American Tricon
Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen
PRX
4.6 • 675 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 2017
⏱️ 51 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, a triple header from the series American Icons, which focuses on works of art that changed the way we think about America.
First is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter”: his 1850 novel about a woman being shamed for having an affair. Anna Sale produced this Icon segment in 2013, before starting her hit podcast Death, Sex and Money. Just four years later, her interpretation of the classic novel resonates very differently in 2017, as the country grapples with how to define consent and sexual misconduct.
Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes,” on the other hand, celebrates the opposite tendency in American culture: the devil-may-care slide towards looser morals. And in “Untitled Film Stills,” Cindy Sherman captured the way that being a woman—or maybe being a person—is just playing a role.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | from PRX |
| 0:03.4 | Studio 360's American Icons project is made possible in part by a grant from the National |
| 0:11.3 | Endowment for the Humanities, Great Ideas, Brought to Life, and by an award from the National |
| 0:16.9 | Endowment for the Arts, Artworks. |
| 0:19.9 | Studio 360. |
| 0:23.8 | On today's show, we are serving up three of our favorite American icon segments. |
| 0:30.8 | And to begin, it's Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. |
| 0:34.7 | That, of course, is his 1850 novel about a woman being shamed for getting pregnant |
| 0:41.7 | adulterously. Anna Sale produced that story in 2013, and even though it's only four years old, |
| 0:48.0 | it resonates differently now as the country is engulfed in new stories every day about sexual misconduct, and we are all engaged in new twists and turns in that national conversation. |
| 1:03.4 | Anna is now the host of the excellent podcast, Death, Sex, and Money, and she is on the line with me. |
| 1:09.9 | Hello, Anna. |
| 1:14.0 | Hi, Kurt. Do you remember, a young person when you first read this card a letter? I think I read it in high school. And, |
| 1:19.8 | you know, what I remember at the time was, of course, like, this is a story about the treacherous |
| 1:26.0 | road that women have to navigate about how to be honorable. |
| 1:31.0 | That's sort of what I remember being a young woman reading it at the time was, you know, |
| 1:35.8 | you've got to not get in trouble. You'll be publicly shamed. And if you are publicly |
| 1:39.8 | shamed, you hold the shame alone. And. You don't drag anyone else down with you. |
| 1:45.3 | Right. |
| 1:45.8 | And did you think at the time, if you can recall, like, whoa, those 1640s, that was a tough time. |
| 1:52.1 | Today, there's no shame. |
| 1:53.8 | I don't think I ever thought that. |
... |
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