By Kai-Arne Zimny

Yes, ok. So the film is twelve years old? It’s fun­ny and clever, and it fea­tures some of the best actors and actress­es Hol­ly­wood has to offer. (How often do you get to see Emma Thomp­son, Dustin Hoff­man, Mag­gie Gyl­len­hal, and Queen Lat­i­fah in one sin­gle movie?) In short: Stranger Than Fic­tion is a clas­sic. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it’s a clas­sic not many peo­ple know. Well, we’re going to change this now.

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By Michaela Keck

After the gen­er­al intro­duc­tion to Hochschild’s trea­tise last week, let us now pur­sue a deep­er analy­sis. The “deep sto­ry” of the Tea Par­ty move­ment in red states is a sto­ry through which its advo­cates pur­sue an “emo­tion­al self-inter­est” (in addi­tion to an eco­nom­ic self-inter­est) as Hochschild empha­sizes. Iron­i­cal­ly, while her inter­vie­wees adamant­ly refuse to par­tic­i­pate in what they con­sid­er a cul­ture of vic­tim­iza­tion – mean­ing a cul­ture that seeks to rem­e­dy sys­temic inequal­i­ties – pop­ulist white male politi­cians, such as Don­ald Trump, nev­er­the­less pro­vide them exact­ly with those empow­er­ing moments of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics that they reject in women, minori­ties, or refugees. As Hochschild puts it in her con­clu­sion, although “vic­tims” would be “the last word my Louisiana Tea Par­ty friends would apply to them­selves,” they are “sac­ri­fi­cial lambs to the entire Amer­i­can indus­tri­al sys­tem.” Hochschild’s use of qua­si-reli­gious terms is telling. She ascribes to Trump’s ral­lies a reli­gious, cul­tic qual­i­ty which, through invo­ca­tions of “dom­i­nance, brava­do, clar­i­ty, nation­al pride, and per­son­al uplift,” trans­forms the crowd’s sense of shame and alien­ation into feel­ings of ela­tion and belong­ing. These con­clud­ing obser­va­tions of Strangers in Their Own Land show the deeply trou­bling aspects of the Tea Par­ty, most of all the manip­u­la­tion of the mass­es through the promise of uplift, uni­ty, and pow­er in a way that uncan­ni­ly resem­bles extrem­ist, fas­cist ideologies.

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By Michaela Keck

In Jan­u­ary 2017, I lis­tened to an inter­view with UC Berke­ley soci­ol­o­gist Arlie Rus­sell Hochschild on Nation­al Pub­lic Radio about her New York Times best­seller. But it was not until a friend of mine rec­om­mend­ed Strangers in Their Own Land that I actu­al­ly read it. My friend com­mend­ed the book less for a more informed under­stand­ing of the rise of the Tea Par­ty and – by impli­ca­tion Trump – but rather for pro­vid­ing an empa­thet­ic, humane per­spec­tive of the sup­port­ers of the Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tive par­ty, espe­cial­ly its pop­ulist right wing.

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By Kai-Arne Zimny

Imag­ine you get home and see a bunch of your friends, let’s say friends whose taste in films and shows you usu­al­ly trust, watch­ing a show. A real­ly weird car­toon show you can’t make any sense of, because, let’s say, one of the show’s con­stant­ly burp­ing char­ac­ters turned him­self into a talk­ing pick­le just to avoid a fam­i­ly coun­sel­ing ses­sion. And sud­den­ly the talk­ing pick­le calls itself “Pick­le Rick” and slaugh­ters giant rats in the sew­er. You see your friends’ faces, their eyes fixed on the screen. Heart­felt laugh­ter alter­nates with qui­et curios­i­ty. “In which world is this an actu­al show?!” you may ask your­self before you decide to sit down and give it a try… Read more »