Carrie Brownstein on Cat Power. Plus, “Materialists,” “Too Much,” and the Modern Rom-Com.

18:21Carrie Brownstein:She'll take any opportunity.

18:22Hilton Als:Any opportunity. Working Girl, my friends. Mike Nichols' Working Girl, starring Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford, about a woman's search for love, but not just love. And the kind of tradition of like 1980s feminism, love and professional fulfillment. I have a head for business and a bod for sin. Is there anything wrong with that? No. No. And it's a great example of a complete wish fulfillment movie where career does not negate love, but in fact complements it in an incredibly satisfying way.

19:07Carrie Brownstein:She can have it all. She can have it all. Exactly. And she can be it all. I mean, it's such a great movie and it is so fascinating because it has to do, I mean, I have a whole argument that I just can't wait to trot out at some point in this episode about the condition of women in the 20th century and how it directly tracks onto the rom-com. Another New York movie, New York is such a place in the rom-com world because of this kind of, I think, striving woman who we know me and I relate to. Surprise. You've Got Mail is a perfect film. It's a perfect film. and its reception history, eyes were rolled.

19:43Carrie Brownstein:And now everyone is regretting those roles because... Because now we love Barnes & Noble. Because, first of all, Barnes & Noble, the enemy in that movie, in the guise of Fox Books. Right. The megastore that's going to put out Barnes & Noble.

19:58Hilton Als:Now it's like a mom and pop shop.

20:00Carrie Brownstein:My goodness. Barnes & Noble is our last hope.

20:03Hilton Als:Like a little shoemaking atelier. Exactly.

20:05Carrie Brownstein:But more to the point. So You Got Meals is a perfect movie. It starts with the trope we were discussing in our Romanticy episode from a few months ago, Enemies to Lovers. And it's a clash all the way until some, okay, fairly questionable stuff involving manipulation, but like all for the good goes down and they befriend one another and accept life. But here's why I love this movie. I love this movie because of Meg Ryan, who is utterly pitch perfect as she's exactly the right degree of frazzled. Why did you stop by again? I forget. She's utterly functional and loving and adorable and wears her heart on her sleeve.

20:43Carrie Brownstein:But she also is like totally who she is in the way that she was in those like Nora Ephron movies, also in When Harry Met Sally and other total great. And so you're rooting for her. You're rooting for the good side of him that could potentially come out. And this is, of course, the other fantasy in romantic comedy. The man is transformed by his love of a good woman.

21:08Hilton Als:Oh, yeah.

21:08Carrie Brownstein:Like, he is this, you know, little shriveled-souled vorsay who just wants to make money and hang out on his houseboat in the Hudson River. Right. Who's transformed.

21:23Hilton Als:I always go back and forth about my favorite rom-com. It's often Love and Basketball, Omar Epps, Sanaa Lathan. um so now lathan is also in another one of my favorite rom-coms which is it's it's a it's a hybrid comedy drama ensemble piece but romance is really at its core it's called the best man and essentially it's about a group of friends this for me is classic really it's about a wedding it's the lead-up to the wedding of two of the friends and it is learned because one of the friends played by tay diggs um is a writer and he has written a novel and and it's found out by the character that's played uh by morris chestnut who's getting married that way back in college there was a betrayal me you slept with your best man and what ensues is a drama of betrayal including Taye Diggs potentially cheating on his girlfriend played by Sonalathan that should never have happened to you for me the best man is the great text of a kind of black Gen X sensibility they're kind of like they have there's incense and people are playing the guitar it's like sexy in a way that I want it to be it came out in 1999 and it's directed by Malcolm D.

22:48Hilton Als:Lee who has continued to create these movies. But for me, one of the good things about a rom-com is that it can introduce you to a whole milieu and a whole kind of social stratum to which you can sort of aspire to live in. Yeah, I mean, that makes me think of another point, Vincent, the idea of kind of aspirationality and when the rom-com catches you in your own life. Like, when are you watching this? Like, in my early teen years, you know? Watching these classic rom-coms when I was myself on the verge of entering into the romance plot, right? Or the sex plot, I guess. and having these movies transmit to me what to look for.

23:39Hilton Als:Like, what are the values that I would myself want to adopt as, like, a person who is seeking her own love connection? That's right.

23:52Carrie Brownstein:I love that you're saying that because I do think that in some rom-coms, in some of the great ones, that issue is itself dramatized. What kind of life do I want to live? and your expectations around it or the fantasies around it being actually defied in favor of something that is not at all what you thought would be your ideal. And that is so fun to watch because the ideal rom-com is also a journey to self-knowledge. It's not just about your perfect wish fulfillment and you got exactly what you wanted. You have to learn something about yourself and have your expectations defied and come out realizing that you now know what love is because it caught you by surprise.

24:31Carrie Brownstein:That's where the magic is. And when there's chemistry between the leaves. Chemistry. So that you believe it. Yes. That's where the magic is.

24:42Hilton Als:Yes. Yes. And I want to return once again to full penetration. Okay. Not because I actually think there should be full penetration. In the rom-com. Let's clarify. Let's clarify. It was a joke. But the belief in the possibility of sex, because actual sex, you know, the rom-com is historically not an explicit genre. There is a hint of forthcoming sex. There should be in the good ones. There is attraction, you know, chemistry. The promise, the potential of sex needs to be there.

25:19Carrie Brownstein:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I'm deep in the Nora Ephron thing, obviously. I know that's rather typical and not going to shock anyone. But When Harry Met Sally, of course, directed by Rob Reiner, but written by Nora Ephron, sex ruins everything briefly before everything is made right again. And that is also such a great part of that movie because that's also realistic. We're like, the wish fulfillment finally happens. And I just I will never forget that kind of like. I know when she wakes up. On Meg Ryan's face. And he's like, oh, really good. He's so happy and he's just like, I cannot get out of here fast enough.

25:52Carrie Brownstein:Brilliant, brilliant. You know, how are you going to work your way back from that? Let's get to that third act and find out. Let's find out.

26:00Hilton Als:This summer, two projects are trying to take up the mantle of the modern rom-com. Materialists and Too Much. How do they succeed or not in updating the genre? That's in a minute on Critics At Large from the New Yorker.

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27:03Hilton Als:That's mintmobile.com slash nyradiohour. Cut your wireless bill to$15 a month at mintmobile.com slash nyradiohour. That's it. There's no catch. upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12 months. Plan required,$15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only. Greater than 50 GB may slow when network is busy. Includes up to 20 GB hotspot. Capable device required. Availability, speed, and coverage varies. See mintmobile.com. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported by Viking committed to exploring the world in comfort offering destination focused small ship experiences on all seven continents with a shore excursion included in every port and programs designed for cultural enrichment and every Viking voyage is all inclusive with no children and no casinos learn more at viking.com This is Ira Glass of This American Life Do you know our show?

28:11Hilton Als:Okay, well, either way, I'm going to tell you about it.

28:14Carrie Brownstein:We make stories, old-fashioned stories that hopefully pull you in at the beginning with funny moments and feelings and people in surprising situations, and then you just want to find out what is going to happen and cannot stop listening. That's right. I'm talking about stories that make you miss appointments and ignore your loved ones. This is American Life, every week, wherever you get your podcasts.

28:42Hilton Als:Okay, now it's time to get contemporary. Let's turn to the 2025 hopeful entries into the rom-com canon. Do they make it in? Let's see. Let's start with Celine Song's Materialists. Would anyone like to offer us a synopsis? I can try. So in Materialists, we have Lucy, played by Dakota Johnson. She is a matchmaker.

29:08Carrie Brownstein:How many marriages are you responsible for now, Lucy? Nine.

29:13Hilton Als:She knows exactly what makes a relationship potentially work. And what makes her so good at her job is that she is completely unsentimental. She sees marriage as a business proposition. It's math, as she says. When the movie opens, she is attending a wedding of one of her clients that she set up successfully. And two things happen in that wedding. First of all, she meets Harry, played by Pedro Pascal.

29:45Carrie Brownstein:You are what we call a unicorn. An impossible fantasy.

29:51Hilton Als:He's incredibly wealthy. He's very handsome. He's tall. He's urbane. He's stylish. He appears at least kind. And he's single. At the same time as she's kind of flirting with Harry, she runs into John, her old boyfriend, played by Chris Evans, who she broke up with because he was broke. And so the movie is basically about this triangle. It's about Lucy trying to determine whether she should go with Harry, which according to her principles is the perfect match, or whether she should go back to John, who, according to her principles, is a complete dud. That is 100 %... Correct. ...between the... Nailed it!

30:41Hilton Als:...the dashing, very eligible, viable Pedro Pascal and the dirtbag artist Chris Evans. Alex, did you like this movie?

30:52Carrie Brownstein:Oh my God, I have so much to say about this movie. Oh my God, I can't wait to hear Alex's take. I have a feeling I'm going to be right in between Nomi and Vincent. I'm guessing, don't tell me yet if I'm right, I'm guessing Vincent loved, Nomi hated, and here I am, very confused in the middle. Okay. I'm seeing nods, so I think I'm on to something. I know my fellow critics. Nomi, don't feel slighted, don't feel slandered. Not at all. I'm just going to say where I came out. No, I feel, in fact, seen and recognized.

31:21Hilton Als:And that's love. And that is love. Good. But it's also hate. Well, it's my love for you. Yes, it's my hate for the materialists. Got it. No, no, no, no, no. It's not hate. I did not think it was a very good movie. I thought it was trying to do something interesting. And there were things about it that I liked. But I felt it was completely, and I understand, I think that this was intentional in some ways. the soporific vibe of this movie the complete kind of evenness of it in terms of dialogue in terms of tonality uh in terms of the characters being indistinguishable from from each other in anything except obviously like appearance was trying i think to make a point about this kind of world that amounts to math, Dakota Johnson characters especially, she is unruffled, but unruffled to the extent where I was like, is she, has she taken like seven Xanax bars like before, you know, doing every scene that I was like, okay, I can see that this could be, yes, again, a comment on like, we're not talking about big emotion here.

32:43Hilton Als:We're talking about calculation, right? We're talking about business. And so this is the way relationships between people are. She, you know, famously, and this has been talked about in stuff written about this movie, up front tells Harry, the Pedro Pascal character, when she first meets him, she's like, I make$80 ,000 a year. I know you make much more, basically. She comes to his beautiful Tribeca apartment the first time. She's like, how much is this place? He's like, it's$12 million, right? The problem for me was that this, the same kind of soporific like Xanax vibe continued like from start to finish for me.

33:24Hilton Als:But then that seemed to me to be at odds with the kind of like central conflict the movie was trying. The choice. Which seemed the kind of the raison d 'etre of this movie. Alex, what do you think? Whew.

33:39Carrie Brownstein:Well, I had a splendid time seeing this movie by myself, the chair next to me absolutely empty, laughing out loud, enjoying myself. Laughing out loud? I was laughing out loud because what I liked very much about it, especially in the first half of the movie, and what I found refreshing was that it foregrounded these materialistic aspects and made them the total focus. and part of the comedy of the movie right up top. Like we were talking about Jane Austen a few weeks ago. This is a world in which everybody knows how much the eligible mate has per year. And the material conditions of what that marriage will look like are everything to determining whether there's compatibility.

34:21Carrie Brownstein:And though we like to think we've moved so far from this world and we like to flatter ourselves that we care about such different things, I don't think that's really so much the case. And this is a very, like, harsh light shown on that. There's a really fun opening where it begins with a caveman couple and a scene of courtship that is both ridiculous and somewhat touching and cuts to contemporary Manhattan where Dakota Johnson is click-clacking around in her click-clack heels. But, you know, what I like about it up front is you get these interviews between the Dakota Johnson character and her clients.

34:57Carrie Brownstein:And you see that all of them, first of all, have this desperation around them. And I found the frank acknowledgement that worth and the acknowledgement of worth is what people are looking for in the dating market to be funny and to feel true. I didn't, you know, is it cynical? It's absolutely cynical. But part of the promise of the movie is that it's going to break down that cynicism and get to the warmer crust underneath. So therefore you have the Chris Evans character. And what got me there was it is for Lucy this choice between the past and the future. Chris Evans' character is living, he's 37.

35:32Carrie Brownstein:He lives like he's 27. And I found that funny too. Like his horrible apartment with his gross roommates. You know, there's a wince of recognition from me. Like, if you're a woman, you've seen that apartment. Possibly if you're a man, it's not good. It's not a good feeling. And I found the truthfulness of that and the fact that she wouldn't want to go back there refreshing and I enjoyed it. And I also admit to being absolutely fascinated by the affectlessness of Dakota Johnson. Like, it's fascinating. It's fascinating, in part because I think in Dakota Johnson, you have a really capital A adult.

36:08Carrie Brownstein:She is living in her uncluttered apartment. She's making money for herself. She looks really great. She's focused on her endgame. She's adulting all the way. And that kind of character, I think, has actually fallen out a bit of the rom-com space and of...

36:24Hilton Als:Someone who actually has it together?

36:25Carrie Brownstein:Yeah, someone who actually has it together. Then, of course, the problem becomes that there's nothing underneath. That you don't understand. You don't see what the Chris Evans character is seeing in her. And the movie doesn't try to make you see it either. It just relies on the idea that they had a past together. It relies on him declaring his feelings for her inexplicably. And while she treats him quite badly. The inexplicability.

36:48Hilton Als:That's what I'm trying to say.

36:49Carrie Brownstein:So it did all fall apart, in my opinion. And my question for you guys and for the audience of this movie and for Celine Song is, is there no middle ground whence the grown up? Where's the grown up man option who isn't this like weird corporate I'm going to take you only to sushi restaurants person or an absolute mess who I'm sorry, I can't respect. Yeah.

37:15Hilton Als:Well, I think part of that is like the description of Dakota Johnson's character that you offered at the beginning, which is she's the middle ground. She is neither of those things. One of my favorite things about this film, and this is one of the reasons that you're totally right in profiling me, I loved it, was in fact the performances. because Nomi's right. When we think about the rom-com, we do think about relatability. And with relatability comes naturalism in acting. And this movie's like, nope, these people don't act like people. And the dual meaning, it seems to me, of the title is like, yes, there's economic materialism, but there's also a kind of spiritual material.

37:56Hilton Als:What if there's no great soul either? What if people aren't these bundle of wonderful qualities that are waiting to be awakened by love, right? The self-realization thing that you mentioned, Alex. What if that's not in play, actually? It seemed to me to be a counterfactual exercise. What if we just are an accrual? Like, yes, we have histories, but we're not some great thing beneath the surface. And so the awkwardness of all the performances to me seemed to be part of a kind of mission statement, which I admired the commitment to it all through the film. I don't really think that we're supposed to think that she and Chris Evans are really some great all compact like every single backstory shot is just of them.

38:42Hilton Als:There's one where they get out of a car in the middle of what seems to be Times Square and they're just yelling at each other because of, you know, it's their anniversary and there's this shitty date and nothing that he does is good enough. He's not it's not like he's poor, but thoughtful. It's not like he's poor, but particularly funny. Yeah. He's kind of nice to her, but that's it. He's just poor. Yeah, he's just poor. Come on, you guys. He's a handsome guy. And not even poor. He's a hot man. He's a hot man. And so, by the way, it's Pedro Pascal. And then there was a great big joke in the middle of the movie.

39:15Hilton Als:I won't let it go, but he has done things to sort of enhance his viability, which calls into question even his sort of dashing exterior. But one thing I do want to highlight is that we won't spoil it, but there is like somewhere in the middle of this movie, we are reminded that beneath all dating is also the like the specter of violence. Right. And so this hope, this aspiration is a great big risk that why are we taking it? It really does call the whole enterprise into question in a way that, again, I thought was brave. But also made me think, maybe it's not a romantic comedy. It seemed to me to be just like a romantic thriller or horror movie that was marketed in this way because it wants to subvert a thing.

40:08Hilton Als:I don't know that this movie believes in love. That's what I like about it. This movie's like, no, we're all alone. I would like to talk about a story that does believe and love, a TV show called Too Much. It's written, produced, largely directed by now a seasoned entrant into this melee, which is Lena Dunham. And it is about a young woman named Jessica, played by, for me, and I'll get into my take, the brilliant Megan Stalter, who has left New York after a disastrous breakup and moved to London and immediately, first through kind of a hookup at a bar, immediately finds herself in the throes of a new romance.

40:55Carrie Brownstein:I will add another drop into the cup by saying that the personality mix is kind of what this is all about. The Megan Stalter character, Jessica Salmon, is the too much of the title. She is going to say whatever comes to her mind as soon as it comes to her mind. She's the opposite in every way of who Dakota Johnson is in Materialists. She's going to be as much herself as possible. And that person is brassy, loud, out there, unafraid to look like a total mess, which she is at the start of the series. And her love object is this indie musician, Felix Remen, who she meets at a pub. And he is much lower key.

41:35Carrie Brownstein:He's conventionally handsome. whereas and this is something that the show I think wonderfully does not emphasize but it is part of the subtext the Jessica character is like this fat woman and he's just sort of like this conventionally handsome guy and he has had this dark relationship to drugs and alcohol he's now sober and kind of trying to stand the straight and narrow but he is not part of grown-up life And she sort of is. She has a job. She's in London to be a producer on a Christmas ad. But he in many ways seems more grown up than she does. While on paper, she's the one who's more grown up.

42:11Carrie Brownstein:And I think the series really works with that. Again, these questions of what is attraction, but also how does that translate into making a life together? And how do these sort of youthful questions of sex and love and infatuation lead into something more stable? I think that's at the heart of this series, too.

42:29Hilton Als:Yeah. And one other thing that I think we should note is that this show was produced by Working Title, which is a production company that has worked on kind of the most famous British rom-coms, you know, like Love Actually and like Notting Hill and, you know, that whole genre. And so, and the series itself plays with that. You know, Jessica as a kind of expat who's coming to London and has these dreams, these fantasies based on watching exactly these rom-coms is coming to this new city imagining that she might find her kind of British lover that answers certain kind of either Jane Austenian or kind of the contemporary version.

43:21Hilton Als:of that ideas that she has in her mind about what makes a romance and what ends up happening. And this is kind of part of the restructuring of the whole idea of the rom-com in the series is life happens in a different way than what she might fantasize about. It's interesting, though. And first of all, I mean, I am a big fan of Lena Delman's work. The first season of Girls, I think, is just... Well, yeah, I mean, nothing like that will ever be repeated it's just a such a fastball and i think she's done it again i think she's done it again it really is a show about a kind of life cycle of the most intense parts of romantic couplings breakups and beginnings two things that are equally if different in valence, equally kind of unbearable.

44:16Hilton Als:The texting, the waiting, the roller coaster of emotions that happens in the early parts of a relationship that kind of make it impossible to Jessica has come to work to London, and she can barely even pay attention to work. There's a capsule episode where she stays up all night knowing that she's got important stuff to do, cannot do it because they're talking, they're watching movies, they're having sex, can't focus on anything. And on the other hand, she's fixating on her breakup. Her ex, Zev, who's played by Michael Zegan, is in a relationship with a kind of influencer who's played by Emily Ratajkowski.

44:54Hilton Als:And she's watching all of their videos, keeping a diary on a secret Instagram, which is directed toward this influencer whose name is Wendy. And so this obsession, the horrible bits of love, I just thought it was great. I love what you say, and yet I have a question for you.

45:17Carrie Brownstein:And that question is, did you like the relationship at the heart of this TV show? Did that work for you?

45:25Hilton Als:Do I like the relationship?

45:27Carrie Brownstein:Did that give you rom-commy, ooh, will they or won't they? Or how's this going to go?

45:32Hilton Als:Well, because it's like they get to, it's almost not that, because they're so together at the beginning. And part of it is that the, like, absolute mania of the beginning of a relationship when you're not even sure if it's the right thing to do and you're spending probably too much time together. So I liked, I believed the relationship for sure. Did I like it? No, I was harrowed by it.

45:55Carrie Brownstein:You were harrowed by it. And there you have it, folks.

45:58Hilton Als:It's harrowing.

45:59Carrie Brownstein:And there you have it, folks. It's harrowing. And I will tell you why.

46:03Hilton Als:Okay, so what were you harrowed about? Because apropos what you were saying, Alex, about like the will they are, won't they? They will from the very beginning is the thing which I thought was very interesting and an interesting choice. Because once again, you know, we talked about materialists and it's kind of like weird relationship to like, is this even a rom-com? Here, in a different way, I think that's a question as well. because from the very beginning, it's like they move in together, essentially. I mean, not move in together. For sure. You know, it's like— Some of us are like this. They shut up.

46:37Hilton Als:No, no, no. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. Serial relationship representation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying it's a particular choice to say we're going in. We're meeting at the bar and we're moving in. You know, like it's just a different type of thing.

46:53Carrie Brownstein:No, you're exactly right. They're meeting. They're fucking. They're spending all night talking. They're, you know, they're in each other's lives. But there's the bigger question of will these two very, very different people find compatibility and a kind of a stability together? And in one way, even beyond the way the show works, we know they will because this is a kind of a Romana Clay show. It's based on Lena Dunham's relationship with her now husband, Louise Felber, who is her co-creator in the show. And there are strong notes of her ex, Jack Antonoff, in the ex who she leaves in New York, who is not a Jack Antonoff mega producer, but is this kind of failing music writer who's really self-serious and goes from this kind of love bomber character into this much darker, egomaniacal putter-downer of Jess.

47:44Carrie Brownstein:He's a putter-downer. He's a real putter-downer. So here's what I think about this show. I got very irritated by the Jess character. It's not a fact I'm proud of necessarily, but it's just what it is. She was too much for me for a while. Like, I just felt like her expectations for the relationship were things that would serve her in every single particular. Finding someone who would kind of just be able to, like, accommodate her in every single way without having to move an inch in a direction towards accommodating the needs of this guy. And I've seen five episodes. I think there are 10 total.

48:18Carrie Brownstein:There's 10. So maybe that will change. But there's a lot of putting up with Jess and kind of the chillness of Felix. And to me, I sort of started to feel like, you know, Lena Dunham specializes in these over-the-top female characters. That's what made girls such a lightning rod of discussion, I think, in a lot of ways. And I really admire her for that. And yet I felt this kind of self-justifying note in some of this where, and I don't know if this changes later in the series. but it just felt like a lot of taking a mile and giving no inches on the part of the character Jess and where she really came alive to me was in this flashback episode about her first relationship and I like that the show accommodates the space for that this kind of anti-rom-com basically in this long episode where you have this super meet cute they meet at a bar and he like her pizza's been taken and her friends have left and he just swoops in like a prince charming and he love bombs the hell out of her She's the best.

49:15Carrie Brownstein:She's so great. And over time, you just see like a noose tightening and he starts withholding affection. He starts criticizing her body and her fashion choices. He just becomes cruel and cold and manipulative. And that talk about harrowing, utterly harrowing. so that brings a lot of sympathy to the character and i love what lena dunham did with that anti-rom com format the falling out of love and the realizing that you've been betrayed by love i thought that was brilliant i will absolutely keep watching this show um but at the moment i'm wondering and maybe this has to do with materialists also these are two totally these are just like poles of straight womanhood that are the extremes one is this like adult robot Like, I am adulting, and the other is this— Adult robot.

50:04Carrie Brownstein:Yeah, and the other is this, like— Absolute mess. Yeah, but like a child, like, needs a caretaker, insists on her independence, but actually insists on being taken care of at all times. And I'm looking for the one who accommodates both.

50:19Hilton Als:Mm-hmm.

50:23Hilton Als:Romantic comedies have always reflected their era's gender dynamics. So what do these rom-coms have to say about ours? That's in a minute on Critics at Large.

50:48Hilton Als:Alex, earlier you mentioned that you had a theory to unspool about the rom-com and the changing fate of women in their lives. I would love to hear this take uncorked.

51:03Carrie Brownstein:You ready to unspool that thread?

51:04Hilton Als:Unspool. Unfurl it. Unfurl, uncork. All different kinds of metaphors I'm offering.

51:10Carrie Brownstein:I like it. Yeah, well, so Nomi was talking earlier about this kind of, like, projection onto these figures in the rom-com and the need to project on. And I do think that the rom-com really gets its lifeblood from reflecting back women's circumstances in this realistic but also idealized way, as Nomi was saying. And because the economic, the political, and the domestic fate of women has changed utterly over the last, you know, 100 years, just so happening to coincide with the history of cinema itself, you know, we get this kind of track record of female fantasy, of what life and love is. And I find that really interesting.

51:54Carrie Brownstein:So, like, you know, we have earlier rom-coms. Like, I love the classic Tracy Hepburn rom-coms. I don't know if that's big for you guys, but, like, those movies are sparkling and charming and hilarious. And, of course, chemistry up to the nines, you know, lifelong semi-secret relationship. Like, hello, there it is on screen. And, like, so a classic example of that is the movie Adam's Rib, which was made in 1949, was directed by George Cukor, and from screenplay written by Ruth Gordon and Garson Canaan. And it's about married lawyers who oppose each other in court, and they oppose each other on the question of men and women's rights and relationships.

52:33Carrie Brownstein:And so you have this great view into a time when women had just, you know, been working during World War II, when the men were gone. Now they have been powered like never before, but they're on, as we know, the cusp of the regressive 1950s. And so you have Spencer Tracy as a prosecutor, Catherine Hepburn as a defense attorney. She is defending a woman who tried to kill her husband because he was having an affair. He is prosecuting that guy. And you get such comedic, like, friction like no other of this couple going up against one another. But you also have real tension because this starts to eat into their own relationship.

53:14Carrie Brownstein:And this kind of drives them apart before they come back together. So those are some really real issues getting worked out in the space of one very funny comic movie. And then, like, cutting ahead to the rom-coms that Nomi and I love, like, in the 80s, everything has changed. Women, suddenly, it's not taboo to pursue a career. There is the beginning of the having-it-all discourse, the, like, ruinous having-it-all discourse, where there is this idea that you can wear your shoulder pads and perhaps get higher up on the corporate ladder or have a career as a journalist as Sally does in When Harry Met Sally, even though we don't know very much about her career as a journalist.

53:53Carrie Brownstein:Divorce is an option. So the rom-com has to give you a relationship that, first of all, doesn't feel like it's just settling because we now know divorce is an option. It has to, like, sell that fantasy of the empowered women back to women. And when it does, like we eat it up with a spoon. We totally do. Guilty as charged. Yeah, because what could be really more perfect? Yeah, career fulfillment and love fulfillment. Yeah, and someone who recognizes, you know, your value in both areas, basically. And now I feel like we're in a little bit, I wonder if the crisis in rom-coms has to do with a crisis in how adult women want to be or want to see themselves.

54:33Carrie Brownstein:Because, again, these characters in Too Much and in Materialists are on total opposite poles to a point of extremity that I find instructive. And neither of them seems to me to be living a life that, like, I like to think that the ideal romantic comedy heroine has a little bit of frazzle. Not too much, like a little bit of relatable frazzle. And in Too Much, it's all frazzle. And in Materialists, it's absolutely zero frazzle. She is a straightened ponytail. Like, that's what she is. So, you know, where are women wanting to see ourselves? And also, where do men come into this equation? Right.

55:13Hilton Als:And is a little bit of frazzle, but everything's going to be okay, is that just the romantic expression of Clinton-era political economy? Is that just the end of history? Because what's interesting about Materialist is the fact that you feel that certainly the Chris Evans character could fall off the end of the earth. And there is precarity such that there is kind of danger in it. You know, I don't want to do like any kind of rote identity politics, but it does seem to me interesting that Celine Song has created a world of mostly white people and is not herself white and was not born in this country.

56:00Hilton Als:And therefore, some of the gimlet-eyed stuff that we're watching in this movie is an outsider's look in to perhaps a white middle class that doesn't really exist anymore. Yeah. And is fraying and is falling apart. So all of a sudden, class differences are not just aesthetic, they are existential. Yeah. And I wonder if that's our changing political economy sort of asserting itself. I think there's also a point to be made here that too much takes place in England while materialist takes place in America, in New York. I think you're absolutely right. It's existential, the class thing, or there's a sense that it could potentially be life and death.

56:47Hilton Als:save yourself and hitch your wagon to the star of pedro pascal who will never go hungry right you will never go hungry please daddy save us save us with your like 12 million dollar loft you know that's right because that's the only chance we're grasping at like please like the the bezos of the world like those are that's me to space daddy send me to space daddy that's the only way to be safe Right. Whereas I do think that in too much, there is a scene early on. I don't remember if it's the first or second episode where Felix is on the dole. It's implied. He goes to talk to like the welfare office and is talking to this guy who's like, have you tried to find a job like in the last, you know, I'm not saying that's some idealized state.

57:40Hilton Als:Right. Of like welfare isn't isn't happening in England, like seamlessly and frictionlessly. That's right. Certainly. But there is a sense that he's not going to go hungry. Like he'll somehow go on with his life and kind of like be an indie musician and live with a lot of roommates. But it's not going to be a life and death situation. Right. Right. Whereas I think you're completely right. In materialists, there is a much harsher kind of starkly black or white life and death thing going on.

58:12Carrie Brownstein:And I think it also has to do with masculinity. You know, surprise, how could it not? But in materialists, you have these two very different visions of masculinity that are both in crisis. You have the Pedro Pascal character who, yes, looks like a very traditional husband material kind of guy. He has all the money. He's suave. He buys the right flowers for the date. He goes to the right restaurant. He is a provider figure. And then you have the polar opposite, this kind of, I can't even provide for myself. I broke my shoelace three days ago and I've had to walk around with a rubber band, you know, kind of vibe.

58:51Carrie Brownstein:Kind of vibe. Kind of vibe. From this other guy who feels himself to be in crisis over his masculinity for obvious reasons he can't provide. But it comes out, and here is a little bit of a spoiler. It comes out that Pedro Pascal has, his character has, and here we almost laugh together, physical insecurities. Okay. He's had physical insecurities about his own marketability, his own ability to attract. So on the one hand, like, I like that this movie is highlighting that fact of reality for men, you know, the fact that the culture is talking about this a little more. And then in Too Much, you have a character who basically is analogous to John.

59:32Carrie Brownstein:He's an indie musician. And the masculinity there comes through in this kind of softer, caring way, I think. The fact that he is equipped to care for Jess, to make her tea, to listen to her, to kind of have this gentle touch. I think that's presented as this winning version of contemporary masculinity. It's opposed to Jess's ex-boyfriend who feels frustrated and takes out his thwarted ambition on his girlfriend by denigrating her and bringing her down. So I think that both of these projects are basically trying to speak to the fact that everyone's ideals are in question. No one kind of knows. And like to add to this, we're sitting around her talking as if it's, you know, as if we're ourselves cave people about like men and women in heterosexual relationships.

1:00:23Carrie Brownstein:Like, OK, there are many alternatives to these things now. It's an of course, but it's also, I think, like, you know, what you see and what's fun and too much is you see that, like, all of her co-workers are living these very different lives, like divorced or wanting to try being a lesbian or whatever it is, like wanting to kind of flirt with all of the possibilities that are open in 2025 as opposed to, like, going down the standard rom-com road. Yeah.

1:00:46Hilton Als:Well, you say masculinity. It's so true. One of the refrains of materialists is this idea of the quote-unquote high-value man, tall, rich, whatever. And that is a refrain that is taken directly from, at least in my experience, the manosphere. One of the refrains of this space, the men's rights activism space, is 80 percent of women want 10 percent of men. This idea of a kind of scarcity that nobody wants. And this goes to the point that you made about Dakota Johnson's wide chasm of choices. Nobody wants the 80K man who kind of gets by and rents an apartment. and no, no, no, you have to be this Superman who can provide and perhaps let you not work.

1:01:33Hilton Als:All of a sudden, these ideas of the love match of two equals, even the two-income household, nobody in a 90s rom-com is like, therefore leaving their job because they got married. That's not at least the ethos. We're together, I'm the publisher, I'm a journalist, we do this together, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now we both look at each other's work over our shoulder and be like, oh, good job at work, honey. All of a sudden, there's this idea that, like, the love match is not only a haven from the outside world, but it seems that, like, patriarchal heterosexuality is, as it is in our culture, reasserting itself.

1:02:09Carrie Brownstein:Yeah, this actually makes me feel very hopeful because—about the rom-com, because it does mean that the rom-com has a kind of, like, a political radicalness to it.

1:02:21Hilton Als:Mm-hmm.

1:02:21Carrie Brownstein:Simply by positing, you know, in that intermediate space that I keep being drawn to, that's between the fairy tale and the utter Hobbesian, you know, life is nasty, brutal and shortishness of it all. Between the looks maxing and the, you know, oh, I just, you know, you took off your glasses and a beautiful flower was beneath the ogress.

1:02:44Hilton Als:Yes.

1:02:44Carrie Brownstein:Like, you know, that in the space of reality where love and attraction and soul spark happen for all different kinds of reason that are both material and totally non-material, that like that's the place to explore, that that's interesting. And I do think you're seeing two heterosexual women trying to make a case against that culture that you're talking about, Vincent, that kind of like, you know, the manosphere culture of where everything is about a number. And there is this idea that everyone's in competition with one another. And yeah, that it's just about resource hoarding. But we're all trying to figure out what we want from other people.

1:03:23Carrie Brownstein:And that is kind of what the rom-com is about. So it's rich ground. Come back to it, filmmakers.

1:03:34Hilton Als:I'm David Renmick. Thanks for joining us this week. See you next time.

1:03:43Hilton Als:My name is Madeline Barron. I'm a journalist for The New Yorker. I focus on stories where powerful people or institutions are doing something that's harming people or harming someone or something in some way. And so my job is to report that so exhaustively that we can reveal what's actually going on and present it to the public. You know, for us at In the Dark, we're paying equal attention to the reporting and the storytelling. And we felt a real kinship with The New Yorker, like the combination of the deeply reported stories that The New Yorker is known for, but also the quality of those stories, the attention to narrative.

1:04:26Hilton Als:if I could give you only one reason to subscribe to the New Yorker it would be maybe this is not the answer you're looking for but I just don't think that there is any other magazine in America that combines so many different types of things into a single issue as a New Yorker you know like you have poetry you have theater reviews you have restaurant recommendations, which for some reason I read even though I don't live in New York City. And all of those things are great, but I haven't even mentioned like the other half of the magazine, which is deeply reported stories that honestly are the first things that I read.

1:05:03Hilton Als:You know, I'm a big fan of gymnastics and people will say, oh, we're so lucky to live in the era of Simone Biles, which I agree. We're also so lucky to live in the era of Lawrence Wright, Jane Mayer, Ronan Farrow, Patrick Raddenkief. And so to me, it's like I can't imagine not reading these writers.

1:05:25Hilton Als:You can have all the journalism, the fiction, the film, book, and TV reviews, all the cartoons, just by going right now to newyorker.com slash dark. Plus, there's an incredible archive, a century's worth of award-winning work just waiting for you. That's newyorker.com slash dark. And thanks. you