Culture Study Podcast - The Intoxicating Ease of Kevin Bacon's Instagram

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00:01:05.380 every Tuesday and subscribe on your favorite podcast app. Sarah, can you open up Kevin Bacon's

00:01:13.680 Instagram? Annie, I have Kevin Bacon's Instagram open already. Have you had it open for several

00:01:21.740 weeks as we've been talking about doing this because i certainly have instagram has been

00:01:26.280 giving me life through a lot of drama and i am so delighted to gaze at him and his zucchini

00:01:33.520 and his wine bottle and his wife and his wife the amazing kira sedgwick so we're looking at

00:01:41.560 i'm looking at his grid right now okay and especially of his like home photos what would

00:01:48.880 you describe the palette as the palette um it's uh rustic and muted with rich tones of red and plaid

00:02:04.320 but a lot of black t-shirts so it's like uh comforting saturated colors but also like a lot

00:02:12.240 of natural light a lot and a lot of wood so much wood so there's wood in his barn there's wood in

00:02:22.060 his kitchen in his kitchen where there's like a really we'll talk about this video later there's

00:02:27.200 like this really great video of him dancing with kira sedwick there is his record player cabinet

00:02:34.000 yes is yes regularly featured on the monday blues feature of the kevin bacon instagram and then like

00:02:41.240 just kind of he has like a little bit of a tan like he has this glow of someone who like clearly

00:02:46.640 spends time outside in some capacity yeah yeah I mean he's not fussy Kevin Bacon he just likes to

00:02:54.300 be in the world this is the culture study podcast and I am Anne Helen Peterson and I am Sarah

00:03:03.680 Misley I am a professor of writing at USC and I edit the web page avidly which is a channel of

00:03:10.820 the Los Angeles Review of Books, and I'm a cultural critic. And I write a lot about hair,

00:03:15.380 which is relevant to this topic. I was going to say that you are a foremost scholar of hair

00:03:21.000 studies. I actually, Annie, just today, my books project publication announcement got launched. So

00:03:26.660 I'm the author of the forthcoming Tangled, American Racism and White Women's Hair, which is

00:03:31.660 both. I know, it's very good. So good. Yes. So stay tuned for my thoughts on Gwyneth Paltrow

00:03:38.400 and julia roberts and elsa from frozen oh my gosh i do we're gonna have another we'll have

00:03:45.340 another one yes going to exclusively be about this okay so kevin bacon kevin bacon is a movie star

00:03:52.660 i mean i would call him a-list in our current taxonomy of a-list movie star or of stars whose

00:03:58.000 names are like knowable legible like people know who kevin bacon is but if we go backwards into

00:04:05.580 like the 80s and 90s, this was not always the case. Like he was actually, at least when I was

00:04:10.900 growing up, like I thought of him very much as like a person whose name I knew, but not as like

00:04:16.320 a leading man. How do you think about him? So you are the celebrity expert and I can only speak

00:04:23.960 from my personal experience. I think it is the case that he had a couple of big leading man

00:04:29.960 roles and then was not getting more and shifted to character acting. And I think that's the scope

00:04:35.440 of his career. But when I think of Kevin Bacon personally, and I'm, you know, like, this is,

00:04:42.500 I think, going to really matter. You're a millennial, and I am younger, but definitely

00:04:49.360 Gen X. So I am imprinted deeply on the Kevin Bacon Footloose dance movie. That is the

00:04:57.120 fundamental bedrock of his career. And the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Kevin

00:05:04.500 Bacon is when I was little and first or second grade, my best friend and I, our backyards

00:05:10.540 connected and we had a pup tent and we all summer we'd have sleepovers. And there were two soundtracks

00:05:15.820 to those sleepover dance parties out in the backyard in the pup tent in rural Iowa. And one

00:05:20.980 was the flash dance soundtrack and one was the footless soundtrack. So like, and like pressing

00:05:26.800 rewind, you know, listening to it over and over again, let's hear it for the boy holding on for

00:05:32.980 hero bonnie tyler so um like kevin bacon brings dance to the people who need to be free so that

00:05:42.780 is the kevin bacon mission and you know can i confess something that like makes me so i think

00:05:49.620 an interesting co-host for this episode is that i've never seen footloose i have seen like every

00:05:54.540 so many other kevin bacon movies i even recently re-watched not for this episode just in life

00:06:01.980 i re-watched diner which was his breakout role which i have not seen actually so go ahead ah

00:06:07.480 so like i i think we're a great we're a great we're a great pair to talk about this okay i

00:06:13.780 want to talk too about the particular instagram that made us want to do this episode which i

00:06:19.280 think brings together this conversation so it's of him in his barn and it's after the end of the

00:06:24.440 writer's strike can you describe what happens in this instagram so kevin bacon the current kevin

00:06:31.580 bacon who is a the current right of a comfortable um livesome um and uh ebullient middle-aged man

00:06:42.320 is in his barn doing the original choreography from the footloose movie in his t-shirt and his

00:06:49.260 jeans and his cowboy boots to celebrate the end of the strike and also coincidentally the 40th

00:06:54.920 anniversary of footloose which dates me coincidentally yes so and um a thing that

00:07:01.880 was really genius about this for me and sent me into spasms of late next time is that ethan hawk

00:07:08.860 commented on it and was like looking great man and i was my heart filled with joy and i was like

00:07:17.040 why can kevin bacon and ethan hawk stop making whatever like sturm und drang end of the world

00:07:21.920 movie and make a buddy dance movie that is what they need like maybe it's a love triangle with

00:07:27.820 julia that is what the people need at this time or the people are me and i also say that this video

00:07:34.460 like there's something about it aesthetically that is really striking to me so he has clearly

00:07:40.200 in the way that i would do this put the phone on the ground like far away and then he is centered

00:07:51.000 on his open barn doors so like there's he's almost backlit like he looks golden in this light

00:07:57.120 right and he's wearing these incredible boots i mean they are that are very sexy in ways that

00:08:03.380 like i don't entirely understand and then there's like this space which just feels like

00:08:09.760 grand without being ostentatious like you can see the the top of the barn and like you know

00:08:15.140 it's not a finished barn it's an open barn like a hay barn yes and you're like what a cool life

00:08:21.280 that you get to just be kevin bacon and you still know the choreography yes so i will say a thing

00:08:27.580 that i really meant to go back and check but my life did not avail me the time to go back and

00:08:31.540 fully re-watch the footloose movie but um the footloose song everybody cut loose take off your

00:08:37.900 sunday shoes that song plays in the final dance scene when he like he has finally brought dance

00:08:44.300 back to the town which i just watched and my mood grew three sizes that day like the grinch

00:08:49.200 but so so but the plot of the movie is that dance is banned by the pastor right yes and then he

00:08:55.380 brings dance back yes yes i mean we have lots of things to say about this very reagan era

00:09:00.280 authorities and the mix of political authority and religious authority and he's gonna liberate

00:09:07.300 us from this and i have a lot of things to say about the idea of liberation but so he brings

00:09:11.200 dance back but in my memory the barn dancing scene is actually him before he's brought back

00:09:19.080 dance and he's just like so frustrated in this small town and he's like doing i think it might

00:09:24.720 actually be to holding on to here i'm not sure but it's a much more like swinging around he's

00:09:30.260 expressing his freedom individually but it has not yet come to the collective which this connects

00:09:36.100 with that feeling of like during the actor's strike he couldn't do his craft in the collaborative

00:09:42.320 way that he was customed and so almost this is like it's still a celebrate it's like we can bring

00:09:48.020 dance back now we can bring dance back now yes actually all hollywood is a metaphor for the

00:09:53.940 footless or vice versa but here's the thing i want to say about is so i keep coming back to

00:09:59.120 this idea of like he brings the dance back to the people who need to be free so this is really my

00:10:04.760 big question for us to discuss, which is that a few years ago, actually, I think during in the

00:10:11.260 midst of kind of the George Floyd activism, I was talking to a friend of mine named Lisa Corrigan,

00:10:18.520 who is a professor of gender studies at the University of Arkansas and a true genius of

00:10:24.260 social life. I really recommend everyone in the world following her. And she was like the problem

00:10:29.260 with white women. She is very clear on this. She has several problems with white women, obviously. 0.87

00:10:34.120 but she's like one of them is that they keep thinking that kevin bacon made them free 1.00

00:10:38.100 and i was like back up he did like dance movies are about freedom that's what they're about lisa

00:10:46.700 and she's like and she like very dryly was like that's cool if you confine yourself to middle

00:10:51.980 class somatics then i guess a dance movie does make you feel free and i was like oh

00:10:56.260 owned owned totally owned and so i just really want to repeat that if you confine yourself to

00:11:03.440 middle class semantics, a dance movie does make you feel free. And I do feel like that is a big

00:11:09.400 part of the fantasy of Kevin Bacon, especially when he just scrolled through the feed. It's like

00:11:13.960 he's so unburdened of all of these questions. Like he's making a recipe. What's the recipe?

00:11:21.860 He doesn't know the recipe. I don't even know what that's called. It's chicken a la Kev.

00:11:26.020 Literally, that's what he calls it. He's like, how many anchovies? I don't know. It just turns

00:11:30.660 out good and then this beautiful woman is behind him like yummy so it's like he's free of all of

00:11:36.720 these burdens of intricacy and rules but a lot of them like following the recipe i don't know i have

00:11:43.860 really mixed feelings about this like a lot of those things yeah he's like he's not worried about

00:11:47.860 sending out the christmas cards he's not worried about decorating and it's like so he's free this

00:11:52.980 he's not worried about his social media as like an apparatus to actually promote himself which

00:11:58.040 allows his social media to be what it is. Yes, absolutely. He's like free from all of these

00:12:03.800 strains of self presentation. So it feels very good. Although looking at a lot of it at once,

00:12:10.300 I actually find kind of grating, but like the dose of it feels very good. But a lot of the

00:12:14.940 things that he feels like he frees us from are things that, and I'll be careful about my we here,

00:12:21.160 but that people of my professional demographic choose, we take on, and then we have this glimpse

00:12:27.600 of freedom and we felt like oh freedom but we haven't actually made any collective change

00:12:31.340 so i also want to talk about just for some more table setting why we are specifically talking

00:12:38.420 about kevin bacon's instagram and not just like celebrity instagram or like some other celebrity

00:12:43.840 instagram and the reason that i was struck by it is because he's doing something that is not

00:12:51.540 entirely unique right but it does feel different than what many other celebrities on instagram

00:13:00.080 are doing particularly younger celebrities right i think he has peers in this arena i think you can

00:13:07.980 connect him to jennifer garner's instagram i think you could connect it to ethan hawk's instagram as

00:13:14.980 well. And you can connect it to Mandy Patinkin's Instagram, although his is so, I think, crafted

00:13:23.200 and led in many different ways by his son. Oh, that makes sense, too. And also in it, you can

00:13:29.280 feel, you know, I live in L.A. I have various friends who are actors and especially comedians

00:13:35.000 and being social around them is a lot of enjoying them working out their bits. Yeah. So, yes,

00:13:41.300 you're right. I definitely and you would know much more about this than me. It's crafted by

00:13:44.400 to some but also just their whole vibe is in a constant joyful state of performance for each

00:13:50.380 other and i think kevin and kira although definitely it is um it's so internal to them

00:13:58.960 that it doesn't you don't it doesn't have a staged quality that would not be pleasurable for them in

00:14:04.800 the way that the intuitive relaxation kevin bacon is married to kira sedgwick who is a massive star

00:14:12.900 herself they got married i i spent some time on wikipedia just to like confirm these things

00:14:18.480 they got married in 1988 when kevin bacon was actually sort of a bottoming out in his career

00:14:25.120 a little bit because he was in diner which led to him being in footloose and then kind of

00:14:31.660 struggled to find what his role would be because he was typecast in that way throughout the late

00:14:37.200 80s and it wasn't until the 90s that he figured out oh i'm a character actor yeah yeah and that

00:14:43.840 is when six degrees of kevin bacon which is like a trivia game that essentially posits that he has

00:14:50.560 been a supporting actor in so many movies that you can connect any actor in hollywood to any

00:14:55.260 other actor in hollywood through starting at kevin bacon essentially like using him as a connective

00:15:00.860 node i think of all of these different supporting roles whether it's like mystic river

00:15:05.560 um flat liners was a really big one for me personally yes it's really important also

00:15:12.920 more julia roberts keefer sutherland more julia with keefer sutherland which was and oliver

00:15:17.620 lots of good hair in that one yes an amazing moment in gossip history actually because that 1.00

00:15:23.700 was like right preceding when julia roberts like left keefer sutherland at the altar and then went

00:15:29.400 to ireland with jason patrick like i'm obsessed with that moment in gossip history but we can

00:15:34.260 return there later um but yeah so he i think is also positioned as someone who is gen x who is

00:15:42.340 using social media in an interesting way yes do you have anything else to add to that besides like

00:15:47.760 how we're thinking about it yeah no i think i um i have a pretty mostly recreational

00:15:53.540 relationship to instagram i don't keep track of too many celebrities on it so uh but he

00:16:01.280 What a different life.

00:16:03.120 That's so interesting to me.

00:16:05.540 But even I didn't follow Kevin Bacon until recently, but the algorithm just knows that if they post a good video of him dancing, I'm going to send it to all of my Gen X lady group texts.

00:16:17.380 And I do.

00:16:18.520 So, I mean, like, I didn't even have to follow him for them to know immediately.

00:16:23.800 Do you feel like there's something, too, about like how he's performing being a certain age in Hollywood?

00:16:30.220 Yes, definitely.

00:16:31.280 his kind of casual silver foxing both of them in this very relaxed way and here i do think the

00:16:39.780 ethan hawk comparison is really good and it's interesting because to me kevin bacon feels

00:16:46.260 older than i mean i think he's 10 years he's a yeah a little 47 so he is like 10 years older

00:16:52.740 than me and ethan hawk is five years older than me so ethan hawk is much more frisiany for me

00:16:57.020 because he's like he reminds me of the guy I'm mad I dated for so long or whatever you know like

00:17:02.720 he's really like he's a very 90s relationship Troy Dyer Troy Dyer um that's his character in

00:17:09.160 reality for others who don't who aren't familiar uh yeah but no that makes sense yeah so last year

00:17:14.760 and I have this very frisiany relationship to Ethan Hawke it's a real point of contestation

00:17:18.560 between me and my best friend who loves him and I'm always like I hate him why is he getting these

00:17:22.640 rules. But last year he gave this very charming interview where I was like, okay, I'm coming

00:17:28.040 around. But one of the, I mean, it was great. Like he was just like so generous and was saying these

00:17:32.980 great things about everybody. But the thing he said about himself was, well, for a long time,

00:17:38.560 I was the oldest young guy in Hollywood. And I've just decided that now I'm going to be a

00:17:42.740 young old. Yeah. My friends and I had this great conversation and my friend Katie was like, no,

00:17:47.540 I'm gonna stay being an old young and I was like no no no this this helps me I am now a young old

00:17:53.420 I'm like over it all tent dresses from here on out um and Ethan Hawke does strike me as a young

00:18:00.400 old and Kevin Bacon is definitely an old young like he's just like listen to his records and

00:18:07.260 he's like what you know like there's no he's not plain old at all right it's a real eternal

00:18:13.800 So interesting. So interesting. Okay, I'm gonna save my comparison that I have to a star of

00:18:20.300 classic Hollywood for our questions, which we should start with. Okay. And all of them are

00:18:24.240 essentially in the same vein. I want to prepare people for this. It's basically like, why do I

00:18:29.200 like Kevin Bacon's Instagram? Okay, so our first question comes from Angel. And Melody's gonna read

00:18:36.220 it. Why do I love Kevin Bacon's Instagram so much when I get annoyed with other celebrities

00:18:41.200 accounts? Is it his long-term relationship with his wife? Is it because they seem quote-unquote

00:18:46.720 down-to-earth? And what makes them come across that way on Instagram? My initial response,

00:18:52.860 and I'm so curious to hear yours, there is this video of Kevin Bacon and Keira Sedgwick

00:18:58.880 dancing in their kitchen. And it's like a normal kitchen. It is not Stanley Tucci's kitchen,

00:19:04.900 right? There are no $10,000 ranges in this kitchen. There are definitely not. Nope.

00:19:10.420 there's something about the way that it's arranged the way that they're dressed also the way that

00:19:15.020 they look that really reminds me of this very famous photo shoot of paul newman and joanne

00:19:22.340 woodward at home like and paul newman's in like some khaki shorts and socks and loafers

00:19:30.600 and he is like flipping eggs standing in the kitchen i'm gonna hold on i'm gonna send it to

00:19:36.900 this is worth sending okay all right send it to me um hold on paul newman

00:19:41.620 oh my god the shorts are in the cat all right i encourage anyone listening to google this

00:19:52.560 also how did she put it in the show notes like her pants are the perfect crop yeah aspirational

00:19:59.760 aspirationally hemmed pants and he's making he's making the meal right right yeah and i think that

00:20:09.880 those photos are part of this larger cluster of meanings that circulate around paul newman as like

00:20:18.640 a great waspy husband yes who loves his wife and his wife is so talented right and this is

00:20:29.600 the same thing with kira sedgwick like and also they've been married for a really long time and

00:20:33.060 theirs is a love story for the ages but it's not like super grossly demonstrative yeah it's just

00:20:39.860 like a relationship of mutual admiration and respect and love yes do you see where i'm going

00:20:46.560 with this like that's the vibe i get from the performance of the relationship on the instagram

00:20:50.760 yes and the um loose jointed easiness of how they move to each other which is this again like back

00:20:58.940 to the middle class semantics, right? This sense of you could have the confidence of white middle 0.50

00:21:06.240 class authority without any uptightness or ambivalence or anxiety or need to overperform

00:21:14.120 it. So the kind of low hip, then he's like bending his knees and the shoulders. It's a such a,

00:21:21.500 I mean, definitely different generations of the thing, but it's such an easily held relation to

00:21:28.360 authority which is such a privilege right it's right complete privilege and very beautiful

00:21:35.380 yeah and it effaces that privilege too I think like absolutely um the other thing too is that

00:21:41.680 so Kevin Bacon grew up in a super liberal household like that's always been part of

00:21:46.460 the politics that he grew up in and he and Keira Sedgwick are also not like massive liberal

00:21:53.880 activist but very much on the forefront of progressive causes which reminds me of paul

00:21:59.440 newman and joanne woodward yes and also like so kevin bacon is from philly like i just there's

00:22:04.880 something about this like liberal waspiness that really sticks with me and i think this too i know

00:22:09.960 that they have a home in manhattan and then they also seemingly have this farm situation it just

00:22:17.220 seems very like yeah yeah a type a type do you know what i mean yes yes definitely i do with

00:22:22.940 this kind of uh california vibe too yeah describe the california vibe because i see when i think of

00:22:30.840 you i think of california vibe but also i mean in a good way well my husband always points out that

00:22:37.720 i am you know i don't think of it strategically but i'm very strategic about when i tell people

00:22:43.580 that i'm from los angeles and when i tell people that i'm from rural iowa so i'm both of those

00:22:47.700 things um i'm from minnesota i'm from idaho i'm live on an island off the coast of washington

00:22:53.220 state all of these things yes but um it's partly the sunness of those pictures that is a little

00:23:00.300 bit what it's like to live in la um and why i do really love it despite my deep midwesternism

00:23:06.100 is just like this low light and there's always enough of it there's a the living room with the

00:23:12.220 big windows and the light streaming in there's a real abundance and a casualness and a sense of

00:23:17.400 like are you awesome you're probably awesome like things are gonna work out it's great yeah that's

00:23:22.900 just like oh I don't have to like there's no like time you have to go to work it's just like maybe

00:23:27.620 I'll do some work right or there is for three months of the year and it's like oh 6 a.m call

00:23:33.880 times but the rest of the time you're like oh yeah so I took a meeting you know and I don't

00:23:40.060 I worked out I live in a very casual I don't live in the Hollywood industry part of thing but it's

00:23:45.960 still a lot of writers around so the coffee shops are amazing it's just everyone looks so chill

00:23:51.580 they're like like i always say that la coming from a cold place there's always the first day 0.96

00:23:58.460 when it gets warm and all the girls like put on their little sundresses and they're so full of

00:24:02.120 joy la like is like that all the time but then you don't know you don't get appreciated as much

00:24:09.020 it's just kind of like an underlying ease but it turns out that being happy all the time is nice

00:24:14.140 and just to bring it back around as i mean i am a serious midwesterner i was always like that is

00:24:19.880 such a deprived way of living but actually being happy all the time is nice and that is really what

00:24:25.240 i see on the kira kevin yeah web page for sure yes just to bring it around yeah yeah so his

00:24:32.080 record corner he does this feature where once a week or so mondays i think it's monday blues

00:24:38.820 yeah so he like puts the camera up and i i'm so curious like does he have a tripod for his phone

00:24:46.080 like right but you don't in my head he does not have a tripod in my head right he's just like

00:24:52.400 sets it up and then he's like hey let's just talk about some of my records hey guys it's kev

00:24:57.440 let's just talk about some records and it feels filled with ease as you said yeah like here's

00:25:07.440 someone with time to listen to music yeah what a what a lovely thought and i think when we think

00:25:13.160 about the history of celebrity like one of the ways that we consume celebrity one of the reasons

00:25:18.280 is for their performance of leisure yes and i think that he's really good at it the particular

00:25:24.300 form of leisure that he is like there's nothing noxious about it there is nothing either that

00:25:30.660 screams privilege right even though we've been talking about all the ways that this is like an

00:25:35.420 ease of navigating the world that is privileged there's nothing that is like a big ticket item

00:25:40.100 like it all is very stars they're just like us aspirationally yes with this perfect beauty and

00:25:50.020 perfect casual relation and they're kind of snarky but clearly affectionate kids and a great house

00:25:58.080 and a lot of goats we have not there's a lot of goat content many goats so many goats goats are

00:26:03.820 kind of the perfect content too because they're kind of funny i know but they're not um it's not

00:26:09.380 like overly precious i kind of it's not like it's horses yeah i think he does but it's him like

00:26:15.480 goofing around with his goats is really different than like here's my show horse are there other

00:26:22.220 i feel like the question was why do i like this so much is there more versions of this question

00:26:28.180 are we pursuing this because i have more well okay let's let's go on to the next question which

00:26:32.480 from Gretchen, which I think will open up some discussion for us.

00:26:35.620 Why is Kevin Bacon's Instagram so comforting and delightful?

00:26:39.380 I like him way more now than I did at the height of his fame.

00:26:42.540 I can't help but wonder how much of it is Kira and cute farm animals and guy with the

00:26:46.760 guitar vibes.

00:26:48.120 Everyone, especially celebrities, cultivates their images to some extent, but Kevin Bacon

00:26:52.940 seems pretty genuine and wholesome, kind of Jennifer Gardner-esque.

00:26:57.440 Also, why is he always a two-name guy in my mind?

00:27:00.020 it's never just kevin always kevin bacon i'll answer the last part of that question which at

00:27:06.240 least for millennials kevin is something and i think this has a lot to do with home alone

00:27:11.860 one name kevin is a rascal right yeah always a rascal and this also has to do with my very good

00:27:20.680 friend who i grew up with my next door neighbor was a real kevin like his name is kevin and he

00:27:25.000 was a real kevin um and so i think that kevin bacon situates him as a professional in some

00:27:32.480 capacity yeah um but what okay where were you gonna go for the first part yeah i was just

00:27:38.160 thinking also this is really nerdy eddie but just like the double trochee the kevin bacon name like

00:27:42.980 it has just just to do some scansion on kevin bacon's name yeah it's out there for the nerds

00:27:50.860 right for the poetry um so one thing to say about this is like the relation to kira is

00:27:57.280 really important the last question too is like is this the long-term relationship

00:28:00.900 i have an interesting relationship to this as somebody who is now remarried but exceptionally

00:28:05.900 happily divorced that was a really positive thing for everyone involved so the fantasy of the we've

00:28:12.800 been together forever i'm a little bit immune to like i don't really believe in famous marriages i

00:28:18.680 feel like like the actually the performance of the perfect marriage i'm just like what's going on

00:28:23.420 are they really doing a will smith and jada pinkett smith behind the scenes you know like

00:28:28.640 which is great like totally great but you're like i'm really in favor of whatever people work out

00:28:33.300 but it um the investment in the relationship is always like a little bit of a red flag for me

00:28:37.820 yeah um and yet the same time that uh he recently in september i wrote down the date um posted a

00:28:45.820 picture on september 4th their 35th wedding anniversary and it's a picture of them oh yeah

00:28:52.160 i saw this he is sitting at a kitchen table and he has no shirt on and he's very slim and very tan

00:28:58.920 very boyish body and he she is leaning on his lap so he's facing the table and her and she's facing

00:29:06.260 the camera and she's got a tank top ton and her hair is in a messy bun which i am clearly aspiring 0.92

00:29:11.020 towards at this moment and a tank top and like a jean miniskirt and she's just like super

00:29:17.020 comfortable and she's like being held by this guy who's doing a really good job of it even though

00:29:23.420 he's not paying a lot of attention to it yeah that is such a fantasy and to get further nerdy

00:29:29.120 i actually i was thinking of there's a particular fantasy here i went and pulled up the opening

00:29:35.480 pages of a wonderful book of criticism called cruel optimism by the queer theorist lauren

00:29:40.440 Berlon, which is talking about the kind of genres that we get attached to, to try and help us get

00:29:46.500 us through a hard time. She's also interested in the way that some of the some of our attachments

00:29:51.300 are counterproductive, they stand in the way of us getting what we want. That's what cruel optimism

00:29:56.100 is, is when the thing that you think is going to solve the problem actually impedes accomplishing

00:30:01.280 it. But she says that this feeling of attachment is really powerful right now, because so many

00:30:07.660 fantasies are fraying and here is her list of the fantasies that are fraying include particularly

00:30:14.640 upward mobility job security political and social equality and lively durable intimacy

00:30:21.260 and that phrase the fraying fantasy of lively durable intimacy is what Kevin and Kira offer us

00:30:31.020 so beautifully like that easy way of being together that um like it seems so enlivening

00:30:37.020 for them and it makes be they seem so happy in their bodies together you know to take that and

00:30:42.600 translate it or map it onto star theory richard dyer the the father of star studies as we know it

00:30:50.360 like his theory was that every celebrity you can look at them and look at their image look at all

00:30:56.540 of the different meanings that circulate around their image all the photos all of the conversations

00:31:00.600 all the gossip everything that they've appeared in right and you can understand if they're

00:31:06.160 incredibly popular that they are embodying an ideology that is under threat uh yes right like

00:31:13.400 they are proving that it is still possible right and still aspirational right yes and maybe that

00:31:20.780 you shouldn't necessarily like worry about it too much right but like if we're connecting it to this

00:31:24.820 idea that this is something that people are actually like is absolutely under threat and

00:31:29.420 people feel no small amount of anxiety about that then clearly this is something that feels soothing

00:31:35.360 yes moment so i think that's really powerful and a small thing about this that i very curious your

00:31:43.440 thoughts on it's all so effortless and they're just always in their kitchen they're making those

00:31:47.620 great food and they're like chatting and they're dancing and they're eating and they are very thin

00:31:53.320 people and yeah like speaking as a perimenopausal woman myself it's like i'm like what's she doing

00:32:01.880 like i'm very curious right like there's some like they're just eating chicken a la kev

00:32:09.460 so like there's some work going on it's like cool girls it's it's like a cool girl thing right like

00:32:17.640 that you can eat whatever you want and still have the ideal body and like you know women's bodies 0.94

00:32:23.240 are wild like the things that everybody can and does and doesn't eat and how bodies react to those

00:32:31.660 saying like gosh that is the one thing that i have learned it's like you don't know you don't

00:32:35.900 know what someone is doing or not doing you don't know to their skin to their body yes anything and

00:32:42.120 i don't say that in any judgmental way at all i think there are zero okay ways to be have a woman's

00:32:50.340 body in public like it's you know it's so but i do think that that is um that i i feel it's like

00:32:57.400 a part of what i see when i look at them like it's possible like she's they're just she's wearing his

00:33:02.580 t-shirts from animal house you know like his cast t-shirt from animal house it's like and it just

00:33:08.480 looks so good and loose on her and she just they they're just carrying the tank top existence

00:33:14.180 whale into their 50s and i was like that's what i want how long do i have to i don't know i also

00:33:21.800 I also think maybe there's something, and I would love to hear your thoughts as a parent of an older child.

00:33:28.960 Like, they've navigated the empty nest moment, and their kids seem to, like, like them, right?

00:33:34.800 Like, doesn't that seem nice?

00:33:37.020 It seems so nice.

00:33:38.240 They like each other.

00:33:39.300 Their kids like them.

00:33:40.500 Yeah.

00:33:40.880 They seem to have gone through pretty smoothly, which is nice.

00:33:45.340 Yeah.

00:33:45.960 So, yes.

00:33:46.620 So, that I do think is why it feels so good.

00:33:51.800 to look at it. Is there something specifically about like his boots? I feel like you really

00:33:57.740 liked looking at all of the different boots that he wears. So I want to give you an opportunity to

00:34:02.680 talk about either his boots or his hair in more detail. Right. Yes. Yes. So, well, I too like

00:34:10.880 boots. Um, and I think, um, uh, and I ha I wear them a lot. I did not wear them up when I was

00:34:18.560 growing up in an actual rural space but now that i'm in less like los angeles westernness i have

00:34:23.860 some great workwear boots that i got in an actual workwear farm and i get complimented on them all

00:34:29.240 the time yeah and he has the same thing that it's like they look great but also he clearly wears

00:34:34.920 them when he's out with the goats yeah so like the fantasy of that of like this kind of boot

00:34:40.240 masculinity uh just makes him seem really capable and relaxed like my husband does this thing where

00:34:46.700 just like hooks his thumb in his jean pocket like in this rural town way i don't know if you have

00:34:52.220 this and it just like i'm like yes you are a man right and um but he's also like definitely does

00:34:59.420 that right it's like just this and he's not rural but he has this kind of like country way

00:35:05.180 which when partnered with the like you can have this fantasy of american white manhood that's

00:35:10.540 like yeah and it's benevolent it's purely benevolent yeah yeah yeah yeah so it that you

00:35:16.100 don't have to think about colonial extraction or you know right but that i mean although that's

00:35:22.440 what it is but you don't have to think about it or it's stripped of all potential trumpiness or

00:35:28.740 um just embattledness yeah he's not he's completely unembattled yeah his masculinity

00:35:34.680 is not under threat yes yes like he is confident in where his masculinity resides yes i was uh

00:35:41.860 noticing that there is a on this is september 24th a photo of him um and the caption of the

00:35:48.480 instagram photo is any suggestions on how to cook this and he's leaning towards the camera in a white

00:35:54.460 tank top and he's um he's not like buff it's kind of loose on him he's not doing marlon brando levels

00:36:00.840 of like white tank top victory right but it's like it's still really his body is on display and you

00:36:06.480 can kind of see this little tattoo and he is holding this huge huge this is a zucchini

00:36:13.460 anyone who has ever vegetable gardened yeah knows this is a mid-September zucchini that

00:36:20.740 is and my advice to him is zucchini pancakes that's what I would say yes that's what I would

00:36:26.720 say but it's just totally like he's like here's my hot body and I'm leaning forward offering to you

00:36:33.780 this huge tumescent tuber and um and it's just like he's like that's how it's masculine he's

00:36:43.040 like look i got it in my hands i'm not stressed about it it's like i can make light of it and

00:36:49.040 that's so great right it's like barely double entendre he's like because he is gonna cook it

00:36:54.500 right so it's like well okay i'm looking at this image right now too what's going on with his hair

00:37:00.980 here oh right it's so like again it's like i think he has earbuds in as well very yes he has some

00:37:07.340 beats in yes yes and this is an interesting kitchen slot as well like you can see it's like

00:37:12.720 nice but not fancy and yeah you know it's not he seems to have a lantern hailing from the ceiling

00:37:17.760 but the hair i mean he's going gray he hasn't lost it i recognize this hair like i have seen

00:37:24.800 this hair in many a 50 year old man um i think that it's similar to my dad's hair it's incredibly

00:37:31.060 straight and there's like a little bit of grease going on a little bit like he doesn't wash very

00:37:36.260 recently he hasn't washed very recently like he like this is a and you can see by like just the

00:37:42.200 bags under his eyes and that sort of thing yeah this is a man who has like rolled out of bed

00:37:45.740 it's also looking at the wrinkles in his forehead like this is also a man who has not gotten botox

00:37:51.460 yeah like maybe he's gotten some work done I don't know but like it's not the sort he doesn't

00:37:56.700 have um the smoothness that I have come to us like with Tom Cruise say yeah yeah yeah yeah um

00:38:03.780 or John Travolta yeah it's a really like um scared of aging and bless I mean well and both

00:38:12.140 of those men to me they increasingly look like um almost like Grecian like death masks of themselves 0.54

00:38:19.800 Right. Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, my God. In a way that is very uncanny. Yeah. And that people understand is uncanny. And I don't think that's like, you know, people do whatever with their faces. But this is what happens is that you increasingly look like, I don't know, like a memory of yourself. And he seems to be like, this is what I look like. 0.96

00:38:40.080 And I think that sort of comfort is also what when people are like, oh, he's so like Silver Fox hot.

00:38:46.200 Part of what they are articulating is like this is a man who is at ease with the way that he looks, with the way that his body is, with the place that he resides in the world, with this place in Hollywood even.

00:38:58.840 Right. Like he is not trying to be the king of Hollywood still the way that Tom Cruise is.

00:39:04.280 Yeah. Yes. Although I did see this morning that he is now going to, there's a new, more nostalgia, Beverly Hills Cop coming out next spring. That was the most, the current in which he will play the bad guy. So it's Kevin and Eddie.

00:39:18.940 Oh, he's such a good bad guy.

00:39:20.420 he's a really good bad guy yeah i know and that's like he's partly good at this okay but um one

00:39:25.020 thing a word that i am not sure we have said at all but even if so we haven't we should just like

00:39:30.620 qualify that all of this luxury um and middle classness it's really about a vision of whiteness

00:39:37.700 and white ruralness and uh the hair too is really whiteness so i mean that in the way that we're

00:39:45.540 saying that the privilege is really latent in this. You know, like the account is not about

00:39:51.960 race overtly, but it's a real performance of benevolent whiteness. Like you can have this,

00:40:01.100 you could have all of this success and all of this stuff and do so in a way that looks relaxed

00:40:08.620 and pleasant. And I think like that is particularly soothing to, I mean, I don't, I won't speak for

00:40:14.300 other people but certainly for me as a middle class white person who wants to uh feel like

00:40:21.280 i am doing good in the world and could also maybe have nice stuff yeah and who also really

00:40:26.380 struggles with the question of what's an ethical relation to things like it's a real vision of

00:40:32.380 whiteness and right and of reconciling that tension right and because these are two things

00:40:37.060 that yes like you said i grapple with this all the time like how do we dismantle privilege and

00:40:42.300 And the things that privilege affords, while also being like, oh, but also I want nice things.

00:40:47.840 Right, exactly.

00:40:48.980 And yeah, I mean, it goes back to the thing that I said at the beginning about, well,

00:40:53.880 this looks like freedom. 0.67

00:40:55.100 And if you're like, I'm constraining myself to an uptight version of whiteness, then here

00:41:01.220 is a model of how I can free myself from that. 0.72

00:41:03.460 And so it has an effective tone of liberation.

00:41:07.540 but my friend who made this point to me about how kevin bacon not anybody never got anybody free

00:41:13.380 has a much more socially collectivist idea of freedom that's based on certain levels i mean

00:41:18.860 like broad levels of accountability and recognition that a dance scene might be related to

00:41:25.660 but also can stand in for in a way that might be problematic

00:41:29.440 hey everyone it's ann just popping in to say we're recording a bunch of new episodes in the

00:41:36.660 next month, and we want and need your questions. We're working on shows about Sephora teens,

00:41:42.800 online shopping culture, like all of the weirdness that's around shopping for things online,

00:41:48.360 contemporary trends in romance, why we get so mad at and about celebrities, just as a general idea,

00:41:56.260 and generational nostalgia. Oh, and we're also looking for you to tell us about like weird

00:42:02.080 trends in your TikTok for you page, FYP, if there's something that you keep seeing, it's like

00:42:07.660 a trend. You're like, what is happening? We want to unpack that for you. We're going to do a whole

00:42:12.800 series where we unpack like clusters of various trends. So if you have questions about any of

00:42:19.580 these things, you can find the link to the Google form at culturestudypod.substack.com

00:42:25.520 or type in tinyurl, T-I-N-Y-U-R-L, dot com slash culturestudypod.

00:42:33.060 And if you're a paid subscriber, remember to use your super special form

00:42:36.300 so that your questions go to the front of the line.

00:42:38.600 Okay, back to the show.

00:42:41.940 Can we quickly, before we go to our last question,

00:42:44.880 you, at the very beginning, you said, like, you had some things to say about

00:42:47.800 Kevin Bacon, Footloose, and how this resides within, like, a Reaganist America.

00:42:53.620 And I really, I wanted to make sure that we had time to talk just a little bit about that.

00:42:58.220 Yeah, well, so like this early 80s moment, when was the moment, which I think was the moment of his biggest stardom.

00:43:06.280 Yes.

00:43:06.500 So there's Footloose, where there had been a moment of kind of cultural liberation and then a huge retreat from that from the election of Reagan and the deep alignment of Christian values with corporate impulses and militaristic impulses.

00:43:25.580 So a very territorial and capital hungry politics aligned with the Christian ethos, which my grandfather was a minister. I think this is a very debased version of Christianity, but that's a separate point. But all of those things were aligned and hit Reagan's appeal of this like 1950s version, like fantasy of American World War II masculinity was kind of attached to the rural spaces of America specifically.

00:43:52.960 And so the footloose plot of I'm coming from a city to a little town that has been fallen under this very oppressive regime and I'm going to teach everybody to dance and so then we'll be free of the politics.

00:44:08.280 Right.

00:44:08.340 So it's like, what do you need to get, like, what would change the world?

00:44:12.040 Prom, you know, and like prom when you're 17 can feel really significant.

00:44:18.200 And when I like and I actually I like I'm not saying that we can't learn lessons about freedom from movement.

00:44:25.440 I actually really think that we can.

00:44:27.540 But it's also a substitutional logic.

00:44:30.160 And the other movie that I will say quickly that really stands in as a Reagan era movie that's very implanted in my brain.

00:44:36.160 Kevin Bacon starring role in Quicksilver, where he plays a stockbroker who loses all of his money, gives it all up, becomes a bike messenger.

00:44:46.060 And he's like, I don't care anymore.

00:44:48.200 And he gives this amazing speech to one of his old stock opener friends about how free he is.

00:44:52.420 And he's like, the sign says go left.

00:44:53.900 And I go right.

00:44:55.000 You know, it's like total, again, a somatic freedom.

00:44:59.180 Like his body doesn't have to follow these rules.

00:45:01.240 But at the end, Kevin Bacon's friend who wants to start a hot dog stand loses all of his money to a loan shark.

00:45:08.100 So Kevin Bacon takes the remaining money.

00:45:10.800 And guess what, Annie?

00:45:11.600 Guess what he does? 0.55

00:45:12.300 he goes back to the stock market and saves his white ethnic friend from the loan shark 0.59

00:45:20.860 with capitalism right so right so there's i mean and i have not seen that movie in a long time but

00:45:30.620 i really remember this speech so he's like both free of capitalism but he can use it to be

00:45:37.740 benevolent okay this is a horrible transition but we're gonna we're gonna run with it yeah and go

00:45:43.960 into our last question which i think as a way for us to wrap up our discussion specifically of the

00:45:49.840 instagram okay we're gonna roll with it so it's from caitlin my only question is isn't this exactly

00:45:55.560 what you would do if you were low-key stoned and rich as hell well i think this goes into that

00:46:03.580 question of like how this is offering a solution to this this like difficult reconciliation of like

00:46:10.180 liberal values and like acquisition right it's like oh I would just be I would just I would not

00:46:17.380 have the ten thousand dollars dope but I'd still have a pretty sick property right and I would just

00:46:22.260 like play my records all the time like that would be my records yeah I was just re-listening to like

00:46:29.260 one of the uh what blues monday uh it's from the w's he's listening to all these records up above

00:46:35.360 so he's listening to the who and he's like long live rock and he's like like god it's like

00:46:40.740 and he's just like loving life van halen man

00:46:47.700 i think that we answered this in a lot of ways but i think that that is in some ways a great

00:46:54.320 encapsulation of like, why we gravitate to this content on like a pretty surface level

00:47:00.380 way. Yeah, of course, this is the how I would want to live my life. It's aspirational.

00:47:05.600 But once we start to unpack it a little bit more, we can see what that means, right? What does it

00:47:10.540 actually mean to be aspirational? And why is this particular account aspirational in all of these

00:47:15.180 different ways? Yes, definitely. I am as a kind of a way to maybe wrap this up. I was watching a

00:47:21.900 little reel where it's Kevin and Kira talking with the director of their foundation about why they do

00:47:28.160 charity work and Kevin was really sweet with Kira he's like you were always really into causes like

00:47:33.100 more than me you know which is also this fantasy of like I was just this bro and like you made me

00:47:38.520 better yeah and Kira gives this very sweet and not wrong account of change doesn't have to be big

00:47:46.820 like I really believe in grassroots we have to make these small changes and they build up and 0.60

00:47:50.980 that's not wrong but also how comforting right how comforting to the specific audience of white

00:48:00.000 middle-class middle-aged people like myself to know oh you could just make these small changes

00:48:05.380 and that is what we need and that itself precisely the truth in it makes it a somewhat pernicious

00:48:14.540 narrative of what not that we shouldn't make the small changes but like that you know um it's it's

00:48:21.600 not revolution it's not revolution i don't think any celebrity can offer us revolution no no no no

00:48:27.180 no but i want to know who are your favorite gen x celebrities oh my gosh annie

00:48:35.540 you know um i guess a thing that i will say is that i recently watched with my kids who are both

00:48:47.100 teenagers um high fidelity the john kuzak movie and before we watched it they had never seen a

00:48:53.580 john kuzak movie so i showed them the scene for say anything where he's like i don't want to sell

00:48:57.560 anything that's been bought or processed or processed anything and i was like okay so this

00:49:01.460 is john kuzak you haven't seen all the other movies but this is the thing and he's holding

00:49:04.900 in the boombox, In Your Eyes, Ioni Sky. Amazing. And then we watched High Fidelity. And High

00:49:11.400 Fidelity is really itself a referend, John Cusack doing a referendum on Gen X.

00:49:16.400 On John Cusack.

00:49:17.360 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I knew that. And that's why it was so charming, right? It's like

00:49:22.140 Super Chicago. It's great. But watching it, I was like, oh, my God, like the whole I mean,

00:49:30.640 it's not that I didn't know he's terrible because that's the plot of the movie but it is an

00:49:35.520 astonishing just memoir of horror and it really made me feel like all these things like the tough

00:49:46.640 guy in a breakfast club so I'm like like the rebels like that's what appeals to me I was like

00:49:53.680 they all sucked and i'm so glad that the kids today are like no we don't need that that's toxic

00:50:01.740 um so i don't feel i'm like even hot great we can just leave them all behind i'm really happy 1.00

00:50:09.220 to turn towards the gender queer future um and follow the the children in our future they will 0.92

00:50:14.560 lead us all right i think this is a wonderful place to stop paid subscribers are about to get

00:50:19.860 the Ask Anne Anything segment after this.

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00:50:36.060 Sarah, where can people find you online

00:50:38.340 if they want more of your work?

00:50:41.020 So my social media handle is Sunset and Echo,

00:50:45.520 which is the corner where I catch the bus

00:50:47.640 here in Los Angeles.

00:50:48.780 and you can find me at sarahmesley.com

00:50:51.800 or at avidly.com.

00:50:54.640 Awesome.

00:50:55.340 Thank you so much.

00:50:56.420 Thank you.

00:50:57.080 This was a real delight.

00:50:58.000 Thank you.

00:50:58.500 Total delight.

00:50:59.780 Thanks for listening to the Culture Study Podcast.

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Culture Study Podcast - March 20, 2024

The Intoxicating Ease of Kevin Bacon's Instagram

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