What Is Cringecore, and Why Is It Everywhere?

Critics at Large | The New Yorker

The New Yorker

Society & Culture

4.4 • 679 Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2023

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In the inaugural episode of The New Yorker’s new culture podcast, the staff writers Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz make sense of an emerging trend in the world of television: a new genre of cringe comedy that collapses the gap between reality and artifice in ways that make the viewer deeply uncomfortable. “As a shorthand, I’ve just simply started calling it ‘cringecore,’ ” Schwartz says, referring to shows such as Nathan Fielder’s “Nathan for You” and “The Rehearsal,” and the docuseries “How To with John Wilson.” What defines these projects, and what draws viewers to them? One theory: at a time when so many of our preferences, relationships, and experiences are mediated by algorithm, these shows reflect a deep skepticism of reality itself. “I feel that reality in our culture is like the last undiscovered tribe of the Amazon,” Schwartz says. “We’ll never make contact with it again.”

New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow Critics at Large wherever you get your podcasts.

Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	I'm Nomi Fry.
0:05.9	I'm Vincent Cunningham.
0:07.1	I'm Alex Schwartz, and this is Critics at Large, a new podcast from The New Yorker, where we make
0:12.3	sense of what's going on right now in the culture and how we got here.
0:19.9	We are all critics at the New Yorker, and each week on the show, the three of us are going to talk about one big idea that's showing up across our culture right now.
0:27.6	You know, I think so often it can feel like big moments in the culture just come out of nowhere, like they appear all of a sudden.
0:34.6	We're left wondering how we got to where we are.
0:38.2	So the point of this show, our idea, is to make sense of that, to connect the dots,
0:42.8	to try to look across mediums, across genres, to figure out how these ideas have gotten to us and why they're here.
0:50.0	And then to ask, how our culture looks different on the other side.
0:53.9	So, hello. Hi, guys. Hi, Alex. culture looks different on the other side. So, hello.
0:55.7	Hi, guys.
0:56.6	Hi, Alex.
0:57.5	Hey.
0:58.0	Let's get two.
0:58.6	Let's do this.
0:59.9	So today, I want to talk about a trend that I've started to notice on TV.
1:03.9	And perhaps I'm not alone here, which is this, this strain of TV that blends comedy and reality television in ways that seem formulated to make us, the viewers, just deeply uncomfortable.
1:17.7	It's like, you know, I'll turn on the TV and there will be this new show that everybody is loving.
1:22.1	And I start to watch it.
1:23.7	And the feeling in me is that feeling of terrified revulsion.
1:27.8	Oh, God, here we are again.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New Yorker, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New Yorker and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.