Unknown Speaker 0:00
Valerie Gorham 0:05
Hello, everyone. I'm Valerie, and I am the host of WKNC brand, newest podcast. This podcast is called more than you think, and it is about pop culture and why pop culture actually matters a lot more than you think, in our daily lives. So just a bit of background about me again. My name is Valerie. I'm a student here at NC State. I work for WKNC radio. Obviously, I'm pursuing a business degree, and I love movies, music, pop culture, everything. I like to go to the movie theater like I'm one of those people that like if something is happening in pop culture, I already know about it, and I know all of the details, and I know the background, and I know everything that happened last year that led up to the moment that is currently happening. Okay, I watch every award show, and I try to watch every popular movie that comes out, or not so popular, even like I you get the idea. So we are going to talk about that. And I want to start off with an example that I actually learned in my economics class. So there was a movie that came out back in the 1930s called It Happened One Night, and it was a big five Oscars winner. So it won the main five Oscars that all movies try to win, right? So it was a very, very successful movie. And one of the main characters was played by an actor named Clark Gable. This guy was the big cheese at the time. He was the main man. So there was a scene in the movie where he was supposed to unbutton his shirt. And then, at the time, everybody, all the men, wore undershirts, under their button up shirts back in the 1930s but he kept struggling to unbutton his shirt and take it off with the undershirt on. So the director decided that he just wasn't gonna wear an undershirt for the scene. And then in the final cut of the movie, he ended up being shirtless and not having an undershirt in that scene. So when all the guys watch this movie, they're like, oh my gosh, I need to be like, Clark Gable so that I can get all the ladies and I'm throwing away all my undershirts and never buying one again, and just going commando with my shirts. And this ended up causing a recession in the undershirt economy, if you can believe it. Yes, men weren't buying undershirts anymore. So the textiles industry ended up suing Columbia Pictures, which was the company that created this movie, and the textiles industry lost, because nobody in the movie directly said, Hey, guys, men, if you want to be hot, stop buying undershirts and wearing them. Okay? It was just the impact, the cultural impact of that film at the time, especially at that time when there were like three movies a year like that was a huge deal, and pop culture still holds a lot of power today, because society is heavily influenced by everything we see on our screens. So this is going to be a podcast about how pop culture influences the political and economic climate and vice versa. So we are going to start off by talking about what everyone was kind of complaining about this summer, which was that there was no song of the summer. But I unfortunately have some very bad news. There was a song of the summer. It's just that nobody wants to admit that this was the song of the summer, especially not me, because this song really got on my nerves. But we are going to have a quick drum roll, and I will reveal to you what I believe was the song of the summer. And you know it too, you just don't want to say so, drum roll, please.
Speaker 1 3:33
Okay, I don't know if I'm actually allowed to sing on this thing, because I don't know if it's if even like, the lyrics are like copyright protected, but I think you all know I'm talking about mystical magical by Vincent Boone, okay, yes, we are in the darkest timeline. Yes, we had a very tragic summer in terms of music. Okay, there were no good songs that defined this summer other than freaking mystical magic. And guess what? It was actually a very significant song, if you think about it, did you see all the tiktoks about the people getting the crumble cookie, the Benson Boone flavored crumble cookie? Okay, yes, because I did, everyone was doing backflips at crumbl. And why is it significant, culturally for us to be having a boring song of the summer? Well, let me tell you right now. Okay, let's get into this, because it matters more than you think. I just said the title of the podcast. So let's talk about Benson Boone. Let's start by talking about that guy, because the general consensus around that guy, with especially with people my age, is that nobody really likes him. Okay? He people don't really like him because they find him disingenuous and performative. He gained popularity last summer because of his song Beautiful things, which, if you didn't live under a rock you heard that song, and it's where he goes, like he's screaming in your ear. Yes, he is, and he's. Things, and that song about God and his girlfriend and his girlfriend being the perfect girl that his parents love. And then in this new album that he just released, it's called American Heart, the cover of the album is a picture of him, shirtless, sweaty, dirty, holding up the American flag like the red blooded American patriot Benson Boone is. And then he goes on stage, and then it's a completely different story, because you see all the evidence that I'm talking about here, and you think to yourself, This man is pandering to like conservatives, Republicans, patriotic people who believe in America's traditional values. But then when you see him performing on stage, you'll notice that he wears very non traditional clothing. In fact, he is wearing clothing that highly resembles the type of stuff that Harry Styles wore when he used to perform way back when in 2023 he hasn't come back here. Harry come back to us. Anyways. Benson Boone is copying Harry Styles in terms of his fashion. And people have been accusing him of that online, and he has been responding, he's saying, No, I'm not copying Harry Styles. I'm just being myself, dude, nobody knows who you are. And he actually, when he talks, he seems like, actually a really nice dude, okay? But at the end of the day, he's, he is all over the place. He's all over the place. We don't know what he is. We don't know who this man is, and he doesn't have like, a defined style or brand, because he is trying to pander to every single demographic on planet Earth, right? He is going for the Republican, traditional conservative patriots. And then he gets on stage dressed like Harry Styles, trying to pander to the liberal, female, modern progressive audience. He also, if you watch his videos, his music videos, or look at his Instagram, he also like queer baits in those because he I saw a photo from, I think it might have been the BTS of his mystical, magical music video. And he was like, sticking his butt out while looking on an ice cream cone. It was very suggestive, but it's like, okay, you also have like, this blonde haired, blue eyed, very typical southern state girlfriend who you sang about in the song that made you famous, and you sing about God not taking her away from you, and your parents loving her and hoping that you can sleep next to her every night for the rest of your life. But I definitely think that there is a reason that he is trying to appeal to, like every single side of the political spectrum, and it has to do with Harry Styles and the criticism that Harry Styles received when he started dressing a little more feminine back in 2021 particularly when he did the cover of Vogue wearing a dress. That was like a huge deal in the conservative media, everyone was like freaking out that this guy was wearing a dress on the cover of Vogue, and he's a man, and he's painting his nails and oh my god, no, Harry Styles was supposed to be our daughter's heartthrob. Why is he wearing the dress on the cup of Vogue? And if you weren't there Candace Owens, who is a very popular conservative journalist, she started this trend or whatever, like this hashtag or whatever on Twitter and online called bring back manly men, to which Harry Styles, like replied, after he he he was announced to be hosting SNL one weekend, and they did the SNL photo shoot, and he was wearing, like a ballerina tutu and like all sorts of, like, very feminine outfits. This obviously upset all the conservatives, all the journalists. This upset. You know, it upset his fans, mothers and fathers, and it was really controversial, because Harry Styles has had gay allegations in the past with his band members in one direction, and like other other, other allegations of like, random guys. And, you know, Harry Styles. He's very ambiguous about that whole thing. And this past summer, in fact, he was like, caught making out with some girl at a music festival. And then, literally just yesterday, the day before I record this, he's like, seen on the street holding hands, walking around Rome with Zoe Kravitz, it's all fun and games, you know. But back in I think it was early 2021 when he was promoting his new album. Fine Line at the time he was getting all this criticism. And now, in his absence, we have Benson Boone trying to fill the hole, because Harry Styles was our main pop guy. He was like the big pop boy up until 2023 when his tour ended, and he hasn't put out any new music since 2022 so Benson Boone has come to try to take the lead, and it's not working for him. Why? Well, as I mentioned before, he's trying to pander to. Every single demographic. And the reason he's doing that is because he knows that he can't win if he decides to go just all the way to the right or all the way to the left. For example, Harry Styles went all the way to the left with his feminine outfits and painting his nails, putting out his nail polish brand. And it's also like a skincare brand, and it has evolved into something else now, but I can't really talk about that right now on the radio, because this has to stay relatively PG. But he hasn't really backed down from the identity that he gave himself in 2021 and he lost a lot of conservative fans at the time because, you know, little girls, their moms were prohibiting them from seeing this man act all feminine, but it wasn't something that Harry Styles really had to worry about, because he already had, like, a huge, huge fan base from being in one direction, whereas Benson Boone is a newer artist, and he doesn't have that luxury. Even more so now with the example that we was set by Harry Styles, that showed artists that if you put yourself out there and try to do something a little different and fun and actually have a little bit of distinctness to yourself, then conservatives are gonna hate you. They're gonna accuse you of attacking the youth of America and rotting the minds of young people. You'll notice, however, they never accused Harry Styles of putting out a bad song. His artistic choices allow him to actually make good music. Benson Boone's music, it doesn't seem to be reflective of his personality. It sounds very much like copy paste pop music, the type of stuff that you hear playing in the background when you're shopping at the mall. And because of all the criticism that Harry Styles received, Benson Boone and his marketing team probably realized that there isn't really room to be yourself anymore, or to fully express who you are, because if you do no matter what, there's gonna be at least one very strongly opposed population of people. And for that reason, Benson Boone is just trying to make everyone happy. He's not allowing himself to fully express who he is, and that is how we get moonbeam ice cream as our song of the summer. He isn't allowed to make stuff that's actually good. He can't really make real art. He has to just make bland pop music that is supposed to appeal to the masses, and since his music isn't really made to resonate with any particular group of people and just the general public, it kind of gets lost on everyone. And the poor guy, he made like 30,000 Tiktok accounts to promote that song this summer. The poor guy, I blocked most of his accounts. I'm gonna be honest with that. I did block like nine of his accounts because I just couldn't take it anymore. Oh my god. And it's really tragic too, because this man has actually an angelic singing voice. But with all the criticism that non stereotypical artists receive right now from conservatives, we are forced to have artists like Benson Boone and really lame, boring, uneventful summers that lead to nobody wanting to claim the actual song of the summer, which was unfortunately mystical, magical by Benson Boone in 2025 And with that, we end that topic of conversation, and we are going to talk about something else that happened over the summer.
Speaker 1 13:28
And I think this topic, we're just gonna call it Sydney Sweeney, she made these two commercials over the summer, one for Dr Squatch, which is a company that makes like soap for men, and another one for American eagle, which everyone knows, that's like a clothing brand, and she was the face of their denim campaign this year. So we're gonna start off by talking about the DR Squatch commercial, where she is like they're laying in a bathtub. It's a bubble bath, so you can't actually see like anything. But she basically makes these very suggestive comments about the soap, and it ends up being that the soap is supposedly her bath water, and the lines that she delivers in this commercial are basically trying to entice men to buy her bath water, very seductive and suggestive stuff, like dirty boys. I'm doing Mickey Mouse voice because I can't do the same voice as her, because she, like, she has, like, a very specific voice. But just imagine I'm doing a very seductive and, like spicy voice. Hey, you dirty boys, you want to try my body wash? That's literally, I'm pretty sure those are, like, exact quotes from the commercial. And obviously this received a lot of criticism from feminists because it objectifies herself. She's objectifying herself in that commercial, and as a woman, you know, it reflects badly off of the entire female community. Sydney Sweeney is an actress who she. She is very, very talented. But unfortunately, she has put herself in the position of being basically known for having big boobs like that is has become her thing, and she is the one who has put herself in that position. She is very talented. If you have seen her scenes in euphoria, where she's like crashing out in the bathroom, and that there are like three different scenes where she crashes out in like three different bathrooms. But she really is very talented. She is a great actress, and she was Emmy nominated, but she has put herself in this position of becoming like just an item for the male gaze, G, A, z, E, by the way, not G, A, y, s, and she is further objectified in the American Eagle ad, where she is wearing a denim jacket and a pair of blue jeans, but she doesn't have like, a shirt under her jacket, which it all ties back to Clark Gable, doesn't it? Well, well, well, but um. So since she's not wearing a shirt under her jacket, you can see, like her cleavage, and they like zoom in on it. In the commercial, they like zoom in on it. While she's talking, she's talking about genetics. You know, it's a play on words, a little pun about the word genes. So she starts talking about genetics and explaining how genetics work, that's passed on from parents to offspring, blah, blah, blah. And then at the end of the commercial, she says, my genes are blue. The camera at that point is focusing on her eyes, which she is, a blonde haired, blue eyed, white woman. And then there are some letters that pop up on the screen that say Sydney Sweeney has great genes. And it's spelled jeans, as in the denim jeans, j, e, a, n, s, but it is insinuated that they are talking about her genetic code, which she is like a stereotypical Aryan woman. And this raised, obviously, many eyebrows, and the word eugenics was brought up, rightfully so, because eugenics, let me read you the definition. It is the study of how to arrange reproduction within a human population to increase the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable, developed largely by Sir Francis Galton as a method of improving the human race. Eugenics was increasingly discredited as unscientific and racially biased during the 20th century, especially after the adoption of its doctrines by the Nazis in order to justify their treatment of Jews, disabled people and other minority groups. So yes, that is a very, very important word and a very good word to use when talking about this commercial, because, as I already said, Sydney Sweeney, blonde hair, blue eyes, white woman, and in case you guys didn't know, there is a rise of Nazi sympathy happening in the young white male population. This started in January, and I have an article here by the Guardian from January 26 titled energized Neo Nazis feel their moment has come as Trump changes everything far right, chat rooms are abuzz as extremists plan to use the next four years as breathing room and look to expand the type of advertisements and marketing that big Companies like American Eagle put out it's directly influenced by what they believe people want to be seeing and right now, obviously companies think that the American people want to be seeing women with Aryan features, light skin, light hair and light eyes. Now, obviously Sydney Sweeney is gorgeous. Yeah, nobody's denying that. The issue with this commercial is how they emphasize that her specific genes, her genetics, are great, and it even makes it feel like they're trying to say that her genetic code is possibly superior. So yeah, they're just promoting white supremacy. American Eagle put out a statement saying that it was about the genes, the denim jeans, guys, it's the denim jeans. But there was a play on words. She goes into detail in the commercial about genetics. So obviously there's an insinuation there. And they didn't apologize. American Eagle. They didn't apologize for the commercial, and they didn't say like we weren't talking about genetics. They just said we were talking about denim. And Sydney Sweeney also put out a statement not about the American Eagle commercial, but about the DR Squatch commercial, which I will read to you right now. It was mainly the girls making comments about it, which I thought was really interesting. They all loved the idea of Jacob alorty bath water, and that's the end of the statement. So yeah, everyone is jealous of Sydney. Everybody wants to be Sydney Sweeney, and women are the enemy, and everybody hates her. But the difference between what she and Jacob elordi did is that she is going out here and me. Making a commercial specifically to sell a product, using her body like literally using her body to sell a product. And that's just her objectifying herself and signaling to men that our bodies are strictly for their use, which they aren't. And that is something that women have fought very hard against over the course of time. Meanwhile, Jacob Lordy, he was just acting in a movie where he took a bath. And, yeah, it was a movie called salt burn. It was very popular in like, late 2023 I believe, and it wasn't a very good movie, but, yeah, I watched it. Okay, Jacob Lord He was in it. What do you want me to do? Okay, I watched the movie. If Jacob Lord is in a movie, I'm going to be watching the movie. Okay, I'm just a girl. But anyways, let's get back to the topic at hand. Lock in. This is about feminism and white supremacy, not Jacob lordy. So back to the topic. Sidney Sweeney has become a vessel for white supremacy and sexism. What the heck? What am I saying this 2025 we're saying all sorts of crazy stuff. But this woman, very talented actress, Sydney Sweeney, pop culture icon, constantly in the constantly. Her name is in people's mouths, right? Like she is talked about all the time. I'm talking about her right now. Like, what the heck she is becoming? She has become a vessel for evil? Well, yes, and American, American Eagle should be ashamed of themselves for putting that commercial out and insinuating that white, blonde haired, blue eyed people are the superior race, because I'm white, but my eyes aren't blue, nor am I blonde, and that actually makes me feel bad about myself. Like seeing that commercial, it made me feel bad about the way I look, and I'm literally white. So me a white person feeling offended by that. I can't even imagine how that makes people darker than me feel. And then back to the feminist point, the DR Squatch campaign, combined with the little camera angles that focus on certain parts of Sydney Sweeney's body in the American Eagle campaign, all of that number one, it encourages women to focus on our physical appearance and reduce ourselves to objects. And then, number two, it it encourages us to focus on just being enough for men, which in 2025 shouldn't be our focus anymore. We have to be enough for ourselves, just like men have always been enough for themselves. You know, it should be equal for everyone. And you know, nothing against marriage. I would love to get married someday, you know, preferably to Jacob Lordy, right? And there's nothing wrong with wanting Jacob lordy. Anyways, enough without Jacob Lordy, enough without Jacob Lordy, it's 2025, and women should not be focusing on men the way that we did when we didn't have access to our own money. This is what Sydney Sweeney is promoting. And maybe she's a nice person, maybe she's a good person, like we don't know. She might just be doing this for fun and for money and to troll, but it is harmful, and this, along with the whole eugenics American Eagle ad, it is a direct reflection of who we have in the White House. The mere fact that we have Donald Trump sitting in the Oval Office, I mean, it suggests to the people in Hollywood that curate our pop culture that the majority of Americans are okay with white supremacy and the objectification of women. Because obviously, Donald Trump doesn't have the greatest track record with, you know, women's safety, with being respectful to women. In fact, he is a convicted felon in that department, and as everyone knows, he's not really the most enthusiastic about non white people, about people of color, about immigrants. So Donald Trump may possibly be the biggest influence on pop culture that we have currently in the world, which can be a problem when it comes to art. Because, as I already explained in this podcast, conservatives like to basically censor artists and control art, which is what I was talking about with Benson Boone at the time of the Harry Styles criticism that I was mentioning earlier. Donald Trump was also president. He had, I think he had just lost the election to Joe Biden, but he was still in office, and the conservative media was still extremely powerful at that time, because he was in office and he was still, you know, the leader of the country. So that was when conservatives in the media had a lot more power to criticize musicians like Harry Styles, and that has. Led to the boring stuff we have now. So yeah, guys, it's all connected. Everything is connected, okay? And yeah, the pop culture that we see is a direct reflection of what Jayden Smith would call the political and economic state of the world right now, guys. And with that, I conclude my summer recap. But next episode, we are going to be getting into more current events. This week, Sabrina carpenters album comes out, and I will be surveying the students of the university here on their thoughts on that album. And I will also be talking about some pop culture trends and just stuff in pop culture that in a few generations we may look back on with shame and regret, and I will be connecting it to what I learned in my law ethics class based on a reading by a Paya. So tune in for that, because I know you all want to know and don't worry, it's going to be fun. It's going to be colorful and glittery, just like this one. We love it. Okay, sending my love. Stay informed. Stan Luna. I actually don't know what Stan Luna means, but Stan Luna and watch YouTube guys, Watch movies, listen to music. Love you. Bye. You. You
Unknown Speaker 26:20
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
