The Phil Lind Initiative: Jia Tolentino

Author of the instant New York Times bestselling collection of essays Trick Mirror, Tolentino’s work deftly mixes reporting, research, and personal history to shed light on the realities of our hyper-digital society. Her Phil Lind Initiative talk—Who’s Afraid of Eating the Rich?—will focus on the recent waves of TV shows and media that make the argument, with varying degrees of sophistication and subtlety, that extreme wealth is unjust, immoral, and corrosive to the human soul. What does this mean, when income inequality is only worsening and poverty itself is almost entirely absent from media and pop culture? Is critique in this case a release valve, a sign of unrecognized popular radicalism, or a form of elite capture? How might this change the way we think about our affective relationship to capitalism today?

The 2024 Phil Lind Initiative series Pop Politics is a novel and nuanced exploration of how pop culture has influenced and shaped how we understand, experience, and practice politics in the United States. This dynamic series will feature talks with artists who have used their craft to take a political stance. Voicing the experience of refugees and the LGBTQ2+ community, demanding climate justice, questioning income inequality and uplifting marginalized communities, these speakers have tackled many of the defining debates of American political life and used their creative outputs as acts of connection, of resistance, and of survival. Presented by the UBC School of Public Policy and Global Affairs in partnership with the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts. Read more at https://lindinitiative.ubc.ca/

Event page URL: https://lindinitiative.ubc.ca/speakers/jia-tolentino/