Crossover Episode: Talking Psychedelics With Culture Trip's Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
Crossover Episode: Talking Psychedelics With Culture Trip's Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
How shrooms helped the Yellowjackets eat people and LSD broke up Roger Sterling's marriage
We’re interrupting the regular scheduled programming to bring you a groovy, some might say mind-opening Q&A with Jennifer Keishin Armstrong, a New York Times bestselling pop culture historian, journalist and author. Jennifer has written eight (!) books about pop culture history, including Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything and Sex and the City and Us: How Four Single Women Changed the Way We Think, Live, and Love. Her new book, So Fetch: The Making of Mean Girls and Why We're Still So Obsessed With It is available for pre-order.
We were SO excited to talk to Jennifer all about her newsletter: The Culture Trip, an exploration of psychedelics in pop culture and media. We chatted about how shows like Yellowjackets, Mad Men and Beef make use of shroomies and LSD, touching on several of Jennifer’s essays, like “Barbie's Enlightenment Journey” and “Ted Lasso and Beef Show Us Psychedelics Done Right on TV”. We’ve edited the conversation for length and clarity. Enjoy!
Mallika: What, in general, do you think about how psychedelics are portrayed on screen?
Jennifer: In general, they haven’t totally been great yet. I know there are some that are good, but usually it’s used as either ‘This is really scary.’ A lot of the sequences are pretty terrifying. And I’m not saying that can’t happen, I’m just saying that’s a large portion of the movie and television depictions. Then there’s humor. I had forgotten there was one scene in Knocked Up. It’s actually really funny, they do mushrooms when they go to Cirque du Soleil, which is not a good idea because Cirque du Soleil is already kind of a psychedelic experience and then they go there and just freak out. So those are really the two buckets.
Rachel: What I’ve gained from reading some of your essays is that psychedelics in real life can be used as a turning point or a pivot to solve some kind of emotional problem. And so translating that to TV, where people are in a writers room trying to solve problems for these characters or trying to pivot, move the story in one direction. I’m almost surprised that we don’t more often see psychedelics used to solve some of those problems.
Jennifer: The danger of it, I guess, is you could go the other way and become like deus ex psychedelia and just have it be like, “and then they solved all their problems.” I don’t want that either. But you’re right. These people in the intentional use community, so many have turning points in their lives small and large because of it. I was actually scared of [psychedelics] at first because I had heard so many stories about people basically leaving their spouses immediately after doing psychedelics. When my partner and I were talking about it, I was like, “I don't want to do it.” That was my fear. So obviously people have big insights that cause them to make major changes in their lives. That seems like such a great go-to plot point. But like I said, I don't want to see this just become like “woo psychedelics and everything changed, and we have no idea why.” That would be annoying too.
We’ve seen TV shows attempting this in new-ish ways. There was a Ted Lasso episode, which I personally thought was pretty well done. It's definitely debated. And Beef was great, maybe the best one that I've seen so far, where it really was the turning point in the entire thing. The question I don’t have the answer to is, “does this not work for people who haven’t experienced psychedelics?” I think that’s the real catch of it: You can’t have it so all the people watching who haven’t experienced this are like, “Why would this be the turning point?”
Rachel: I was thinking about Beef as you were talking, because I do feel like that’s such a good example: Steven Yeun and Ali Wong’s characters were stuck in this blind hatred and then this other perspective (forced by some kind of psychedelic experience) pushed them out of it and brought them together. To answer your question though, I don’t think I’ve ever done whatever it was they were doing in that field...
Jennifer: There’s a lot of questions about that, like was it really psychedelics? I had a hard time when I was going to write about it. I was so frustrated because I was like, this is huge. This is such a good sequence. And yet they do this very weird thing where they don’t just come out and say it’s psychedelics. The only thing I could come up with is that it was more about lamp shading like “Where would they have gotten psychedelics in that situation?” But it almost reminded me of network television where they would want to do something and pretend that wasn’t what they were doing. So they’re like, “oh it’s just a weird plant we ate.” But it’s like, you’re on Netflix! We’ve seen horrific things happen on this series. Suddenly they’re like, “Oh, let’s not mention that we’re doing drugs.” It was very weird.
Mallika: What’s a psychedelic depiction on TV that you really hated?
Jennifer: Nine Perfect Strangers, that series with Nicole Kidman in a weird accent, does a super common trope throughout the history of psychedelics in media and that is the unwitting dosing of people. An evil person doses people against their knowledge. They don’t know what’s happening and then suddenly they’re tripping. I just don’t get the motivation, like why don’t you just ask people if they want mushrooms or not? Why this would be a thing that an evil person would do of all the things... I guess they think they’re making people enlightened or whatever, but it’s just a very strange thing to do and it’s weird that it comes up so much.
Rachel: Yellowjackets also does that.
Jennifer: It was funny because those two happened near each other in time. It was right around the time that I was starting to pay attention to this. And I was maybe a little over-protective of psychedelics at that time. In my mind, I'm coming to a moderate position like they're not a cure-all and they are not all perfect, and people have bad experiences. That's my disclaimer, but I was feeling a little like, why have we never seen a positive depiction of this? And then those two happened and I was like, “Oh, this is what we’re doing.” It’s a weird idea that villains just dose you with psychedelics through smoothies.
I will say in Yellowjackets, in their defense, we talk a lot about set and setting in psychedelics and that was definitely not the right set nor setting. If you’ve been in a plane crash and you accidentally take psychedelic mushrooms and you don’t know what’s happening to you... they are in a really bad mindset. Imagine if you didn't know what was happening to you when you were tripping. Like, it would be unbelievably scary. It can be scary when you know exactly what's happening to you. On top of which, you're lost in the woods and starving. And so them acting out is not a huge surprise.
Rachel: Arguably, they used psychedelics in the way we were talking about earlier, to propel you out of being stuck. Everyone’s kind of wondering, “When are they going to start eating people?” And that kind of set them in the right direction.
Jennifer: [laughs] Yes, very true. I’m laughing because we were just talking about how a lot of people have turning points in their lives when they really realize something important and in this context they’re like, “We probably need to start eating some people. I've had this realization while on psychedelics, and now I know that it's just going to have to happen.”
Mallika: Do you think more shows will start to depict psychedelics like how Ted Lasso or Beef did?
Jennifer: I could see that. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone tries to just do it like what I would call “normal.” With any action in TV and movies, they’re going to want to make it more exciting. So that’s why we get all of these strange variations on it that don't really happen in real life. But I'm trying to think of what an entire series on a community that uses mushrooms intentionally would look like because I've been aware of some of these communities and plenty of drama goes on both with, and actually more without, the mushrooms. Or something at a lab where they’re studying this stuff regularly. I think it’s a real challenge to depict and so this is why we get these certain kinds of tropes because the actual depiction of a lot of the more intentional stuff that's happening now is pretty difficult and maybe less fun. So they’re like yeah we’re just going to see Cirque du Soleil.
Rachel: I wonder if you could do like a Shrinking type show where you’re using psychedelics for a therapeutic release but you’re doing it every episode.
Jennifer: We’re almost at peak mental health and therapy TV. There used to be a time where you didn’t talk about going to therapy and now every character has a therapist and we go to the therapy office with them at minimum, and then you have shows like Shrinking where it’s the whole thing. So we could see some of that with psychedelics too. I can imagine a show that’s set in a Johns Hopkins lab or someplace like that and the people who work there, maybe they use intentionally on their own time as well. Maybe we get into the industry-side. We’re going to pitch a whole show now.
Rachel: I wanted to talk to you about the Mad Men episode “Far Away Places.” I recently bought the DVD box set for Mad Men and a bunch of other shows so I could go and listen to the audio commentaries. I listened to the showrunner Matt Weiner’s commentary for that episode and it was interesting. One of the things he said was that in that exact timeline, it was a month before LSD became illegal. So in the episode Roger and his young wife at the time Jane go to this party and do LSD. And I think it was pointedly not “hippie people.” There are other points in Mad Men where you see Don and others getting down with the hippies and doing drugs. But this was very much not that. There was a psychiatrist and upper class people who were trying to experience some kind of enlightenment. And Matt Weiner was saying that was the hot thing to do at the time, expand your horizon with psychedelics
Jennifer: Yeah, I thought it was probably one of the best depictions I’ve seen, especially having recently done a bunch of research about the ‘60s. I wasn’t that interested in this topic when I watched Mad Men originally so it didn’t really do anything for me. I went back and watched it recently and it truly is one of the best: the people who are doing it, the circumstances, the way that it’s the wife saying, “Please, do this for me.” It’s in the Upper West Side and the visions are great and tastefully done. A lot of times they can go overboard. It felt like it was done by somebody who had experienced it. The insights are beautiful. They do break up. Sorry, spoiler alert.
Rachel: Yeah that was an instance where psychedelics broke up a marriage!
Jennifer: They were already not right though. It was not just the psychedelics that broke them up. It was just the courage to do it.
Rachel: Yeah, Matt Weiner said a great thing in the commentary. He was talking about that experience when two people are high together and they’re agreeing with each other. Like that moment where you figure out that both of you are experiencing the same thing and you're actively and energetically agreeing with each other. And he was interested in that happening in the midst of people having deep conflict, and how you can kind of come around to being on the same page.
Jennifer: It was actually pretty beautiful all around, that entire experience. I think it’s really touching. They have to break up. I mean, it’s ridiculous. But seeing them come to that conclusion together is really lovely. That it was initiated by the woman made me extra happy about it. That and Beef might be my favorite depictions. I haven’t found a movie I love that has done this. I’m sure there’s stuff out there.
Rachel: Can you tell us a little bit about your own psychedelics journey?
Jennifer: I wrote this piece a million years ago, in like 2016, and it was asking “Are shamans the new therapists?” I've always been interested in spirituality. I’m a Buddhist. And so I did this piece and I’m kind of embarrassed to say I don't think I fully understood what was happening. These people that I was interviewing, who identified as shamans, kept talking about plant medicine. And I was like, I don't know why they're saying that. So I'm like googling “plant medicine” while they're talking. And then I was like, “Oh, okay.” So that was initially how I got interested in it. I saw it grow so much in prominence a few years ago out of nowhere. It was just like everyone was talking about doing ayahuasca, specifically.
Finding out that drugs can be good was a very big deal for me having grown up in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Realizing, “Oh, you can use these things intentionally” was a huge revelation for me. And it infected the culture so much in the ‘60s and it’s just still in the water now. So it’s just become a huge thing for me.
Rachel: What do you mean by it’s still in the water now?
Jennifer: I am still constantly encountering things. I did a post on psychedelic art, realizing that Sesame Street was aggressively psychedelic. It just shows how much it was in the ether. All of us grew up watching that and probably thought that was just like one cool way of depicting things when in fact, it’s heavily influenced by psychedelics. My favorite Beatles album is Revolver, and that’s super psychedelic. But that's not how I saw it when I first heard it. I just liked it. There’s so many things that just seem normal to us now but they really came from that time. My favorite story is Cary Grant was a huge proponent of psychedelics and ran around throughout the ‘60s, giving interviews to places like Good Housekeeping magazine talking about all of his psychedelic experiences. I just find that fascinating.
B Plot
Question: What’s a show that you couldn’t get into on first try but then revisited?
Mallika: The year was 2020. I was concerned with whether or not I could give my dog “coronavirus,” learning that first Doja Cat TikTok dance from my Gen Z sister and getting a job for once. What I did not care about was a bunch of teens hunting for treasure in North Carolina. Oh, how the times have changed. After not being able to get beyond episode two of Outer Banks when it first aired on Netflix, I recently revisited it and gobbled down all three seasons in what I will say was five days to make myself feel better, but what I know was closer to three and a half. All I can hear when I go to sleep are panicked yells: “JOHN B!!!!!!!!!!”
Rachel: I was 13. It was Halloween weekend. I was too cool and old to buy a costume but my tween heart still longed to get into the Halloween spirit. So what do I do? I go to the local used book store and I buy myself the season one dvd box set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I think I made it to that one episode where Xander almost gets eaten by his slutty teacher who turns into a praying mantis before I lost interest. For a dozen Halloweens after I tried to get into the Buff, but it wasn’t until 2021 when a friend patiently walked me deep into season 2 that I finally watched the whole thing and oh, I am better for it.
C Plot
Since Selena Gomez accidentally scabbed about a month and a half after the SAG-AFTRA strike began, we’ve been wondering who would be next. Austin Butler seemed like a good bet — he’d probably say it was method acting or something. We could see Timothée Chalamet going all yes-I-did-that-and-you-would-do-it-too for-a-check if Kris Jenner asked him to do it for publicity. Those videos of him and Kylie smooching at Renaissance World Tour won’t last forever! But in a twist, it turned out to be Drew Barrymore. The specifics of who is on strike and under which contract is complicated, but here’s a good breakdown of what’s going on with Drew. The actress then posted a tearful apology Friday morning in which she compared the accomplishment of continuing the show despite a global pandemic to continuing it despite the strikes. This is actually Adam Sandler’s fault because as we all know, Drew has short term amnesia and Adam has to tell her every morning that she’s strike. He’s obviously on PTO or something.
Two things we’ve actually never thought in our lives are “I wish I could take a pottery class in New York City with Busy Phillips” or “I would die for Lena Dunham to paint a mural in my house” and yet those options are now available to us and anyone else on eBay dot com. That’s right, you can do BOTH and each is less expensive than getting Natasha Lyonne’s help with the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle. Hollywood’s finest are auctioning off random items and good deeds (ex. dog walk by Adam Scott) on eBay with net proceeds going towards film crews affected my the strikes.
Hey Upper East Siders, Penn Badgley had Taylor Momsen on his podcast Podcrushed (which we endorse for free, but would take some of Penn’s Netflix $ for) and it was the perfect Humphrey reunion. They talked Taylor’s crush on Jared Padalecki, her band The Pretty Reckless, all things Gossip Girl and meshing an actor with their character (something we obviously love to do). But probably the most juicy part was Taylor saying she’s never actually watched the show. She “thinks” they made her character a drug dealer at one point… no one tell her she then boinked Chuck and got exiled from Manhattan.
And finally, could you even BELIEVE that Sam Levinson’s whole deal was stolen from a woman? (Yes, obviously).