For this week’s installment of the Weekly Culture Menu, we have a sampling of content across a variety of mediums, lengths, and sensibilities so that you can dip in and out all week. Once you subscribe, you can expect a weekly menu delivered to your inbox every Tuesday.
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Happy Tuesday! And happy Ryan Gosling is performing “I’m Just Ken” at the Oscars to all who celebrate! Do we think they’ll stage a dream ballet with costumes, full choreography, and an army of Kens? Or do we think they’ll go for something more stripped back, à la Ken the EP? I guess we’ll find out on March 10th. And with that, let’s get to this week's menu:
🍤 Amuse Bouche [ -10 mins ]
🗞️ Teen Subcultures Are Fading by Mireille Silcoff. Word on the street is that teens these days are more about “vibes” and “creating an aesthetic” than hanging out in person. Silcoff opines that there’s been a meaningful reduction in lived experience as a catalyst for creating subcultures. This should probably shed some light on why Swifties (myself included) have been so verklempt at the Era’s tour and getting to experience a real-life community formed from shared experience (read Taffy Brodesser Akner’s retelling of attending the concert for a taste of what I mean).
📺 David Sedaris on Why You Should Dress Like a Corpse. Humorist David Sedaris recounts an experience attending the theater and feeling disappointed by the lack of sartorial effort. Honestly, just buy tickets and support the arts. But, if the mood strikes, do your best impression of a Capote swan and put together a fit worthy of the performers’ talents. Worth the 2.5-minute watch to hear why Sedaris thinks a corpse is peak sophistication.
🍟 Appetizer [ -30 mins ]
🗞️📺 The Problem of the Too-Truthful Woman by Alexandra Schwartz. I’ve been going down a Justine Triet rabbit hole, reading everything I can find about the 2023 Palme d’Or winner and Oscar-nominated director. I particularly enjoyed this interview from the past fall, where she dives into some of the behind-the-scenes discussions between her and her partner as they wrote the script for Anatomy of a Fall and her perspective on gender roles in parenting. I also learned that the now infamous opening song wasn’t supposed to be “P.I.M.P..” You won’t believe what the original choice was (hint: it’s referenced somewhere else in the menu)! One of the things I found particularly striking about the movie was how different the French judicial system is from the American system. An excerpt from the article:
So I met a lawyer, someone really super, who helped us during the writing process and who explained something interesting about the French system, which is that sometimes the judge—in France, it’s the president, but for you it’s the judge—can decide to do things in a more anarchic way. The distribution of speech is much more anarchic. And I found that interesting because it created something much livelier and less codified than what we already know.
I also really enjoyed this interview, where she discusses the controversy around her advocacy for gender quotas in filmmaking and the future of French cinema.
🍽️ Main Course [ 1 Hour+ ]
🎬 9 to 5. I recently learned that Dolly Parton and Pitbull made a remake of Dolly Parton’s song “9 to 5” from the eponymously titled movie. I prefer the original, but their collaboration led me to revisit the film. Three women (Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda, and Lily Tomlin) devise a plan to get back at their abusive and sexist boss. Before you watch, you must listen to this episode of Dolly Parton’s America, where they tell the behind-the-scenes story of the film (spoiler: it’s an act of protest in an engaging format with mainstream appeal) and how Parton got involved. In particular, I enjoyed Fonda’s breakdown of how Dolly so simply and eloquently lays out the thesis of the fair pay movement in what could appear just to be a catchy theme song if you’re not paying attention - the brilliance of Dolly. So pour yourself a cup of ambition and watch this classic.
🧁Dessert [ -1 hour ]
🎧 Why Country Music Dominated 2023’s Charts. I’ve been having many conversations about country music since Beyoncé announced her upcoming (speculated) country album and released her two new singles, “Texas Hold ‘Em” and “16 Carriages.” For context, my music interests are varied, but I grew up listening to a steady stream of vintage country, folk, and bluegrass music. While much modern-day country has been fairly criticized for being predictable and narrow-minded, for me, the heart of real country music is storytelling and musicianship, with an emphasis on the plight of the working class. Country’s earliest origins are European immigrant folk songs, slave songs, and gospel spirituals (if you want to learn more, I highly recommend Ken Burns’ miniseries Country Music). Country has perfected the art of oral storytelling (listen to Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” Kenny Rogers's “The Gambler,” and George Strait’s “Amarillo by Morning” as a starting point), and it feels exciting to me that artists from other genres are interested in expanding upon this tradition.
Per this analysis from Professor Tressie McMillan Cottom, It shouldn’t be a surprise that Beyoncé is making country music. She’s from Texas (with Louisana roots), and this isn’t the first time she’s made a country song. Remember “Daddy Lessons” on her 2016 album Lemonade? And her performance with The Chicks at the Country Music Awards? She’s been here before (and withstood the criticism that came with the previous outing). In Act I: Renaissance, she used her platform to pay homage to the Black and queer roots of dance music, and people are speculating that this next album will do something similar for country. You know that addictive banjo in “Texas Hold Em?” That’s none other than the exceptionally talented Pulitzer Prize and Grammy-winning Rhiannon Giddens (read her Wikipedia - her resume is insane), who has long made it her project to share the lesser-known origins of country music. In a 2023 interview with Variety, Giddens said, “As soon as somebody like Beyoncé picks up the banjo and starts talking about the history, we’re good. But until then, I’m trying to take every opportunity that I’m given to tell the story.” And now, Giddens is playing the banjo and viola on the first-ever Billboard Hot Country Songs number one by a Black woman. That’s certainly drawing attention to the history!
Of course, Beyonce isn’t the only artist to crossover from other genres and make a country record. Ray Charles, Lionel Richie, Lady Gaga, and more have all dabbled in the country sound. The podcast linked above talks more about the increased mainstream interest in country and also recounts how Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” rose to the top of the charts (despite pushback from country music insiders). I’d say go ahead and invest in a pair of cowboy boots because, in addition to Beyoncé’s forthcoming album, we’re also expecting country music from Post Malone and Lana Del Rey.
And I’ll leave you with this TikTok, which immediately transported me back to a Sunday morning in my childhood bedroom, rewinding a DVRed episode of Saturday Night Live in 2006 to memorize all the lyrics to this Natalie Portman rap.
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