{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"(Pop) Cultural Marxism, Episode 12: Megalopolis \u2014 or, the Decline and Miraculous Resurrection of American Empire","description":"In episode 12 of (Pop) Cultural Marxism, Ajay and Isi tackle Francis Ford Coppola\u2019s Megalopolis (2024). Kicking off with a review of a few recent pop-cultural engagements\u2014including an assemblage of classic vampire films (Coppola\u2019s Bram Stoker\u2019s Dracula (1992), among them), Mubi\u2019s restoration of The Fall (2006), Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, and a pair of streaming series about professional wrestling\u2014the conversation turns to Coppola\u2019s reactionary would-be summa about an architect attempting to construct a techno-futuristic utopia on a plot of land in \u201cNew Rome,\u201d an alternate-world New York City as played against Roman and early American history. Along the way, Ajay and Isi discuss Neri Oxman\u2019s faux-ecological contributions to the film\u2019s central animating macguffin, the mysterious \u201cmegalon;\u201d the film\u2019s antipathy for the marginalized masses; its protagonist as synthesis of Caesar, Robert Moses, Walter Gropius, and The Fountainhead\u2019s Howard Roark; accidentally timely narratives of the \u201cgood guy\u201d billionaire pitted against the \u201cbad-guy\u201d billionaire; and the ecofascist inclination to marry the romanticization of nature with authoritarian techno-optimism. Among the topics at hand are Coppola\u2019s disturbing, \u201csecretly autobiographical\u201d efforts to reaffirm himself as auteur, his baffling postmodern pastiche, the classic right-wing themes of patriarchy as a sign of order and non-normative sexual expression as a sign of decline and decadence, the film\u2019s shocking ugliness, and how Megalopolis\u2019s strange incorporation of current events betrays \u201ca baby boomer [having read] a bunch of airport history books.\u201d ","author_name":"(Pop) Cultural Marxism","author_url":"http:\/\/thebrooklyninstitute.com","html":"