The Elusive Promise of the First Person

Summary

Podcast Summary: Critics at Large | The New Yorker Episode: The Elusive Promise of the First Person
Release Date: January 9, 2025

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Introduction

In the January 9, 2025 episode of Critics at Large, The New Yorker's cultural critics—Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz—delve into the intricate world of first-person narrative across various mediums. Titled "The Elusive Promise of the First Person," the episode explores the strengths, limitations, and evolving role of first-person perspectives in literature, film, and digital media. Through lively discussions and insightful analysis, the hosts examine how this narrative technique shapes our understanding of characters, stories, and our own place within them.

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Understanding the First-Person Narrative

The episode opens with the hosts defining the first-person narrative as a storytelling technique that allows audiences to experience events through the eyes of a character, emphasizing intimacy and personal perspective.

Vinson Cunningham introduces the concept with enthusiasm:

"It's all about the eye, but also the E, Y, E I through somebody else's eyes." ([00:50])

Naomi Fry underscores its historical significance:

"It's all about the eye. It's all about the eye." ([00:50])

Alex Schwartz adds nuance, highlighting the paradox inherent in the first-person perspective:

"The first person is the most occluded of any perspective you can use... you gain intimacy, this sense of being pressed next to someone... at the same time, the distance is the opening up of a different perspective from your own." ([04:45])

The hosts discuss how first-person narratives have been a staple in Western literature since the Psalms, extending their influence into modern platforms like social media.

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Case Study: 'The Nickel Boys' Film Adaptation

A significant portion of the discussion centers around Romel Ross's film adaptation of Colson Whitehead's novel The Nickel Boys. The film employs a first-person perspective to immerse viewers in the harrowing experiences of two boys in a segregated reform school.

Alex Schwartz provides a detailed synopsis:

"Nickel Boys begins in Tallahassee, Florida... Elwood Curtis, a black high school student inspired by Martin Luther King Jr., is wrongfully sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school where black boys are brutally mistreated." ([08:07])

Vinson Cunningham elaborates on the film's narrative technique:

"The camera lingers... you hear Elwood's voice almost as if it's proceeding from behind the screen." ([10:13])

Naomi Fry praises the film's visual aesthetics while critiquing its emotional impact:

"I thought this was a gorgeous movie... The world is figured in a way that's very sensate, you know, that's very sensual." ([11:53])

However, Naomi expresses some reservations:

"When he interacts with other characters... I couldn't connect... It distanced me in a way that seemed counterproductive." ([13:37])

In contrast, Alex shares a more personal and emotional response:

"I loved this movie... I found it powerful and moving... a feel of being in someone else's eyes." ([14:24])

Vinson provides a critical perspective on the film's conclusion:

"At the end of it, there's like this big collective exhale... it felt more like an expressionistic display." ([16:22])

The analysis of The Nickel Boys serves as a springboard for broader discussions on the efficacy and challenges of first-person storytelling in film.

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First Person in Film: Historical and Modern Examples

The hosts explore various film examples that utilize the first-person perspective, assessing their successes and shortcomings.

Alex Schwartz references early cinematic attempts:

"Lady in the Lake was from 1947... It’s interesting that in the 40s, film technology being much newer than it is now, this idea hits of, okay, actually we could put the camera in a different place." ([20:13])

Vinson Cunningham adds another classic example:

"There's another 1947 movie directed by Delmer Daves, starring Humphrey Bogart... you are seeing through his eyes as he hitches a ride." ([20:38])

Moving to modern cinema, Alex mentions Gaspar Noé's Enter the Void:

"The film is from the perspective of an American drug dealer who dies at the start of the movie and then kind of hovers over the rest of it." ([21:29])

Naomi Fry cites The Blair Witch Project as a notable first-person narrative in horror:

"The surprise hit Blair Witch Project... it's kind of like the filmic, their filmic remains through their POV." ([24:04])

Vinson touches on video games, specifically first-person shooters, drawing parallels between interactive and passive media:

"The first person shooter... when you're running... getting up, up at the sky... It's experiential." ([25:50])

These examples illustrate the diverse applications and potential of the first-person technique across different storytelling mediums.

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First Person in Literature and Other Media

The conversation transitions to literature, focusing on autofiction—a genre that blurs the lines between autobiography and fiction.

Naomi Fry defines autofiction and provides examples:

"Autofiction is the literary response to the culture of self-exposure on the Internet... books like Karl Ove Nausgaard's My Struggle, Ben Lerner's 1000's, Sheila Heti's How Should a Person Be." ([28:03])

Alex Schwartz discusses the power and pitfalls of first-person narratives in literature:

"There is a kind of conflation of the user of first person with the text itself... It can be a power in a way." ([29:44])

Vinson Cunningham offers a philosophical take on the limitations of first-person perspectives:

"The paradox is that the impossibility is actually what it's giving me, not the opposite." ([42:07])

The hosts debate whether first-person narratives can truly bridge the gap between individual consciousness and shared human experience.

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First Person in Social Media and Contemporary Culture

The discussion shifts to the prevalence of first-person storytelling in social media, highlighting both its addictive nature and cultural implications.

Vinson Cunningham raises concerns about the dominance of first-person perspectives:

"It does seem to me that the first person is ascendant and maybe in like, in a negative way." ([34:04])

Naomi Fry reflects on her own experiences with social media's first-person content:

"I'm riveted by her first-person narration of her completely mundane experiences... I can't stop watching them." ([35:50])

Alex Schwartz suggests that technological advancements have facilitated the surge of first-person content:

"Part of me wants to say that it's because the technology just continuously serves this up." ([36:38])

The hosts express a sense of overwhelm and questioning about the cultural shift towards self-centered narratives, pondering its impact on empathy and collective consciousness.

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Conclusions and Final Thoughts

Wrapping up the episode, the hosts synthesize their discussions, reflecting on the enduring allure and inherent challenges of the first-person narrative.

Vinson Cunningham emphasizes the personal and collective tensions created by first-person storytelling:

"The tension, that impossibility is, for me, the actual promise. Not the promise of a final mind meld, but a confrontation." ([42:07])

Naomi Fry finds comfort in shared humanity despite the inherent isolation of individual perspectives:

"To read a convincing account of someone's consciousness through first person telling is to me a real comfort." ([43:39])

Alex Schwartz offers a hopeful perspective on the necessity of inhabiting others' experiences:

"You have to leap off and try to inhabit someone else's. Thank goodness we can jump into other people's lives." ([44:55])

Naomi Fry extends the conversation to abstract art, suggesting that first-person expressions can inspire personal creativity:

"This art was conveying something to me that I then wanted to expand into my own life or accept this invitation to expansion." ([45:16])

The episode concludes with a nuanced understanding that while the first-person narrative may never fully bridge individual consciousness, its ability to foster empathy and personal connection remains its most profound promise.

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Key Takeaways

• Intimacy vs. Distance: First-person narratives offer deep personal insight but can create emotional distance or detachment.

• Medium-Specific Challenges: Adapting first-person storytelling varies across literature, film, and digital media, each with unique technical and emotional hurdles.

• Cultural Impact: The rise of social media has amplified first-person perspectives, raising questions about its effects on empathy and societal cohesion.

• Autofiction's Role: Blurring the lines between reality and fiction, autofiction reflects contemporary issues of identity and self-exposure.

• Artistic Expression: Despite limitations, first-person narratives continue to be a powerful tool for artists seeking to convey personal and universal human experiences.

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Notable Quotes:

• Vinson Cunningham on first-person film techniques:

  "The camera just lingers... you hear his voice almost as if it's proceeding from behind the screen." ([10:13])

• Naomi Fry on first-person narrative in literature:

  "Autofiction is the literary response to the culture of self-exposure on the Internet." ([28:03])

• Alex Schwartz on the emotional power of first-person storytelling:

  "I loved this movie... I found it powerful and moving and visually very beautiful." ([14:24])

• Vinson Cunningham on the collective experience of first-person narratives:

  "The tension, that impossibility is actually what it's giving me, not the opposite." ([42:07])

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This summary encapsulates the rich and multifaceted discussion from the episode, providing insights into the complexities of first-person narratives across various forms of art and their broader cultural implications.

Transcript

[Alex Schwartz]

Happy New Year from Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm Nomi Fry.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And I'm Vincent Cunningham. Auld Lang Syne. We're back, baby.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. And we are back on the case. New year, new episode, new us. You'll just have to see. Oh, yeah, but this is an episode that we've all been looking forward to chomping at the bit. I would say. It's all about the first person. Now, as I'm sure many of you know, this is the technique in literature and many of the other arts that really puts us in the eyes of another person, characterized, of course, by the first person singular pronoun. It's all about the eye.

[Nomi Fry]

It's all about the eye.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The eye, but also the E, Y, E I through somebody else's eyes.

[Nomi Fry]

Nice.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Today we're talking about some of the biggest hits. Yeah, it really is nice and misses of first person stories. We're gonna kind of do a tour of this technique and it shows up in really any medium that you can think of. Do you guys have maybe first person stories or experiences in the arts that kind of come up for you?

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, there's just so, so, so many, you know, I mean, obviously it starts with the Psalms, you know, I mean, it's like biblical, like it's always been with us in Western culture at least, and surely other cultures as well. But I think there's just so many, I don't know, Twitter. It's not exactly the arts, but it's certainly culture. Or X, shall I say X.

[Alex Schwartz]

From the Psalms to social media.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes, that's right.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Nomi Fry]

The Nomi Fry story.

[Alex Schwartz]

Tell it to us in the first person.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Nomi, when that's the title of your book.

[Nomi Fry]

Just.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You heard it here. Froze.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, I mean, exactly. The first person is an ancient narrative technique for a very good and obvious reason. We are all people who see through our own eyes. As you were saying, Vincent? And one very popular way to tell a story for millennia has been for the purported seer of the story to recount what he or she has seen.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, we got interested in this technique because of the recently released film directed by Romel Ross, Nickel Boys, an adaptation of Colson White.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's it, Harold.

[Nomi Fry]

You're doing great.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's about two young boys in the Jim Crow south at an awful reform school called Nickel. Abuses abound at this place. You don't remember. Remember what?

[Nomi Fry]

You really don't remember.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's a grim story which in Colson Whitehead's telling and the novel happens, and a very plainly told, kind of almost factual third person. But Romel Ross, the director of this movie, has placed us in the eyes of first one character and then another, these two boys. It makes me think of, you know, first of all, what makes a first person narrative successful? What are the methods and the techniques that really get us under someone else's skin? And then maybe second, does that work? Does that experience in the. In the consciousness, in the mind, seeing through the eyes of another? Does it take us outside of ourselves for any amount of time past when we, like, sort of leave the page or the screen? So that's today on Critics at Large, the elusive promise of the first person. I do want to just ask a sort of scene setting question, which is for you, what is the promise? What is the big promise or hope that is set forward by first person perspective or narration? What are you hoping that it can achieve if somebody's doing it really well.

[Nomi Fry]

I think for me, literature in general shows one, what it's like to be a person, like what a person can be, you know, and in turn, how can I be potentially, and I think first person? Its promise is to potentially be the most close to the bone example of this type of thing that literature does. Right. Showing us what it is to be in the world.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

How about yours?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I would say for me it's a paradox. And the answer is intimacy and distance. That's the paradox because the first person is the most occluded of any perspective you can use. If we're talking about literature, and soon we'll get to film, which is a bit of a different case and an interesting case because you only have the information that the narrator has. You know, one, the exceptional tool of literature is that you can. The writer can be omniscient, can go into anybody's head. And with first person, you're giving that up. And the thing you gain in exchange is this intimacy, this sense of being pressed next to someone. And when that intimacy works well, really that feeling, there's nothing like it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's a real thing. Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

At the same time, the distance is the opening up of a different perspective from your own. We'll get into examples later, but just to make it a little clearer, what I'm talking about, let's say I'm talking about a narrator like Humbert Humbert, who narrates Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

[Nomi Fry]

A classic example.

[Alex Schwartz]

A classic example because he's a monster who does monstrous things. And yet by being put into such close intimacy with him, you're really being forced into a test case of the bounds of what Naomi is describing. Do you really wanna look at the entirety of human experience? What might it be like if you got interested in someone else's perspective and you did allow yourself to see what they saw?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right. Yeah. Everything you both said is so true for me. And it's also just a way of connecting for me, at least to the primordial. The reason that we like stories, which is usually our first exposure to stories, is somebody saying, here's something that happened to me. The sitting on someone's knee or whatever of like, let me tell you. And the way that. That is a kind of trust that we always know is being a little bit betrayed. That, like someone's. You know, in order to tell the story, somebody's lying to us. You know, they're like cutting things, making elaborations, making exaggerations. I remember my older cousin telling me stories that, like, half of these are lies. And I'm just trying to piece it together. That sort of game of hide and seek with the first person narrator is also something that I really enjoy. Like I said, we're talking about this because of this new movie. Nickel Boy is an interesting and really what I would say is just a very dedicated exercise. It doesn't depart from this technique in film, a medium that's already very important. And so it's a really good test case for how this can be deployed on film. As we mentioned before, it adapts Colson Whitehead's 2019 novel and it's directed by former basketball player, Six'six apparently.

[Nomi Fry]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

A former ahoya.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Not just basketball player, a Georgetown basketball player. I met him. He's a tall gentleman.

[Nomi Fry]

I just wanna say that I read a piece in the Times about him and there was one of those times corrections at the very end. M. A previous version of this article mistakenly suggested that Romel Ross is six four. He is, in fact six'six or something.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That means that Ramel Ross was like, hey, he called.

[Nomi Fry]

He was like, it's six'six or someone did on his team. Yeah, but I thought that was just great.

[Vincent Cunningham]

But I'd love to hear maybe. Alex, a synopsis.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, my God.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Would you synopsize?

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm kicking 2025 off with a synopsis.

[Nomi Fry]

New year, but old habits.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You can be a new you with the same talents.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, well, you know, Great. All Right. So Nickel Boys begins in a place that we soon come to learn is Tallahassee, Florida. It's the story of Elwood Curtis, who, when the film begins, is a young boy who's being brought up by his grandmother. We're in the early 1960s, Florida, very hot, quite segregated, as we soon learn. And Elwood is black in high school. He gets excited by racial progress being made by people like Martin Luther King Jr. Who becomes an absolute idol for him. And he kind of wants to devote himself to the cause. He's a great student. He is college bound. When his whole life is upended by being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And he is sent to Nickel Academy, a reform school for both white and black boys. Although it is segregated, the white boys get better treatment. The black boys are treated absolutely terribly, both mentally, emotionally and physically. They're really at this school. Elwood, who's basically serving time as you would serve time in prison and trying to figure out what this means for his life, meets another student who is called Turner. And the two of them form a kind of duo as they both try to survive at Nickel and think about a way out.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right. My grandmother got me that Lloyd, man. Make a move there. First chorus. Play both the white and the black, they just move us around when they're ready. And we have to be like knights. Checkmate. How many people you know done that?

[Nomi Fry]

L.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There are four ways out of Nickel.

[Nomi Fry]

Serve your time or age out. Court might intervene. If you believe in miracles. You could die. They could kill you. You can run only four ways out of Nickel.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And all through this, you know, we open up almost as if awaking in the eyes of Elwood. When he's looking at his grandmother, sometimes you see his reflection in her iron. It's very dedicated to the fact that we are occupying his position. And if he's on screen, if we're seeing through his eyes, we hear his voice almost as if, like, it's proceeding from behind the screen. And then when he meets Turner, we gain the ability as viewers to see through Turner's eyes as well. There's a scene in the early parts of the film where they meet. And that meeting scene is reiterated, but this time through the eyes of Turner. And that's how the film almost teaches us that we can now see through both of these perspectives.

[Alex Schwartz]

Totally. There's a cool and subtle thing that happens early in the film because I like that we're teaching. You know, sometimes, like a book has to teach us how to read it, or a film has to teach us how to watch it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And one thing you become aware of really early in the film is that you are seeing from a little kid's perspective. Because you're looking up all the time.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Alex Schwartz]

Someone is. The person is short. There is a great early scene of a party and just focusing on hands with cards, a door opening and closing. You realize, oh, I'm a kid. And I'm like. But I'm just hanging with the adults. And you're observing. And then as Elwood grows, suddenly you're looking down. Suddenly his grandma, who is really tall, who's played by the amazing ingenue Ellis Taylor. Incredible in this movie and in many movies, she becomes short. You're looking down because you've grown. And so tricks like that start to teach you that you really are seeing through someone else's eyes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right. Naomi, what were your impressions?

[Nomi Fry]

Okay, I will start by saying that I thought this was a gorgeous movie. Like, visually gorgeous shot, really amazingly. And of course, that is. This can't be separated from what you guys just described about the kind of, like, looking machine of the movie. Right. Of this kind of, like, POV or I don't know what to call it. Concept, decision. You know, Romel Ross is, among other things, a photographer as well, a still photographer. And the kind of texture of this movie has kind of a similar bent to his still photography that I've seen. The world is figured in a way that's very sensate, you know, that's very sensual. And I love that about the movie. I did have some. While I understood conceptually, or I hope I did what the movie was trying to do with this technique. I don't know if, for me, it achieved what I think it was trying to achieve which is the kind of hopefully complete union between our bodies and eyes as viewers and the bodies and eyes of the character on screen. And I think part of the problem for me was speech, where, you know, obviously, you see mostly from the perspective of Elwood, where, you know, what you see on the screen is what he sees through his eyes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Nomi Fry]

And so when he interacts with other characters, with Turner, with his grandmother, whoever, you mostly hear his voice off camera, off screen, right? That's right. You don't see him interact. You hear him. And there was something about that that consistently took me out of the moment. And I understand that maybe that is the price that one pays for the use of this kind of conceit. But it distanced me in a way that seemed to me, counterproductive to my ability to connect.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

So I loved this movie, and it hit me very hard. I found it powerful and moving and visually very beautiful and quite distinctive from directorial perspective, which was exciting. I totally hear what you're saying, Nomi. I just didn't have that experience of detachment. Yeah, I didn't feel detached, nor did I feel at one with the characters. Like what I felt was a Mel at all. I don't think that's possible. Really.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

What I loved is the way it expands the characters in the movie. They are not just symbols of black pain. You know, here are two boys who are about to be put through the grinder of American racism and come out mangled. You're also just seeing what they're seeing. You're seeing the oranges on the trees. You're seeing your grandmother's hands. You're seeing you're a person outside of big history. There's a really painful image, actually, in the movie. To me, it's a good example of what the first person lets you do. It's Elwood as a teenager sitting in his classroom. And all the textbooks that come to this classroom have come first from a white school. The white students therefore, draw, you know, racist stuff in the books because they know they're going to black students. And the camera just lingers. The camera, which is Elwood's eye, just lingers on a student flipping the corner of his book, where there's a little flip book, stick figure drawing of a lynching. And that, you know, knowing that that is information that's being given to Elwood and therefore to us, feels a little bit different to me than something. Of course the filmmaker wants us to notice it. But if that was presented in a more conventional style, I think in a movie where the filmmaker's almost saying, look at this. I'm giving you information. You're my viewer. It's Elwood who's the viewer also of life. I found that very emotionally affecting and intellectually affecting. And it's something that I found very cool about the movie. And I really want to hear what you thought. Vincent, too.

[Vincent Cunningham]

You know, I did enjoy this movie, but I have to say I did not. You know, sometimes you're at a movie like this, and by like this, I mean more harrowing than you really can ever figure out how to stand.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And at the end of it, there's like this big collective exhale. And I felt that in the basement of the Angelica, but it was almost more clinical.

[Nomi Fry]

I agree.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It felt like not the story, but a sort of expressionistic display or projection of the story.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, that's so interesting because there I was weeping at Bam.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Okay, okay. No, I felt it more like it was. I felt it like it was.

[Nomi Fry]

No, I agree.

[Vincent Cunningham]

More exhibition based on the story.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, yeah. And I.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Which makes some sense, you know, but totally.

[Nomi Fry]

And I think like the beauty that we were talking about, the sort of photographic beauty and the kind of decisions, these sort of visual decisions that are being made, I could appreciate them, but I couldn't. But for some reason, Vincent, I agree with you. Maybe it's just a question of convention and I'm just not used to this other way of seeing.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Nomi Fry]

Which is why it was more difficult for me to connect and in the way that I'm used to.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Deploying the first person on film has historically been tricky to pull off. In a minute we talk about why on critics at Large from the New York.

[Nomi Fry]

Hi, this is David Remnick and I'm pleased to share the news that I'm Not a Robot. A live action short film from the New Yorker's Screening Room series has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This thought provoking film grapples with questions that we can all relate to about identity and technology and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. I encourage you to watch I'm Not.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A Robot along with our full slate.

[Nomi Fry]

Of documentary and narrative [e-mail] video.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This week's episode is sponsored by Neon's Film Presence. Directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by David Koepp, Presence is a thrilling new ghost story about a family that moves into a new home and becomes convinced they are not alone. Starring Lucy Liu, Chris Sullivan and Julia Fox, Presence has been hailed as one of the scariest movies you'll see this year. Experience it in theaters on January 24th. In his review. Really interesting review, I thought of this film. Our colleague Richard Brody talks about the Robert Montgomery film 1947 adaptation of the lady in the Lake, which is by Raymond Chandler, as an early filmic attempt at this. You know you're seeing only through Scott Marlow's. Yes, I'm Philip Marlowe. I got a letter asking me to come up here about a story.

[Nomi Fry]

Tell Mr. Marlowe to see you. You may go in.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Richard, who is never afraid to make a declarative statement, says that that movie. This is just a gimmick in Nickel Boys, it becomes a true artistic technique. Are there other places that you've seen this in film or attempts at this so crazily.

[Alex Schwartz]

There are two movies from 1947. Lady in the Lake was from 1947. There is another 1947 movie that attempts exactly this dark passage, directed by Delmer Daves, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. And at the beginning of the movie, Humphrey Bogart is escaping from prison and you suddenly are seeing through his eyes as he hitches a ride with an unsuspecting passerby.

[Vincent Cunningham]

As I was saying, you ought to be more sunburned.

[Alex Schwartz]

And then, of course, on the radio comes an announcement about an escape prisoner history flash.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We interrupt this program to warn all listeners in the North Bay area, be on lookout for a convict who escape From San Quentin 15 minutes ago, probably on an outbound truck.

[Alex Schwartz]

And so you, the viewer, stare into the driver's eyes as they stare back at you, as the driver starts to realize that maybe you are such a person. So, you know, it's. It's interesting to me that in the 40s, film technology being much newer than it is now, this idea hits of, okay, actually we could put the camera in a different place. So where does it go? Like, I can think of some other examples from later on, please. One example that comes up a lot, definitely with cinephiles, if you talk about first person perspective in movies is Enter the Void, Gaspar Noe's movie from 2010.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Why did she say I'm chunky? I know I'm not a junkie. I don't know who I am.

[Alex Schwartz]

The film is from the perspective of an American drug dealer who dies at the start of the movie and then kind of hovers over the rest of it as the action takes place. And, like, I just wonder why it hasn't happened that much. I don't know if you guys have answers. I think one answer might be a little bit, well, okay, I have two things to posit, okay? One is that to do this, you actually need to have your technical shit together at a high level, which is not to cast aspersions on the vast majority of filmmakers who don't do this. Many of them have their technical shit together, but you gotta figure out where the camera is, are actors wearing it, you know, how do your performers have to act directly into the camera? There's a kind of whole reconception, a reinventing of the wheel that you would think would excite directors who wanna do that kind of thing. My second thought about why directors might not wanna do this as much is that you are giving up that God's eye perspective. Is it hard to give up that God's eye perspective fiction writers do all the time. They love writing. But, you know, we're so used to just watching a film and looking at everything director has placed in that frame because they want to see it just. So is it hard for a director to decide, oh, actually I'm going to compromise my ability to show you everything at once, right. I don't know.

[Nomi Fry]

But it's so funny because, Alex, because it's like in another way you could, if you're looking about something like Nickel Boys, for instance. Whereas in some ways what you're saying is true. The director has given up his perspective, has ceded his perspective to the characters and so on. But it's such like a huge flex as a director to do it. It's like such an auteur, like vision. I know there's no bigger eye in a sense than, you know, doing this virtuoso kind of move of let's do POV cinema. And so that's one thing I want to say. Another thing that strikes me re film and first person is, you know, there are several examples in horror that have used this technique. You know, my mind turned to 1999, to the halcyon days of 1999 and a simpler time. The surprise hit Blair Witch Project.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

Which, you know, what was kind of the conceit was this is found footage of these three kids who go into the woods and kind of film everything and come. Obviously it's a horror movie. Come to a bad end.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm going upstairs. Where is he?

[Nomi Fry]

Where are you? And what we see as the movie is kind of the filmic, their filmic remains through their, you know, pov. I was thinking about POV in horror and I was thinking about it in porn as well. Both, you know, POV porn you kind of see from the perspective of the person holding the, you know, holding the camera. And often a man, you know, looking at a woman. Not always. And it's interesting that these two examples of where the technique of point of view, first person point of view is used, have to do with the body. You know, porn, obviously, in obvious ways. Horror as well. You know, the kind of like chills and thrills of the horror movie.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Nomi Fry]

The screams, the enhanced, you know, the sped up heartbeat, you know, the kind of like the prickle of fear going up your spine and making your hair stand on end. The technique of first person in movies lends itself to these genres in particular, I think, in ways which are kind of interesting.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. Cause the other place where you see it a lot is video games and the first person shooter, which is like again, experiential. When you think about horror movies, the times when it does, even movies that aren't committed to it all the way through, the times when it does go into first person is usually like when they're running and you see the confused scramble through the woods and everything's all over the place. Getting up, up at the sky or whatever. Similarly, moments of high intensity make us wanna be in the body. Like I need to kill this alien or whatever Doom's about. So outside, and we've already started to venture outside of movies, we're talking about video games. Are there examples of works in the first person that really kinda turn you on? I could tell you about one of mine and then.

[Alex Schwartz]

Please do.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I wanna hear. For me, I mean, I love first person fiction. One of my favorites is the fiction of Christopher Isherwood, who is one of my favorite novelists. The Berlin Stories.

[Nomi Fry]

You know, I've never gotten into it and I really want to. 2025, you'll tell me where to start.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Happily. The Berlin stories. It's a 1945 novel of a young English writer who is kind of slumming it in Berlin. And as he's doing this kind of giving us portraits of the people that he knows and sees, he's also witnessing the encroaching march of Nazism. In the Berlin Story, he has this quote which I think is characteristic often of my enjoyment of the first person. He says I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. This idea that it's not just about the experience of being inside the person, but the historicizing, the archival eye, the sort of. That's a person's observations. I mean, my great suspicion in life, the thing that haunts me all the time is I'm missing something and somebody else is getting it. And suddenly I'm able to get what somebody else is getting. So Isherwood is one for me. Are there first person artworks of any kind that are just.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, I think, you know, I'm thinking of a couple things. First of all, I'm thinking of like Victorian sensation fiction.

[Alex Schwartz]

Tell us more.

[Nomi Fry]

Well, it was kind of a somewhat trashy look down upon subgenre of Victorian literature. Wilkie Collins, his novels. The Woman in White, for instance. I don't know. Yeah, Woman in White is written in like with a series of first person narrators. Really good. It's sort of like melodramatic, a kind of later reappearance of the gothic and kind of like transitioning into the 20th century. Brad Easton Ellis's American Psycho from 1990, about kind of like a rich, young, successful finance guy working on Wall street in the high 80s who is also secretly a serial killer.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

An extremely controversial book pulled by its original publisher, Simon and Schuster, for, you know, after complaints, mostly from feminists, that it was violent in its description of kind of like horrific things done not just to women, but mostly to women. And the fact that this is a first person book, I think had a lot to do with the kind of absolute distaste it aroused in many quarters and the controversy that kind of followed it. Because it's one thing to hear about awful things done in the third person. It's quite another to read it and kind of feel as if by reading you're in a sense implicated in the actions of the person narrating the story.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Too much intimacy.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, so much.

[Alex Schwartz]

And also, I think there's something else that can go on with the first person, and this touches on that. There is a kind of conflation of the user of first person with the text itself. And I think that can be a power in a way. So I was kind of thinking of other examples where an I can be a kind of reclamation or declamation of selfhood in, you know, in any kind of way, but also like a really exciting way. And one that, to me, is a classic of the 20th century. First person is the Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow. So Saul Bellow had written two books before the Adventures of Augie March came out in 1963. And these books are not considered his best books. There's a kind of cramped style to them. There's a sense of being really limited by the first person perspective, that you're squeezed in there and be limited by a self just by being trapped. The subject of the second book is antisemitism. And, you know, you feel this kind of trapped sense of what it is to be a Jew in America. This, you know, looking over your shoulder. And then he, you know, this is so the legend goes, he gets a Guggenheim grant, he goes away to France, and he hates France, thinks it's super depressing. And he just kind of falls back in love with America, American energy, American style. And he stops the book he's writing and he starts a totally new book, which becomes the Adventures of Augie March. The first sentence of the Adventures of Augie March, which just has a great. Vincent's doing a little shimmy in here.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I love it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Has a great little music to it is I am an American, Chicago born and go at things as I have taught myself. Freestyle and will make the record in my own way. First to knock, first admitted. So there's a thing here of declaring yourself. It's not saying I'm Jewish and feel restricted by that and, you know, blah, blah, blah. It's saying I'm an American, you know? You got a problem with that? Well, like, sucks to be you. Here we go.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Saul Bella found his voice in this character and you feel the energy of it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Mm. Aye, aye, aye. Is that an expression of annoyance or too much? I, I, I. You get it. That's next.

[Nomi Fry]

Wow.

[Alex Schwartz]

Obsessed with that.

[Nomi Fry]

No, this is good.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can we have four different takes of that with slightly different intonations in the.

[Nomi Fry]

The run through evoke is where you'll meet all the most exciting people in fashion and culture. I am Fran Lubowitz, who should be.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The mayor of New York.

[Alex Schwartz]

We all support that.

[Nomi Fry]

We support that. Very nice, Nikki.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes.

[Nomi Fry]

It's been really great being in this beautiful pink room. All right, Usher, can you hear us?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I can hear you.

[Nomi Fry]

All right. Can you hear me? We can, we can.

[Vincent Cunningham]

All right, here we are.

[Nomi Fry]

On the podcast, you'll learn how Vogue really works.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Sometimes we'll come in for a second.

[Nomi Fry]

Or even third run through until we are awok.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can you tell us what awok means?

[Vincent Cunningham]

It means aw. Ok. And I went to ok.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm Cho Menardi. And I'm Chloe Mel. And we're the hosts of the run through of Vogue, where fashion and culture collide. Join us. It's awok. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think this is a good time to, like, even step away from the purely artistic and just look at the way that we live and the media that's kind of always intruding into our consciousnesses, our eye spaces. It does seem to me that the first person is ascendant and maybe in like, in a negative way. Right?

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Where the sort of. Maybe if you want to extrapolate the metaphor a little bit, the sort of the more distant magisterial third person, even of the traditional news media is being replaced all the time by like, you know, my YouTube stream, my. Excuse me, my podcast.

[Nomi Fry]

Our podcast.

[Vincent Cunningham]

That's right.

[Alex Schwartz]

First person plural.

[Vincent Cunningham]

There you go. That this has become a form that really is threatening to brush back many other ways of knowing and learning and being narrated to. Are we living through maybe a glut too much first person?

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, it's crazy. I mean, and, you know, I'm guilty of it as well. I'm not even saying it as like, oh, those narcissists. Like, clearly, you know, sometimes I look at my X feed and I'm like, oh, my God, there's so much I hear. Like, there's so much. Why am I talking about myself so much? Why am I, like, sharing my unsolicited opinions every second? It's like, it's too much. And I keep getting fed these reels on Instagram, which seem like, so crazy to me, and yet I can't stop watching them. Like a day in a life of a single woman in her 40s in suburban Chicago. And it's like, I get up in the morning, you know, I walk around the reservoir, I, like, make myself tea with two, you know, teaspoons of honey. Then I, you know, do my skincare routine. I'm like, who is this person? Why am I watching this? Why am I riveted?

[Vincent Cunningham]

But you are riveted.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm riveted by her first person narration of her completely mundane experiences. This is just one example. It could be like a guy in his, like, 20s and whatever, in the countryside who raises pigs, you know?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Nomi Fry]

So it does seem like it's like almost unending our desire, people's desire to tell their first person stories, and then viewers desire to watch them and listen to them.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I totally feel this. Any one of these things I will go with, by the way.

[Nomi Fry]

It's just like. Yeah, I don't know even why exactly.

[Alex Schwartz]

Like why you're riveted.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm riveted.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, it's very sticky. For some reason.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's very sticky. Part of me wants to say that it's because. Because the technology just continuously serves this up.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes. And it's easier than going to writing and you're going just doing dishes or doing it.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, but it's a real question. The first person. Then you just sort of slump into this passive state where these accounts are flashing before your eyes. Yeah, no, we're in a complete glut. I mean, we love to talk about social media on this show. Well, like, it's. Because it's a huge. I mean, I'm thinking back, you know, you're describing something, something that's kind of coincident with the rise of social media. And I think it's coming around again. And I want to hear what you guys think about this. In the, let's say, early 2010s, there was an absolute boom of personal essays online. It was golden Age with an asterisk of the exo.

[Nomi Fry]

Jane?

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. The website Exojane was.

[Nomi Fry]

It happened to me.

[Alex Schwartz]

Exactly. Nomi, wanna explain what it happened to me was?

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, well, it happened to me. So. Exojane was a site founded by Jane Pratt, who previously before that was the editor in chief of Sassy magazine, which was extremely important to me as a teenager in the 90s. It was the kind of like cooler teen magazine. And It Happened to Me was in fact a column in Sassy magazine where readers, you know, teenage readers would write in with their stories. You know, it Happened to me. I got stood up for prom. It happened to me, you know, my sister died from a drug overdose, whatever. And you know, for. As a reader of these stories, they were important to me because I do think it was kind of like an empathy creating mechanism. And it's a kind of. Especially as a. As a young girl, you're like, am I normal? Are these things that other girls are feeling? You know, all of that sort of thing. But then in Exojane, which was later the site that, you know, as I said, Jane Pratt from SASE, founded in the 2010s, it happened to Me kind of used the same structure, but it became, because of the requirements of online, it became much more. More over the top than before. So I remember there was one that people talked about a lot, which was a girl who had left her tampon in.

[Alex Schwartz]

Do you remember that?

[Nomi Fry]

It was like things that were. It went into kind of like extreme. The extreme nether regions. Talking about body. Right. Of kind of personhood. Right. Like, what won't we hear next?

[Alex Schwartz]

Totally. And I think one thing that marked this period was the technology of publishing was changing. So so many things were moving online. So there needed to be a lot more content. And then there was a lot less money in media. At the same time, advertising crashed and there was this kind of idea, I think, especially for young women, that if you want to make your name, if you want to get a shot at writing professionally and publicly, here's a really good way to do it. And, you know, there have been all kinds of debates about whether this was good or bad, but I think it's not that unlike, you know, saying if you want to be in the movies, you gotta show a little sk. Like, come on in, strip down. Like, the incentives were kind of skewed. And so this led to a lot of stuff out there and a lot of pressure on people to put stuff out there and an audience reaction. You now I'm thinking of like the cut At New York Magazine is kind of what I think of as almost in the throwback way has gone to publishing these essays where you wonder, are you guys doing this to get rage clicks?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I married an older man.

[Alex Schwartz]

I married an older man.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I hate my cat.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, yeah. Which, yeah, an essay that the Cut published last year.

[Nomi Fry]

It was a woman who had a new baby and wanted her cat dead because she didn't have time for the cat.

[Alex Schwartz]

Right.

[Nomi Fry]

Essentially. And neglected the cat.

[Alex Schwartz]

Neglected the cat. The cat seems to be fine. We have no involvement with that. I don't want to get us involved in that whole brouhaha, please. But what I'm interested in asking you guys what I am kind of wondering. So I think it's like a bit chic to hate on the name Autofiction and just sort of say, oh, fiction. People have written non biographical fiction forever. Autofiction is like, you know, some common ideas about it, I guess are that the protagonist of this work is an avatar for the narrator. That they usually have the narrator's name, if not the name, a very close similarity to the narrator, and the narrator's kind of sending them about business that could closely resemble the writer's but may differ in important ways. It's not. We're not supposed to say, oh, yeah, all this stuff happened. But the idea is to play with that similarity and just to give people a sense of what I'm thinking of. I'm thinking of books like the seven volume My Struggle by Norwegian writer Karl Ove Nausgaard. I'm thinking of Ben Lerner's book, especially the book 1004. I'm thinking of Sheila Hedy's book How Should a Person Be? To me, autofiction is the literary response to the culture of self exposure on the Internet. All of this has to do so much with our era where we all have avatars out in the world anyway. So what do we do when we put them on the page and make them literary? What do we actually want to create in the distance between the real self and someone else? And I think this kind of like brings us back in some ways to the big question we're asking, which is, can you be in someone else's shoes? I think with Autofiction the question is like, can I even be in my own sometimes?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think the answer, with caveats, because, you know, I do believe in moments of the sublime, et cetera. But the answer in large part is no. And I think something that we've been talking about a lot, this question of this essential paradox is that that tension, that impossibility is, for me, the actual promise. Not the promise of a final mind meld, but a confrontation, a negotiation with the fact that our perspectives really are our own. The fact that we are really. This is to go back to nickel boys, very briefly. One thing that it really did do for me was confront me with a kind of claustrophobia, a kind of, like, the anxiety of, like, I'm stuck in this point of view, which really just makes me think about, like, the fact that I really am finally stuck in my shit, stuck in my head. You know, as you get older and older, that becomes an ordeal. The fact that I really am in this experience. And, you know, art usually is a way to get out of that. And so art that makes me. That rockets me back into that fact, the claustrophobia of being. And, like, even when I'm trying to get into somebody else's thing and I'm still in my thing and all of the sturm that. That creates that to me, like, the impossibility of it is actually what it's giving me, not the opposite.

[Nomi Fry]

Interesting. I mean, the awareness is an ordeal, right? The remembrance, the re. Realization that, once again, yeah, you're stuck in the casket of your own skin envelope. And it's just. You're stuck in your own consciousness. There's no two ways about it. To me, where first person becomes exciting is not. I don't think it's possible. I agree with you, Vincent. I don't think it's possible to embody another person's perspective. But to me, there is a kind of, like, comfort in a shared humanity. Like we're all stuck in our own consciousness. We're all stuck in our own bodies. It's not possible to completely bridge the gap. But to read a convincing account of someone's consciousness through first person telling is to me a real comfort. A real comfort. To me, it's the creation of true sympathy.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. I mean, yeah. I kind of want to contrarianly say, yeah, you can. Yeah, you can get into someone else's skin.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Sure.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can you live there forever? No. But here we all are in lives. And, yes, you have to leap off. Or at least I feel that I have to leap off and try to inhabit someone else's. I mean, thank goodness we can jump into other people's lives. I need that.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah. I mean, I even think, you know, this might seem like it's totally out of left field, but I, over the weekend went to the Guggenheim, and there's a show of abstract art from, you know, 1910 to 1930, it's called Orphism in Paris. And obviously visual art is very different. And talking about, especially abstract, talking about the first person, I don't know what exactly that means, but as I was walking around and, you know, going around the loop of the Guggenheim and looking at the images, these like first person expressions of these artists, I was thinking to myself, oh, I can. This makes me want to pick up a brush. I'm not a visual artist, you know, this makes me want to make something. In a weird way, this art was conveying something to me that I then wanted to expand into my own life or accept this invitation to expansion, whether it was meant or not. I do feel like there is something to this transmission in first person art and ourselves as viewers or readers or listeners that can potentially, when it's good. Invite us to Share.

[Vincent Cunningham]

This has been a Happy New Year edition of Critics at Large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's head of Global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrado composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from Jake Loomis with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] critics. We're so happy you're here with us in the new year and we'll see you again next week. I'm dan Taburski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York.

[Nomi Fry]

I was like at my locker and she came up to me and she was like stuttering super bad. I'm like, stop around. She's like, I can't.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The state tried to keep on the down low.

[Alex Schwartz]

Everybody thought I was holding something back.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, you were holding something back intentionally.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, yeah, you know, it's hysteria. It's all in your head.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's not physical.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating.

[Alex Schwartz]

Is this the largest mass hysteria since.

[Vincent Cunningham]

The Witches of Salem, or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here. Something's not right.

[Alex Schwartz]

Leroy was the new dateline and everyone was trying to solve the murder.

[Vincent Cunningham]

A new limited series from Wondery and.

[Alex Schwartz]

Pineapple Street Studios, Hysterical. Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad free right now by.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Joining Wondery.

[Nomi Fry]

From prx.