This is Critics At Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham. Alex Schwartz: I'm Alex Schwartz. Naomi Fry: And I'm Nomi Fry. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hello friends? Alex Schwartz: Hello. Vinson Cunningham: Hi. What's up? Naomi Fry: We're all ready to, you know, discuss the matter at hand for this week. The topic of today's episode, my friends, is drum roll please. Marriage and all it's discontents. Alex Schwartz: Woo-hoo. Naomi Fry: Imagine that there are actually a few occasions for this. The first is a new season of the show beef, which focuses on two very different couples that wind up in an increasingly tense standoff with each other. That standoff quickly starts to expose the cracks that are forming in these relationships and boys at Harrowing. Okay. And we'll also be talking about the movie, the Drama, which came out earlier this month, and it's about a couple. Charlie and Emma and Emma reveals a deep, dark secret about her past, and then things start to go south very fast. K, so… I think it's fair to say that both of these texts put forward a somewhat cynical view of what it's like to be in a committed relationship. Would you guys say that this reflects a kind of broader feeling in the culture right now? Are these outliers or are they indicators? Vinson Cunningham: I think there is a general, and I wouldn't even say pessimism, but a kind of. Downbeat pondering about what marriage is and what it's for. A question I guess that come, I mean, and maybe it's a question that comes up age after age, but what is this institution for? Who does it serve? Why do we enter into it? And um, are there alternatives coming over the horizon? I think that's the moment we're in this resettling. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex, what do you think? Alex Schwartz: I totally agree, Vincent and I, I think it's a long moment and I think we're actually close to the beginning. To me, these things, these questions really began with the advent of birth control, women's lib and no fault divorce and Vinson Cunningham: the holy trinity. Alex Schwartz: Exactly. But yes, no me. I think these are indicators and I think one theme that I see stretching. Across the two works you mentioned and others, is this idea of revelation. The fear that you could be in a marriage with someone, feel that this is the person you know the best in the world, and wake up one day and discover that there is something big they've been hiding from you, and that actually your life is a house of cards, a pack of lies. And you have to a pack Naomi Fry: of cards, Alex Schwartz: a pack of lying cards, and you have to renegotiate everything, ask everything, and that the foundations of the supposedly solid thing, your marriage are actually quite shaky. Naomi Fry: Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree more, Alex. I mean, all of these things, the kind of, the long moment of Reinvestigating. What marriage is good for. And then this particular question that I, I do think is germane. Anyway, today we're gonna be talking about beef. We're gonna be talking about the drama. We're gonna be talking about several other texts, and we're gonna be talking in general about modern attitudes towards this very old institution. As we've said, it's kind of at an inflection point right now. Statistically, marriage rates are hovering around an all time low, and at the same time, people are trying to find new approaches to make marriage work. I mean, open marriages, polyamory, all of these things are feeling increasingly mainstream. And my question for us is, at a time when relationships are more flexible than ever, what do we as a culture want marriage to meet? That's the day on critics at Large Beef, the drama and the new marriage plot. ________________ Okay, you guys, let's begin with beef. Okay. On Netflix. The second season of the show is out today, and it's written and directed by Lisa on gin. Did you guys watch the first season of this show? Alex Schwartz: Sure did. Naomi Fry: Okay. Alex Schwartz: I did very much enjoy it, and it was about an incident of road rage that led two people into an ever escalating conflict. So I think the connection is Is conflict. Yeah. Conflict as the driver of passion. Fury as the great revealer. Yeah. Otherwise, totally different. Character. Totally different setup. Naomi Fry: Absolutely. Right. So this is an anthology show, right? Yeah. And now we have a whole other story, a whole new set of characters, but the idea that beneath the seemingly placid surface of kind of, you know, regular everyday life mm-hmm. There are resentments, there is violence, there are secrets and lies that lie in wait to be exposed. Right. So in this. Beef two season. Who wants to give me a synopsis of kind of like the lay of the lay of the land? Vinson Cunningham: We start on the grounds of a country club at what we come to understand as a fundraiser for that club. And um, on stage is the general manager of the club played by Oscar Isaac. His name is Josh Martin. And by his side, is his wife played by Carrie Mulligan, Lindsay Crane, Martin CLIP: Beef as soon as they leave the grounds, they are fighting And then, I mean, every single recrimination in the world comes out. The show starts with. A facade, these two on stage? Yes. And then a total outpouring of ID in this fight. Um, the fight gets so bad that, uh, a golf club becomes involved. Kerry Mulligan's character is basically just destroying the house. Uh, Isaac's character grabs the, uh, golf club, but then he seems to be kind of like almost threatening to, to hit her with it. It's at this moment of just like unchecked rage. CLIP: Beef Meanwhile, he left his, uh. Wallet at the club. Therefore, two young members of of the staff are coming to give the wallet. They see this, they record it in the fullness of time. They decide that they should use this as a way to improve their own station. So she's like, we need healthcare. We're gonna use this to extort this couple, and they think that this is their ticket. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. But the, the, the main gist is the trouble that is caused by this one moment of unchecked rage in this marriage. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. I have now seen seven out of the eight episodes of beef too. Gobbled it up. Gobbled up with my husband by my side. We were Naomi Fry: on the marital couch. Alex Schwartz: On the marital couch, just gobbling up beef two. Uh, I, I really like this show. It really reminded me of the White Lotus. Yes, it is. Naomi Fry: From s from the Jump. Alex Schwartz: Yes. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: And I think this is a place that, uh. TV is increasingly interested in going to these luxury worlds that reveal personal and class fissures and One thing I really like about the show is that the young couple, the Charles Melton and Kaylee Spany. Couple, Austin and Ashley see the older managers as having it made. And the older couple see themselves as slipping down the class ladder. They're. Kind of barely clinging to their position and they spend all their time around the truly wealthy people who patronize the club catering to them. So everyone is just trying really hard to hold onto what they have, and the stress of that is. In the show What fractures these relationships? Naomi Fry: Yeah, because it's all about comparison. Like I think within the marriage there is always, and I think within their marriage and also increasingly in the younger couple's marriage, there is a looking outside there is like. Oh, maybe I should have, you know, been with this guy. Maybe I can, you know, secretly text an old boyfriend, an ex-boyfriend to, you know, give myself a kind of a little boost. Right? Yeah. When I'm feeling like down that I'm like older and have made wrong choices in my life, you know, there's, everything is kind of ruled by this jockeying for status, whether in love or in in work.f Yeah. What did you think, Vincent? Vinson Cunningham: Yeah, I. It's a really interesting show to me on, on, on one level. I feel like it sometimes at its worst moments threatens to be a kind of second rate white lotus, but at its best moments it really does. Talk about what you just mentioned, Naomi, like how much political economy and our place within it in this great context. Um. How much of that weight lands on the couple form? All of the tensions within the, these relationships and between them, uh, have to do with what does it mean that I have or don't have money, have or don't have health insurance, have or don't have a sense of security, whatever that means to me, and how much do I associate. The health of a relationship with this other kind of more nebulous, like whatever, economically driven health. And that is really interesting to me. And the, the moments when that gets contemplated, maybe paradoxically, is when these characters are alone. There's a lot of loneliness in this Oscar. Isaac is, you know, like, he's like always on OnlyFans doing God knows what, looking at, you know, so there's this undercurrent of loneliness, Alex, like, what, what did you think of that relationship like those two? Isaac and Mulligan? Alex Schwartz: Yes. I think There's a sense increasingly, I think in the Lindsay Josh marriage of. I know you too well, and I don't like what I see. There are no more surprises. You are horrible. Let's have the same fight we've had a million times over again, but only more intensely. Mm-hmm. Which is the moment when the younger couple, Ashlyn Austen come upon them. And then you have the, you countered with the idealism of this very young couple. There's a scene where Austin. Is talking to Lindsay about what he's witnessed and Lindsay says to Austen, Hmm, okay, but you actually have no idea what marriage is really like. CLIP: “Beef” S2 Naomi Fry: the, the pretense in the younger couple is that one utterly knows the other and, and vice versa. That is, you can never. Betray me or you can never disappoint me because I know you are fully on my side and you can never surprise me with kind of veering from that sense that I have of you. Right? Alex Schwartz: I will say, and I wonder what you guys think about this. Both of these couples are total red herrings, like neither of these couples has any idea what any of this is about, as far as I'm concerned. And the, the therefore, the show remains on a pretty shallow level when it comes to speaking to marriage. I think Naomi Fry: it's, it's the, the classic blind leading the blind, or not leading, it's the bli, the blind talking to the blind. Vinson Cunningham: I know you don't think you're about to say bland, and that's what I, it's kind of the bland leading the blend as well. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Naomi Fry: Okay. Say more. What do you mean? Vinson Cunningham: Well, it's neither of these couples to, to the point. Seem to have a well developed idea of why, you know, why they're together. And this speech I sends Austin into kind of a tizzy, right? He is, starts Googling, why do we never fight? Now he, his sense of what a relationship is, is totally determined by the outside. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: And so. That sort of blandness of purpose maybe is a kind of profound statement, but it never, it it doesn't really develop though. Naomi Fry: Yeah. I mean, I think if, if we were to, uh, kind of define or distinguish between the two couples, apart from the stuff that we've. Already said, the older couple seems to kind of like have sinister intent. More definitionally, I guess. I mean, both of them are kind of like sly and cynical. And status seeking fraudulent in a more intentional way while the younger couple end up also doing a lot of kind of things that aren't great, but they're basically kind of like the idiot innocence, right? I mean, they don't mean to like stumble into these, but they're kind of like dummies who also want theirs. Basically right. Alex Schwartz: I think I would say when it comes to marriage, the thesis of the show is that marriage is complicity. What unites both of these couples is doing illegal shit. The older couple is gonna scam the club for money. The younger couple is gonna scam the club for jobs, and a good marriage is covering each other's backs. Do I find that a message that I want to, you know, happily blast from the alter at everybody? Probably not, but it does make for fun watching Naomi Fry: when we're back, we're talking about the new film, the drama, and whether it's actually a good thing to know everything. Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back. :: MIDROLL :: Okay. I feel like this is now the time to turn to the drama. Take note. We're gonna be talking about the twist In the movie, there's a big twist. You probably heard there's a big twist if you don't know the actual twist yet. But if you wanna continue to not know what Zendaya did in the movie, Spoilers. Are coming. The drama directed by Christopher Boley, the Norwegian filmmaker, came out in the beginning of April. Stars Robert Rob Pattinson as Charlie, and Zendaya as his beautiful fiance, Emma, who wants to set the scene of what we're dealing with here. Alex Schwartz: I'd be delighted. Naomi Fry: Great. Alex Schwartz: The drama starts out seeming like it's gonna be a rom-com. We get a meet cute that is presented with the framing that this couple who's meeting cute in a Boston cafe is now two years later about to get married. Everything has been absolutely great with them. They have wonderful chemistry. They love each other so much. They live in a gorgeous apartment. Charlie is writing his wedding speech CLIP: The Drama and then. Very close to their wedding. They go out to dinner at their wedding venue to do a final tasting with their two best friends. And these best friends who seem like freaks to me, decide that what they most wanna do is talk about the worst thing that they did, because they did that before they got married. Mm-hmm. And it only bonded them further together. Vinson Cunningham: What's the worst thing you ever did in your life? Alex Schwartz: Exactly. And even though that was an intimate exercise between the two of them, that they agreed never to share. They somehow are sharing the worst things they ever did in their life, and the conversation is passed around until we get to Zendaya. Everyone else has done something and I really hope we return to this. That really sucks. Like, I don't like what those other people did at all. I'm just gonna editorialize in here. They bullied other people. Yeah. I have to, I have stuff to say about it. Yeah. They locked mentally disabled children in closets. They, they cyber bullied. They used someone as a human shield in front of a mad dog. They just, they did horrible, selfish things and then Zendaya. Admits that she planned but did not execute a school shooting when she was 15. Boop, the tenor changes. Everybody freaks out. Alana Ham, who plays Rachel, the best friend, really freaks out and everything becomes a complete disaster. Charlie starts to think, who is this woman? I actually know nothing about her. I thought it was so cute that she's deaf in one ear, and I love to whisper sweet nothings and see if she can hear any of them. Oh damn. Actually, she blew out her eardrum while firing her father's rifle in the swamps of Louisiana to prepare to commit mass murder. Vinson Cunningham: Yes. Alex Schwartz: And yet I somehow, inconceivably am going to go through with this wedding. And meanwhile, Zendaya is all is very flummoxed. She's just flummoxed. Here I am. I thought my life was going one way. Now this thing from the past has come out to haunt me. It's escaped what goes on. And so all of this culminates in a classic. Wedding from hell Naomi Fry: masterful, Alex, Alex Schwartz: that's, that's what I got from it. And I have much more to say, Naomi Fry: okay, what, what did we think, Alex? I'm, I'm getting the sense that you might not have liked this movie, but maybe, maybe let's, let's, let's go to Vincent. Yeah, Alex Schwartz: yeah, yeah. Vinson Cunningham: It's, it's a really. Interesting film. It's got a playful texture. Right? I think one of the things to, to point out, playful is a Naomi Fry: good word. Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: The editing is full of all of these, uh, red herrings, almost counterfactual stems that, uh, you can see one character ideating how they wish something that they said was received and is actually received in a different way. All these flashes backwards and forwards to moments in the relationship that might have been tells. Um, first of all, I have questions, first of all. Okay. Naomi Fry: Okay. Vinson Cunningham: No one, no matter how drunk would ever tell anybody this. Number one. Number two. Um, what about, it's the best thing I did. What about I stopped a mass shooting? Naomi Fry: Correct. Vinson Cunningham: I stopped a mass shooting in its tracks. Naomi Fry: By not doing it Vinson Cunningham: by. Yes. Well, what, what if, what if I don't have to put that clause in there? What if I just, oh, what if I just convinced somebody myself not to shoot up a school? Um. Alana Hai who I love. I love her music. I, I think she's a pretty good actress. Um. The judge, she's the one who admits to putting a kid in a, Naomi Fry: she's the worst. Vinson Cunningham: She, she's the one who put the person in the closet and left them there seemingly overnight locked in a closet, not telling a single adult what she has done. Okay, Alana Heim, get off of your high horse, number one. Um, and then, and then we have the brooding figure of pattinson sort of looking, not unlike a vampire, trying not to. Uh, eat his beloved. You know, he's got the same kind of, I don't know, clenched body, uh, posture as he does in the, uh, what's the name of that series? Twilight In the Twilight Series. Naomi Fry: What's the name of Vinson Cunningham: that Naomi Fry: series? Um, he pretends, he pretends we know Vinson Cunningham: none. Nonetheless. I do. I, IWI will see this movie again and I kind of enjoyed it. Woo. Partially. This is what I like about it. Naomi Fry: Okay. Vinson Cunningham: We are entering the absolutely. White hot prime of Zendaya's career. And here's the thing, she is always, she is very often in a situation just like this one. Naomi Fry: What do you Vinson Cunningham: mean? In the middle of some sort of, uh, either erotic or, uh, romantic entanglement that makes her character more, uh, a kind of symbol or a signifier. Than a real person. Yes. But, but weirdly, in an interesting way, think about challengers, how she's just in the middle of that, the two rival friend rivals, uh, United not only by their love of tennis, but by their love of this same woman. Yeah. Think of the 2021 Sam Levinson film. Malcolm and Marie, she and John David Washington are, are the couple in that he's a filmmaker. She's upset that he won an award but didn't thank her because his movie is about this young addict that, um, is found by another character. Turns out that was, she was an addict before they got together, and she was like rehabilitated through the form of their relationship. She's always someone who's in a romantic situation and her position in that relationship becomes. Like a, a cap all caps symbol for a larger mm-hmm. Social thing. She's a really talented actor in what? In that she can kind of play these screens. In this film, we get a sense of how this is really tearing everyone else apart, but really we see her so much from the outside, which I think might be a demerit. Toward the film, but it is totally, I think I was watching Zendaya the whole time being like, I'm glad to be watching this because I can't take my eyes off her character whenever she's there, even though she's a total cipher. Cipher. Alex Schwartz: Vincent, this is a fascinating take because I agree with everything you're saying, and I just conclude I want so much more for her. I want, I want her to be able, yeah. To play a fully embodied person. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: Who is real. Okay. I want so much more than what the drama could give us. Naomi Fry: Okay. Arguably this is not a movie about fully embodied characters. I actually thought, you know, Zendaya perhaps. The most beautiful woman right now that we have in the world. We Alex Schwartz: have, Naomi Fry: I mean, yeah, not that I've seen every single person in the world. Alex Schwartz: If you would like to contest this, send your headshot to the male, but@newyorker.com. Vinson Cunningham: Subject line Hotter than Zendayal Naomi Fry: than, than exactly an absolute. I don't know what Vinson: she pops off the screen, it's just Naomi Fry:she pops off the screen. She is absolutely gorgeous. She is likable. I actually don't think her performance in this movie is that great. Mm-hmm. But maybe again, it's, it is the fault. Of the role. I actually thought Pattinson was good. Mm-hmm. I, I really liked him. But in general, when we're talking about embodiment and depth and kind of like, you want more for her, you know, this is not the movie in which that will happen, and I think that's okay. Like, I enjoy this movie. I thought it was a slight and fun and funny and very good looking exercise. You know, when I say exercise, I don't mean even to undercut it. Like I don't, but it's almost like, um, like a game, you know, or like a, a kind of a diagram of like, here is like, what if, you know, here is like a situation. What if this happens? Wouldn't that be crazy? And then like, how would people react? Like let's take this as far as it might go. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: Um, and. On that level, I thought it was successful and enjoyable. I am not looking for answers or I, I think we shouldn't, or we can't look for answers about like, what does it mean to be married right now? I mean, it is an example of like. Oh, I actually know nothing about this person that I'm about to marry. You know? I know. I don't know even, because of course when she does tell him that she planned this, you know, mass murder, it's, she tells him like I was a reject. You know, I was a reject and, and indeed there are flashbacks to her past in high school and it's like, oh, he knows nothing about her. Like, imagine if this was one's origin story, not even, even barring the, the No, of course the killing part of it. It's almost like a parable, right? It's, it's not like. A realistic engagement with an actual relationship. Alex Schwartz: I mean, my, my issue with it, I had a great time at the theater. I think this is not a good film. Mm-hmm. And that's sometimes my, my, my favorite viewing experiences are those where I'm like, hooting and hollering and then I'm like, Nope, actually I think it's very bad for these reasons. Mm-hmm. Nomi, I think the big point for me about this movie as far as marriage goes, is what you're bringing up. The lack of knowledge. Mm-hmm. The total lack of knowledge between two people who are theoretically prepared to commit the rest of their lives to one another, who seem to have no knowledge of one another's families, one another's backgrounds, um, even high school photos, things like this. Uh, but I think a big part of. Marriage and marriage depiction. There we go. And marriage depiction is about change and it's about how much can you stand to change and how much can you tolerate change in someone. Mm-hmm. Whose life you've hitched yours to. Mm-hmm. And when those changes come over time, maybe it's great when they come, boom, all at once. It can rock the whole boat. And that's what I see going on in the drama. I don't think it's explored in an interesting way particularly, but I also see it going on all over the culture. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: Right. So let's, maybe, let's turn now from the drama and this topic of kind of like zero to one, like, you know, black and white kind of change of like, oh, who is this person that I've hitched my, my wagon Alex Schwartz: mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: To, uh, this, its total stranger. We can talk about some other texts where this happens, and one of them is actually titled Strangers by Bell Burden, which came out. A couple months ago. Speaker 5: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: And it's a memoir based on a modern love column mm-hmm. That was published in the Times in 2023. And it has become a phenomenal success. Bestselling, uh, we have just learned that it's gonna become a movie. Gwyneth Paltrow is gonna play the, the author and the protagonist Bell Burden. And let's talk a little bit about this, this, uh, book, because really. So many people, and especially women in my cohort, I've found that have read it. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Strangers is the kind of book that, of course men, it would be great if men read, but women will read it by the drove and mm-hmm. And we have, and we are essentially, it's bell burden, uh, writes about being a young woman swept up in. A fast moving, sweep you off your feet kind of romance. When she was a young, professional woman working at a law firm gets married V in very short order, and they have a great marriage that goes on for many, many years, produces three children, the pandemic hits, they decamp from their lovely Tribeca apartment to their lovely home in Martha's Vineyard, and within a week of quarantine, it is revealed that the husband, Alex Schwartz: Has in fact been having an affair. And after initially seeming to be contrite and concerned about this, the husband says, in fact, I'm just gonna leave you and I'm gonna leave not only you, but our whole family. Don’t want to do it anymore, be a husband anymore, be a dad anymore, I’m out. It's a sense of who are you? I don't know you. You have built this family with me. You have, uh. In, you know, taking the kids on these activities, you have enjoyed them, you have provided for them, you've done the same for me, and you can just walk away and I'll never know why. I think the, the big preoccupation of this book is not knowing why, and that that is, I really think that's getting to the heart of where our culture is at. This question of why, who are you and what if? I can't know. It's the same thing with the drama. Yeah. I'm thinking of it also with. I'm sorry, I'm gonna bring up something very dark here, but with the Giselle Pelico story. Naomi Fry: Yeah, Alex Schwartz: absolutely. Gi, gi Pelico, of course. The, um, this French woman who was discovered had been serially raped by her husband and by other anonymous men who he had found on the internet and recruited to rape her while she was. Asleep because he had drugged her, um, who had a very, very well covered public, notably public trial in France was very, very visible as the victim in this case and as the heroine of this case and who's just come out with this book, A Hy to Life shame has to change sides. The most horrific form of not knowing. And I think just to think of her case as a cultural lightning rod, which it certainly was in France, and I think to an extent was in the United States too. There's this question of how could it have happened to her? Could it happened to, to me, to anyone. That's the horror story aspect. The fear aspect. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Vincent, did you, have you followed any of that case? Vinson Cunningham: I've just followed the, the case, and I think for me the, the aspect of Revelation. When it comes to marriage, therefore is twofold, right? It's you as a participant in the marriage, one of the members of the marriage can figure out much too late that your spouse is in the case of Pelico, an absolute sociopathic monster. But also there's the aspect of revelation that happens. Publicly because marriage is it seems to me, I mean I guess philosophically, they’re these strangely very public, this is why we inaugurate them in front of other people, the whole spectacle of them, as far as other people are concerned, is how we look and comport ourselves and treat ourselves and treat each other that is in public. Um, but there is such, and this is why marriages can become, not only can become prisons, but historically war prisons for generations and generations of women. Um, so much of it is still conducted in private that when. In this case, a horrifying aspect of the marriage comes out. It so radically changes and threatens our notions, not just of this marriage but of marriage in general. Naomi Fry: When we're back, is the culture totally disenchanted with married life and if so, what else is there? Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back. :: MIDROLL :: Alex Schwartz: Vincent, you got me thinking when you were talking just now about the pre assumptions of marriage. Mm-hmm. Like the old ways of marriage, about woman as property to man. Mm-hmm. Which was the condition for a very long time. Uh, and it got me thinking about how we even got to our. Current ideas of romantic partnership in marriage and I credit slash blame the 19th century. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Naomi Fry: Shout out 19th century. Alex Schwartz: Shout out to the long 19th century for this idea that marriage is not just a pact between two families and mutually advantageous decision made to further the line, but also that people are supposed to find love and romance and sexual fulfillment all wrapped up into this. Economic bundle with marriage and as my support I have on my lap, two of my favorite friends, Madam Bovary by Gustav Lebert and Parallel Lives, Phyllis Rose's. Wonderful study of five Victorian marriages. Have you guys read this book, parallel Lives? Yes. Yes. My dear Critic friends Vinson Cunningham: I've read, I've read the first half of it. Naomi Fry: Well, I read the whole thing Alex Schwartz: well, I watched seven episodes of Beef two Vinson Cunningham: Uhhuh. Alex Schwartz: This is a great book and it's a wonderful book, and it has shockingly a great deal to say to our condition, I think in the 21st century, the argument that Phyllis Rose is making is that marriage is a political experience and it's the primary political experience that most people will have. It is about. Balancing of power. It is of course about power between genders, but it's about the, the family and the marriage as a body politic in which two people are jockeying and negotiating and things are frankly set up to not work more than they're set up to work. Vinson Cunningham: Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: I think we have this kind of fantasy idea. Of marriage as a time where everyone knew their place, the man was the center, and the woman's job was to just help the man fulfill whatever had to be done. And one thing that I love about the book Parallel Lives is that it shows us that that was really never satisfying for anyone. And I think that a lot of these ideas that we have now about freedom, personal freedom, sexual freedom. We're trying to reconcile them with marriage. And I think we're in a place where we're trying to make marriage seem more like a positive choice. Mm-hmm. Rather than an obvious obligation. And so in a way, it's a fascinating fiction that those who get married subscribe to hoping that the fiction becomes true. And Phyllis Rose has a great line about reading marriage, like you can read a novel. Um, and I think that's true in a lot of these cases too, that. Life is a kind of fiction writing. Yeah. You are making it up as you go along. And who you are at the start of a marriage is not gonna be who you are at the middle and who you're at the end. And yet that keeps coming like such a rude shock to us. Yeah. It's such a rude shock. Yeah. That we get great literature, movies, TV shows. Albums. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: From the shock of discovering that the other person's not who you thought they were and that you're not who you thought you were, either. Vinson Cunningham: One way to articulate that, you know. In this and part of this long renegotiation that to your point, has its early tremors in the 19th century has a, some pretty big explosion in the middle of the 20th, um, uh, with the onset of modern feminism and, and still continues today. Part of that trajectory is okay if we acknowledge that it can't just be an economic situation, a situation of. Bondage really. Um, and yet it still carries, at least in its sort of outward form, those traces. It still is a contract. Um, but it's also supposed to be this place of personal revelation. I mean, this is sometimes the, the characteristic of love, especially in fiction. Okay. Yeah, there's public revelation. What others learn about you through the fact that you're married. There is. Intra marital revelation, what I learn about the other. But there's also, um, I love how you say marriage is a fiction because like an artwork, it has many forms that present themselves to us and through these forms, their generality, the specificity of ourselves and the the self of the other. Uh, we're supposed to learn something about ourselves too. I mean. For me, the great passage, the great moment in, uh, Madame Bovary is, um. The opera where, you know, Emma goes to the opera and she's like, reawakened by the opera, sees Leon, the, uh, the sort of romantic rival of her husband is like, you know what? I have to have an affair. You know, that romance is like art in that it has moments of cathartic learning. Naomi Fry: Mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: And if we're supposed to do that at the same time as we're in a contract, that's a lot. Of weight for any one institution, personal, privately, publicly, aesthetically to bear. Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Naomi Fry: And this leads me. To the question of, okay, what if we split the difference, right? You present an Emma Boveri, who's, you know, in this unsatisfying relationship with Charles Boveri and is awakened to the possibilities that might lie outside of marriage, and of course it's an illicit affair. Mm-hmm. There was no such thing as polyamory. There was no such thing as, you know, open marriage. Uh, as a kind of like, um, legitimate cultural choice. Mm-hmm. Let's say, uh, at least not in Emma bore's world. And today, of course, things are different it’s like you can’t leave your house without hearing of someone being polyamorous. Or having an open marriage. Alex Schwartz: you can’t even stay in your house without hearing of it. Naomi Fry: Absolutely. And we come to examples. For instance, like the writer Lindy West, right. Who recently. Uh, published a memoir called Adult Braces, which raised a big discourse around it that had to do with what happens when you are married. You as Lindy. Are not interested in polyamory, not interested in an open marriage. You wanna be monogamous with your husband, but your husband wants something different. And you can take it or leave it, and the book ends up. Being about the opening of a relationship to include this other partner, another girlfriend, uh, and the cohabiting of this throuple, essentially, right? Yes. And why has this, why has this conversation become so. Heated online about this book? What, what can, can, who Alex Schwartz: can, what a great question. Even as I was engaging with the heatedness of it, I also was wondering Vinson Cunningham: why. Alex Schwartz: Yeah, why, um, I think part of it has to do with that Lindy West, for those who are listening and don't know, is a very public figure has been, uh, kind of vocal memoirist, written a lot about, um, the body, body identity, fatness and feminism, and. Has made her life very public in the way of many female writers, especially from that period who wrote a lot online. She was part of the early days of Jezebel and, and, um, you know, other such websites. and I think, again, it has to do with this question of revelation. This thing that everyone is picking on is this idea that the ethics, I think when people talk about the ethics of polyamory, there's. All this conversation that goes into, um, everything being consensual, everything being above board, everything being, being agreed upon. It is the contract of contracts. It's like. More contractual than a marriage contract. Mm-hmm. For everything to operate as it should. Vinson Cunningham: Well, it's interesting, obviously like you know. Polyamory has been a discourse, you know, they were on wave what seven of polyamory discourse of over the past decade or so. but it's interesting. Here we have, um, to your point, Lindy West is a very public writer and a very straightforward political writer. And it's interesting you mentioned Phyllis Rose's contention that all marriage is political, and in fact it is for most of us, the primary political experience. And it almost seems that that observation has come full circle where what kind of romantic entanglement one, uh, enters. Is, at least for some segment of people, um, the expression par excellence of your politics. Mm. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: You know, a lot of the, a lot of the book, Naomi Fry: mm-hmm. Vinson Cunningham: Um, excerpts are run. You don't even need to read the book to, to see these passages. You go on Twitter, xgo on threads, go on wherever you want. Um, part of the dialectic of, uh, arriving at this arrangement is, um, the husband, uh, Aham saying. Well, you know, actually monogamy is a little bit, he's a, he's a, um. A black gentleman, uh, is a little bit like ownership, which, you know, Naomi Fry: you're a white woman, you own, you wanna own me, and so you Alex Schwartz: Yeah. Extraordinarily. It wasn't implied that it was the woman who was the one, Vinson Cunningham: right. Generally exactly. Like, Alex Schwartz: yes. Vinson Cunningham: So, you know, chilling listeners, you do it that way. You will, I'm gonna. I'm, I'm exercising extreme, extreme, uh, restraint because of it's chilling, this being like a, a real person who's busy, but yeah. Chilling argument. Right. And part of the reason that, uh, west Reasons herself and, and, and it really is a, maybe the book, part of the book, at least it's a road trip physically, but it's also a road trip of reasoning oneself toward an arrangement that one does not originally want to be in. Um, part of that reasoning is explicitly political. It's like, uh. Yeah. How can I be a progressive if I can't understand this? Naomi Fry: Yeah. Vinson Cunningham: Um, not only on the level of the emotions, but on the sort of formal palette that is marriage, which okay, fine. Um, but it really is interesting to see that this political dimension of marriage has migrated from a descriptive fact to a kind of prescriptive, uh, arrangement. That marriage becomes the place where we show what we believe. Naomi Fry: Yeah. And also just in general, I mean, I think it, it bears mentioning this is, this is not, um, just something obviously that's happening on the level of culture in the sense of, on the level of fiction. I mean, I know we said that actual marriages are also fiction, but these are things that statistically have been happening. According to Pew, the US marriage rate hit 140 year low. In 2019 and is never fully bounded. People are not looking to marriage necessarily as much as they used to, as the kind of pinnacle of, of adult life. You know, thinking about this statistic about kind of marriage losing its luster, it's kind of like capability as a solution mm-hmm. For people in their lives. It made me think about this like, um. I'm, I'm off Instagram currently, but when I was still on Instagram, and I'm sure on TikTok as well, a kind of popular reel that would keep coming up for me, like a kind of like influencer reel would be like Friday night as an unmarried, middle aged woman with no friends. Alex Schwartz: Oh my god. With no friends. Naomi Fry: Yes. Alex Schwartz: Where are the friends? Naomi Fry: I don't know where the friends are. Mm-hmm. But basically, mm-hmm. It, it would be like, you know, it was like a get, get it. It wasn't a get ready with me. It would, it was, it was like, get like unready with me. Right. It's like I come home from work. I like do my skincare routine. I watch my shows. Um, I'll, I'll pull one up. Alex Schwartz: I mean, the has no friends Naomi Fry: is the Alex Schwartz: part I'm struggling. Naomi Fry: PV we're married. Part is and child-free girl that lives alone and has no friends. So this is what your Friday night looks and sounds like. 176,000 likes. Okay? Mm-hmm. Alex Schwartz: Let's have a little look. CLIP: Instagram reel Naomi Fry: She's entering her clean, quiet, peaceful apartment for a Cozy Night Inn. She ran to the store afterward to get some ingredients for dinner. Friday night is pizza night. Oh, everything is kind of clean and cozy. She's taking out the pizza from the box, slipping it in the clean oven. People ask if I miss being more social. Honestly, I really have no interest in dating, Oh my God. Ate dinner while watching Midwest Safety Body Camp videos on YouTube. I've seen YouTube. Okay. Alex has seen enough. I've Alex Schwartz: seen enough. Naomi Fry: Everything is just so as a solitary person, is basically the idea. No one can impinge no one is impinging on what I wanna do when I get home from work. And it can be obviously a little depressing in some ways but in other ways, and I look at the comments and it’s like damn, that looks good, love me some me time, oh god, mom of three here, if only my husband could go on a vacation and I could do this, whatever. The notion that you are an island to yourself, and what might once have counted as like a pathetic sad cat lady existence, is now for some people at least, the pinnacle of living, of existence as a modern person. Woman, I guess, I’ve seen this with women I haven’t seen this wiht men. Alex Schwartz: Here's what I wanna say about this. Naomi Fry: Yeah. Alex Schwartz: Much like the left loves to express horror at the Trad wife phenomenon. The right loves to express horror at this phenomenon. And we have these two extremes of, I don't find the childlessness unmarried thing in extreme. I find no friends, no. Vinson Cunningham: Whatcha talking about? Alex Schwartz: Well, yeah, like no social connection to be extreme. Much as I find having 10 children and saying I wanna live in submission to my husband's will to be rather extreme. So we have, if marriage, we're talking about marriage as a fiction that we make as we go along and as a political experience. Both of those things. Are in crisis in the way that like many things in our culture are in crisis, in the culture war sense with two opposing polls pushing and pulling, but also in the middle. You've got a lot of people, if we're trying to figure out a new way forward, whether that's in a, you know, we got a piece of paper and they're just two of us, or whether it's in an expanded. Polyamory situation, whatever it is, people are trying to reimagine this. Mm-hmm. For themselves, because you're only living your own experience in the larger cultural context. You have to reimagine it for yourself. And what this really makes me think of is the bravery of the imagination. To imagine any kind of future for yourself at all. Naomi Fry: I love that, Alex Schwartz: the bravery of the imagination, and it makes me think back to the 19th century. May I share something with you guys from one of my favorite stories in parallel lives? Naomi Fry: Please. Alex Schwartz: Please. Okay, So, the thing that I love in this, I mean, there's so many things I love in this book, but one is the story of George Elliot, whose name is Marianne Evans, and George, uh, Henry Lewis fell in love with one another. Um, but one thing that I really like about this is later. Elliot marries someone else. She marries someone who's 20 years younger. Naomi Fry: Oh yes. Alex Schwartz: Than she is. Naomi Fry: Yes. Alex Schwartz: Super unconventional. This is after Louis had died. I think people thought this was utterly bizarre. And there is a quote here from someone about this marriage, uh, where she says, you see, I know all of love is so different than I do not see it unnatural to love in new ways. And I think that's kind of it. Naomi Fry: Yay. Alex Schwartz: Love in the old ways. Love in the new ways, but we've gotta recenter the love part of it, maybe. Mm. Naomi Fry: I love that. Vinson Cunningham: Yeah. it strikes me that love. Like the things that we have likened it to art and politics is something that is conditioned by time and lives in time, that, you know, what is beautiful to us in one age is not beautiful to us in another. I mean, it's for me, like, you know, I'm, I don't wanna be all the things around polyamory, it's like too many emails, too many. It's like, it doesn't, it's like it's the who Naomi Fry: has the patience? Vinson Cunningham: I'm not saying it's, I'm not saying it too. Naomi Fry: Yeah. No, Vinson Cunningham: to put it down, but to each zone. My my point is that it doesn't appeal to me aesthetically. And, and one way to ask, be asking these questions over and over again. It's like, what seems beautiful to me? Naomi Fry: This has been critics at large. Alex Barish is our consulting editor, and Rhianne Corby is our senior producer. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kuman. And we add engineering help today for PR Bandi with Music by Alexis Quadro. You can listen to all of our episodes anytime at new yorker.com/critics.