Episode 10: Total Recall 2

March 14th, 2019
Hosted by Brian Birnbaum
Guests: Devin Kelly, George Sawaya & Jared Marcel Pollen
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcripts by Jonathan Kay

In this tenth episode of the Animal Riot podcast we bring back the OG Animals, Devin Kelly, George Sawaya, and Jared Marcel Pollen, to discuss technological disruption's impact on the future of writing and art. Beginning with House of Cards' origins in big data, your faithful host, Brian Birnbaum, and his gang of perishing bunnies navigate such topics as robot art, big data's potential impact on art, and the creative market's fate in the face of algorithmic advancement -- including the movies such algorithms would personalize for each of us podcasters (#TotalRecall2 #TogetherWeCanDoThis).

>> Brian: Welcome to the 10th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot, a literary press for books that matter. We're here today with the OG Sarah Lawrence gang. Devin Kelly, poet and prose writer and cohost of the Animal Riot Reading Series. George Sawaya, poet and co-author of "A Good Leave" with Devin Kelly. And Jared Pollen, fiction and non-fiction writer and author of "Unified Field of Loneliness" which is coming out with Crow's Nest. A short story collection due out on March 15th. Right, Jared? Am I correct about that?

>> Jared: That is correct

>> Brian: March 15th. Good. Ok. This hour's brand of fuckery is brought to you by two lovely gaba b agonists: phenibut and alcohol. The former of which probably no one knows about. But its.. you know... go look it up.

>> Jared: Phen-i-bit?

>> Devin: Phen-i-bit

>> Brian: I think it's like phen-i-buet or something but kind of like kratom. I'm not going to say kray-tom or kra-tome. I'm just going to keep saying krat-um.

>> Devin: Fitbit (laughter)

>> Jared: Whatever. Soft 'u'

>> Brian: Call it fitbit. But yeah, I'm fucking tore of up from the floor up on this nom nom. I just took a little bit. But I really just can't stop eating. But anyway (laughs)....

>> Jared: Ok (laughter). Good to know...

>> Brian: Yeah, seriously (laughs). It's fucking gains season out here man (laughter). Alright, yeah. So today we're going to talk about how tech and specifically big data is going to affect literature and art in the coming days. So Jared, why don't you talk about an article about House of Cards and how they came up with that in particular

>> Jared: Yeah. Are we live right now?

>> Brian: Yeah we are

>> Jared: Ok sorry (laughs)

>> Brian: It's all good. We'll cut that

>> Jared: I just went to refill my drink and when I came back you said "March 15th, right?" and I said yeah and we're recording now (laughter)

>> Brian: Oh. Dude, good fucking timing. Actually I think we'll keep all of this (laughs)

>> Jared: Alright. Yeah well this is something I stumbled upon a couple of weeks ok. It was really startling, actually, which is that Netflix did a big data analysis when they were preparing their flagship show. Because House of Cards is really what made Netflix. I mean before that it was a mediocre streaming service with bad quality and no original content. And Netflix invested a huge amount of their money in House of Cards. They invested like 50% of their budget into House of Cards. It was a huge gamble.

>> Brian: Damn. I did not know this.

>> Jared: Yeah and they analyzed viewer data from the British House of Cards. And they discovered that the people who liked the British House of Cards were also watching a lot of movies with Kevin Spacey and they were also watching a lot of David Fincher films. And so of course David Fincher is an executive producer for House of Cards and then they casted Kevin Spacey for it. And they constructed the show based on consumer data... viewer data in that way, and they built that thing like a fucking Big Mac. They built it to be as good as it could possibly be. And it worked. I mean House of Cards is massively entertaining.

>> Devin: It makes me if the Big Mac was built on data (laughter)

>> Brian: Ask Ray Kroc man (laughs)

>> Devin: Yeah

>> Brian: Yeah that's absolutely nuts and it's actually funny because the first podcast we ever did was on Sapiens... I mean very loosely obviously. We were more of just drinking (laughs). But I just picked up Harari's latest one and I had Homo Deus since or maybe even before that podcast. Yeah, he's talking about big data a lot and how decisions will be made for us and this is kind of... you know this a harbinger of how we will be force fed art in a certain way and what's scary about it is that the show is fucking good, you know?

>> Jared: Yeah

>> Brian: I guess my view on it is that I'm less afraid of decisions being made for us than art being taken out of the hands of artists.

>> Devin: Of creators?

>> Brian: Yeah because we have already seen programs that are making music that is indecipherable or judged as superior to actual classical composers and stuff, you know? And of course we already have programs out there that can beat any chess player out there.

>> Devin: Yeah the role of the algorithm in art

>> Brian: Yeah. So I don't know. Thoughts? What are our fears and hopes and dreams?

>> George: What's the best case scenario for it? If we want to get imaginative then it's suddenly, by algorithm alone, anybody can make anything beautiful or touching or entertaining. I'm afraid I don't see the downside of it honestly. Who knows? What would the role of art be in that society? You can push a button and make compelling instances of it.

>> Devin: Sure. To me though, art doesn't exist, as much as we would perhaps at times like for it to exist in this way, I do not think it exists in a vacuum. And so therefore if we live in a world where a great deal of art is made in response to or as a result of say data pulling people's interests and pulling their wants and needs, we also are most likely living in a world where everything else is doing that as well. Where we are eating and exercising and voting in a world where all of these things are aggregates of pulling data based on our wants and needs. Therefore if art is doing that where everything else is doing that then what is the value of art? Art should be running counter or at least running tangentially or critiquing / glancing off of the mainstream. In a world of big data, art to me is becoming mainstream and that is more dangerous to me than it seems

>> Brian: Yeah I agree that it's dangerous. I don't know if it's that dangerous in the field of art. I think there are going to be symptoms within it, you know? Because the fear is that... this is so vast it's hard to know where to start. But one of my biggest fears is that if choice is what makes art, both from the artists perspective and from the consumers perspective, then what happens when an algorithm knows better than we do? And so what happens when everyone else is being fed their own preferences... for example... Let's take one example... and Harari kind of touches on this in his book, but what happens when we are being tailored to our own pieces of art that nobody else has access to. Like let's say an algorithm comes up with a song that takes some biometric data and sees what's going on with you and you have some compositional program that writes this song or melody or ambient noise for you and then you don't share it with anyone else. And that destroys art in the sense of breaking down that solipsism, you know? But at the same time, George said that's obviously better for the consumer, for the individual, but does that distance us from each other?

>> Jared: Well it makes art less negotiable and it makes it less communal

>> Brian: Right

>> Jared: It's going to make it more hermetic but that already happened once with the transition from oral culture to print culture.

>> Brian: That's true

>> Jared: Prior to the printing press, all art was social. If you wanted to see a play then you had to go out to the theater with everyone else and experience it with everyone else. But once the printed, bound book was invented then you could sit in your home and consume endless volumes of books without any sort of social experience. And I'm sure that there were some people alive at that time who thought that was in violation of some kind of essential communal experience of art. So it simply could be another iteration of that phenomena

>> Brian: Yeah, that's a good point.

>> Devin: Well I agree but I would also add that when that started, just to hypertextual critique what you said, you probably weren't consuming endless amounts of books. You were probably consuming 1 book every week or every month or every year based on the slowness of production and also your ability to access your production. What's interesting now is that the average human being in the Western world spends roughly 3 hours a day on their phone. I believe the latest statistics, just to use 1 app Instagram... I think the average person who has Instagram spends 32 minutes a day on Instagram and I would assume that person is scrolling through at least 100 photos in those 32 minutes which means they are then spending 20 seconds per photo? And so we have access to so many things that we can consume now and yet we are spending so little time on each thing that we are consuming and we are in our siloed spaces. Like the silo that forms around a human being holding a phone. So to me it throws a deeper wrench into the conundrum of like... data is accumulating on us when we don't even know about it and we are also accessing things in not that much depth. I don't know, it's just some wrenches. Throwing wrenches, everyone is getting hurt.

>> Jared: George, you wanted to say something. I cut you off

>> George: Oh no, just to go back to that idea that Brian raised that art is this sort of communal experience. Which I think is definitely one of its functions, right? Art isn't just experienced on an individual level. It's a shared community experience, right? We all talk about the newest and best television shows. We all talk about the newest albums. We like to share art because it helps us maintain our solidarity within the culture which I think is a wonderful function of art and one that could be potentially damaged if we are talking about some kind of incredibly perfect system that can churn our perfect instances of art for a single consumer. I think that would be lost. Maybe that is a detriment of that fantasy that we are discussing.

>> Brian: But one silver lining is that I do think that the written word will be one of the last bastions of art that's protected from big data. I can see an algorithm taking biometric data and creating a song, right? But creating language, like a story? I don't know what kind of data that you would have to pull for that

>> Devin: Have you seen those... you often see them on Twitter. There are algorithms that they force a robot to watch an entire season of Seinfeld and then they ask the robot to write its own episode and they are hilarious

>> Brian: Yeah, like hilariously bad?

>> Devin: No, they work.

>> Brian: Are you serious?

>> Devin: They are both really funny and really scary

>> Brian: (shudders)

>> Devin: I saw one with Seinfeld in it and it caught perfectly this sort of ennui that is prevalent. Like the fact that the robot was able to capture that sense of ennui that to me defines Seinfeld's humor...

>> Brian: God, I'm just dying to jump into this freewill conversation now because of this like (laughs) the pattern recognition is so... but one thing I do want to mention is... Devin I'm not sure if you're familiar with this but I don't think George and Jared are. Keaton Patty... am I pronouncing that right? They are on Twitter... and I think 'they' is the correct pronoun, right? Yeah. Former SNL writer. They wrote this faux Hallmark script. And you know they said "I got a bot to watch a billion hours of Hallmark movies and wrote this script" and it's one of the funniest things I have ever read in my life. Kind of a tangent, not an actual algorithm (laughs). I highly recommend everyone to check that out

>> Jared: Well ok, so there's something kind of analogous here. So we all know that old chestnut of like "a thousand monkeys working on a thousand typewriters", right?

>> Brian: Well yeah, that's our closer so (laughs)...

>> Jared: Right and so if enough chimps bang away at the keys for long enough then just by virtue of chaos theory, they will at some point, one of them produce a masterpiece. But that's completely random. We are in a situation now where we have highly intelligent machines run by algorithms who are not doing this randomly. They are sorting according to preference and according to certain features and certain structures and one bot can produce potentially a thousand masterpieces in three hours if we are dealing with a super intelligent computer, right? We could be pumping out masterpieces daily. In huge quantities. Imagine what that will be like

>> Brian: Yeah. It's going to make good music look like dogshit (laughs).

>> Devin: Yeah

>> Brian: That was actually a Kanye West reference. Not a (laughs)...

>> Devin: Yeah, I got it.

>> George: But again the question is if a society with more masterpieces... like is it lesser for its additional masterpieces?

>> Brian: No, definitely... that's not the fear. The quality... that's unquestionably going to... we'll benefit from the quality aspect. That's not under question. It's what's going to happen to us. It's kind of like if you extrapolate the automation factor of us becoming irrelevant as laborers. What happens when we become irrelevant as artists and we just become these consumers that sit here and have things made for us. I'm sure it would be deeply enjoyable in so many ways but it's very hard to suss out the consequences of it and we won't know about it until it happens.

>> Devin: I don't think the outcome of an algorithmically produced artistic world will be a bunch of high quality masterpieces. I think it will be in tune with the market and I think what you would essentially...

>> Brian: That's a fear, I think. Because it becomes what will sell to more people, just not to individuals.

>> Devin: You would just get a mass onslaught of essentially your versions of your Hollywood blockbusters in literary form or in musical form. Which we sort of already have with pop music. And the question becomes... and our analysis of artistic merit is within the concept of the Blockbuster. Like Black Panther was ostensibly a Blockbuster but people have ascribed to it. It got nominated for Best Picture

>> Jared: Which is amazing (laughter)

>> Devin: Yeah, it's wild to me. And I can go through a list in my head of summer Blockbuster movies and tell you which ones I think we’re better and my ability to tell you which things are better... my perception is grounded in the things that they do that are artistic. Like if a Blockbuster does one crazy plot twist or has a character who is deeply complex or nuanced. But those things are truly rare. What makes a good Blockbuster is usually like that we have to ignore the thing that makes it a mass produced piece of garbage

>> Jared: Right. Well it's because we know the way that those films are constructed. They are constructed based on market data and they are designed not to fail because there is so much at stake.

>> Devin: Yeah

>> Jared: Maybe talking about thousands of masterpieces being made every day is not the best kind of scare mongering. But I think what you said, Devin, is more likely. I think that's true. It will reduce itself to a perfect formula.

>> Devin: Well look at what's happened to Netflix since House of Cards. You go on Netflix now and it's like... when House of Cards came out, I believe there were 2 or 3 Netflix-produced shows: one was House of Cards and the other was Orange is the New Black. I could be wrong.

>> Brian: Wow, that's amazing. It's not that long ago. 2011 or so?

>> Jared: 2013 I think

>> Brian: Wow, that's incredible.

>> Devin: Yeah, 5 or 6 years. And now you go on Netflix and they have... it's also because their budget is huge and the Netflix-produced shows are just something that they just bought the rights to. But now you go on Netflix and there's a whole fucking slideshow of Netflix originals and it goes on for infinite. And there are some that pop up every week as if they are truly a dime a dozen

>> Brian: Yeah, that's a very, very good point and it makes me think of... the bigger fear with big data, obviously for me, comes politically. But drawing from that, once people in control have keys to these algorithms then the fear to me is what can you use art for in that sense? Like are we going back to some Soviet propaganda sort of subliminal shit? I don't know. That might be too alarmist but it's a real fear to me. Because if a politician has the keys to this and you're coordinating the entire grid and everything is connected together: your health, your psychology, everything... that can be scary about what art is filtered through the system. I don't know. That was a bit of a leap but I think it's true

>> Jared: No, that is very true. There is a whole school of neo-Marxist criticism that's dedicated to that. I mean that's the culture industry. That's the idea that everything in a capitalistic society is destined to become pop. Everything is destined to become formulaic and hypnotizing. There is a whole school of Marxist theory that's dedicated to that very concept which is that in a market driven, capital driven society, any art that is produced will inevitably be driven by a profit motive and reduce itself to a formula that serves the consumer foremost and the human being second, right?

>> Brian: Mhm

>> Jared: And that that agenda will inevitably produce a kind of stupefying, hypnotizing effect that makes us susceptible to... fascism (laughs)

>> Brian: Or at the least the lowest common denominator. Like hedging kind of stuff

>> Devin: The worry for me is less politics and more the fact that all of this is in the hands of massive billionaires that can control politics. As the Cambridge Analytica breach showed with Brexit and, I assume, with our recent election already does control politics to a degree. Like Brexit happened in large part because people got their hands on data that suggested that a large swath of potential voters, who never really voted, shared the same opinions. And if you could that giant swath of voters to vote in one direction then they can sway an entire election. But that data didn't come from politicians. It was fed to politicians by people with monied interests. And the deeper worry to me is that we live in a world where everything we do is controlled by people so far outside the picture that we don't even know who they are.

>> Brian: Yeah

>> Jared: And one of the most effective things about the Cambridge Analytica thing is that they were able to target people individually, you know, and not just in swathes but they were able to create psychological profiles and target them directly in ways that they are most susceptible to.

>> Devin: Yeah. Like on Facebook.

>> Jared: Yeah, they were able to tell the best way for you to be deceived. And with regard to art... this goes back to what you were saying a little while ago Devin... one respect in which the transition from oral culture to print culture is not analogous is that even in print culture everybody was reading the same books.

>> Devin: Yeah

>> Jared: But imagine if we are in a culture where we are all reading our own novels that are constructed for us based on our psychological profiles and there's no shared experience. Like none of us has read the same things.

>> Brian: Yeah and obviously you can make a preference where it's like "ok well give me a 10% or 20% randomized experience". But whether they allow that or it is allowed is another question. We won't know

>> Jared: (laughs) How much randomness would you like?

>> Brian: Yeah and also just going back to what you were saying that everything in capitalism being ultimately pop, right? Right now, the existential risk to not make pop and make more obscure or more literary or more... artful music...

>> Devin: Yeah, whatever the fuck that means.

>> Brian: Yeah, whatever that means, right? The existential risk is just not that high. You may make less money, right? But if I have a day job then who gives a shit? But if the existential risk goes way higher because if you make this then you aren't going to make any money or maybe it's not allowed then that's when it becomes a big problem because if people have the keys to big data and are able to lock you out, that's where it gets a little scary. I'm not exactly sure how that would happen but I'm sure it could. Certainly in the future.

>> George: But you know when we talk about the relationship that pop art has with... I should say more artistic endeavors, idiosyncratic endeavors. The pop and the idiosyncratic, the artful, they react to one another in a lot of different ways. It's the job of the subversive tempt to sort of take the piss out of the popular. So inevitably as goes one so goes the other, I see no reason why that shouldn't be especially true if most of the world's shared entertainment is being produced by a computer instead of a room full of people. I think they're still going to find their way to a different kind of narrative. A different sort of sthetic. I think at a certain point we want to resist what's popular and see if there's not something better, right? Isn't that a shared human frustration with the chafing popularity of certain things?

>> Brian: Yeah...

>> Jared: Yeah, well there's a... oh sorry

>> Brian: No, no. I was just going to bring up a real quick point. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Hasan Minhaj... yeah, yeah. His show is really good.

>> Devin: The Patriot Act show, right?

>> Brian: I kind of have a little preference for him because he makes constant NBA references and like really jockey early aughts references that I relate to (laughs). He's super smart and he's hilarious. But his recent episode on China... that's kind of a counter to what you are saying George. Like in terms of that all sounds well in good but that's us in our American culture in a so called "free" country. But if China all of a sudden becomes the super power and we keep globalizing, which is the message that they are sending because they want to globalize. China wants to globalize because they have so much going for them right now. And if they are able to keep kind of annexing culture, that becomes scary to me. But to your point, in that episode, the way that women are handling the #MeToo movement over there is amazing. The way that they are getting around their censors they basically forced Jinping's hand to acknowledge discrimination against women by basically getting around the censors by using Chinese words that made #MeToo but they would use emojis that were like whatever Me means in Chinese, you know? They would use whatever... it was like some cartoon character that became a symbol of the #MeToo movement because Me meant that. I'm butchering this but, yeah. That's a really good point but it's still really up in the air to me

>> Jared: Right. Well that's like in 1984 when Winston Smith writes "down with Big Brother" in his journal. They don't have any language for dissent in that society. But the only word he has is "down" but he somehow manages to express that thought even with limited capacity.

>> Brian: Right, right. Yeah. Super interesting

>> Devin: Which in itself is an artistic quality to be able to express a lot with a little

>> Brian: It's like defamiliarization (laughs)

>> Jared: Exactly. I think that's where maybe the distinction can be found, actually, in the ability to do that. But a potentially even more terrifying scenario is not a world in which everything in the world becomes pop by virtue of the fact that everything's being constructed for us by algorithms. But a world in which even a dissenting formula... a world in which a kind of Banksy figure, even though I don't consider Banksy that much of a rebel...

>> Brian: Oh. Shots fired

>> Devin: What do you think? Comment below (laughter)

>> Jared: You know, a world in which subversive art is generated by algorithms and it's designed to be maximally irritating and agitating against the mainstream. What do we do when even the supposedly subversive stuff is being constructed by intelligent bots?

>> Brian: And it's subversively subversive in service of the mainstream

>> Jared: Yeah

>> Devin: I think that, to a large part, that dissent is part of the equation and I think we live in a world now where that is increasing... the Western world is increasingly moving towards a true binary between conservative and liberal, populist and anti-populist, whatever the fuck you want to call it. But I think there are people who are definitely enjoying the fact that there are a lot of people upset about the current political culture. I would say that there are people who are really enjoying the fact that 40% of the country that supports Donald Trump and the other rest of the country vehemently disagrees with him. Or are trying to push a culture where it's simply those two poles because then I think you are easier to control.

>> Brian: Yes

>> Devin: I mean I don't know enough about liberal politics to get in discussion about that but that's why the upcoming Democratic primary race is not something that I am looking forward to because it's going to be a race, to me, where no one knows how to talk about a truly better world without... like you have to... I feel like compromise is a dirty word these days. Because compromise is anti data. It's between 1 and 0. That's a scary thought to me.

>> Brian: Yeah, yeah. I feel a desperate pull to plug my new boy who was just on Joe Rogan the other day, Andrew Yang. I think he has some really good ideas on why Trump won that go a lot deeper than the standard tropes that we hear out there. But anyway, let's move past that (laughs)

>> Devin: I have an idea for something that we should all share. Like when you're in 4th grade and you write a letter to your 8th grade self. I feel like we should go around and in 1-2 sentences only, describe the perfect algorithmically tailored movie or novel, novelesque movie, plotline would be for you and then in 5 years we can see if it's been delivered to us

>> Brian: This is very hard.

>> Jared: In 1 to 2 sentences?

>> Devin: 1 to 2 sentences. Like mystery man comes to town, gets shot, falls in love, gets hung... that kind of thing. Ok 2-3 sentences but keep it to 45 seconds.

>> Brian: 45? Damn, I can say a bunch of sentences

>> Devin: 30 seconds.

>> Brian: But then you have to lay out the algorithm afterwards.

>> Devin: Ok. Or you have to hashtag it (laughter). Like #violence. #DeepseatedMasculinity.

>> Brian: Ok you go first then

>> Jared: Yeah

>> Brian: I'm fucking terrified

>> Devin: You want me to go first?

>> Jared: You have to explain it in a series of 0s and 1s.

>> Brian: (laughs) Yeah. Tabs or no tabs.

>> Devin: I volunteer. I'll go first. I'm going to need 10 seconds to think... I have a... great. Yeah. So my perfect would be a...

>> Brian: Was it a book or movie first?

>> Devin: Obviously it's a book first. It's a novel made for the movies. Young male with no mother, a deep-seated, unspoken connection to his father wakes up one morning to find that his father has been brutally murdered across the country and wanders fearlessly across the country by foot (laughter) looking to avenge the death of his father. Sleeps only in Motel 8s (laughter) and falls in love with a desk clerk at a Motel 8 in Toledo who then comes with him to avenge the death of his father and he arrives to find his father buried in an unmarked grave and his father's killer pissing on his grave. (laughter) And he is so overcome with grief that he cannot kill his father's murderer and his now wife, they were married in Reno, his now wife takes the paper knife, letter opener, that he has been carrying for months, from his now husband's pocket and slices off the murderers penis and kills him. And that's how the novel ends.

>> Brian: Well you just gave us the ending.

>> Devin: Yeah. But that to me is...

>> Brian: That was also just a 3 hour thing when you said 30 seconds (laughs).

>> Devin: Yeah

>> Brian: I just want to add with the letter opener, he's only been eating McDonald's chicken McNuggets and stabbing them with the letter opener and putting them in his mouth and forming little Joker-like cuts on the corner of his lips (laughs)

>> Devin: So #Violence, #America, #MaleVulnerability, and...

>> Brian: #BruceWillis (laughter)

>> Devin: Yeah and #... (laughter)

>> Jared: Devin, that just sounds like one of your stories

>> Brian: (laughs) Yeah

>> Jared: I know but I thought the aim was that we realize it and... but anyways that sounds like the stuff that you produced in the workshop.

>> Devin: Yeah, I have to go back to that. But why not? Who's going to pick it up next?

>> Brian: Shit, do you guys want to go? I can go. I have nothing but I'll just start going... A big pharma exec (laughter) gets hooked on a new research drug that proves an untapped portion of the brain is available to us that can transcend between the 3rd and 4th dimension.

>> Devin: Oh my God. That's enough. I mean like (laughs)

>> Brian: I think that's it. Oh, right right. Our producers are reminding me I got...

>> Devin: Hashtags

>> Brian: #OnThePlug (laughs). #Drugs.

>> Jared: You have to hashtag big pharma.

>> Brian: #BigPharma. #FuckScottGottlieb (laughs). Alright

>> Jared: #MartinShkreli

>> Brian: (laughter) Yeah

>> Devin: So far it does feel quite onbrand.

>> Jared: Yeah, we don't even need bots. We can do this all day.

>> Devin: Alright we are waiting for George or Jared.

>> George: Take it away brother

>> Jared: Go ahead George

>> George: Yeah? You want me to go first?

>> Jared: Yeah, sure

>> George: I need a refresher on what it is exactly that we are doing. Are we programming... Are we talking about the perfect movie?

>> Devin: Your ideal masterpiece / entertainment... you know like someone made the movie for you.

>> George: Ok that's what I thought

>> Devin: Or the novel for you

>> Brian: Oh and real quick. My algorithm is a binomial... a fraction over 0. So it doesn't really exist (laughter). You know what I'm saying?

>> Jared: Got it. Thanks for that Brian.

>> George: I think that's pretty easy for me. I think it's going to have to be... I can probably do it with 2 sentences. Arnold Schwarzenegger and time travel (laughter). You can count me the fuck in if you can have Arnold Schwarzenegger traveling through time (laughter).

>> Brian: As the kindergarten cop

>> George: I don't care what he is because he's the same guy in every movie. He's just the biceps.

>> Brian: IT'S A WORMHOLE (laughs).

>> George: It helps if he's on Mars

>> Brian: It's the biceps (laughs)

>> George: Paul Verhoeven would be my choice for this. Basically I just want a Total Recall 2 (laughter)

>> Devin: Got it

>> George: I've just been waiting for that sequel for the last 29 years

>> Devin: All of George's comments in this episode is that he's deeply invested in mainlining entertainment (laughter)

>> Brian: Yeah, yeah. Just type in Total Recall 2, enter, run algorithm (laughs)

>> George: Yeah, #TotalRecall2. I want all of our listeners to get on Twitter and make this shit happen

>> Brian: Ok good. The movement has begun

>> Devin: We already have one tweet

>> Brian: #ArnoldSchwarzenegger

>> Devin: If you like what you hear... #TotalRecall2.

>> George: That's it.

>> Devin: Let's start a movement

>> Devin: Paul Verhoeven is still alive, isn't he? I think we could get him

>> Brian: I don't know who the fuck that is. I'm going to look him right now

>> Jared: Oh man. It's Crocodile Dundee man

>> Devin: Yeah man

>> Brian: Oh God.

>> George: Oh no you're thinking of Paul Hogan. I'm talking about Paul Verhoeven. Who was the director of...

>> Jared: Who is that?

>> George: He's a Dutch hyper violent science fiction director

>> Brian: Jared's already trying to mainstream this shit (laughs)

>> Jared: I'm jumping to my answer

>> Brian: "How do we get all of Australia involved?" (laughter)

>> Devin: I'm just looking at pictures of Paul Hogan

>> Brian: Yeah that hat man. That's like Australia's version of a 10 gallon hat. I need that

>> George: Also Crocodile Dundee 3. I'll take Crocodile Dundee 3 as well. Sorry go ahead

>> Brian: Ok our producers are telling me that she wants both of your movies, Jared and George, to murder Lars von Trier brutally (laughter). To get exactly what he's asking for. He's seriously just crying out for help. He wants to be murdered

>> George: That will be the after credits

>> Brian: Anyway, Jared, I don't know. That could be your movie. I don't know. Go. What's your movie?

>> Jared: I think we should just keep remaking "Back to the Future". That's like the perfect movie. (laughter)

>> Brian: Oh God. I just went half chub a little bit

>> Devin: I'm surprised Jared that yours isn't more of a...

>> Jared: The brow's not high enough, Devin?

>> Devin: Yeah. I know you have the capability to descend your brow quite low (laughter). But you also have the capability...

>> Jared: The brow stoops low

>> Brian: He can furrow the fuck out of that thing (laughs)

>> Devin: Your forehead is just huge (laughter) and your eyes are below your nose. So your brow spectrum is quite vast and I was expecting the high-end of your brow, not the lowest end.

>> Jared: No, that's the nadir of my brow (laughter)

>> Devin: Ok. That sentence in and of itself shows...

>> Brian: That's his movie. The nadir of my brow. That's fucking it right there (laughter)

>> Devin: It's just a pitch black movie. No characters and just a garbled voice speaking in reverse through one of those (laughter)...

>> Brian: #Nothingness

>> Jared: It's just me explaining how disappointed I am in everyone for an hour and a half. (laughter)

>> Brian: Yeah, just for our listeners, just to let you know, Jared is basically the Canadian Morrissey.

>> Devin: Looks like him. Talks like him.

>> Brian: He is him. And it's the only time I've ever seen him dance is when we went to a Smith's... what was that our lovely producers?

>> Devin: Another night that I wasn't there

>> Jared: Yeah it was like a Morrissey dance night. They were playing the Smith's

>> Devin: The day before Jared got fired (laughter)

>> Brian: That was

>> Jared: Yeah, I got fired the next day (laughs)

>> Brian: You ran the world's fastest drunk mile and then got fired (laughter)

>> Devin: And now your in Europe because you got fired

>> Jared: Yeah pretty much

>> Brian: Defected. Running from big data

>> Jared: Yeah, moving away from big data. But they do teach the "Back to the Future" script in virtually every Screenwriting 101 class because it is like the perfect script.

>> Devin: Yeah well it's a great example of what we were talking about before. A successful movie that tapped into something artistic at the same time

>> Brian: Ish. I think so. Maybe. I don't know

>> Devin: It did exactly what it said it was going to do but did it quite well

>> Brian: I mean the first "Back to the Future" is one of the greatest movies of all time

>> George: Agreed

>> Jared: Yeah so if we just keep going... if we keep going back to the future (laughter) then that's it

>> Brian: Yeah, I think that works. I don't know what that means but I think... I think that's actually the plot of my story somehow. I don't know. I think we just need drugs (laughter). Anyway. So we were talking about big data and we were talking about algorithmically making movies.

>> Devin: Yeah. Comment below on what your favorite movie is

>> Brian: George, do you want to talk about how you are aiding and abetting this system by constantly going to see every Avengers movie that comes out

>> George: Yeah absolutely. I would be thrilled

>> Brian: (laughs) I knew you would

>> George: So here's the thing. Talking about subversive and popular and what goes around comes around, right? When I was a young man, this was subversive, right? Comic books were the things that unpopular people enjoyed

>> Brian: Yeah, that's true. What the fucking losers do (laughs)

>> George: But genre fiction, anime, now all of these things have come up and dominated young adult culture now and they pervade into adulthood and they stay with us. And so I have no problem gushing about Marvel super heroes or Star Wars, which if you ask me is never going to be the original trilogy, right? But the Marvel movies are making gang busters and here's the thing, they're pretty good.

>> Devin: Yeah

>> George: I don't just eat any shit that shovels in the direction of my face (laughter). Like I have some... like I know the difference between shit (laughs). See what I'm saying?

>> Jared: I know when to close my mouth (laughter)

>> Devin: Just turn your head

>> George: Right? I'm not going to watch Captain America punching an alien with a shield made of imaginary metal because I need to understand what I am doing with my life or I want to come to terms with that loved one that I lost, you know? (laughter) I'm going to watch him punch an alien in the face with a shield made out of imaginary metal because it's fucking crazy and it's hell of a lot of fun

>> Brian: I think you just made me realize that Wu Tang Clan is a metaphor for big data in the sense that they just sow our assholes shut and keep feeding us (laughter)

>> Jared: I think we should note here that amongst all of us, George is the most shamelessly commercial in his enjoyment of certain films.

>> George: Oh absolutely

>> Devin: Yeah.

>> Brian: "Top Gun". "Top Gun". Let's talk about "Top Gun"

>> Devin: "Top Gun" is one of the best movies of all time

>> Brian: That's an algorithm movie right there. That's perfect. Just like "Back to the Future"

>> Jared: And they're making another one

>> Brian: No

>> Devin: What? Well it's been in the works

>> Jared: I think they're finally doing it though

>> Devin: Yeah. It's going to be in 3D

>> Jared: Tom and Val

>> Brian: See now Tom is going to put in an algorithm for Scientology conversion

>> Devin: Yeah. But what Tom Gun shows... I don't want to wax poetic here on "Top Gun"...

>> Brian: I do (laughs)

>> Devin: But what it does show to me is that "Top Gun"... "Top Gun" was made pre big data and I think they stumbled onto a formula or they predicted a formula that worked which is just like... was it Scorsese or Tarantino who said it's like mainlining adrenaline. They just said let's get a bunch of hot dudes, let's get some hot women, let's put the dudes in things that go 400 miles an hour, or actually like 800 miles an hour, let's put some explosions in, and let's call it a wrap. And also let's shove it all up through the orifice of the military industrial complex...

>> George: Yeah sprinkling of jingoism

>> Devin: And come out on the side of the Cold War. The formula worked and what's fascinating to me about "Top Gun" and what I can never get over is that the same director directed "Days of Thunder" which came out 2 years later which is essentially the same movie except it takes place on the ground with NASCAR'S. Which go 1/8th or 1/10th the speed of an F18.

>> Brian: Is it Formula 1?

>> Devin: No, it's just NASCAR. And it's exactly the same plot. Like Tom Cruise falls in love with a woman and also has a rivalry with someone. Everyone is wearing jumpsuits still

>> Jared: And there's like a cigar-pinching coach (laughter) who is just like "goddamnit, you're so arrogant"

>> Devin: Yeah. And it's so much worse than "Top Gun" only by virtue that everyone who has seen Days of Thunder has seen "Top Gun" before and says "well this is "Top Gun" but this is on the ground". And so it shows the folly of... it shows, I guess to George's point, that if some algorithm is working they would have said "ok "Top Gun" works, what's the only way to make it better. Oh we have to put it in space" (laughter)

>> George: Yeah I was about to say... speaking of understanding that, your contention is that the success of the film was not up to its plot but to the relative speed of the activity that they were undertaking (laughter). Correct?

>> Devin: Yes. I mean the plot is fine. The plot is great

>> Brian: It is itself inert (laughter)

>> Devin: The plot is the same as any plot which is just... yeah. And the names too. You also can't go back to Earth because on Earth people go by their real names (laughter) and when you're flying fighter planes, you can be called Maverick and Hollywood. Like the names Slider, Maverick, Hollywood, Iceman, Viper...

>> George: It sounds like a Marvel comic book movie when you talk about that

>> Brian: It does

>> Devin: Yeah, it is. Truly. I mean I love "Top Gun", unashamedly, and I will also love it. Goose. Goose is what makes the movie

>> Brian: Goose died right?

>> Devin: Goose dies. Spoiler alert. Sorry, we have to go back and start it all over. If someone hasn't seen "Top Gun", Goose dies in a scene that still makes me cry (laughter)

>> Jared: Ok but you didn't have to tell us that

>> Devin: Yeah. Terrifying sex scene too

>> Jared: Ok. Yeah?

>> Devin: Have you seen "Top Gun", Jared?

>> Jared: Yeah, of course.

>> Devin: It's two bodies silhouetted and then a tongue snakes out (laughter) of both of their mouths at the same time as if they're inhabited by some sort of demon...

>> Brian: It's like lady in the tramp...

>> Devin: Yeah. And then the tongues meet silhouetted against a blue / black night sky or window and it's just these two tongues and there's so much space between the tongue and the roof of their mouths (laughter)

>> Jared: Yeah and they're playing that "Take My Breath Away" song

>> Brian: (sings) "Take my breath away". Yeah, it's a fucking classic

>> Jared: Yeah, great soundtrack by the way.

>> Devin: It is a great soundtrack

>> Brian: The only way that would have been better is if they played "Dying in Your Arms Tonight" at some point. Not necessarily in that scene

>> Jared: Alright so, at this point I'm going to inject some moral seriousness into this discussion

>> Devin: Once we let George speak we need some

>> Brian: Yeah, we need Jared to corral us back from space.

>> Jared: Because this was already imagined by Wallace. I mean, this is the whole premise of "Infinite Jest". Imagine something that's so entertaining that you don't want to do anything else, right? Imagine the perfect piece of entertainment that renders you inert and useless, right?

>> Brian: And dead. Literally in that book. In "Idiocracy" too. That's basically the end game is that we all just sit... even Tom Segura. Have you guys heard of Tom Segura?

>> Devin: Yeah

>> Brian: His latest stand up he says the dream is to never leave his recliner. Like Amazon doesn't just deliver, you literally have a shoot that hurtles through and you have your fucking meal or whatever. But honestly, that really could be one of the end games. Except for when you have virtual reality and stuff there might just be these big rooms that we walk around in like fucking idiots. Like we have the goggles on or whatever

>> Devin: Are you going to pose a question Jared? Or are you just mentioning that?

>> Jared: So what I'm working towards is this... writing a novel or making a movie is not like instructing a Big Mac or creating a recipe for Coke. Like when Coke designs their recipes, they measure that shit down to like the nanometer. There are like minute variations between different recipes and they do this stuff for market research. They'll lay like 25 cans of Coke out on the table and have people test them all. And if for some reason people say they enjoy like number 18 the most then they will use that recipe. And the difference between all of the cans is negligible. Like it's so small

>> Brian: Yeah, which always amazed me.

>> Jared: But they got like electrodes hooked up to their head and something is firing in their brain that means that that is the most pleasurable recipe. But creating art is not like that and we all know Coke tastes great and we know that Big Mac is great. But we know that it doesn't make us feel good. It doesn't nourish us although it is wildly enjoyable. And so the question that I'm really asking, which is going to sound kind of controversial, but is the purpose of art really to be as entertaining as possible. Is the purpose of art to deliver maximum pleasure or is there something more to it?

>> Brian: My very basic "shoot off the hip" answer is that I do think... one of the reasons that I do really champion contemporary literature is because I do think it has done a really good job in a lot of cases at a higher rate than in the past in combining entertainment and substance. And those are my favorite books. I mean like "Infinite Jest" is a perfect example of that. "Cloud Atlas", may be my favorite book, is another great example of that. Again, that caters to my biases though because "Cloud Atlas" isn't easy to everyone. "Infinite Jest" isn't easy for everyone. I don't know. Yeah, that's my real basic story

>> Devin: Yeah, well it calls into question to me the culture of consumption that we are living where I think as a society I don't think it's controversial to say that we value enjoyment over substance. Or entertainment over...

>> Brian: Gratification.

>> Devin: Immediate gratification above all else. I guess you technically could have the time but as a generalization no one has the time anymore the way they did when "Swan's Way" came out to sit with Proust for a long fucking time.

>> Brian: Which is also a product of technology. Which is interesting

>> Devin: Yeah. And so the culture we live in changes the way that we consume art and it's hard to argue whether or not... I'm so jaded about it that I don't really care if this is a positive or negative thing. I think it's just the way it is.

>> Jared: Yeah but as much as you love "Top Gun", that's not all you need. That doesn't fill you up.

>> Devin: Yeah. And what's interesting is that I sense in me a need every once in a while to sit with a hard book to read. But also that gives me pleasure so that's my bias. But like every once in a while... like this summer I want to read "Moby Dick" because I just want to sit with a book for a long fucking time. I also know that reading "Moby Dick" will give me a vast amount of pleasure

>> Jared: Well George loves "Moby Dick"

>> George: Oh yeah. For me, and "Moby Dick" falls into this category, and I enjoy being entertained... I really do. But I think I like more, I find more, as Jared said, nourishment from is something that puzzles me. Like I want something that I have to think about. Because you don't like to sit and... and you know things like that can be enjoyable as well. I can think of several films over the last few years that do exactly that. Not the least of which is "The Lobster". What's that director's name, Jared?

>> Jared: Oh yeah. He's a great director. I can't remember his last name

>> Brian: Oh yeah, we watched that a few years ago.

>> Devin: He just did... I'm looking it up now

>> Jared: "The Favorite"

>> Devin: He did "The Favorite" which I haven't seen yet

>> George: But uh, I like something that baffles me. I like something that's new enough to inspire consideration long after you're through reading it or watching. And I find that, again as Jared said, nourishing. Something you have to sit with. Something you don't just comprehend at face value as you can do with so much of the popular media.

>> Devin: Yeah and I think one of the dangers of contemporary culture and the way in which we ingest information is that it becomes harder and harder, and I see this when I teach too, when I teach students who grew up with this form of mass media, it becomes harder and harder to instill the intrinsic importance of having intellectual curiosity. Of learning for learning's sake. Of thinking for thinking's sake. Of finding pleasure, as you say George, by being puzzled by something. And I think that's to me, and this is mostly coming from a teacher's point-of-view, and is one of the biggest losses. And I think that is a loss. I think even though information is readily accessible now, some things are worth working for and that's a difficult agenda to push now because people don't want to hear that. And people say it's old-school or whatever, it's archaic, but I think it's really important, especially when you're young, to learn the value of sitting with something that you're puzzled by and figuring it out on your own. Or not figuring it out. Coming to a place where you don't figure it out but the attempting was the pleasure. And I worry about that. People do only read headlines now and they don't sit with things and they don't read the whole article and they don't blah blah blah. It makes me feel like a 60 year old man but really I'm sounding like a 27 year old person who had an education that showed me the value of that. And I don't see it anymore.

>> Jared: Right, well that...

>> Brian: Just real quick, that makes me think what Emerson would think of today's culture just because that's basically self-reliance, you know? Anyway...

>> Devin: Yeah. So Emerson would have made a great tweeter.

>> Brian: Yeah (laughs)

>> Devin: Like he would have

>> Brian: Yeah, he would have

>> Devin: So would Theroux. I mean "imitation is suicide"...a fucking viral tweet.

>> Brian: Yeah (laughs)

>> Jared: Yeah as would Oscar Wilde. He would have been a great tweeter

>> Brian: Oh my God. Yeah, he would have been the Tweet Master General man.

>> Jared: Yeah, he was the original tweeter

>> Brian: Seriously. Oh fuck. Yeah, we really miss that.

>> Jared: Yeah, regarding what you were saying, Devin, that's where a book like Infinite Jest is actually quite wise and quite profound because Wallace when he was writing it had to try and somehow manage the irony that he was writing about a culture that was obsessed with entertainment and maximum pleasure while also trying to make the book pleasurable but not so pleasurable that it was succumbing to the very thing that he was trying to describe, right?

>> Devin: Yeah

>> Jared: And so he tried to write a novel that pushed on people a little bit. And we're all writers here. We all have friends that are writers. And we all know how many people complained about Infinite Jest and how few people have actually read it. And it seems like in that regard the book was kind of a failure. And fun fact actually, the original subtitle for Infinite Jest was "A failed entertainment" but Michael Peach made him remove it. But maybe that was Wallace's intention was that maybe the concept of making something that is pleasurable in itself is asking for too much. It's doomed to failure in that sense.

>> Brian: Yeah

>> Devin: That's interesting

>> Brian: That is very interesting. But just one more comment about difficulty and how important it is in our lives. I think the biggest danger in our culture is the lack of exposure now in difficulty. I do mean in a literary sense. In terms of literature... literacy is a problem now compared to the past despite the enormous access we have to language, you know? Now more than ever. And it's so ironic to me. And being exposed to language and being able to suss out language and becoming better with language only begets a deeper interest. And the more distant that we are from it then the less we are going to care about it. And that's kind of scary. I don't know the remedy for that. Especially in a world where binary is becoming pretty important.

>> Jared: Yeah it's going to render us more and more passive

>> Brian: Yeah and I don't know what that means... like when I say binary I also mean like literally what we are doing digitally is becoming more important and I don't know how that's going to affect language in the future. Especially when we are able to read exactly what's going on in our minds more and more. That's another scary feature for art, especially writing. Direct access to minds. It's going to take the mask off and it's going to take the drama away a lot. That's actually something else I did want to talk about because big data is going to take away a lot of choices and without choice there is no drama and without drama there is no story. So I don't know... that's probably not in the near future but if we are talking about people sitting on their recliners and having things brought to them: entertainment, nourishment, whatever, money, whatever you need. The drama is gone. But I don't know. Infinite pleasure. Maybe that's better? I don't know (laughs)

>> Devin: I feel like we should go around again and in one word to describe how we feel about the future.

>> Brian: One word? Goddamnit

>> Devin: One word. True rotary fashion

>> Brian: Yeah, yeah. We'll close with this. Ok. Let's meditate

>> Devin: Are we going to meditate? In school we call this a turn and talk. But we aren't talking, we are just gathering our thoughts...

>> Brian: (heavy breathing) Dear baby (laughs). This is hard man

>> Devin: It's one word

>> Brian: Everything is going to feel so...

>> Devin: It's one word. It's not going to be right

>> Brian: Ok you go first

>> Devin: No, I went first last time

>> Brian: Alright George, you go first

>> George: Uh pass. Come back to me

>> Brian: I like that. Can that be your word? (laughs)

>> George: It can be

>> Devin: No, George needs a word. I like that as a word but George gets another word. George gets two words. Why doesn't our producer begin and write a word on the...

>> Brian: Our producer is making gestures of eschewal. Here she goes. Community is her word.

>> Devin: Wow. Optimism there.

>> Brian: Yeah, very optimistic. I am very concerned about community when it comes to the future. Ok

>> Jared: Ok. I can't reduce it to one word but I'll kind of encapsulate it in a sentence

>> Devin: No, it's gotta be one word. (laughter)

>> Jared: I can't do it though, sorry. But I'll just try to encapsulate sort of what I've been thinking this whole time and what I have been thinking about these last couple days as my closing statement, which is that the question of what kind of art is good for the soul is an age old question. It goes back to Socrates arguing with Euripides about poetry and Plato famously believed that poetry is a kind of corrupt form because it relied on artifice to instruct whereas philosophy was more pure because it was a direct delivery system, right? Which is of course ridiculous.

>> Brian: (laughs) Yeah

>> Jared: If we can imagine a future in which we are passive consumers of perfectly constructed pieces of entertainment which are marketed directly to us and are not challenging to us at all and are just gratifying that part of our brain that just wants the Big Mac, you know? That to me will mean a certain loss of humanity because it will mean a certain loss of freedom both in the creation of art and the reception of art and I think that puts the whole question of negotiable meaning, communal meaning, and the commerce between the audience and the artist into question and I just don't like the idea of that. I mean I'm like a chronic worrier when it comes to that kind of stuff. Especially technology. But living in that kind of world where everything is generated for us based on algorithms is going to mean a loss of humanity in more ways than one but that will be a deep one indeed.

>> Devin: So worried is your one word

>> Brian: Anxiety. I was also going to say for him... I'll use this for my word...

>> Jared: Angst

>> Brian: I'll use it as my word but a part of what you are saying, and everybody can look this up now, but 'meretricious'. I think that's the word that I will say. I think that defines a lot of our art. I think it kind of always has. That's my word. That's my word. I'm going for it.

>> Devin: My word is just 'terrified'

>> Brian: Terrified? Yeah. Anxiety was going to be my other word. But that's just me.

>> Devin: I'm torn between reactionary and terrified.

>> Brian: Yeah. I don't even think we will have the power

>> Devin: I am terrified. The loss of ennui is terrifying too. The fact that our dailiness of life will be corrupted is terrifying.

>> Brian: Yeah. Ennui has been replaced by anxiety and fear.

>> Devin: Ennui is... George's past

>> Jared: And boredom, Devin, is just terror spread thin

>> Devin: Is that Camus or something?

>> Jared: No, that's me

>> Devin: Oh wow. Tweet that man. Get that out there. Get viral (laughter)

>> Brian: I'm going to steal that

>> Devin: Viral too is a good word for the future as well

>> Brian: Viral is good

>> Devin: The idea that there is an infection

>> Brian: (laughs) Yeah that’s true. It's true. Ok guys. We're going to stop now. Ok that's it for today's episode. If you liked what you heard then please subscribe and review on whichever platform you are listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter @AnimalRiotPress or Facebook and Instagram @AnimalRiotPress or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 10th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast featuring Devin Kelly, George Sawaya, and Jared Pollen. And is produced by Katie Rainey without whom we would merely three of Shakespeare's thousand monkeys banging on a typewriter.

>> George: #TotalRecall2. Together we can do this

>> Brian: (laughs) Good shit