The Culture Gabfest, “The Erudition is Sick” Edition
Listen to Slate's show about Beavis and Butt-head, literary theory, and indie rock’s descent into banality.
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Listen to Culture Gabfest No. 163 with Stephen Metcalf, Jody Rosen, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner by clicking the arrow on the audio player below or opening this player in another tab:
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In this week's Culture Gabfest, our critics Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner discuss the return of MTV’s Beavis and Butt-head and then deconstruct the legacy of literary theory. For their final segment, they’re joined by Slate music critic Jody Rosen to determine whether or not indie rock is slowly becoming adult-contemporary Muzak.
Here are some links to the things we discussed this week:
Troy Patterson’s Slate review of the new Beavis and Butt-head.
Dana’s Slate piece on Beavis and Butt-head in 2005.
Rolling Stone on Beavis and Butt-head’s return.
The New York Times on the eternal adolescence of Beavis and Butt-head.
The A.V. Club’s review of Beavis and Butt-head.
The New York Times’ review of The Marriage Plot.
Jeffery Eugenides on his novel The Marriage Plot and literary theory, in the New Statesmen.
The New Yorker’s Richard Brody on literary theory.
Alex Ross’ New Yorker article, “Worst College Essays 1989.”
“I was an under-age semiotician,” in the New York Times.
The postmodern essay generator.
Nitsuh Abebe’s New York article “Indie Grown-Ups.”
Salon’s Stephen Deusner also worries about the status of indie rock.
Carl Wilson’s article “Reluctantly Feist” in the Toronto Standard.
The Culture Gabfest weekly endorsements:
Dana’s pick: Norwegian Medieval Helpdesk on YouTube.
Julia’s pick: iTr3vor and Arnold Schwarzenegger calls Gateway tech support, both on YouTube.
Jody: Historian Fernand Braudel’s A History of Civilizations and Mad Libs
Steve’s pick: Pankaj Mishra’s critique of historian Niall Ferguson; Will Ferrell as George Bush with the special monkeys unit and Mona Simpson’s Steve Jobs eulogy.
Outro: Feist's "How Come You Never Go There."
You can email us at culturefest@slate.com.
This podcast was produced by Jesse Baker. Our intern is Matt Sigl.
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