years or so and all use that. And

49:18

then he talks about making a film on your iPhone,

49:20

which Steven Soderbergh, I guess, did in 2018. But

49:23

Sean Baker famously had done that years

49:25

before with Tangerine. So in both of those cases,

49:27

there's a moment of me thinking, but couldn't

49:29

you just, if you're going

49:32

to make arguments about the first time this has

49:34

been done in the 21st century, just get

49:36

on Wikipedia and make sure it's really the first time.

49:38

Because even in the last 10 years, there

49:41

was another example of that. Well, and

49:43

if you're going to pronounce

49:43

them this way, you've got to come correct.

49:46

Yeah. All right. Well, it's Why Culture

49:48

has come to a standstill by Jason Ferrago.

49:51

It's in the October 10th Times

49:53

Magazine. Check it out. I'd

49:55

love to hear from you guys on this. Let's

49:58

move on.

50:01

Whether it's your passion for grizzly

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love just keep going. Tap

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the banner to learn more.

50:30

All right, now is the moment in our podcast when we endorse

50:32

Dane. What do you have?

50:35

I think I'm going to endorse something that I saw at the New York

50:37

Film Festival. I've been going

50:39

to tons of movies for that. It's in its last

50:41

week now, and it's kind of the time of year where

50:44

most of the movies at the New York Film Festival have already been at

50:46

other festivals. Sometimes they've won awards

50:48

at other festivals. The New York Film Festival is really

50:50

more of a showcase, like here are some of the big movies

50:53

that are about to come out this fall. I've

50:55

been glorying in those. I've seen

50:57

probably three or four masterpieces

50:59

in the past two weeks. It's crazy. So

51:02

I'm going to endorse just the only one that I've

51:04

seen that has actually opened yet. I think this is

51:06

only out in limited release, but it should be in

51:08

more cities soon and then come to streaming eventually.

51:11

I hope that we'll talk about it on the show at some point. It's

51:13

called Anatomy of a Fall, and it's

51:15

a French thriller, I guess you'd

51:17

call it, sort of a murder mystery, but

51:19

also a psychological study of a marriage.

51:23

Not to spoil anything, the trailer already shows you this,

51:25

but it's about a family

51:27

living in the French Alps in a sort

51:29

of ski chalet type building. The

51:32

father of the family falls or jumps

51:34

or is pushed out of a window and dies.

51:37

The rest of the movie is about the forensic

51:39

exploration of what happened, the sort of psychological

51:42

repercussions of what happened on his

51:44

wife and child. Eventually,

51:46

it becomes this really tense courtroom

51:48

drama where new information is revealed

51:51

at the last minute. It really keeps you on the

51:53

edge of your seat. It's pretty extraordinary. It's

51:55

a long movie, as every movie seems to be

51:57

these days, but I

51:59

thought it was...

53:53

kind

54:00

of sort of a reaction to

54:03

all of the previous segments in a way that

54:05

that's kind of inadvertent. I mean it was among

54:08

the most interesting things if not the most interesting

54:10

thing I read this week. It's an essay

54:12

by the art critic Jed

54:15

Pearl in the New York

54:17

Review of Books which is celebrating its 60th

54:19

anniversary and they got

54:21

the A team together for this

54:23

anniversary issue and the A team brought

54:26

their A game but the Pearl essay

54:28

I thought was was a really interesting tour

54:30

de force. I mean he's you know he's fairly senior

54:32

now as a art critic eminence and

54:37

it's an extended and not

54:40

at all slapdash comparison

54:42

between the paradigm of the artist as

54:44

Picasso really came to embody it for the

54:47

first part really half of the 20th

54:49

century and beyond and how eventually

54:51

Warhol came to

54:53

embody it since and inadvertently

54:56

I think he doesn't go into it that much

54:58

but it is about the paradigm shift that we're

55:00

talking about in relation to the Ferrago

55:03

essay and

55:05

also somewhat about it weirdly

55:07

relates in some weird way to the Taylor Swift

55:10

movie which just what and

55:12

the Beckham documentary what is there aside

55:14

from publicity that the artist

55:16

when they withdraw from the

55:19

public and the commercial life of a society

55:22

in order to make something self-consciously new what

55:25

is what are they doing and what

55:28

why why is it that Warhol was importantly

55:30

not doing that and what do you get

55:32

out of comparing the two and it's it's I

55:35

think the best broadside ever leveled at Warhol

55:38

and a defense of an older notion of an artist

55:40

and again one makes these arguments advisedly

55:43

in this day and age but the

55:45

but to treat it as though it's no loss

55:48

whatsoever I think I

55:50

think pushing back the time has come to push

55:52

back on that right that that that the

55:55

defensive reaction has gone too far the

55:57

other way so I just think if nothing

56:00

It's a challenge to the idea that nothing is lost

56:02

and that such a figure was only as Gadsby

56:05

imagines him a kind of you know

56:07

totemic publicity driven libido

56:10

driven monster right patriarchal

56:13

monster and It's

56:16

highly recommended. It's called the cock Picasso's

56:18

transformations by Jed pearl in

56:20

the November 2nd issue of The

56:23

New York Review

56:24

check it out

56:28

Julia thank you so much. Thank

56:30

you. Thanks Dana. Thank

56:32

you You'll find links to some of the things

56:34

we talked about today at our show page slate

56:37

comm slash culture fest You

56:39

can email us at culture fest at slate comm

56:42

our introductory music is by the composer Nicholas

56:44

Patel Our production assistant is Kat

56:46

Hong our producer is Cameron Drew's

56:49

for Dana Stevens and Julia Turner. I'm Stephen

56:51

McCaff Thank you so much for joining us. We will

56:53

see you soon

56:54

You You

56:59

You

57:23

Hey everybody, it's Tim Heidecker, you know me Tim

57:25

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