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PODCAST

(Pop) Cultural Marxism

Brooklyn Institute for Social Research

In (Pop) Cultural Marxism, a subseries of the Podcast for Social Research, BISR faculty Ajay Singh Chaudhary and Isi Litke (and special guests!) will be exploring the "fantastic form" of pop-cultural commodities—from film and television to toys and games to objects of every conceivable consumer variety.

society & culture

All Episodes

02:51:45

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 19: Ghost of Yotei -...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2025/10/31

In episode 19 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay are joined by fellow BISR faculty Joseph Earl Thomas to discuss Ghost of Yotei, Sucker Punch Productions' much-anticipated sequel to Ghost of Tsushima. To kick off the episode, Isi and Ajay chat about recent cultural news and highlights, from the Japanese government calling on OpenAI to refrain from using anime and manga as training data, to the #SwiftiesAgainstAI campaign, to Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another (2025). Turning

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02:30:02

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 18: I Don't Know What...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2025/09/19

In episode 18 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay spend some time with a handful of big news items at the intersection of politics and media—from the Skydance-Paramount merger (and other instances of media market concentration) and its implications for American newsmedia (and its potential new gatekeepers); to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, its aftermath, its mediations with mass cultural objects (like alleged HellDivers II bullet etchings or Nepalese protestors with One Piece flags); the

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02:02:19

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 17: I Have Friends...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2025/06/27

In episode 17 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi once again find themselves in the regrettable position of praising the Walt Disney Company. After chatting about recent cultural highlights (Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, a 40th anniversary screening of Kurosawa’s Ran, and a Criterion retrospective on Johnnie To), they consider the popular and critical success of Andor’s second season, and ask what it means to describe a pop cultural text as “politically timely.” Their conversation turns to

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01:52:47

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 16: Shine Bright Like...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2025/04/25

In episode 16 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay discuss the return of Tony Gilroy’s Andor. Before departing for a galaxy far, far away, they stop by the world of gaming to chat about Hazelight Studio’s latest co-op title, Split Fiction, and the impact of Trump’s tariffs on the rollout of Nintendo’s Switch 2. Turning to the first three episodes of Andor’s second season, Isi and Ajay discuss the show’s improbable presence in the Disney universe, the promises and perils of thinking with

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02:30:38

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 15: Vampires!

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2025/03/21

In episode 15 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay, Isi, and Joseph explore vampires in media, across genre and time! Welcoming back Joseph after a few episodes away, the episode kicks off with a games roundtable on Monster Hunter: Wilds (Capcom, 2025) and Pentiment (Obsidian, 2022), among other things. Then the group quickly dives into all things vampire. From Capital to Castelvania, the conversation analyzes the psychosexual, political economic, Orientalist, literary, genre, social, and even

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01:49:24

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 14: Things of the...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2025/02/07

Isi and Ajay kick off episode 14 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism by paying tribute to the late, great American auteur David Lynch. They discuss the pleasures of Lynch's oneiric style, his keen eye for American mass culture (and the horrors it conceals), and recent re-watches of Twin Peaks and Dune. The two then reprise episode 13's review of 2024 pop culture. Along the way, they discuss year-end film releases (Brady Corbet's The Brutalist, Ridley Scott's Gladiator II, Robert Eggers' Nosferatu, Gints

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01:49:42

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 13: Things of the...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2024/12/31

In episode 13 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi ruminate on a largely dismal year in pop culture. Kicking off with a discussion of unexpected developments in the world of health insurance, the conversation turns to a number of broad trends that characterized culture this year: AI, long production cycles, platforms—rather than cultural works—as objects of cathexis, IP art, and the use of IP as trans-media anchors. Along the way, they discuss social bandits, collective effervescence, Leiji

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01:28:15

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 12: Megalopolis — or,...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2024/11/15

In episode 12 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi tackle Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis (2024). Kicking off with a review of a few recent pop-cultural engagements—including an assemblage of classic vampire films (Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), among them), Mubi’s restoration of The Fall (2006), Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, and a pair of streaming series about professional wrestling—the conversation turns to Coppola’s reactionary would-be summa about an architect attempting to

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01:15:45

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 11: Civil War

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2024/05/21

In episode 11 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi examine Alex Garland’s Civil War (2024). Kicking off with a handful of pop culture news items—including the Met Gala, the death of Steve Albini, A24’s Stop Making Sense tribute album, and Apple's alarming iPad Pro commercial—the conversation turns to Garland’s provocative and uneven drama about a group of photojournalists traveling through a war-torn United States. Ajay and Isi discuss the perils of directors commenting on their own works, the

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02:34:09

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 10: It's Not Easy...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2024/03/08

What does culture look like in a "sustainable" world? In episode of 10 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay, Isi, and guest Rebecca Ariel Porte examine the problems with "green" technology and consumption—which, it turns out, do little, nothing, or less than nothing to sustain the environment—and talk about the kinds of cultural forms, from literature to architecture to games, that are not only sustainable in terms of ecology and society but also aesthetically compelling and beautiful. How does genuine

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02:58:49

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 9: Things of the Year...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2023/12/22

In the final episode for 2023, Isi, Ajay, and Joseph address the vexing nature of End-of-Year lists—and then go through the vexing process of assembling our own! Isi leads us through our year in cinema; Ajay, the year in games; and Joseph, the year in television, culminating in three top picks (and some honorable mentions) for the year in each category. Discussions range from the surprising success of cinematic restorations to films which shape, subvert, and show the optical unconscious; games of

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02:28:20

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 7: The Legend of...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2023/07/21

After a brief hiatus, Ajay and Isi are back with another episode of (Pop) Cultural Marxism! In episode 7, they sojourn amidst the splendid ruins of Hyrule in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, the much celebrated 2023 game from Nintendo's EPD development group, directed and produced by Hidemaro Fujibayashi and Eiji Aonuma. Before delving into the series’ past and present iterations, the two spend some time catching up on what’s new at the movies—including the expected summer blockbusters,

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01:48:44

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 6: Everyone Enjoying...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2023/04/04

In episode six of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay consider the cultural imperative du jour, "Let People Enjoy Things"—and offer an alternative: not letting people enjoy things. What underlies the collective impulse to not criticize? What is the purpose of criticism? And how does the injunction to not criticize misunderstand the relationship between the self and representation? Are critics cheerless? Why are we anxious for our art (are blockbuster movies so fragile)? Why, in this moment, are we

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02:10:06

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 5: Avatar: Cinema's...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2023/04/04

In episode 5 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay dive deep into the spectacle of James Cameron’s latest blockbuster Avatar: The Way of Water, touching on questions of cinematic language, the ironic celebration of nature through its destructions, papyrus fonts, visual and narrative incoherence, Final Fantasy (and being unfair to it), Ridley Scott, Moby Dick, Heidegger’s question concerning technology, Prehistoric Planet, windmills, colonialism, György Lukács, Eiji Otsuka, Sontag's “Fascinating

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03:14:28

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 4: 2022 Cultural Year...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2023/02/24

In episode four of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay, Isi, and Joseph review the year 2022 in pop culture via the prism of five topics and trends: “open world” (and cinematic universe) fatigue (for example, Assassin’s Creed: Vahalla, Sonic Frontiers); the plague of remakes and cultural nostalgia (Top Gun Maverick, Wednesday, Interview with the Vampire); cultural paranoia (true crime TV and paraphernalia, including the “In Case I Go Missing Binder,” Nextdoor, Tár); liberal fanfiction (Handmaid’s

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02:42:37

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 3: Elden Ring:...

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2023/02/24

In episode three of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi welcome fellow faculty and videogame connoisseur Joseph Earl Thomas to talk about Elden Ring, the acclaimed 2022 RPG videogame, directed and created by Hidetaka Miyazaki and Japan’s FromSoftware studio (alongside some “worldbuilding” by Game of Thrones writer George R.R. Martin.) After a few preliminaries (a revisit to Andor and discussions of the recent Sight and Sound “best movies” poll, Pokemon, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 as communist allegory,

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01:16:06

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 2: Stellan Skarsgårdian

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2023/02/24

In the second episode of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Isi and Ajay continue their explorations of the “fantastic form” of pop-cultural commodities. This time around, they take up the latest addition to the Star Wars universe, Tony Gilroy’s television series Andor. Their talk touches on topics large and small, from animatronic garbage droids, ordinary social life in the Star Wars universe, and the petty middle managerialism of empire, to labor militancy, Wagner’s Ring Cycle, early Hollywood genre

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01:51:00

(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 1: Elves and Dragons

(Pop) Cultural Marxism ·

2023/02/24

Introducing Episode 1 of the new Podcast for Social Research subseries (Pop) Cultural Marxism, in which Ajay and Isi (and special guests!) will be exploring the “fantastic form” of pop-cultural commodities—from film and television to toys and games to objects of every conceivable consumer variety. In the premier episode, they turn their attention to the genre of fantasy, and in particular to the recent prequels to The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Listen in as they discuss, among other

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18 results

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