Carolina knows what? Sally Rooney-verse, & politics of p0rnography

Hello The Lavender Menace listeners! Finally, here is the long awaited episode where we discuss the Sally Rooney literary universe, after Renaissance finished reading Beautiful World, Where Are You while in St. Louis. This was a major agenda point in this year’s Sunnissance in St. Louis era, of which many of you– especially our Patrons!!!– have been very supportive of (emotionally and financially), which is incredibly appreciated. For some context as to why this episode took so long to go up, while in St. Louis Renaissance’s laptop display started to break and began getting worse at an exponential rate (everyone booed). This slowed down the editing and publishing aspect of producing the episode quite a bit (sad-face-emoji), but the laptop is now fixed and this episode is ready for you to watch (for our Patrons <3)/listen and enjoy! In episode 6 of season 4, we talk about Carolina, the new Taylor Swift song released for the soundtrack of the film Where the Crawdads Sing (2022) directed by Olivia Newman. Although this song is released for the movie, the lyricism, sound, and light lore around the song's conception place it firmly in the mystical TS10 musical lineage. As per our 3 format structure, in the first act we delve into sex politics and the impact of porn in the digital age. How are teenagers supposed to explore their sexuality, while developing their own politics, parsing out desire, and growing up, in a pedophilic society that universally grooms young girls and boys (with the additional possible journey of navigating queerness)??? It’s not easy! For our shared media, we discuss Sally Rooney’s (she’s mother), third novel Beautiful World, Where Are You, both as an independent novel and within the context of Rooney’s body of work as an author. We still love women writers who confess all and tell nothing. For the third and final act, Recommendations, Sunny recommends Lauren McBrayer’s debut novel featuring lesbian adultery Like a House on Fire and Renaissance recommends Tig Notaro’s third stand up special Tig Notaro: Happy to Be Here (2018) on Netflix. We hope you all enjoy this episode and continue to enjoy the content from the special time we were able to spend together in person!​​Thanks for joining us for this episode. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, YouTube, and Letterboxd if you want to connect! Submit your hot takes, rantings, thoughts, anything else to [email protected].