‘Eddington,’ Katy Perry, and Why Obama-Era Pop Now Sounds Like a Punchline
In Ari Aster’s Covid-era nightmare, “Firework” is wielded like a cudgel.
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.”
