00:00:00.000someone in the chat suggested that we create an audio version of Myths of Power read by Richard
00:00:07.580Spencer himself. Yeah, that we are working on that right now. And Mark and I are alternating
00:00:17.560the chapters. I do think that read by the author means something, actually, in terms of sales and
00:00:27.020authenticity and all that kind of stuff um and it's just also it's it's sort of like a big
00:00:37.540project it's like a they're now a four-hour podcast in a way but with the script i i don't
00:00:45.260know it's it's sort of a big project i'm i'm happy to do it and sort of learn what it's like to create
00:00:52.360an audiobook um it will happen as soon as possible but um i definitely would not count on that next
00:01:01.040week or anything um i i think this is going to take us a month or so but you know once we do one
00:01:07.940we are going to be better at doing the second one and the third one will be really easy and so on
00:01:16.040so forth so i i think it's good just to sort of learn this technique so anyway
00:01:28.760well um let's just jump into it um i guess i'm wearing sweats although i think these would be
00:01:40.680considered gay by uh randy the ram robinson uh what i'm wearing right now a little too
00:01:51.080designer not authentic enough but anyway um let's uh talk about the wrestler 2008
00:02:00.280directed by darren aronofsky uh you know it's interesting the the wrestler film
00:02:07.720is centered around a rematch from a fight between randy the ram robinson and the ayatollah from
00:02:16.7601989 and the movie seems to be happening at the present day so it's sort of 2008 2009 ish
00:02:24.360um and we are more or less just as far away from the release of the wrestler as we as the wrestler
00:02:34.280was away from the original Ayatollah match so a couple of thoughts on that time flies
00:02:42.080and secondly I do feel like you know people have talked about stuck culture where
00:02:50.560you know decade by decade the 1950s really meant something there was a vibe an aesthetic
00:02:58.320a fashion a way of thinking the 60s iconic the 70s had all of those things the 80s
00:03:08.020the 90s did they have them maybe they still did but we for the last 25 years we seem to be
00:03:14.500stuck um the wrestler could have been released in 2026 and i think it would look the same and
00:03:22.260would have the same uh message and quality to it i i think culture at least in terms of style just
00:03:30.100seems to be stuck at this point just just a thought yeah the thesis um capitalist realism
00:03:37.000by mark fisher and you're a marxist kind of ideas of some sort yeah yeah he's a marxist um you're
00:03:44.540a marxist of another kind i guess is what a mark i'm a marxism of of a different sort i guess
00:03:51.860you mean mark as a play on the name mark you mean correct i guess yeah yeah i think i think
00:03:59.540marks and mark have the same root they both come from mars interestingly enough yeah um
00:04:05.060but yeah so fisher i mean there are a couple i i don't know that i necessarily recommend the book
00:04:11.440he is a marxist and it is a little redundant and some of the cultural analysis is i don't want to
00:04:17.960say it's shallow but i mean he is talking about films though as we are one way he's assessing
00:04:23.780them though essentially is that he's assessing them for the mood of a time so a film the themes
00:04:30.200in a film will represent the kind of mood and anxieties of the time i think it's totally true
00:04:35.860totally a valid way of looking at films but i also think that it is shallow ultimately if that's the
00:04:42.940only if that's the only sort of layer deep that you're willing to go with a lot of the cinema
00:04:47.740One of his main ideas is this idea, this ontology, and he's using it to describe a kind of cultural malaise that results from these sort of dashed dreams of the promises that emerge in art and so forth, but that ultimately also have an egalitarian hope, essentially.
00:05:11.620So ultimately, a Marxist, at least from Fisher's perspective. But the term, I think, nevertheless, is useful from our perspective, because it does describe a true phenomenon where there is, because what he's describing is, is creativity has become stunted, essentially. So there's this kind of creative stunting that occurs.
00:05:32.760And I think that implicitly he's relating that to the sort of Marxist or egalitarian aspirations and so forth. But I think that it is correct to see things as sort of culturally stunted or exhausted might be another term that you would use.
00:05:49.140we use the term fossilization in the book as well so it's related uh so i think the term
00:05:55.540is valid ontology or describing this kind of malaise of culture and as you were saying that
00:06:01.420we're stuck effectively um i think that's true and uh it becomes you know we see all this sort
00:06:08.540of ai slop and it does seem like a lot of this ai slop is a desire to kind of recycle
00:06:13.5001980s like action heroes so like at least on the right where it's like they'll create a scenario
00:06:20.560where it's like schwarzenegger hanging out with stallone and they'll run into eddie murphy or
00:06:26.500something like this and this is the premise of one of these ai slop videos and it's like but it just
00:06:33.360reveals how barren the imagination is on the political right that there's just this kind of
00:06:38.860They just want those films to just kind of be repeated endlessly in this, you know, recycled ad nauseum, despite them no longer really being interesting, essentially.
00:06:51.820I think someone had their hand up, but I don't know if it went down.
00:06:54.220Yeah, Chris can jump in if you'd like to.
00:07:51.880That's going to do, who knows, however much damage.0.88
00:07:54.820I mean, it kind of reminds me of the power of these narratives
00:07:58.240that we try to analyze and deconstruct on this show it's like it's almost like wrestling itself
00:08:04.020and that it's scripted and the script and like randy the ram robinson it almost feels like we're
00:08:08.600powerless to avoid falling into this script that's written out for us to do we're doing what
00:08:13.920it seemed like we're never going to do was written all along yeah and it's all fake it looks like a
00:08:18.740fight but it's all staged you know on some level i'm not i'm not saying i you know don't take that
00:08:24.220too far but you understand what i'm saying there there is and what you're saying as well there is
00:08:28.940a script to it and uh it is a fake wrestling match and the end is already determined yeah
00:08:35.020but real quick just so no one's confused um what chris is getting at is that this match with the
00:08:42.940ayatollah between the hulk hogan-esque uh usa usa randy the ram robinson it does seem to be like
00:08:54.620a thinly veiled metaphor of the united states attacking iran and certainly you know some of you
00:09:02.980Young people were alive or were following the news in 2005 to 2007, but certainly after the Iraq invasion, particularly after the perceived success of the Iraq invasion, an Iran invasion almost seemed like a fait accompli.
00:09:23.940i mean they they were another part of the axis of evil and uh we were pushing forward no one
00:09:31.140could stop us the wave of democracy was cresting across the world and um yeah it is sort of it is
00:09:42.260fascinating just to reiterate what chris just said in the sense that there there are some similarities
00:09:48.740between randy the ram robinson and trump in the sense that their glory days are far behind them
00:09:56.100yet they're still going through the motion they love the crowd the crowd is their real family
00:10:01.620even if trump might secretly hate his supporters and never want to invite them over for dinner
00:10:09.700he clearly is addicted to them and addicted to the roar of the crowd and he's reiterating
00:10:18.180these things from past periods uh like the george w bush era which was a high watermark of america
00:10:27.700whether we like it or not reiterating the 1980s when patriotism was cool again and it was mourning
00:10:35.460in america and and these these do seem to be tired scripts of fake conflicts of half-remembered
00:10:43.620dreams if if if you understand my my drift when i'm saying that um yeah and this this point is
00:10:52.160also sort of emphasized in the film when he's playing a video game with the kid in his um
00:10:59.020apartment building and his trailer trailer and the video game that they're playing the old like
00:11:07.48080s video game where it's the ram versus the ayatollah and the kid brings up the modern video
00:11:14.320games which are call of duty 4 is the one that he mentions and he he mentioned specifically like
00:11:21.520what you know what's cool about this new uh sequel of call of duty is that it's against iraq
00:11:27.500essentially and so that's the video game that the kid is interested in um so it's just it's a kind
00:11:34.920of recycling of the conflict it's a sort of updating the conflict it's a perpetual uh conflict
00:11:40.480where we're set against the arab world on behalf of israel effectively yeah and he also said most
00:11:47.680of the call of duties were about the second world war uh but this one's about iraq and i think even
00:11:53.740that was another layer to it because again 2003 the amount of times hitler chamberlain
00:12:02.600winston churchill were mentioned in the media and by politicians of both stripes
00:12:11.120uh you just can't underestimate it we were even iraq was a sort of rehash of what happened 50
00:12:20.080years ago of there there's a new hitler on the loose and we've got to do it again and so on so
00:12:26.200i i think there's there's actually a lot of like i don't know embedded metaphors going on there
00:12:32.520um and we see it today i mean it's a little bit more muted but there's no doubt that when
00:12:40.980benjamin netanyahu goes on fox news he's going to mention you know we can't appease hitler like
00:12:46.760chamberlain did and uh we should learn these lessons and bring them to iran etc it's just
00:12:51.940over and over again a regular guy so um some con well we probably all know this but the iran war
00:13:00.340or the possibility of an Iran war as in a boots on the ground one was kind of described as a
00:13:07.300quasi-apocalyptic event for the U.S. at minimum another Vietnam and because occupying Iran
00:13:18.200different thing than Iraq and a lot of people suspected there would be a requirement for0.63
00:13:24.880conscription and the idea of that would be that would be a big event in the U.S. and we'd have
00:13:32.020events similar to the civil war draft riots at the same time that this movie was made there was
00:13:37.780another one called the made called a day zero where the U.S. in addition to Iraq is fighting
00:13:44.600in Iran Azerbaijan and I think Egypt and three guys decide what they're going to do
00:13:50.980um in regards to getting their draft notice so that was a legitimate fear at the time
00:13:57.200that young people could be essentially forced to go to iran and it might be existential for
00:14:06.140their personal life in one of the most individualistic times yeah yeah the timing
00:14:12.820the timing of the film is critical to understanding the subtext but then again it's been a kind of
00:14:18.940continuing subtext the whole time. But I think at that moment, it was a sort of heightened sense
00:14:25.760that we might go to war with Iran. Now we're actually at war with Iran. So it's actually
00:14:30.760occurred. But following 2008, I mean, there were long periods of time where it seemed like
00:14:36.220the window had essentially closed, that Israel would not go to war, or America would not back
00:14:42.320Israel in a conflict against Iran. And obviously, we were optimistic in thinking that. But at some0.92
00:14:50.540point, it seemed like the neocons had lost their opportunity basically to use America, which is0.62
00:14:56.480symbolized in the film by Randy the Ram Robinson, to sacrificing itself against the Ayatollah of
00:15:04.400Iran. That's clearly the metaphor that's going on in the film. One of the films that I think came
00:15:09.520out it the same year was 300 or it came out around earlier yeah it was a year 2007 i believe yes
00:15:17.700yeah yeah and that clearly is is kind of an anti-persian propaganda film and there's all
00:15:25.320kinds of kinds of interesting ways that we can evaluate that film now uh the director is