Nostalgia Trap

A deceptively straightforward romantic drama set in the early 1960s, Dirty Dancing (1987) is a unique entry in the pantheon of 1980s blockbusters. Claudia Moreno Parsons joins us to explain what makes this film such a potent nostalgia trap, from its epic rock and roll soundtrack to the infectious chemistry of its two main stars, Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey. But as we explore in this conversation, Dirty Dancing invests its coming of age story with complex critiques of class, gender, and racialized bodies at a specific moment in American history.  

Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us to navigate the politics of desire as we unpack the career of Brad Pitt, an enigmatic American mega-celebrity whose on-screen presence and media persona carry a particular resonance in the story of American capitalism. This conversation features take after take on Pitt movies, from 90s bad boy stuff like Fight Club and Seven to later works like Moneyball, Fury, War Machine, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. We examine Pitt’s place in the pantheon of Western heroes, exploring how his characters’ “savage” violence reflects ancient ideas about American masculinity, race, and power. To hear full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Jordan Thomas is a graduate researcher in anthropology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, whose work focuses on the cultural and historical forces that shape fire. He also works as a firefighter, spending increasingly long fire seasons laboring in the mountains alongside thousands of others, collectively battling some of the largest wildfires in human history. His recent piece in The Drift details the astonishing effort to save California from the ruinous results of centuries of environmental mismanagement. In this conversation, Thomas tells us why these fires have grown so large (hint: it’s climate change), tells us about his research into the history of indigenous fire practices erased by imperialism, and provides perspective on the fierce ground battles waged by firefighters on the front lines of climate catastrophe.  

Paul Thomas Anderson’s second feature, Boogie Nights, is a nostalgia trap in every imaginable way, combining an obsessively detailed vision of 1970s porn production with a hip, postmodern aesthetic that defined 90s indie cinema. Matt Christman of Chapo Trap House is a fellow Boogie Nights appreciator, and joins us for a conversation about the cultural context that produced auteurs like PTA and Tarantino, the endless (and endlessly awful) imitators that followed, and the ways in which Boogie Nights represents, in both form and content, ideas of authorship and art that are rapidly transforming. To hear the full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

This week on the livestream, Justin Rogers-Cooper dropped by to discuss Biden's shocking pick for Secretary of the Interior, and why green capitalism is the battlefield (literally) of the future. Plus, David continues sketching out his pop cultural biography, reflecting on how a year of movie obsession in 1998 forced some painful self-reflection, but also offered an unexpected path out of a vapid suburban spirituality. To listen go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap. 

In a world of infinite #content, why do we find ourselves watching the same movies and TV shows again and again? KJ Shepherd joins us for a conversation about the particular qualities that draw us to compulsively re-watch certain pieces of media, especially from when we were young. Our conversation focuses on the 1997 film Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, a “dumb” comedy that functions as a powerful nostalgia trap for KJ and a reflection of a very specific type of 90s Hollywood production. We talk about Romy and Michele’s unique charm, its undeniable queerness, the post-Romy career paths of Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow, and the singular social, cultural, and economic circumstances from which the “dumb 90s comedy” emerged. To listen to full episode go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977) remains an unrivaled enigma in the history of cinema, a cult film that launched the career of one of Hollywood’s most enduring outsiders. The process of making the film, detailed in Lynch’s 2018 memoir Room to Dream (co-written with Kristine McKenna), reflects the complicated intersection of individual vision and economic reality that would define Lynch’s path as a filmmaker. But do these cultural and economic conditions even exist anymore? Musician, writer, and fellow Lynch-head Tyler Scruggs joins us to talk about Eraserhead’s unique production and cultural legacy, in a conversation that explores authorship, adaptation, consciousness, and what it means to be an artist in the digital era.   

We kicked off this week's livestream with a visit from Justin Rogers-Cooper, who reminds us that liberals (and the left too!) often lack a critique of the Fed, and how that gap in understanding leads to weird pronouncements like "capitalism loves COVID" when the truth is far more sinister. And I continue down the 90s memory hole with a discussion of Neil LaBute's 1997 film In the Company of Men and the different ways it rearranged my views on masculinity, work, and the banal sadism of capitalist culture. To listen to the full episode, go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Claudia Moreno Parsons joins us for an exploration of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders (1983).Based on S.E. Hinton’s 1967 novel about working class teen “greasers” in 1960s Tulsa, Oklahoma, The Outsiders is a searing take on the rigidity of class in America that resists the easy answers of other “young adult” books and movies of the era. In this conversation, we talk about the elements that make this film unique, from its melodramatic tone and affecting performances to the wider cultural and political questions with which it grapples. Listen to the full episode at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Michael Brenes is  Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy and Lecturer in History at the Yale Jackson Institute for Global Affairs. His new book, For Might and Right: Cold War Defense Spending and the Remaking of American Democracy, asks important questions about the disturbing connections between militarism, austerity, and democracy that mark the post-Cold War era, and how those trends both continue and accelerate the ideological and practical structures of American anti-communism. In this conversation, Brenes shares some of the book’s more startling revelations and reflects on how his historical and political imagination has evolved in the Trump era.