Wallace Stevens's "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is a widely misunderstood poem. Poet and filmmaker Alex Sheremet is joined by poet and critic Dan Schneider to tackle not only the bad analysis of Wallace Stevens's poetry, but also that of Robert Frost in "The Road Not Taken" -- another work of art that is both far more simple, and far more complex, than it's given credit for.

You can also watch this discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cwVEbW1K9Xw

Read Alex Sheremet's in-depth analysis of Wallace Stevens's "The Emperor of Ice-Cream": https://www.automachination.com/analysis-wallace-stevens-emperor-of-ice-cream

Read Dan Schneider's classic essay on Wallace Stevens and William Shakespeare: http://www.cosmoetica.com/S3-DES3.htm

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Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 -- through the eyes of Wallace Stevens

1:44 -- Dana Gioia's awful reading and interpretation of "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"

3:35 -- Wallace Stevens and playful poetry; the "roller of big cigars" is not the undertaker; Wallace Stevens's relationship to New York City; sights on the Coney Island boardwalk

10:32 -- the BEST reading of "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"; why do critics miss sexual innuendo; does the first stanza have ANY intimation of death; debunking the "Caribbean funeral" myth; Wallace Stevens celebrates life and sexuality

16:04 -- explaining the second stanza; "deal" vs DEAL; sexuality in "The Emperor of Ice-Cream"

24:00 -- Wallace Stevens was THINKING of death, even if he wasn't WRITING about it; every sexual image explained; why bad critics bring Shakespeare's "Hamlet" into this poem

29:24 -- images of feminine seduction; "Yellow Afternoon" as a dark, death poem; why "The Emperor of Ice-Cream" is great

36:36 -- Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken"; debunking the most common reading

39:12 -- self-justification; why Robert Frost's mirage is so appealing; poetry and memory; Wallace Stevens vs. Robert Frost; why art is failing; Dana Gioia is an ignoramus!

52:00 -- Bruce Ario vs. Robert Frost

57:00 -- preview: Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives"; "Annie Hall" vs. Woody's greater works

Tags: #WallaceStevens #RobertFrost #PoetryAnalysis

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Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" deserves a second look not only for its frightening depiction of an otherwise "normal" killer, but also for how it masks an equally frightening comedy with dark humor. For example, Dolores (Anjelica Huston) is both a murder victim as well as a villain. Cliff Stern (Woody Allen) has noble aspirations but little talent. And Mia Farrow's character is gentle and kind, yet also a social climber who is willing to look past serious faults to grow her career.

In ArtiFact #73, the world's leading Woody Allen critic, Alex Sheremet, is joined by Belgian-Kazakh critic Ruslan Gallopyn and Pakistan's Waqas Jani to analyzes the film's characters and themes. Is the blind rabbi, Ben (Sam Waterston), as blind as he seems? Is Judah Rosenthal even worse than his gangster brother? And what can be said about the relationship between comedy and drama not only in "Crimes and Misdemeanors," but Woody Allen's filmography as a whole?

You can watch this discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/xybyMEzWLv4

Read Alex Sheremet's essay on "Crimes and Misdemeanors": https://www.automachination.com/art-review-woody-allen-crimes-and-misdemeanors/

Become a patron and get the full show ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/c/automachination

Bonus show topics: Louis Levy seems like a trite philosopher without much to offer; the symbolism of Ben dancing with his daughter; on Ben's blindness; Ben vs. Flynn ("Interiors"); does "Crimes and Misdemeanors" suffer from a major cliche?; the contradictions of Dolores (Anjelica Huston); is Dolores a projection of the young women Woody Allen dated; Judah vs. other cinematic killers; the comedy side seems just as frightening as the film's drama; self-knowledge in relationships; Alex's nightmare-girlfriend; Waqas reveals EVERYTHING; Indians vs. West Indians; teaching in Pakistan, Belgium, and the United States

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 -- Martin Landau pretends he isn't a murderer

0:45 -- why the film's final speech is so frightening; Judah's false nervous breakdown

3:38 -- Ruslan Gallopyn on the WEAK ending of Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment"; is perpetual guilt realistic; Judah as psychopath; he is compromised even before committing murder

8:15 -- social murder vs. war; killing by the push of a button or a signature

10:00 -- the world's top expert on Woody Allen explains why the director is universally loved

11:38 -- Waqas on why a man from rural Pakistan loves Woody Allen films; Woody Allen as Hollywood anti-Hollywood

15:04 -- how young men fall into the Woody Trap; Woody Allen & Europe; Alex credits Woody Allen for clarity on human relationships; comedy vs. drama in Crimes and Misdemeanors; the film packs so much in the first five minutes

21:37 -- are the eyes of God really upon us; an objective observer exists even without God; Ruslan: Judah's "eyes of God" is nothing more than his social status; ironically, Judah gets accountability through art; how image and sound cross-connect scenes

28:49 -- Clifford is a coward; Lester (Alan Alda) and Clifford are actually quite similar; Clifford as a do-nothing creep; Woody Allen's virtue signals

42:03 -- absurdity of plagiarizing James Joyce letters; the viewer begins to empathize with Clifford's bad wife; Hailey (Mia Farrow) is also a fraught character with Clifford's problems

49:04 -- Alex's dating advice to young and dumb; everyone is committing at least a misdemeanor; Woody Allen's most iconic scene; Judah's mass manipulations; Jack, Judah, and Dolores; "reason" as a euphemism

Tags: #CrimesAndMisdemeanors #WoodyAllen #FilmAnalysis #MovieReview #FilmPodcast #Existentialism #MoralAmbiguity #MoralPhilosophy #PhilosophicalFilm #DarkComedy #ClassicCinema #CinemaDiscussion #WoodyAllenFilm #PodcastEpisode #GuiltAndJustice

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Mariel Hemingway dominates "Manhattan" (1979) as she plays the role of Tracy -- Woody Allen's own projection. While "Manhattan" has become a controversial film due to the substantial age gap relationship (Woody Allen's character, Isaac, is 42, while Tracy is 17), this was not the case upon its release. Instead, it was universally praised and further cemented Woody Allen as a master of both drama and comedy.

The world's leading Woody Allen critic, Alex Sheremet, is joined by Irish poet Laura Woods for a discussion of the film's illusions and the changing POVs around it.

You can also watch this discussion on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HTHBvojj-vc

Read Alex Sheremet's essay on "Manhattan": https://www.automachination.com/illusions-woody-allen-manhattan-review/

Subscribe to Patreon and get the full show ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/c/automachination

Bonus show topics: more controversy surrounding Mariel Hemingway; how Tracy's precociousness fails; the meaning of the great planetarium imagery; more cinematography; Isaac's bout of self-recognition; why Meryl Streep kept Isaac's last name; the "gay son"; the theme of "surprise" divorces; vicarious relationships in real life; Roger Ebert weasels out of praising "Manhattan"; black and white vs. color; Alex goes to Guyana for photography; why Dan Schneider listens to podcasts of himself; why "Annie Hall" is popular among women; Alex previews his Burma/Palestine research; why pre-Christian Jews fought other Abrahamic Jews; how theology adapts to heresy; Israel vs. Judea; AI art; milestones of world poetry; Shakespeare trutherism; Alex's literary run-in with a Mormon missionary; it's much easier to find great photography than great poetry

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 -- Mariel Hemingway dominates Woody Allen's "Manhattan"

0:47 -- the film's illusions

2:27 -- Laura's soft spot for "Manhattan"; drawing the viewer into illusions and delusions

5:16 -- unreliable narrators; Isaac Davis is supposed to be a bad artist

12:22 -- Diane Keaton's anxieties; Woody Allen is merely depicting the artists he's known; how art gets misused by the elites

20:30 -- art is high stakes; not everyone can be a genius!; the artistic character of New York vs. Midwest; Laura on Diane Keaton's great artistic range

26:40 -- Mariel Hemingway dominates the film as an idealized male projection; Mariel Hemingway as a composite of Woody Allen's teen girlfriends; how men show off young women; why "Manhattan" is slightly better than "Annie Hall"

33:23 -- Woody Allen's "fake" vehicular homicide joke; the men in "Manhattan" have a strict moral code meant to miss the big picture; Woody Allen's peculiar use of self-delusion

37:47 -- Mariel Hemingway is the only one who "gets" Diane Keaton; how realistic is Mariel Hemingway's character; Tracy will probably grow out of Woody Allen's character

48:50 -- the DARK ending of "Manhattan"; how Woody Allen plays both sides; reviewers didn't analyze the film's more controversial themes in 1979; UK/Irish perceptions of relationship power dynamics

58:08 -- patron preview

Tags: #woodyallen #filmpodcast #cinematography

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Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters" remains an undisputed classic in the director's filmography, yet just like "Manhattan", "Interiors," and "Annie Hall," it is often misunderstood. The film's ending, for example, is not what it appears to be, while Woody Allen's fixation on death masks an even darker fixation on the meaninglessness of his own life.

In ArtiFact 71, the world's leading Woody Allen critic, Alex Sheremet, is joined by actresses Christina Behnke and Jacklyn Collier to discuss the film's daring use of music, psychoanalyze the dynamics between characters, and touch on separating the artist from the art.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JrO8BrjR9s

Read Alex Sheremet's essay on "Hannah and Her Sisters": https://www.automachination.com/greatness-woody-allen-hannah-sisters/

Subscribe to Patreon and get the full show ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/c/automachination

Follow Jacklyn Collier on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jacklyncollier/

Follow Christina Behnke on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christina_behnke/

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 -- Woody Allen's fixation on death

0:54 -- introduction; Alex Sheremet's book on Woody Allen's filmography; when Woody Allen was cool; culture vs. posture; perception vs. reality in "Hannah and Her Sisters"; Woody Allen as didactic art; how Alex got over his initial "dislike" of the film

8:29 -- the three sisters dynamic in Woody's films; Christina: this was my first experience of female dramatic complexity on film; 3 siblings means ever-shifting partnerships; illusions in "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Manhattan"; how Woody Allen makes you root for bad behavior and characters

15:15 -- is Hannah actually a benign character; Hannah as the resented caretaker; Jacklyn: the scene that wrecked me!; marital dysfunction in Hannah's relationships; poor relationship dynamics are always co-created; psychoanalyzing the parallels between Elliot & Hannah / Frederick & Lee

27:40 -- Woody Allen's use of humor in "Hannah and Her Sisters"; everyone catastrophizes except Hannah; how the nerdy, short, confident guy can be extremely charismatic; Woody Allen LIES about his own artistic achievements; Woody Allen's death-fixation is constantly made fun of, for good reason

34:25 -- Woody Allen's awareness of human nature; Dianne Wiest's cab scene with the architect (Sam Waterston); competition between women over men; the film's great use of music across 3 scenes; the film's faux happy endings; Dianne Wiest vs. Woody Allen chemistry; how characters talk about each other out of earshot

45:35 -- Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" plays with the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman marriage, just like "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "Husbands and Wives" tackles Mia Farrow/Woody Allen's real lives; dysfunction in the Mia Farrow household; does Woody Allen critique Mia Farrow in "Alice"

54:00 -- why are women so tolerant of Woody Allen's art; will Woody Allen be remembered for his misdeeds or his art; film is too cumulative to erase everyone's contributions; separating the art from the artist; Alex: Woody Allen films improved my sense of self and moral compass

1:04:03 -- more humor in "Hannah and Her Sisters"; Woody is so Jewish that he doesn't understand Christian iconography; Woody Allen's Nazi jokes; Jacklyn: exploring art is exploring the self; the girls debate whether we've ever lightly & innocuously stalked anyone

1:12:55 -- how realistic are the film's rivalries; Alex: my grandma's frenemy

1:16:46 -- is there artistic value in bad decisions; how "Annie Hall" gets perceived by young immature men; Elliot's happy ending is only self-serving; support REAL podcasting!!!

Tags: #HannahAndHerSisters #WoodyAllen #FilmAnalysis

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Woody Allen's "Interiors" is a poorly understood film, in part because it deals with artists and their foibles for a non-artistic audience. There are misunderstandings about Woody Allen's POV vs. the POV of his characters, misunderstandings about the nature of art and aesthetics, and even the role of cinematic influences on Allen, such as through Ingmar Bergman.

In this episode of the ArtiFact Podcast, the world's leading Woody Allen critic, Alex Sheremet, discusses "Interiors" with other film critics and artists, bringing the deepest and broadest conversation on the film.

You can also watch this discussion on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbZPk64mmTw

Subscribe to Patreon and get the full show ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/c/automachination

Read Alex Sheremet's essay on "Interiors": https://www.automachination.com/interiors-woody-allen-analysis-review

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Bonus show topics: ranking Woody Allen films; differentiating Woody making fun of pseudo-intellectualism vs. critics' pseudo-intellectualism; nitpicking "Husbands & Wives"; John Ashbery's "Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror"; Alex discusses opening up new emotions in his poetry; "Grandma": Bruce Ario's poetry on grief; Alex's triptych of autobiography, novella, and book-length poem; Enneagram Type 5 vs. astrological Libra; why Alex's first film felt so magical; why Alex doesn't want to do fictional films; is pure writing more satisfying than filmmaking; Jessica Schneider's grave mishap; Zeke's conspicuous tattoo; "Blue Lagoon" discourse; why writing sucks now while photography/filmmaking is having a moment; AI hack-poetry is STILL better than academic hack-writing; why the HELL did Woody Allen destroy his life via Jeffrey Epstein; how kids get destroyed through private schooling; Jessica Schneider on PLAYGIRL; and much more...Timestamps:

0:42 -- the world's foremost Woody Allen expert chimes in; Woody's use of three sisters plays with viewer expectations; Joey (Mary Beth Hurt) as a non-creative archetype; Flyn as the self-aware "empty vessel"; Renata (Diane Keaton) as the viewer's perception; Frederick as the self-loathing hack; Geraldine Page is great as Eve

8:10 -- "Interiors" is very much a Woody Allen film, not an Ingmar Bergman one; Eve's fascination with artists; Eve represents the tension between art and aesthetics; Eve's use of purely aesthetic language hides her inability to really discuss art; why the $400 vase is barely shown on-screen

17:42 -- art seems to offer nothing to these characters; why would Michael stay with Joey?; the use of family members as meat-shields against one another; Michael's nurturing political side is desirable to Joey; the wounded-bird complex for men; relationships & passivity

28:40 -- all 3 men depicted are passive or weak; money does not buy self-respect; Renata is with Frederick because he is not as talented; Renata might not believe her own self-conception about art; Renata speaks to her therapist as if he is not even there

33:30 -- Woody Allen's nuanced characters; Flyn is both more self-aware and interesting than first assumed; Frederick isn't wrong, just wrong in his approach; deep down, these people are all superficial; Flyn's underlying sadness; we hear comments about Flyn only from others; Flyn has the purest reaction to Eve's death

44:30 -- Eve has problems, but Arthur is quite flawed too; "Interiors" & Former Gifted Kid Syndrome; Arthur marries Pearl after only a few weeks, but Pearl wants this too; what is Pearl hiding; everyone gets something out of dysfunctional relationships; Woody Allen was ready to compromise his own film!

53:53 -- is Woody Allen a people-pleaser; the film's color and cinematography; Woody Allen's underrated use of audio even without music; "September" vs. "Interiors"; Ezekiel Yu's comments on the film's composition; connections to "Long Day's Journey Into Night"

1:02:30 -- the film's ending: was that really Eve's final suicide attempt; Joey's potential fantasy; can Eve actually drive that far into Long Island; the death scene as an anti-symbol

1:08:05 -- the Joey archetype: emotional and expressionistic but uncreative; art as self-esteem; Joey's final journal entries are hopeful, as she is now expressing basic emotions; artists who can't create art; Renata's dishonesty with Joey; art vs. belonging

1:17:10 -- many "artists" just want validation, not great art; PATRON show preview...

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Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan is our greatest living filmmaker, and 2011's "Once Upon A Time In Anatolia" is still his greatest film. Set deep in the heart of an ancient land, the film probes both myth and psychology in seamless fashion.

In ArtiFact no. 69, filmmaker Alex Sheremet and critic Keith Jackewicz analyze the film in-depth.

You can watch this discussion on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMYGO5OLlZw

Subscribe to Patreon and get the full show ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/c/automachination

Read Dan Schneider's essay on "Once Upon A Time In Anatolia": https://www.automachination.com/masterpiece-nuri-bilge-ceylan-anatolia/

Bonus show topics: Ceylan's influences; favorite vs. best films; extracting artistic influence from less-than-great films; Alex's digital detox; Keith's frustration with a VERY foxlike dog; Alex's doglike cat; the ignorance of the Trump administration; Alex bullies Max "Shit Tank" Abrahms on Twitter; America was sold moronic propaganda about Iran; Persia as the fulcrum of the world; after crying wolf for decades, ACTUAL anti-Semitism is now coming to America; destroying the neoliberal dream; dissecting Professor Jiang Xueqin; is China "innately" anti-war; oppression in Xinjian vs. America's targeting of nonwhites; why is America so brutal in its punishments; Alex's VIRAL post attracts Japanese nationalist weirdos; Japan's Unit 731 vs. Germany's Josef Mengele; assessing the 2028 election contenders; and much more...

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 -- why Nuri Bilge Ceylan is the greatest living filmmaker; the one question Keith didn't get to ask Ceylan; the John Cassavetes connection; why "Once Upon A Time In Anatolia" is difficult to discuss

6:20 -- Once Upon A Time In Anatolia vs. Once Upon A Time In The West; how the film plays with myth without touching mythology; the symbolism of time

16:15 -- landscape as psychology; viewer empathy for the film's "killers"; Ceylan's unique use of humor; Arab: slur or diminutive?

27:56 -- the poetic use of past tense dictation of present tense events; odd details during the autopsy scene

32:16 -- the trope of "gorgeous women"; Nuri Bilge Ceylan's use of masculinity; women are kept at a distance; how a stray comment becomes central to the film

38:50 -- cinematic contrasts; village teenager with a lamp vs. Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam"; Ceylan's idea that "everything must be earned these days"; psychological profiles

49:15 -- is light vs. dark a cinematic cliche; can we say definitively what happened (or didn't happen) with the murder; "Once Upon A Time In Anatolia" is the better version of Kurosawa's "Rashomon"; the lack of clarity is the point

59:55 -- Alex: as a viewer, I avoided creating "the" definitive narrative in my mind; the great symbolism of the squirt of blood at the autopsy

1:09:10 -- one of the few films worth the Blu-Ray release; the anti-symbol of the rolling apples; "Once Upon A Time In Anatolia" is 99/100; Nuri Bilge Ceylan has the GREATEST list of "best films ever"; Steve McQueen gave up his chance at being the world's greatest filmmaker

1:17:15 -- dream-like sequences in the film; did Kenan "see" his friend's asphyxiation; the dog at the film's start vs. the dog at the end; the more ethereal elements that go into great filmmaking

Tags: #film #turkey #türkiye

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Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine" (2010) remains one of the greatest and most realistic depictions of marriage on film. It eschews melodrama in favor of granularity, avoids the typical pitfalls of "relationship films," and probes both characters' psyches, ensuring that neither of them can avoid blame for the state of their marriage. Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) deliver great performances that the film's psychological realism demands.

You can also watch this discussion on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI9c95zSC7A

Become a Patron and get the show ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/c/automachination

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

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Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:05 -- introducing Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine"; who's that white girl???

2:59 -- initial and later impressions of the film; the effectiveness of its time-jumps; the symbolic and imagistic power of the opening scene; does Dean have a stronger relationship to Megan than her mother?

8:45 -- biases against Dean from female viewers; Dean is a playmate but not really a parent; Alex defends "feral children"; Dean is oddly good with women, but also fears them; Dean's alcoholism; Cindy might not be a drug addict, but she has other addictions and emotional dysregulation

15:49 -- she buys a lot of alcohol for the hotel; Cindy's many sexual partners and inability to connect emotionally; self-loathing & self-abnegation; how people pick and choose their addictions and patterns

21:16 -- substance vs. emotional abuse; Dean's romanticism kills him; personal neediness in both creates this relationship; limerence and projection

26:24 -- Dean says women settle, yet he settles; Dean only begins to drink after this marriage; do they have a deeper "reason" to be together; if she did not get pregnant by an ex, they would have broken up; why did Cindy refuse to go through the abortion?

30:28 -- men's simulated selflessness; Dean and Cindy knows each other's vulnerabilities; impulsivity in both; male/female hero complex; doing your best in the face of hypothetical "meaninglessness"

35:51 -- male sexual strategy in "Blue Valentine"; lack of attraction in this marriage; Alex: the male point of view is idealistic, but not innately unjust; relationships are the ONLY place for cosmic justice

40:36 -- their courtship is sweet and charming, but not necessarily romantic

44:48 -- Dean should have never made his offer; genuine moments of tenderness in "Blue Valentine"; is there an actual "good partner" for Cindy out there

52:12 -- don't start with relationships based on ambiguity; the bus scene soundtrack is rather creepy and ominous; "Blue Valentine" is one of the best depictions of relationships on film

57:42 -- "Blue Valentine" is tied to the times; the "meet cute" inversion; the endpoint of Millennial hipster culture; the Lena Dunham connection

1:00:44 -- the dangers of love at first sight; how fast crushes tend to flame out; Alex shares a GRIM story from his youth...

1:05:13 -- why Alex thinks their marriage might have ended; the anti-symbolism of the film's ending; why Dean has grown more than Cindy; filming around a dying battery; the conversation in the love motel

Tags: #film #review #relationships

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Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" was never meant to be an erotic thriller, but a supreme glimpse into human psychology. Alice (Nicole Kidman) and Bill (Tom Cruise) are well-suited for each other's inner dreamscapes. In fact, the entire film should be seen as a kind of dream: from the improbable action, to the way that certain characters mirror one another, to the ways in which even fantasy is ultimately defanged. This is Kubrick's only real "relationship" film, and it remains one of the greatest depictions of marriage on screen.

More recently, Stanley Kubrick and "Eyes Wide Shut" have been the subject of conspiracy theories. Jeffrey Epstein's crimes entangled many otherwise "respected" elites, and filmmaker Alex Sheremet and actress/producer Christina Behnke break down the implications.

You can also watch this discussion on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnDZNmplQzE

Subscribe to Patreon and get the full show ad-free: https://www.patreon.com/c/automachination

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:51 -- Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" is not an erotic thriller; Lolita vs. Kubrick's peak film psychology; the relationship film; picking at the Jeffrey Epstein connection

03:34 -- Christina Behnke's lifelong relationship with "Eyes Wide Shut"; identifying with the characters; "Eyes Wide Shut" is a much better title than its source material, the novella "Dream Story"; the autopilot of marriage

9:05 -- "Eyes Wide Shut" as a dreamscape; the mirroring of characters & situations; the lack of consummation; the film's many blondes; Stanley Kubrick's NYC is like his dream of New York City; impossible physical dimensions; this is not the real Greenwich Village

16:06 -- Tom Cruise as actor and character; playing with the public marriage of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise; connecting to Mia Farrow in Woody Allen's "Husbands and Wives"

21:40 -- the use of ambient vs. diegetic sound via Shostakovich; logical vs. illogical action; "Nicole Kidman's lovely body"; Alice is bored at the party; the Hungarian vs. "two models" sequence; is Alice really in control while dancing; superficiality in Bill & Alice; Catullus vs. Ovid

30:20 -- the overdose scene; Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman get home; "plain" cinematography furthers the dreamscape; jealousy

38:20 -- is Alice's fantasy a form of infidelity; Christina on Alice's psychology; Alex thinks Alice's fantasy is out of bounds for her own true self; how Kubrick makes "marital psychology" digestible and understandable

49:33 -- Alice should not be taken literally; are men more romantic than women; is a lack of jealousy an issue for relationships; Alex identifying with Bill; PEACH, Alex, PREACH; do women pity men

1:02:00 -- Bill get propositioned by his patient's daughter; Tom Cruise is further fed the worst fantasies; cultivating fantasy

1:06:00 -- the Jeffrey Epstein connection; dismissing the Stanley Kubrick & Eyes Wide Shut conspiracy theories; the Epstein class is bored and boring; Ziegler is crude & rude; Nick Nightingale calls forth sexual imagery in Ziegler

1:12:20 -- the "boring" orgy as a critique of the POINT, rather than on the film; 1999 tabloids for Eyes Wide Shut; the edited vs. unedited versions; is there such a thing as a non-boring orgy; the symbolism of the password, FIDELIO; the ceremony feels more exciting than the action

Patron show topics: Stanley Kubrick and "Jewishness"; more on Epstein psychology; Alex gets REAL about his super knavish year; the importance of the bed-mask scene; "Eyes Wide Shut" has a great ending...

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Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men" (2006) is enjoying a renaissance not only for its aesthetic qualities, but also its prescience. In the 2000s, overpopulation was still being discussed, and immigration wasn't the major topic. A post-racial America was declared, but ultimately dismissed.

Taking place in 2027, "Children of Men" depicts refugees, fascism and domestic repression, a fertility crisis, Islam-as-rebellion, and a post-racial world in 2027, where one's place of birth is the great hierarchy.

In ArtiFact #66, filmmaker Alex Sheremet and critic Keith Jackewicz tackle Alfonso Cuaron and his artistic philosophy.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/bDptk-kq01g

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 -- a looming post-racial hierarchy?

1:00 -- futurism in sci-fi; why a filmmaker must critique films; technical greatness vs. artistic greatness

2:51 -- Keith on social vs. artistic accomplishment; why Britain "survives"; aesthetic vs. artistic greatness; why Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" is the supreme example of sci-fi greatness; the realism of civil war in "Children of Men"

11:55 -- world-building vs. art; assessing the characters; Michael Caine is uncharacteristic as the hippie Jasper

16:16 -- why prescient art tends to be greater; the realistic assessments of technology in "Children of Men"; 1970s vibe to technology and militancy; cybernetics; by contrast, David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" fails; Barack Obama's "post-racial moment" was false, whereas here it seems to exist; class stratification; native-born vs. foreign-born; did Britain have anti-migrant talking points in the 2000s; missing Ethan Pinch

28:20 -- the use of keffiyehs, Islam, and Arab militancy in "Children of Men"; prefiguring Hamas; the film is more plot-driven than narrative-driven; the writing isn't very memorable, but there aren't many cliches either; one example of cliche-inversion; cliches vs. predictability

36:40 -- the use of religion & Christianity; although not subtle, the manger scene is better than expected; Theo & Jasper in conversation; "Children of Men" could have used more off-the-cuff conversation; Baby Diego as a "wanker"; creating a distinct world through difference

45:43 -- predicting infertility & the refugee crisis as the "serious" issues of today

50:04 -- great color grading in "Children of Men"; the use of handheld camera for subject/object transitions; purpose of blood drops on the lens; long shots in a way that isn't showy

56:14 -- assessing Alfonso Cuaron's aesthetic philosophy; film in search of narrative vs. narrative in search of film; doing one's own cinematography; what else "Children of Men" does well; Alex: everything is downstream of the written word, PERIOD; the Au Hasard Balthazar connection

Tags: #film #review #filmmaking

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The release of the Jeffrey Epstein files have further eroded the status quo. People all over the world have recognized the Epstein class is bipartisan, and we dissect the implications.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9sOo4z7s3A

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Learn about our debut film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.automachination.com/cityboy-bruce-ario-great-american-novel/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 -- film updates; previewing Alfonso Cuoron's Children of Men; the coming treasonous war with Iran

2:11 -- the purpose of the Jeffrey Epstein abuse ring; "flooding the zone" with nonsense; cabals as the end of history; Epstein covered up bigger crimes in his emails; not funny, not smart, not even Daffy Duck; Seagate vs. Coney Island; Epstein as a trend-riding networker; Michael Tracey is a **; how Epstein used intellectuals to whitewash himself; evidence of blackmail; Bill Gates spikes his wife's food with antibiotics; why Prince Andrew's downfall is revealing; Epstein and arms trafficking

18:48 -- Jeffrey Epstein and the Zionist superstructure; was Epstein a "liberal" Zionist?; how Ehud Barak paved the road for Israel's genocide; Woody Allen and Peter Beinart as liberal Zionists; Woody's anti-Semitic joke; Alex Sheremet is the foremost expert on Woody Allen's films; does Alex regret writing his book on Woody?

35:03 -- Michael Tracey & Epstein minimization; the Sultan's "torture video"; the DOJ's unnecessary redactions; did Trump cause Epstein's first arrest; the Alex Acosta / Alan Dershowitz angle; Alex Tooze's comments; why is the Epstein class so boring

46:06 -- the Jewish supremacist angle; a top Zionist seems to have pimped out her daughter; did Epstein have Jewish victims; Middle Eastern abuse rings; the targeting of Russian & Ukrainian women

57:28 -- Epstein & the dehumanization of sex workers; definitions of sex trafficking; fraud & coercion; Epstein victims (mostly) have the same stories; the Leon Black story; Virginia Giuffre; hundreds of court settlements are under de facto gag order; does Michael Tracey abuse women?; the consensus view; can you imagine Michael Tracey eating p****

Patron show preview:

Does Michael Tracey have the spirituality to worship the cl*t; erosion of the status quo; the implosion of Barack Obama; Trump's presidency is being perceived as disastrous; why was Chomsky so fascinated by Epstein; old-school leftists had problems with age of consent; Gore Vidal and Roman Polanski; more on Woody Allen; the Soon Yi Previn angle -- why did she defend Anthony Weiner???; Woody Allen was a "legal" abuser; Epstein helped Woody Allen's children get into a top school; how Woody Allen's films shaped Alex Sheremet's psychology; previewing my Eyes Wide Shut conversation

epstein #politics #princeandrew

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Topics: discussing our upcoming film on Don Moss in Savannah, Georgia & Tybee Island; "Camera Work" photos curated by Alfred Stieglitz; adopting new cinematic techniques; Donald Trump, Elon Musk, & America's depression; Trump meme coins & the crypto grift; crypto removes the layers of fraudulent abstraction in Traditional Finance; how Trump could have avoided scamming his crypto followers; the DOGE dilemma; is Trump trying to provoke a constitutional crisis; will conservative culture be ascendant; how an economics cottage industry covered for Joe Biden's administration; is Left-Pessimism dead; on the oligarchy; the tech freaks; academia sucks, but the death of academic humanities will still have negative effects; coming troubles for the Trump admin; bird flu & coronavirus; RFK might not even pass a bird flu vaccine; Elon Musk's abandoned children; why voters gravitate towards authoritarians; what China & Russia is thinking observing America's oligarchic takeover; Chinese protest against local government; Alex's coming video essay on Liberia

Get the full show here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/video-artifact-122779569

Watch our latest video essay, "The Murder & Resurrection of Paul Klebnikov": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Av6WBg0ii3U

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

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Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

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Donald Trump's 2024 win surprised many pundits, but not Benjamin Studebaker, who had assumed the worldwide incumbency crisis in 2024 would ultimately come for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

His newest book, "Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies", builds on his previous work on the chronic crisis of liberal democracy. In ArtiFact 64, Benjamin Studebaker and author/filmmaker Alex Sheremet discuss their reasons for expecting a Trump victory, the question of political polarization, and where liberal democracy goes from here.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/j1nENjZNwu0

Read Alex Sheremet's essay on why Donald Trump was poised to win: https://www.automachination.com/joy-kamala-harris-lose-2024/

Buy Benjamin Studebaker's "Legitimacy in Liberal Democracies": https://www.amazon.com/Legitimacy-Liberal-Democracies-Benjamin-Studebaker/dp/1399534688/

Get the B Side to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side Topics: Why Allan Lichtman's "Keys to the White House" failed; pollsters had no courage; modeling presidential elections on fundamentals; the psychology of modeling; how blame is shifted on to the electorate; assessing a very mixed economy; did white collar workers punish Kamala Harris for 2023-24 layoffs; the housing market as independent of inflation metrics; why voters assess incumbents on a purely relative basis; politics of memory; inflation-adjusted median family income has not returned to Trump-era benchmarks; are liberals dropping out of politics after Trump's win; why MSNBC and other outlets are losing subscribers; why the fear narratives failed; the story of 2024 is a racial shift towards the GOP; Benjamin Studebaker on what sort of disagreement nation-states tolerate; the nature of political polarization; how political leadership has ceased to lead; folk legitimation vs. official legitimation; expanding notions of inequality

Learn about and contribute to our film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

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Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps

0:00 - Alex Sheremet's new film is out; introducing Benjamin Studebaker and his new book; why we expected Donald Trump to win

4:39 - Benjamin Studebaker on Democrats' headwinds; COVID & inflation; Democrats destroyed their chances years ago

8:13 - Alex: Democrats who sound/act like Kamala Harris NEVER get elected; there are no Liz Cheney/Alberto Gonzalez voters; polling was stable and consistent in favor of Trump

15:52 - sexism & the Kamala Harris campaign; many voters saw Kamala Harris as a weak woman, whereas few voters would dare think of Hillary Clinton as weak; why Kamala Harris was seen as a "DEI candidate"

20:45 - the global anti-incumbent bias in 2024; Mexico's AMLO and Claudia Steinbaum as exceptions to this backlash

25:20 - Trump's racism surrounding Haitian migrants vs. Kamala's racism in using, then ignoring migrants; Kamala's identitarian failures; Democrats are behaving like mob bosses, and voters don't want it

34:22 - Democrats assume voters accept their racial narratives about the GOP; why Democrats dehumanize non-party voters; previewing Allan Lichtman's Keys to the White House

36:36 - Benjamin Studebaker's thesis on the legitimation strategies of liberal democracies; the nature of escalating disagreements in embedded democracies; Trump and Obama as the aesthetic trappings of change; Studebaker's conception of a legitimation hydra in deep pluralism

48:25 - Kamala Harris taps the legitimation hydra with her contradictory promises; Trump has power as a non-incumbent, but loses as an incumbent; incumbency is increasingly a disadvantage for politicians

53:37 - defining deep pluralism; does it necessarily lead to polarization; deep pluralism creates issues for state capacities; embedded democracies imply no living memory of previous systems; the limits of an electorate's imagination

01:03:05 - legitimation in illiberal, authoritarian states

01:08:30 - amoral political theories leading to emergent morality; John J. Mearsheimer and state survival; survival is yet another key human value; how Israel partisans can come to exactly opposite conclusions with identical values; although everyone is watching Iran, Egypt and Jordan can just as easily collapse

01:18:20 - the role of art in politics, politics in art; art and infantilization; corporatist art; genuine art vs. fandom; fandom in politics; art as needling the status quo; Alex: art is a NECESSARY retreat; how great art is a service; Bruce Ario as a service-oriented artist

Tags: #election2024 #politics #trump

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As soon as Joe Biden dropped out, Kamala Harris cinched the Democratic Party nomination. We assess Kamala Harris's uphill battle, and the extent to which Joe Biden condemned her to it. For example, why did Democrats hide Joe Biden's condition, even from themselves? What role will Biden's support for Israel's war crimes in Gaza play in 2024? We also assess Donald Trump's unique disadvantages, such as his horrible pick of the doughy and goofy JD Vance as Vice President.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ-CVOXacus

Get the B Side to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: the role of Polymarket & other prediction websites; Kamala Harris's VP picks; why Josh Shapiro is a bad choice; the role of the Trump assassination attempt; Trumpian 'genius' does not generalize in any way; erosion of democracy; Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables"; Russia vs. China in racial stereotyping; the oddly dispassionate reporting on China; ethnic cleansing in Gaza; don't assume Donald Trump's psychology is your psychology; how quietness and false peace breed violence; the Lancet editorial on Gaza deaths; 'genocide' as a political football; is there a Democrat you would currently vote for; energy prices and climate change; assessing the Kamala Harris poll numbers; why Joe Biden's polling numbers never improved; Kamala Harris's silence on Joe Biden's senility; the Mercer cash injection in 2016 was just as important as the Comey letter; politics are so silly; Trump's strange popularity on Tik Tok; Alex talks about wrapping up his upcoming film

Learn about and contribute to our film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 - the "Joe Biden Dementia" conspiracies turned out to be correct; how Democrats lied to themselves and others over Joe Biden's electoral risks; Joe Biden's slow and sudden decline; Joe Biden and Israel's genocide in Gaza

6:20 - the "secret competence" of Joe Biden vs. entrenched trajectories; why the 2020 debate was even more depressing; how Ezra Klein & Pod Save America created this whole mess; the prospects of a 2nd Trump presidency; Donald Trump's "dark vision" of America vs. Joe Biden's "no vision" for America; Project 2025

16:45 - lobbyists & the Judicial Branch are in control of America; the trajectory of privatization; Kamala Harris's extremely high staff turnover; Kamala Harris as "goofy girl-boss"; Donald Trump now sounds like a LOSER; is Kamala Harris sufficiently self-confident;

24:35 - Donald Trump's hubris forced him to select JD Vance; Elon Musk backs out of his $50 million a month promise to Trump; how public cryptocurrency bribes reveal the true role of money in politics; there is no "crypto vote"

30:10 - the tech class is the new freak class; Curtis Yarvin / Mencius Moldbug is an idiot & poor writer; Silicon Valley, Elon Musk, & pro-natalism; why Trump was booed at the Libertarian convention; why IQ does not transfer into actual competence & ability; JD Vance can't even win the Rust Belt; the tension between short & long-term thinking destroyed Roe v. Wade

42:00 - everything is getting much more competitive; Vice President picks used to matter a lot less; why are elections getting crazier & crazier; social media makes background "noise" much more meaningful; America's transition from hegemon to regional power; healthcare costs under Joe Biden & the erosion of Medicaid

53:33 - dissecting assumptions behind "Kamala Harris, DEI candidate"; political correctness on the Right, political correctness on the Left; "DEI thinking" is inherent to ALL political thinking; steelmanning DEI as an insult; why Joe Biden treated Kamala Harris as a token; did Joe Biden try to sabotage Kamala Harris; the leaks from Harris over the last few years are revealing

Tags: #politics #kamalaharris #2024elections

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Thaao Penghlis is a legendary actor who appeared on "Days Of Our Lives", "General Hospital", "Mission Impossible", and more. Yet he is also an intellectually curious person, and put together a mini-series on the archaeology of Homer's Greece.

In ArtiFact 62, writer and filmmaker Alex Sheremet speaks with Thaao about Homer's "Iliad", the nature of cultural memory, and controversies surrounding Greek archaeology.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnNGWHmNrBg

Listen to Thaao Penghlis's "Lost Treasures" on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thaao-penghliss-the-lost-treasures/id1705933001

If you found this video useful, support us on Patreon and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Learn about and contribute to our first film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:24 – introducing Thaao Penghlis’s “Lost Treasures” podcast; Thaao’s boyish desire to be an archaeologist; cultures which “don’t steal”; the spoken word & pre-literate cultures; human memory & the Trojan War; Heinrich Schliemann

8:28 – how time levels what is least important; the longevity of Homer, the Iliad, and the Odyssey; why Thaao Penghlis was drawn to Homer & Homeric archaeology; Thaao: a country without a culture dies; when Thaao found ancient treasure in a tomb; Homer as the beating heart of Greek culture; the Greek respect for what’s ancient

15:48 – Alex: Homer was probably a writer, not illiterate; Thaao: Homer delivered a point of view; the nature of theater & theatrics; Ithaca as metaphor; the relevance of Homer’s blindness; Thaao’s on Barack Obama’s oratory; superficial distractions; why Thaao Penghlis stopped doing Days of Our Lives

23:38 – Alex: Greek mythology has been simplified for a pop audience; why Aphrodite is not the goddess of love; the Iliad does not give one much backstory; Helen was stolen by Paris as well as by her former husband, Menelaus; the amorality of ancient Greece; Hector’s wife, Andromache, describes ancient ethics; the child-like depiction of Achilles; the startling lack of heroes & heroics in Homer’s Iliad

32:27 – Homer’s indirect storytelling; Thaao: the Greeks did not go to war over a woman, but the development of steel; America’s War in Iraq vs. the Trojan War; intellect in Odysseus; why women as property might still explain war in an anarchic system

38:27 – Achilles and the death of his male lover, Patroclus; Athens vs. Mycenaean Greece; Heinrich Schliemann & the Mycenaean tombs

42:30 – Thaao Penghlis: when I touched Schliemann’s documents and palace, it finally felt real; Homer’s Greece and the Italian Renaissance

47:55 – was Heinrich Schliemann merely an impressive conman; Schliemann’s romantic entanglements; Schliemann as Pygmalion; Thaao: every rich businessperson (and politician) deals with fraud; Schliemann’s Orientalism in neglecting Turkish history in favor of “Greek” relics; Germans stole Greek relics, then Russians stole them back

56:00 – how Russia and Iran take war booty; why transitioning away from Putin won’t help Russia; Alex’s thoughts on Thaao’s podcast; taking the difficult path in the arts and art education; Hollywood’s bastardization of Greek mythos; Thaao on superficiality in the showbiz world; “Lawrence of Arabia” is “too slow” for the young; how Woody Allen taught Alex about avoiding relationship mistakes

Tags: #tv #literature #greece #poetry #ancient #epic

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Author and filmmaker Alex Sheremet sits down with Erik Hill of Erik Hill Reviews @erikhillreviews to discuss all things art: the relationship between filmmaking and poetry, how the Harlem Renaissance and rap music changed Alex's life, the perils of Steven Pinker, and fresh insights into Alex Sheremet's and Joel Parrish's new film, "From There to There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet".

This discussion can also be watched on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1QPNsQlZRk

This interview first appeared on Erik Hill's channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBE0DeormUQ

Donate to "From There to There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:35 -- Alex Sheremet's background; from the USSR to Brooklyn, NY; Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice; the Harlem Renaissance & artistic hierarchies; how Alex's book of film criticism, "Woody Allen: Reel to Real", helped shape his own filmmaking

5:53 -- what makes a poem great; Countee Cullen's "Heritage"; Alex's atheism doesn't interfere with appreciating theological poetry; art should omit ideology in questions of craft; the artist's manipulation tactics

10:46 -- art's trajectory over time; one needs to do sufficient reading to recognize quality or flaws; why Alex abandoned Vladimir Nabokov

14:45 -- the role of politics in Alex Sheremet's artistic life; how rap music shaped Alex's artistic views; hip-hop & the stakes of masculinity; the destruction of attention span; being a 20th century man in the 21st century; many elements of human culture can disappear, but books totally shape human civilization

21:45 -- discussing Steven Pinker's "Better Angels of our Nature" & "Enlightenment Now"; human violence over time; bad neighborhoods vs. hunter-gatherer societies; those who believe in progress are incentivized to ignore stagnation

26:30 -- our film on Bruce Ario; Erik Hill reviews the film's first 8 minutes; Erik's experience with classical music set against visuals; how Alex Sheremet and Joel Parrish use visuals to "explain" Bruce Ario's poetry; why most poetry documentaries fail; using footage in arresting ways; choosing a film title

35:05 -- Bruce Ario's novel, "Cityboy"; Alex: it is a great, short novel but a difficult read; why Bruce Ario allowed his book to get destroyed; "Cityboy" captures mental illness very well; an example of great, unconventional writing in "Cityboy"

40:45 -- defining Bruce Ario's disabilities and mental ills; memoir vs. veiled autobiography vs. a "mere" novel; the "morality" of Bruce Ario's novel; art requires order, discipline, and consistency from the artist; Bruce Ario's interactions with homeless people; Robert Grudin: Time and the Art of Living

47:56 -- Bruce Ario's "innocence"; all cityboys must learn that all cities are the same

51:00 -- poetry recommendations for beginners; poetry is like learning a new language; how Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky changed Alex's life; Alex learned to read books by summarizing every paragraph on index cards

Tags: #filmmaking #politics #books #poetry #cinema

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Filmmaking can be highly technical, or not. As first-time director Alex Sheremet argues, finding the right topic and having an artistic blueprint in mind are far more important to master, as no amount of technical training will overcome bad ideas and artistic choices.

Alex Sheremet and Joel Parrish sit down with Destin Davis of the Benton Courier to discuss their upcoming film, “From There to There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet”.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/o-eerpxlDlw

Watch the film’s first 8 minutes on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Donate to "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Destin Davis’s article: “Upcoming documentary chronicles the life and legacy of Minneapolis poet Bruce Ario” – https://www.bentoncourier.com/news/upcoming-documentary-chronicles-the-life-and-legacy-of-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario/article_d4da549e-fe6e-11ee-8200-37b686dd31bf.html

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:18 – Joel Parrish discusses his art; transitioning into film work

3:01 – why Alex Sheremet wants to get back to writing; creating a film vs. executing on the page; writing must always stand on its own

4:32 – Destin Davis on newspaper writing; for film, the editing experience is quite different from shooting

5:50 – Alex on their DaVinci Resolve workflow; splitting up tasks; color grading vs. audio; Destin: the only way to shoot a film is to go out and do it; Joel: how photography is different from videography; Alex caught the photography bug

9:58 – Destin reviews the film’s first 8 minutes; Joel’s and Alex’s film equipment; Alex: you can make a great film under $10,000; pick a film-friend and split shooting duties

16:15 – how to take advantage of cheap equipment; technical deficiencies should be turned into strengths; the importance of having an overarching artistic blueprint; how the opening credits were designed; using composite and biographical material

19:05 – how Alex & Joel knew Bruce Ario; Bruce’s art and person; why we decided to do a film on Bruce Ario; even a non-reader of poetry can quickly ‘get’ Bruce’s poems

25:35 – how Alex used Bruce Ario’s poetry as the film’s framing device

28:00 – Minneapolis as the film’s center; Alex on how his book, “Woody Allen: Reel to Real”, prepared him to make a movie; Alex and Joel’s cinematic influences; Terrence Malick’s cinematography

35:20 –Terrence Malick’s “Badlands”; lo-fi aesthetics in film; preparing for a 30 minute rough cut; Destin Davis on the sameness of film festivals; people don’t talk about or read poetry anymore; poetry has the phantom of “uselessness”; Alex on an audience’s artistic discrimination; Joel: there is no Bruce Ario juvenilia, only the fully formed adult Bruce; how the brevity of Bruce’s poems helps the film

44:30 – understanding film vs. prose, poetry vs. prosaic scene-making; how to keep a film from being too prosaic

51:00 – timelines & practical considerations; film festivals; how filmmaking changes one’s film viewing habits; the faux documentaries of Werner Herzog; the lo-fi qualities of “Harlan County, USA”; influences from “Mr. Untouchable” and “Finding Vivian Maier”; Joel on “Searching for Sugarman”; the difficulty of reviewing John Cassavetes’s “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie”; Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage”; how Woody Allen’s films changed Alex’s life; distinguishing a character’s likability vs. goodness; drawing the wrong lessons from the right film

Tags: #filmmaking #cinematography #artist

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Thomas Sowell has a reputation for unorthodox positions and intellectual chops, but does he deserve it? His comments on slavery, equality, freedom, and philosophical concepts are rather thin, while his claims about the public commons are hypocritical. In this video, authors and cultural critics Alex Sheremet and Dan Schneider go through some of Thomas Sowell's core beliefs, breaking down his logical fallacies, double standards, inconsistencies, and more.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/d3LUO8mXbcg

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Quora as a hotbed for bigotry; Quora sciolism; who were the original inhabitants of Palestine; international vs. American coverage of Israel; the disappearance of Palestinian women; bad reporting on Hamas rape allegations; if an Alabama town was cordoned off like Gaza, there would be rebellion; distinguishing Jews, Israelis, and the government of Israel; anti-Semitism is the wrong term; the IDF has likely abused more Jewish women than Hamas; the Ottoman Empire had no right to sell Palestinian land; World War 3 vs. a regional conflagration; after Ukraine + Gaza, will China invade Taiwan; Alex is getting nervous about North Korea; John Fetterman wraps himself in an Israeli flag, members of Congress wear IDF uniforms on the floor; China, Vietnam, Ukraine; Dan: China has much smarter leaders than Russia & the USSR; China & the microchip wars; why America wants civil wars; why Heartland Theory seems to have won out; Zbigniew Brezinski’s conundrum; the Monroe Doctrine should be dissolved; Russia as the sick man of Europe; political legitimacy in America & abroad; the US needs drastic change; global warming proves democracy cannot respond to crisis; an even worse pandemic is coming; JN.1 variant & long COVID; the travails of blue collar labor; Alex: all pain can be solved with (unknown) physical movements; age & memory

Dan Schneider’s YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/@cosmoetica

Dan Schneider’s Cosmoetica: http://cosmoetica.com/

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Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Background photo by Andrea Piacquadio via Pexels.

Timestamps:

0:00 – Thomas Sowell in the grand scheme of things

1:46 – Thomas Sowell talks freedom, egalitarianism; notions of equality; growing up in poverty; the word “processes” as a scare-tactic; re-defining freedom; the “states’ rights” argument around the Civil War; does Thomas Sowell have any original ideas?

7:35 – “people have an ascribed status”; Thomas Sowell on affirmative action; Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, WEB Du Bois were all socialists; crafting polling questions; equality of outcome vs. equality of opportunity; special privileges granted by government; slavery in a zero-sum game; how the rich exploit the public commons; Bill Gates depended on government services; welfare hypocrisy; libertarian arguments exempt themselves from pre-existing privileges

18:48 – a cartoon of Thomas Sowell saying cartoonish things; Thomas Sowell mislabels “cosmic justice”; Thomas Sowell’s Freudian slip; Thomas Sowell makes the worst possible boxing analogy

31:55 – Thomas Sowell vs. John Rawls; Thomas Sowell describes his great public school education; did a white teacher save Thomas Sowell’s life; Thomas Sowell’s hypocrisy; the role of teachers vs. other public servants; Thomas Sowell is not meeting his purported intellectual standards; Thomas Sowell likely benefited from de facto Affirmative Action

46:50 – is Thomas Sowell now “the mascot”?; why white people LOVE Thomas Sowell; do men lie for their ideals; Thomas Sowell’s mistakes on Vladimir Lenin; why does Thomas Sowell think he himself is not an “idealist”?

Tags: #politics #blackhistorymonth #sowell

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Jared Taylor was born in Japan, traveled the world and became fluent in several languages, yet has wasted his life on white separatism. In this way, he extracted all the benefits of diversity—personal, professional, developmental—then decided to shut the door behind him. A longtime white supremacist, Jared Taylor nonetheless looks down on the vast majority of whites, telling Phil Donahue that he wants to be at “white cocktail parties” in “wealthy neighborhoods” full of “good-looking people”. After Donald Trump emerged, Jared Taylor was forced to reinvent himself as a Trump-style populist interested in the plight of the white working class.

In this video, Dan Schneider and Alex Sheremet dissect Jared Taylor’s appearance on Phil Donahue, his lies and omissions on immigration law, his ignorance of history and the plight of former Soviet nations, his new, politically-correct brand of white supremacism, Jared Taylor’s Freudian slip-ups, and much more.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/TA1UWUI5A-0

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Dan Schneider’s YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/@cosmoetica

Dan Schneider’s Cosmoetica: http://cosmoetica.com/

Jared Taylor on Danielle Romero’s on NYTN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QWz5uwyFQc

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – Jared Taylor as a politically correct white male; the NYTN (New York to Nashville) channel; Danielle Romero & ethnic ambiguity; how YouTube censors racial language

5:46 – Jared Taylor on Phil Donahue; Jared Taylor puts a slick corporate face on his personal biases; Jared Taylor’s racial Catholicism; why Jared Taylor is not an anti-Semite

11:05 – are immigrants taking over America; is Texas a Spanish state; the Mexico-Texas conundrum; the US creates refugees; Jared Taylor doesn’t know what he doesn’t know; Jared Taylor sneaks his way around 9/11 & questions of terrorism

19:24 – immigration & GDP; Jared Taylor lies about the 1965 Immigration Act; prior immigration systematically excluded ‘undesirable’ Europeans such as Russians; Jared Taylor calls Arabs “shifty eyed”; Jared Taylor flip-flops on overpopulation; “if diversity was so great, the Indians should be happy”

33:24 – Jared Taylors fails to say WHY “New York looks like Afghanistan”; Robert Moses demolished black neighborhoods; Alex goes OFF on “white comradery”, “white consciousness”, & “white culture”; Alex: only other Russians have put me in dangerous situations; Jared Taylor has little curiosity about the world

43:30 – Jared Taylor has WASTED his life & squandered every opportunity; Jared Taylor reveals his condescension & hatred of white people; Russians, Uzbeks, and Koreans vs. ethnicity; Native American solidarity

01:09:26 – Jared Taylor & anti-Semitism; shtetls, ghettos, & European identity; South Africans & Zimbabwe whites as “persecuted minorities”; Jared Taylor is inconsistent on the role of homosexuals in his white ethnostate

01:23:49 – Jared Taylor’s appearance on Danielle Romero’s “New York to Nashville” show; Jared Taylor’s modern strategies for a new racial world; critiquing “it’s OK to be white”; Dan Schneider’s experience being pulled into a KKK rally; Taylor is reserved with a younger woman he wants to “educate”; many Soviets would consider Koreans “white”; if we assume Jared Taylor is a straight white male, should we expect him to find black women attractive; race & sexual attraction; Italian ambiguities

01:35:25 – there are no white lobby groups because whites are the lobby; Italian ambiguities; race & the Mediterranean; shifty-eyed Jared?; black culture is hegemonic; Jared Taylor is a Freudian basket case; Jared Taylor’s Golden Age thinking; people naturally wish to intermix; South Asians & Indians in Texas

01:52:00 – the China comparison; Jared Taylor is already a minority; Jared Taylor says black Americans have not assimilated; James Baldwin vs. Jared Taylor; Irish slurs; proto-Arabs precede Jews in the Levant

02:05:11 – the KKK; race & unions; Jared Taylor’s Rachel Dolezal rubric for “whiteness”; race & the bog mummies; Jared Taylor’s political correctness

02:21:20 – Jared Taylor takes credit for Shakespeare’s plays & Mozart’s symphonies; Jared Taylor doesn’t understand art; are Russians adopting European culture

02:31:15 – race & sexuality; biology & the science of beauty; Dorothy Dandridge; Diahann Carroll; Dona Drake; Bernadette Stanis; Halle Barry; Ida Ljungquvist; Nicole Meyer; Kylie Johnson; Dan opines on the Sports Illustrated Lovely Lady of the Day; Dan on how men think

Tags: #politics #roast #debate

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Myths of Rome and the Orient, as well as questions of race and sexuality all play major roles in William Shakespeare’s underrated play, Antony and Cleopatra. It follows the final years of Roman triumvir Mark Antony and Egypt’s queen Cleopatra VII, as they engage in affairs, neglect their imperial duties, and wage war against Octavius Caesar (Augustus). In ArtiFact 57, authors Laura Woods, Alex Sheremet, and Keith Jackewicz discuss Antony & Cleopatra through the lens of Roman history, key aspects of Shakespeare’s writing, and ways of assessing the play as modern readers.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/igBzg1B9Wro

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Cleopatra’s ambivalence over love; Cleopatra through time; sex, politics, psychology; Keith: love and power’s maintenance can be similar; power as mutual agreement on common myths; Enobarbus is underrated; Antony & Cleopatra as Shakespeare’s most cynical play; Roman propaganda during the time of civil war; the facile comparisons between America and Rome; comparing American and Israeli politics; how liberal/conservative politics get coded, weaponized; Laura: social media has Americanized political discourse in Ireland; Apple vs. Android vs. Microsoft products; Alex: the best, most stable phone I’ve ever owned was an off-brand Chinese product; America, Russia, China; assessing Chinese cultural exports; the lack of penetration of “closed” cultures; why there has been no English-language documentary on Vladimir Vysotsky; Laura on the Irish language, Alex on the Latin Vulgate Bible; Laura on nursing politics in Ireland; Keith: I have little respect for psychiatry as a discipline; mental health is too de-contextualized from everyday reality; the South African genocide against in the ICJ; Ireland’s Palestinian experience, Palestine’s Irish experience; Iran’s Bobby Sands virtue-signal; Michael Hoffman is useless for Palestinian activism; anti-Talmud theories are similar to Islamophobia; Israel & genetic ancestry

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Cleopatra thumbnail photo by Siednji Leon on Unsplash.

Timestamps:

1:00 – introducing Antony & Cleopatra; Irish poet Laura Woods on Antony and Cleopatra in the Shakespeare pantheon; how Shakespeare manages length; sexual innuendo in Hamlet and Antony and Cleopatra; Keith Jackewicz: Antony and Cleopatra has no obvious villain; do readers have empathy with a “soft” & emotional Antony; Cleopatra, race/ethnicity, and Orientalism

15:48 – how 17th century conceptions of race crystallize in Shakespeare; there are no great (extended) soliloquies in Antony & Cleopatra; tensions between prosaic and poetic elements in Shakespeare; austere Rome vs. Egyptian fantasy; moments of humor; why elites ignored the Eastern Roman Empire

25:30 – Alex on the ancient tension between Roman citizens & Greek migrants; Homeric vs. Hellenistic Greece; Roman history never seems to hit a true Golden Age; Roman propaganda as “public morality”; offstage action; greatness of Antony, Octavius, and others is based on mass perception

34:55 – Shakespeare’s decision to bring the action offstage; the male craving to study ancient Rome; Cleopatra’s death as a grand affair with posthumous needs

41:53 – Antony’s dead wife, Fulvia; Fulvia vs. Cleopatra in the historical record; why does Antony want Fulvia dead; feminist, post-colonial, etc. readings tend to be anachronistic; Fulvia as paragon; feminine manipulation vs. making excuses for one’s poor choices; the psychopaths writing young adult literature

1:01:08 – Fulvia’s death as a bargaining chip; Antony & Cleopatra as narcissists; Jordan B. Peterson is a fraud for never discussing the play’s “feminine chaos”; viewer reactions to Robert Altman’s MASH in the 1970s vs. today

1:11:55 – Cleopatra uses sex for political survival; male arguments about “feminine wiles” are very effeminate; Alex relates the story of his own conniving Cleopatra; ambiguity of love within the play; unconscious behavior; how Shakespeare leverages unclear action; how Cleopatra wrestles control of the narrative; the snake’s symbolism

1:30:45 – Alex: it was refreshing to watch leaders worrying about future perceptions; past glory; how Antony & Cleopatra plays with chance/destiny; does political power at the highest levels entail determinism; Augustus Caesar as Shakespeare’s agent of fortune; the role of ego; 1 of Cleopatra’s greatest & most modern lines; why Act 3 ends perfectly

1:40:35 – Patron show preview

Tags: #cleopatra #ancienthistory #books #shakespeare #booktube

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Bitcoin and cryptocurrency are a hotbed for right-wing ideologues, but Joshua Davila argues this technology is not going away and ought to be used for left-wing activism. Bitcoin, for example, is not inherently capitalistic, while projects on Ethereum and other protocols have been more exploratory and experimental. In ArtiFact 56, Alex and Josh discuss the concept of blockchain, why it’s valuable, on-chain models for political organization, NFTs as supportive of, and destructive to, genuine art, and expose crypto-idiots and other unsavory personalities.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/un8jqcrQ70k

Buy Joshua Davila’s “Blockchain Radicals: How Capitalism Ruined Crypto and How to Fix It” – https://www.amazon.com/Blockchain-Radicals-Building-Beyond-Capitalism/dp/1914420853

Joshua’s Twitter page: https://twitter.com/TBSocialist

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: left vs. right-wing conceptions of personal responsibility; every crypto Twitter ad is a scam; account abstraction for added security; froth vs. fundamental value; how crypto adds a premium; investment vs. utility; Alex: most of my crypto acquaintances are sociopaths; why Alex hesitates to release his art as NFTs; bitcoin ordinals encourage spam art; the art world has been scamming for centuries; NFTs place anti-art expectations upon artists; Solana’s Degen Poet is like a 10 year old; art as money laundering; hypocrisy in the art world; Josh: most art does not have value; why Alex is annoyed by DCInvestor.eth; how NFTs work and why they will NOT go away; NFTs add inalienable rights on top of authentication; why Josh rejects digital scarcity; crypto idiots: Balaji Srinivasan makes a $1 million bitcoin bet; debunking the Network State; Roger Ver gets imprisoned over pipe bombs; bitcoin and energy consumption; crypto “walking” apps and greenwashing; Bill Ackman won’t be getting laid for months

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:42 – introducing Josh Davila’s "Blockchain Radicals"; understanding crypto, blockchain, and bitcoin is critical for left-wingers; the bitcoin ETF; cryptocurrency at an inflection point; right-wing vs. left-wing conceptions of monetary debasement

11:25 – is bitcoin dead for left-wing projects; how WikiLeaks and SciHub leveraged bitcoin against financial sanctions; the inflation hedge argument; why bitcoin is not “money”

21:24 – beyond financialization in blockchain; markets vs. commoditization; human nature and incentive structures; the value proposition of blockchain; the implications of crypto-mediated ownership; why the Tezos hicetnunc NFT marketplace imploded; how crypto adoption is a regressive tax; Stalin and cryptocurrency; open source crypto projects; how NFTS are misunderstood

38:42 – how crypto cultivates certain audiences; post-capitalist blockchains; the Uniswap airdrop vs. government stimulus; private, public power; why Joshua used the DAI stablecoin over USDC for Breadchain

46:30 – privacy and digital identities in crypto; why Joshua took time to dox himself; how anonymity can build trust; cryptocurrency businesses invade privacy even more than generic corporations; crypto dystopias; the tendency towards centralization; how the creator of ProtonMail made Alex change his mind on Monero & other private cryptocurrencies

58:57 – crypto as a double-edged sword; there is no “obvious” answer on anti-state privacy; how states leverage financial sanctions; code is law vs. social consensus; the 2016 Ethereum DAO hack and Ethereum classic; if bitcoin were banned, bitcoin would be legitimated; bitcoin ordinals vs. bitcoin maximalists

01:07:09 – Ethereum philosophy = Ethereum innovation; users of Ethereum Classic get the Darwin Award; is Vitalik Buterin a socialist; Heavy Bags: why right-wing goldbugs hate bitcoin; patron show preview

Tags: #bitcoin #crypto #politics

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Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It" is a great American novel, which is particularly shocking since it was Maclean’s first book and written in his 70s. In essence a memoir, “A River Runs Through It” follows the relationship between two brothers in 1930s Montana. Alex Sheremet and Keith Jackewicz dissect the book’s strengths, its powerful imagery and controlling metaphor(s), and unique structural decisions.

You can also watch this conversation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqXGKkRzTDY

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: videos depicting A River Runs Through It encourage trite imagery; spinning cliched images into something fresh; Norman Maclean uses the cosmic scale; Biblical imagery in Herman Melville; the use of elision; escalations in the Gaza conflict; a conclusion without conclusions; martyrdom in Scottish-American culture; God and country, or Country and God in nationalist-religious movements; art and ego; motivated reasoning; literary neglect; Alex’s New Year Resolutions; can Alex limit himself to reading the news once a week; academia’s abuse of “liminal spaces”; steady multinational escalations in the Gaza genocide; is Israel trying to pull America into a wider war; Joe Biden’s 2024 trap; is China / Taiwan a Boomer fixation; the smearing of John Mearsheimer, Ivan Katchanovski; a strange economy; Harvard & the disciplining of Claudine Gay; the golden mean in the 1990s

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:36 – introducing Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It”; why Keith is skeptical of Robert Redford’s film; memoir vs. The Great American Novel; Norman Maclean leaves out his narrator’s name; it’s important that Maclean wrote his first great novel in his 70s; how Maclean’s character/experiences shaped this book; lack of experience in today’s writers

13:01 – Norman Maclean’s individualistic lines; assessing the opening paragraph; how the novella uses text for physical distance; the lack of melodrama in A River Runs Through It; Neal’s function as character; bait-fishing vs. fly-fishing; Neal pretends he has sunburn, then actually gets sunburned; Keith’s “hell itch” and Alex’s sunburn in Puerto Rico

27:34 – the use of foreshadowing; Paul gets into a fight & jailed; themes of Scottish emotional repression; seeking, rejecting, offering help; Paul as artist and storyteller; some beautiful lines

41:41 – understanding the police sergeant/jail scene; how Maclean mirrors dream states; 1930s Montana; Alex and Keith stumped by Prohibition; love of language vs. MFA repetitiousness; Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom” sucks; Norman Maclean as academic; A River Runs Through It is respectful of your time

58:04 – what might a modern iteration of this novel look like; A River Runs Through It vs. Moby-Dick; the bias for length vs. depth and substance; Keith: Moby Dick’s whaling scenes are hilarious

Tags: #booktube #books #review

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The Hamas attack of October 7 was preceded by a number of escalations: ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and Jerusalem, Netanyahu’s threats to annex Palestine, encroachments into the Al Aqsa Mosque, the rise of the Lion’s Den movement and Unity Intifada, as well as Israeli-Arab normalization agreements (“Abraham Accords”) which excluded Palestinians. In ArtiFact 54, Middle East scholar Mouin Rabbani joins Alex Sheremet to discuss the prehistory of October 7, Joe Biden’s lifelong desire to protect Israel at all costs, myths about the Netanyahu government, and the region’s future.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FiKIenWoC-I

Support us on Patreon for patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Mouin Rabbani’s Twitter page: https://twitter.com/MouinRabbani

Mouin Rabbani in “Deluge: Gaza and Israel from Crisis to Cataclysm” (OR Books): https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/deluge/

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:10 – a pre-history of the October 7 Hamas attack

3:00 –Joe Biden’s “strategic neglect” policy towards Palestine

4:48 – how Joe Biden tried to restrain Barack Obama’s pro-Palestinian instincts; West Bank violence before the Hamas attack; Joe Biden as Netanyahu’s “point man”; the Unity Intifada; Israel’s attacks on Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem prior to the Hamas attack; Hamas as an Islamist organization

16:01 – Israelis might protest Netanyahu, but they don’t really protest apartheid; why Mouin does not think Saudi Arabian / Israeli normalization was “the thing” that caused the Hamas attack; what Saudi Arabia sought through normalization; if Israel’s massacres in Lebanon did not affect normalization, the destruction of Gaza might not either

28:35 – the logical conundrum of a 2-state settlement; Israeli peace activists are often not what they claim; why Netanyahu himself is not “the reason” for the Gaza war; Netanyahu will not be imprisoned for his failings

38:42 – Israeli society seems to crave images of war crimes; comparing IDF imagery to the Abu Ghraib scandal in America

41:40 – what has changed since the start of the Gaza siege; prospects for normalization; how America has eroded all credibility in the Middle East; the end of America’s “rules-based international order”

Tags: #middleeast #politics #palestine

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In light of decolonization and postcolonial theory, William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” has received new interest. Although Caliban is often thought of as the play’s centerpiece, Prospero remains its best-sketched character, as he has complex relationships and contradictory beliefs. His subjects, Ariel and Caliban, both demand freedom, while the stories told of their unnamed island are only second-hand accounts that feed into Prospero’s own self-conception. In ArtiFact 53, literary critics Alex Sheremet and Keith Jackewicz assess Shakespeare’s mysterious play, touching on questions of decolonization, imperialism, gender roles, Orientalism, Italian politics, and much more.

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on our Patreon page for patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: more connections between Shylock and Caliban; how Shakespeare plays with audience expectations; how Shakespeare signals he’s about to write something bad; Alex's falafel over rice; the Daniel Defoe / Robinson Crusoe connection; William Shakespeare vs. Mark Twain; Leo Strauss; how politics had to be occluded in Shakespeare's day; Caliban's god vs. Prospero; the meaning of magic; why didn't Prospero cast the "reason" spell on Caliban; the meaning of reason & logic in the play; why lesser characters are poorly sketched; disappointments with The Tempest; the Harold Bloom problem; how Shakespeare's reach exceeded his grasp; why the Beatles were necessarily overrated; how Shakespeare critics do a disservice to Shakespeare; Joseph Conrad's Henry James phase; Frank Herbert's Dune vs. the Dune 2 videogame universe; how voice acting destroyed game writing; does Israeli society crave images of war crimes; is Israeli targeting journalists; the university hearings on anti-Semitism; Alex goes to a POC-only Palestinian protest; how the Joe Biden coalition is fracturing; the Right is better positioned for 2024-28 than in 2016; Keith boasts of getting Trump's presidency correct

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

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Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:24 – Alex grows taller, Keith shrinks in size; analyzing William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”; no character goes unscathed; ranking “The Tempest” in the Shakespeare pantheon

3:08 – how Keith read all of Shakespeare’s plays over a month; Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth; ranking Romeo and Juliet as tragedy; why Shakespeare’s comedies are often weak; Shakespeare & class politics

9:15 – passage of time in “The Tempest”; Shakespeare overuses plot-driven techniques; some more daring parts in “The Tempest”; Prospero as the absent-minded king; is Prospero blameless; why Prospero was overthrown in Milan; the metaphor of Prospero’s island; Prospero is “The Tempest’s” only character of depth; overthrow & rebellion in the 15th century; Duke of Milan, King of Naples; political logic in Shakespeare’s era

21:03 - Miranda as an archetype; Prospero seems aware of his own flaws; dialogue vs. stage directions; Ariel is having the same argument every month; why early Shakespeare criticism was bad; the implications of Miranda’s virginity

30:42 – dissecting Caliban; Aime Cesaire & The Tempest; Prospero suggests the same punishment for Caliban as to Miranda and Ferdinand; how biological imperatives change; does Prospero have anything without magic; the victors are more or less writing the play; decolonization and postcolonial theory in Shakespeare; why was Sycorax REALLY banished

46:00 – the Algiers Connection; Prospero’s “white magic” is ultimately conflated, and on par with, the Orientalist “black magic”; how Shakespeare makes fun of Gonzalo’s ideas; Caliban’s speeches in “The Tempest”; Prospero has different standards of punishment for identical crimes; Caliban never gets the Shylock / Merchant of Venice treatment; did Shakespeare get bored with The Tempest?

Tags: #shakespeare #decolonization #booktube #postcolonialism

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Loren Eiseley was a paleontologist more famed for his beautiful writing than for scientific discoveries, a fact that both oppressed and liberated him. In his book, “The Night Country”, Eiseley discusses his childhood exploring underground worlds and compares this with his work as a scientist and writer. He deals with questions such as “the ghost in the machine”, the purpose of civilization and (cultural) evolution, and philosophical evil. Alex Sheremet is joined by radical climate activist Arnold Schroder of the Fight Like An Animal podcast to discuss Loren Eiseley’s text and its implications.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4rJV3bZVQQ

Arnold Schroder’s website: https://www.againsttheinternet.com/

Arnold Schroder’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/arnold_schroder

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on our Patreon page for patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: the final chapters of Loren Eiseley’s “The Night Country”; Arnold’s experiences with “terrifying” nighttime cattle; subject-object distinction in nighttime experience; Francis Bacon as the Great Synthesizer; mysticism among scientists; scientific research has liberalized stylistically; Loren Eiseley chooses an owl’s life over scientific discovery; how to deal with libertarian moral calculus; Eiseley’s characterization of human beings out of time; “Give me my crown – I have immortal longings in me!”; how Alex might have survived five centuries ago; Eiseley’s most beautiful passages; returning to one’s roots & losses; human integration; Arnold Schroder on Franz Kafka; Kafka vs. Orson Welles (The Trial); what Arnold Schroder learned of from Palestine and the Israel-Hamas war; the erosion of media consensus; chaos, the Internet, & balance of power; did Elon Musk save the world by being an idiot; Hillary Clinton would have prosecuted activists for terrorism; William Nordhaus & the falsification of climate science; the hothouse Earth scenario; why climate scientists aren't allowed to do science; affirmative action; we can't take the Supreme Court seriously; Arnold Schroder's "World Tree Center"

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:02 – introduction to Loren Eiseley; Arnold Schroder’s “uncanny” relationship with Loren Eiseley’s “The Night Country”; the Robert Lanza connection; the scientist-artist as outsider; the fugitive as archetype; the natural philosopher in 2023

10:04 – Arnold Schroder & the Fight Like An Animal Podcast = natural philosophy; is there an innately special mind; Loren Eiseley’s nostalgia for the night; the book’s foreword as a framing device; privileged experience can disrupt science

24:40 –night & nostalgia; night in human evolution; Arnold Schroder’s encounters with mountain lions

31:13 – concept of evil; how childhood helps define evil; adults wish to explain away injustice; Loren Eiseley’s textual transfiguration; the Rat as character & fulcrum; how intelligence thrives in unexpected niches; human variability; academia increases defensiveness

51:18 – a sardonic rat; the world’s garden; human aesthetics are biologically expensive; how much wealth is necessary for happiness; synthetic biology and algae-based economies

58:55 – the train derelict in Night Country; Loren Eiseley’s use of symbolic statements; how civilization moves, evolves without purpose; extremely long 19th century novels are a regressive tax; the language used for free will and determinism is confused

01:12:50 – Francis Bacon & Loren Eiseley’s conversations with ancients; drawing lessons from history; the attraction to ephemeral novelty; reading, politics, & dopamine addiction; Alex’s dystopian experience with Artificial Intelligence; previewing the Patreon show

Tags: #books #philosophy #science

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Now that Israel’s invasion of Gaza is center stage, Russia’s war in Ukraine is getting less attention. This has frustrated Zelensky in the midst of bad news. The Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed, and both Ukrainian and Western officials are wondering if negotiations should be the next step. This will require preparing the Ukrainian public for the possibility of a worse peace deal (and less land) than in 2015 and 2022.

In ArtiFact 51, Alex Sheremet is joined by University of Ottawa professor and Ukrainian-Canadian scholar Ivan Katchanovski to discuss the Russia-Ukraine War, the costs to Ukraine, the impact of the war in Gaza, and recent developments in the Maidan massacre.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/9GXxQGZ5-YU

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on Patreon and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: how Russian state media presents Palestine & Palestinians; Russia’s policy in the Middle East; the role of Dmitry Medvedev in Russian politics, propaganda; Medvedev’s Telegram posts; Russia’s might seek more territory; Belarus as a client state; the case of Ivan Bubenchik in Maidan; a Ukrainian law which allows murder?; more Maidan details come to light after the trial; the most common objections to Ivan Katchanovski’s claims; what if Maidan protesters were not in control of every building; how the Svoboda Party provided muscle; Ivan has been to Hotel Ukraina many times; the testimony of hotel staff; the future of Ukraine; de-population, poverty, & the refugee problem; Ukrainian dependence on Western aid; Ukraine should join the European Union; the EU acts like a political/military rather than economic union; can Russia and the United States cultivate an alliance; observing right-wing Russian nationalists

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Learn about and contribute to our first film, "From There To There: Bruce Ario, the Minneapolis Poet": https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Timestamps:

1:28 – introducing Ivan Katchanovski, professor at University of Ottawa

4:08 – the conflict in Gaza will have consequences for the Ukraine War; comparing the Palestine and Ukraine conflicts; why Barack Obama didn’t want to arm Ukraine; AIPAC vs. Ukraine; Russia pivots to Palestine

8:14 – Russia & Obama; the Israel-Ukraine relationship; Zelensky trying to turn Ukraine “into the new Israel”; Zelensky’s anti-democratic reforms;

19:51 – was Ukraine pressured into its 2023 counter-offensive; how Zelensky gets conflated with “Ukraine” & Ukrainian opinion; Ukraine as an abused proxy; why Russia was presented as weak; fissures in the war narrative cropped up as early as summer 2022

30:40 – sanctions don’t have the intended effect; Ukraine’s PR battles in Bakhmut and Mariupol; tensions between Zelensky, Zaluzhny, and other generals; Ukraine might engage in political prosecutions; was Zaluzhny’s aide involved in an assassination attempt?

46:12 – grenades & pomegranates; the status of the Ukraine war; Putin’s possible behavior in 2024; how bad statistics were used to sell a proxy war; are the witnesses to the March/April 2022 negotiations credible; the Boris Johnson angle

1:02:02 – re-visiting the Maidan Massacre; Ivan Katchanovski’s claims vs. police involvement in protester killings; why the Maidan trial dragged out for a decade; destroyed evidence; the exclusion of most ballistic analyses; the New York Times model from 2018

1:27:00 – previewing the Patron show; Ivan Katchanovski’s upcoming book on Maidan and the roots of Russia/Ukraine War

Tags: #russiaukrainewar #politics #ukrainewar

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Although there’s often a desire for big, Hollywood films, having too many resources, and too much polish, contradicts the mission of art. Independent films can be shot with minimal equipment and lend themselves to bigger, bolder ideas in a smaller package. In ArtiFact 50, Alex Sheremet and Joel Parrish reflect on shooting their first film, “From There to There: Bruce Ario, The Minneapolis Poet”. Topics covered: film and audio equipment, cinematography, production and post-production, finding interviews, and the practical as well as theoretical foundations of filmmaking.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/u4hX_OSyWs4

To get the full conversation, support us on Patreon and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Read more and contribute to the film here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Joel Parrish’s poetry and photography: https://poeticimport.com

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – the excitement of guerrilla filmmaking

1:36 – the final night of our Minneapolis trip; splitting camera responsibilities; over-scheduling yet still getting everything done; how capturing footage helps define the screenplay; Robbinsdale in Minneapolis; managing sixteen hour days

13:52 – the final night in Minneapolis; nighttime guerrilla filmmaking; accidental imagery & footage; Alex finds some bud; shooting without a plan; every alley has something that can be captured; Joel hops on a city bus and captures video & conversation; checking off a checklist vs. improv filmmaking

22:06 – how shooting a film altered Alex’s perception of watching movies; paying attention to cinematography; Alex’s thoughts on the 1995 hip-hop vampire film, The Addiction; how text styles on the screen can become quite dated; avoiding dated, faddish aesthetics; long vs. short takes; making a well-produced film on a budget using today’s software & equipment

31:20 – the post-production process; how we went from an informational, “good” documentary, to something far more ambitious; going through our equipment: a Canon M50 with an additional lens; DaVinci Resolve for film & color grading; capturing deep nighttime grain; SSD storage for keeping all files in 1 place; Zoom Podtrak P4 for an XLR connection to Audio-Technica’s lavalier microphone & AT2005 mics; Hollywood vs. anti-Hollywood aesthetics; Joel’s professional setup, cameras, GoPro, and audio equipment; getting the most out of any camera at a discount; GAS: Gear Acquisition Syndrome

53:50 – the pre-planning stages for an independent film; why a documentary is a great first movie; the importance of split responsibilities

FOR PATRONS: Joel’s planning stages for the film; acquiring interviews; the perils of overplanning; reducing the amount of equipment; Joel praises Alex as an interviewer; returning to Minneapolis: catching segregated neighborhoods, visiting other parks, 5-minute interviews with locals; capturing Minneapolis footage vs. footage from other cities; frozen falls; some wonderful descriptions of nature in Bruce Ario’s “Cityboy”

Tags: #film #art #artist

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The IDF is accused of bombing the al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza. As a result, both Israelis and Palestinians have staked their reputations on the responsible party. Yet this would already be the 35th hospital strike in Gaza since 2008, while fully half of Gaza’s medical infrastructure had been leveled in Cast Lead and again in Protective Edge. In this video, political commentators Alex Sheremet and Keith Jackewicz deal with the fallout of the Hamas attack in Gaza, the Israeli counteroffensive, the meaning of the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital strike, Palestine’s history, and Joe Biden’s increasing lack of credibility in America and abroad. They also discuss Alex’s essay on the topic and Keith’s own essay on “asbestos capitalism”.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5lCjNGDb7k

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side Topics: when Alex forced Keith to carry water gallons home; water-wars & over-stimulation; politics of de-growth; if you want Alex in the Marxist revolution, keep your grubby hands off of his bananas; wastefulness in the healthcare system; Putin’s military vs. social & educational spending; why sanctions have not crippled Russia; Ukraine youth paramilitary camps; Crimea & Russia’s first-use nuclear doctrine; the Supreme Court forced Israel to allow a Gazan to leave for medical treatment; white guilt is counter-productive but points to a positive historical development; Alex’s process of writing his Gaza essay; how skeptics of the War on Terror became Israel apologists; the subtle shift in calling Hamas’s terrorism “war crimes” alongside Israel’s own; most “human shields” allegations are false; why Leftists have a messaging problem; realpolitik in Israel-Palestine; how Joe Biden’s wars might come back to haunt him in 2024; polling problems & unfavourability; Keith’s impressions of the new Ceylan film, “About Dry Grasses”

Alex Sheremet’s essay on the al-Ahli Baptist Hospital bombing: https://www.automachination.com/israel-identity-gaza-hospital-attack/

We are working on a film on the late, great Minneapolis poet, Bruce Ario. Read more and contribute to the film here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:54 – framing the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion; analyzing the Hamas attack of October 7; the gradual breakdown of the IDF; does Hamas want a Stalingrad

9:13 – Alex’s essay on the implications of Al-Ahli Hospital; why Israelis (and Palestinians) have hinged so much on the outcome; Keith’s essay on Asbestos Capitalism; Israel prefers to engage via airstrikes than IDF ground incursions; how “impersonal wars” & Israeli airstrikes create plausible deniability for high body counts; Israeli vs. Russian war crimes; Joe Biden is tying his hands with unpopular wars

20:21 – how Gaza & the Ukraine War shows limits of American unity; Israeli propaganda tries to connect Jews & Judaism with unpopular state actions; Jewish anti-Zionism; Keith’s experiences at a pro-Palestine rally; Keith: a dialectical attraction to Judaism; how Judaism has been subsumed by a colonial project

31:06 – Edward Said’s essay on the Oslo Accords: The Morning After; how the media changed from anti-PLO to pro-PLO; signing away Palestinian rights for positive media coverage; Oslo & settlement acceleration; assessing Yasser Arafat; Israel & the Arab world thinks of Palestinians as a millstone around the neck; how Palestinian lives are counted as less worthy

45:41 – Palestine’s ethnic cleansing is no different from 1000s of other groups in history; AIPAC is the NRA for liberals; Netanyahu should have become irrelevant after 2003; Netanyahu’s direct cash transfers to Hamas; how the response to Hamas’s 2006 election destroyed all possibility of democracy in Palestine; Gaza as a testing ground for fascism

59:22 – the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital attack in Gaza; how the attack has become so symbolic for both Palestinians & Israelis; the murder of Shireen Abu Akleh; Israel’s massacre of the 2018 Gaza protesters; no, the pro-Palestinian side does not rest on the culpability for the Al-Ahli outcome; how Netanyahu mouthpiece Hananya Haftali accidentally revealed Israeli’s propaganda machine

01:22:29 – Israel keeps delaying its ground offensive; Israel has nothing else politically except Netanyahu; Ariel Sharon’s cynical reasons for Gaza withdrawal; Ehud Olmert’s pathetic two-state solution peace plan; how Joe Biden continued Trump’s foreign policy

Tags: #gaza #israel #freepalestine #politics

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Taking great influence from Martin Scorsese's "The King of Comedy", Frank Whaley's underrated character portrait, "The Jimmy Show", was attacked by critics and filmgoers upon release, and is mostly forgotten now. In ArtiFact 48, critics Jessica Schneider, Ethan Pinch, Alex Sheremet, and Ezekiel Yu break down the film’s strengths and weaknesses while putting it in the wider context of American comedy and stand-up routines.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D28Ib8L1BQk&

If you’d like the B Side to this conversation on Martin Scorsese’s The King of Comedy, become a YouTube member or join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Alex hides & tricks everybody; soy tag vs. Brooklyn-style manhunt in the 1990s; Jessica and Alex indulge; one never stops cringing at Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy; Rupert Pupkin is the perfect name; Travis Bickle; Zeke watches King of Comedy for the first time; Rupert Pupkin vs. Jimmy; Robert DeNiro is intentionally made less sexy; Martin Scorsese’s diversity as a filmmaker; unique imagery and symbolism in The King of Comedy; Rupert Pupkin is not less talented than those around him; “my name is Rupert: it may not mean a lot to you, but it means a lot to me”; leveraging fame; reality vs. fantasy/day-dream in the film’s ending; comparing to Sidney Lumet’s “Network”; the role of sexual grotesque in Scorsese, Woody Allen, & Robert Altman; why Rupert is animated in his renditions, but placid in his fantasies; is King of Comedy an artistic dead-end; comparing to Scorsese’s “After Hours” & male sexual psychology; King of Comedy in the Scorsese pantheon; Scorsese’s Shutter Island as a low point in his career; no point for Gangs of New York to exist; Bresson’s style was forged from personal needs; Andrei Tarkovsky & Ingmar Bergman; Martin Scorsese’s scriptwriters; & news, politics, Gaza, Israel, Hamas, Tony Blinken gets in trouble on Babi Yar, & much more…

Jessica Schneider’s review of Frank Whaley’s The Jimmy Show: https://www.automachination.com/underrated-gem-frank-whaley-jimmy-show-2001/

We are working on a film on the late, great Minneapolis poet, Bruce Ario. Read more and contribute to the film here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – introducing Frank Whaley’s The Jimmy Show; links with Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy

2:40 – why Jessica wanted to review the film; fan expectations vs. artistic reality; portrait of a failure; even the descriptions of the film are wrong; Ray vs. Jimmy: who is the better person; Zeke on how Jimmy’s character creates a ceiling for the film; Ethan Hawke

9:27 – Ethan expresses distrust for Realist Cinema; is The Jimmy Show a comedy or a portrait of a comic character; the dynamic between Jimmy and his grandmother; tender vs. unlikeable moments; why the film is neither satire nor tragedy; the importance of the film’s title to its meaning; the Mike Leigh connection

19:10 – Alex on why Jimmy fails to read the room; how his classist humor gets him into trouble; failures of internalization; the Al Bundy / Married With Children connection; what makes the divorce scene so well-written; Jimmy’s character arc sees her become decisive & firm, while Jimmy doesn’t grow much

28:25 – Ethan: this is a very American film; fame for the sake of fame; Frank Whaley’s use of time can be quite arresting; is Jimmy a worthwhile character; Ethan pushes back against our praise for the film

38:20 – Ethan: isn’t EVERYTHING the Jimmy Show, the Alex Show, the Ethan Show?; the nature of motivated reasoning; people wish to be recognized, but for what?; the Milli Vanilli connection; Taylor Swift’s blandness IS the point; why Eugene O’ Neill didn’t sell out; revisiting Mike Leigh films

49:34 – does the ending “serve Jimmy right”; the nature of comedy; Ethan on American-style standup comedy & machismo

Tags: #films #review #comedy

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Two years after the creation of the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver’s prison writings were published as SOUL ON ICE. He became the party’s Minister of Information, but would soon have a falling out with Huey P. Newton over tactics and ideology. In ArtiFact #47, authors Alex Sheremet and Keith Jackewicz break down the text, highlighting its strengths and weaknesses, as Alex explains why it was so critical for his own intellectual development in high school.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1DCNP2uYMo

If you found this video useful, support us on Patreon and get the B Side to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side Topics: re-visiting James Baldwin; why don’t political writers care about good prose; varieties of bad conservative & liberal writing; African American leftist writing tends to be self-Orientalizing; art has become an arm of ideology, parasocial relationships; terrible art-objects (“The Sound of Freedom”) and ciphers (“Try That In A Small Town”); the implosion of Ibram X. Kendi; his valorization of ignorance and refusing to read; Ibram X. Kendi doesn’t get Shakespeare’s “Othello” and “The Tempest”; Christopher Rufo runs victory laps; Boston University’s racial problems; COVID in 2023: no tracking, vaccination is disorganized, no funds for long COVID & the nature of endemic disease; most Americans are not compliant with vaccine uptake; blood clots & COVID; Chapo Trap House & their fanbase; the practical ramifications of day-to-day climate change; waking up to storms; Pittsburgh & the Amtrak experience; Ukraine/Russia developments; why did Biden box himself in by selling the war as a Russia-US proxy; Nikki Haley vs. Joe Biden; the salience of Roe v. Wade; Republicans will likely adopt Trump’s abortion strategy; Zelensky & Minsk II

We are working on a film on the late, great Minneapolis poet, Bruce Ario. Read more and contribute to the film here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – a white kid sits at the black table

1:30 – introducing Eldridge Cleaver’s classic Black Panther text, “Soul on Ice”; how the book totally changed Alex’s life in high school; Keith: Cleaver has more lyrical dexterity than most leftist writing; the homophobia

9:00 – Malcolm X’s autobiography vs. Eldridge Cleaver; thresholds of transformation; Ras Kass’s 1996 rap album, “Soul on Ice”; contrasts with Huey P. Newton’s “Revolutionary Suicide”; homophobia & social conservatism in the radical left; the RCP’s Bob Avakian; Aleksandr Dugin’s style of fascism

19:25 – why the Black Panthers presented as a black nationalist group despite being Marxist-Leninists; how Donald Trump’s election shattered Keith’s understanding of the world; why the United States government feared the Black Panthers; hecklers in the Nation of Islam; the New Black Panther Party; armed patrols in California; overreaction within geopolitical rivalry; liberalism & the erosion of rights; 2007’s Stop the Madrassa; America’s change of opinions on Islam, immigrants; Alex: why Richard Spencer, et al was a dying gasp in 2016-2017

38:50 – Eldridge Cleaver’s obsession with poseur whites; Norman Mailer & “The White Negro”; a terrible passage from Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road”; masculine novelists & insecure violence; cultural appropriation discourse is now passe; how diversity & integration teaches everyone; Alex’s experiences in a majority-black high school; how Alex was transformed by Countee Cullen & Harlem Renaissance poetry; black America faces steeper consequences for everything

52:08 – respect vs. fetishization; collectivization & sociability in black America; Eldridge Cleaver’s attacks on James Baldwin; Eldridge Cleaver might have been a closeted bisexual; Cleaver fails to understand high art; assessing Giovanni’s Room; defending James Baldwin’s comments on Richard Wright; Cleaver’s upbringing & psychology damaged his chances of becoming a great author; the worst chapter in Soul on Ice

01:19:42 – Eldridge Cleaver’s love letters are surprisingly well-handled; Alex’s favorite chapter in Soul on Ice; Cleaver knew how to sketch and characterize; Cleaver’s writerly tricks in his Old Lazarus chapter; how sexual imbalances fuel resentment; black objectification; comparisons to Bela Tarr’s The Turin Horse

01:42:05 – Patreon show preview; Eldridge Cleaver’s latter biography; his falling out with Beverly Axelrod; Soul on Fire was a terrible follow-up; Keith: how There Will Be Blood & Ratatouille changed my life

Tags: #politics #books #blackpanther

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Ibram X Kendi (born Henry Rogers) is an "antiracist scholar" who is now under investigation by Boston University due to alleged mismanagement of the Center for Antiracist Research. In ArtiFact #46, Holocaust scholar Norman Finkelstein breaks down the allegations, as well as his responses to Ibram X. Kendi's scholarly writing in "Stamped from the Beginning" and "How to be an Antiracist". He concludes that, besides his alleged administrative fraud, Kendi is an intellectual hoaxer who has more in common with the Right than with the Left.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/ieU2HCGpCSY

Buy Norman Finkelstein’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Heretical-Thoughts-Identity-Politics-Academic/dp/B0BSJXB7WN/

Norman Finkelstein’s website: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com

If you found this video useful, support us on Patreon and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

We are working on a film on the late, great Minneapolis poet, Bruce Ario. Read more and contribute to the film here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/new-film-the-minneapolis-poet-bruce-ario

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

01:47 – introduction; the implosion of Ibram X. Kendi's antiracist center at Boston University; Norman Finkelstein distinguishes Kendi the scholar vs. Kendi the administrator; Ibram X. Kendi's celebrity encouraged a total lack of oversight; the Center for Antiracist Research was a vehicle of Kendi's books; Kendi's output vs. Noam Chomsky’s; How To Be An Antiracist Baby; the mystery of Ibram X. Kendi's celebrity

18:09 – Norman Finkelstein dissects Ibram X. Kendi’s “Stamped from the Beginning”; does Ibram X. Kendi’s exercise of “racist, not racist” for 100s of pages add up to anything; why Norman Finkelstein does not use the word “fascist” as an insult; the question of Abraham Lincoln’s racism; goodness vs. greatness in human beings; Teddy Roosevelt’s racism towards Native Americans

30:00 – Paul Sweezy’s apologia for Stalin & Stalinism; Alex: why my great-grandmother LOVED Stalin; Alex on the perceived political legitimacy of Stalin, Putin, and Xi Jinping; Norman Finkelstein reads his favorite quote from Abraham Lincoln

41:40 – Norman Finkelstein on Martin Luther King, Jr.; Alex on arguing with Nazis and white nationalists as an adolescent; the one useful thing Ibram X. Kendi should have done; Norman Finkelstein on upper-crust, racist friends from the 1970s; sports and intelligence; the racism of William Shockley and James Watson; prejudice & property values; why fighting race science intellectually does not work; Norman Finkelstein’s advice on how to break anti-black racial stereotypes

57:17 – Norman Finkelstein denies accusations of elitism; the implosion of Democracy Now! & Amy Goodman; tackling Ibram X. Kendi’s “How To Be An Antiracist”; the appearance of “Smurf”, Kendi’s high school friend “so black that he’s blue”; Ibram X. Kendi insists on structural racism, yet shies away from obvious, everyday examples of such; some howlers from “How To Be An Antiracist”; previewing our coming conversation on the Supreme Court affirmative action decision

Tags: #politics #identity #normanfinkelstein

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Universally heralded as an American classic, Martin Scorsese’s TAXI DRIVER (Robert DeNiro, Jodie Foster) deserves its reputation for nuance and the subtle ways in which its thematic, cinematic, and psychological elements cohere. Paul Schrader’s script allows for everything from understated racial critique, to a realistic depiction of how entanglements are made and broken, to the role of loneliness and purposelessness in the modern world. This is partly done by way of a dreamscape, which has enough plausible deniability to still feel "real".

In ArtiFact #45, Alex Sheremet is joined by Irish poet Laura Woods and poet, novelist, and film critic Jessica Schneider to offer fresh insight into Martin Scorsese’s seminal film and the psychology of its protagonist, Travis Bickle.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8u7n9uTexs

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on Patreon and get Patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Jessica on Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ”; Jessica physically acts out “demon children”; Laura on Gerard Manley Hopkins; guilt and art; Alex “wanders off”; reading John Donne; social services & abortion politics in Ireland; Tanizaki’s “Some Prefer Nettles”; Laura on COVID politics in Ireland; on modern Russian music & the Soviet bard tradition; American meddling in Russia’s elections; translating Russian poetry; & much more

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Jessica Schneider’s essay on Taxi Driver: https://www.automachination.com/mindful-loneliness-martin-scorseses-taxi-driver-1976/

Dan Schneider's essay on Taxi Driver and Travis Bickle: http://www.cosmoetica.com/B928-DES721.htm

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – thematic coherence in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver; Travis Bickle’s arbitrary attachments of value; Betty’s rejection quickens Travis Bickle’s psychotic break; the function of The Wizard character; choice vs. determinism

5:58 – racial hang-ups in Taxi Driver; the Alka-Seltzer scene & its "dream thug"; the beating of a dead robber might be Travis Bickle's own fantasy; Paul Schrader's original script called for black actors to play the film’s pimps and johns; Charles Palantine vs. Robert Altman's Hal Philip Walker (Nashville)

11:48 – Travis Bickle's "misguided earnestness"; his romantic impulses are impulsive, yet his critiques tend to be "correct" purely by coincidence; analyzing a scene where some children harass Travis Bickle

19:20 – empathy & character relatability; Dan Schneider's assessment of Travis Bickle’s psychology; the world’s current default state of loneliness

26:00 – Travis Bickle's conservative values; the humor + empathy of Travis feeling repulsed by immorality; the Mike Leigh connection; a Woody Allen + Annie Hall connection; how Travis enters & leaves lucidity; incels & White Knight psychology; even a scumbag pimp like Matthew (Sport) “sees” Travis Bickle’s lack of social adjustment

36:24 – how cognizant is Travis Bickle of his situation?; Travis's family vs. Jodie Foster's family; was there abuse at home?; neglected Martin Scorsese films; Paul Schrader produced a weak script for 'Light Sleeper'; how Taxi Driver predicted Jordan B. Peterson types; Roger Ebert on Martin Scorsese

51:46 – Travis Bickle: “I believe someone should become a person like other people”; underlying profundity vs. crass profundity; confession time: Alex Sheremet just can’t get through Mishima’s “Spring Snow”; Mishima’s "Temple of the Golden Pavilion"; why Murakami (mostly) sucks; Lars von Trier is Ingmar Bergman without the depth

Tags: #cinema #psychology #taxidriver

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In the last few decades, political correctness has divided Americans and reduced their ability to embark on a real political project. According to Holocaust and Israel/Palestine scholar Norman Finkelstein, Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi are representatives of race-based fraud, downplaying the role of class, culture, and more in order to sell books and corporate workshops.

In ArtiFact #44, Norman Finkelstein and Alex Sheremet discuss the class-based critique formulated in Finkelstein’s latest book, “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It”, as well as questions of criminal justice and criminal justice reform. The text covers political correctness, academic freedom, class politics, cancel culture, Roe v. Wade and other Supreme Court decisions, W.E.B. DuBois, Frederick Douglass, and more.

You can also watch this discussion on the automachination YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/csWQhC40DDM

Buy Norman Finkelstein’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Heretical-Thoughts-Identity-Politics-Academic/dp/B0BSJXB7WN/

Norman Finkelstein’s website: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com

If you found this video useful, support us on Patreon and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – race, class, and the criminal justice system

1:26 – introducing Norman Finkelstein’s “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It”; is there a biological basis for race and racism; Finkelstein explains why he rejects the salience of race and IQ; Robert Trivers and Mihalis Yannakakis; Finkelstein’s experience with his African American students

12:56 – Alex Sheremet’s experience with desegregation; ethnicity from Belarus to Brooklyn; how proximity creates understanding; Robin DiAngelo’s bait-and-switch in “White Fragility”

16:34 – “White Fragility is the worst book written on any subject ever”; Norman Finkelstein on structural racism; racial representation vs. culture; Asian representation & the Tiger Mom; Finkelstein on Ketanji Brown Jackson & the Affirmative Action decision; W.E.B. DuBois; cultural disparities are a constant; why the American legal process is grounds for revolution; class forces one into plea bargains

30:16 – racism and the criminal justice system; how class defines the criminal justice experience; Norman Finkelstein’s arrests and legal experiences

37:54 – gender disparities in male/female sentencing for identical crimes; the need for a material/cultural analysis; basketball courts are material and cultural; Norman Finkelstein wasted too much time watching television; early childhood years are fundamental for development; Frederick Douglass

44:54 – Robin DiAngelo’s authoritarian version of antiracism; liberalism & authoritarianism; the silliness of “interrupting racism”; developing a thicker skin; anti-Semitic comments directed at Norman Finkelstein; African American passivity in “White Fragility”; have classical studies been hijacked?

56:42 – Alex Sheremet and Norman Finkelstein make a series of “wild surmises” about Robin DiAngelo’s psychology; the Glenn Loury problem – personal background should make you “know better”; Robin DiAngelo as a “sick Karen”; teasing our future conversation on Ibram X. Kendi

Tags: #politics #justice #iq #normanfinkelstein #woke #race

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According to Holocaust and Israel/Palestine scholar Norman Finkelstein, Barack Obama’s “neat trick” allowed voters to imbue whatever political values they wished on to a blank slate who seemingly came out of nowhere. This allowed Democrats to turn the 2008 and 2012 elections into a referendum not on the candidate, but the “goodness” and “morality” of the electorate.

Finkelstein’s new book, “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It: Heretical Thoughts On Identity Politics, Cancel Culture, And Academic Freedom”, tackles, among other topics, Barack Obama’s 2020 memoir, “A Promised Land”, concluding Obama was little more than a cipher enamored by celebrity. In ArtiFact #43, Alex Sheremet and Norman Finkelstein discuss Barack Obama’s presidency, cultural import, and more, kicking off a series of conversations that will span much of Finkelstein’s text.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEZCalY_gcg

Buy Norman Finkelstein’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Heretical-Thoughts-Identity-Politics-Academic/dp/B0BSJXB7WN/

Norman Finkelstein’s website: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com

Watch Norman Finkelstein discuss Israel with Palestinian refugees: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4OP7B9jKao

If you found this video useful, support us on Patreon and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – was Barack Obama’s presidency a net positive?

1:25 – introducing Norman Finkelstein’s “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It”

3:05 – Norman Finkelstein’s textual analysis; Barack Obama has no real written record; biographer David Garrow calls Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” a work of historical fiction; why Obama’s “A Promised Land” is unmemorable

10:38 – Obama finally had the opportunity to say anything he wanted, but said nothing; the Joe Biden / Obama tension; the Oprahfication of Michelle Obama; Michelle Obama’s humiliation of pre-fame Obama

15:12 – David Garrow is Obama’s definitive biographer; Obama & the Choom Boys; the GQ Marxist; how Obama cultivated white people; Chuck Schumer, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton vs. Obama

34:23 – Obama conspiracy theories & birtherism vs. the reality of an ex nihilo, blank slate Obama; the post-Bush presidency; the Great Recession; how Barack Obama turned the 2008 election into a referendum on the electorate

44:49 – why Norman Finkelstein had few illusions about an Obama presidency; Pod Save America sucks; the biggest critique of “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It”; Alex and Norman debate Cornel West

01:03:26 – Obama as politician; why Dick Cheney could not shut up; how Barack Obama’s love of celebrity threw David Axelrod under the bus

01:12:11 – Barack Obama repeatedly shields Hillary Clinton from Libya, the “Kenyan dress” scandal, & her RFK assassination comments; Obama in Martha’s Vineyard; the Central Park Five; why Hillary Clinton & Stormy Daniels LOVED Donald Trump; David Garrow’s final judgment on Barack Obama’s person

Tags: #obama #normanfinkelstein #politics #democrats #palestine

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According to the Left, Right, and Center, democracy is under attack. Donald Trump claimed election fraud in 2020, while both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton hinted at fascism with a Republican administration. In his 2023 book, “The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way is Shut”, Benjamin Studebaker argues that neither is the case, as the very popularity of democracy is being used to energize fringe voters in lieu of passing real legislation.

In ArtiFact #42, Alex Sheremet and Benjamin Studebaker tackle “the unsolvable problem”, wage stagnation, the causes of austerity, and how political parties continue to get away with minimal promises against the backdrop of maximal drama.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OobuZB1BLX4

Support us on Patreon and get the patron-only B Side to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Aristotle’s “Vulgar Craftsman”; how the lack of writing hurts podcasters & other speakers; the peak message board era; the current Ph.D. landscape; how Raul Hilberg’s Holocaust research stymied his career; how the 2008 crisis shaped Benjamin Studebaker’s political awakening; the (illegal) Libya intervention & death of Gaddafi; comparing the 2008 and post-2020 austerity regimes; Trump vs. Hillary voter naivete; more on conspiracy theories; why Benjamin Studebaker is skeptical of affirmative action; Alex’s high school experiences in the hood; is meritocracy possible; how Benjamin Studebaker turned Alex on to Kwame Brown; black girl magic vs. black boy magic; Clarence Thomas is insulted so hard that Alex fears losing his YouTube channel; political theory in the academy; the dream-eating democracy; if the Left secures its goals, wouldn’t citizens drop out of politics altogether; assessing the 2024 presidential race; is Cornel West a serious candidate

Buy Benjamin Studebaker’s “The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy: The Way Is Shut”: https://www.amazon.com/Chronic-Crisis-American-Democracy-Shut-ebook/dp/B0BVZ7V4T6/

Benjamin Studebaker’s essays: https://benjaminstudebaker.com/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – introduction to Benjamin Studebaker & his book, “The Chronic Crisis of American Democracy”

04:03 – Studebaker: all time for thinking is created by other people not having time for thinking

05:17 – the unsolvable problem; how capital mobility erodes politics & freedom; FDR as the first neoliberal; the role of World War I, trade, & the Great Depression; the Bretton Woods conference; capitalism in “communist” nations

20:35 – the world is growing more competitive; 1972’s “The Limits to Growth” & the 2020s as a turning point; the role of education; rump vs. fallen professionals

33:35 – the plight of academics & disposable faculty; higher education as extraction; a widening gulf between working and “professional” classes; the role of the autodidact in conspiracy theories

46:00 – how the French riots turned into a race riot; conspiracy theories among the educated, “anti-conspiracy” class; why COVID is ignored; Donald Trump’s strategy in 2020; political messaging

58:30 – are wages really stagnating; common talking points & right-wing subreddits; the proper framing for discussing wages; the effects of COVID on wages; inflation

01:11:40 – Benjamin Studebaker’s reading of freedom; Isaiah Berlin & positive / negative freedom; how students get tricked into a limited debate; freedom vs. state / market interventions

01:25:41 – why Benjamin Studebaker does not buy typical critiques of democracy; long-term anemic equilibrium in democracy; new realities for the political Left, Right, & Center; how traditions are divided

01:48:12 – progressives are both critical of, yet amenable to, markets; Left/Right and the critique of desire; how media ecosystems undermine class traitors; Benjamin Studebaker on exogenous shocks which might change the system

Tags: #politics #trump #podcast

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Art YouTube ranges from academic to street, high-brow to low-brow, natural, performative, good and bad. In ArtiFact #41, writers Alex Sheremet, Ezekiel Yu, and Dan Schneider tackle some of the more popular art YouTube channels, dissecting their arguments, assumptions, and presentation. Our questions include: how does YouTube incentivize poor artistic judgment and packaging? Does overly performative criticism damage the field? What is the difference between criticism and sociological critique? Is “honesty” really the most important quality in a critic? Is worrying about the commodification of the arts self-defeating? Plus: comments on Banksy, Kurt Cobain, Andy Warhol, Marxist theory, & more.

This conversation can also be watched on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RHNRHLHa8yg

Support us on Patreon and get the patron-only B Side to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Ezekiel Yu’s development as a writer; yes, every writer writes from experience; the before/after when figuring out how to write; Alex’s video essay on Robin DiAngelo; in praise of Laura Woods; artistic competition; why Milk74 is an interesting YouTuber; PhilosophyTube sucks; Vladimir Vysotsky’s worst songs focused on street culture; Zeke’s religious transitions; truth vs. privacy in personal memoir; how having less time allows you to do more; art as therapy is good if there is a worthwhile art-object that comes out of it; Alex and Zeke discuss their guilty pleasures; Kwame Brown & natural conservatism; Andrew Tate, JustPearlyThings, & others with failed relationships give relationship/marriage advice; why Red Pill men are effeminate; tackling a bad video essay on Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver”

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Dan Schneider’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@cosmoetica

Dan Schneider’s Cosmoetica: https://www.automachination.com/

Timestamps:

0:00 – the pitfalls of “art” YouTube; voices & affectations; how good art channels become bad; content vs. personality; Zeke mispronounces ‘automachination’

13:07 – Steve Shives is wrong about “honesty” in a critic; subjective preferences in the arts vs. objective evaluation; sociology vs. criticism; taking oneself out of one’s criticism; a critic’s honesty is the minimum standard for criticism; how Steve Shives switches between critical and emotional language; why Dan Schneider, on rare occasions, goes for bimbos; is this an exhortation to “not try”?

52:58 – The Canvas YouTube channel; performative discussions of art; Alex describes the culture shock of getting into college; how authority, museums, etc. dissuade artistic critique; the arts do not require mystique; dissecting The Canvas’s Aesthetics vs. Cognition distinction; art vs. artistic context; the passing off of negative qualities as positive traits; Noble Savage myths of art; separating art & self; how time levels, resets artistic baselines;

01:36:38 – The Canvas on Banksy, Andy Warhol, Marxist theory, & Kurt Cobain; too many sources can compromise opinion; the commodification of art; the art audience; Alex: commodification is a side-show next to the actual production of, & work ethic in, art; so-called “artistic problems” and “artistic concerns” are self-made, rather than genuine issues; why artists & non-artists often justifying not creating art

Tags: #art, #podcast, #artist, #kurtcobain, #banksy

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In 1972, four scientists – Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, William W. Behrens III – published a book called The Limits To Growth, about planetary limits based on a new computer model called World3. It was attacked by journalists, scientists, and economists who claimed it was making faulty predictions based on untested hypotheses, and was often rejected in highly emotional terms by a society that wanted to believe in infinite growth. These attacks accelerated in the 1990s, since models of food and resource scarcity failed, while the 1990s, themselves, were a highly idealistic decade.

By 2023, however, it is obvious that the book’s core premises – that planetary limits exist, that they will be hit and create fresh limits, and this will likely cause a contraction in the standard of living – are beginning to be vindicated. Yes, the suggested limits to copper, fossil fuels, and food turned out to be far too pessimistic, but modern research suggests that the world is more or less going according to the basic scenarios of the World3 model.

In ArtiFact #40, Alex Sheremet is joined by radical climate activist Arnold Schroder of the Fight Like An Animal podcast to discuss “The Limits to Growth” as well as follow-up texts and papers.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/dh46XiXwwLE

Arnold Schroder’s website: https://www.againsttheinternet.com/

Arnold Schroder’s Twitter page: https://twitter.com/arnold_schroder

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on our Patreon page for patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Arnold Schroder’s experiences in New Orleans as a teenager; why Alex thinks New Orleans is a symbol of America’s future; Portland in the time of Elliott Smith vs. today; issues of gentrification; why seemingly minor variables play major roles in an artist’s art; Alex’s neighborhood & why some people are targets of crime but not others; political equality vs. cultural elitism; political, psychological, and emotional stakes have heightened in the last few decades; the roles of Arnold / Alex might play in building ideological bridges; what IQ fetishists get wrong; & more

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D
Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV
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Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo
iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:56 – introduction; the response to “The Limits to Growth” over time; from research to the empirical environment; how psychology mediates activism & complacency

9:12 – why “2020” kept coming up as a pivot point in 1972, 2004; how hitting planetary limits diverts capital to externalities as opposed to human welfare; why Arnold Schroder thinks public mobilization won’t happen even with poor public outcomes; how charts (as opposed to fundamentals) model potential futures; Gaya Herrington’s January 2020 model of how well “The Limits to Growth” tracked

25:23 – which model might best suit empirical reality; the factors behind civilizational collapse; COVID denialism on the Left & Right; total collapse will likely not happen

32:30 – the “stable world” model & conscious choice; why civilizational collapse tends to happen all at once; stagnation, inertia; are Democrats more blameworthy than Republicans for climate inaction; Arnold Schroder on abusive relationships within politics; how polarization worsens problems of collectivization, social cohesion

45:14 – models vs predictions; why readers should appreciate the simple, material rationales in “Limits to Growth”; it’s important to identify moments of stagnation; although specific limits change, the concept of planetary limits does not; systems theory & the environment: Jeffrey West’s “Scale”; the importance of logarithmic charts

58:04 – consumerism & the nervous system; how forced de-growth in one’s everyday life creates space & time; Nietzsche on religious war; the parameters of human nature; radical responsibility

1:11:08 – the world is getting more & more competitive, but over what?; China & population fetishism, population control; Elon Musk vs. Genghis Khan; how environmental issues became coded Left

1:19:44 – assessing the final numbers: 2, 3, or 4 degrees of warming?; the effects of individual milestones; feedback loops & uncertainties; why the survival of the human species is not the actual concern; how “survival” is used as a cudgel to minimize climate concerns

1:28:24 – Degrowth vs. Radical Abundance; understanding the arrow of progress vs. periods of stagnation

Tags: #climatechange, #politics, #podcast

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Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a large number of books defying systematization, creating a reputation for difficulty that is not altogether fair. For instance, “The Gay Science” (1882) captures the bulk of Nietzsche’s philosophy through great writing highlighting its own anti-obscurantism, which makes it the perfect book for introducing readers to his work. In ArtiFact #39, Alex Sheremet and Irish poet Laura Woods tackle Friedrich Nietzsche’s literary and intellectual accomplishments by carefully assessing the book’s introductory poems and 383 aphorisms, by way of Walter Kaufmann's classic translation. They dissect Nietzsche’s views of women, art, politics, war, questions of personal experience, and more, finishing their conversation in a patron-only discussion on the book’s remainder. Other subjects include: Brett Weinstein and Aella (OnlyFans), Steven Pinker’s misunderstandings of Nietzsche, how Friedrich Nietzsche can be used for left-wing politics, a men’s rebellion on Reddit, and more.You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV8xtLySAx4

For access to the B Side conversation, support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Watch our analysis of Steven Pinker’s rejection of Nietzsche in “Enlightenment Now”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4uAyN00BdM

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4DApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEVGoogle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJAmazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxBPodbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUoiHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Thumbnail photo: Joel Parrish: https://poeticimport.com

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:11 – introducing Friedrich Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science”; why this is a book one returns to; how Nietzsche combines logical and rhetorical argument; common criticisms of the text; why non-systematization works for Nietzsche; the desire for objective values; how Steven Pinker uses Nietzsche without crediting him; calling Nietzsche a “great stylist” is often a pejorative; why “great style” so often encourages great, re-purposed ideas; Nietzsche’s self-conception as an artist

20:51 – Nietzsche’s poetic writing in the “Preface to the Second Edition” of The Gay Science; the claim that certain books, ideas require experience to understand; rebuffing the pop cultural understanding of Nietzsche; “convalescent art”, Alex’s & Laura’s experience with such; Nietzsche glosses over differing responses to sickness; Jordan Peterson vs. Friedrich Nietzsche; linking subjectivity and objectivity; an art for artists

48:00 – truth, illusion, art, reality; dissecting Friedrich Nietzsche’s poems in “The Gay Science”; the Walt Whitman connection; the meaning of Gay Science as a title; how Nietzsche makes fun of artistic clichés in his poems; how notions of “art and truth” developed over millennia; Dan Schneider’s view of art is almost more Nietzschean than Nietzsche’s

01:04:54 – tackling the aphorisms of Book 1 of The Gay Science; Aphorism 1- explaining what Friedrich Nietzsche means by “good”, “bad”, and “evil”; the see-saw structure of the aphorisms; Nietzsche failed to distinguish war from wars of stagnation; why hasn’t China unleashed more carnage on to the world; Donald Trump vs. Middle America; how stagnation leads to a conflict of attrition; Nietzsche’s endearing response to the Paris Commune; psychology of sickness; levity/laughter as a corrective for life and art

01:28:32 – aphorism 20; science vs. scientism; foundational thinking in the modern world; on the issue of sex nerds; Bret Weinstein gets accused of trying to recruit unicorns into his marriage; Weinstein’s comments on Aella

01:42:50 – aphorism 16: Over the Footbridge: lyrical, structural; its emotional import for The Gay Science; aphorism 54- on the process of writing; aphorism 56 & “ending aphorisms” in Nietzsche

01:58:03 – Nietzsche on women; hidden progressivism in Nietzsche; rejecting the cult of rationality; experiences have pre-rational effects; why it’s impossible to get out of the body; the “concept” of women; aphorism 66: feminine, masculine, exaggerated weakness; what women, men can “afford” to do; how liberals argue from conservative assumptions; mixed messages to men about opening up, showing emotions; Reddit’s AskMen subreddit in open rebellion; “smile more, girl!” vs. “cry more, men!”; the desire of both men and women to “change” their partners based on a mental image;

02:17:49 – aphorism 67; Friedrich Nietzsche’s abusive language vs. progressive content of views; arbitrary metrics in dating apps; aphorism 68; aphorism 71- “on female chastity”;

Tags: #books #philosophy #podcast #nietzsche #booktube

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Although Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 caught many analysts off-guard, Ukrainian-born scholar Ivan Katchanovski (University of Ottawa) predicted the growth of tensions well before the Maidan. In some respects, the Ukraine War as well as Vladimir Putin and Putinism had their roots in the early 1990s. On the one hand, the West made contradictory promises to Ukraine about its security while demanding they give up nuclear arms, and on the other, Zbigniew Brzezinski’s fears (The Grand Chessboard, 1997) of America’s “mismanagement” of its Russia policies were slowly realized. At the same time, Russia’s poverty and instability in the 1990s gave rise to ultra-nationalism and other forms of right-wing discourse which would eventually go mainstream.

In ArtiFact #38, Alex Sheremet is joined by Ivan Katchanovski to discuss some lesser-known details of Russian and Ukrainian history in light of the Ukraine War.

Follow Ivan Katchanovski on Twitter: https://twitter.com/I_Katchanovski

If you found this video useful, support us on our Patreon page and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4DApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEVGoogle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJAmazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxBPodbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUoiHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – Ivan Katchanovski’s theory of the Maidan Massacre as a right-wing false flag attack

1:32 – Ivan Katchanovski as a Ukrainian dissident in the Soviet Union & a Ukrainian dissident today; Alex Sheremet’s Chernobyl mutations

5:20 – Ivan Katchanovski on the pitfalls of Russia-Ukraine discourse; his upbringing in Ukraine under the USSR; why studying international relations was impossible in the Soviet Union; studying alongside the future presidents of Georgia and Ukraine; family expulsions from Poland; attending anti-Soviet demonstrations; why writing a thesis in Ukrainian was acceptable but its content rejected; censorship today

24:16 – Alex: censorship in the West is (mostly) outsourced to liberal institutions rather than government censorship; on the nature of the left/right divide & student demonstrations in the USSR; how Soviet politics bleed into Ukrainian & American politics; why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is more like the Crimean War of 1853-56 as opposed to Hitler’s invasion of Poland; neither Russia nor America want a truly strong, independent Ukraine, but a client state; fractures in pro/anti-Soviet referendums in early 90s Ukraine; why some post-Soviet states remained free of conflict & others not

51:32 – Eduard Limonov’s 1992 prognostication of civil war coming to Ukraine; to what extent are his comments on Ukraine the thinking of Russian intellectuals in the 1990s; right-wing and left-wing repression in the 1990s; Boris Yeltsin’s & Vladimir Putin’s relationship with right-wing post-Soviet thought

01:07:50 – the historical & linguistic fault-lines between Russia, Ukraine; Bolshevism & anti-Bolshevism the roots of ultranationalism and Nazism within Ukraine; the lack of hostility between Russians & Ukrainians after 1950s; Ukraine’s present-day illiberalism on language policy; Lenin’s policy of Ukrainianization; class-based policies vs. cultural policy

01:26:42 – the Donbass: its history & present; how the Donbass thought of itself through history; why Donbass was unhappy after voting for a unified Ukraine; Donbass as “Europe’s final frontier”; Donbass independence streak means Russia might have to deal with Donbass secessionist movements; how oligarchs took over East Ukraine; how Maidan changed oligarch structure

01:40:49 – assessing the 1990s for Russia & Ukraine’ Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard” & Heartland Theory; how America’s behavior towards 1990s Russia helped create Putin & Putinism; how Putin combined multiple ideologies; the West has blocked peace deals in the Ukraine War; why did the US offer a Marshall Plan for Europe but not for Russia; the Customs Union vs. European Union Association Agreement

02:13:36 – was the Maidan Massacre a false flag; right-wing groups were not politically popular, but provided the muscle for Maidan; what changes if the Maidan Massacre was a false flag?; Ivan Katchanovski on the role of right-wing militias; Ukraine as containment strategy; assessing whether Maidan was a “Western-backed coup”, totally independent, or something in the middle?

02:50:52 – why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal; hypothetical circumstances under which Russia’s invasion would be legal or ethical; John Mearsheimer & getting beyond the Monroe Doctrine; how the Russia-Ukraine war will determine the fate of America & Russia

Tags: #russiaukrainewar, #russia, #ukraine

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Junichiro Tanizaki (1886 – 1965) was a Japanese novelist born to a Tokyo merchant family. His work combined some of the best elements of modernism while tapping both Japanese and Western aesthetics. In ArtiFact #37, Alex Sheremet and Ruslan Gallopyn discuss Tanizaki’s “Some Prefer Nettles” (1929), a novel depicting a dysfunctional open marriage and impending divorce which nonetheless might be averted. The book’s dry humor, poetic descriptions, modern (especially by today’s standards) psychology, and deft use of understatement allows Junichiro Tanizaki to develop some of his richest characters.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/3KJ6vvM4Llg

If you found this video useful, support us on our Patreon page and get the patron-only B Side to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Alex turns on his foot massager; Alex, undercover cop?; planning future conversations; analyzing Ingmar Bergman’s “From The Life of Marionettes”; why the roof-jumping scene is among the film’s best; contrasting with Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage”; is Bergman critiquing faux psychology with the “latent homosexuality” diagnosis; two Russian speakers discuss Alex’s Russian bard music playlist; Vladimir Vysotsky’s theatrical performances; Ada Yakusheva; Russian music vs. Russian lyrics; Soviet upbringings: Cheburashka, Russian animation, Russia’s version of Winnie Poo; implicit competitiveness within Russian music; a Russian goes to banya, gets too drunk, ends up on a plane to his address in the wrong city; how Russian got its monopoly on kitsch; preparing for Alex’s Russia-Ukraine conversation next week; Xi Jinping, Crimea, Vladimir Putin & political legitimacy in the developed vs. developing worlds; why the Donbass is such an interesting place, well before Russia’s invasion

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4DApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEVGoogle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJAmazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxBPodbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUoiHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

0:00 – introduction to Junichiro Tanizaki’s novel & aesthetics; In Praise of Shadows; Patreon show

5:31 – “Some Prefer Nettles” & modern politics; Tanizaki’s cleverness in the opening chapter; Kaname’s indecision, the book’s understated use of humor; invoking “the old man” as a concept vs. a slowly-unfolding, ‘real’ character; Tanizaki’s tapping of ‘pure’ aesthetics in the service of deeper characterization; East/West, conservative/progressive

22:07 – Tanizaki’s use of self-indulgence; Kanane is incurious; the (false) characterization of Misako; Kaname’s use of psychological leverage against Misako; Tanizaki apportions guilt differently from how the characters apportion guilt; Kaname’s passive-aggressive qualities work well with Japanese stylization, use of understatement; the different functions of passivity

35:40 – the Osaka, Tokyo, Kyoto axes; how Tanizaki always presents counter-arguments to his own arguments; “Some Prefer Nettles” & the tension between subjectivity, objectivity within the narration; how “the old man” goes from being indirectly characterized, to speaking for himself; Tanizaki’s use of music; the Herman Hesse / Steppenwolf connection; Kaname’s confusion of women with art, art with women; Hiroshi as a character; re-assessing Misako

57:30 – introducing Takanatsu; the use of seemingly throwaway details (like the purchase of a dog) for rich effect; Misako’s domesticity

01:11:00 – the phenomenal middle section in “Some Prefer Nettles”; Kaname’s “set of principles” for divorce; objectivity in humor;

01:25:15 – Kaname’s visits to Louise, a Eurasian prostitute; what this says of his psychology; the interplay of East/West disturbs Kaname; ennui, boredom, & the creation of synthetic enigmas;

01:36:50 – the book’s mysterious ending; “the old man’s” principles about marriage, love; how Kaname’s lack of “troubles” hurt him; how seemingly regressive comments on men/women have a progressive edge; O-hisa reveals her own complexities near the end, encouraging Kaname (possibly) to change his incoherent views of women; Tanizaki’s great choice of turning Kaname’s father-in-law into a man of wisdom, yet also a man no one should aspire to be; Kaname realizes he would miss Misako’s domesticity; the John Ashbery connection

Tags: #japaneseculture, #books, #japanese, #podcast, #artifact, #automachination, #asian

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Although ekphrastic poetry (‘poetry about art’) has been around for a long time, the majority of ekphrastic writing does little more than recapitulate and describe a painting. In ArtiFact #36, Alex Sheremet is joined by Jessica Schneider to discuss her recent book of ekphrastic poetry, “Ekphrasm”, and how her approach is different. From the use of recurring characters, to combining observations on photography with those on painting, to characterizing her various poetic narrators, to the use of psychological tricks, there is more to ekphrasis than meets the eye.

Painters covered include Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne, Hilma af Klint, and others.

Buy Jessica Schneider’s “Ekphrasm”: https://www.amazon.com/Ekphrasm-French-Painters-Paintings-Natures-ebook/dp/B0B53ZB2TV

Jessica Schneider’s first poetry collection, “Wordshapes”: https://www.amazon.com/WordShapes-Selected-1999-2009-Jessica-Schneider-ebook/dp/B07HRDL58B/

To get the patron-only B Side to this conversation, support us on our Patreon page and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Enneagram Type 5 & over-preparation; the role of enjambment, punctuation in poetry; does YouTube have an unfilled niche for great short poetry; Alex makes plans for capturing footage of the old brothel he grew up next door to; how footage of the 1945 Victory Day parade in Russia suddenly veers into greatness for 30 seconds; Bruce Ario as the most commercial and viral of poets; Jessica’s earrings interfere with the show; “you’re only as good as your last poem” as a psychological motivator; Alex’s first draft of his Lunar New Year (2023) poem; exclusivity in the arts; Alex and Joel Parrish traveling to Minneapolis for footage related to Bruce Ario; on Malik Bendjelloul’s “Searching for Sugar Man”, a biopic on Sixto Rodriguez; Sixto Rodriguez’s excellence as a singer-songwriter; the emotional dilemmas of great artists; why animals can serve as a great example for human beings; Americans take the wrong lesson from Office Space; why every Twitter personality, no matter their politics or beliefs, sounds exactly the same; Russia Russia Russia; what gets lost in translation; Jim Morrison, The Doors, The Beatles and commercialism; Nuri Bilge Ceylan; Nassim Taleb snipes at Lex Fridman; do we need 6 months to read & digest The Brothers Karamazov; pitfalls of highly commercial marijuana legalization

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4DApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEVGoogle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJAmazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxBPodbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUoiHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Jessica Schneider’s interview on ekphrasis with Ethan Pinch of @AnthropomorphicHorse – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbjuQX_r_ho

Vivian Maier footage used in video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDewAU-rgIM

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:18 – an icebreaker: Jessica Schneider’s disrespectful emails in preparation for our show

3:18 – how Jessica’s approach to ekphrasis is different; Jessica’s initial frustration with her poem on Mariupol & how it was improved

9:22 – Jessica Schneider’s poem “Manet’s Mirror”, after Edouard Manet’s famous “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère”; how the introduction of Landon at the end of the poem takes it out of the painting’s own diegetic universe; the Wallace Stevens / Sunday Morning connection; why memorizing poetry is excellent for poets

21:40 – Jessica Schneider’s poem “What Monet Said”, after Claude Monet’s “Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son”; Leonard Shlain’s “Art And Physics”

29:35 – the drawing of Paul Cezanne’s son; Jessica Schneider’s “A Young Paul Asleep”; how details totally outside of Cezanne’s drawing make their way into the poem

36:37 – Jessica Schneider’s poem on Mariupol; how Cezanne’s paintings of a forest serve as a ‘spiritual’ backdrop to a seemingly unrelated poem

42:28 – poem on Paul Cezanne’s father reading a newspaper; there has always been a lack of family support for artists; “reading” Cezanne’s painting vs. writing the poem

50:54 – Camille Pissaro’s Voisins; extracting (unexpected) value from a title

56:27 – Jessica’s poem after Vivian Maier’s photography; on the nature of “selfie” / self-portrait poetry; Alex gets in touch with his feminine side

01:05:34 – a poem after Hilma af Klint’s “swan” series; how a series can change individual artistic objects; speculation on Hilma af Klint’s desire to publicly release her work only after a substantial amount of time passed after her death

01:14:08 – discussing the patron-only show & a final, autobiographical poem from Jessica Schneider; a non-ekphrastic poem that nonetheless taps into some concepts of ekphrasis

Tags: #poetry, #painting, #photography, #artpodcast, #cezanne, #monet

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Bruce Ario (1955 – 2022) was a great Minneapolis poet with a fascinating backstory. Although he did not have much interest in writing in the start of his adult life, a car accident and traumatic brain injury (possibly) led to mental illness, homelessness, drug addiction, a religious conversion, and, most importantly, a lifetime of poetry and prose. Author of the novel “Cityboy”, he is also creator of the ario poetic form, a 10-line, 4-stanza poem which taps plain speech and startling juxtapositions of thought and image for its poetic effect.

In ArtiFact #35, Alex Sheremet is joined by one of Bruce Ario’s surviving brothers, Joel Ario, and Bruce’s literary executor, Dan Schneider @cosmoetica to discuss Bruce’s upbringing, mental health struggles, fascination with Minneapolis, personal views, and art.Watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycAD9s57Re8

To get the patron-only B Side to this conversation, support us on our Patreon page and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: the 2022 Sound & Sight film poll; why Chantal Akerman's “Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles” is not a traditionally bad film, but still fails; contrasting the film’s aimlessness with Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion”; some artistic decisions Chantal Akerman could have made to improve her film; why Roman Polanski’s Carol has a more logical character arc than Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman; how Akerman’s writing (and critical appraisals of it) mirrors some of the worst elements of John Williams’s “Stoner”; if Jeanne Dielman seems to have a rational, mature view of life, murder can’t really be part of the character arc; contrasting this film to Orson Welles’s “Other Side Of The Wind”; the Jeanne Dielman / John Cassavetes connection; James Emanuel, “a poet who wrote about racism”; why Ben Shapiro, Matt Yglesias, liberals & reactionaries need to shoehorn art into some political box; using emotion in the arts as a springboard for depth; narcissism & in-fighting between Native American elites; why YouTube blocked a Russian playlist featuring Alexander Galich, Bulat Okukdzhava, and Novella Mateeva; on Alexander Galich’s career: from social-climbing artiste to genuine dissident & poet; Alexander Galich’s “Song About A Bike”; going to Minneapolis to get footage related to Bruce Ario & the 1990s arts scene; racial segregation in Minneapolis art; Elon Musk’s Twitter meltdown; why Elon Musk’s COVID demands in 2020 & wrong-headed economic prognostications in 2022 are self-serving; Elon Musk’s free speech hypocrisy; if Twitter goes away, something nearly identical would replace it

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4DApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEVGoogle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJAmazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxBPodbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUoiHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Dan Schneider’s website: http://www.cosmoetica.com/

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex Sheremet’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – Dan Schneider on Bruce Ario’s importance, especially in light of his mental health ills

3:28 – Joel Ario on Bruce’s siblings, parents, & upbringing; Bruce’s “sensitivity” & what this entailed for his person, his art; Dan Schneider speaks to art vs biography; Bruce’s childhood

10:04 - Bruce Ario’s budding rebelliousness, even before his car accident; Bruce Ario’s philosophical father; family addiction issues; Bruce’s accident and subsequent mental health woes; sexual guilt

21:24 – Bruce Ario’s feelings of romantic, sexual loneliness; reading his poem “Lofting It Into Friendship”, & how loneliness did not lead to bitterness or entitlement; Bruce’s visits to prostitutes, poetry on the subject; reading “Waltz In Waltz Out”; how Bruce’s post-injury complaints about the world ultimately cohered into a rational critique

34:35 – Bruce Ario’s inner and outer lives; his charitable donations, self-sacrifice; the “devils” Bruce saw in his own life; his use of these situations artistically

40:43 – Bruce Ario’s 6 months of homelessness; Bruce’s mature response to mental health issues, and his refusal to romanticize his own problems; how mental health issues are incidental to, rather determinative of, artistic creativity; how this might have differed in Bruce; why Bruce Ario, despite mental health issues, does not have to judged on a curve

50:10 – reading Bruce Ario’s poem “Tugging”; on the intersection of random variables and art; poetry vs biography

01:00:38 – Dan Schneider reads a passive-aggressive email from an academic belittling Bruce Ario’s accomplishments under the guise of helpfulness; how fake liberal types damage not only those who are struggling, but the arts and artists in general; concluding remarks

Tags: #Minneapolis, #mentalhealth, #poetrylovers, #drugaddiction, #poetry, #poetrycommunity

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After embarking on a two-decade terrorist campaign of mail bombs, Ted Kaczynski forced the Washington Post to publish “Industrial Society And Its Future”, or, the Unabomber Manifesto, in 1995. This was an infamous tract on climate change as well as on the philosophical and pragmatic ramifications of accelerating technology.

In ArtiFact #34, Alex Sheremet is joined by radical climate activist Arnold Schroder of the Fight Like An Animal podcast to discuss “The Industrial Society And Its Future”. They tackle Ted Kaczynski’s claims about Leftism and political psychology, his time frame for ecological collapse, his use and misuse of terms such as “freedom”, and more. In assessing the Unabomber manifesto, they conclude that while Ted Kaczynski is often labeled insane or a genius, he is in fact neither. Rather, he is very much within his milieu, as well as a statistically likely end-product of his times.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0HNSRH1sKA

To get the B Side to this conversation, support us on our Patreon page for patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B Side topics: Alex's "unbelievable" banana; political turning points for Alex and Arnold Schroder; Arnold's activism and upbringing; the nature of the 1990s; political illusions; 90s vs. 2000s Internet, message boards, sever hosting; the over-willingness for everyone, of all ideological stripes, to be subsumed by fads, lingo, non-expression; how right-wing elements use liberal PMC empathy; the failure of social movements, narrowing of political possibilities; Bill Clinton's once-in-a-generation political talent; technological stimulation & human contentment

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4DApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEVGoogle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJAmazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxBPodbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUoiHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Arnold Schroder’s website: https://www.againsttheinternet.com/

Arnold Schroder’s Twitter page: https://twitter.com/arnold_schroder

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:00 – Ted Kaczynski was neither a madman nor a genius

01:18 – introducing Arnold Schroder, Ted Kaczynski, the Fight Like An Animal Podcast; human nature, human psychology; the first battles fighting climate change have been lost; the Unabomber manifesto

8:54 – why Alex wasn’t impressed with the craft of Industrial Society And Its Future; how Ted Kaczynski is representative of 20th century pathologies; unethical experiments; Arnold’s background growing up in a cult prepared him to better understand Ted Kaczynski

18:00 – tackling the opening paragraph of the Unbabomber manifesto; the Nietzsche / Steven Pinker / Ted Kaczynski connection; ideas of human progress, cooperation; Ted Kaczynski does not properly define freedom; violence vs. authoritarianism

35:16 – ambiguity in Industrial Society And Its Future; some failures of Third Way and Fourth Way politics; the syncretic nature of politics and art; Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring as historical syncretism

50:52 – how Ted Kaczynski’s claims about “optional technology” proved true

58:10 – deeper issues in the Left/Right divide; why modern language of liberalism and conservatism is misleading; environmentalism is only recently a “liberal” issue

01:07:10 – Ted Kaczynski’s claims for Left/Right; hierarchy, openness, sexuality; moralizing about sexuality leads to ideological attachments; a masturbatory issue with zoos; pleasure and dopamine

01:15:45 – the Unabomber’s definition of Left Wing and liberal: political correctness, interest in feminism, gay rights, animal rights, antiracism; Ibrahim X. Kendi & what the Stop Asian Hate campaign got wrong; discussions of class & academia; liberal pathologies, hyper-sensitivities; the Left vs. objectivity; leftists exerting strength

01:31:00 – Ted Kaczynski’s argument about leftist values interfering with climate projects; de-growth and abundance; (slightly) greater scarcity as a psychological positive; discussing transitional states; food crises, inflation, collapse; the 2010s as a turning point

01:57:10 – previewing the patron-only bonus show: Arnold Schroder’s activism, the 1990s, Internet cultures in transition, historical promises, & more

Tags: #Unabomber, #TedKaczynski, #climatechange

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Although Israelis view the events of 1948 as liberation, to Palestinians, this was “Nakba”, or “disaster”. According to Israeli historian Benny Morris, the events of those first few years were tantamount to “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians, a fact that neither Israel nor the international community have been able to properly deal with. How to resettle hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees and their descendants? Was the original partition of Palestine equitable and just, and if not, what would a logical compensation package look like? Was Israel interested in a genuine peace process, or do the Oslo Accords, Camp David, Taba, and events surrounding the First and Second Intifada suggest that Israel, according to Norman Finkelstein, is frightened of a Palestinian “peace offensive”?

In this video, Norman Finkelstein, scholar of Palestine and the Holocaust, author of “Beyond Chutzpah”, “The Holocaust Industry”, “Gaza”, and “I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get To It”, convenes a panel with Alex Sheremet and several Palestinian refugees. These are scholar Mouin Rabbani, activist Sana Kassem, B’Tselem researcher Musa Abu Hashhash, and activist Arwa Hashhash.

They discuss their families’ experience fleeing Israel’s war of independence, the destruction of Palestinian homes, the apartheid system of law, arrest, detention, harassment, and subsequent wars.

Norman Finkelstein, who is himself the son of Holocaust survivors, often tells the story of his parents’ shock at Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinian refugees. He credits them with his moral understanding of the world and his interest in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Norman Finkelstein’s website: https://www.normanfinkelstein.com/

Mouin Rabbani’s work at Jadaliyya: https://www.jadaliyya.com/Author/4114

Sana Kassem’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/SanaKassem

If you found this video useful, support us on our Patreon page and get patron-only content: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4DApple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEVGoogle Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJAmazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxBPodbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUoiHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

1:25 – introducing the panel and their recollections

10:41 – 1947-1948; the Israeli War of Independence; Palestine’s Nakba Day; how the Israeli Declaration of Independence tapped international law to create Israel; Musa shares his refugee experience after fleeing the last Palestinian village in 1949; Sana relates her family’s experience of fleeing war; Mouin describes his family’s escape from the last Palestinian village in Haifa; Arwa’s claim that the logic of oppression and occupation cannot last

36:04 – the 1967 War; Mouin describes Israel’s use of napalm; Sana describes painting her light bulbs blue to avoid Israeli airstrikes; Musa describes his family’s loss of property

47:40 – Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon, Sabra and Shatila massacres; Israel’s reputation begins to decline; Sana’s experiences in Beirut during the war; legal racism against Palestinians in Lebanon; Palestinian inability to inherit property; Mouin describes post-1947 Israeli laws dispossessing Palestinian property; the role of Jordan in the Palestinian refugee crisis, Jordanian claims over the West Bank

01:03:51 – the First and Second Intifadas; Arwa recalls her father’s arrests, inability to go to school, Second Intifada; Musa recounts Israeli harassment of him and his family, detention conditions; Musa shares his disappointment with the First Intifada; Mouin describes the closure of schools and universities as collective punishment against Palestinians; the use of identity cards to restrict movement; labor rights in Israel and Palestine; Musa on continued targeting and harassment of his family; Norman Finkelstein describes house demolitions for stone-throwing; debating hope in Palestine; Norman Finkelstein on Gaza’s March of Return as the Third Intifada; lack of support from West Bank, Fatah

02:06:14 – the Oslo Accords; why the Letters of Mutual Recognition were a red flag for negotiations; Norman Finkelstein recalls his reactions to Oslo; Noam Chomsky’s warning about the Oslo Accords; the Abraham Accords between Israel and the UAE; Morocco’s normalization agreement, Trump’s recognition of Morocco’s claims over Western Sahara and the Sahrawi people; the role of Arab states in Palestine; Mouin clarifies Arab-Palestinian relations; Sana on the role of money in the PLO

Tags: #NormanFinkelstein, #freepalestine, #gaza, #israelpalestine, #apartheid, #westbank

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James Cameron's "Terminator" film series combines the best of Hollywood while remaining unburdened by its convention and cliche. In “Terminator” (1984), Cameron casts an apparently reluctant Arnold Schwarzenegger into the role of T800. From the opening shots of a nude, physically unfamiliar, almost biblical figure surveying Los Angeles, to the slow, complex, yet satisfying buildup of drama/plot machinations, the first Terminator is an example of novelty and craftsmanship in genre film, while “Terminator 2: Judgment Day” takes it all a step further through deeper explorations of character.

In ArtiFact #32, Alex Sheremet, Ethan Pinch, and Jessica Schneider compare the two films as they try to imagine seeing them for the first time. Questions discussed include: how does Arnold Schwarzenegger, as actor, add to the films without much acting? How does his character (even if programmed) change? Are human beings becoming more efficient thinkers and killers to compete against Skynet? Are narrative arcs “enough” to make a good film?

You may also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIRS9DIl3bk

If you found this video useful, support us on our Patreon page and get the 2+ hour, patron-only “B side” to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B side topics: Jessica learns the final piece of her Zoom puzzle; why Ethan Pinch’s pet rabbit made Alex think differently of him; explaining why Bruce Ario’s (as well as Walt Whitman’s) poems creep up upon the reader; Jessica assesses Bruce Ario’s Enneagram types via his novel Cityboy; how death de-fangs “threatening” artists; Ethan Pinch goes off on the British Monarchy, explains Queen Elizabeth’s hidden, understated power; the monarchy’s control of British media; Prince Andrew’s arms sales to dictators; Aleksandr Dugin’s “The Fourth Political Theory” doesn’t differentiate between strains of liberalism; Jessica on Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story on Netflix; thinking about psychopathy, human violence; debating the best artist biopics: Vivian Maier, Amadeus, Into The Deep (on Herman Melville), Emily Dickinson; making fun of Amanda Gorman; art & futurity

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read Jessica Schneider's article on Terminator 1: https://www.automachination.com/great-action-great-storytelling-james-cameron-terminator-1984/

Read Jessica Schneider's latest book of poetry, Ekphrasm: https://www.amazon.com/Ekphrasm-French-Painters-Paintings-Natures-ebook/dp/B0B53ZB2TV

Subscribe to Ethan Pinch’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AnthropomorphicHorse

Read the latest essays from the automachination universe: https://www.automachination.com/

Read Alex's (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:18 – introduction; how James Cameron’s early films were formative for Jessica and Alex; arguments for why Terminator 2: Judgment Day is the superior film; Ethan on the shifting stakes between films

9:38 – craft in the Terminator films; symbolism, psychology, how Arnold Schwarzenegger realized over time this was a worthwhile film; seeing the film for the first time; Ethan on the Cold War and Freudian themes; Alex on the use of death, humanoids in Terminator 2 as a nightmarish factor; the comparison to Chris Market’s “Le Jetee”; the Hitchcock connection

25:32 – Jessica on the characterization of Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton); smaller scenes as interstitial character-building; how Terminator and well-crafted genre films separate consistent thinking from mere aesthetic preference;

40:43 – Alex on capturing the logic of AI, computer programming; object-oriented behavior in human beings vs. machines; the Freudian / Cold War themes as under the auspices of competition, survival; the attempted Dyson killing as Terminator-like; sociopathy, narcissism vs. robotic behavior; Ethan on the films’ haunted future; The Prisoner and the “white ball” as the sum of incipient human fears; the cliches in the first film’s ending vs. the fact that “the real action” hasn’t been shown from the future; the introduction of behavioral constraints

01:03:15 – cynical apocalypticism into Terminator 2: Judgment Day; the Philip K. Dick connection; how the film makes fun of answers and non-answers, such as John Connor’s interruption of his mother’s spoken/writerly cliches about motherhood; the use of music; do cultural references date James Cameron’s films?

01:15:00 – the use of Los Angeles as both topical, as well as prophetic; turning LA’s Hollywood back upon it across films; Jessica on 90s culture

Tags: #Terminator, #JamesCameron, #scifi

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Although Ryusuke Hamaguchi has been a well-known Japanese film director for some time, it was only with 2021’s Drive My Car that his name entered the West. In ArtiFact #31, Alex Sheremet and Ezekiel Yu dissect Hamaguchi’s two best-known films: 2018’s Asako I & II, a romantic drama with strong anime overtones, and Hamaguchi’s breakthrough film, Drive My Car. Neither Alex nor Zeke are impressed with these films – from the cliched scripts, to poorly sketched characters, to cinematography which adds little to the films’ lacks, to a strange Orientalism (as well as Occidentalism) in the portrayal of women and love, neither Asako I & II nor Drive My Car deserve much staying power.

You may also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTPfXXdSPw

If you find this video useful, consider supporting our work on Patreon and get the patron-only B side to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

B side topics: Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” (2019); objectivity & subjectivity in the arts; the perils of artistic reflexivity, as in the rap world; why even the best critics & writers will have blind spots; Dan Schneider’s artistic blueprint; the coming of art that we might not even recognize as art; objective criticism is often accused of pretentiousness, yet subjective critique can just as easily be accused of narcissism; objective criticism is expansive; why removing most constraints eliminates true freedom; Zeke’s desire to bridge analytical criticism with James Baldwin-esque cultural comment; Alex’s method of writing means a lot gets thrown out; turning one’s back to the future means one will ultimately not be accepted by it

Ezekiel Yu’s review of Asako 1 & 2: https://www.automachination.com/beauty-filth-ryusuke-hamaguchi-asako-i-ii-2018

Ezekiel Yu’s review of Drive My Car: https://www.automachination.com/vacuum-taciturn-ryusuke-hamaguchi-drive-my-car-2021/

Alex Sheremet’s review of Haruki Murakami’s “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki And His Years Of Pilgrimage”: https://alexsheremet.com/review-of-haruki-murakamis-colorless-tsukuru-tazaki-and-his-years-of-pilgrimage/

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:18 – introduction; Orientalism in Hamaguchi’s Asako 1 & 2, Drive My Car; the “anime” qualities of Asako 1 & 2; Baku as a JRPG hero; Asako and Baku have no reason to be attracted to one another; why the English title is potentially good, but wasted; the two forms of bad writing in Ryusuke Hagamuchi

21:04 – Ethan Pinch on Orientalism; the John Williams / Stoner connection; both films feature badly written women; women presented in animalistic fashion with no internal life; the awful motorcycle scene in Asako 1 & 2; why the film’s side characters are more interesting; how a good scene goes off the rails; more mechanistic problems with the writing; how the goofy landlord character is the Orientalist “weak Asian male”, a trope familiar to those who follow right-wing journalist Andy Ngo; how anime techniques get misused without a real object; the hypocritical portrayals of Asako; critiquing a bad ending; some of the film’s worst lines

52:07 – Ryusuke Hamagushi’s Drive My Car; how the film begins with an absurd setup which can only let the viewer down; puerile “slice of life” drama; the Orientalist reviews of Drive My Car; contrasting Hamagushi’s films with “Some Prefer Nettles” by Junichiro Tanizaki; an hour in, Hamagushi offers little depth to the characters; the ‘inner’ drama of Uncle Vanya; Occidentalism in Hamaguchi; Alex on Murakami’s fiction; Misaki’s character is just as empty as everyone else’s; on forced characterization; the weird necessity to “redeem” bad characters (if they’re pretty women); the objectification of Oto by all characters; mystery requires substance; the lamprey Orientalism; the film’s notion of an all-forgiving, all-illuminating love

Tags: #Hamaguchi, #JapaneseFilm, #Orientalism

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Elon Musk is a South African entrepreneur who has recently entered America’s cultural (and political) wars. Celebrated by Joe Rogan and Sam Harris, Elon Musk has carved out a level of celebrity most CEOs don’t get to enjoy, amassing 100 million Twitter followers, marrying his brand to his own persona, and encouraging a cult-like audience which publicly defends Musk against bad publicity. Long derided for his business practices, from poor employee and car safety standards, to Tesla lemon laundering, to a wild bet on purchasing Twitter which he is now trying to back out of, his recent foray into politics (including attacks from Donald Trump) has only increased this criticism. In this video, Alex Sheremet and Dan Schneider assess Elon Musk’s self-claims against reality and the documentary record.

If you find this video useful, consider supporting our work on Patreon and get patron-only exclusives: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhnBzyZVwo0

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Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Dan Schneider’s website: http://www.cosmoetica.com

Dan Schneider’s YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/cosmoetica

Timestamps:

0:18 – how Elon Musk outwore his welcome; body shaming Elon Musk; how Musk’s definition of Political Correctness & “wokeness” is applicable to himself; why has Elon inserted himself into the public sphere?

7:24 – Dan: how can Elon Musk be wrong on almost everything he says?

8:46 – Alex on Elon Musk’s free speech hypocrisy: the alteration of reality by money; SpaceX as having extracted from the commons; why the concept of the self-made man is incoherent

13:57 – Elon Musk’s early history; how Musk shares his father’s flaws while moralizing about them; what does it mean to be “against apartheid” while using slave labor analogues; family drama & blood feuds; why being “self-made” tends to only be about financials

19:54 – Elon Musk fails to understand the public commons; how the commons build up corporations; Elon Musk’s failures with autonomous driving; how the rich socialize costs by not thinking about outcomes

32:50 – Elon Musk is misleading the public on electric tax credits

40:00 – the top few posts in a subreddit critical of Tesla’s cars; Better Business Bureau ratings; the Tesla lemon laundering charges; are EVs greenwashing?

49:30 – Alex on the Inflation Reduction Act; true public investment vs. tax incentives for companies; the traps technocratic solutions create; hypocrisy on crime

59:00 – Elon Musk’s absurd COVID disinformation; Musk doesn’t understand the vaccine or lockdowns; disinformation on the nature of pre-existing conditions & COVID; Musk behaves as if he has no Twitter followers

01:09:20 – Elon Musk promotes the Great Replacement conspiracy theory; what Musk means when he says population “sustainability”

01:17:56 – Elon Musk on simulation theory; he makes a number of invalid assumptions, anthropomorphizes; assessing the typical Musk sycophant

01:27:00 – Elon Musk explains his political leanings; narcissism & virtue-signals; how does the world’s premier environmentalist forge an alliance with climate change skeptics?

01:40:35 – Elon Musk on art; says the video game Elden Ring is “the greatest work of art” he has ever experienced; Musk brings ideology to his Netflix critique because he is incapable of engaging art

Tags: #ElonMusk, #Tesla, #SpaceX, #ArtiFactPodcast, #simulationtheory

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Roe v. Wade was overturned June 2022 by way of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a decision that was decades in the making, yet little prepared-for. At Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s confirmation hearing, she insisted that abortion is best viewed under the Equal Protection Clause rather than that of strict privacy, while in other contexts called Roe v. Wade a poorly argued decision bound to wither away. Despite this, little was done to formally ensure abortion rights.

In this video, Dan Schneider and Alex Sheremet discuss how Roe v. Wade was argued, what could have been added/subtracted, and analyze abortion rights from a holistic and constitutional lens. Dan Schneider also goes into detail about his experience with abortion prior to its legality and easy access, describing illicit medical procedures, medical harms, doctor/patient rape, and other forms of abuse which were rampant in the pre-Roe world.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-p_NC9UnHCs

If you find this episode useful, consider supporting our work on Patreon and get patron-only exclusives: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

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Read more from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Dan Schneider’s website: http://www.cosmoetica.com

Dan Schneider’s YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/cosmoetica

Timestamps:

0:18 – introduction; why Alex believes Roe v. Wade helped in its own undoing

3:43 – Dan goes through the constitutional amendments which support abortion rights: the First Amendment: 1) establishment of religion clause; 2) genetic self-expression

8:41 – Alex: those against abortion also don’t seem to believe that a fetus is a person; why the total lack of desire for abortion-is-murder law enforcement?; infantilizing laws

11:55 why a fetus is “a human tissue” vs. “a human being”; why we might grant more “life” to praying mantises

13:28 – Amendment 4: the coming wave of “unreasonable searches and seizures” due to abortion restrictions; how Amendment 4 grounds “the body” in a right to bodily autonomy

18:14 – how the 9th Amendment guts originalism; denying unenumerated rights is radical right-wing judicial activism; 10th Amendment & all rights “to the people” – the individual is supreme

25:54 – Alex: Amendment 13 prohibits abusive limitations on one’s body; how religious arguments about “the objectification of women” paper over their own desire to objectify women by even worse means: sexual-biological demands, a demand to “perform” by way of the body

29:50 – Amendment 14: how the Due Process Clause & Equal Protection Clause protect abortion

32:20 – Alex: intuitive weaknesses in the privacy argument; Roe v. Wade didn’t make use of the best pro-abortion arguments, which the 14th Amendment also provides; Dan on Dartmouth College v. Woodward; Alex on Judith Thomson’s “A Defense of Abortion” providing an excellent framework for abortion rights; Dan on the Supreme Court

42:50 – kooky Great Replacement comment under our Christopher Langan video; mass dumbing down of culture & abortion politics

44:342 – uh-oh……………

49:00 – failures of the Democratic Party; juicy backtalk on Clarence Thomas; Democratic Party hypocrisy on abortion

01:02:00 – abortion & the Bible; do people become more right-wing as they age?

01:12:13 – Dan Schneider describes 1960/70s prostitution, illegal abortions during restricted access in New York; confronting anti-abortion protesters in the 1980s

01:35:02 – responding to Leah Libresco Sargeant’s New York Times article on classic abortion vs. ectopic pregnancy

Tags: #abortion, #roevwade, #constitution

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American filmmaker Richard Linklater occupies the space between Hollywood and the indie film scene, combining some of Hollywood’s refinements with unexpected inversions and sleights of hand. Perhaps best known for “Boyhood” (2014) and the Before Trilogy (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight), these latter films defined some of Richard Linklater’s chief concerns: the passage of time, the role of nostalgia in youth and adulthood, and the tension between fantasy and reality.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/CIgmRNDTpNQ

If you find this video useful, consider supporting our work on Patreon and get patron-only exclusives, such as the B side to this conversation: https://www.patreon.com/automachination

Topics covered in the patron-only show: Alex shows off his wild Tortie cat; Bach’s role in Jessica’s new book; Jessica’s COVID experience; the possibility of long-term COVID damage on biological systems; Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”; the weirdos trying to prove via Natural Language Processing that Jane Austen is the greatest writer ever; the coming tyranny of the “artsy programmer”; Jessica diagnoses Alex’s psychology; why Dan Schneider (not Nickelodeon Dan) is “extremely giving”; poking fun of Dostoevsky’s “Notes from Underground”; Jessica reads a poem from her new collection, “Ekphrasm”; Alex describes plans for a book diving into 90s culture + politics from all angles; Jessica praises Quentin Tarantino’s, Spike Lee’s stylistics; on “Good Will Hunting”; serendipity among artists; Jessica explains how Emily Dickinson changed her life; Alex reads the first poem (a sonnet) he has written in many years, about a black woman, Connie Marie Hobbs, who was murdered in the 2000s only to be scrubbed from the Internet; how Ezekiel Yu has vastly improved as a writer; Jessica has her 3rd glass of wine; Alex describes an animal’s response to personal musk

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Jessica Schneider’s essay on “Before Sunrise”: https://www.automachination.com/wistful-dissolve-richard-linklater-before-sunrise-1995/

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:18 – introduction; Jessica Schneider’s three essays on the Before Trilogy; thanking a particularly generous Patreon subscriber for getting us closer to $500

2:17 – why Jessica Schneider has always been moved by these films, and “Before Sunrise” in particular

05:40 – Alex explains why coming to the films late doesn’t really take away their more intellectual appeal; how Jesse’s public access television idea turned into now-dead Internet fads

12:56 – digital vs. analog narratives; the thorny topic of dick pics; The Wonder Years connection; “young adult” artistry done well

18:36 – “Before Sunrise” plays with the idea of a ‘new dawn’ by making it undesirable & riddled with anxiety; “Before Sunset” is shorter, more manic in its energy, yet has a more poetic and definitive ending

26:00 – Richard Linklaker makes some intelligent choices with the German couple at the beginning of “Before Sunrise”; Jessica on fantasy vs. reality in the Before Trilogy; Alex on “Before Sunset” as a structural bridge between the films with a totalizing force, as opposed to functioning as a standalone work; how the “magic” disappears in “Before Midnight”

33:35 – Alex defends the Jesse of “Before Midnight”: both Jesse and Celine wanted the same thing, yet to reach it, Jesse had to sacrifice significantly more; how Richard Linklater establishes flaws for both characters

39:34 – Jessica on the Terminator 1 & 2 connection; the viewer’s waning or increasing attraction to Julie Delpy / Ethan Hawke as they mature; Alex explains why his romance and nostalgia have diverted into a richer appreciation of present-day reality (“an intellectual wall comes up”); Europe vs. boring-ass United States; Alex talks about the time Jessica “lost” him in the middle of a jog in Texas

45:27 – how the Before Trilogy slights Americans; connecting these films to the only good sequence in Joachim Trier’s “The Worst Person In The World”; how “Before Sunrise” uses the gradual build-up of romantic tension vs. the give/take buildup of subtle (and not so subtle) resentments in “Before Midnight”

50:53 – Alex on the “pitter-patter” of little insights in “Before Sunrise”; the possibility of additional films; the co-willing, co-manipulation in “Before Sunset”; poet/beggar character interrupts the fantasy world in “Before Sunrise”

01:07:45 – the films are Ethan Hawke centric rather than following Julie Delpy’s character; why Jesse is always the one in a foreign setting; Woody Allen’s “Husbands and Wives” vs. "Before Midnight"

01:17:30 – getting lost in time’s instantiations

Tags: #RichardLinklater, #BeforeTrilogy, #BeforeSunrise, #BeforeSunset, #BeforeMidnight, #EthanHawke, #JulieDelpy

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Published just a few years after Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five”, Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow” uses many of Vonnegut’s postmodern literary techniques: serpentine plots, anchoring phrases/themes, implicit and explicit political commentary without over-moralizing, humor (or attempts at humor), pastiche, and more. Yet the two books are wildly different in accomplishment. What accounts for such differences? How can we differentiate good from bad artistry in works of similar aesthetic predilections? In this video, Alex Sheremet and Joel Parrish debate the merits and de-merits of these two novels while focusing on characterization, sentence construction, insight, social commentary, the use of epigraphs, anchors, and fulcrums, while keeping the big picture in mind.

This conversation can also be watched on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DN2QvbzqgD8

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Timestamps:

0:24 – the Thomas Pynchon / Kurt Vonnegut connection; Gravity’s Rainbow as a narcoleptic; how Joel’s reading of a Thomas Pynchon debunk make him better understand the arts; using Post-Modern aesthetics for good & ill; comparing the first ~200 pages of Gravity’s Rainbow, Slaughterhouse-Five

12:50 – dissecting the Thomas Pynchon fanboy; good ideas vs. proper execution of those ideas; epigraphs in Gravity’s Rainbow, reading through the first sections and its clichés, various artistic failings; why the text is the equivalent of a Hollywood action film for those to “cool” and “smart” for such; how Pynchon goes from solid paragraphs to total formlessness; when writers try to overwhelm the senses, get cutesy for the sake of cutesy, & flail; Captain Beefheart vs. Thomas Pynchon, music vs. the written word

55:24 – dissecting the epigraph & opening chapter in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five; why Vonnegut’s opening is so much more dense than Pynchon’s, despite being more elegant & having less “stuff”; setting up phrases, words, ideas as pivot points & fulcrums; characters in Gravity’s Rainbow (~700 of them) vs. those in Slaughterhouse-Five; how Kurt Vonnegut ‘gets at’ war with no grisly imagery & pure metaphor; why Kurt Vonnegut continues to be ahead of his time artistically & in terms of his observations

01:40:09 – what is the purpose of the ‘Adenoid scene’ in Gravity’s Rainbow?; Thomas Pynchon systematically ignores the need for wit in such over-the-top scenes; later references to the Adenoid as word & fulcrum are empty, vs. Kurt Vonnegut’s treatment of similarly memorable phrasings

01:56:33 – Joel on later sections of Gravity’s Rainbow & why they are (marginally) superior; how the text presaged a balkanization of the arts into niche for self-indulgence & self-titillation; some better passages in the text; Section 9 & the (pointless) harping on the V2’s Poisson distribution as having an obscure salience

02:14:50 – Thomas Pynchon’s vs. Kurt Vonnegut’s treatment of race; why Kurt Vonnegut’s comments on racial riots are still ahead of their time

02:23:32 – the great “war in reverse” scene in Slaughterhouse-Five; why it works in terms of pure writing & character development; analyzing Billy Pilgrim as a non-heroic character & why Kurt Vonnegut made his choices; the role of luck & happenstance in the text & beyond

02:39:05 – Kurt Vonnegut’s treatment of free will vs. determinism; art theory in Slaughterhouse-Five; a few miscellaneous scenes

02:54:30 – some terrible sex scenes in Gravity’s Rainbow; why Thomas Pynchon had the right idea for the book’s ending to simply focus the movement of a V2 rocket, as opposed to moralizing about war; final thoughts on the text, why Thomas Pynchon / Gravity’s Rainbow was “meant to happen”, whereas writers such as Herman Melville were historical & cultural flukes; final thoughts on Kurt Vonnegut

Joel’s website: https://poeticimport.com

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Dan Schneider’s review of Gravity’s Rainbow: http://www.cosmoetica.com/B1277-DES88...

Tags: #ThomasPynchon, #KurtVonnegut, #SlaughterhouseFive, #GravitysRainbow, #Postmodernism, #ArtiFactPodcast

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In Herman Hesse’s “Steppenwolf”, we get a dense text which draws on various philosophical traditions in service of richly characterizing its protagonist, Harry Haller. What does Haller think and why? Are his flights of fancy a mere defense mechanism, or is there genuine depth behind his observations? How do the book’s less obvious (but no less important) moving parts all cohere? How can modern authors use some of the same tactics without leaning into what, a century later, might veer a bit too close to cliché? In this discussion, Alex Sheremet and Joel Parrish cover these and other questions.

You can also watch this conversation on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPwCpSDEcnk

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV

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Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Timestamps:

0:24 – introduction to Herman Hesse’s life, work, and our top-down view of Steppenwolf

9:28 – why books touching upon Eastern philosophy need extra care in character development; how Hermann Hesse opens Steppenwolf for a pessimistic or ambivalent reading of the novel’s ending

16:04 – explaining the faux introduction to Steppenwolf’s “inner” text; how Herman Hesse taps Nietzsche; is the introduction’s final set of claims universally applicable?; meta-issues in Steppenwolf

33:00 – appraising the book’s opening paragraph; Jack Kerouac’s negative critique of Steppenwolf; Redditors in confusion once again

47:20 – Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Charles Johnson’s Oxherding Tale; contentment vs. struggle as a clue to Harry Haller’s psyche; his hatred for, and wallowing within, the bourgeois world; more examples of great lines/paragraphs

58:40 – the book’s action & temporal reality; Steppenwolf’s “magic” as a glimpse into Harry Haller’s mental break; the “Steppenwolf treatise” within the “inner text” and its function; humor vs. tragedy as artistic expression; how and why to laugh at oneself; the “multiple selves” posit of Steppenwolf & Siddhartha; why those with mental turmoil often believe their problems are unique, & how Hesse leverages this for the text

01:36:19 – Harry Haller meets an old university colleague; Haller’s self-serving critique of a Goethe painting; Haller given positive & even prophetic traits for being anti-war, seeing the germs of the next conflict

01:51:31 – Harry meets Hermine; some samples of great dialogue, as well as Haller’s growing realization how “rich” his life has been, irrespective of his current state; Alex & Joel argue that there is some critique to be made of Herman Hesse’s use and writing of female characters; Alex gets very controversial on the subject of old-man sex

02:13:20 –Hermine’s notion of permanence and eternity; the conflict of accumulating knowledge for its own sake; the Magic Theatre & beyond; Harry Haller’s gatekeeping as a psychological tactic; are some of the writerly strategies in Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Oxherding Tale done with those books, and now at risk of becoming clichéd tactics and tropes?

Joel’s website: https://poeticimport.com

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Tags: #Steppenwolf, #HermanHesse, #GermanLiterature, #ArtiFactPodcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPwCpSDEcnk

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In ArtiFact #20, Joel Parrish and Alex Sheremet went through the history of photography from Louis Daguerre (the creator of the daguerreotype) to contemporary photographers. In ArtiFact #25, there are fewer technicals to address and more emphasis on ‘forgotten’ and misunderstood photographers, with more connections to the art world as a whole. Among the questions asked: how can artists understand the techniques of one medium and apply it to their own art? What should the viewer look for in a photograph, anyway? What are the unique advantages and drawbacks of photography, especially in light of “borrowed” tropes such as painting’s still life genre? What do ‘timeless’ photographic shots look like, and is there a difference between those and documentary-style photography?

Photographers covered: Josef Sudek, Zdzisław Beksiński, Francesca Woodman, Hengki Koentjoro, Gordon Parks, Harry Callahan, Josephine Sacabo, Sebastiao Selgado, Laura Macabresku, William Eggleston, Pete Turner

You can also watch this conversation online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au4d8fjlmhQ

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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ArtiFact #25: Photography From Josef Sudek To Laura Makabresku | Joel Parrish, Alex Sheremet

Timestamps:

0:24 – introduction; why there has been such a glut of good (and terrible) photography the past half-century; Joel on the popularization of photography over time

6:12 – Josef Sudek (1896 – 1976) – his strengths & influence; the use of light, color, motifs, and inversions of expectation; an example of a great cityscape; Sudek’s use of abstraction; some issues with still life photography

53:29 – Zdzisław Beksiński (1929 – 2005) – a look at his paintings, surrealism, & comparisons with his photography; an excellent video montage of his photos; how photography naturally lends itself to a ‘softer’ or more muted surrealism; how to apply these principles across art forms & disciplines

01:26:06 – Francesca Woodman (1959 – 1982) – a young photographer who was known for her selfies; how Woodman was able to subvert the “nude in a dilapidated building” cliché; a (rare) excellent photographic still life; responding some flaws in The Woodmans (2010) documentary

01:48:32 – Hengki Koentjoro – a still-living Indonesian photographer known for his landscapes, oceanscapes, and more minimalist shots; Koentjoro’s subtle use of time-lapse photography

02:50:45 – Harry Callahan (1912 – 1999) – a Detroit-based photographer who was excellent in a number of styles, techniques, and photographic genres

03:06:08 – Gordon Parks (1912 – 2006) – a black American photographer who excelled at everything from fashion photography, to the documentary style, to breaking conventions across genres; how his Red Jackson series on Harlem captures the basis for art’s longevity

03:29:00 – Sebastiao Selgado (b. 1944) – a contemporary Brazilian photographer who is most known for his documentary-style photography, even as he pushed boundaries and tropes far outside of the range of more typical documentary snapshots

03:45:35 – Josephine Sacabo – a contemporary photographer with some of the richest uses of analog-style editing techniques; her dipping into ‘painterly’ processes; Josephine Sacabo as a technician

04:06:14 – Laura Makabresku – a contemporary photographer with a tremendous work ethic & an emphasis on symbolism, folklore, religious imagery

04:30:03 – William Eggleston (b. 1939) – a modern photographer who was a pioneer in the use of color, seemingly “unartistic” or banal shots, & documenting the American South at a time when it was out of vogue

04:42:32 – Pete Turner (1934 – 2017) – a photographer across genres and styles anchored by his expert use of color, whether it’s the depiction of New York City in the 1950s using a now-unexpected palette, his travel photography in Africa & beyond, or his more symbolic work

Joel’s website: https://poeticimport.com

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Jessica Schneider's review of The Woodmans: https://www.automachination.com/so-mu...

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

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Although considered one of Kurt Vonnegut’s minor works, 1987’s BLUEBEARD is an interesting novel that covers some fresh territory for the author. It follows the life and work of Rabo Karabekian, the son of Armenian immigrants who flee to California after the Armenian genocide. Starting as a highly realistic, technically proficient painter, Karabekian shifts his aesthetics to Abstract Expressionism, and, after “failing” as an artist, becomes a collector with one magnum opus left inside of him, which is tucked away under padlock in his barn. This is a work of modern Expressionism which a pseudonymous writer, Circe Berman, tries to wriggle out of him, a work which touches upon Kurt Vonnegut’s own experiences at war.

BLUEBEARD tackles the questions of art and meaning, aesthetic preference, and masculine / feminine conceptions of history in ways both similar and not to Kurt Vonnegut’s more well-known works.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/mMNcCdj6XOM

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

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ArtiFact #24: Kurt Vonnegut’s “Bluebeard” | Ethan Pinch, Alex Sheremet

Timestamps:

0:18 – introduction; where does Bluebeard fit among Kurt Vonnegut’s other novels; its writerly vs. painterly qualities; why Ethan thinks it’s the best novel ‘about’ painting that he’s ever read, as well as one of Vonnegut’s best; Alex on his own ‘writerly’ narrative biases when he approaches the visual arts; the pitfalls of ekphrastic poetry; cultural criticism masquerading as art criticism

14:00 – why Bluebeard is a “conflicted” work, and has complex things to say about Abstract Expressionism; the self-destructive streak in AbEx painters; Kurt Vonnegut’s empathetic treatment of their work vs. the existentialism within AbEx

21:32 – Alex’s love/hate relationship with Abstract Expressionism; conspiracy theories around AbEx going back a century; why non-narrative art or claims to non/anti-narrative are not logically tenable; Ethan’s skepticism of (and grudging respect for) Clement Greenberg

34:20 – Kurt Vonnegut’s introductory note to Bluebeard; can it be read as both praise and critique of Abstract Expressionism?; would Kurt Vonnegut say something similar about his own work, or literature that he respects?; AbEx machismo & Kurt Vonnegut’s response to it

45:18 – Ad Reinhardt’s cartoons on the history of visual art; abstraction vs. ‘the tangible’ in elements such as brush-strokes; a story about a poor Winslow Homer reproduction; Rabo Karabekian’s strange comment about the deaths of his AbEx friends – is he offering an implicit critique of their lack of purpose?; art and art-adjacent financials

01:03:00 – setting Bluebeard in its diegetic & historical contexts; photorealism-adjacent commentary in Bluebeard; the importance of Dan Gregory’s ‘forgery’ of a ruble; why Dan Gregory, not Rabo Karabekian, is the true Bluebeard of Kurt Vonnegut’s title

01:18:20 – Alex’s criticism (and praise) of Bluebeard’s writing; how Kurt Vonnegut recapitulates his views on art by way of his own structural and aesthetic decisions within the book; comparing these decisions to earlier texts; Dan Gregory, Circe Berman, and the “Jesus” metric; Circe Berman’s own character arc; what can we make of her “kitsch” aesthetic, as well as her deeper artistic critiques of Abstract Expressionism & beyond?

01:52:12 – on the nature of storytelling; Alex doubts that Ad Reinhardt offer a valid response to critiques of AbEx; on the nature of meaning

02:14:45 – Alex and Ethan debate the use of Rabo Karabekian in Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions; how Kurt Vonnegut critiques Abstract Expressionism by crafting pro-narrative, technical prose; assessing Karabekian’s version of The Temptation of St. Anthony; how abstract values pervade life; on “oblique” criticism, and why James Baldwin did it so well in The Devil Finds Work; a story of Clement Greenberg’s aesthetic strategies in real life; art and the ego; Kurt Vonnegut as realist

2:50:20 – the ending to Bluebeard; the ‘feminine history’ in the text, as reflected in Rabo Karabekian’s final painting, “Now It’s The Women’s Turn”; the idea of women re-creating the world into something better; what of Circe Berman’s own strategy for survival, and how it complicates Kurt Vonnegut’s other observations?; Sateen Dura-Luxe & other tropes

3:05:12 – how cultural & historical context generates artistic currents: hyper-competition in the arts in ancient Greece; spiritual undertones of Giotto’s “perfect circle”; commercialization via Dan Gregory’s need to replicate the ruble; why Ethan is skeptical of both capitalism as well as material / anticapitalist analyses of both life and art

Ethan Pinch’s YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AnthropomorphicHorse

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://www.automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Tags: #KurtVonnegut, #Bluebeard, #AbstractExpressionism

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Just as television eventually gave way to mass adoption and lowest common denominator programming, the Internet, once niche, has given a means for narcissists, sciolists, and other bad actors to carve out an unsuspecting audience. Taken from the Latin “scius” (knowing) and its diminutive “sciolus” (little knower), the word “sciolist” refers to a pretender towards knowledge – conscious or not. Of course, this is a cross-cultural, cross-political phenomenon, for there is a basic, simian drive to not only “know”, but to pretend to know when one does not.

Over the past decade, pretenders such as Jordan B. Peterson, Joe Rogan, Sam Harris, the latter-day Richard Dawkins, Christopher Langan, Ben Shapiro, as well as their liberal counterparts have taken attention away from those with genuine ideas to impart. In this video, Alex Sheremet and Dan Schneider comb through these sciolists’ aesthetics, their claims, their craving for an ever-expanding audience of know-nothings, and various intellectual traps they’ve laid for themselves in the quest for pelf.

You can also watch this conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9e0sb886l1Y

ArtiFact #23: Sciolism & Sciolists – Jordan B. Peterson, Christopher Langan, Athena Walker & Quora Experts | Alex Sheremet, Dan Schneider

Timestamps:

0:18 – introduction to sciolism; Dan Schneider’s history with such, interpretation of the word, and the “wisdom of the common man”; Joe Rogan as a vector for sciolism; comparing the Intellectual Dark Web to Noam Chomsky

7:06 – Jordan B. Peterson; his evolution from trite academic to on-camera actor; Jordan Peterson’s audience capture; the Richard Dawkins / Jordan B. Peterson connection; the growth of the Internet as fuel for sciolism; how Ted Talks transformed from science shows to a Lowest Common Denominator money-grab

18:32 – Jordan Peterson as a malignant sciolist; critiquing Video 1- “One Of The Greatest Speeches Ever”: Jordan B. Peterson as Oprah for white men; Peterson’s superficial understanding of truth vs. reality; his terrible advice to “stop Auschwitz”; his total dearth of material analysis; the way his fans edit video montages of JBP reveal how much they crave cliché

50:00 – critiquing Video 2- “Jordan Peterson: His Finest Moment” – how malignant sciolism makes its way into questions of equality; Jordan B. Peterson’s “stand up at the funeral” hypocrisy; how JBP ends up a shill for mainstream status-quo thinking by obfuscating reality

01:18:16 – critiquing Video 3- “Truth About The Evil 1% Of Society” – Jordan B. Peterson obfuscates what it means to be “for” poverty; more hypocrisy about drug abuse and “laying face-down in a ditch” after his own addiction problems were ameliorated by huge personal wealth; the folly of comparing living standards in an attempt to stop history; why homelessness IS, in fact, a simple problem; Peterson’s willful misreading of the Matthew Effect; how Jordan Peterson confuses money with genuine value

02:07:46 – critiquing Video 4- Jordan B. Peterson is about to have another mental breakdown, this time over vaccination

02:24:45 – Christopher Langan; Dan Schneider’s experiences with Mensa & IQ tests, Alex Sheremet’s experiences with school, the SATs, graduating Valedictorian in college; emotional insecurities generating a wish to ‘succeed’; why don’t high IQ individuals produce things of value?; intelligence vs. accomplishment

02:54:06 – critiquing Erroll Morris’s short film on Christopher Langan; assessing Langan’s style of communication, obfuscation tactics, & extremist ideas

03:53:02 – Christopher Langan’s incoherent concept of “evil”; the CTMU & its language games; why non-artists try to use artistic language to cover up more “boring” ideas

04:02:20 – Christopher Langan’s totally insane social media presence; how can “the smartest man in the America” have such patently terrible ideas?; Langan’s incoherent quotes are poorly written, trite, and without a deeper purpose

04:13:34 – Quora sciolism; benign vs. malignant sciolism; the ‘types’ such websites can sometimes attract; introducing Eva Glasrud, a writer on various topics; TERFs, trans activism, & more; issues with meta-studies vs. individual studies

04:33:08 – more on trans rights activism; are lesbians being pressured into having sex with MtF transsexuals; Eva Glasrud’s white privilege re: black Americans & policing in the US; facts of day-to-day harassment that cannot make it into statistics; if Eva Glasrud believes she is entitled to send aggressive, boundary-setting texts to potential romantic partners on account of her vulnerabilities as a woman, why doesn’t she extend the same empathy to those outside of her own circle?

05:03:42 – Athena Walker as a malignant sciolist; false claims about the nature of psychopathy; why psychopaths DO ‘feel emotions’; Athena Walker’s narcissistic Quora posts; Athena Walker’s fascination with Jordan B. Peterson; how Athena Walker moves from medical misinformation to spiritual psychobabble; how Athena Walker plays up to an audience for the sake of money

05:41:13 – Closing remarks

Dan Schneider’s YT channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN5kTfj5u8XcTBg51Z65EKw

Read Dan Schneider’s essay on early 2000s Internet sciolism: http://www.cosmoetica.com/B184-DES128.htm

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://www.automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Tags: #JordanPeterson, #ChristopherLangan, #AthenaWalker, #ArtiFactPodcast

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) was one of the best poets of the 19th century, yet remains little known today and even less read. At a time when feminist literary criticism (among other relevant lenses) is ascendant, how did Barrett Browning go from a much-admired writer to one that is neglected in favor of her literary inferiors? In ArtiFact #22, Jessica Schneider, Ezekiel Yu, and Alex Sheremet tackle her classic novel-in-verse, Aurora Leigh, uncovering depths and dimensions to a work she considered containing her very best poetry.

You may also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTYi0UMives

Timestamps:

0:18 – Introduction to Elizabeth Barrett Browning & Aurora Leigh – art vs. politics, other -isms; John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” vs. Aurora Leigh; Book 1’s introductory stanza; Christian theology vs. Old Testament myths

16:00 – Book 1; poetic compression; Aurora’s relationship with her parents & how this is conveyed; EBB’s feminist & anti-feminist strains; introducing Romney Leigh as an inverted Victorian trope; contrasts with Jane Eyre; Browning’s prescient critique of liberalism + liberal men; the Victor Erice (El Sur) + Aurora Leigh connection

36:38 – Book 2; Aurora Leigh’s youthful “hubris” & imperfect heroine trope; the understated humor in Aurora Leigh; Zeke pushes back against a Deist reading of the text; uses of Greek/Roman mythology in Aurora Leigh; Virginia Woolf’s (envious) attacks on Browning & EBB’s deep classical education; Browning’s unique spin on feminism; Aurora Leigh angrily rejects Romney Leigh’s marriage proposal

56:45 – Book 3; Aurora Leigh becomes a writer in London, but EBB turns her into an artistic failure; fame vs. genuine achievement & how EBB rejects simply ‘imitating the men’; Aurora Leigh’s thoughts of Romney do not recede; more critiques of faux liberalism via Marian, Romney’s new fiancée; introducing Lady Waldemar as villain; the text’s complex relationship with love and grief

01:14:32 – Book 4; Marian continues her story & meeting of Romney; Aurora Leigh casts doubt on their love as conflating mere charity with love; Aurora Leigh starts to develop feelings for Romney, but why?; EBB’s inversions of ‘goodness’; the material world vs. spiritual underpinnings

01:30:00 – Book 5; one of the philosophically richest books of the text; Aurora Leigh’s “distrust” of Golden Age thinking & how to extract value from the present day; back to Book 4- Marian does not show up to her wedding with Romney, and what this means; the use of women in instrumentalizing men’s identities; more humor from Elizabeth Barrett Browning; Aurora Leigh’s controversial use of “demeaning” language for lower classes

01:47:30 – Book 6; the France/England dichotomy as philosophically rich, but also a literary device; Aurora meets Marian again in France, but rushes to judgment about Marian’s child in the same way others had judged Aurora in the past; a powerful ending

01:57:30 – Book 7; Marian explains she was raped; Aurora writes a letter to Lady Waldemar expressing her rage, inverting some of the tropes of Victorian ‘banter’ in Book 3; painter Vincent Carrington & others praise Aurora’s manuscript, but (yet another) beautiful ending to the book reveals her own ambivalence; the idea that high art has some ethical imperatives

02:23:00 – Books 8 + 9; Aurora confronts Romney about Lady Waldemar, learns that they are not getting married; Waldemar writes an angry letter back to Aurora, absolving herself of the worst accusation; Aurora becomes the romantic aggressor, almost demanding Romney marry her; Romney/Aurora both seem to have grown up; the “blindness” trope- does Elizabeth Barrett Browning indulge in a cliché?; George Eliot & other critics of “Aurora Leigh”

Read Jessica Schneider’s essay on Aurora Leigh: https://www.automachination.com/low-to-the-ground-elizabeth-barrett-browning-aurora-leigh

Read Ezekiel Yu’s essay on Aurora Leigh: https://www.automachination.com/this-verse-in-fire-forever-elizabeth-barrett-browning-aurora-leigh

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Tags: #AuroraLeigh, #ElizabethBarrettBrowning, #ArtiFactPodcast

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Taking up Mark Twain’s mantle, then expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the greatest comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to timeless political comment, thus overshadowing his other great works.

One of these is 1986’s Galapagos, a novel which uses Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, as well as Kurt Vonnegut’s spin on “the oversized brain”, as a controlling metaphor to explore human behavior and self-destructiveness. Featuring one of Vonnegut’s more convoluted plots, it follows a handful of characters on a cruise to the Galapagos islands, which is suddenly canceled due to an unnamed financial meltdown, world war, and an infection which leaves most of humanity sterile. Only the women who make it to a remote island are able to conceive, repopulating the world as natural selection slowly makes these human beings less human.

You can also watch ArtiFact #21 on the automachination YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/CRQwn3ZW8Lc

Timestamps:

0:24 – introduction: Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos in context; plot machinations- do they work?; Galapagos relies more heavily on description, less on dialogue than other texts; synopsis of the text; how Kurt Vonnegut withholds certain details to reinforce the text’s themes; the “financial crisis” and what this entails; human intervention & financial pronouncements as self-fulfilling prophecy

21:22 – Chapter 1: more descriptive than typical Kurt Vonnegut; small details take on significance later; Vonnegut’s use of the Bible; debating the meaning of “A Second Noah’s Ark”; banter on spiders, bugs, Keith’s move to NYC, & whether he will be sleeping on Alex’s bed or on the cat couch in the basement

43:48 – James Wait, a well-sketched swindler in Galapagos; ironies of character; where (some) of the book’s convolution goes awry in its repetitiveness; lessons for modern writers who wish to improve on some of its deficiencies; did Kurt Vonnegut’s humor start to leave him in the 1980s?

01:03:55 – what is the function of Mandarax? is it effective? what can we make of all the quotes, and are all of them used well?

01:12:40 – Looking more deeply into Kurt Vonnegut’s interpretation of Charles Darwin & Social Darwinism; dissecting the society before & after the transformation(s); Kurt Vonnegut’s use of the “oversized brain” as a controlling metaphor throughout; are the characters in Galapagos “real”? What makes them relatable?; characters as fulfilling niches, more comments on biological determinism

02:00:32 – Why aren’t people interested in sculpture? – using one of Kurt Vonnegut’s best lines for fresh applications; people’s lack of interest in art, save to serve their own ideological biases; why is there ANY interest in art from the Red Pill / Pick Up Artist (PUA) community?; the Wall Street bull sculpture vs. the “little girl” virtue-signal; the Wall Street ape statue as a cultural comment without teeth; why Kurt Vonnegut’s alleged misanthropy is over-stated

02:12:12 – the ending of “Galapagos”: as a collection of odds-and-ends and character/idea arcs searching for some resolution, is the ending a cop-out, or something more?

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Tags: #Galapagos, #KurtVonnegut, #ArtiFact

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Like cinema, photography is a recent art form which has had to “prove itself” to a skeptical audience. After Louis Daguerre created the daguerreotype, photographers grew increasingly sophisticated, experimental, and art-minded, and soon a photographic language developed. Early photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Robert Demachy were surprisingly modern, while contemporary photographers, like Fan Ho, Vivian Maier, and Alexey Titarenko, continued to innovate into the 21st century.

What are some cues for better adjudicating photographs and photographic art? What is the relationship between cinema and photography? Can (or should) cinematic stills be great photographs? What is the “discretionary” part of the artistic process, and what does photographer Joel Parrish have to say about the thought process behind his own work? Alex Sheremet and Joel Parrish discuss this, ending with the photography and films (Once Upon A Time In Anatolia, Winter Sleep) of Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

Photographers covered: Alfred Stieglitz, Robert Demachy, Fan Ho, Masahisa Fukase, Vivian Maier, Sohei Nishino, Alexey Titarenko, Edmund Teske, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Joel Parrish.

You can also watch ArtiFact #20 on the automachination YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/CHcy2nQRTiA

Timestamps:

0:24 – introduction; Joel Parrish as photographer; claims for greatness among the earliest photographers; does art have a self-regulating function?

9:52 – Joel on the history of photography, tension + fear between the world of painting and photography, & how photography demanded that it be taken seriously as an art-form

28:20 – how should we look at photographs? what makes it a viable art-form? Alex and Joel offer abstract and pragmatic answers from cinema, painting, and more; why cinema stills are a good short-cut for understanding photography; the “discretionary” artistic process & what this entails

53:21 – Alfred Stieglitz (1864 – 1946): one of the breakout “art-first” photographers; married to George O’Keeffe & involved with High Modern artistic circles; good title conventions; landscapes, portraiture, lite abstraction, borrowings from Impressionism & other diverse work

01:16:45 – Robert Demachy (1859 – 1936): highly modernist in approach; pioneered post-editing with painterly, sfumato, and other effects; portraiture, staged and unstaged shots, and other artistic techniques; why staging works much better with highly edited shots; Joel presents Demachy’s lesser-known work from his photography books

01:40:14 – Fan Ho (1931 – 2016): Alex’s (new) favorite photographer & one of the greatest photographers ever; documenting life in Hong Kong; stark use of black/white contrasts for unexpected effects; great use of abstraction, geometry, conceptualization, and symbolism

02:07:07 – Masahisa Fukase (1934 – 2012): similar to our take on Hokusai’s 36 Views of Mt. Fuji, Fukase’s “raven” photo series offers increasingly clever takes and inversions on a single subject: the raven; plus, a novel take on the concept of the photographic self-portrait

02:23:17 – Vivian Maier (1926 – 2009): recently discovered photographer who lived her life in obscurity; thousands of undeveloped photographs in documentary, self-portrait, abstract, and symbolic styles; Joel Parrish: ever since she’s been popularized, lesser photographers have ripped off her style and innovations

02:39:14 – Sohei Nishino (b. 1982): a photographer using innovative techniques to create “dioramas” and “dioramamaps” of cities; Joel Parrish explains just how much work this process entails

02:45:37 – Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962): most prominent for his depictions of Russia’s post-USSR collapse; how Titarenko uses time-lapse to make statements; why tapping Cuba and Havana makes sense as analogues to post-Soviet Russia, as if frozen in time

03:05:09 – Edmund Teske (1911 – 1966), Andre Kertesz (1894 – 1985), Josephine Sacabo, Michael Ackerman & Alec Soth

03:32:00 – Joel Parrish on his own photography, thinking process, artistic decisions, & more

03:58:08 – Chris Marker’s La Jetee (1962); how a movie can be shot using still images only; why there is still a great deal of cinematic scope in still images; La Jetee is full of individually great shots, irrespective of the broader film; why a great script is essential to a film like this

04:21:32 – Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Once Upon A Time In Anatolia (2011) and Winter Sleep (2014); Ceylan as cinematographer & photographer; how cinematography ought to be tapped and discussed outside of comments re: a film’s “beauty”

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Joel’s website: https://poeticimport.com

Tags: #photography, #NuriBilgeCeylan, #frenchfilm

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Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 – 1861) was one of the best poets of the 19th century, yet remains little known today and even less read. At a time when feminist literary criticism (among other relevant lenses) is ascendant, how did Barrett Browning go from an almost universally admired writer to one that is neglected in favor of her literary inferiors? In ArtiFact #19, Joel Parrish and Alex Sheremet tackle her classic sonnet sequence, Sonnets from the Portuguese, going through roughly half the poems line by line to uncover Browning’s complicated views on love, art, and other subjects, highlighting her philosophical depth, technical skill, as well as her inversions of familiar tropes.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nCaB4_tJCQ

Timestamps:

0:24 – Introducing Elizabeth Barrett Browning + Sonnets from the Portuguese in context; William Blake, Walt Whitman, Shakespeare, John Donne; Browning’s world-building, sonnet-units, and characterization from poem to poem

11:37 – Sonnet 1: “I thought once how Theocritus had sung…” – how Elizabeth Barrett Browning creates a world with values, assumptions, moods, and characters with their own narrative arcs; how a complex and even ambiguous view of love gets presented from the very beginning; the love of melancholy; love vs. death; introducing the objective-subjective distinction in Sonnets from the Portuguese

23:36 – Sonnet 3: “Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!” – inverting the vocative cliché; the modernity of Elizabeth Barrett Browning; time and death as leveling forces for the objective + subjective divide

35:16 – Sonnet 12: “Indeed this very love which is my boast…” – a weaker sonnet that nonetheless has some redeeming features, such as ambiguity in the ending

40:49 – Sonnet 13: “And wilt thou have me fashion into speech…” – inverting the classic ‘I can’t even express my love’ trope in poetry; the use of literal images to offset generic and/or trope imagery; the subtle and underrated feminism of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

53:20 – Sonnet 14: “If thou must love me, let it be for naught…” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning seeks a more substantive love; cleverness from line to line; a lackluster ending

01:02:20 – Sonnet 15: “Accuse me not, beseech thee, that I wear…” – a truly great poem; some of the best clues to the narrator’s thinking about love, relationships, and more

01:13:28 – Sonnet 17: “My poet, thou canst touch on all the notes…” – is Elizabeth Barrett Browning presaging theoretical physics; how the narrator’s self-effacing words are strangely turned on the addressee

01:20:32 – Sonnet 18: “I never gave a lock of hair away…” – inverting the “lock of hair” trope in romantic writing

01:29:28 – Sonnet 19: “The soul’s Rialto hath its merchandise…” – more sonnet-units, forming a unit with Sonnet 18; Alex makes a decent number of mistakes after failing to refer to his own notes

01:36:43 – Sonnet 22: “When our two souls stand up erect and strong…” – how Elizabeth Barrett Browning uses conventionally “positive” images to opposite effect

01:46:35 – Sonnet 25: “A heavy heart, Beloved, I have borne…” – turning the “heavy heart” cliché into a literal image that becomes the fulcrum for startling imagery

01:52:16 – Sonnet 26: “I lived with visions for my company…” – some good images, but a mixed bag

02:01:04 – Sonnet 33: “Yes, call me by my pet-name! let me hear…” – one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s greatest + most famous poems; the strange mix of feminist eroticism and invocations of childhood; how EBB plays off of John Milton’s famous sonnet “On His Blindness”

02:12:29 – Sonnet 34: “With the same heart, I said, I’ll answer thee…” – merely recapitulative of the greater and more daring preceding sonnet

02:19:08 – Sonnet 36: “When we first met and loved, I did not build…” – proto-feminism in its treatment of love as an “unowned thing”; some good images

02:22:27 – Sonnet 37: “Pardon, oh, pardon, that my soul should make…” – some of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s most modern imagery; thematic connections between images help invert the familiar; the Hart Crane-like ending

02:29:49 – Sonnet 43: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s most famous poem; a mix of daring images + conventional choices

02:41:02 – Sonnet 44: “Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers…” – a great ending to the sequence; Alex and Joel disagree on the quality of the poem; how it recapitulates and refracts Sonnets from the Portuguese

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com/

Tags: #ArtiFact, #Sonnet, #ElizabethBarrettBrowning

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Eva Schubert is a singer-songwriter, poet, and historian from Canada with several full-length albums, plus an upcoming record that was finished just weeks ago. In this conversation, Alex and Eva discuss growing up and growing into poetry, concepts of self-identity, the fears and imperatives surrounding human creativity, art as competition and communication, Eva’s thoughts as she writes her lyrics, how to avoid musical and writerly clichés, and an analysis of two albums: 2017’s outstanding “Borderless Sky” and 2019’s “Hot Damn Romance”. At the end of the discussion, we touch on our shared interests of fitness, deadlifting, nutrition, and injuries/injury prevention as they relate to middle age and beyond.

Time did not permit us to get to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”, as planned, but we will make it up to the audience with another ArtiFact on this and other subjects down the road.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCUorJjTv2c

Eva Schubert’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/evasajoo

Buy “Borderless Sky”: https://www.amazon.com/Borderless-Sky-Eva-Schubert/dp/B077BQY1X2

Buy “Hot Damn Romance”: https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Damn-Romance-Eva-Schubert/dp/B07WNZTNTQ/

Timestamps:

0:24 – Eva Schubert’s origin story: Shakespeare, Edgar Allen Poe, T.S. Eliot, rhythm, music, and oatmeal

14:18 – Eva on self-limitations, and how her experience as an airplane pilot expanded her own self-definition

20:30 – The “fears” surrounding art, creation, and other pursuits at odds with financial + outward societal success

31:04 – Object-oriented art: why art is almost wholly about competition and communication

37:34 – Eva’s music: discussing her second album, “Borderless Sky” (2017) – why does Eva Schubert work mostly in the love-song/jazz tradition?

44:05 – The track “Backcountry Blues”: how the composition subverts the lyrics, and how the lyrics gradually re-inform the composition; how this can be extrapolated to other works of art; Elliott Smith’s “Waltz #2 (XO)” + Phosophorescent’s “Song for Zula”

57:34 – The track “Traces of You”: how to establish a Cole Porter vibe; the function of the A-B-A-A-B rhyme scheme; how to prime listeners for lyrical cleverness before the lyrics even begin

01:06:14 – The track “Ribbons and Bows”: dual male/female expectations in song traditions + in life; do women “really” know what men want?; the irony + tragedy of romantic closeness & mitigations of distance; the epidemic of cosmetic surgery and the faux-style feminism that downplays it; the overcorrection of the Slut Walk & the sexual pathologies + shame these things are trying (yet failing) to correct

01:27:40 – The tracks “They Say” & “Saying Goodbye”; inverting POVs & turning love into what other characters in a song perceive; how to write about love and death while avoiding the most obvious pitfalls- for example, clichés like “everything will die but our love will endure”

01:34:42 – Eva’s third album, “Hot Damn Romance” (2019): the track “Water”: how does Eva understand artistic improvement, and what does that even mean; how might Eva respond to charges of writerly cliché; inverting clichés by making them literal statements; Eva’s experience working alongside many artists with visions that might compete with or otherwise conflict with her own

01:52:48 – Exercise, nutrition, & fitness; how Eva got interested in weight training; injuries and injury prevention; the deadlift; Alex on getting over his childhood obesity; Stuart McGill, back health, the Big 3; what if the deadlift cannot (or should not) be performed at a certain age; the Turkish Get Up; physical therapy is still in the Stone Age of human knowledge

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com/

Tags: #ArtiFact, #EvaSchubert, #writing, #songwriting, #lyrics

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As Alex Sheremet and Ethan Pinch argue, Woody Allen has been falling out of favor for a long time now – and not only for the more obvious and superficial reasons. Critics charge him with indulging a Pygmalion complex, by which he lives out his androcentric fantasies through his films, crafting the very same women he has an interest in, then letting them loose upon the screen.

There are issues with this analysis, however: not only has Woody written some great female characters that ought to be the subjects of feminist film theory, but Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion” does more than meets the eye. After all, Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle is a powerful character well before her transformation, and the transformation itself belies her benefactor’s own self-conception. Woody Allen adopts a similar tactic in his films, skewering his male leads through his use of women.

In ArtiFact #17, Alex Sheremet and Ethan Pinch use this lens to analyze four films: Stardust Memories, Husbands and Wives, Midnight in Paris, and the much-neglected Another Woman.

You can also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BA7TanP3ls

Subscribe to the ArtiFact podcast on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3xw2M4D

Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3wLpqEV Google Podcasts: https://bit.ly/3dSQXxJ

Amazon Music: https://amzn.to/2SVJIxB

Podbean: https://bit.ly/3yzLuUo

iHeartRadio: https://ihr.fm/3AK942L

Timestamps:

0:24 – The city aesthetic, international Rust Belts, and the rural/urban divide

04:37 – Woody Allen’s urban aesthetic, the illusions of “Manhattan” (1979), moral ambiguity & how cinematic imagery can be used to play off of viewer assumptions

11:52 – The Pygmalion connection: from Ovid’s Metamorphoses to Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion; how Woody Allen uses great female characters to skewer men; more on Manhattan, Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters

38:56 – Woody Allen vs. the stigmatization of male sexuality + male neuroses

44:45 – In-depth: Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives; the faux documentary conceit, how Judy gets some things right, Jack/Sally disconnect, character framing, the Rain arc, feminist ideology, & more

01:17:32 – In-depth: Woody Allen’s Another Woman; visual frames, Marion’s true feminism, Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, the viewer’s necessarily partial knowledge of character backgrounds and thoughts, & more

01:33:50 – In-depth: Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories; contrasts with Federico Fellini’s 8½, the usage of “freaks” in both films, pastiche vs. homage, Sandy Bates as the “true” Woody Allen stand-in, more on masculine impositions

02:04:30 – In-depth: Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris; contrasts with Manhattan, Owen Wilson’s acting, nostalgia vs. delusion, literary caricatures, the film’s faux closure

# # #

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s review of Stardust Memories: https://alexsheremet.com/review-of-woody-allens-stardust-memories-1980/

Read Alex’s review of Woody Allen’s Manhattan: https://alexsheremet.com/woody-allens-manhattan-not-what-you-think-it-is/

Purchase Alex’s book on Woody Allen’s films, Woody Allen: Reel to Real – https://www.amazon.com/Woody-Allen-Reel-Version-Digidialogues-ebook/dp/B00PJF2F36/

Tags: #ArtiFact, #WoodyAllen, #Pygmalion

Woody Allen: Reel to Real: Version 4.0 (Digidialogues)

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Over the last few years, we’ve heard that white people ought to “shut up and listen” when it comes to questions of race and racism. Yet Dan Schneider’s 2005 book, Show & Tell: A White Man’s Antiphonal Primer on Race, argues the exact opposite: that understanding white psychology, white leverage and material advantages is the key to unlocking all else. As he writes in the text, racism, to black America, is a burden to be lived through, but what is it to white America – and why does it persist? In this conversation, Dan Schneider and Alex Sheremet discuss these and other questions, set against the context of Dan’s own experience of racism in New York City through the 1970/80s. Topics covered: the black Noble Savage myth in liberal + conservative factions; the materially hollow antiracism of Robin DiAngelo (“White Fragility”); the killing of Ma'Khia Bryant; multi-ethnic racial tension; white “appropriation” of black culture; the myth of the model minority, and much more.

Purchase Dan Schneider’s “Show & Tell: A White Man’s Antiphonal Primer On Race”: https://amzn.to/37feJQK

You may also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/8bfdI_qvcYY

Timestamps:

0:24 – Why racism is a white person’s problem, the nonwhite’s burden, and ought to be discussed as such

09:08 – Why the Robin DiAngelo model of antiracism fails to do much of substance

12:48 – Alex: “Out of Africa” liberals & other race propagandists are trying to have it both ways

20:45 – How liberals and conservatives use the black Noble Savage myth for their own ideological purposes

24:18 – Dan: are our positions on race truly leftist?

28:23 – Dan Schneider describes 1960s – 1980s racism in Ridgewood, Glendale, & Jamaica vs. today’s Golden Age thinking

42:00 – Is racism biologically ingrained or otherwise “natural”?

45:18 – Are older black Americans reflexively deferential to whites?

54:40 – Why police brutality has gotten better since the 1960s, but began to go up again in the late 1990s; why ‘being a cop’ takes precedence over other in-group + tribal thinking

01:06:02 – Racial tensions between blacks, Asians, Jews, and Hispanics

01:14:00 – Is there a conflict between personal responsibility, “free will”, and a material analysis of history? Plus: the anthropology of black sexual dynamics vs. conservative hypocrisy

01:24:12 – The Asian “model minority” myth & reverse bottlenecks: why Hmong, Vietnamese, and Laotian crime rates in America approach that of the worst and poorest neighborhoods

01:29:19 – Why does there seem to be so little bigotry, violence, and resentment directed towards whites by the very communities whites have historically exploited?

01:35:38 – Black vs. white mask compliance, black vs. white vaccine compliance & why the Left is uncomfortable here

01:37:24 – What is the “wigger”, and how do different communities interpret him?

01:43:47 – The killing of Ma’Khia Bryant in Ohio

01:53:00 – Would Ma’Khia Bryant have been killed if she were a white girl?

01:59:00 – Why don’t police shootings of white victims garner the same media attention?

02:04:44 – How ideology inflates some stakes, deflates others; Tucker Carlson, more NYC crime from the 1970s/80s, reparations TODAY, cop non-compliance with mask mandates

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Show & Tell: A White Man's Antiphonal Primer On Race

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In 1992, Edward P. Jones published what might very well be his best work of fiction: Lost in the City, a short story collection that deals with (mostly) black characters in Washington, D.C., set between the 1950s and 1990s. Primarily working through understatement, an amalgamation of poetic and prosaic style, and competing POVs, many of these characters could have been of any race, dealing with his characteristically “mature” drama in any time period. How does Edward P. Jones achieve these effects? Does he effectively move between the criminal and the working class, the religious and the disconnected, or does he have a preferred turf? What structural choices does Lost in the City make? Finally, how does Edward P. Jones use race – and why is it better, more credible, and deeper than the ways race gets misused by modern authors?

Alex Sheremet and Keith Jackewicz discuss these and other questions.

You may also watch this discussion on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihC2Fj6Vnw8

Timestamps:

0:24 – “I said, ‘I don’t need this anymore…’” 0:43 – introducing Edward P. Jones, Lost in the City, subjective/objective responses, the role of understatement 12:56 – Story 1 – The Girl Who Raised Pigeons – a father’s projection, encroaching danger, unexpected character arcs, stipulated meaninglessness 46:08 – Story 2 – The First Day – extremely compact writing, dueling child/adult POVs, growth of the narrator 01:06:54 – Story 3 – The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed – the fame lottery vs. racial politics, an ending that belies the children’s own sense of ‘adulthood’ 01:28:04 – Story 4 – Young Lions – good, gradual characterization with an overlong middle; Keith on Caesar vs. community access 01:48:37 – Story 5 – The Store – Edward P. Jones’s best story? overturning stereotypes + archetypes, how to turn the prosaic poetic, character maturation 02:22:52 – Story 6 – An Orange Line Train To Ballston – a tight, realistic character sketch 02:28:19 – Story 7 – The Sunday Following Mother’s Day – surprising character arcs; Edward P. Jones playing off of competing + changing reader empathies 02:44:16 – Story 7 – Lost in the City – finding new territory in the “drugged-out haze” narrative 02:51:00 – Story 9 – His Mother’s House – Edward P. Jones goes Quentin Tarantino, and that’s no compliment 02:59:40 – Story 10 – A Butterfly on F Street – character sketch + unexpected trope inversions 03:01:54 – Story 11 – Gospel – gossip, religion, hypocrisy 03:07:35 – Story 12 – A New Man – one of the more mysterious, almost metaphysical stories from Edward P. Jones 03:20:00 – Story 13 – A Dark Night – another quick character sketch 03:27:14 – Story 14 – Marie – the POV of both a limited & powerful character, with a great, multi-faceted ending

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Dan Schneider’s review of Lost in The City: http://www.cosmoetica.com/B235-DES175.htm

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Taking up Mark Twain's mantle, then expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the greatest comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to timeless political comment, and has overshadowed his other great works. One of these is 1972's Breakfast of Champions, a novel Kurt Vonnegut had abandoned several times, even as it remains a clever examination of America’s money-obsession, corporatism, sexual dynamics, artistic fraud, and more. Imparted by a (potentially) unreliable narrator, these lessons come to a twist ending in the book's last few scenes of philosophical slapstick.

You can also watch this conversation on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/InsbL7cxJ_Q

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Read the latest from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Timestamps:

0:23 – Kurt Vonnegut + Breakfast of Champions in context 23:00 – Joel makes sense of Kurt Vonnegut’s plotting 27:42 – Is Philboyd Studge an unreliable narrator? 36:45 – Kurt Vonnegut describes great writing with a metaphor 41:40 – Ch. 1: political preoccupations in Breakfast of Champions 01:01:24 – Ch. 2: sexual dynamics & Wide Open Beavers 01:10:02 – Is Kurt Vonnegut an anti-humanist? 01:17:02 – Ch. 8: what the Pluto Gang says about white liberalism 01:26:24 – Ch. 10, 11, & 12: Nelson Rockefeller vs. a truck driver’s free will 01:44:45 – Joel on Kurt Vonnegut's use of ellipses 01:47:40 – Kilgore Trout turns beautiful language into a liability 01:54:45 – Ch. 15: a bottleneck in Breakfast of Champions 02:00:00 – The Reindeer Problem: how Kurt Vonnegut tackles race relations 02:08:46 – Joel tries to escape his artistic responsibilities to watch a soccer game 02:09:12 – The narrator meets his (alleged) creations 02:13:55 – Is Kurt Vonnegut criticizing Abstract Expressionism? 02:24:06 – The last chapter, epilogue, & terrible criticism from "the failing New York Times"

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Alex is joined by painter Ethan Pinch to discuss a variety of topics: growing up on the precipice of the Internet’s mainstreaming, the role that media censorship (and thus self-censorship) play in everyday decisions, the Golden Age of rap music, Alex’s rap-to-politics-to-art pipeline, NFTs vs. Abstract Expressionism, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s absurdist film “Satan’s Brew”, and Clement Greenberg’s classic essay on kitsch.

More specifically: is kitsch a legitimate part of artistic judgment, or is it merely an aesthetic object? Do Clement Greenberg and other Marxist critics fall into an anti-Marxist idealism trap? Is E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” an example of kitsch, and if so, is every example of great children’s writing by definition kitsch? Do NFTs fall into the same category, and what does blockchain technology mean for the art world? Finally, Alex and Ethan go over some of Ethan’s abstract drawings.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4O594Rqu5w

Read the latest essays from the automachination universe: https://www.automachination.com

Subscribe to Ethan Pinch’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AnthropomorphicHorse

Timestamps:

0:24 – The 1990s: growing up in the analog/digital transition, today’s Internet culture, & speech-policing 25:00 – Rap, artistic competition, Eminem, “conscious” hip-hop, UK grunge-rap, and where reflexive artistic genres fail 01:03:00 – Overlap(s) between art, politics, and meta-ethics: “art for art’s sake, and what that means politically” 01:26:15 – Origins of the automachination channel name; responding to Nietzsche’s “art’s purposive purposelessness” vs. Nietzsche’s “additive” morality 01:37:00 – Debating kitsch as an aesthetic concept; debating Clement Greenberg’s classic 1939 essay, “Avant-garde and Kitsch”; Greenberg’s “medium-specificity”; is E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” an example of kitsch? 02:41:43 – Debating Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Satan’s Brew” 03:03:44 – Patreon & the balkanization of the art world 03:13:00 – Alex: NFTs are doing what the AbEx world once did, but with math, statistical parameters, and even more greed 03:23:18 – Assessing Ethan’s abstract drawings

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Steven Pinker is a cognitive scientist who’s written a number of pop science classics: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, and more. In 2011, he waded into the culture (if not political) debates with Better Angels of our Nature, a text whose basic premise – that the world has been getting more peaceful for millennia, and that the advent of a powerful state can be credited here – has shaped this podcast's political thinking.

Although an excellent writer at his best, in 2014, he published a book about writing well – The Sense of Style – which was loaded with haphazard advice, and then 2018’s more explicitly political Enlightenment Now, a mixed bag that has the overall correct argument (the world gets better over time) but lots of overstatement, understatement, and poor framing of a number of issues. It also suffers from its straitjacket reliance on the Great Enlightenment as a thematic/unifying writerly tool, since Steven Pinker only superficially touches upon the movement, and ends the book with a bizarre attack on Friedrich Nietzsche as a Counter-Enlightenment anti-humanist.

In this video, we assess Steven Pinker's claims and offer up some of our own. For example: if GDP is a sloppy way to measure human development, what does GPI say? Should we prefer one criminal cartel over another? Why HAS institutional trust eroded, anyway? And many other questions, as well.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/1oSwpfcxmbM

Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Read Alex’s essay on Steven Pinker’s “The Sense of Style”: https://alexsheremet.com/review-of-steven-pinkers-the-sense-of-style-the-thinking-persons-guide-to-writing-in-the-21st-century/

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:00 – Steven Pinker’s Language Instinct, Better Angels of our Nature, Blank Slate, Sense of Style; where Enlightenment Now fits into his oeuvre 16:15 – What does it mean when billionaires like Bill Gates want to blurb your book? 27:46 – How Steven Pinker misuses his two opening epigraphs 40:08 – Steven Pinker primes the reader early on for the book’s least plausible arguments 53:00 – Does Steven Pinker downplay the Enlightenment’s skepticism of reason? 01:06:08 – Yes, we’re more rational than ever, but what are today’s witches and werewolves? 01:10:50 – “Misfortune may be no one’s fault”: does Steven Pinker boost the status quo? 01:17:06 – Is it true that “justice” has killed more people than “greed”? How can we even know? 01:24:40 – Why has institutional trust eroded? Is Steven Pinker’s answer satisfying? 01:36:51 – De-framing + re-framing Enlightenment Now while still accepting its core claims 01:49:48 – Have we reached “peak stuff”? 02:10:05 – Study: GDP vs. GPI to measure human progress & wealth 02:16:04 – Alex goes OFF on the childish capitalism/communism debate & Western hypocrisy 02:37:45 – What Steven Pinker gets wrong about Korea and Taiwan 02:48:50 – Income inequality, colonialism, & post-colonialism: the Steven Pinker, Bill Gates, Jason Hickel, Branko Milanovic debate 03:53:06 – How Steven Pinker depends on Friedrich Nietzsche’s arguments, then misreads him 04:28:25 – Enlightenment Now is (mostly) correct about existential threats 04:35:12 – Steven Pinker offers remarkably thin political analysis

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Taking up Mark Twain's mission, then greatly expanding upon it, Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the best comic writers to have ever lived. His best-known work, Slaughterhouse-Five, features everything from sci-fi to dramedy to timeless political comment, and has overshadowed his other great works. One of these is 1963’s black comedy, Cat’s Cradle, a 127-chapter novel split across a mere ~300 pages, best typifying Vonnegut’s idea that his books “are essentially mosaics made up of a whole bunch of tiny little chips, and each chip is a joke”. Featuring an artificial religion and carefully built-up philosophy (Bokononism), WMDs familiar (the atomic bomb) and strange (ice-nine), well-phrased doggerel that serves any number of functions, and a subtly rich set of characters, the novel remains one of Kurt Vonnegut’s best.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/mrJyyTFaHYg

Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:00 – Cat’s Cradle: structure, density, value systems, political lens(es) 09:20 – Bokononism, black comedy, Kurt Vonnegut’s artistic choices 19:40 – Keith on the degeneration of the novel 21:56 – Alex: will shortened attention spans kill the arts during this cycle? 29:29 – Ch. 1: “Call me Jonah”, Ch. 2: the karass & Vonnegut’s ‘good’ doggerel 51:40 – The Bokononist compulsion to “write things down” + artistic mystique 55:40 – Alex: how art helped me introspect & make better decisions 01:00:52 – How Cat’s Cradle tries to resolve the object/subject dilemma 01:02:40 – Understanding the Bokononist vocabulary 01:28:46 – Ch. 5: Newt/Felix Hoenniker + how Kurt Vonnegut builds Cat’s Cradle upward 01:47:12 – Keith on Felix Hoenniker’s “saint” (‘miracle’) function 01:52:42 – Ch. 11: “Protein”: how Kurt Vonnegut generates character capstones 01:56:58 – Who is Mona? Wherefore is Mona? 02:05:00 – Hoosier + the concept of a “granfalloon” 02:13:46 – Why did Kurt Vonnegut choose ice-nine as his WMD? 02:26:32 – Reading the final 3 chapters

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Charles R. Johnson (b. 1948) is a scholar, cartoonist, and writer who approaches literature from the Buddhist tradition. His best-known novels – Middle Passage and Oxherding Tale – offer a unique philosophical twist on slave narratives that go well beyond ‘redemptive’ and Abolitionist writing, and have still remained fresh decades after publication.

Oxherding Tale, especially, is a highly dense, character-driven work, which is obvious not only by the weight of individual sentences, but also in its complex, self-referential structure. What, exactly, makes the novel work so well, and what does it say of (and beyond) slavery? Is Andrew Hawkins a “wanderer” akin to wanderers of today? What is moksha and samsara in the context of the book? Who is the Soulcatcher, and what is his role beyond the most obvious one? Please join us for an in-depth look at one of the greatest novels ever published.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/vOi55Cs1xAk

Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:00 – Introducing author and scholar Charles R. Johnson 4:38 – Oxherding Tale as a Buddhist slave narrative…for 2021 10:02 – Explaining the “10 Ox Herding Pictures” from Zen Buddhism 19:34 – Joel on the importance of cutting + condensing 22:45 – Chapter 1: George Hawkins, Jonathan Polkinghorne, & the master/slave relationship 39:40 – Joel on Ezekiel, the book’s “half-privilege” & speed of characterization 49:50 – Chapter 2 + 3: Flo Hatfield, Siddhartha’s “Kamala”, & the book’s sexual conflicts 58:20 – Why Alex used a passage from Oxherding Tale to tackle Red Pill ideology 01:05:40 – The function of samsara in Oxherding Tale, introducing Reb the Coffinmaker 01:24:55 – Joel: Flo extends Andrew’s more ‘privileged’ experience of slavery 01:27:00 – Alex & Joel interpret the Soulcatcher’s deeper import 01:34:20 – The veterinarian’s “life-assurance” policy vs. objective values 01:39:15 – What is Karl Marx’s role in the wider narrative? 01:55:04 – Joel asks whether Andrew Hawkins copies Ezekiel’s false charity 01:59:15 – The Soulcatcher vs. human craving for mediocrity 02:12:40 – Spartanburg, Dr. Undercliff, and Andrew Hawkins’s marriage to Peggy 02:23:40 – Charles Johnson on the despair of black vs. white history 02:43:30 – Moksha: the final confrontation in Oxherding Tale

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The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 1200 BCE, Standard Babylonian) is based on Gilgamesh of Uruk, a historical king subject to centuries of cult-worship and mythmaking before his exploits were written down. Although this was not unlike the fate of many ancient rulers, the Epic of Gilgamesh separates itself by its poetic modernity and psychological complexity.

In this video, Joel Parrish and Alex Sheremet discuss Gilgamesh’s failed quest for immortality, the ‘wild man’ Enkidu as Gilgamesh’s foil and savior, proto-feminist characters such as the prostitute Shamhat, as well as structural questions and the power of specific passages before critiquing a Christian reading of Babylonian polytheism and Great Flood myths.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/Ldg1wfTuenY

Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:00 – Comparing two translations of the epic (Andrew George vs. David Ferry) 4:58 – History of the Epic of Gilgamesh + competing versions 13:16 – A synopsis of the Epic of Gilgamesh 17:38 – Appending Tablet XII 22:12 – Tablet I: Gilgamesh, Ecclesiastes, and goodness vs. greatness as Nietzschean concepts 35:48 – Tablet I (cont.): The creation of Enkidu 46:30 – Tablet I (cont.): Is Shamhat a proto-feminist icon? 53:48 – Has the Adam and Eve story been misinterpreted? 01:01:15 – Gilgamesh dreams of Enkidu 01:03:45 – Tablet II: Enkidu confronts Gilgamesh in Uruk 01:12:53 – Tablet III: Gilgamesh is given more dimensions 01:16:36 – Tablet IV: What explains Enkidu’s overly sanguine interpretation of dreams? 01:24:46 – Tablet V: is Humbaba merely a stock villain? 01:30:20 – Tablet VI: Ishtar and the Bull of Heaven 01:41:18 – Tablets VII & VIII: the death and funeral of Enkidu 01:51:14 – Tablet IX: Gilgamesh mourns Enkidu 02:00:36 – Joel: these are some of the most modern lines in the epic 02:05:50 – Tablet X: a Christian lecturer on Gilgamesh’s Great Flood 02:18:30 – …but what does Genesis ACTUALLY say of such interpretations? 02:43:18 – Alex: monotheism concentrates polytheistic dualities into one being 02:48:12 – Tablet XI: Gilgamesh fails to gain immortality 02:54:41 – Tablet XII re-visited

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Joel Parrish and I are joined by Ethan Pinch, a painter and art critic from the UK, for an interview (and debate) on his perspectives. In previous videos and comments, the 3 of us took some divergent approaches to visual art, with Ethan distinguishing “meaning” from “interpretation”. Ethan’s video (and my specific comments under the video) can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN9k5YHcpdM

The point of contention had to do with Ethan’s painterly criticism vs. our more narrative/literary critique of visual art. It’s a criticism worth responding to, as even the most objective person has a number of biases and blind spots. For us, since technically good fiction is empty without depth and characterization, a painting can easily fall into the same trap without some narrative heft to latch on to. In this video, such orientations lead to disagreements about the painter Zhiwei Tu, differing judgments on Matisse’s “Moroccans”, and more.

Among the questions asked: are we simply tallying up all the clever parts and inversions in a painting if exclude narrative? If so, when (and how) does the tally cross over into artistic greatness? How would we know? Is Salvador Dali ‘merely’ kitsch, and why has his style (if not results) been so prone to bad emulation? Plus: What makes Tintoretto’s “Susanna and the Elders” the greatest painting of all time?

It’s interesting to note, however, that many of our conclusions about individual paintings are quite similar, despite taking different avenues for getting there. After all, there are many ways to reach greatness in the arts – even if there are even more ways to fail.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/YWEg4uWqUGY

Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Ethan Pinch's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/AnthropomorphicHorse

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:00 – Introduction 5:20 – Alex: the difference between ‘balance’ and ‘an ongoing balancing act’ 12:45 – Joel: on the layers of meaning within great art 15:54 – Ethan: Patrick Heron vs. Clement Greenberg 24:00 – The boyz argue about Soviet-style art 41:40 – Alex and Ethan argue about Zhiwei Tu’s “Frontier Girl”, Joel goes turncoat (UH-OH….) 01:19:19 – Ethan on why he doesn’t have a “theory of painting” 01:24:00 – Ethan contrast Zhiwei Tu with Chardin’s “The Young Schoolmistress” 01:40:00 – Ethan contextualizes his favorite painter, Paul Cezanne 01:48:50 – The boyz on Cezanne’s “Lac d’Annecy” 02:16:30 – Is an artwork’s subject the first thing that ought to “fall away”? 02:22:00 – Ethan agrees/disagrees with Dan Schneider’s POV 02:44:23 – Is Salvador Dali merely kitsch? 03:08:18 – Paul Cezanne’s “Madame Cezanne in the Greenhouse” 03:19:18 – Ethan: why Tintoretto’s “Susanna and the Elders” is the greatest painting ever

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John Williams (1922 – 1994) is best remembered today for his 1965 novel, STONER. Mostly ignored during his lifetime, the book has become a cult classic after being re-issued in 2006 by the New York Review of Books. But is the novel worthy of its more hyperbolic praise (“perfect”, “almost perfect”, “the most beautiful book in the world”)? Is the text misogynistic, as claimed by the feminist literary critic Elaine Showalter, or do such charges merely paper over some deeper problems in the novel? Finally, what can we say of John Williams’s understanding of his own work? Alex Sheremet and Joel Parrish discuss these questions, and more.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/wgT8RX0pZW0

Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:00 – What is a “cult classic”, anyway? 4:12 – Context & introducing John Williams’s life 12:20 – William Stoner’s first big gamble 18:32 – Implied characterization in STONER 21:18 – The novel’s risky (but successful) opening 29:18 – Alex: John Williams takes no real position in the novel 33:10 – Joel: despite the author’s claims, William Stoner is not a “saint” 34:50 – Why was it a good choice to set the book during WWI, not WWII? 41:10 – Is Gordon Finch a total piece of shit? 46:40 – Edith as (unintended) caricature 54:50 – John Williams’s excellent use of sexual inversion 01:01:18 – Edith guilts Stoner into having a child 01:10:40 – How John Williams slips into stereotype 01:15:52 – Joel: Edith is not given any redeeming qualities 01:25:00 – Katherine Driscoll & William Stoner’s romantic affair 01:34:45 – Alex: Katherine, like Stoner & Lomax, never indicates that she “gets” art 01:45:30 – Critiquing some of the novel’s best passages 02:18:22 – Is William Stoner a failure? 02:38:58 – Debunking Elaine Showalter’s criticisms of STONER 03:26:30 – Jack Kerouac + closing remarks

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Leonard Shlain (1937 - 2009) was a surgeon, inventor, and author whose 1991 book "Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light" shaped much of our artistic thinking. Shlain’s core argument is: the great (visual) artists are visionaries who are able to presage discoveries in other fields by cultivating their own, more individualistic work. But how can we actually use Leonard Shlain’s theories for understanding individual works of art? And is this form of analysis enough?

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nbQp9mGnHs

Read the latest writing from the automachination universe: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Read Alex’s (archived) essays: https://alexsheremet.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:00 – Defining Leonard Shlain’s core argument 5:20 – Does art ‘merely’ organize one’s perceptions? 9:28 – Joel: people don’t want to parse out ambiguous terms 11:05 – Alex: nonvisual artists prefigure reality, as well 19:38 – Why society laughs at innovators 25:12 – Joel opines on the mutual benefits of art/science 29:30 – Euclidean geometry in ancient art 34:40 – Alex: art over-compensates for new knowledge 39:30 – Mosaic in the Middle Ages: Shlain’s “just-so” story? 44:00 – Giotto’s proto-perspective 48:57 – Joel on the need to contextualize Giotto & period art 55:05 – Alex: every artistic “problem” forces its own solution 57:50 – A few words on Leonardo da Vinci 01:05:56 – Joel shows off his woolen lamb 01:09:47 – Rembrandt’s use of chiaroscuro 01:13:54 – Edouard Manet’s “Luncheon on the Grass” 01:36:21 – Claude Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series 01:50:04 – Van Gogh’s “Wheatfield with Crows” 02:01:32 – Henri Matisse’s “The Dance” 02:12:21 – Leonard Shlain’s argument for Cubism 02:17:38 – Pablo Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” 02:29:50 – Alex: Marcel Duchamp was a lot more mature than big-name Modernists 02:32:52 – Marc Chagall's "I And The Village" 02:36:43 – Leonard Shlain on Asian art 03:01:49 – Hokusai's "36 Views of Mount Fuji" 03:43:17 – What does today’s art tell us about society?

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In ArtiFact #5, Alex and Joel are joined by Dan Schneider to discuss his picaresque novel, The Custodian's B****.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45J0Upz1_x0

Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Dan's website: http://cosmoetica.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:14 - On Richard Linklater's "Tape", Christopher Nolan, Terence Malick, Martin Scorsese 8:28 - Introducing Dan Schneider's "The Custodian's Bitch" + prologue 17:01 - Dan's use of humor and concision 24:10 - Joel: there is an (implied) Vonnegut influence 26:26 - Dan's advice for episodic writing 30:24 - How can writers avoid "idealized" characters? 45:17 - Alex: insights from ALL characters should be harnessed 01:01:12 - Dan's 2-minute tour of CISD 01:01:51 - Joel: "typewriter ribbons?" 01:02:25 - Dan excerpts "Sept. 26, 2016" 01:03:28 - Alex: only the Bull Toad gets its just desserts 01:07:57 - The book's caste system creates reader anxiety 01:12:08 - Do episodic novels "need" a climax?

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In ArtiFact #4, Joel Parrish and I discuss growing up religious, the literary questions surrounding the Bible's Ecclesiastes, and other works of art by Rembrandt, Countee Cullen, and Robinson Jeffers.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWgEDn4TXIY

Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:14 - Joel amidst the wildfires 5:48 - Some peculiarities of Russian Orthodoxy 9:40 - Joel's religious upbringing 17:05 - Religion will continue compromising with itself 27:34 - Joel: religion still sticks to the atheist 34:03 - Christian Marxism in action 41:37 - Religious sublimation, or sublimating religion? 45:14 - Alex: healthy atheists don't obsess over religion 50:26 - Loren Eiseley as spiritual literature 55:04 - Is religion explanatory or prescriptive? 01:06:46 - Alex: God is an after-thought in Ecclesiastes 01:09:00 - Joel on Biblical structures 01:13:11 - Reading Ecclesiastes, Ch. 1 01:17:12 - Robinson Jeffers vs. Ecclesiastes 01:25:25 - Ch. 2: Solomon's (missing) labors 01:34:32 - Solomon's sophistries 01:40:08 - Ch. 3: where does the narrator truly stand? 01:47:06 - Ch. 5: Schopenhauer explains Ecclesiastes 01:57:00 - Ch. 7: against gatekeeping 02:04:19 - Ch. 9: cutting God out of the equation 02:08:06 - Ch. 10: redemption arcs 02:11:09 - Ch. 11: for the love of melancholy 02:22:22 - Ch. 12: whose epilogue? 02:25:05 - Ecclesiastes as a work of art 02:33:32 - Critiquing Rembrandt's "The Prodigal Son" 02:49:24 - Encore: Robinson Jeffers, Countee Cullen

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ArtiFact #3: Art & Art's Object | Alex Sheremet, Dan Schneider

In this episode of ArtiFact, Alex Sheremet and poet, critic, and novelist Dan Schneider discuss the foundations of art. Unfortunately, tech issues cut the conversation short, but there is ~10 minutes of episode outtakes near the end.

You can also watch this episode on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xse5XbhH7aE

Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com

Dan Schneider's website: http://cosmoetica.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:13 - Introduction 3:39 - Will Dan write essays again? 5:22 - Do prose and poetry writers filter the world differently? 8:23 - Why competing definitions of art have led to confusion 13:13 - Definitions of art can't just be additive... 15:20 - ...because most stories are not worth telling! 17:54 - A Darwinian explanation of the arts 28:52 - Why the generic is generic 33:27 - Alex: in time, society will improve its artistic baseline 36:28 - Dan: but there will always be regression 53:17 - Generic "specialness" might paradoxically explain a deeper "uniqueness" 01:02:24 - Sexual selection and the arts 01:10:54 - ArtiFact Outtakes: 9 Rants About 9 Things

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In the first episode of ArtiFact, Alex Sheremet and co-host Joel Parrish discuss art and artists in light of Abraham Maslow's classic text, "Toward A Psychology of Being" (1962).

This discussion can also be viewed on our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFUooBvJAOo

Read the latest writing from automachination: https://automachination.com

Joel's website: https://poeticimport.com

Music sample: Lowkemia - "Lorem Ipsum" (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Timestamps:

0:14 – Introducing Joel Parrish, co-host of ArtiFact 4:02 – Why was Joel drawn to the arts, but not other pursuits? 6:52 – How artists get stuck in “preparation mode” 8:10 – Alex: knowledge is/was my defense mechanism against insecurities 10:50 – Joel defines Abraham Maslow’s primary argument 17:17 – How do artists perceive their inner world? 23:27 – Alex: art is communication, with an emphasis on “how” 24:55 – The problem with Vladimir Nabokov and Albert Camus 28:45 – Joel: art emphasizes – and requires – some sort of hierarchy 30:54 – Alex: our definitions of art exclude so much from the discussion 36:10 – Maslow says not every feeling of insight is an insight 38:28 – Bela Tarr’s “The Turin Horse” (2011) 42:31 – Growth and regression in the artist 47:15 – Do we really have “options” in life? 54:18 – Joel: artists must cultivate a filter 59:54 – Alex: I’ve given into too many “deficiency needs” these last few years 01:09:11 – Joel: self-actualization is especially hard for artists 01:19:15 – What does the word “high” in “high art” really mean? 01:28:40 – Resolving the artist’s internal contradictions 01:31:12 – Maslow: artists must be selfish and un-selfish at the same time 01:45:03 – Alex: artists must rehabilitate bad works of art for deeper purposes 01:49:07 – Do flow states imply artistic unity? 01:55:02 – Nietzsche and Maslow make similar arguments 01:57:07 – Joel enthusiastically eats a banana 01:57:50 – Critiquing Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Archaic Torso of Apollo” 02:10:46 – Critiquing Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel 02:28:52 – Alex: beauty and art are separate concepts, though they do overlap 02:34:41 – Joel: beauty is a slippery slope to “art is subjective” 02:36:58 – Critiquing Hieronymus Bosch’s “The Garden of Earthly Delights” 02:59:52 – Bosch’s connection to El Greco 03:02:11 – Alex: great artists build infrastructure for the next generation of artists 03:05:15 – Critiquing Wallace Stevens’s “A Rabbit As King Of The Ghosts” 03:20:03 – Critiquing Walt Whitman’s “As I Ponder’d In Silence” 03:26:34 – Joel: artists must enjoy, poke fun of, and take liberties with art

ArtiFact: Books, Art, Culture: Recent Episodes

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