#94. Obi Wan and Decadence
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
This bonus episode skips the usual banter and personal-updates block and dives straight into two topics. First, the trio picks apart the new Obi-Wan Kenobi trailer for Disney+: Sonny and JVL are openly deflated ("eh," "am I going to have to watch four episodes of this?") while Vic tries to defend his enthusiasm, and all three mock the show for once again being set on Tatooine between Episodes 3 and 4, for recycling the "Duel of the Fates" cue, and for bringing back Ewan McGregor and Joel Edgerton decades later; a tangent runs through the Phantom Menace soundtrack's old MTV Total Request Live run and the Naboo battle's dated green-screen candy colors. Second, and at greater length, Sonny walks JVL and Vic through a BuzzFeed feature by Joseph Bernstein on a decadent, Peter Thiel-funded downtown-New York scene where neo-reactionary and very-online-left figures form a horseshoe coalition against "wokeness," centered on a self-styled cult figure named Trevor Brazil who dies after a drug-fueled party. JVL reads several excerpts aloud with real contempt, calls the whole cast of characters "decadent, terrible people" and "worm food," and argues they're a symptom of societal decline rather than any coherent politics; he then one-ups the group with his own Peter Thiel story, recounting how he once turned down a breakfast summons from Thiel because he "didn't get summoned" by rich people he disagreed with. Sonny pushes back a bit, noting a genuine anti-censoriousness point buried in the piece (and approvingly cites filmmaker John Waters's quote defending "transgressive" institutions), while Vic mostly professes bewilderment at names and jargon he doesn't recognize. No movie reviews or Quadrant grades this episode — it's pure trailer reaction and media-criticism venting.
From the show notes
More Star Wars! Decadence in the arts! The Worst People In The World! This bonus episode has everything.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the Sub-Beacon. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You will easily find us. Obviously, you're here, but please tell your friends and subscribe. Today, we're talking about two things. First, how about that amazing new trailer for that amazing new series on Disney Plus, Obi-Wan Kenobi? I have to tell you, I did not know there was going to be an Obi-Wan.
Sonny00:00:45You're not up on the...
Vic00:00:46No, and now I'm so confused with the timeline after having watched Mandalorian and then Book of Boba Fett. And this is along the same lines, except it's not.
Sonny00:00:58No, it's set between Episodes 3 and Episodes 4. Right, so now we're going back again. Now we're going back because...
JVL00:01:04Because Tatooine is the most important planet in the entire galaxy. Nothing else happens anywhere else.
Sonny00:01:10I have to say, I watched it and I was just like, eh.
Vic00:01:17Isn't it sad? Isn't it sad that this is the reaction? I like Obi-Wan Kenobi.
JVL00:01:22Was that the reaction of it? I like Obi-Wan Kenobi. I like Obi-Wan Kenobi. I like Obi-Wan Kenobi. I like Obi-Wan Kenobi. I like Obi-Wan Kenobi. I said, like, oh, that amazing Obi-Wan trailer, and I thought, ooh, I sort of missed it, I guess. I'll go look at it if everybody likes it.
Sonny00:01:33And I felt the same thing.
JVL00:01:35I just thought, you know what I thought to myself? I thought, oh, am I going to have to watch four episodes of this fucking show? Yeah.
Sonny00:01:40Well, here's the thing, because it does star. I think it's only going to be, like, four or six episodes. It's a mini-series.
Vic00:01:45It's got a major, a major star is attached to it, right? Ewan McGregor rehashing his role from Phantom, you look at Sonny's face, a major star from Phantom. Is Ewan McGregor a major star? Yeah, Trainspotting and Star Wars.
Sonny00:01:59I like Ewan McGregor a lot. I think he's a good actor.
Vic00:02:02I think he's really good. And Moulin Rouge and whatnot. He can sing. He can do this. He can do that.
Sonny00:02:07You're mentioning a lot of movies that weren't huge hits.
Vic00:02:10No, you know, but he was in these movies, and here he is now. Gattaca.
Sonny00:02:16No, that's not him. That's Ethan Hawke. That's Ethan Hawke.
Vic00:02:19Also a good movie.
Sonny00:02:21Ethan Hawke's in Moon Knight. We're going to have to watch four episodes of Moon Knight. Wow. JBL. You excited? You excited for Egyptian Marvel Batman?
Vic00:02:31Okay. Is that DC also? Moon Knight is DC?
Sonny00:02:34No, that's Marvel.
Vic00:02:35No, it's Marvel. Oh, wow. Okay. So here we are.
Sonny00:02:38Moon Knight's actually kind of a cool character.
Vic00:02:40What is happening after Book of Overfed? Isn't there another series?
Sonny00:02:44There's a million series. There's a series until you're dead. Oh, my God. There's a Star Wars series. There's going to be a fucking Star Wars series set on Tatooine every year until you die.
Vic00:02:55And you're going to have to watch all of them. You're going to have to watch all of them for the show. It's the center of the universe.
Sonny00:03:00Every Star Wars movie is coming back to Tatooine. We got to do the Tatooine piece.
Vic00:03:05I do not know what you're doing here in my planet. I wish there was Watto. If Watto was in this, it'd be so much better. I'm so glad you realized. I was like, wait, who was that guy?
JVL00:03:15If they're going to keep going back to Tatooine, couldn't they at least invest in some sets?
Vic00:03:22Right?
Sonny00:03:22I mean, why do they keep doing that?
JVL00:03:25I mean, these green screens that look like they are USA Network movies.
Vic00:03:30Yes.
JVL00:03:30Since they're going to, like, you know, I understand, like, hey, look, we're only doing eight episodes of this thing in Tatooine, and then we're going to be off to some other, you know, planet Zubatawaba after that. Jakku.
Vic00:03:42Jakku, which is unlike Tatooine, by the way. Jakku. Jakku.
Sonny00:03:45The other desert planet.
Vic00:03:47The other desert planet. Very convenient for the set. Can we all agree on the worst part? Of the trailer?
Sonny00:03:56Probably not, but.
JVL00:03:57The recycling of the Duel of the Fates music.
Vic00:03:59Oh, oh, okay. All right. Also. To try to make us feel something. Yes. Now, I was going to say, Obi-Wan with his special binoculars spotting Luke Skywalker on top of the hut.
JVL00:04:11You can't see me pretending. I thought to myself, oh, is it going to be pod racing? Are we going to get to do pod racing in this fucking movie?
Vic00:04:18Totally wizard if they do.
Sonny00:04:20I can't wait. Thank you, JBL. No, the Duel of the Fates actually got me because that is just that. It really is a little epic piece of songwriting. But it also made me remember, like, you know, so that video debuts in, like, I guess early 99. Wow. It must have been when, because the movie came out in 99, right? Yeah. The music video debuted, and it was on, it charted on MTV's Total Request Live. And it started.
Vic00:04:55Was there a techno version of it?
Sonny00:04:56No, it was just, it was like, it was just the John Williams Duel of the Fates. Duel of the Fates. Yes, Duel of the Fates. Duel of the Fates. People loved it. And it was, it was, like, clips from the movie with Darth Maul and his cool double-edged lightsaber. People just wanted to watch the video. And it was, like, you would hear, like, NSYNC, John Williams, Blink-182 in, like, a three-song script.
Vic00:05:17Oh, right, because it'll be the list of, like, here's your top videos.
Sonny00:05:20It would just, you know, that was, like, that was what, that was what, for, like, two weeks. For two weeks it was on the, it was on the top ten.
JVL00:05:25That moment was the high point of the entire prequel trilogy. Yes. I mean, it literally, the, the, the Duel of the Fates, Darth Maul versus Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan is, is the, the pinnacle of everything else.
Sonny00:05:41But the sad part is, is that it's intercut with the two lowest parts of the, the, which is Jake Lloyd flying into space and also the, the fight on the grassy plain of Naboo.
Vic00:05:51The Gungans, the Gungans battle in that, the bright, that, in that. Unnaturally bright. Candy colored. Candy, yeah, because this was new. This whole thing, Lucas was so excited that let's go crazy with this set. You know, the whole thing is a green screen and it, and it, it, the age shows. And that's the worst part because just when the fighting is good, he had to cut away to these other things in which.
Sonny00:06:14It's, it's, it's really like, it's really like a super incompetent version of Christopher Nolan's tick of cutting between three different scenes at the climax of his film. Like if you, if you watch what happened, if. If you watch like the Dark Knight Rises or Tenet or Inception, right? Like he's like cutting back and forth between these sequences and, and watching the Phantom Menace now is like, it's like, I did, did Nolan like, is, is, did he pick this up from?
Vic00:06:43Well, this is, this has happened in, in Return of the Jedi, right?
JVL00:06:47Return of the Jedi, the climax of Return of the Jedi where we're clipping between.
Sonny00:06:52Directed by George Lucas, it should be noted. It's directed by, yeah, like Richard Marquand or somebody.
Vic00:06:58Yes, Marquand, that's right. Okay, so in the trailer, so is, so Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru there, is Uncle Owen played by, it looked like Joel Edgerton.
Sonny00:07:08Joel Edgerton, he's back. Joel Edgerton played Uncle Beru in the. A very young Joel. In the first one.
Vic00:07:14Edgerton, right? Because that was a long time ago.
Sonny00:07:16No, I mean, 23 years ago. Oh my goodness.
Vic00:07:18Okay, so there's that.
Sonny00:07:19I hope they de-age him. I hope they, I hope they, I hope they don't just use makeup. No, I, in the trailer, he's got.
Vic00:07:24He's got that grime on, you know, because of the dirt and the dust. You can't tell, but.
Sonny00:07:28Well, he, but he's supposed to be even younger. I mean, he's supposed to be even younger than in The Phantom Menace because he's, he's, you know.
JVL00:07:34I hope they have a scene where somebody drinks blue milk.
Vic00:07:37Revenge of the Sith. Revenge of the Sith, sorry. What's, what JVL?
JVL00:07:40I said, I hope they have a scene where somebody drinks blue milk. That's from the movie.
Vic00:07:45I remember. I remember the movie. So, how much interaction did Obi-Wan have with Luke before? Episode four? Like, is he watching over him? And then, I just don't know. And I guess they're going to add more depth to Uncle Owen. So, that's it. This is what it is. Okay. And the villain? Who are the villains? There's two villains in this? Who the fuck knows? Who cares? The guy, the guy looks like from Hellraiser.
Sonny00:08:12Somebody is trying to kill the Jedi and Darth Vader's going to show up.
JVL00:08:18No one's ever really gone.
Sonny00:08:22Where's that from again? What do I forget?
JVL00:08:25This is what the Emperor says, isn't it? Yeah.
Sonny00:08:28It's a line in, it was a line in, I think, one of the trailers for the, either Last Jedi or Rise of Skywalker.
JVL00:08:37When they're like, wait, it's the Emperor again? Wait.
Sonny00:08:40Somehow, Palpatine is back.
Vic00:08:43Yes. Okay, great. So, there's that to look forward to. But let's end on a high note, this piece that you want, we're a whole show.
JVL00:08:54We're a whole show about a magazine article on a website.
Sonny00:08:57I wanted to talk about it because I do think it's interesting, but mostly I just wanted to, I wanted to get JVL's ranking of who the worst people. Explain, explain to our readers. The basic premise of this piece is there are these New York scene kids. And this is in BuzzFeed. It's a big reported feature in BuzzFeed. And it was interesting to me because this like touched on a bunch of different stuff.
JVL00:09:21By Joseph Bernstein.
Sonny00:09:24Joseph Bernstein. Joseph Bernstein at BuzzFeed. I'm friends with Joe. So don't nobody say anything mean about.
JVL00:09:30But the. I hope Joe doesn't listen to the show.
Sonny00:09:34I don't think he does. So I. It's a bonus. The. Here's what was interesting about the story to me, because it touched on a couple of different things that I had like kind of heard of, but wasn't really sure what was going on with them. Those being the anti-woke film festival, the quote unquote anti-woke film festival that was taking place in New York City. And a lot of. Like New York hipster types were like really upset about. They're like, oh, I can't believe this happening. And then also the Sin of Family debacle out in Los Angeles, which the short version is these these guys started a repertory theater in Los Angeles called Sin of Family. And one of the guys was accused of sexual harassment. And the whole thing kind of blew up. Anyway, this guy that got accused of sexual harassment basically got hooked up with Peter Thiel. So the neo reactionary type Mencius Moldbug and happening with with the backing of Peter Thiel again, Facebook billionaire, PayPal billionaire Peter Thiel founders funded a like super left wing like Chapo adjacent Red Scare adjacent. Again, these are things that mean nothing to Vic. His eyes are just glazing over. So super left wing, like super irony soaked film festival that, again, came to be known as, quote, the the anti woke film festival. And there there there is one there's there is an interesting idea at the core of all of this, which is that you have this weird horseshoe effect where you have the neo reactionary types and the super left wing types who are like kind of coming together to react against the what I mean, what what is he bourgeois use usefully referred to in the shorthand as wokeness, right, as like, you know, being exceptionally worried about identity politics and gender politics and all that at at the expense of class. Again, this is a identity politics versus a class based politics sort of thing. There is there's an interesting idea here. And this this story gets at it. But the thing that is the thing that is, again, the reason I wanted to be able to read this is because I want. I wanted I wanted a ranking of like who needed to be eliminated from the face of the earth first out of all of these people, just as a just in order who who goes who goes first.
JVL00:12:09Victor, did you hate this cast of characters as much as I did?
Vic00:12:15Yeah, but none of it made any sense to me. And I mean, I understood that there's a there's a sentiment out there. And I share that sentiment about like, you can't make certain movies that from even, I don't know, ten years ago that that were great, but you can't do it now. I was just what was it? It was like the 40 year old virgin, you know, and they have this back and forth. Do you not you know, you know how I know you're gay between Paul Rudd and Seth Rogen, and it's really very witty and funny. And oh, you can't make that now. And I'm not saying that we need to make, you know, go back with the girl next door. Another great movie or poor. I'm not saying you need to go back to make poor.
Sonny00:12:54He's I actually am revenge of the nerds, revenge of the nerds.
Vic00:12:57I actually am actually. Uh, but you know, I, I understand that sentiment, but this feels like the whole
JVL00:13:03thing just got out of control and I just was like, so I, I find the moral panic about wokeness to be unbelievable TD, unbelievably tedious in the same way that all moral panics are tedious. Uh, I just want to read you three very brief passages. Yes. From, from this piece, just so people can understand why. So the, the, the chief figure is a fellow named Trevor Brazil. And, uh, so here is, here is Trevor Brazil talking on a podcast. If I act like how people on these apps are acting, who are trying to chase social capital by canceling people, I need to participate in this market. Cancellation he says was a form of currency and it might've been, this is our intrepid reporter Sonny's friend. Maybe it might've been the only one he had here again is, is Mr. Brazil. That's when I started shit, posting, posting the most terrible things I could. I haven't stopped them in a cult scene. This is your, your friend. Now, again, the reporter Brazil became a cult figure. Here's Brazil. Ironic blackness needs to take up digital space. I don't know what's happening here. It's I don't understand. So I just want to juxtapose this, which is a collection of people, all of whom represent the same thing, which is decadence and whether they are the very online Bernie bro dirt bag left or the Peter teal Mencius mold bug authoritarian. Right. These are all people who live in a make believe world because at the same time, this shit is happening, you have a bunch of 22 year olds, same as, as this fellow, Mr. Brazil, uh, leaving their job as a remote coder in Kyiv and running out to the armory to get a, uh, uh, uh, whatever gun they can get their hands on and try to shoot at Russians and the effect. And the defensiveness of these motherfuckers, like talking about their shit posting and how they, you know, they just got super into Instagram. Uh, I just wanted them all to die. And at the end of the end of this, this piece, uh, Mr. Brazil dies. He, he, after some gigantic drug fueled party, mysterious circumstance, he, he just, he just expires and, uh, and. This intrepid reporter who is Sonny's friends. I won't be saying, but he, he closes by saying since Trevor Brazil's death, there's been sniping on Twitter about higher profile white posters, stealing his memes, denaturing his ideas and taking credit. Denaturing is a, is an actual technical term. I don't know that Joseph understands what it means. It's a, it's from chemistry that talks about how proteins behave when they begin to unfold.
Vic00:16:23I was gonna say denaturing is what you do.
JVL00:16:24Yeah.
Vic00:16:25Um, peanut oil.
JVL00:16:26Mr. Brazil does not seem to have had any ideas, uh, and disappears to be again, like every other person in this story, nothing but a cancer on society and, uh, decadent societies grow people like this and people like this are what caused societies to fail.
Sonny00:16:49And, uh, and this is why it's important to understand and see what's happening. Look, I, I. I really agree with you that these are decadent, terrible people. And I agree with you that, uh, these are, these are the sorts of people that we create when society fails. And I could even, I even agree that there's like, there, there is a, a nothing burger aspect to this, that there have always been like weird scene kids and there've always been like, you know, crazy political cranks on, on all ends of the spectrum. Um, but I do think that I, I think that there is, I think that there is something interesting about this kind of weird horseshoe reaction against, I, for lack of a better term, neo-liberalism, should we say?
JVL00:17:34It's definitely not neo-liberalism, neo-liberalism is, uh, neo-liberalism is just the bourgeois, right?
Sonny00:17:41What, what are they reacting against? That's what the, they're, they're reacting against like the, uh, you know, the, the whole like Raytheon, uh, gender equality campaign, look at us, we've got, we've got the, we've got the rainbow flag on the drone strike.
JVL00:17:56I disagree with that. I think what they're against is America. They're against, they're against bourgeois culture and they don't like it. And what is different is that unlike in previous moments, these people are working from a base of a tremendous asymmetrical wealth because of the internet. And so you have a guy like Peter Thiel who comes in and who's just a whale for them to, to go and suck off a few million here, a few million there. And you have some guys who have made a ton of money in crypto and, you know, back in the bad old days, you needed an heiress, right? You needed some, you know, the great grand daughter of JP Morgan to wind up into your scene in order to be able to, to suck blubber off the whale. And now we have, you know, relatively young people who had that money and are stupid. And uh, it's really.
Sonny00:18:50And have way more of it. I mean, like, I don't like Peter Thiel is worth. Like, I don't actually know what he's worth. He's worth several billions of dollars.
JVL00:18:59Did I ever tell you guys my Peter Thiel flex?
Sonny00:19:02No.
JVL00:19:03So I, uh, I wrote about him a long time ago. So this is, you know, in the before times, um, maybe right after when zero to one came out and I wrote a short essay about something he'd written, um, and, uh, and he emailed me. It's like, Hey, I saw that. It was really, it was really very smart. Very interesting. Yeah.
Vic00:19:23Great.
JVL00:19:24Yeah. Anyway, it's like, I'm, I'm in, uh, I'm in town on Thursday. You want to want to come in and have breakfast.
Sonny00:19:29You know what I said, eh, no, thanks.
JVL00:19:32I'm busy. Maybe next time, because I don't fucking run when I'm summoned like some little bitch just cause you have money. And I watched the way he was trying to spread money around the conservative movement and,
Vic00:19:46uh, began, you know, first Murdoch emailed me, I said, fuck you beginning with first thing.
JVL00:19:53Why would I do that? Which is a weird, do you guys remember this? This is where like his first 10 to footsteps in a conservative media world happened, which was weird. Like, you know, this gay atheist tech oligarch has given money to the Catholics. What's all that about? Yeah.
Sonny00:20:08Oh, I didn't realize he had given money to first thing.
JVL00:20:10That's where it started way, way, way, way, way back, way back. Yeah. Anyway. And I just, you know, I, I'm sorry. You weren't curious at all about, I was, I was curious, but I don't. I, uh, I don't get summoned.
Sonny00:20:27Well, he wasn't it more like would you like to have summoned you? We invited you. It's like, it's not like he was like, show up here or I'm gonna drone strike your house.
Vic00:20:36Would you like to have breakfast? That sounds like a polite invitation. Yeah, fine.
Sonny00:20:40But uh, I don't look, I don't like rich people and uh, didn't George will summon you one time.
JVL00:20:45That's different. That's different. George will did some of me and it was amazing and no, but I don't get summoned by rich people. That's, that's the point of this. That's the point of this. There. I flex on Peter Thiel. You know what?
Sonny00:21:03I gotta say, I got tremendous, he's gonna buy Patreon now just to shut us down.
JVL00:21:07I got tremendous satisfaction out of sending that email cause I left on myself. I bet this guy doesn't hear this very often.
Sonny00:21:14When was this? When was this? Like six years ago, eight years ago.
JVL00:21:18It was a long time ago, long, long, but it's good feeling.
Sonny00:21:22Yeah. You know who doesn't? The only people I know to him are all these left wing kids who are taking his money, putting on festivals, putting on anti-woke film festivals, but, but, but which, which do what that that's
JVL00:21:35the other thing, you know, for, for, for Mr. Trevor and I, I'm sorry if I feel heartless, the death of anyone, the death of anyone diminishes us. All life is precious. I am, I am very pro-life. I care so much about all the life and uh, but these people like, I'm sorry, Mr. Bazile, are you going to be remembered in five minutes? Do you leave anything behind? Do you even leave like a kid somewhere like that? It just, this is ephemera. This is, this is wasted life and I find it hard to hard to have any sympathy over for people who, who literally waste life, you know, like it's precious. This is, it's, it is real and it is earnest and these people are like, Oh, I'm so deep in on Instagram. Like we are all worm food for worms.
Sonny00:22:28What do you think about, what do you think about the guy wearing the, uh, the green body paint and the alligator hat in the cage?
JVL00:22:34Yeah. I, uh, I saw that and I was intrigued, um, cause I really, I liked the denatured, the denatured point he was making about our relationship to reptilian space.
?00:22:49All right.
Sonny00:22:50Okay.
JVL00:22:51All right.
Vic00:22:52That was, that was a, yeah. Wonderful. Why have you guys made me the bad guy in all this?
JVL00:22:57You hated these people as much as I did, didn't you?
Sonny00:23:01Uh, you know who I liked who was in this piece is John Waters. John Waters, the filmmaker shows up, he shows up and he's talking about, hold on, let me pull up the quote here. John Waters says transgressive organizations, uh, like the new people cinema club, that's the official name of the anti woke film festival, uh, must survive because they help. Keep devious ideas near and dear to the hearts of the young. And look, I say what you will about John Waters, interesting guy, interesting filmmaker, uh, and understands that this is not just a moral panic JBL, that this is a very serious problem that there, there is a closing off of ideas and somebody's got to push back against it. And if it's the fringes of the right and left, so be it. So be it.
JVL00:23:50The middle class needs to be saved from itself.
Sonny00:23:54He gives people quotes all the time. He's not a, when he's asked, sure he's no, he's no, you know, shrinking violet.
JVL00:24:00No, no. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that he's old and irrelevant. Sorry. I should have been more. It's not true.
Sonny00:24:06It should have been more, uh, incorrect. Pacific.
Vic00:24:08That's a, a lovely, a love, a lovely, a lovely upbeat bonus episode for our listeners.
Sonny00:24:15It's a happy ending there. This is what Peter Thiel pays a big spot, big bucks for. He's going to get this. It's going to, he's going to up his, uh, monthly. Monthly spend. Thank goodness for that.
?00:24:26I'm sure it's fine.
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