Death is a Photograph

Patreon here. [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] This week, the DPP boys check out Reginald Hudlin's 1990 House Party [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Party_(1990_film)]. The film launched a long-running series of coming-of-age comedies under the House Party title, terminating in 2023. Centring around the exploits of rap duo Kid n' Play, the film did much to introduce hip-hop into the American mainstream. It also foregrounds African American middle-class suburban life on film in a groundbreaking way. Where did the film's subtle hints at pan-Africanism and 1990s affluence lead in the 2000s and 2010s? Find out in today's episode.

Patreon is here. [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] Today's DPP episode explores the little-known 1994 feature by multi-media artist Jessica Hagedorn – Fresh Kill. Recycling, sushi, yuppies, toxic waste, nameless megacorporations, ethical hacking – Staten Island – Fresh Kill has it all, wrapped up in a dissonant prose-poem of a script. But did the world really turn into the endlessly diffused and globalised set of networks that Hagedorn predicts? Find out in today's episode.

Like, rate, and subscribe at our patreon – here. [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] This week, DPP delve into the high school comedy Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982). The film, directed by Amy Heckerling and based on the gonzo reporting of Cameron Crowe, is a vignette of teenage life in suburban southern California in the 1980s. With Reagan in power, plentiful jobs, and easy credit, what did adolescence look like for a broad swathe of the American population not normally depicted in films, for lack of interest and dramatic effect? (i.e the Californian middle class). And what was the texture of life like in the early 1980s, before the neoliberal turn had had its full effect on the same group of people? Find out in today's episode.

Subscribe to DPP's patreon. [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] This week, DPP takes on Gen X myth-making about the city of Manchester – namely, through Michael Winterbottom's 2002 film 24 Hour Party People. Why did Manchester explode as a Gen X-era subcultural and music mecca in the 1980s and 1990s, overtaking places more central to the boomer consciousness like Liverpool? And how did those involved in the post-punk and acid-house scenes of the era understand the sociology and economics of the epoch in retrospect? Find out in today's episode.

Subscribe to our Patreon here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. The DPP boys head back up to Scotland (we can't keep away), in search of meaning in deindustrialised hellscapes — that's right, we're doing Trainspotting (1996) and Danny Boyle's lesser-known follow-up: T2 (2017). Is there any compensation for the full-scale loss of meaning, association and community brought about by the offshoring of manufacturing and the rise of finance? Individualism, punk rock, raves, heroin — EU redevelopment funds? Listen to this week's episode to find out.

This week, the DPP lads are joined by David Jamieson [https://x.com/David_Jamieson7], journalist and editor of Conter Scot [https://www.conter.scot/] to discuss Mel Gibson's 1995 epic Braveheart. What does a botched historical drama about Scotland's First War of Independence (1296-1328) by an American-Australian traditionalist Catholic tell us about the political conscioussness of Gen X and the contemporary American right? What does, and did, freedom mean to those born in the 1960s and 1970s? Find out in today's episode. Like, subscribe, rate, and connect with us on Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod].

Our Patreon. [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] It's giving unemployed. This week, DPP is joined by poet, podcaster, author, and host of Varn Vlog [https://www.youtube.com/@VarnVlog] — C. Derick Varn — to discuss Richard Linklater's non-linear, slice-of-a-generation classic, Slacker (1990) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker_(film)]. Set in the suburbs of Austin, Texas, Slacker follows an interwoven set of 20 and 30-somethings, doing, well, not exactly much. This is pre-techlord and podcaster Austin. However, Linklater still captures glimmers of the hipster explosion that is to come in the characters of Slacker — conspiracy theorists, anarchists, conceptual artists, skaters, post-punk drummers, etc. In 2026, we live in a world where Gen X's children across much of the western world, and increasingly the far east, are out of work, out of education and on the scrap heap (NEETs, lying flat etc). If Gen Z are structurally excluded from much of the work force, Gen X conciouslessly opted-out. As always, like, rate, subscribe [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] — or don't: whatever, man.

Subscribe [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod] for upcoming premium content. This week, Chase and Sam at DPP are joined by architecture critic and writer Owen Hatherley [https://owenhatherley.co.uk/] to discuss British director Patrick Keiller's London (1994) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hxbg6QTkmUw] and Robinson in Space [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crVFU-5B6fs] (1997). London and Robinson in Space form the first two parts of the decade-long Robinson trilogy [https://www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/38477]. Keiller's two essay films capture Britain during the interregnum between Thatcher and Blair — an oft-forgotten period, after the end of the Cold War, but before the short-lived ecstasies of Cool Britannia. Keiller charts a country still very much in thrall to tradition, mediating its own decline, and with a surprisingly intact industrial base. Both films feature an unnamed narrator who journeys around England with an unseen accomplice: the titular Robinson (a permanently precarious academic). Keiller's camera lingers over petrol stations, suburban business parks and other liminal spaces — a post-Thatcherite, globalised, netherworld of commercial utilitarianism. Through a patched-together series of shots and reams of economic data, Keiller, arguably, makes the case that Gen X, not the boomers, were the UK's last industrial generation: squatting over the final flames of manufacturing during the rule of John Major — the infamous prime ministerial 'grey man.' Major and Blair haunt the background of Keiller's work, bookending the period his films explore. The former is presented as a bland technocrat at the End of History, the latter a representative of American-style personality politics. Keiller's films place us in a British interregnum — and, to steal a line from Gramsci, 'morbid symptoms' are everywhere. Hatherley is the author of several books, including Militant Modernism, Trans-Europe Express, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London, Modern Buildings in Britain: A Gazetteer and, his latest, The Alienation Effect (out now with Penguin [https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/311898/the-alienation-effect-by-hatherley-owen/9780141989778]). Our Patreon can be found here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. Like, rate and subscribe — or Sam will drag you on a 5 hour walk under Birmingham's Spaghetti Junction in search of mutated fish.

Today, and once again, the Europeans outnumber the Americans on this week's DPP. Chase and Sam are joined by British GQ staff writer and friend of the pod, Josiah Gogarty, [https://x.com/josiahgogarty] to discuss Italian director Paolo Sorrentino's seminal feature film The Great Beauty (2013) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dyt430YkQn0] and slightly self-indulgent coming-of-age piece The Hand of God (2021). [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_1VW_0i6vo] Sorrentino, alongside Luca Guadagnino, is probably Italy's best-known Gen X director. Behind the elevated chorals, lush birdsong, Palladian architecture and eurotrash fashion — The Great Beauty is a savage takedown of Italy's boomer elite, under Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia, by a rising Gen X figure. It's Rome, sometime in the late 2000s, and the city's elderly elite have traded in the Marxism and literary idealism of their youth for easy indulgence, cocaine, dinner parties, and idle chatter. But they can't escape the rising generation below them, who, far from being lapsed idealists, present a front of destructive and cynical nihilism. As the post-political age [https://thepointmag.com/politics/everything-is-hyperpolitical/] of Berlusconi transitions into the anti-political epoch of the Lega Nord, Five Star Movement and, finally, Giorgia Meloni (Gen X'ers to the last) — what can be salvaged from the wreck? Art, friendship, faith, really nice suits? Find out in today's episode. Josiah can be found on Twitter, at GQ [https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/profile/josiah-gogarty], the New Statesman [https://www.newstatesman.com/author/josiahgogarty], Monocle [https://monocle.com/contributors/josiah-gogarty/] and many other outlets. Our Patreon can be found here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. (Subscribe — or we won't invite you to our cool parties).

It's the new year, and Sam and Chase have returned to their PMC day jobs in force. Less mind-numbing conversations by the water cooler, less pizza parties, less boredom — but far more existential dread and precarity (who said things couldn't get better). In today's episode, we're joined by sociologist and writer Dan Evans [https://x.com/dai_alectic?lang=en] to discuss two Gen X films about work and working: Joel Schumacher's Falling Down (1993) and Mike Judge's Office Space (1999). During a period of steady wage growth, relatively low asset prices, declining (but still powerful) labour union power, and porous gatekeeping practices — why did Gen X hate work so much? We find out in this week's DPP. Evans is the author of the brilliant A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie [https://repeaterbooks.com/product/a-nation-of-shopkeepers/] (you can watch him talking about it here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRp5xBKL54M&t=4s]). You can find our Patreon here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod].

This week, DPP is joined by Jacobin film critic [https://jacobin.com/author/eileen-jones] and host of the Filmsuck podcast [https://www.patreon.com/filmsuck]: Eileen Jones [https://x.com/Eileen15Jones]. We gather in the police station break room over coffee and doughnuts to discuss Errol Morris's 1988 film, The Thin Blue Line [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thin_Blue_Line_(1988_film)]. Morris's documentary has been incredibly prescient — bringing to the fore big 21st-century questions about 'fake news,' 'polarisation,' and state power. Sam, Chase, and Eileen contemplate a few questions — "what even is the truth, man?" and "what if justice just serves the system, dude?" as they discuss the rise of postmodernism and narrativisation in late 20th century documentary making. Like, subscribe, and rate us on Spotify. (Or we'll fabricate evidence against you.) Our Patreon can be found here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. (Free for now).

DDP is joined today by cultural historian Shalon van Tine [https://www.shalonvantine.com/] to discuss Martin Bell's Streetwise [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetwise_(1984_film)] (1984) and Larry Clark's Kids [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_(film)] (1995). As of two months ago — all the hosts of DPP are now on the wrong side of thirty. Consequently, there couldn't be a better time to dive into the archives and explore some youth culture both Chase and Sam are too young to remember — 1980s streetkids in Seattle and 1990s skaters in Manhattan. Was Gen X really as independent as they say they were? And where did this latchkey ethos come from: family breakdown, liberation, austerity, neoliberalism, outsourcing, the corrosion of the counter culture, the end of social democracy? With Gen Z dubbed, rightly or wrongly, 'puriteens [https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/puriteens-sex-negative-lgbtq-pride-tiktok-twitter-1180208/]' by the mainstream press (with teen pregnancy, drug use and drinking down), why were their parents, in contrast, so darn hedonistic? Find out in today's episode. Our Patreon — as ever — can be found here [https://www.patreon.com/deathphotopod]. For now, everything is free. Bonus episodes, polls and other features coming up. * Like, rate, and subscribe: Sam and Chase need to buy Christmas presents for Francis...

This week DPP is joined by academic, podcaster, former editor of Sublation Magazine and founding member of the Platypus Affiliated Society: Spencer Leonard to talk about the 1989 Civil War flick Glory [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glory_(1989_film)]. Leonard briefly taught Sam a course on Indian political history at the University of Virginia in the depths of the 2010s — so this is a homecoming of sorts. Glory marked a high-water mark for a certain liberal and intergrationist conception of race-relations in the USA. In 1989, the struggle for civil rights 'appeared' to be over, the threat of radical alternatives to the American social compact was diminishing in day-to-day and week-to-week as the Soviet Union collapsed and Reganism ran its course. Yet, at the same time, left-liberal conceptions of 'recognition' and Rawlsian justice were at their height. Then, Gen X could look forward to a 21st century defined by postracial politics — not the Afro-Pessimism that actually emerged. Can some men with moustaches and silly frock-coats run at each other with rifles without triggering a Hegelian meditation on The End of History? The answer is no. Chase and Spencer Yank out on Civil War references, while Sam is left baffled and wishing this was all about an earlier, 17th-century civil war. Who exactly were James Montgomery, Robert Shaw?, and Frederick Douglass? And why do they matter so much to Gen X? Find out in today's episode. Leonard can be found at @SpencerALeonard [https://x.com/SpencerALeonard], he formerly edited Sublation Magazine [https://www.sublationmag.com/] and his latest publication is Marx and Engels on Bonapartism: Selected Journalism, 1851–59 [https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/marx-and-engels-on-bonapartism-9781666928051/]. As always, please like, subscribe, rate on Spotify and follow us at DeathPhotoPod on X [https://x.com/deathphotopod]. You can find our Patreon here [https://www.patreon.com/c/deathphotopod]. Bonus episodes to come.