Jessa Crispin

I have heartburn. I probably have heartburn simply because both my parents also had a lot of heartburn, and I have treated it the same way they treated it, with antacids. But lately, with all the sleep disruption and discomfort, I tried to get rid of my heartburn and regretted it. I didn’t talk to my doctor, however, because the last time I tried to schedule an appointment the earliest she could see me was in six months. Instead I went to the internet. I was told to change my diet, so I changed my diet. Still had heartburn. I was told to cut out red wine, so I cut out red wine. Still had heartburn. I was told to add preventive measures such as lime juice, so I mixed lime juice with seltzer every morning. Still had heartburn.

If there’s any form of entertainment that I will reliably find time for, no matter how big the to-read pile or how long the to-do list, it is the dying-on-an-adventure true story. I have yet to watch about half the films being called the best of the year, but I am devouring documentaries about hikers and extreme sports athletes going missing in national parks on every streaming service. I have work to do, but still I can’t put down Nastassja Martin’s In the Eye of the Wild, her memoir about barely surviving a bear attack in Siberia. Every winter, with the first snowfall, I send everyone I know the link to Peter Starks’s essay ‘Frozen Alive’, published by Outside Magazine years ago, about what it’s like to freeze to death.

We’ve been living through a nostalgia for the 1990s that has lasted longer than the decade itself. That was back when music was cool, the only Batman movie wasn’t a fascistic fantasy of surveillance and control, and dresses over jeans looked good. Podcasts and documentary series have really dug into the decade to reinvestigate and reappraise everything that went down in those ten years. I’ve listened to a podcast that takes the top hits of the decade one by one and defends each song, I’ve watched specials on why every maligned woman of the era (Lorena Bobbitt or Tonya Harding or Monica Lewinsky) was good actually and the only bad thing here is patriarchy actually.

Stories about money are never about money. They are about pain, about family, about atrocity, about luck, about health, about politics. And while we get a kind of vicarious thrill from listening to other people’s financial tales of woe, whether we are morally condemning a millennial for buying a daily flat white when she could be putting that $3 into a savings account that earns zero interest in the hopes that the city she lives in won’t be underwater from rising sea levels by the time she has enough for a deposit or just feeling gratitude that we are better off than the poor shmuck explaining their hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, rarely are these stories allowed to be as complex as their situations truly are.

‘I’ve actually seen ghosts.’ This statement comes less than ten minutes into the first episode of Dark House, a limited-series podcast about ghosts, houses and interior decoration from House Beautiful magazine. And this is the moment, I assume, a certain number of people roll their eyes and switch over to the next podcast in their queue. Humans are fascinated by ghosts. We tell the stories, we take the city tours of hauntings when we travel, we see all the films in the Conjuring and Insidious series. But that’s a bit different from seeing real ghosts, which is just someone taking things too far. It was a shadow, or a dream, or a trick of the light, or a flaw with the camera.

How do we have difficult conversations? Especially in an age of polarisation, where everything is immediately politicised? But also where calls for ‘nuance’ and ‘complication’ are sometimes used to justify what is really just bigotry. Is it possible to be both protective of the vulnerable and to allow for a larger pursuit of justice and compassion? These are the questions I was left with after listening to the podcast series The Inbox (part of the larger anthology The 11th), a tricky but sensitive look at the questions that surround the adjudication of sexual violence accusations on college campuses through the Title IX system. Sarah Viren wrote an essay for the New York Times about the accusations of sexual harassment against her wife that went viral.

Our occasional series on cinema’s most underrated films arrives at what many have considered the peak of misogynistic trash.  We’re in 1980s America, and a bunch of Hollywood execs are puffing on cigars, sipping scotch. ‘You know, I’ve been hearing a lot about these so-called “liberated women”. What do you think they’re like?’ And thus — or so I imagine — the erotic thriller was born.  Everything we’ve learned from the #MeToo accusations, scandalous trials and casting-couch innuendos suggests powerful men might have been shocked to learn that there were women engaging in sexual activity voluntarily — without having to be coerced or forced.

What use does a fallen and corrupted world have for a man of integrity? This was not the question I had anticipated walking away with after viewing the new Nicolas Cage indie Pig, but much of the film, from Cage’s intensely quiet and soulful performance to the new ideas it has to offer a very old narrative, was a satisfying surprise. The film is ultimately a story of revenge, but it plays out in unexpected ways. Cage is Robin Feld, a man living off the grid with only a truffle pig and a recording of his deceased wife for companions and a trade in the luxury food item as an income. But when his cabin is invaded and he is attacked and his pig is abducted, he’s forced to con-front his old life as a chef in Portland to get her back.

Work is our new religion. There are people whose primary job is writing listicles of celebrity gossip, illustrated with gifs from the Fast & Furious franchise, who refer to being a writer as a ‘calling’. If I think about this for too long my brain simply shuts down to protect itself. What we used to do for God we now do for our work. In a secular culture, it seems totally normal — admirable, even — to sacrifice the possibility of having a family, to give up all leisure time, to starve yourself or live on insane, totally made-up diets like intermittent fasting or paleo for the sake of your job as an Instagram beauty influencer or whatever. But to wear a habit and be celibate and fast out of a religious devotion? That must be a cult!

Pity the aesthete, the flâneur and the opera-goer. Those who find the contents of their own heads so dull and mundane they must fill them instead with the fantastical inventions of our most extravagant lunatics. They have been locked out of the theatres and cinemas and public spaces that make them feel at their most alive and abandoned to the content programming of Netflix and whatever Tenet was supposed to be. They’ve been deprived, sheltered, cut off from the only thing that gives their lives meaning. I’m describing me. I’m asking you to feel sorry for me.

Now that all of the billionaires are going into space, the night sky holds a special new kind of allure. We see a little twinkle in the distance and we can think to ourselves, there they are, out there, far away, away from us. It’s not clear whether Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk spent their childhoods looking up at the stars, fantasising fervently about joining them at some future date, or if they are now just bored. But perhaps their sense of identification and belonging in the vast night sky can be understood in another way. Humans have always told stories about the stars, and many of these myths could be relevant to the ambitions of these very wealthy men. Think of Prometheus, too smart and powerful for his own good.

It’s interesting that we have decided shaming and yelling are the easiest ways to change people’s minds. Which is not to say I do not think there are people in this world who deserve to be shamed and yelled at: people who use the term ‘cancel culture’ sincerely, people who are deeply invested in the marriage and divorce cycles of celebrities, Meryl Streep. But do I think yelling at Ms Streep will accomplish what I fervently wish for, which is for her to stop ruining perfectly fine movies with her barely adequate performances? No. Every issue in our cultural lives is politicised right now.