Nostalgia Trap

Our series on the rapidly evolving politics of COVID-19 continues this week, with Justin Rogers-Cooper warning that the logic of finance capital may force a premature “re-opening” on the American public in the summer of 2020. In this conversation we talk about recent armed anti-lockdown protests, the movie Parasite as a window into the cultural zeitgeist around class inequality, and the potential for social violence as America plunges into an unprecedented depression.    

Arash Azizi is a writer and scholar currently completing a Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies at NYU; his work focuses on the left in Iran and in the wider Islamic world. In this conversation, making frequent reference to cinema and pop culture, he discusses the global dimensions of anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements, tracing a narrative from the Cold War to the 21st century.

Drew Morton is an Assistant Professor of Mass Communication at Texas A&M University-Texarkana. He is the co-editor and co-founder of [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies, the first peer-reviewed academic journal focused on the visual essay, drawn from a wide range of scholars (including Drew himself). In this conversation he describes his education in film, both as a casual viewer and fan and later as a graduate student in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA, as we explore how the central questions, ideas, and methodologies of the discipline are evolving in a hyper-accelerated media landscape. 

Yasmin Nair returns to the Trap for a deep dive into the film Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), a conversation that helps us frame ideas about prison abolition, animal rights, environmentalism, pandemics, and the tactical elements of a grassroots revolution. 

As we continue our series on the politics of COVID-19, Justin Rogers-Cooper takes aim at the absurd ideology of “sacrifice,” as we explore how American sentimental mythology allows us to justify capitalism’s indifference to deaths of its "essential" workers.

Mistress Snow, Ph.D. is an academic in the humanities who was abruptly rejected by her mentor after coming out to her as a working dominatrix, an experience she documents in a recent Chronicle piece. In this conversation, she explains how her story connects with larger issues of class in academia, from the collapse of the job market and the humiliations of the adjunct hustle to the student loan nightmare and endless financial precarity. In the context of an accelerating economic and biological meltdown, we try to salvage what we love about academic work and the university, while looking ahead to a rapidly shifting future. 

Yasmin Nair is a writer and activist who always says what’s on her mind, and the results are consistently some of the most refreshing and challenging takes on modern American politics and culture. In this conversation, we talk about her most recent work, her outlook on the 2020 Democratic primary, the carceral politics of #MeToo, and why the U.S. left is often so hopelessly lost on issues of sex, race, and class.

Evan Purchell is a film historian and archivist whose latest film project, Ask Any Buddy, presents excerpted bits from 126 different gay male “adult” films from the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. The effect is an uncanny journey into a lost world of urban gay culture, depicting a kind of imagninative fantasy of gay life before the AIDS crisis. In this conversation, Evan tells us about the film’s origins as a popular Instagram account, and details some of the stars (both in front of and behind the camera) of this extraordinary moment in the history of cinema, culture, and sexuality. 

With a nation in quarantine, Justin Rogers-Cooper joins us for a deep dive into the political opportunities presented by the COVID-19 moment, as we track the rapid evolution of capitalism in crisis. Now that the energy of apocalypse has been released into the discourse, where does it go? What new futures can we imagine as the old world shapeshifts before our eyes?

Justin Rogers-Cooper returns to continue our series on the extraordinary historical moment created by the COVID-19 crisis. In this conversation we take on the rapidly evolving politics of the virus, reflecting on the public outrage at massive corporate bailouts while working people are saddled with unimaginable economic ruin. Can the left seize that energy to win electoral and ideological victories? We also speculate on the direction of U.S. government policy, social stability, and American popular culture as the crisis develops.