Nostalgia Trap

Kiara Barrow and Rebecca Panovka are the creators and editors of The Drift, a new magazine on culture and politics that promises to “introduce new work and new ideas by young writers who haven’t yet been absorbed into the media hivemind and don’t feel hemmed in by the boundaries of the existing discourse.” Barrow and Panovka join David and Danny for a wide-ranging conversation on the state of young left media in the post-Bernie era.

Daniel Traber is a professor of English at Texas A & M University at Galveston, a punk at heart, and an active member of the cult of Repo Man (dir. Alex Cox, 1984).  In this conversation, we get into why Repo Man, a movie literally about Repo Men in 1980s Los Angeles (oh, and aliens) is such an important lens on punk, postmodernism, and the twisted knot of counterculture, capitalism, and reaction that defined the Reagan era. Along the way we trade key scenes, lines, and characters, as we take apart a film that still seems, more than three decades later, far ahead of its time.   

Derf Backderf is a writer and artist whose graphic novels explore everything from the lives of sanitation workers (Trashed) to Derf’s actual high school relationship with future serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer (My Friend Dahmer). His latest book, Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio, tells the story of the Kent State shooting in personal, often wrenching detail. In this conversation, Derf explains the challenges of rendering the event visually, the research behind some of the book’s incredible revelations, the psychological and ethical struggle of writing about Jeffrey Dahmer, and the wider project of “history as graphic novel.” 

What happens when organized groups of working class Jewish communists pool their resources to create cooperative housing in New York City? Avi Garelick and Andrew Schustek have some ideas for us. Their detailed history, “The Rise and Fall of the Coops,” in the latest issue of Jewish Currents, examines the incredible story of the United Workers Cooperatives (or “Coops”), which were part of a wave of radical housing experiments built in the Bronx in the 1920s and 1930s. As Garelick and Schustek share in this conversation, the history of the Coops has vital lessons about the possibilities and limits of mutual aid when capital still controls the flow of power and resources. 

Well, there was an election. And there was a result of that election. But what does it MEAN? Trap oracle Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us this week for a conversation about the multiple stories being born before our eyes, as neoliberalism’s representative politics come roaring back to life with Biden’s electoral victory, the left wing of the Democratic Party plays defense against its centrist attackers and, all the while, Trump sits in the White House denying that he lost and promising to fight the alleged conspiracy against him. What are the possibilities currently on the table? How wild are the next ten weeks going to get? It’s time for some game theory. For full episode, go to patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

The Amazon series The Boys, based on the comic book series of the same name, is a hyper-violent and deeply cynical take on superhero culture and, ultimately, neoliberal capitalism. Danny Bessner joins us for a discussion of the show’s truly unhinged characters and plotlines, as we examine both the striking elements of The Boys’ dark vision of 21st century America (spoiler: it’s Nazis all the way down) and the limits of slickly-produced critiques of capitalism’s evils made by the very capitalist institutions responsible for them. Subscribe to listen to the whole episode: patreon.com/nostalgiatrap.

Writer Rax King’s deservedly celebrated recent piece, “Love, Peace, and Taco Grease: How I Left My Abusive Husband and Found Guy Fieri,” is both an incredible feat of writing and a compelling take on the unlikely charm and cultural power of the yellow-haired star of the Food Network’s flagship program, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (or, the “Triple D”). She joins David and Danny for a discussion of millennial food culture, the aesthetic evolution of food TV, the connections between cheeseburgers and climate change, the ethics of eating at restaurants during COVID, and of course, the complicated cultural legacy of Guy Fieri’s undeniably addictive tour of American foodlust. Visit patreon.com/nostalgiatrap for full episode.

Trevor Beaulieu of the Champagne Sharks podcast joins us on our journey through 90s Los Angeles, as we explore John Carpenter’s batshit 1996 action film Escape from L.A. Dismissed by critics and ignored by audiences, the film now seems like a strange kind of masterpiece, and a vibrant window on the confused cultural politics of 1990s Hollywood. Subscribe at patreon.com/nostalgiatrap to listen to full episode.

On our first live podcast episode, Danny Bessner, Courtney Rawlings, and Bill Black join us for a detailed look at the 1985 pop culture nostalgia monster Back to the Future (dir. Robert Zemeckis). We take on the film’s weird political economy, sexual psychology, and engagement with 20th century American history, discovering a disturbing, often racist, conservative vision at the heart of Zemeckis’ insanely popular filmography. And of course, we find out if Back to the Future really did predict 9/11.

Oliver Stone’s 1995 film Nixon, starring Anthony Hopkins as the haunted, duplicitous 37th U.S. president, marked both a turning point in the filmmaker’s career and a significant shift in public opinion about Richard Nixon. Historian and writer Michael Koncewicz, author of They Said No to Nixon: Republicans Who Stood Up to the President’s Abuses of Power , joins us for a detailed discussion of the film’s complex engagement with the actual history of the Nixon administration. As we consider Nixon alongside Stone’s numerous other historical films (many of which ruminate on the 1960s), we explore a filmography marked by a sometimes exhilarating, often frustrating mix of wild aesthetic experimentation, paranoid conspiracy mongering, and conventional liberal sentimentalism.