Episode Overview

Podcast: The New Yorker Radio Hour
Episode Title: Perfume Genius Talks with Jia Tolentino, and Anthony Lane Examines Outbreaks in the Movies
Date: May 19, 2020
Host: David Remnick

This episode explores two main topics:

1. Anthony Lane, film critic for The New Yorker, joins David Remnick to discuss “plague movies” and how cinematic depictions of outbreaks resonate in the age of COVID-19.
2. Writer Gia Tolentino interviews musician Mike Hadreas, known as Perfume Genius, about his creative process, identity, and emotional journey reflected in his latest album, Set My Heart On Fire Immediately.

I. Anthony Lane on Outbreaks in the Movies

Introduction to the Segment

• David Remnick introduces Anthony Lane, noting his “binge” watching of 20-30 films about pandemics and plague ([00:21]).

Revisiting “Contagion” (2011)

• Main Points:

  • The Soderbergh film Contagion has surged in popularity during real-world pandemic.
  • Lane ranks Contagion highly among pandemic movies ([01:02]).
  • Noted for its realism: “You just… sit there and go, that’s right, they do that… don’t touch that credit card.” (Anthony Lane, [01:10]).
  • Clip played illustrating everyday transmission risks.

• Film Critique:

  • “One of the strange things about the film is it’s very scary. It’s well put together, but it can’t resist the upswing at the end… the finding of the vaccine by the brilliant young scientist. … It doesn’t pay much attention in the end to what a search for a vaccine is gonna look like. It’s an interesting case of the Hollywood ending needing to improve on life…” (Anthony Lane, [02:38]).

The Classic: “Faust” (1926)

• Relevance and Insights:
  • F.W. Murnau’s Faust is discussed as a reflection made in the shadow of the Spanish flu ([03:28]).
  • Key Point: The film visualizes plague as almost supernatural vengeance: “There’s a biblical sense, that of possible vengeance, that you have earned this by being irresponsible citizens.” (Anthony Lane, [04:00]).
  • Lane notes Murnau’s interest in darkness and redemption, with Faust making a deal with the devil “for quite altruistic reasons—he wants to be the sort of person who can cure a plague…” ([04:43]).

“Panic in the Streets” (1950)

• Synopsis & Themes:

  • Elia Kazan’s Panic in the Streets is highlighted as essential pandemic cinema ([05:55]).
  • Infectious disease meets crime procedural: a corpse with pneumonic plague sets off a race to contain both the criminal and the outbreak.

• Insightful Commentary:

  • Lane remarks on the film’s focus on working people, skepticism about public information, and contemporary relevance about misinformation and press freedoms.
  • “Rich Widmark is fantastic because he’s doing good...but he’s not a do-gooder...he tells people off...with a kind of sneer and a snarl, as if he really means this.” (Anthony Lane, [06:14]).

• Notable Quote:

  • “We’re all in a community. The same one.” – Film clip, underscoring the film’s resonance today ([08:34]).

Reflections on Pandemic Films vs. Real Life

• Lane compares cinematic pandemic with real-life quarantine, noting a lack of focus on daily tedium, confusion, and personal isolation in film: “Where’s the lockdown bit? Where’s the boredom bit? … There’s almost none of that.” (Anthony Lane, [08:39]).
• “Who wants more of that at the moment? You can get that at home.” – (Lane & Remnick, [09:17])
• Lane jokes about longing for the return of movie theaters: “I need James Bond in November, come what may.” ([09:24])

II. Perfume Genius (Mike Hadreas) with Gia Tolentino

Opening Context

• Gia Tolentino describes Perfume Genius’s music evolution and discusses the context of the COVID-19 pandemic around the album’s release ([10:38]).

Creative Process Amidst Quarantine

• Hadreas’s Reflection:
  • “The hardest part is that I had envisioned this whole way that this was supposed to go… That required people and it required being right and it required leaving. And so now I’m trying to figure out a way—how can I have that same energy, but just like with In My Bedroom or something.” (Mike Hadreas, [10:43])

Evolution of Sound

• Tolentino traces Hadreas’s sound from “sad, intimate, bedroom pop” in his debut Learning (2010) to the “rock album” textures of Set My Heart on Fire Immediately ([11:10]–[12:08]).
• Hadreas on Classic Influences:
  • “I kind of was inhabiting classic ideas and classic ways of, like, of singing. And that felt really satisfying, but there’s also this, like, undercurrent of something else or something supernatural, or, you know, kind of trying to meet those two things.” ([12:50])
  • On American classic pop and swagger: “Felt like there was always not completely room for me in the music, but inhabiting that specific, like, map and the swagger… felt good… to be singing about the things I care about.” ([13:22])

Queerness in Music

• Essence and Challenge of Queer Identity:

  • “It’s essential to me… but… I don’t want that to be, like, a barrier to me being able to have other people listen to it… sometimes that is, like, a sacrifice to… how smart and technical and, like, actually deliberately I’m making this good music, you know?” (Mike Hadreas, [14:59])
  • Yet, “the emotional content is honestly way more important to me. And being a queer musician… is way more important to me.” ([15:28])

• Expression of Community:

  • “I just want to grab like 10 people and… buy a big ranch and live with them and just make our own world. But then I’m leaving behind a bunch of people that don’t have the luxury of leaving… I need to stay and be helpful.” ([15:54])

Personal History and Transformation

• Tolentino recounts Hadreas’s trauma and bullying as an openly gay high schooler and how his music has been a vehicle for processing pain and seeking freedom ([16:18]).
• Hadreas on emotional progress:
  • “Every record is kind of like aspirational… I wanted to be really like more liberated and free…but it was kind of aspirational… now I kind of feel like that more.” ([17:56])
  • “I think I feel all those phases less now than I used to and consciously maybe. … I don’t really feel like I need to do that anymore.” ([18:40])

The Audience’s Experience

• Music as Companionship:
  • “If I make a song where two things that are competing are existing at the same time... I make, like, four minutes where they can be just next to each other… it just makes you feel less lonely for four minutes. And that’s what I hope.” (Mike Hadreas, [19:41])
• Notable Song Example:
  • On the final track’s meaning: “The whole idea of that song is that all the stuff that I think I’m reaching for and trying to access and longing for and trying to go to, what if it’s ultimately nothing? … but also... in that song is that other people are with me. And if this is all there is, then, you know, I want to be with you. There’s just okayness to it not being okay.” ([19:53]–[20:49])

Overarching Theme

• Tolentino closes by relating the music’s drive for equilibrium and meaning to the collective feeling of living through uncertain times: “There is this sense, I think, for all of us that, you know, all we have is what’s in front of us. All we have are the little moments of kindness that other people are extending to us... and it’s gotta be enough.” ([20:57])

Notable Quotes

• “Where’s the lockdown bit? Where’s the boredom bit? … There’s almost none of that.”
  — Anthony Lane ([08:39])

• “Felt like there was always not completely room for me in the music, but inhabiting that specific, like, map and the swagger of some of that singing and how they’re really ultra vulnerable, but also have this really intense command and confidence at the same time. Felt good. And it felt good to be singing about the things I care about.”
  — Mike Hadreas ([13:22])

• “If I make a song where two things that are competing are existing at the same time… it just makes you feel less lonely for four minutes. And that’s what I hope.”
  — Mike Hadreas ([19:41])

• “There’s just okayness to it not being okay.”
  — Mike Hadreas ([20:49])

Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:21] – Anthony Lane discusses binge-watching outbreak movies
• [01:02] – Lane and Remnick discuss Contagion’s prescience
• [03:28] – Lane recommends Faust (1926) as a plague movie
• [05:55] – Panic in the Streets is discussed
• [08:39] – Reflection on how real pandemic life differs from the movies
• [10:38] – Gia Tolentino introduces Perfume Genius segment
• [12:08] – Discussion of new album’s sound and influences
• [13:22] – Exploring classic pop structures as a queer artist
• [14:59] – Queerness in music: essential or reductive?
• [16:18] – Processing trauma through music
• [17:56] – Transformation from aspirational to realized liberation
• [19:41] – Music as a space where contradictions can coexist
• [20:49] – Acceptance and connection in the face of uncertainty

Concluding Thoughts

The episode deftly weaves together the onscreen and personal narratives of confronting crisis—whether through pandemic cinema that reveals both our anxieties and our cinematic desires for tidy endings, or Perfume Genius’s artful negotiation of trauma and identity in song. Both segments grapple with emotions of fear, hope, and community, ultimately seeking meaning and solace amid upheaval.