Know Your Enemy
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"Succession," "Extrapolations," and TV Writing Today (w/ Dorothy Fortenberry and Will Arbery)
🕑 Added 2023-05-04 22:42:46 +0000 UTCWith the Writers Guild of America strike underway, the plight of television writers—especially their treatment in the age of streaming and artificial intelligence—is garnering new, and overdue, attention. Matt and Sam are joined by two friends of the podcast, Will Arbery and Dorothy Fortenberry, who write for major television shows: Will is a writer for HBO's Succession, and Dorothy for Apple TV+'s Extrapolations. They discuss how they write about political topics and themes, such as rightwing political candidates or the effects of climate change, in these fraught times, when the demands of good art can seem in tension with a simplistic and moralistic culture. Also discussed: parents, children, and families, now and in the coming climate crisis; how and whether people can change; and, of course, the WGA strike and why it matters.
Sources Cited:
Michael Schulman, "Why Are TV Writers So Miserable," The New Yorker, Apr 29, 2023
Alex Press, "TV Writers Say They’re Striking to Stop the Destruction of Their Profession," Jacobin, May 3, 2023.
Sam Adler-Bell, "Succession's Repetition Compulsion," The Nation, Nov 10, 2021.
Pope Francis, Laudato si’ (“On Care for Our Common Home”), May 2015
Listen to previous Know Your Enemy episodes with these guests:
"We Can Be Heroes" (w/ Will Arbery), November 11, 2019
"Suburban Woman" (w/ Dorothy Fortenberry), October 29, 2020
"Living at the End of Our World" (w/ Daniel Sherrell & Dorothy Fortenberry), September 2, 2021
Comments
Quinn Brunk
I thought that she was clearly making a joke about Fox News climate change denial.
Steve Hall
Well maybe, and that’s certainly true about right-wing cable news. But, Dorothy specifically referred to a show that had been renewed every year for 20 years. That doesn’t sound like right-wing cable news to me! (If only right-wing news was one show for the last 20 years.) I did a little internet searching….was she referring to South Park and the Al Gore kerfuffle?
drizzly_november
I think she's jokingly referring to the whole ecosystem of right-wing cable news.
Steve Hall
What is the 20-year TV show that sows climate skepticism? I listed to that segment twice, and if the name was mentioned I missed it. Thanks in advance!
Aric Rosenveldt
This episode convinced me to start watching Succession so shoutout to Will for that one
-thundergolfer-
Cool to hear that Will is getting that 💰💰 at HBO. I moved to NYC too late to see Heroes of the Fourth Turning, still wish I could see it.
Dan
It seemed to me that in both shows there is a kind of blessedness either by way of insane wealth and power or complete destruction of the world and all it's alienating institutions. It is the place where people can have access to their family again. It is a kind wish fulfillment that is delusional and is a clear escape from and rejection of the institutions that drive human flushing more than the institution of the family. The best example I have seen lately is in the Last of us, where Pedro Pascal literally choses his adopted daughter's life over the potential salvation of humanity. It was a divisive ending to a show that was really an odyssey of cynical and incongruent takes on human's prospects to be able to form institutions to deal with apocalyptic change. I haven't seen Extrapolations, but there is a theme about family that I have seen in Succession and Last of Us, that is delusional it's longing for some vague realism wrought through family togetherness. What Sam and Dorothy referred to as 'witness'. Since we were born we have been graded, measured, evaluated then passed over or accepted into the next level of evaluation-- does that speak more to the preciousness of family or the inhumanness of the institutions that are designed to engender human flourishing? Can people that close to us, in our family, that involved with in the same struggles for love and vindication as us really witness us? Our families were always the fallback throughout our as we navigated institutions, or at least we think, they should of have been. Does that mean that they are the only ones who can interpret us and understand us in the face of alienating/flailing institutions? Is that enough for us to flourish, or to overcome? No. It is a reaction to the fickleness of intuitions to dehumanize and isolate people either through economic pressure or through the physical structure of our communities, roads and cities.
Kori Sparks
In S3 when Shiv says about one candidate, “He’s a neocon pretending to be a paleocon”… 🙌🏻🙌🏻 Praise to KYE for magnifying the rich experience of Succession fandom
David Glenn
That was a total delight. Carried me through an hour of laundry-sorting and pot-washing.
