Episode 43: Worst Behavior

December 5th, 2019
Hosted by Brian Birnbaum
Guests: Seth Katz and Jared Marcel Pollen
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay
Podcast Assistant: Dylan Thomas

What’s good Animals? Glad you’re joining us for our 43rd episode. Today we’re discussing Zadie Smith’s semi-recent essay, "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction". Joined by Animal Riot OGs Jared Marcel Pollen and Seth Katz, listen in for our take on whether we still live in an age where it’s permissible to write across demographics and identities. Meanwhile, your host will lament the lack of snow here in New York on the heels of a busted winter storm forecast. (Brian really likes snow: follow him on Facebook for winter weather forecasts.)

>> Brian: Welcome to the 43rd episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. I'm your host, Brian Birnbaum. We're here today with Seth Katz, a writer of fiction and an ardent art critic. I came up with that. Copyright it. And you can find his review of “Yellow Earth” by John Sayles on Slant magazine come January, for which you're being paid. Right, Seth?

>> Seth: That is my first paying gig as a writer, I'm happy to say.

>> Brian: And we're also here with Jared Marcelle Pollen, author of the debut story collection, "The Unified Field of Loneliness" and the forthcoming novel "Venus and Document" both out or forthcoming from Crowsnest, the imprint from Political Animal. And so before we get started today, I'm just, you know, I'm gonna come out with it. I'm feeling churlish as fuck today.

>> Jared: You got the churls.

>> Brian: I got the churls, dude. I got the churls. That's how they say it in Baltimore. Yeah, it was supposed to snow. I don't know if I have announced this on the podcast yet I'm basically like, you know, I want to say Paul Cousins' godson, but no one knows who the fuck that is, and they should look him up.

>> Jared: Is that the guy who was screaming about the...

>> Brian: That's what I'm saying. I'll say I'm Jim Cantore's godson, even though it's bullshit. It's just that I feel like such a sellout for saying that. But Paul Cousins, everyone look him up. He's the godfather of winter weather, meteorology forecasting, etcetera. But so, yeah, if he was, if he was with me today here in this room, maybe I wouldn't be feeling like this. Maybe it would have told me exactly what was gonna happen. Maybe would have told me that I was gonna wake up to chimeric dreams of just a whitened New York City only to find out as usual...

>> Jared: Was he omniscient in his ability to predict the weather?

>> Brian: I mean, honestly, man, no cause no one is. Let's be honest.

>> Jared: No, no, he was not. (laughs)

>> Brian: He was not, but he was damn good. He's better than the rest. He was it. He was the Messiah.

>> Jared: So wait, You're not... you're not getting snowed in? This was a false alarm?

>> Brian: It was man. And I was on board the NAM. The NAM was on board. Alright, man? We were in range.

>> Jared: The NAM was in range.

>> Brian: We were in range. Alright, so anyways, I'm upset.

>> Jared: So that's why we're having this podcast?

>> Brian: And that's why we're having this podcast. I guess I will be probably commenting throughout and referencing Help said I am and maybe getting more specific, But let's try to talk.

>> Seth: How long have you been doing your own forecast there, Brian?

>> Brian: You know, I'm gonna tell you right now. It all started when I was at a baseball practice, an indoor practice because it was the winter time. But, you know, I played Metro ball and, you know, we were all fucking serious about it, you know? And in the lobby of the facility on the Weather Channel, they said it was gonna snow. I was, like, 10 years old, 11 years old at the time. And then four days later, when they said I was gonna snow it snowed, and I was I was absolutely just I was transfixed by that prognosis and the confirmation of that prognosis. And so I became obsessed.

>> Seth: The Oracle of Delphi.

>> Brian: Yes, exactly. And Ah, and and dovetailed with the fact that my friend Dave had the fucking dopest sledding hill known to man. Yeah, it was just It was just this maelstrom of joy. So slowly over time, I got into the science of it, you know? And so I just started following all the models, You know, I can I can list him off for you here, but I won't bore you. And so now I have legions of fans. I mean, at least double digits, following me on Facebook to get the weather. And I've let them all down today.

>> Seth: That's the only reason I'm friends with you on Facebook is for the weather updates.

>> Brian: I know. That probably represents, like, 70% of my digital friendships is because of...

>> Jared: Right. We should say here that Brian keeps us all very up to date in our group chat on the, uh yeah, the climax notice mix happening in the New York... in the New York City area and also the greater East Coast, even for me being here in Europe, you know, having absolutely no relevance to me whatsoever. Brian keeps me very well informed as well.

>> Brian: It's really important stuff. And I think, you know, I think my lowest moment over the last 24 hours was I texted you guys in all caps, Wham bam thank you NAM, because, you know, I thought, Well, you know, I thought we were in for it, man. I thought we were in for it, and then it, then it busted harder than my first time spanking it. (laughter)

>> Jared: It's supposed to be a dry run.

>> Brian: It really was. It was supposed to last all day. Uh, it never works out like that.

>> Seth: This is where 75% of listeners have tuned out.

>> Brian: Now let's talk about books. They're still here. Don't worry about it. So, yeah, What do we want to talk about? You guys had some ideas. I know Jared. You mentioned the Zadie Smith New York Times essay, which I'd be okay with discussing, even though I only read half of it because I agreed so fervently that I was just like I'm done. I don't want to disagree with this at any point.

>> Seth: Wasn't that piece in the New York Review of Books?

>> Jared: Yes, it was.

>> Brian: Yeah. And we were, Yeah, we thought it was Yeah. We thought it was gonna be situated near my, uh, the ad for Emerald City. But it wasn't, And so I despaired. Maybe that's why I stopped reading it, but yeah, so I don't know. Jared, did you finish the whole thing?

>> Jared: I did.

>> Brian: Give it a synopsis. Seth didn't read it but he's a smart guy.

>> Jared: Okay, so we got someone here who assented to the piece so much that he didn't even bother to finish it. Someone who didn't read it and then me who read it, like, five weeks ago and remembers like 1/4 of it.

>> Seth: Yes. Sounds like one of our writing workshops.

>> Brian: That's perfect. Yeah. Okay. So absolutely perfect.

>> Jared: Well, I think if I remember correctly, I apologize if I get this wrong, but I seem to remember that...

>> Brian: Don't worry about it. Wouldn't be the first time today. Sorry, it's early, but I had to say, It's just, you know, it's been a hard day for me anyways, Continue.

>> Jared: I think this this question about whether or not you should right outside of your own experience, particularly when it comes to people of different groups or people of different ethnicities or colors or sex is or whatever it may be, was something that I think was closing in around Zadie Smith for a while, in the sense that she had been asked several questions about it, not because she's guilty in any way of, you know, violating any norms. But I think she had been asked in some interviews with journals and things like that. And she had always kind of declined the question because she didn't wanna hang herself by giving the wrong answer. And so when that piece appeared in the New York Review of Books, it seemed to me like something that she had probably been thinking about and working on for awhile. And it is very... I use the word calculated hesitantly because, like I don't want to make it seem like there was any sort of, like, you know, like PR involved in it. But it felt like a very safe position for her to take in classic Zadie Smith fashion. No disrespect to her, but it felt like a very safe article in which she said, Basically what we already know, which is that we as writers need the freedom of our imaginations, and a big part of that is imagining the lives of others. And that's a big part of empathy, which is what literature is all about in alleviating loneliness.

>> Brian: Great movie, too.

>> Jared: And writers are multiple people, writers are full of contradictions, and she quotes that Walt Whitman line. "Do I contradict myself very well? I contradict myself. I invest, I contain multitudes." And she uses that as the essential irony on which this whole argument about whether or not you can write outside of your own experience kind of hangs and coming from someone like her, I think she has the clout, and she has this status to be able to make that argument without getting too much flak for it. I don't know. I didn't read any of the follow up on it or the comments on it. I'm sure some people came down on her.

>> Brian: She also kind of indemnified herself by coming back to the Walt Whitman quote From what I remember and using it as an example of Okay. But what we also know about Walt Whitman? You know what I mean? Like he had episodes of bigotry is the probably the best way I can put it. It's vague as fuck.

>> Seth: He held views that were comparable to white men in the 19th century.

>> Brian: She kind of uses it to come back and say, Here's what I think she made it very safe for her. She came back and said, Basically Well, you know, fiction has always been evolving. It was some eloquent version of maybe I'm the old woman on the porch right now.

>> Jared: Yeah. There's a curve.

>> Brian: Yeah, yeah, And so fiction is always evolving. So maybe it has evolved past this thing where, you know, we should be able to imagine anyone else's life. So that's where I thought she was being extremely safe because she was just hedging you know what I mean? But I did agree with the entire piece in the sense that but I would extrapolate it even further. I mean, fiction, as a technology to me is running into... I think the conversation can get anachronistic pretty quick because I think something she didn't allude to is Okay, well, if it's further than just identity politics or something like that, demographics like who deserves the right to say what? I think pretty quickly it's gonna become an actual technological argument. But I don't want to go there right now.

>> Seth: Well, no, I actually think that's that's actually that's exactly right. That touches on a number of things I think we can talk more about. Just make two quick points here one. Well, Brian, when I interviewed you for The Millions about Emerald City, we talked about this little bit. And when I have gotten feedback from people about that conversation, a lot of people have pointed out something that you said as being especially astute, which is that you know, the only way this conversation ends is that you can only write about yourself. If you can't write about people who are of you know, a different ethnicity, different background, a different class than you. You know, if you keep kind of going down that rabbit hole, then the only way it ends is that the only proper subject for a writer is him or herself or theirself but related to technology. I mean, I know ever actually brought this up in the last podcast we did. I don't know why I'm so fixated on it. Except Well, you know, Dave Eggers wrote, "What is the what?" I don't know if anyone's read that. I'm sure nobody in the world has read it in the last 10 years, but it's about a real person, a refugee from Sudan, I believe. And, you know, he met with this person, interviewed him, had extensive conversations and then wrote a novel in the first person. He wrote a novel about this guy in as him in the first person, and it's hard to imagine that happening today for a number of reasons. But as far as the technological argument that you're making, it seems to me that rather than write a novel in that way, the first thing that anybody would do would be to make a documentary. To let that person tell their own story in a very direct way, rather than having it be mediated through what is, in fact, anachronistic piece of technology. Which is the Codex, the novel. The written form.

>> Brian: Yeah, and I don't I don't find it to be anachronistic at this point. I still think that, you know, as I said in the interview, I think that we did that I think that the novel is still very relevant. Unfortunately, it's, I think, more relevant than people realize, because I still think language, especially decoding language through... decoding someone's consciousness through language is and is an enormously beneficial tool for one's emotional and just outright intelligence. But I think I'm especially thinking about maybe 10, 20, 30 years into the future, I'm not expecting us to be, you know, at a point of appearance like cognition or something. At that point, though, I do think it's somewhat possible Elon Musk is out there working on it right now as we speak. Facebook has cochlear technology that they're working on as we speak. That would do something like this. So if you go down this rabbit hole of who deserved to say what? Well, in 10 or 20 years, we're gonna be saying who deserves to know what about another person? So to me, it is somewhat of a ridiculous conversation in a way. And let me give you an example why? Because that might feel like a tangent. Because, Seth, you just brought up the fact that you know, Dave Eggers went and interviewed this person, right? And the reason you bring that up is because I'm assuming this person is of another race, another ethnicity, another culture?

>> Seth: A completely alien experience to anything Dave Eggers has ever...

>> Brian: Right. I just did a podcast with a woman, Atia Abawi about her YA novel. And she's And though she is a refugee and and and though she, you know, has has cultural ties to the characters that she wrote in her book who were largely refugees, whether they were Afghan or Syrian, she was American. She grew up in California. She was a refugee as a baby, you know? So her experience of coming over here is really blotted out by just being that young and in no way shape or form, not only do I not think that not only do I think she deserves to tell that story because she's a writer, and that's just what writers do, But I also know that people in our day and age will give her the benefit of the doubt the same way that people in our day and age give me the benefit of the doubt writing about Deaf people just because I grew up with Deaf parents and I have been around Deaf culture, which assumes that just because I've had a certain experience, a very specific experience, that could be that's extremely generalized. And yes, there's a lot of truth to it. It assumes that I know more than someone else about something. Well, while there are sign language interpreters out there who hang out with Deaf people more than I do, who are more fluent in sign language than I am, who might have a greater interest in Deaf culture than I do. But if they wrote a novel, who knows. So when I say anachronistic I just mean it in both directions of chronology like this literally can't end in any other way. Then one person thinking about their own experience or everyone being allowed in to know they're each other's lives. Does that make sense or am I completely off the rails?

>> Jared: It does. But I think the argument coming from the other side is somewhat at odds with what the other side's actually trying to achieve. So, for example, there's all this emphasis on awareness, you know, and like seeing your blind spots and like recognizing biases that you might have but don't realize that you have. And so we're talking about points of access here. Like, How do you have conversations? How do you get to learn about other people in the experiences that they have that you're not conscious of or never even thought about before? And I see the novel for better or worse, as a point of access and talking about what you were saying a moment ago, Brian, you grew up with Deaf parents, so you have some access to that culture. It might not be as thorough as some others, but you have enough. You have a hinge into that world where you can allow your imagination to carry you into places that other people who maybe have more access to that world but are not novelists would not be able to go. And so they're able to perhaps learn something or glean some kind of insight from your perspective that they may not have known before and to hold you to a certain standard and say that you shouldn't be writing about something because you have only shallow knowledge of it is to indict almost, you know, every novelist in the history of literature because all novelists, as we know, do a certain amount of research for a particular subject, and then you just kind of finesse the rest of it. You do enough to be able to get away with it, to be able to get by and to make the reader believe this is an essential part of suspension of disbelief, right? It's part of the contract that we make with fiction. So to hold writers to this criteria of like, well, you don't know enough about this or you're not part of this group or you don't have any access to this community. Or if you do, it's only shallow or it's only, you know, indirect and therefore maybe it's better if you don't weigh in on this. I think it is just defeatist in principle. And it's the death of the imagination.

>> Brian: I'm kind of wondering if there's actually an argument to be made about why there is a definitional boundary between fiction and nonfiction because...

>> Jared: It's a very interesting debate.

>> Brian: Because in the sense of, if you define something as fiction, then yeah, I mean, I think that's that's what gives people the freedom to investigate whatever they want. Otherwise, why would people be up in arms about James Frey lying about things and in "A 1,000,000 Little Pieces."

>> Jared: I don't know if everyone was up in arms about that. I think Oprah just got hoodwinked by and then she felt betrayed. And so her outrage was manifested on mass through everyone else.

>> Brian: Yeah. Yeah, well, I think I think some of that was she had a platform in which I like, I think people wouldn't have known exactly. Not nearly as many people of what would have known without Oprah putting it on blast, you know? So I do think people were outraged to the degree that each and they listen.

>> Jared: They listened to Oprah and then felt like fools after. Book club sucks anyway.

>> Brian: Yeah, right, you're sounding like Jonathan Franzen.  You better rein it in there. My thoughts on fiction are just so paradoxical because I had once thought it's this I don't know. I just don't know. I want to say that it's kind of like this almost this pastiche of an art form. But I do think it's only because we're more entertained by more passive forms of entertainment and, you know, blah, blah, blah. That comes back to the old old man on the porch kind of thing. You know, this is that we did it back in my day, even though we all grew up with the Internet and everything, but I think that's what says something, right? We all grew up with the internet, and yet here we are, and we've done deep investigations. You know, Seth, you're a film critic. Jared., I'm not sure if you've written any film reviews, but like we you and Seth could...

>> Seth: He did the review on Lars Von Treuer.

>> Brian: Oh, yeah, I'm sure you ripped him a new asshole, but yes. Oh, there's two people here who are heavily invested in the new, you know, quote unquote newfangled passive entertainment that's been around for less time. And it's still a representation of somewhat of, like, you know, the new like golden age of TV, which then lends into documentaries and and whatnot and true crime or true, like TruTV. And still Yet here we are all talking about how novels are worth it, how literature still worth it. And the reason I think that is because there is no other way to see inside a person's consciousness.

>> Jared: Absolutely.

>> Brian: That matches the way that they turn a phrase and the matches the way that they say things. Not just what they're talking about and what they think about, but the way they say it.

>> Jared: I was just going to say the way perception is intrinsically connected to language, right?

>> Brian: Yeah, Exactly. Bringing that back to Zadie Smith. I did think that I do, however, think that as safe as it was. And I don't know, Seth, maybe you've heard enough to chime in after me because I am interested to hear what you think about this. But as safe as it was, I did see it is immensely true. You know, every generation has their thing where the older generation goes, That's fucking bullshit, you know? And it's hard for us to hold perspective and while I sit here, it is hard to say, OK, it's hard for me to put myself in the shoes... Okay, so, you know, if I was gonna do it myself. If someone wrote a book about Deaf culture, I will say outright, I wouldn't mind at all if someone had not grown up with Deaf people and just did their research. The only thing that would matter is if they got it right. If it was good, you know?

>> Seth: Jared brought up the word imagination earlier, and we've all kind of been reaffirming this idea of, you know, all that really matters is whether you can pull it off. But then, you know, there's the question of who decides whether the author pulled it off. I mean, you would have some good insight on that if someone wrote a novel about deaf culture, you know, you would be in a good position to say, you know, is this accurate? Is this fair? Is this true? But, you know, I have very little contact with the Deaf community, you know, I could read the novel and say, Well, this feels true to me. It seems you know it. It feels real as I'm reading it, and I believe it. But then someone you know, you might come along and say, Well, that's not how it actually is. And those are two different. There's so many of you can pull it off. It's a narrative level, but then you know whether you are, as I think, many people take doing justice to the community about what you're writing.

>> Brian: Yeah, no, I mean and you're definitely right about that. The unfortunate fact is, it's so nuanced that,like the example I brought up about Atia. You know, Is she immersed in Syrian culture? No, but because of certain peripheral traits that she has, that she is technically a refugee and that, and she's done immense research. And she grew up, you know, it just gets so nuanced and I'm thinking back now to that, you know, the review that everyone everyone talks about. What was it in? Okay, All I'm gonna say is, and this is true. I just have zero actual like, No, I don't know the title, but I just remember there was a book that came out and someone I was closer to the culture than the person who had written it, I believe it was a white woman had written it, But I do know again, don't quote me on this. Reviewed the book and gave it a glowing review. And then everyone jumped down the reviewers throat kind of saying this was appropriated. That's like the gist of it, you know? So, Seth, that's what kind of going back to the whole...

>> Seth: Okay, if I can, you know, kind of jump on my John Sayles soapbox for a minute.

>> Brian: Yeah. Do it.

>> Seth: John Sayles is one of the You don't take any opportunity to beat the drum for Mr Sayles. He's one of the great living filmmakers, but he also has had a very successful career as a novelist since the 1970s.

>> Brian: Yeah, that's actually the only way I knew him. I didn't know he made films.

>> Seth: Yeah, you know, his output as a novelist has been a little more sporadic since he became a filmmaker. But I think he said he mostly, you know, writes during writer strikes. When he can't work on screenplays, Then he'll work on prose. Anyway.

>> Brian: Fucking scab (laughter)

>> Seth: See Sales has been renowned throughout his career for his ability to write about so many different communities. I mean, one of his early films is called Lyanna. It's about a woman kind of coming out as a lesbian, and his film Passion Fish is about an affluent soap opera actress who becomes a paraplegic, and her, you know, kind of pushing poor relationship with her, you know, kind of nurse or caretaker who's a black woman recovering from drug addiction.

>> Brian: So I'm assuming I'm assuming he's the script writer and the director.

>> Seth: Yeah, yeah, but it's but also I mean in his novels, I mean, Lois Cassano's is a novel about kind of Cuban exiles after Castro came into power. And anyway, the point here is in the introduction to one of his short story collections, Dillinger and Hollywood Sales talks about how the main kind of motivating force behind his writing is curiosity and interest in people. If you want to talk about diversity in fiction, I mean Sayles has been kind of an exemplar of that in practice throughout his career, but he's never fetishized diversity. He's never really made a point of it. It's really just kind of come about naturally, by the fact that he is just curious about different kinds of people that he has read about or has met, and I think that should be the motivating factor behind any fiction writer is just that interest in other people. Sayles never set out to fulfill some quota in terms of diversity in his work. He just happens to be a naturally curious person. And so he's written about everything from coal miners unions in West Virginia in the early part of the 20th century to the Philippines American War. And I think I think he should be a role model for any fiction writer in the way that he approaches his work.

>> Brian: Would that in itself, though... I mean, isn't that the axiomatic argument that everyone kind of... Maybe I'm wrong, that everyone kind of already understands and like still, it's confronted with the fact that he doesn't deserve to do it? And I'll say this with the caveat that I do think film is just a lot more forgiving for some reason. Not totally. I mean, we all know the drama that surrounds the Oscars, especially in terms of representation and speaking of like fetishizing representation. I honestly don't buy their actual passion for diversity in the arena.

>> Jared: No. It's disingenuous as all hell. I mean, that thing talking about diversity quotas were meeting the demands for diversity. These movie studios like Disney, for example, which seems to own everything.

>> Seth: Don't get me started on that shit.

>> Jared: They own Star Wars, and they own Marvel. We have these movies now. Captain Marvel is a woman and then we have Wonder Woman, and we have apparently the new Thor movie is gonna have a female Thor and the new James Bond. It looks like it's gonna be a woman. And everybody is sort of, you know, glad handing this whole thing and saying, What a mark of progress that is, that we're sort of flipping all of these longstanding institutions that had male leads and making them female leads now. But the fact is that these studios make very expensive products and they need 99% certainty that they're gonna get in ROI on these movies. And so any movie a movie studio that is going to, you know, hinge the whole film on a lead actor that they're not confident will deliver that kind of performance, and that kind of money at the box office is not taking any chances whatsoever. These movies that have like these strong female protagonists... Now I'm not being cynical about it, but like that's, there's no risk being taken there. Marvel movies do not take any risks whatsoever creatively, and so Disney shouldn't get any kind of pat on the back whatsoever for having a female superhero movie now. That's not diversity. That's just bullshit. That's just pandering..

>> Brian: I guess maybe to mitigate any cynicism within that argument is the fact that I think I think the evidence that you're right is embedded in the fact that if they were really serious about it, then yes, they'd probably make a totally different movie based around it.

>> Seth: That's what I thought when I saw Oceans 8.

>> Jared: Yes, here's another example.

>> Seth: But that was there's no reason that had to be tied into the existing Oceans franchise. I mean, they could have said, alright, let's just make a heist movie but with a bunch of women.

>> Jared: No, but that's a number that I think that was like, that's the studio hedging their bets. It's like we don't have the confidence in this film in and of itself and the cast and so will make it like a spin off of this other series that everyone loves and that will be more reliable and more bankable. They don't deserve it. They don't deserve any credit whatsoever for having an all female cast in doing something like that.

>> Brian: I see it two ways. I mean, I see it in the cynical way that you do in the sense that I'll take it even further. I think they can sort of trick people into thinking that they're doing something special when yeah, you're right, Sandra Bullock's already huge. She's been making money. A Sandra Bullock movie is going to pull, you know, we all know that at the same time, I kind of also see the other side in the sense that, like paralleling this back to what Zadie Smith is saying, I kind of pulled back and go well... If this is what people like now you know this is how you make equality.

>> Jared: Giving people what they want.

>> Brian: Exactly. If this is what if people want Oceans, another Oceans franchise, at some point they do have to have a female cast because at some point it is going to be outright inequality. I think it's tough. It's tough. It's tough to kind of balance that, because I think in the at the end of that rabbit hole is like, Why the fuck are we still making Oceans movies?

>> Jared: Exactly. It's like, Yeah, exactly. It's like the Oceans films are like the Ghostbusters remake, or like the 40th Marvel movie that they're now making. All of these franchises demonstrate a complete lack of imagination and originality on the part of these movie studios. But like you flipped the cast and you make them all female and suddenly it's like, Oh Disney is so woke now. They're really hitting the mark, and they're really recognizing their blind spots and, like, you know, all that other shit that people love to hear.

>> Brian: And I also and I'll say it to another point of mitigating cynicism. And it is that you look at the movies that have that same sort of that same caste, like, you know, the Ghostbusters movies. A lot of the people that were in that movie we're also in a movie Bridesmaids. Completely original idea in the genre of that kind of comedy that was coming out and that movie was huge, you know what I mean? So, like, yeah, I do know what you mean. They're doing something they don't need to do just to pander. And really, it is about the money, and it is kind of bullshit. So it does take away from this idea that these big corporations are doing something virtuous. I'm trying to bring it back to fiction because, like, how does that relate to the to the idea of whether who deserves to say what I mean? I see something about, we could go back to the studio, you know, and say, Okay, they're they're deciding to make this movie. Who's in that room? You know what I mean? Is their board of directors still completely imbalanced? I don't know. I'm trying to find a connection between...

>> Seth: I think this is why this relates to what you said earlier about why it's easy to get away with certain things in the film, and that's because it involves a lot of different kinds of collaborators. If your John Sayles and you know you're writing your writing characters who are our Cuban and then you cast them with actors who were Cuban, they're actually bringing their real experiences to their roles. So even if you have been somewhat deficient in the writing, which you know, Sayles never is. But let's, for the sake of argument, the actors might save your ass a bit by right telling you Well either by actually suggesting revisions or just by filling out the role emotionally in a way that nobody else could do.

>> Jared: Yeah, well, in this in this goes both ways, too. And I should say on the other side of this argument, like going in the other direction, I'm actually completely for casting unknown actors or maybe not even unknown actors but famous actors from other countries or of other ethnicities in certain Hollywood movies. So if you think, for example, like a movie like the Ridley Scott film about the exit, this story the Gods and Kings movie with Christian Bale like I think Christian Bale played Moses in that movie and Ridley Scott was criticized for that. And he said like, Well, if I had cast like some guy, some Egyptian guy in that movie, you know it wouldn't have made any money. Which is ridiculous, of course, because there's actually a long history of very talented and successful Egyptian actors in Hollywood, and Rami Malek is an example of one currently, and he won an Oscar last year for Bohemian Rhapsody. Or, you know, take a film like I don't know... Valkyrie or something like that were like Tom Cruise plays like Klaus von Stauffenberg or something like that, and he doesn't even put on an accent for, and it's completely ridiculous and unbelievable having an American like that play a Nazi officer. So, like, you know, Hollywood made these movies all the time. They banked on their stars to play roles that they totally were not suited to play.

>> Seth: How about Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil. What the hell was that?

>> Brian: I think the point is that it's not that Sandra Bullock and company aren't equipped to play an Oceans movie. It's that they're throwing this thing together without the thought of making something that they really are behind. It's lip service, right?It's lip service of the idea rather than saying, let's actually create something that's made originally or bring where if we're going to do an Oceans movie, let's let's bring someone in who's passionate about the project or else we'd all be talking about, you know, every single way we would all be screaming for this franchise to continue.

>> Jared: Right. Maybe trying to bring this back to the Zadie Smith piece into literature. I just want to say just to put it out there, I don't think we need to, you know, pat ourselves on the back for being so accepting of something that we already know we're accepting of. We don't need to pretend that Black Panther’s a better movie than it actually is. We don't need to make ourselves feel good about stuff that we already know that we're ready for. We have been expecting for a long time, so I'll just say that. But as it relates to the Zadie Smith piece and the question of literature and what literature is able to do and what it, I guess you could say, ought to do or what it could do. I think it goes to this question of whether or not you believe that art should be on it's best behavior. So this is the argument. This is the curve that the culture is on. So if the culture is going in one direction and it's starting to demand something, if the spirit of the times are changing, does art have a responsibility to meet those demands at best or at worst, very cynically kowtow to them and pay lip service to them like these Hollywood films are. So is it now incumbent on novelist to sort of recognize which way the winds are blowing into right for the audience now, in this way, does fiction have to be on good behavior now? Does it have to be responsible for what it says? Because the audience has a level of sensitivity that in the past they didn't have?

>> Brian: That's a really good question. Honestly, I wish I could say something different, but I can't help but keep coming back to the fact of, Is it good or not?

>> Jared: Right, because that's all that matters.

>> Brian: I think to really good examples because they're set in in times when when Zadie Smith's White Teeth came out and I and I'll say it up front, I think that's why that's where a lot of her responsibility is born from, because I think you look at that book and it's yeah, she's writing about a range of cultures from which she, you know she doesn't really come from except for the fact that she's English, you know? But so The Wire came out around that time maybe a little bit after, but pretty much around that time. And it was very called for because, you know, because, Jared, you're talking about the responsibility of art. Well, the responsibility of art was we have a system called the War on drugs that's completely ineffective. And pretty much breeds the problem that it tries to solve. And a lot of that is inner city, largely black poverty, which breeds the kind of crime that you know comes from, I mean, a need for sustenance. Of course, like, there are malevolent features that come out of that come out of greed. You know, when someone gets too big, you know, blah, blah, blah. But I think art called for that at that time. And in no way was that a show that pandered to anything. I mean, it was just so fucking real. We all know that one of the best shows ever made, but and then and then you fast forward and you have a movie like Moonlight. At the time The Wire came out, you can hear homophobic slurs just thrown around casually. It's all of those shows at the time. You go back and watch Friends and sitcoms like that. You kind of cringe. But the thing is, and and I'm not justifying that at all, I'm saying quite the opposite. I'm saying Moonlight is one of those movies that it's like we're looking at. What's the reality on the ground? And they just depict it so perfectly that it's just a great movie. That's what it comes down to is just really. That's it. And that's why, to me, it's like this discussion always begins with is it good? Because in the end, when I look at a Marvel movie, I just don't think it's good. So when you remake it with, like a certain cast and you know and rebranded as a certain way to appease like a certain demographic that, like you know, we all know has been oppressed and, like we all know is disenfranchised. It's honestly, to a certain extent at once, I think it's great, because I think in a way it needs to happen. At some point moves need to be made, and I do see that angle. But it's also in a saint in the same sense kind of insulting to me. You know, it's kind of being Jewish myself, I've heard so many fellow Jews say I cannot watch another Holocaust movie. It gets to the point where it feels like they're just soliciting this. This is like suffering. You know what I mean? And you know, and we have the great ones like Schindler's List, Sophie's Choice, and all that shit.

>> Seth: I wouldn't put Schindler's List up there but...

>> Brian: Oh you don't like that movie? Wow.

>> Seth: I wouldn't say that. I mean, it's awfully sentimental.

>> Brian: Yeah, Okay.

>> Jared: Relating this back to literature or keeping this on the track of literature. Seth, I know that you know this. Philip Roth got a lot of flak for that in the early days from the Jewish community because he wrote about the families that he knew. Jewish families living in Jersey, and he portrayed them as sort of petty and frugal and neurotic and like concerned about money and like, very sort of puritanical and having very sort of archaic attitudes about sex and like all these sort of Jewish stereotypes that you would expect. And he got a lot of flak from Jewish critics, especially saying like, people have been saying this stuff about us for, you know, hundreds thousands of years, and now you're gratifying all these stereotypes by writing these books. You should know better, like you have a responsibility to not do this. And this is exactly what we're talking about here. It's like, there's a distinction between being good and getting something right, and art can be good and get something right at the same time. But is it possible for art to be good without getting something right or at least not recognizing the obligation to have to get something right? And I think Roth is a great example of that. His novels are almost certainly not right in that sense.

>> Brian: That's very interesting. And it's a dangerous question in these times but I really like the question. That's why I think that there is a definitive boundary between fiction and nonfiction. But that boundary is you know, when we were in grad school, we were all jerking off to the fact of like, Oh, you know, blended genres like, you know, on this abstract theoretical level. But in the end, if someone wants to write a slave novel in this day and age, you just can't because you're gonna get something wrong and you're gonna piss someone off, even though you know, the fact is, it's just fiction. But the thing is, if you even imply something that's wrong, you didn't mean to. Barth's death of the author. You know what I mean? You're fucked, it's over, and the novel could be great. It could be a great read. It could be even one of the you know, it could be a shitty, pulpy novel that gets it wrong. But that has some entertainment value. It could be literature with a capital L. But at the same time, I think it's an absolutely, it's a relevant question because again, going down the rabbit hole. Then where do you stop? If you want to make a Marvel movie and and there's a bunch of people whose who say it sucks then is that wrong? Scorsese says it is.

>> Jared: So if you make a film, that sucks but it satisfies all the quotas or all the demands that people are calling for, like, is it a good film?

>> Brian: That are absolutely in vogue. The demands that are absolutely in vogue, which we have proven time and time and again that history is our greatest teacher and that we as humans fail time and time again in our morals and values.

>> Jared: Right. So let's just do like a thought experiment here Let's just imagine not being cynical about this. Let's imagine this. You know, for real. Let's imagine like a comic book movie, our superhero movie that's gonna be produced by Disney, where the superhero is like a transgender character or something like that. Or like the character is like a former rape victim or something like that, who, you know, becomes empowered and fights crime and does it for all the right reasons and, like represents their community and exactly like the right ways everybody wants them to be represented in like the movie is so positive and so progressive in every way you can imagine. But the movie fuckin sucks. It's just awful. What kind of reaction do you think that movie would get from, You know, a general audience or from people? Or from film reviewers that box or something like that. Like, how do you think that film would be received?

>> Brian: I don't know about you Seth, but you know, to me, it's almost impossible to say. I think every film because at the same time, you know we're at a point where when you put something out, it's hard to say what's gonna happen. In that situation, I think you'd get a few people saying that the demographics were being exploited. Then those people might be lambasted for saying like look, we need this. It doesn't matter at this point... shit someone's ringing our doorbell.

>> Jared: I have a feeling that if such a movie were to be made, the shitting this of the film would absolutely be downplayed in favor of like, this is an important film, you know, like this has social utility.

>> Seth: Well, it depends on who you're talking about me, whether it's general audiences or critics, because I have to say I mean, I read a very broad cross section of critics, and the idea that there is some kind of critical establishment or some kind of unified front on these issues is a complete myth. There have been films like the one that you are imagining, and I mean, you see all different kinds of reactions. I definitely don't think that people are completely, you know, throwing away any kind of art. Any kind of aesthetic criteria in favor of social utility.

>> Jared: Yeah, I don't even think we need to imagine this, though. I could have just used Black Panther as an example, because Black Panther's pretty describing. Black Panther was such a boring, average movie.

>> Seth: I'm not gonna defend Black Panther artistically, but that is a very competent, slick, well-done movie. I don't think that that is quite the piece of shit that you were talking about.

>> Jared: Well, no, it's not a piece of shit, but it's no better than any other Marvel movie.

>> Seth: Yeah, you're probably right.

>> Brian: I would disagree. No, I would disagree. Personally, I mean, maybe that's my personal taste, but I would disagree there. But like I think adulation, like the self congratulation you saw at the Golden Globes and the Oscars last year. It was disgusting.

>> Seth: What you're talking about is what Harold Bloom rather controversially dubbed the School of Resentment and Harold Bloom... and I don't really agree entirely with...

>> Jared: May he rest in peace.

>> Seth: May he indeed. I don't entirely agree with what Bloom said on these matters. But he felt that there that in the academy in the university that mediocre works were being elevated despite what he saw as aesthetic deficiencies. It's basically what you're saying that if a work is seen to have some kind of social utility than all of the criteria fly out the window. I don't know whether that's the case, and I also I mean, his standards were different than mine. I think it's hard to make generalisations like that.

>> Brian: Well to wrap it up because we're already at an hour so we can start to wind down. Seth. did you have anything else you wanted to say on the Philip Roth deal? Because I think we should wrap it up in a way that us of the tribe can speak to our own personal experience with outsiders or not necessarily outsiders. But those representing our kind?

>> Seth: Yeah, I mean, I think the Jewish question is a little different just because there is... certainly I think rock was at the vanguard and...

>> Brian: I can't believe you just phrased it as the Jewish question (laughter). That's one noun away from the Jewish problem.

>> Seth: Well Roth was kind of at the vanguard in American literature, certainly kind of with him but the modern, you're, uh, and there's just been such a saturation within American storytelling of Jewishness. So I don't think there's any shortage of examples that you can look to. Whether it's Woody Allen, whether it's Larry David, whether it's Philip Roth or Saul Bellow, or whether it's Mel Brooks.

>> Jared: Sorry not to cut you off Seth, but that tradition did not always exist. That tradition is actually quite new. You know, that path had to be carved by people like Bellow. It wasn't there before. We take it for granted now that we consider books by Bellow and Roth to be canonical. But at the time those dudes were writing, it was anything but canonical.

>> Seth: Right and to go back to what you were saying about Roth, I think you know his novel The Ghost Writer is kind of the seminal text on this question because as I recall, one of the refrains running through the book that the main character was a novelist is asked is you know, is this good for the Jews? I can't remember whether it's phrased that way in the book. But that question kind of hovers over the whole novel, and I think that's a question that has hovered over Roth's entire career. Some people found, you know, his portrayals to be exaggerated or no stereotypes. What have you. But I think Roth just saw them as true and authentic. But then there's this sort of external question of Is this good for the Jews? What effect will this have if a gentile reach this on on how they see our people?

>> Jared: Right. And that's the thing. External criteria.

>> Seth: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't know that that's necessarily the question that a writer should be asking during the composition process.

>> Brian: I'll say one more thing. And I do think this actually might be a simulacrum of putting a bow tie on this. Our beloved Dave Chappelle said that the biggest problem in our country right now is that we're not able to disagree peacefully. And so when it comes down to something like, well, do I like this movie or this book? And maybe it did get something wrong culturally. The fact that that's not okay to me might be the thing that is not okay, right now. I think that's what best represents it for me. Unless there's something outright just, you know, I mean, there's just bigotries and chauvinism just slathered all over something. And it's obvious. I think it needs to be more okay for us to say Okay, well, maybe this person got some things wrong, But you know, for example, for someone to have to apologize for something that they never intended or pull a $500,000 book for something they never intended. I don't know if that's good. That kind of breaks the code of dialectics in my opinion of having a good honest conversation about something.

>> Seth: I'm obviously not in favor of censorship.

>> Brian: Yeah, I was about to say, That's what was about to say that it smacks of censorship a little bit, you know? And that's my big problem about things right now because I mean especially. And also add, you know, something that I've talked to a lot of people about is the fact that there's a high selectivity when it comes to social justice and coming from someone who has Deaf parents and the phrases you'll see in the newspaper and the sort of words that people will use, You know, something like turned a Deaf ear to this or like, you know, when it comes to this, like someone's Deaf and dumb.

>> Seth: Like, what are you Deaf or something?

>> Brian: Right. No one talks about that shit.And I don't sit here and go, Oh, if well, if you say something like that, you're a bad person. But, you know, on the other end, like, you know, you'll see people just absolutely lambasted for saying the wrong thing when they might not have really meant it. And I know it sounds maybe a little pure ill And like, you know, I do think people need to own up to the way they behave, then the things that they say. But I'm saying that there should be an actual conversation, not this book pulling, not this hit piecing, not this X, y and Z. That's just kind of how I see it, but, um, I will add this the radar starting to backfill a little bit.

>> Jared: What does that mean?

>> Brian: There's a little optimism there. That means the storm is starting to redevelop a little bit off the coast. And, you know, maybe we'll see an inch or two, would that please anyone else out here other than me?

>> Jared: That would placate me being here in Europe.

>> Brian: Yeah, I just gotta announce that.

>> Seth: I'm happy for you.

>> Brian: I'll put it on Facebook. Okay, guys, you have anything else you want to add?

>> Seth: It's just gonna be totally deflating.

>> Brian: You know what, Seth I've already been through it.

>> Seth: The winter is young.

>> Brian: I've been saying to myself all day.

>> Jared: Winter hasn't even started yet.

>> Brian: Well, that's actually a myth.

>> Jared: We are three weeks away from the Solstice.

>> Brian: Yeah, the Solstice is... Actually, there's no written code that the solstice is the start of winter. It's kind of a Band Aid. A little bit of ah, apocryphal. In meteorology, they actually say that the first day of winter is December 1st.

>> Jared: Well, I just made a fool of myself. So I guess as a closing statement to try and tie all this together. I think what's at the heart of this conversation is whether or not writers have a duty to follow the moral curve of progress. Which is to say, Do writers have a responsibility to be right thinking? And I would argue that they absolutely do not. Literature has an intimate relationship with Liberalism, and there's an argument to be made for that which I won't go into right now because I don't want to bore anybody with it. But if anyone wants to know what that is, they can read Lionel Trilling. Because Lionel Trilling's whole canon is about literature's relationship with Liberalism, which is happening.

>> Seth: Capital L Liberalism.

>> Jared: Yes, the individual, essentially in the individual conscience, which is what literature is in the imagination of the self and new possibilities for everything that humans are and everything that humans could be. And literature and Liberalism is not the same thing as literature and progressivism and to me injecting the progressivist agenda into literature, requiring that writers get things right or, like hit the mark or whatever it is they're supposed to be doing now in response to what's happening in the culture, would succeed only in making literature boring and stripping it of all its danger and all its risks and all the things that makes literature fun. And I don't know about anybody else, but I certainly have no intention on being on my best behavior when it comes to that.

>> Brian: Boom. Okay, that's it for today's episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you're listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @animalriotpress or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 43rd episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press with me, your host Brian Birnbaum featuring Seth Katz and Jared Marcel Pollen. Transcripts for our Deaf and hard of hearing animals are provided by Jonathan Kay and we're produced by Katie Rainey, without whom we'd be merely three of Shakespeare's 1000 monkeys banging on a typewriter.