Jazmine Sullivan and Anxiety Dreams

You may have heard a little something about America's two hundred and fiftieth birthday, or to put it in a way that rolls off the tongue, it's semi quincentenial, so we thought it was a good time to discuss depictions of America in movies, TV, and music. I'm Stephen Thompson and today we are sharing our picks for what pieces of pop culture best depict the American dream. Joining me today are my fellow Americans and NPR pop culture happy hour hosts. Linda Holmes Hey Holmes. Oh hello, Stephen. Aisha Harris, hey Aisha. Hey Stephen. And Glenn Weldon, hey buddy. I am that Yankee Doodle boy. Hey, Stephen. You really, really are. All right, we kept this prompt somewhat open ended. So I'm fascinated to see where we go and how on brand we stay. Linda Holmes, I'm going to start with you. Give me your pick for a pop cultural depiction of the American Dream. Sure. So I am aware that the meaning of the American Dream that gets used the most often is an idea of universally achievable economic security and upward mobility, which is something that has never been real. There are films that have pretended it's real and recognized that it isn't real. My own heart is so settled in its rejection of that particular myth that I did not feel moved by trying to pursue that. So I went looking for something that feels American dream like but that I feel more kind of conflicted about and uncertain about and that led me to the nineteen ninety five film Apollo thirteen . Apollo thirteen was directed by Ron Howard. It tells the story of the space flight in April of nineteen seventy when an explosion in an oxygen tank disabled some of the systems that operated the spacecraft, took a tremendous amount of ingenuity and nerd problem solving to get those astronauts home, even now if I watch it, even though I know it happens, very suspense . Why is it an American Dream movie? I think the space program is one of the things that genuinely still makes my heart swell with optimism. I don't know if any of you are like that, but despite the fact that American space exploration was deeply intertwined with the military and inexorably connected to the Cold War, there is something like neat about space travel travel that is hard to duplicate with anything else. Even now, I think with the recent Artemis mission, you see that a lot of your hardened cynics found something moving about it. So I think where I came down was that space travel is what I want to be the American dream, knowledge , science , international cooperation, curiosity about the world. And in the case of the Apollo thirteen mission, people dedicating themsel ves fully to solving a problem that seems impossible to solve simply because you cannot let anybody go. You cannot leave anybody on their own. It's competence porn in a way, right? It is certainly a work place piece and a competence piece. I have a couple of other thoughts, but I am curious to hear how this strikes the rest of you as my effort at the American Dream. I think this is a great pick. I mean, because this is where the American dream confronts reality this movie . I mean, the dream of going to the moon is a dream that meets in this film the very harsh realities and the costs, the human costs, among other kind of costs of space travel. I mean , when this film is set, we'd already had three astronauts die, but we kept going anyway. And that's that's a very American thing. Good pick. Yeah, I think this general idea for this episode was my idea and I realized as soon as I actually started thinking about it, this is really hard to pin down . What a task I've given us. Not unlike the astronomical task at hand in Apollo thirteen . I think this is a very good pick as well because like you said, Linda, I mean, I think a lot of our picks here are going to have a mixture of both that dream, the dreaminess of the dream and then also the cold hard reality of like when that dream is confronted and when that dream is intended to be achieved. And I chonographically, it also just feels very, very American , you know, in a way , yeah. Yeah, that's the other thing that I wanted to say is that like cinematically, I also think it's so interesting to me that the movie was directed by Ron Howard, who both as Opi on the Andy Griffith Show and as Richie Cunningham on Happy Days became a a sort of anvatar for an idealized notion of what the United States is or was the kid in the music man. Right, sure. Also. And the music man. And it's so interesting to me that as a director, he's often kind of been playing in some of those same spaces right up to the fact that he directed the adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, which is JD Vance's book that I think over time has been pretty vigorously interrogated for its vision of the American Dream. And on top of that, it's Tom Hank who has been representing this very particular stripe of American heroosity in movies through this Sully the Hero Pilot, Forrest Gump. Saving Private Ryan, he played Fred Rogers. He's woody in Toy Story. Yes, he is. There's a huge like part of mythology going on that I am very aware of and find difficult to resist. And of course it's like there's also this poignancy to the fact that the space travel now is bound up with billionaires and with a lust to sort of colonize space and cast off the planet we're on. So I think like I chose this because it captures so much of the love and optimism and also ambivalence that I feel when I hear the phrase American dream. Yeah, I mean, my immediate response was Holmes went with optimism . And I feel like that's going to be a through line for all of our picks. We all went with a vision of the American dream that was deeply wholesome to which everyone should aspire. Aishya, give us your pick . From the great expanse of the planets and the stars and the moon and the sky to Baltimore. Here we go. Circuit two thousand two, two thousand three. I went with the wire and why wouldn't I? Because I think this is truly one of the great American texts. I think this is not a new thing to be said. I am not breaking any ground here. This is well troud, well fertilized ground. You know, when I set us up for this very monumental task of trying to pin down something that represents the American dream, how we see it, or how we hope it could be, I did the you're in high school now and you have to go back to the source and how are you going to write this paper? And you're going to start it off with James Trussell Adams coined the phrase in nineteen thirty one in his book The Epic of America. And I went back and looked I at the many ways that he kind of talks about it. And one of the ways he talks about it that stuck out to me was a dream of a better, richer and happier life for all of our citizens, all our citizens of every rank. And I kept coming back to the wire and how there are so many examples of this both mostly failing or stumbling to get to that point, but also in ways getting to that point. And I chose two characters that I want ed to focus on. The first is the one of failure because let's start with the sadness and end on a better note. And for me, I could have chosen a lot of people in the wire universe. There are so many sadness. Yes. It is that show was not wanting for that aspect. But I wanted to go with Frank Zabatka, who's played by Chris Bauer in season two. He is, of course, the Polish American longshoreman, and he's also the treasure forr a dying labor union of Steve Dores. And so what I love about Frank Zabatka's character is that, you know, he is both sympathetic and not sympathetic. Like he's way too like son his Ziggy . He just lets him kind of do run rickshot and do whatever . But he also is trying to help his men. He's trying to do the best he can. And he's out there lobbying the politicians, trying to get these things to work. And at the end of the day, it doesn't, you know, about a dozen dead women, girls are found in one of the shipments. Frank didn't know about it, but that of course puts the police on him. All the work that he's done by the end of season two is to help like try and push the politicians to listen to what they need and what the union needs is basically undone because of the illegal stuff that's going on . And there's a scene in episode eleven of season two that just kind of sums it up very nicely. He's talking to the lobbyists, he's working with. The lobbyist is like, look, there's nothing we can do. Oh, at this point, he's got a warrant out for his arrest. Like it's over for Frank. He says this to the lobby ist. You know what the trouble is, Bruce? We used to make shit in this country. Build. Now we should put our hand in the next guy's pocket. We used to build Could you get any more like this is the decrepitous of the American Dream? Like yes it is. Do we feel like this is a solid choice for like the sad part of the wire? There are a lot of choices I could have made. Yeah, home run. Most definitely. And I think if nothing else , you certainly know that this is the creator David Simon trying to make his thesis statement about the American Dream, right? So it's like, whether you thought this was the American Dream or not, it's certainly an interesting example of a creator trying to get at the idea of the American Dream and what has been lost and things like that. So one thousand percent. Yeah. So many storytellers find ways to distill gigantic , complicated ideas down to very linear narratives . And he does this incredible job of capturing complex systems and how complex systems can fail . And I think that's such a huge part of the power of what he does is like instead of peddling these kind of Eren Sorkin style every problem can be solved with a speech , he really captures the way like trying to run a society really, really, really messy and often results in failure. You know, I think that's part of what makes any Simon Show but particularly the Wire just a perfect pick for this. We look at this show and there's a criminal enterprise at the center of it and if you don't know anything really you think well it's a criminal enterprise. It must be lawless . There must be no systems, but it's still an enterprise and it is a ruthlessly capitalistic one and it easily adopts, eagerly adopts the model. And even in my favorite scene in the show and may be the best, certainly the funniest scene in the show, they've adopted Rober ts rules of order and they conform to the laws of commerce and capitalism and they still grind people up in the gears. They're just a lot more honest about it. Yeah. Well, in a way, it's so normal that they forget that it's a criminal enterprise, which is where you get that great line about are you taking notes on a criminal conspiracy . Yes, that I mean, that's the thing, right? And of course, as we know and with, the wire is very good at is showing how those criminal enterprises, the line between the criminal enterprises and the actual law and order, there's no line. It's completely blurred. They all work together. Which brings me to my other pick of like the focus I feel that should be put when we're talking about the American dream. And that is on the law side, but this is the law side that I think fully understands that line can be blurred. And that is in the character of Howard Bunny Colvin, played by Robert Widstom. What I love about the Bunny character, he is the police chief in season two in season three, especially in season three, he's the police chief of Baltimore's Wester n District and he's nearing retirement. You know, going back to the Adams take on the dream and of this better richer and happier life. Like I feel like he, Bunny fully embodies this, right? Like he is frustrated with how the rise of the drug trade and crime related to the drug trade has basically interfered with his quote unquote real police work, his ability to do it, and he feels as if he's failed as community. Early on in season three, he has this moment where he's talking to another person and he's just like trying to explain how he feels like he hasn't done all that he can . The city is worse than when I first came on . So what does this say about me ? About my life . So what does he decide to do? He decides to pursue the chance for himself to make a better, richer and happier life for himself and his community by creating Hamsterdam , which, you know, is him setting up these abandoned row houses away from the neighborhoods and designating them as these sort of safe zones for all the drug dealers to sell without any police interference while also minimizing violent turfs. And so later on in the season, and by the way, he's doing all of this without getting any permission. He's gone rogue, this is what he does. And he, you know, entails his subordin ates to help carry this out . People are selling, but there's no turf for, there's no violence. And I love that. I think that is working within the system of the American dream and knowing that the odds are stacked against you, but doing what you can anyway. And then of course in season four, he adopts Nayman Bryce, who's one of the at risk kids that season. I feel like Bunny, he is the idealized. He's the Apollo thirteen of the Wire. He is the idealized version of the American dream that also feels rooted in reality . And that is why I think that the Wire but also Howard Bunny Colvin and Frank Sabatka are they are the perfect stand ins for this idea of the American Dream. And that is my that is my ted talk . All right, well we've got more show ahead. We've got Glen's pick, we've got my pick. But first let's take a quick break . Welcome back. We are talking about the American Dream in pop culture. We're each making a pick, Glen Weldon. It's your turn. Give us some uplift, buddy, I just I know you got some. I got some nuanced uplift. I chose the nineteen seventy five documentary Grey Gardens by the Mazel Brothers David and Albert, along with Ellen Hubdy and Muffy Meyer who tend to get overlooked. We're talking about the American Dream and that definition we've kind of batted around is the belief that anyone with hard work and some determination can achieve wealth and success and security . This is a film about the American Dream in decay , how wealth and success can develve into squalor, basically. And it also writs on a lot of other facets of the American Dream, but before I get to that, I just want to know have y'all seen this film? , so I finally watched this for the first time like this year. So it is very fresh in my mind. I am so glad that I was able to have seen it because my God, this movie is bonkers and I love it. I've seen the documentary now parody of and I've seen like endless references to it. I have so many friends who are fascinated with it. I'm genuinely not a hundred percent sure I've ever actually sat down and watched the source material from start to finish. I'm gonna say something that is often a lie when I say it, but it is the truth when I say it this time, which is I've seen a lot of it. I'm not sure if I've ever seen it start to finish. Okay. Usually that means I've never seen it . You all you can all be my friends. I mean, Stephen, you're getting in on a you're grandfathered in on the documentary now . You can all be my friends. All right, here it is. It's a documentary about these two women, an elderly mother and her middle aged daughter, both named Edith Bouvier Bell, the mother is called Big Ede, the daughter is called Little Edy. As we meet them, they live in this decaying man sion near the tip of Long Island, a house called Grey Gardens on the beach in East Hampton. It's falling apart, it's overgrown, there's no running water, there's garbage piled up in the rooms, raccoons have the run of the place , but both of these women are American aristocracy if not American royalty. They both come from privilege. They were members of high society, both debutants and socialites in their youth. Big Edi was Jackie Kennedy 's aunt, and Little Edie was her cousin . But when Big Edie's husband left her , she moved out of Manhattan and moved to Greg Gardens. Little Edie joined her a little bit later, and they became this pair of reclusive eccentrics . Their trust fund dried up and they were living in this dilapidated mansion in one of the most expensive zip codes in the US, which is the irony of it. I'll be honest, when this topic came up, I initially saw this movie because I thought of its most famous scene, which is where Little Edi celebrates the fourth of July by putting on some marching band music and dancing around the house's foyer in her signature headscarf while she's waving an American flag The more I became convinced that this film says everything there is to say America because Gray Gardens is one of those films that changes every time you see it, as different aspects of you kind of ch ime with the movie, resonate with the movie in different ways. I mean, the first time I saw it, it really seemed to me like the filmmakers were exploiting these women, you know, pointing the camera at them and painting them as grotesques, you know, mocking them. Now, when I see it and I'm much closer to Little Edi's age in the film, I realize how much of that kind of knee jerk impression does these women a disservice because it robs them of their I don't want to say agency . I never want to say agency but just say complicit is their complicitness, their volition. Well, their choices, yes, thank you. The thing that Little Edi is consumed is self awareness. These are both very self aware women. They are not just willing participants. They are both performers. Big Edie was a singer. Little Edi was an actress and a model. And Little Edi, especially throughout the film is acutely aware of how she's being perceived. She flirts with the camera, she flirts with the masals . And watching it now, it's hard not to impute on her the feeling that she sees this as an opportunity this film, as a way out . And sometimes watching it nowadays, I get struck by what seems to me to be moments where the filmmakers, you just get this upwelling of empathy, not pity, but like just basic human kindness, like seeing these people as they are, tinged with exploitation . Because why not both, right? Well, this is also the way in which it prestages reality television, right? And I think when you talk about that combination of fascinating and yet exploitative and yet you don't want to rob people of their right to make choices about how they want to live their lives and that sometimes they are very aware of how they're being received and they don't really care. You could be talking about below deck. People get really shirty sometimes when you make these comparisons , but it is true that I think a high brow movie a well, regarded classic movie that's part of the canon and a that is thought of as sort of trashy can call upon some of the same sources of curiosity you know , it's interesting to see people living all different kinds of lives. Like those instincts are present, you know, in both. Yeah. I do think it's interesting how this film has kind of created shorthand for describing a certain way of living and kind of a certain way of living in your home and how much of my relationship with this film is through the prism of like my parents' house was really cluttered growing up . It's been like a running family joke in my family for decades of like my mom is big eatie. If I don't pick up this stack of books or whatever, I'm going be to a little eating . The word that I was always trying to avoid, you were trying to avoid agency. The word that I keep trying to avoid is curdled. Yeah . I think so many portraits of the American Dream that feel really true to the idea and true to our relationship with the idea often contains this idea that it started out as this kind of idealistic enterprise and has devolved into to , you know, into something a little sadder. I mean, you will find in my many notes about Apollo thirteen, if you read all of my notes about Apollo thirteen , you will find in there, you know, the idea that I think disappointment a part of how I received the idea of American Dream is that there's a constant cyclical hope and disappointment in the sense that like even when you look at this, it's like on the one hand it',s this beautiful hope, ful story. On the other hand, it is still a bunch of like exclusively pretty much a bunch of white guys doing stuff. And which was the story of the space program for a long time in the popular imagination, although it was not in real life, as we know, fortunately, from hidden figures and the book that inspired it and all of those things hidden figures. But there are all of these, yes, but things that are disappointing when you look at this idea of the American Dream. And I think one of the things that makes this a brilliant pick from Glenn is that you have these women who in the one sense are connected through blood to camelot. What would they actually call Hamilton, right? Yeah, to JFK, Jackie Kennedy, which now we know so much about what that really was and what that world really was. And the fact that these women, this is part of what makes this so brilliant is that it captures that sort of mirror effect where over here you have the beautiful glamorous this and not that far away separated by circumstance and personality and for tune and all that, you have a really, really different couple of people. Yeah, and that's why I know this is not a competition, but I think my pick best exemplifies every aspect of the American dream. It's not a contest, but you win, you feel. It's not a contest, but I'm going to win because I mean this film touches on is something else about this country, which is that in American life , there is this weird escape hatch, Zaxis, ejector seat, rip cord, I don't know what to call it, but like a weird workaround to hard work and determination, which is fame , the kind of fame that was completely rare back in, you know, when this film came out, but that this film helped to create to Linda's point, which is celebrity. And it's celebrity not based on anything you make or that you do or you produce , not based in skill, not based in any craft or even expertise, just personality, not what you do but who you are. And that was rare back then and now with the below decks of it all and the reality TV and the real housewives and influencer culture, it's kind of ubiquitous. And it's that kind of fame that Andy Warhol talked about, fifteen minutes of fame, it's that kind of fame, which is very apt because it's the kind of fame that Little Edi achieved. This film comes out, she gets embraced by people like Andy Warhol and Truman Capote contain your shock. Big Edi then dies , and Little Edi sells Grey Gardens. She starts doing cabaret at Reno Sweeney at a gay supper club in the village , then she moves to Miami and she becomes a mainstay at Torpedo which was a gay bar in South Beach . So if you want to be cute about it and I do she goes from being the subject of the male gaze of the Mazels camera to the male gaze of Miami Beach. Okay, yes . Thank you very much . And worth it. And thank you. The kind of fandom she found among gay men , that's a distinction without a difference. We love women who are strong and individualistic and eccentric, but to truly be embraced by the gay community, to achieve gay icon status , we need to know that you went through some stuff. We admire strength, but we love vulnerability , even fragility , like brittle ness. I mean, there's a reason that the gay rights movement started right after the death of Judy Gar . So the fuel mixture is kind of the same. It's veneration , but it's tinged with mockery. It's inseparable. You can't tear them apart. And again, to think that she didn't know that that 's exactly what was going on is to not infantilize her, but to underestimate her. In a real way, she just loved attention. She wanted to be adored and she was. And I don't have an ending to this except to say in conclusion, Finland is a land of contrast. I don't know how to end this, but in conclusion, I made the best pick. Thank you, Steven, that's how I should end this. Let's see, this is why I like this question. This is why I think this question is so interesting is that none of us chose, I mean, to me when I sat down to think about this, it's like you can go for one of the pieces of brilliant art that is very specifically about at least in part the American dream. Your death of a salesman. Any one of several August Wilson plays, right? If you look at something like fences, that's what fences is about. If you look at a lot of theater, there's a ton of theater that's about that. The play purpose, which is about this Chicago family of kind of politics and politics adjacent folks that I saw a couple years ago is about it, right? There's lots and lots and lots of art that is very specifically plugged into interrogating the idea of the American dream and all of that stuff I absolutely recommend, right? I absolutely recommend fences of purpose and death salesmen and all those kinds of things that are about families, all kinds of different kinds of families trying to find economic security and position and status and things like that. But we all didn't do that. We all kind of went to different like the idea of the American Dream makes me think about fame , poverty , policing . And that's why I love this question, Ayisha is that it is so incredibly like open ended that none of us kind of chose to highlight the art that has made that its very reason for existing, I would say. Exactly. And we haven't even gotten to my pick, which is actually the correct pick . Bring us home, Stephen. I'm assuming it's gonna be great. Well, Glenn went with Grey Gardens , which I think we can agree is fairly on brand . I also went fairly on brand. I went with a song . Immediately, as soon as songs were part of this equation , I went to FastCar by Tracy Chapman. Yes , which is one of my favorite songs of all time. It is also a perfect summation of a modest American dream that shifts over time and evolves as its protagonist evolves . And I have talked about that song enough that I decided to go with something else because everybody knows that song. So I went with a different song about compromised expectations in America. That's what I kind of came back to again and again when I was thinking about the American Dream. And I truly think that this song deserves to be a standard the way that FastCar is. It's from twenty twenty one. It's by Jasmine Sullivan. It's called The Other Side . And to set up the clip, it's from the perspective of an attractive young woman who dreams of wealth as a means of escape. layback, spent my baby money in his baby bag. I deserve that life . He a damn good housewife. Two kids from a surrogate. Find mama stay fit, get a face gloves. Sucker mom did a waste there. Her best in this grace layters vacation . First of all, if you don't know this song, you have to hear this song. It is so good. I've listened to it dozens and dozens of times. It is an absolute masterclass in conveying an entire inner life in like three and a half minutes. The first line is, yeah, I got dreams to buy expensive things . And her pursuit of wealth is entirely second hand. It's by marrying someone rich and essentially becoming a socialite , essentially kind of marrying into the kind of wealth and status and class that we were talking about even with like Grey Gardens . And the clip that we pulled is from the bridge and it just that bridge just knocks me flat every time. Two kids from a surrogate. Hi mama, I'm gonna stay fit and get a face lift. Now first of all, I think Jasmine Sullivan's delivery of that line , the way her voice drops with facelift, I gasp, like almost every time I hear it. Second of all , this is an American dream that has conditions ached . Even if her fantasy pans out , she has to stay on her toes . She can't let her body change. She is fantasizing about a future of fabulous wealth, and yet even in that fantasy , she has to get facelifts or risk losing the life she hasn't even attained yet . There's something so bleak in that, so realistic in that, so strangely rel atable even though this is not my particular fantasy , there's something so universal. The way this song embodies all these kind of insidious messages from shows like The Real Housewives about what we should be striving for feels just deeply American to me. Yes, yes. I mean, I don't know if this song could have existed without real housewives and the Kardashians preceding it . The idea of the housewife and of the social life has existed within American society for hundreds of years. Like that is not new. I think the very, as you said, Steven the specificity of this, like the surrogate, staying fit, all of that. Oh my God, it resonates so well. I also think like this is kind of the you and Glenn's picks, as you had mentioned, like they kind of go hand in hand here because it's like what we're big and little Edie before Big Edi . She lost that privilege that she had through marriage and just kind of descended and that's like that's the dark side and this song is like the dark side, but in a different way and also before it can get even darker 'cause she hasn't even achieved that dream yet. It's just, oh, so good. Yeah. She hasn't even accomplished this thing that can be yanked away from her at any time. Well, it's a dream. That's why they call it a dream. They were very specific. This is the other reason why I like this pick and why I think it's so interesting is that one of the questions I always have about when people say American Dream, is it a place that you can ever actually arrive at or is the dream to be in a constant state of strive , right? That's why everything is maxing like wherever you are , you're supposed to be farther than that. And the dream itself becomes living in that state of constantly trying to get to something higher and better than where you're at, because for her, what I hear in that song, when I listen to those lyrics, part of what I hear just like Steven said is, yeah, I'm going to get what I want and then I'm going to be constantly sc rambling to try to either keep it improve on it, right? Keep it or maximize it. And it's interesting to me to think about whether the idea that we have of that dream has an endpoint or whether it would require you this is sort of where you get to like millaires, billionaires, multibillionaires , like where are we trying to get to? Like what's the fantasy? What even is the fantasy at this point? Because for some people, it's just security, right? Totally . But for other people , it's I'm gonna retire when I'm thirty , you know , which is like okay , then what? Right? What? Also life liberty and pursuits of happiness, not actual happiness . I don't want to live in a constant state of pursuit. I will tell you that about me personally I would love to stop pursuing at some point. And at the end of the day, what the song is it's not an American dream, it's an anxiety dream . It's basically if I get x, I still have to do Y and Z. And what is more American than anxiety . Good point. Mike's drop. We'll leave it there . So my pick is the other side from Jasmine Solivay from her Grammy winning and fantastic album Hotels. That brings us to the end of our show, Linda Holmes, Aisha Harris, Glenn Welden, thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, buddy. My pick's the only one that has space in it, that's honest . I think we all did great. This episode was produced by Hofsophatha, Liz Metzger, and Mike Katsiff and edited by our showrunner Jessica Reedy. Hello Commin provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Steven Thomps on and we will see you all next time