Socialism, Anarchy, and Pixar Movies with Jack Halberstam

Summary

Episode Summary: "Socialism, Anarchy, and Pixar Movies with Jack Halberstam"

Fail Better with David Duchovny
Hosted by: David Duchovny
Guest: Jack Halberstam, author, scholar, and professor at Columbia University
Release Date: December 3, 2024

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Fail Better with David Duchovny, host David Duchovny engages in an enlightening conversation with Jack Halberstam, renowned author of The Queer Art of Failure. The discussion delves deep into unconventional interpretations of children's movies, the pervasive themes of socialism and anarchy within them, and Halberstam's personal experiences confronting societal norms. The episode challenges listeners to rethink failure, success, and the underlying systems that shape our perceptions.

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Exploring Failure Through Children's Media

[04:21] Jack Halberstam:
Jack begins by challenging the traditional Beckettian notion of "failing better," emphasizing that constant failure can lead to deeper systemic issues rather than mere resilience.

Key Discussion Points:

1. Redefining Failure:

   • Halberstam argues that failure isn't just about individual setbacks but is intrinsically linked to resisting oppressive systems.
   • "Failure is the burden of those who do not conform to the social script they've been given." — [04:21]

2. Analysis of Pixar Films:

   • The conversation shifts to the ideological subtexts within Pixar movies. Halberstam posits that these films embed themes of socialism and collective action inherently.
   • "Pixar films made films about social insects and collective groups, which corresponds well to the way that the child is actually experiencing the world, as part of a collective." — [07:37]

3. Examples of Subversive Themes:

   • Shrek: Subverts traditional fairy tale norms by presenting non-ideal protagonists.
   • Finding Nemo: Illustrates collective struggle and solidarity, with the climax emphasizing teamwork over individual heroism.
   • Chicken Run: A blatant Marxist and feminist allegory depicting chickens uprising against oppressive farmers.
     • "Chicken Run is a very basic Marxism at the beginning... it's a friggin feminist Marxist fable." — [16:00]
   • Monsters, Inc.: Critiques corporate culture through the lens of a company designed to scare children, ultimately showcasing solidarity and rebellion.
     • "Monsters, Inc. is saying even the figures that are supposed to represent the anarchic outside of the culture, we can incorporate them. The uprising comes from within the company through solidarity with the child." — [14:38]

Notable Quotes:

• "Fail again, fail better has been interpreted as if at first you don't succeed, try and try again. And those, those things are not compatible." — Jack Halberstam [04:49]
• "Animation is like a magical realm. There's all this potential there." — Jack Halberstam [06:55]

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Personal Journey and the Queer Experience

[30:38] Jack Halberstam:
Halberstam opens up about his own experiences growing up queer in 1970s England, a time and place rife with societal intolerance.

Key Discussion Points:

1. Struggle with Gender Identity:

   • Jack discusses being frequently mistaken for a boy and the familial pressures to conform to a female identity.
   • "Your gender identity is coiled within you, but it's also projected onto you by every interaction that you had." — [35:33]

2. Impact of Punk Movement:

   • The punk scene provided a refuge and a space for expressing anger against societal norms.
   • "Punk was a great hideout for me because the punks were pretty asexual and they were also pretty non-binary." — [30:38]

3. Confronting Societal Expectations:

   • Halberstam reflects on how societal scripts assign categories of success and failure, often marginalizing those who don't conform.
   • "Some of us have already been assigned to the category of failure without even beginning our lives." — [33:42]

Notable Quotes:

• "I was never gonna give up the boy thing. I just wasn't." — Jack Halberstam [37:10]
• "I'm somebody who was trained probably in the same way that you were when you were an undergraduate or doing your PhD." — Jack Halberstam [18:39]

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Teaching, Systemic Critique, and Personal Success

[45:35] Jack Halberstam:
The dialogue transitions to the challenges of teaching within hierarchical systems and the pervasive influence of traditional power structures.

Key Discussion Points:

1. Navigating Hierarchical Education Systems:

   • Halberstam discusses the difficulty of teaching in environments that often suppress alternative viewpoints.
   • "When I'm teaching, I try to give them the tools that they need to deconstruct the tradition." — [47:32]

2. Success and its Discontents:

   • The conversation touches on the concept of success within oppressive systems, highlighting how institutional recognition often requires co-opting individual efforts.
   • "If you enter into that system and become a winner and don't change the system, then you must question your own character." — Halberstam paraphrased by Duchovny [33:42]

3. Systemic Alternatives:

   • Discussing abolitionist perspectives, Halberstam emphasizes the need to dismantle harmful systems rather than merely offering superficial alternatives.
   • "We just have to work really hard to unmake this world that we live in because it's predicated on such brutal exploitation." — [49:32]

Notable Quotes:

• "Anyone who's doing well in this system, in this economy, is co-opted. No question." — Jack Halberstam [48:07]
• "What we want to do can't often be done in the institutions that employ us. We have to go elsewhere." — Jack Halberstam [48:38]

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Reflections on Memory, Forgetting, and Identity

[22:01] Discussions on "Dude, Where's My Car?":
Halberstam critiques mainstream media's portrayal of forgetting and identity, using Dude, Where's My Car? as a case study.

Key Discussion Points:

1. Forgetting as a Revolutionary Act:

   • Halberstam redefines forgetting not as a simple lapse but as a means to challenge and reinterpret existing societal constructs.
   • "Forgetting is more of a revolutionary notion in the way we're discussing it here." — Paraphrased from Halberstam [22:40]

2. Critical Examination of Mainstream Narratives:

   • By loosening the dominant white male perspective, alternative identities and stories emerge, offering richer, more inclusive narratives.
   • "There's casual homoerotic kissing between the two male leads... and this sets them into a loop." — [21:28]

Notable Quotes:

• "Ideology is selective remembering. We're just like friggin soaking in." — Jack Halberstam [52:17]
• "The script that I was given. I refuse it. And forget it." — Jack Halberstam [26:07]

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Closing Thoughts and Future Directions

[49:22] Jack Halberstam:
Halberstam expresses his ambivalence about offering alternatives within the system, recognizing that true change requires dismantling the current structures entirely.

Key Discussion Points:

1. Abolitionist Approach:

   • Advocates for completely unmaking existing oppressive systems to pave the way for genuine transformation.
   • "I'm sort of in the abolitionist camp. Let's take this thing down, and then we'll see." — David Duchovny [50:52]

2. Systemic Failures and Democratic Shortcomings:

   • Critiques the efficacy of democratic institutions, pointing out inherent flaws like the Electoral College and lifetime Supreme Court appointments.
   • "If you can elect someone like Trump, then are you in a democracy? Really?" — [51:03]

3. Personal Reflections on Success and Systemic Privilege:

   • Duchovny shares his introspections on personal success within a system marked by wealth inequality, questioning the narrative of being a "self-made man."
   • "Speaking to somebody like Jack and realizing that you must question the system." — David Duchovny [53:13]

Notable Quotes:

• "What would a system look like that actually cared about people who are living in poverty, who this system has actively produced as a population living in poverty." — Jack Halberstam [53:51]
• "You're doing your piece. Exactly. You're doing your piece." — Jack Halberstam [53:57]

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Conclusion

This episode of Fail Better offers a profound exploration of how children's media subtly instills themes of collective action and resistance against oppressive systems. Through Jack Halberstam's insightful critiques and personal narratives, listeners are encouraged to reconsider the definitions of failure and success within societal frameworks. The conversation underscores the importance of questioning entrenched systems and highlights the transformative potential of understanding and embracing failure as a tool for meaningful change.

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Additional Notes:

• Sponsor Messages: The transcript includes several sponsor advertisements for products like Cologuard, Girls Who Code, BetterHelp, Aura Frames, and Acorns. These segments are non-content-related and have been excluded from the summary to maintain focus on the core discussion.

• Post-Episode Reflections: Duchovny shares his personal takeaways, emphasizing the importance of questioning systemic structures even when personally benefited. These reflections enhance the episode's depth, bridging the academic insights with real-world implications.

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Recommended For:

Listeners interested in critical theory, media studies, queer theory, and systemic critiques will find this episode particularly enriching. It offers a blend of academic discourse and personal storytelling, making complex ideas accessible and relatable.

Transcript

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[Reshma Saujani]

Hi, I'm Reshma Sajani, founder of Girls who Code. Look, I'd consider myself a pretty successful adult woman. I've written books, founded two successful nonprofits, and I'm raising two incredible kids. But here's the thing. I still wake up wondering, is this it? And if the best years are yet to come, when's that gonna start? Join me on My so Called Midlife, my new podcast with Lemonada Media, where we're building a playbook for navigating midlife one episode at a time. Each week, I'll chat with extraordinary guests who've transformed their midlife crisis into opportunities for growth and newfound purpose. At some point, we all ask ourselves, is there more to life? I'm here to discover how to thrive in my second act, right alongside you. My so Called Midlife is out now, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jack Halberstam]

Lemonade.

[David Duchovny]

I'm David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Jack Halberstam is an author, scholar, and professor at Columbia University. He's the author of multiple books, including the Queer Art of Failure, which is of course of interest to me and this podcast. Jack's book has continued to be relevant since it was published in 2011, as it questions the values of traditional society and systems and advocates for a kind of failure as a rebellion kind of alternative. Way forward. We get into that a lot. It's for me, just a fascinating discussion as well as fun because we talk about kids movies a lot. Jack has traveled internationally to bring theory and ideas to lots of different audiences from Brazil to Berlin. Reminded me of my graduate school days in ways Both good and bad, but not because of anything Jack talked about. Just kind of rigorous thinking that my soft mind is not able to do anymore. Truly though, I'm honored to be talking to Jack today. And I just. The 90 minutes or 100 minutes that we talked just flew by. Here's that conversation.

[Jack Halberstam]

Hi, David.

[David Duchovny]

Hi, Jack. Nice to meet you.

[Jack Halberstam]

You too. You too.

[David Duchovny]

What studio are you at, Jack?

[Jack Halberstam]

I have no idea, but it's a nice top floor studio with a little view of other top floor studios.

[David Duchovny]

Well, officially, thank you for talking to me today, Jack, because it's really special for me to get to talk to you because you're, your thoughts are so fascinating to me and foreign in many ways. And I want to live in that world for a minute or however long we can. And we kind of take this Beckett quote, which is fail again, fail better, and it becomes about resilience or about picking yourself up after you fail and going on to conquer the system. And what I want to interrogate with you obviously is the system, but you know, it sent me back talking to you because you reference the Becket in it and I think you reference it in that way.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah, but that's the problem, isn't it, David? That quote, which came from one of the bleakest writers of the 20th century, from a text called Worstwood Ho. In other words, there's worse to come. You know, that quote, you know, fail again, fail better, has been interpreted as if at first you don't succeed, try and try again. And those, those things are not compatible.

[David Duchovny]

Exactly. It was like when I have been in 12 step rooms and they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. And I would always say, well, that's what they taught me was perseverance when I was a kid, not insanity. You know, but I would give you the. I would share with our listeners the entire quote with some ellipses, but it was ever tried, ever failed, no matter try again, fail again, fail better, try again, fail again, better again, or better worse. And here's where it turns to what you're saying. Fail worse again, still worse again, till sick for good, throw up for good, go for good. So that's the, that's the quote in its context. And I think it kind of sets us up in a good place to start a conversation with you. What I loved in your book in the Queer Art of Failure was your exegesis of kids movies. If you wouldn't mind giving an example of one of these readings of a movie, because I think they're aside from being deep as hell, they're fun to listen to.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah, they are fun. Yeah. You know, a rom com is a deeply ideological text. It has to follow the convention set up for it, which is imagine we don't live in a world where heterosexuality is expected and demanded. What holds these two people apart? What crisis has forced them away from each other? What brings them back together? None of those rules apply to animation, even in terms of how the physical body reacts to violence or to catastrophe or whatever. So animation is like a magical realm. And many. When animation and animated cells were invented at the beginning of the 20th century, people realized that. They realized, if we have a little rabbit, it doesn't matter whether a boulder falls on the rabbit. The rabbit can get up again. We don't have to have a funeral for the rabbit.

[David Duchovny]

Right.

[Jack Halberstam]

So there's all this potential there.

[David Duchovny]

I think also what I was struck by and what I'd like to lead with in this discussion is. And correct me. I'm going to be paraphrasing you and I'm going to be getting it wrong. So please feel free to correct me. But what I get is you are writing at some point that failure is the domain of the child. Children do not have mastery. That's exactly how we can define them. They are beginners.

[Jack Halberstam]

Correct.

[David Duchovny]

And they fail all the time. And so a kids movie has to, if it's. If it's going to resonate for a child, is going to have to create a world in which there's a different conception of what it is to be a failure and what it is to fail. Can you speak on that a little bit?

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, you could just take Shrek as an example. You know, instead of having a handsome prince and a beautiful princess, you have this green monster from the swamp and a slightly tubby princess. And that's a better way to appeal to the child in many ways, because the child doesn't experience themselves as a Greek God, hopefully. I mean, the child who does be very afraid of. Right. So the child, in their awkward embodiment, doesn't necessarily want to see an ideal. The ideal is going to exclude them, which is why fairy tales are always so creepy and scary. But Pixar in particular kind of came up with a cool formula for addressing the child in their awkwardness, in their clumsiness, and exactly, as you say, in their status as a beginner, and was able to weave these narratives through those experiences and still deliver a little bit of an inspirational outcome. But the thing That I noticed when I started watching Pixar films. And Pixar, really the big innovation is to enter into a three dimensional world instead of the two dimensional world of cel animation. What those films were able to do was make a world that was quite credible, even if that world was made up of grasshoppers or bees or fish. And notice, you know, they kept going for these sort of collective animal groups or chickens. And in order to make them credible, you had to be able to differentiate between each chicken, each fish, each bee. And in cel animation, you can't. You just draw a bee and then you repeat the bee. So once they had an algorithm for a multitude that was compelling. Now you need stories about multitudes and that delivers a really like a set of very revolutionary texts.

[David Duchovny]

So you see technology as driving, as driving story, as driving philosophy. Do you think there was some kind of a mandate or do you think this is something they just discovered unconsciously on their own?

[Jack Halberstam]

I don't think there was a mandate, but it's available. It's available as a reading. But these films are often built around a flawed subject. So the best example of that is Nemo, who is literally disabled. He is the one survivor from a part of clownfish where all of the fish have been eaten and the motherfish has been eaten by a shark, and he's the only one left with his father. And he has a damaged fin. Right, That's Shrek again. And then his sidekick, played by Ellen DeGeneres, known to everybody as a queer person, has memory loss. So these failings define the characters, and that then defines their trajectory in the script. And that's really different from telling a story in which the prince fulfills all of the tasks he's been giving and wins the hand of the fair maiden. Right. These are really different stories.

[David Duchovny]

But what I was fascinated by in your interpretation of these movies was it wasn't just the lesson of resilience or of overcoming your failure or of turning your disability into a superpower, which is kind of on the surface of these movies. But you saw you're looking more deeply. Can you speak to that a little bit?

[Jack Halberstam]

Well, I'm saying that whether they know it or not, because they've made Pixar, in those early days, made films about social insects and collective groups, which, by the way, corresponds well to the way that children live. Children aren't coupled and they often aren't singular. They're in groups. Children, children. No, child, children. You go to school, children line up. Children do this. So this corresponds to the way that the child is actually experiencing the world, which is as part of a collective. A collective in which they are mostly equal, even as they can also be pretty brutal to each other. So in those films, once you've set in motion a narrative about collective struggle, you're kind of on a socialist path, whether you want to be or. And so in Finding Nemo, the climax of the story is not that we find Nemo, it's that Nemo and Dory and Malin tell all the fish that have just been swooped up into the fisherman's net to swim down. And Dory's silly little song, Keep Swimming is now the kind of socialist anthem for guys, get out of this net. And you can do it, but you can't do it as one. You can only do it as many. So it's practically like there is power in a union. It's like a solidarity song.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[Jack Halberstam]

And that repeats across all of these films. There's always an uprising. I mean, you'd be hard pressed to think of a single film made for an adult audience in the last 50 years that featured a revolution, a socialist revolution, moreover, at its climax. But kids films filled with it.

[David Duchovny]

That's fascinating. And do you come down on the side of, well, this is like a bloodletting. This is like a letting off of steam. This is a co opting of the insecurities and the dark feelings about living in a capitalist Freudianized society. Or is it a call to revolution of some kind?

[Jack Halberstam]

I think to the kids, it's everything that appeals to them. Like children aren't just quietly conforming, they're anarchic. They're anarchic. If children were quietly conforming, why are we parenting? Let them get on with it.

[David Duchovny]

Then why are we so strict?

[Jack Halberstam]

Why are we strict? Why do we have to train them? Why do we have to say, no, don't do it that way? Right. So children are not quietly conforming. And so to watch film after film, Monsters Inc. Robots, can you go through.

[David Duchovny]

Monsters Inc. Because it's just so. I think it's gonna be so much fun for people to hear.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah, well, Monsters Inc. Is so cool because the monsters are sort of like part of a corporate entity in which they have been commissioned to scare children at night. You know, and this is understood to be what the monster is for. And so once a child enters the facility and a bond forms between child and monster. And really within the culture, child and monster are actually closely aligned.

[David Duchovny]

They really are child and monster closely aligned. What do you mean by that?

[Jack Halberstam]

Because Again, the child is the untrained version of the human. And so when you're looking at a little person having a tantrum, you're seeing, you know, the unrepressed version of how we might respond to the world. And we say, no, please stop doing that. This is monstrous. And so we tame our children, and we. And especially in this era of, like, helicopter parenting, we really ascribe to them a code of conduct. The monster is precisely the figure that does not follow a code of conduct. And so what's amazing about Monsters, Inc. Is it's saying even the figures that are supposed to represent the anarchic outside of the culture, we can incorporate them. Monsters, Inc. Let's put them in a. In a company. And the uprising comes from within the company through solidarity with the child. And that's. I mean, it's kind of amazing to have these films that are ratting on corporate culture, you know?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. Were you in the. In the audience screaming, aha, aha, aha. When you first saw that movie, or did it take a while?

[Jack Halberstam]

My favorite really, is Chicken Run. It really is. Or Fantastic Mr. Fox, both of those.

[David Duchovny]

Give us your Chicken Run.

[Jack Halberstam]

Chicken Run is very basic Marxism at the beginning, which is that you have farmers who are stealing the labor of the chickens and the fruits of their labor. So the chicken lay the eggs. The farmers come and steal them, they sell them. And now we enter a new mode of production where Mrs. Tweedy says, I've got an idea. We're not getting enough out of our chickens. Why stop at the eggs? Let's turn them into chicken pot pies. So now they become the commodity rather than the producers of the commodity. And Ginger, who is the intellectual of the bunch, not Rocky, played by, you know, the horrible Mel Gibson, he comes to save them. He's, in fact, booted out. Ginger realizes we have to escape, and hidden behind this is chickens. It's a matriarchy. I mean, this is a feminist uprising. You know, there's no guy. There's the old soldier, and there's Rocky, and neither are viable models of masculinity. And the chickens realize we're not going to have a natural revolution by flying. We're going to make a machine. And our.

[David Duchovny]

Which is the male domain, normally, right?

[Jack Halberstam]

Yes, technology. We're going to become a kind of cyborg figure, power the wooden airplane and fly off to this utopian zone. And you end up in a kind of Marxist utopia where people are working, playing, thinking, reading, knitting, but their labor is not alienated. That's Chicken Run. It's a friggin feminist Marxist fable. And the kids are like, oh, yay. This is amazing. It's insane. It's insane that they got away with it.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. I wanted to pivot for a moment from failure to forgetting. Because this is another thing that you expound on brilliantly in your exegesis of dude, where's my car? Which blew my mind. I'd never seen that film. I watched it two nights ago. Okay. I've never seen. I don't know if I'd say it's so good, but what is so good is the way you talk about it. Cause I was sitting there going, yeah, okay, I prefer Jack's version of this movie.

[Jack Halberstam]

Apparently you have to be stoned to watch it. And I'm not a stoner. So I watched it cold sober.

[David Duchovny]

I like my gummies, but I wasn't gummied up when I watched. Maybe I have to go back. But with dude, where's my car? You speak about forgetting and you talk about white male stupidity. Two of my favorite subjects. So it's all yours.

[Jack Halberstam]

Give me. Where's my clue? Well, you know, I'm somebody who was trained probably in the same way that you were when you were an undergraduate or doing your PhD at.

[David Duchovny]

I didn't get my PhD to be clear.

[Jack Halberstam]

But you continued. Yeah. But you began a PhD program, I believe.

[David Duchovny]

Abd. Abd.

[Jack Halberstam]

Abd. That's pretty far along.

[David Duchovny]

Yes. Yeah.

[Jack Halberstam]

And you know, we were told that there were certain artifacts of our culture that were worthy of our contemplation. Beckett is a good one. You know, high art and avant garde literature. And having been a punk in the 1970s, I just don't buy it. I'm like, yeah, I could get that from T.S. eliot's A Wasteland, or I could watch, you know, fantastic Mr. Fox and get some of the same material. I really can. I don't know why you need a high cultural text to get to angst or darkness or any of those things.

[David Duchovny]

Well, you want to take seriously art that doesn't take itself so seriously, right?

[Jack Halberstam]

I do. I do. Because when you have a kind of anarchic text like, dude, where's my car? It's something that can be exploited to rethink world. The world. Because the world has been imagined and theorized and politicized from the perspective of a universal white man. When that perspective is loosened up, lots of other things appear. And in that film alone, there is casual homoerotic kissing between the two male leads, both of whom, at least one of whom, Ashton Kutcher, is known to be kind of a babe magnet at that time, you know, very clearly heterosexual. There are drag kings in the film. There are, you know, queens. There are powerful women with phalluses, et cetera. There are gay aliens from Uranus. I mean, that's what happens when you loosen up. The center of a white man who knows everything. You know, whether it's any Steven Spielberg film ever made or just a rom com with a mansplainer at the center. I would rather watch a film with a stupid guy at the center because his stupidity gives often. Not always. Sometimes it's just an avenue for more violence for everybody else. But often his relaxed relationship to knowing means that somebody else can know things.

[David Duchovny]

His relaxed relationship to knowing, by which you mean his incuriosity or his stupidity or his just forgetfulness, just complete.

[Jack Halberstam]

Like in Dude Wears My Cod, these guys are as babies, right?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah.

[Jack Halberstam]

They don't remember where the car is. And this sets them into a loop.

[David Duchovny]

They live in the moment, you know, they live in the future.

[Jack Halberstam]

They live in the moment. They're in an eternal present. Yeah, yeah. There's no past. There's no future. They're not controlling.

[David Duchovny]

There's no school.

[Jack Halberstam]

There's no school. There's no. Where do they get their knowledge? They're watching a nature program on tv. Right. And where the ape picks up a stick.

[David Duchovny]

Animals. Animals. They're watching animals. Yeah, they're animals. Yeah.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah. So it's a. I think it's a really brilliant film. It's up there for me with all the Austin Powers films and Wayne's World. Those are the kinds of films that I'm saying revel in a kind of, you know, a masculinity that doesn't want to rule.

[David Duchovny]

Doesn't want to rule. Yeah. It's such. Forgetting is such a strange concept. Right. Because we can't actively forget. It's something we can't. We can't force ourselves to forget. In fact, I think Nietzsche says we only remember things that give us pain, you know, so.

[Jack Halberstam]

Right. That's right.

[David Duchovny]

How do. How do we forget? Or. And I think what you're opening up in your. In your work and in the space that we're talking about is a different notion of forgetting than is what the person on the street might think of as forgetting. It's more of a. It's more of a revolutionary. And I think, just to go back one more point on the kids movies, what I loved about your discussion of that was you said we as a culture, and often as parents, we designate rebellion as childish. Because children are rebellious. We all accept that. But we also say you'll grow out of it. You'll grow out of it. You'll learn, and you'll grow out of it. And I think that that's an incredible designation to make, if you want to speak on that.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah. Because what it. It does more than that. It says, revolutionary impulses are immature. Yeah, yeah. And it says, yeah, you know, maybe when you're 16, that sounded exciting to change the world.

[David Duchovny]

Punk might have changed. Now you're an adult when you were 16, but now. But now it's time to listen to the Beatles and Bach and grow up.

[Jack Halberstam]

Exactly right. Your tastes need to mature as well. But that category of maturity is a deeply disciplinary category. It really is. And the only people who have the privilege to not grow up are these kind of stupid dudes, like our dudes in Dude Where's My Car? Or an aging rock star or whatever, who we're like, oh, boys will be boys, and he's ever young and that kind of thing. Apart from that, we have a very clear sense of what's appropriate at what age, and we enforce it fairly restrictively. Now, in terms of forgetting, you're right. You can't just say forget that, because forgetting is not necessarily something that we have agentic control over.

[David Duchovny]

Forgetting is another way of remembering. For me, anyway.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah, but we can selectively remember. And in fact, as a society. Well, we do. Ideology is selective remembering. Where we say, this great nation and this, you know, that has been built upon the hard work of Protestants. Okay, Slavery, you know, have we. How have we forgotten it to the point where we're actually saying. And don't teach any books that focus on slavery because it's detrimental to the way we think about this country. But that's what this country is, right? This country with its wealth and its riches and the way in which those riches are distributed across white populations is the result of slavery. So on the one hand, you know, forgetting can be an official task and can be mandated in the schools. On the other hand, we can also practice a certain kind of forgetting that says the script that I was given. I refuse it. I forget it. And as Dory does in Finding Nemo, you kind of are no longer restricted by this time Oedipality, time of the family and what has been passed on and what is now expected of you. You fall out of time when you enter into the loop of forgetfulness.

[David Duchovny]

This show is sponsored by Better Help. One of my favorite parts of the holidays has always been the quieter moments at home. There's something special about December slower the coziness, the warmth. Even when it's freezing outside. I love getting under a blanket on the couch. You know, just relaxing, watching a movie, spending time with the family. That comfort is everything. And I don't just mean physical comfort, of course. I also mean taking care of your mind, especially when the season changes. That's where therapy comes in. Whether you've been through it or not, therapy helps you build positive habits, things like learning how to set boundaries and find better ways to handle life's challenges. And it's not just for when things are tough. It's for anyone who wants to be the best version of themselves. If you've ever thought about starting therapy, BetterHelp is a great option. It's all online, which makes it really flexible and convenient. You just fill out a short questionnaire and get matched with a licensed therapist who fits your needs. Find comfort this December with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com failbetter today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.com failbetter after taking a million photos this year, vacations, birthdays, you name it I realized I needed a better way to share all those moments with my family. That's where the Aura Frame comes in. Named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter, Aura Frames are incredibly smart and easy to use, allowing you to upload unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. No memory cards or trips to the drugstore photo counter. Aura Frames also have unlimited storage, no hidden fees, no subscriptions. And here's a fun touch you can react to photos with little emojis. My family gets a kick out of it every time. Setup takes two minutes, and since it comes preloaded in a premium gift box with no price tag, there's no need for wrapping paper. And the frames themselves just a beautiful design. So classic and sleek. They look good in any room in the house. For a limited time, listeners can visit auraframes.com and get $45 off their selling Carver Mat frames by using promo code FAILBETTER at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code FAILBETTER. Their Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is the best of the year, so don't wait. Terms and conditions apply. Today's podcast is sponsored by Strawberry Me. We talk a lot about the value of failure on this show, but working past setbacks can be a difficult process and one where you might want a little help. When most people think of coaching they probably think it's just for CEOs or high powered executives. And the coaches are guys with muscles bulging out of their blazers delivering cliches about achievement. At Strawberry Me we believe everyone deserves access to personal coaching. With coaches who are trained to help you navigate life's challenges. They can help you set and achieve your goals, whether that's improving your relationships, boosting confidence or choosing the next move in your career. Whatever you need to help unlock your full potential. A StrawBerry membership offers one on one video sessions with your coach and secure messaging in between to keep you on track. This is real coaching with real people and real results. Accessible to everyone who wants to find out how far they can go. Visit Strawberry Me Failbetter and take a short quiz to get matched with the perfect Coach. Plus get 20% off your first month membership. That's Strawberry Me Failbetter. Your interest in these matters, they come from a personal biography and clearly you have made transitions in your personal biography. And I'm wondering how do we live with both, like the quotidian Freudian, just pain of growing up different, of dealing with failure within a system that young you must have gone through. And if you don't mind talking a little about that, your origin story in a way and how it obviously informs the way you think and what you say today.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah, that's really nice. You know, when I'm probably about your age, David, and that means that, you know, I was coming of age in England in the early 70s, which was a bit brutal for a queer kid, somebody who like at that point I already knew that I at least was interested in girls, not boys, and that my presentation was very consistently masculine and not feminine. And that was a brutal environment for that kind of self presentation or that kind of trajectory of desire. There was no room for it. I mean when I went to a lesbian bar, you know, when I was like maybe 16, it was like, wow, what's. What happened to these people? You know, it was hidden down a back alley. Everybody in there was just drinking their sorrows away. And so it seemed as if to have my particular orientation meant I had already failed. I had failed to be a woman, I had failed to be heterosexual. I was going to fail to get married, I was going to fail to have children. My life stretched out ahead of me as just a road of not living up. And my answer to that, and this was lucky for me, was that 1976, along came punk. And punk. Yeah, punk was a great hideout for me because the punks were pretty asexual and they were also pretty non binary, we would say today, everyone wore everything. And it was a very angry scene. And so it was a great place to just, you know, really express my deep anger at this society that was telling me what you are is not permissible. And so by the time I'm writing this book, that's kind of flowing through a little bit. And what I'm saying, which is about failure, which is a bit different from some of the folks you've spoken to who are all, by the way, quite successful, including yourself, is moments of failure in an otherwise fairly successful life by every standard that the society has set. What I'm saying, and I've heard you say this in the podcast a couple of different ways, is that success failure is a logic. It's not simply about moments of interruption to an otherwise smooth, flowing trajectory. Failure is the burden. And the lot of people who do not conform to the social script they've been given. And you know, as an actor that's kind of recognizable, that there are all kinds of ways that a script can be performed, but there are ways that still are considered to be right and ways that are considered to be wrong. So some of us have already been assigned to the category of failure without even beginning our lives.

[David Duchovny]

How. Thank you for that. That's beautifully put. And that you mentioned, punk is very interesting to me because it's one of the things that I've gone through on this podcast. I was not into punk.

[Jack Halberstam]

Oh, right.

[David Duchovny]

And I mean, for many reasons. I know now why. I mean, I mean, just I was kind of living an accepted identity and accepted life, and I ingested the accepted rock and roll forms. Right. So I was. Yeah, I didn't have the need for the outlet of punk. And in many ways I was scared of the anger because I didn't really understand it. And I guess without dwelling too long on your childhood, I just want to dwell a moment longer on. At 16, you go to a lesbian bar, but 0 to 16, you're dealing with this overwhelming sense of failure that. That you are overcoming in your philosophy and your Life. But at 5, at 6, at 7, it's not feeling that way or you don't have the mental capability to kind of pose those questions to the system and to yourself. And I'm just wondering if there's anything you want to speak to there that can. I mean, I hesitate to say help, but I think that it's very interesting to talk to people. Cause I would say you have found your successful identity, but it came at a great kind of emotional Cost. I would imagine at some point, it is instructive to watch people as they transform and not, as you say, I'm talking to successful people about moments of failure. But, no, I want to get to that point before. Just for a moment. I don't want to, you know, push on the couch or anything. No, it's.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah. You know, my therapist will thank you for this, but, you know, I grew up as a little girl who was mistaken for a boy well into my teens. Like, everywhere we went, oh, they'd say to my dad, lovely, two girls, two boys. And he'd say, three girls, one boy. And, you know, that's the thing. Your gender identity is coiled within you, but it's also projected onto you by every interaction that you had. And every interaction I had said, you're a boy. And I was not unhappy with that identity. And until I hit puberty, I could live that identity. And my mother, who died young, died when I was nine. She did her best to try to make me a girl, you know, and so that was. That was difficult to remember that she did that. Then through the experience of losing her, to think at the same time, like, I have this terrible memory of losing her, but even before that, I have this memory of her trying to alter me. That was also not good.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. Do you remember trying to fit in? It sounds to me like there was some deep knowledge in you that was just like, I am going to be what I'm going to be, or I am going to be what I am, no matter what's going on right now. But were there moments of trying to fit in and feeling that failure?

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah. Oh, for sure. I mean, but to be honest, David, I was never gonna give up the boy thing. I just wasn't.

[David Duchovny]

Like, how do you have that belief?

[Jack Halberstam]

I don't know. It just was. I mean, it's what we now call a kind of core trans identity. And I don't identify as trans in an uncomplicated way, but it's like, you know who you are, and just if someone had tried to script you as a girl in your childhood, you would. No doubt if your core identity told you something different, you would defy that ascription. And I did that. I played soccer with boys and hung out with boys till I was 13 or 14. And at that point, when their testosterone kicked in, I couldn't beat them up anymore, and I couldn't play on the same level, and we had to go our separate ways. And that was hard for me because my early childhood was spent with boys. And so actually being queer was a bit of a challenge because actually, I really like boys. I liked hanging out with them. I just didn't want to be with them sexually. And so I'm always sort of looking for these straight guy friends who I miss from my childhood.

[David Duchovny]

That's kind of dark and lovely. I'll say. Do you know the book Man Made man by Pagan Kennedy? Do you know this story?

[Jack Halberstam]

Yes, yes.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. I tried to make a movie of that for years because this was the first.

[Jack Halberstam]

Oh, wow.

[David Duchovny]

The first female to male transsexual operation that we know of.

[Jack Halberstam]

Oh, oh, that's the one about Michael Dillon, isn't it?

[David Duchovny]

Yes. Michael Dillon.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yes. Yes, it is. That's exactly right. And Michael Dillon was, wow, an incredibly imaginative person to figure out how to get hormones and top surgery. It's an amazing story.

[David Duchovny]

Ex nihlo. Really? Out of nothing.

[Jack Halberstam]

That's right.

[David Duchovny]

No, no. There was no literature. There was nothing for this person to go off of. And this person said this. This person born a woman said, I'm a man.

[Jack Halberstam]

Okay. But the truth is, David, that what he did know about was hormones, which was a big area of medical research at that time. So it wasn't completely ex nihilo, but it was a huge leap. It was a huge leap that he began injecting himself with testosterone. And because there were army surgeons around doing plastic surgery.

[David Duchovny]

Gillis. This guy Gillis.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah. On men who had been wounded in World War I. He was able to get top surgery simply by saying, you can experiment on my chest, take these breasts off. That's an incredible story. It really is. But what comes through the story as well is loneliness, you know.

[David Duchovny]

Oh, yeah.

[Jack Halberstam]

Ends up a monk, you know? Very singular.

[David Duchovny]

It's stranger than fiction. I mean, you can't believe that this happened. And not many people know this story. And I'll still. One day.

[Jack Halberstam]

But why can't you make it, David?

[David Duchovny]

I don't know. I wasn't able to. I commissioned a script to be written. Maybe the script wasn't good enough. Maybe it was 15 years ago. I was trying to make it. Maybe it was too soon. And maybe now it's too late, you know? Maybe now it's not too late.

[Jack Halberstam]

Cause there's tons of these stories, including the story of Billy Tipton, who was a jazz musician in the 40s and was married and so on. They didn't know that he was living in a female body until he died. There's tons of these stories. No one's made them. No one.

[David Duchovny]

All right, well, I'll get back out there with it. All right, I'll start walking the streets with my old script.

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[David Duchovny]

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[Jack Halberstam]

I was thinking about that when I was listening to your podcast because acting and teaching are. They're not the same, but they are related in that you have to go into the classroom or you have to go on the stage or on the set and perform and you have to perform something that is not always you and often is quite distant from you. So sometimes you do just have to teach the thing that they need to know. But at other times, you're teaching them the thing that they think they need to know, but you're also teaching them about how it came to be that this is the thing we think we need to know, as opposed to everything else that's ever been written. How was it that we came to think of this lineage from sort of Shakespeare to T.S. eliot? Well, T.S. eliot, for example, wrote an essay called the Great Tradition, in which he placed himself at the end of this long lineage of white guys who were, in Matthew Arnold's opinion, the best and the brightest, the best that had been said in the culture. But to get to that lineage, you've had to push aside so much material. You have had to clear the decks of anything that didn't conform to that particular perspective. So when I'm teaching, I try to give them the tools that they need to deconstruct the tradition that will anyway, no doubt cover. But I also teach punk in the classroom and the critique of the culture that they're living in.

[David Duchovny]

How do you feel about your success? You know, because that must be a bittersweet notion to you. I mean, you have a Guggenheim, am I right?

[Jack Halberstam]

I just got one. Okay. But, David, I honestly must have applied 20 times. It's pathetic, really. I don't know. I just kept going. And most people who get these things, they get them the first or second try and they tell you if you don't get one, you're not gonna get it.

[David Duchovny]

I got one, so congratulations.

[Jack Halberstam]

Sheer bloody persistence, I guess. They gave me one.

[David Duchovny]

Should I say congratulations or condolences in your.

[Jack Halberstam]

Definitely congratulations. I may be a failure guy, but I'll take that win. I really will.

[David Duchovny]

This is a question, kind of a continuation of you at the head of the class being a pedagogical figure. Now you are at the head of the class with a Guggenheim. Are there any kind of checking over your shoulder, like, am I being co opted or am I still doing what I want to be doing?

[Jack Halberstam]

Oh, that's for sure. A question. We're all co. Opted. Anyone who's doing well in this system, in this economy, is co opted. No question. And I think it's more recognizing that the work that we want to do. And this is why I really appreciate your podcast, actually, the work we want to do can't often be done in the institutions that employ us. We have to go elsewhere. We have to make a classroom in the wild?

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. More of a village collective of some kind. Collective, yeah. I guess that's what I would end on. An impossible question. Because if we're unmaking, if we agree that the system is flawed to an extent that is too painful for too many people, do you feel the need to offer an alternative aside from. Or are we just talking about creating a space where people who are most deeply injured by the system can live? Or are we talking about no system at all? And what's the alternative?

[Jack Halberstam]

I think I have been seduced by the idea of offering alternatives in work. I do that in the queer art of failure.

[David Duchovny]

Why do you say seduced?

[Jack Halberstam]

Well, because that's a very masterful position anyway, to say, you know, this way of doing things is screwed. I can offer you another way. I mean, you can't. You really can't. We are in this system. We have consented to it, we participate in it. But there are hundreds of thousands of people who are being actively screwed and dispossessed by that same system that delivers goods and riches to you. So what I now believe is that we just have to work really hard to unmake this world that we live in because it's predicated on such brutal exploitation. And I don't know what would then come after, because unmaking the world will reveal to us what a different formation could look like. And most of that work is being done by black activist groups, by prison activists, by abolitionists. Abolitionists really believe you have to abolish a society that runs on the dispossession of large numbers of people on the one hand, and the incarceration of large numbers of people of color on the other. So I'm sort of in the abolitionist camp. Let's take this thing down, and then we'll see.

[David Duchovny]

And you're going to run into always too big to fail there, that this system. I'm not just talking about financially. I'm just talking about this system that we inherit.

[Jack Halberstam]

Right, that's true.

[David Duchovny]

It takes a hell of a lot of balls and guts to go out into the anarchy.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah, it does. But does anyone really think the state elections, the system that we're inhabiting, is doing a good job? I don't think so. If you can elect someone like Trump, then are you in a democracy? Really? Really. And if not, then the system of democracy is consistently delivering authoritarian leaders, which makes it suspect. And a lot of people are thinking about alternatives to the electoral system right now.

[David Duchovny]

Well, it's the electoral college, which is really the hedge against just outright democracy. I guess, you know, and that's.

[Jack Halberstam]

Yeah. Well, there are many hedges, including the Supreme Court.

[David Duchovny]

Supreme Court. And the Senate.

[Jack Halberstam]

People being appointed for life.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, the Senate. Each state, regardless of population, has two senators. There's ways that are baked in that circumvent the actual will of the majority of the people.

[Jack Halberstam]

Exactly.

[David Duchovny]

And yet we have this myth of ourselves as being the democratic beacon for the rest of the planet.

[Jack Halberstam]

Well, we know that's a joke. I mean, that's part of the ideology. We're just like friggin soaking in.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. It's funny to think back on my own education because, you know, I was educated as a kid in the 60s and, you know, not yet did we have the 60s vision, even though it was on, you know, the news. But, you know, I got, you know, the complete whitewashed version of American history and all that, and yet I had an inkling that it was bullshit. So the kind of happenings of the last 10 years have not been. They've not been so surprising to me yet. I'm on my heels, you know, trying to figure out, you know, I walk in every conversation. I don't want to walk into every conversation apologizing for being a straight white man. I mean, I want to be able to publish a book without my name on it and just have it. Have all books read as just texts, you know, and not to have identity be part of it. But that may not be a right that I'm entitled to at this point, I don't think.

[Jack Halberstam]

It's not about being a straight white man. It's about being part of a system that is constantly smoothing the way for straight white men that doesn't have anything specific to do with you as an individual who is making all kinds of contributions. It's more to say, what would a system look like that actually cared about people who are living in poverty, who this system has actively produced as a population living in poverty, you know, from years of exclusion, exploitation, and lack of support. It's more structural than that, just than mea culpa, you know.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah, yeah, okay. I'm trying. I'm. You know.

[Jack Halberstam]

You're doing your piece. Exactly. You're doing your piece. Thank you. Failing.

[David Duchovny]

Well, when you said failing, I just heard my mother's voice say miserably, but she was a Scottish woman, so you probably understand where she was going.

[Jack Halberstam]

Absolutely, I do. I do. And in many ways we're back to Beckett and the Misery.

[David Duchovny]

Yeah. I'm being told I gotta wrap it up because your studio running out. Yeah, but, Jack. Hey, I. Yeah, I don't know how to thank you. This was such a wonderful conversation for me to have. And I know conversation is just conversation, it's not action, but I thank you for what it is.

[Jack Halberstam]

I thank you, David. It was my complete pleasure.

[David Duchovny]

Okay, these are some post Jack Halberstam thoughts. I mean, my mind is spinning after that. It was so invigorating, eye opening, Jack's point of view, questioning all the power structures that we are both born into and for the most part accept, certainly ones that I've accepted my entire life. You know, I've. I've had pride in feeling like a self made man, self made person. You know, I grew up with parents who did not have a bank account. I mean, they had a bank account, but you know, there was nothing. There were no savings, we didn't own any real estate renters. I was never hungry. I was never feeling like underprivileged, but the fact that I made a bunch of money in my life, it was a source of pride to me, the fact that I owned a home or two. Um, so I came in kind of not questioning the setup, you know, what you'd call the liberal capitalist setup now. In fact, that was the game I didn't mind playing in. It wasn't about making money for me ever. But I certainly didn't mind it that it came along and it gave me a sense of security because my mother, having grown up in the depression in Scotland, had real fiscal insecurity her entire life. But I entered into a system of great wealth inequality and I came out on a winning side of that. And I had always thought that it was testament to my character and talent. And I was loath to give up that self conception. And I still am. I want to believe in that, that story about myself, but speaking to somebody like Jack and realizing that you must question the system and if you enter into that system and become a winner and don't change the system, then you must question your own character. There's more. Fail Better with Lemonada Premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content. Like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now in Apple Podcasts. Fail Better is a production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Keegan Zemma, Ari Abraci, Donnie Matias and Paula Kaplan. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neal. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Kupinski and Brad Davidson. The show is executive produced by Stephanie Whittleswax Jessica Cordova Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band, the lovely Colin Lee, Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan, and Sebastian Modak. You can find us online at Lemonada Media and you can find me at David Duchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcast or listen. Ad free on Amazon Music with your prime membership.

[Gloria Riviera]

Hi everyone, Gloria Riviera here, and we are back for another season of no One Is Coming to Save Us, a podcast about America's childcare crisis. This season, we're delving deep into five critical issues facing our country through the lens of childcare, poverty, mental health, housing, climate change, and the public school system. By exploring these connections, we aim to highlight that childcare is not an isolated issue, but one that influences all facets of American life. Season four of no One Is Coming to Save Us is out now, wherever you get your podcast.

[Leisha Haley]

Hi, I'm Leisha Haley.

[Kate Manig]

And I'm Kate Manig.

[Leisha Haley]

20 years ago, we met playing best friends on the set of the TV show the L Word, which quickly morphed into us being actual best friends for the rest of our lives.

[Kate Manig]

Truly, it feels like we're an old married couple, but with fewer cats, although we each have a number of cats in our lives, and we're pretty much inseparable and have more or less zero boundaries.

[Leisha Haley]

Hence why we named our podcast Pants, because at this point, you can't have one leg without the other.

[Kate Manig]

And each week we catch up with each other on the big and small things going on in our lives, which then leads to much oversharing and little left to the imagination. Whether it's sex or therapy or money, fears, literally nothing is off the table in terms of discussion topics.

[Leisha Haley]

Oh, and we also like to talk about that wild ride that was the L Word, you know, the genesis of our friendship.

[Kate Manig]

And Pants is out now, wherever you get your podcasts from Lemonada Media.