Death is a Photograph

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This week, the DPP lads are joined by writer, critic and marketing director at publishing house Deep Vellum (and friend of the pod) Jon Repetti — to discuss Spike Lee's 1999 crime thriller Summer of Sam.
Summer of Sam revolves around the fallout from a real-life killing spree committed by David Berkowitz between 1975 and 1977.
Lee's 1999 feature is an odd combination of 1970s nostalgia aimed at a young Gen X, combined with subcultural analysis and crime thriller tropes. The film delves into the urban psychogeography of New York City's outer boroughs and ethnic neighbourhoods — at a time when NYC was widely considered to be in decline, yet also experiencing a huge cultural flourishing of underground scenes, musical creativity, and club life.
Does Gen X's childhood fear of the city and the urban, in the 1970s, translate into today's pervasive paranoia about large American cities? Find out in today's episode.
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This week, Chase and Sam at DPP are joined by architecture critic and writer Owen Hatherley to discuss British director Patrick Keiller’s London (1994) and Robinson in Space (1997).
​London and Robinson in Space form the first two parts of the decade-long Robinson trilogy. Keiller's two essay films capture Britain during the interregnum between Thatcher and Blair — an oft-forgotten period, after the end of the Cold War, but before the short-lived ecstasies of Cool Britannia.
​Keiller charts a country still very much in thrall to tradition, mediating its own decline, and with a surprisingly intact industrial base. Both films feature an unnamed narrator who journeys around England with an unseen accomplice: the titular Robinson (a permanently precarious academic). Keiller’s camera lingers over petrol stations, suburban business parks and other liminal spaces — a post-Thatcherite, globalised, netherworld of commercial utilitarianism.
Through a patched-together series of shots and reams of economic data, Keiller, arguably, makes the case that Gen X, not the boomers, were the UK's last industrial generation: squatting over the final flames of manufacturing during the rule of John Major — the infamous prime ministerial 'grey man.'
Major and Blair haunt the background of Keiller's work, bookending the period his films explore. The former is presented as a bland technocrat at the End of History, the latter a representative of American-style personality politics. Keiller's films place us in a British interregnum — and, to steal a line from Gramsci, 'morbid symptoms' are everywhere.
​Hatherley is the author of several books, including Militant Modernism, Trans-Europe Express, Red Metropolis: Socialism and the Government of London, Modern Buildings in Britain: A Gazetteer and, his latest, The Alienation Effect (out now with Penguin).
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This week, DPP is joined by prolific podcaster and Renaissance man J.G. Michael of Parallax Views to discuss two underappreciated gems by director Adam Rifkin: The Chase (1994) and Detroit Rock City (1999).
Rifkin, who got his start in the world of wrestling (could there be a more Gen X origin story?), has produced an oeuvre defined by Hollywood's commercial needs. Yet, in between, family-friendly forgetables like 1997's Mouse Hunt and 2007's Underdog, Rifkin has directed films that speak to the zeitgeist.
The Chase is a knowing satire on the car-chase genre combined with a deconstruction of 24/7 news and 'infotainment.' Detroit Rock City, meanwhile, is that strange Gen-X beast - a 1970s nostalgia film (think Summer of Sam, Dazed and Confused, etc.) entirely centred around the band Kiss.
It's our contention that Rifkin may well be the Gen-X Robert Zemeckis — someone who understands the median tastes of a generation forgotten about by history, and too often Hollywood.
As always, our Patreon can be found here. We'll be publishing subscriber-only episodes on everything from Trainspotting and Clockwatchers — to interviews with leading theorists of our historical moment. Subscribe.

Today, and once again, the Europeans outnumber the Americans on this week’s DPP.
Chase and Sam are joined by British GQ staff writer and friend of the pod, Josiah Gogarty, to discuss Italian director Paolo Sorrentino's seminal feature film The Great Beauty (2013) and slightly self-indulgent coming-of-age piece The Hand of God (2021).
Sorrentino, alongside Luca Guadagnino, is probably Italy's best-known Gen X director.
Behind the elevated chorals, lush birdsong, Palladian architecture and eurotrash fashion — The Great Beauty is a savage takedown of Italy's boomer elite, under Silvio Berlusconi and Forza Italia, by a rising Gen X figure.
It's Rome, sometime in the late 2000s, and the city's elderly elite have traded in the Marxism and literary idealism of their youth for easy indulgence, cocaine, dinner parties, and idle chatter. But they can't escape the rising generation below them, who, far from being lapsed idealists, present a front of destructive and cynical nihilism.
As the post-political age of Berlusconi transitions into the anti-political epoch of the Lega Nord, Five Star Movement and, finally, Giorgia Meloni (Gen X'ers to the last) — what can be salvaged from the wreck? Art, friendship, faith, really nice suits?
Find out in today's episode.
Josiah can be found on Twitter, at GQ, the New Statesman, Monocle and many other outlets.
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In today's episode of DPP - Chase and Sam are joined by filmmaker Charles Pinion to discuss his 1988 film Twisted Issues.
Pinion's films — made during Gen X's heyday — revolve around skater culture, punk rock, DIY aesthetics and, in the case of Twisted Issues, maniac zombie killers with fencing masks.
You can see Pinion's back-catalogue of films here.
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