Paul Cantor on the Dark Side of the American Dream

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2019

⏱️ 96 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“[America], which promises freedom, can’t guarantee that freedom won’t be misused.” So argues Paul Cantor in our new Conversation. Drawing on his new book "Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream: Con Men, Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies," Cantor explains how a country that offers a fresh start to everyone inevitably produces many false starts and opportunities for con men, along with tragic examples of freedom misused and talent thwarted. Cantor traces this theme through American popular culture, focusing on Mark Twain’s "Huckleberry Finn," Francis Ford Coppola’s "Godfather" movies, and Vince Gilligan’s "Breaking Bad." These works, Cantor argues, exemplify what he calls the “dark side of the American dream.” This is a must-see Conversation for anyone interested in American culture and ideas.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the I am Bill Crystal.
0:15.0	I am Bill Crystal. Welcome to Conversations and welcome back to Paul Cantor.
0:19.0	Pleasure be here.
0:21.0	With whom I've conversed on a variety of subjects from Shakespeare to other literature to
0:27.0	popular culture I think twice before and now again you've written of course
0:31.6	extensively on popular culture Gilligan
0:33.7	unbound in 2001 I think it was and then 2012 was that liberty and
0:38.6	uh... invisible hand in popular culture liberty versus authority, American Film and TV.
0:44.0	Excellent book.
0:44.6	I reckon on both, and the recently Shakespeare's Roman plays, Roman trilogy.
0:48.4	Yes.
0:49.4	People need to read that too, so.
0:51.1	But first they can listen to this conversation.
0:52.8	So this is about a forthcoming, well, based on a forthcoming book of yours, which I've had the pleasure of reading in manuscript,
0:59.0	extremely impressive, a huge bestseller, to make all those other, you know, Jack Reacher novels and so forth,
1:08.9	you know, fade into the sunset by comparison, but it deserves to be though really and you read actually two the
1:14.3	most substantial chapters which we'll talk about are on very popular
1:19.7	parts of popular culture right breaking bad and the godfather that's right extremely famous but of Popular
1:23.0	that's right extremely famous but so how how'd you come to write the book what's the book about and then we'll talk about
1:29.1	about Godfather and breaking bad okay it's called pop culture on the dark side of the American dream.
1:35.7	As you know, I'm a big fan of spontaneous order and so I generally let my books evolve.
1:41.3	This wasn't planned ahead of time. I write essays, publish them, and then begin
	...

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