‘Eddington,’ Katy Perry, and Why Obama-Era Pop Now Sounds Like a Punchline

There’s a scene in Eddington that’s been rattling around my skull for the last week. A scene that sets the chaotic second half of writer-director Ari Aster’s pandemic allegory into bloody overdrive. That calls back to the tension and menace of classic Western standoffs between two hay-chewing gunslingers. That skewers the smug cynicism of neoliberalism and hints at its disastrous fallout. That is dominated by the blinding sparkle and lizard-brain thump of Katy Perry’s chart-topping  2010 hit, “Firework.”

Smack in the middle of the film, which is set during Covid’s frenzied first summer, Joaquin Phoenix’s sheriff character, Joe Cross, responds to a noise complaint at the home of his small-town rival, Ted Garcia, played by Pedro Pascal. It’s an especially awkward encounter because Cross is the bumbling, conservative sheriff challenging Garcia, a corporate-owned liberal, to become the mayor of the tiny, made-up town of Eddington, New Mexico. And oh yeah, Cross recently posted a video on social media accusing Garcia of raping his wife—a claim that was quickly debunked by Mrs. Cross herself in another social media video. (Aster has described his film “a Western with phones instead of guns.”) And Garcia is celebrating his opponent’s embarrassing episode with a party at his fancy house, hence the noise complaint. So when Cross confronts Garcia, the tension between the two men is ripe. You can watch the scene, alongside some commentary from Aster, below:

That pressure is somehow both deflated and heightened by “Firework,” which blares over the outdoor speakers at Garcia’s bash and into the surrounding desert hills. Deflated because, well, it’s “Firework,” a relic of Obama-era optimism that can’t help but play like a punchline now. Its infamous lyrics about sad plastic bags floating in the wind have been used for laughs in everything from Seth Rogen’s North Korea spoof The Interview to the wonderfully goofy miniseries The Dropout, about Theranos hustler Elizabeth Holmes. It’s sung by Katy Perry, perhaps the most cursed/dunked-on celebrity of 2025, who seemingly can’t go a week without one of her onstage props almost killing her, or without doing something incredibly tone-deaf or dumb, like singing on Jeff Bezos’ penis rocket. When the track started wafting through the movie theater where I saw Eddington, scoffs and giggles instantly followed.

It also increases the stress of the scene, because this is an oppressive song being played at oppressive volumes—which you can viscerally feel in the film thanks to some canny sound mixing. It’s like every bass hit and soaring vocal line is pummelling Phoenix’s Cross, whose tentative cadence and hunched posture make him look like an animal in enemy territory. When Garcia, looking casually imperial in a bolo tie, expensive sunglasses, and a medical-grade face mask, turns the volume knob up and then slaps Cross across the face not once but twice, you can feel the blood boiling in Cross’ eyeballs. Talking about the scene to IndieWire, Aster said, “I wanted a song that kind of represented the culture, and have the culture like pounding in your ear. There’s a great bass to [‘Firework’], and when you push the bass, it’s really queasy-making.”

Aster also said he originally wanted to soundtrack the scene with Alicia Keys and Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind,” but couldn’t get approval. He liked the juxtaposition of a two-bit politician in New Mexico playing an aspirational New York City anthem, but “Firework” is ultimately a better choice. It is one of the most memorable totems of pop from a bygone era of hope and change, and it pushes a feeling of uplift that is alien to so many Americans right now. “Firework” was always ridiculous—the video features a cancer-stricken child with sparks flying out of his chest—but its naive theme of overcoming rang true enough throughout the country to blast it to the top of the charts for a full month and achieve platinum status 12 times over.

In 2025, though, I can’t think about “Firework” without thinking about the arrogance and failures of neoliberalism, of what has happened since its release. Remember how hard Katy Perry stumped for Hillary Clinton in her doomed 2016 presidential campaign? Remember how no establishment Democrats took Donald Trump seriously, and how he internalized that ridicule and then multiplied it many times while unleashing torrents of hateful and cruel policies? (Notably, Trump is not mentioned in Eddington by name—likely to make Phoenix’s character more empathetic—though the divisive and conspiratorial culture he has wrought makes up the film’s entire atmosphere.) Remember, even, when Obama called Kanye a “jackass,” and then Kanye took that humiliation and became a MAGA torch-bearer? Derision, however deserved, often leads to dire consequences.

It’s easy to feel superior to Trumpism and everything it represents but, as Eddington’s “Firework” scene and the movie’s subsequent lethal insanity make clear, that superiority can backfire. Though some critics have found Aster’s political both-sides-ism in Eddington distasteful, it would be a much less interesting, and less realistic, movie if Pascal’s mayor character was some kind of saint—a guy who didn’t take the chance to crush his enemy’s soul with Katy Perry’s “Firework” when given the chance. Aster doesn’t seem to be suggesting that the country’s ills can be cured by civility. We’re too far gone. Instead, he created a parallel universe where our fears and our greed and our retreat into our phones will consume us, making it that much easier for evil corporations to mine our data—and our humanity—en route to an A.I. dystopia. In that sense, for all of its unhinged twists, Eddington is depressingly relatable.

Maybe the “Firework” scene hit me especially hard because, back in 2010, I was a stupidly hopeful Obama supporter in my 20s who happened to be a big Katy Perry fan. I even reviewed her album Teenage Dream, joyously, for The Village Voice. I bought the album on vinyl, too. To match the record’s confectionary theme, its inserts were doused with a chemical cotton candy scent. One day around this time, I noticed some ants in my Brooklyn apartment. I did a deep clean, but a slow trickle kept coming in. I decided to follow one of them, and was delightfully horrified to learn that it was enticed by the fake sugar smell coming from my copy of Teenage Dream. I threw out the most pungent insert but kept the record. It doesn’t smell anymore.