Jia Tolentino
speaker
981 appearances
13 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Jia Tolentino’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
They're nice people, really good families. And what people in the South mean when they say that is like they're rich and they keep their shit under wraps.
Like they're rich and they successfully repress any outer sign of disorder. That's literally all people mean.
There's something interesting about while I don't doubt that Jacqueline and Laurie, you know, or whatever, variously sincere, progressive, liberal, however they consider themselves.
But it is something that I feel quite aware of in my everyday life where there are plenty of people in my orbit who think of liberal or progressive politics mostly as kind of a consumer identity who were really offended by Trump mostly as an aesthetic signal about like, like, this is just embarrassing. Like...
There's a way in which Kate having voted for Trump is on an equal plane in terms of moral and aesthetic importance as kind of not having a really good doctor for your Botox, right? Like they have the—they are appalled as if they are talking about a serious political topic, but there's a way in which it's sort of like, ooh, you know, you've made a lifestyle choice. You've made an aesthetic choice.
Right. And there was that part in the first episode where Laurie's like looking at you guys, it's like looking at a mirror. And there's something interesting about what this crew will not do, which is like probably they are all living extremely similar lives with extremely similar consumer choices, you know, etc. But the exact same life.
If the person voted for Trump, that life will then be viewed as sort of like immoral and false.
But yet I'm sure those women are making quite similar choices about their children, their children's schooling, how much they fly on planes, whatever. You know, their degree of civic engagement. And that, you know, I don't know. I doubt a lot of that will reach the surface. But I was like, ooh, I can feel it.
That they exactly make, yeah. So the themes really come out. The themes being the snake in the Garden of Paradise or whatever with Chelsea and Rick.
But the snake show is also prompted by another meditation session.
His mask is the thing that it's masking. Like he's giving like broken man. And he is. You know what I mean?
Like he's the only one that's sullen on the boat and as such he's the only one telling the truth about existence.
He's the truth teller.
So he gets too high or so he says. They're at the snake show and he lets a bunch of snakes loose.
I think he – well, I didn't read it as a noble motive. But I do think, you know, he was – it seems the episode is trying to make it really clear. He was in his therapy session saying that he has been caged in by circumstance more or less. And he feels misunderstood and he probably feels misperceived.
Kind of, yeah, right? Like he's clearly sick of everyone else's sort of – he seems like someone that wearies immediately of any stab at propriety. And he's just – he would prefer the truth of snake bites and chaos.
And unfortunately, my personal identification with the Chelsea ended in their final scene where she's like, I will follow you into the next life.
And the next life and the next. And I was like, you will never catch me saying that to a man.
Well, there's something really sweet earlier in the episode. She's like, you know, like, I'm your soulmate. Like, I am your soulmate. And I really believe it from her. Like, she sees a hole in him that can be filled by her.
Right. With the snakes in this episode, with the preponderance of snakes that is sort of amassing in this season. We had the choker. Now we have the, you know, the pile of cobras that Rick unlocks out of their home. The Garden of Eden biblical stuff is getting more overt. The first episode, you had Saxon pick up a fruit. And Pam, Australian Pam, says, you know, this fruit can kill you.
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