Hear and subscribe: Apple | Spotify | Wherever You Hear
Enroll to obtain our weekly cultural-recommendations publication.
“The Apprentice,” a brand new movie directed by Ali Abbasi, depicts the rise of a younger Donald Trump below the wing of the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn. The movie is, in some ways, an origin story for a person who has overtaken modern politics. On this episode of Critics at Giant, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz talk about the film and different works that discover Trump’s and Cohn’s psychologies, from duelling household memoirs to documentaries. The sheer variety of such texts raises the query: Why are we so within the backstories of people that have executed fallacious, and what will we stand to realize (or lose) by humanizing them? “Can we need to see our villains, our absolute villains—individuals who have brought on a lot hurt to the world—as weak little boys who’ve undergone trauma and have had their causes for changing into the monsters they later flip into?” Fry asks. “Or will we not?”
Learn, watch, and pay attention with the critics:
“The Apprentice” (2024)
“Who Might Ever Love You: A Household Memoir,” by Mary Trump
“All within the Household: The Trumps and How We Received This Means,” by Fred C. Trump III
“The place’s My Roy Cohn?” (2019)
“Roy Cohn and the Making of a Winner-Take-All America,” by Naomi Fry (The New Yorker)
“Angels in America” (2003)
“Joker” (2019)
“Depraved” (2024)
“Ratched” (2020)
“Elephant” (2003)
“Cruella” (2021)
“The Sopranos” (1991-2007)
“Mad Males” (2007-15)
The “Harry Potter” novels, by J. Ok. Rowling
“Paradise Misplaced,” by John Milton
“Be Prepared When the Luck Occurs,” by Ina Garten
New episodes drop each Thursday. Comply with Critics at Giant wherever you get your podcasts.
