
5 Star Tossers
Playful academic podcast that looks at movies and other cultural objects through the lens of 5 groovy themes: Pervs 'R Us, Beast & Sovereign, Il vaut mieux Lyotard que jamais, Marx Grudge, and What Would Jesus Do?
Episodes
58 episodes
The University, or Teaching Real Fucking Shit
Greetings, audient!This.. was... a long one. We each have our own scar tissue from university encounters, passionate moments of transformation and inspiration experienced alongside sad encounters with hopelessness, mediocrity and slave m...
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1:56:58

The Shit-Eating Grin: Defense Mechanism for a Modern "Man"
Jake can't stop cursing in this episode. We discuss the terribly obnoxious, punch-deserving, smirk that refuses to listen to the Other. Though prevalent especially in the world of Maga punditry, whether it be Zionists smirking at the word genoc...
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1:50:04

Sherlock Holmes: Limited Bandwidth (Inc.)
Audient!This episode imposes upon us (well Jake mostly) the horrors of shoddy writing and bad aesthetics. And yet, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation seems to be very much alive. How is that? Why?We get to touch on some long-neglec...
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1:26:31
Nosferatu: Bringing the Finish Line Right To You
You gotta listen to it to believe it. Jake, Sagi, and Andy go Foucault, Nietzsche, Derrida, Lacan and Freud all over Nosferatu's Ass. There's demonic possessions, feminine jouissance, the Marquise de Sade shows up, Sagi defends masculine dignit...
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1:38:15

The Hustler with an Unconscious of Gold: Homage to David Lynch
Greetings, audient!David Lynch passed away, and Sagi insisted on embarrassing his memory and us by making a tribute pod.Of course an oeuvre analysis is not Tossers style, but we found a nice angle in comparing his The Los...
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1:36:23

Revenge of the Nerds: Elon Musk, Silicon Valley, Crypto Fascists and Other Sad Shit
Welcome to a sad episode about the sad state of our world. If you thought the nerds taking over for the jocks was a sign of liberation, think again. The spiteful nature of the nerds knows no limits and certainly knows even less about care. Refe...
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1:26:12

Late Stage NBA...
Hello, audient,We are discussing the NBA's crisis of viewership these days, how to analyze it, where to approach it from, who to blame...Jake takes the side of the NBA "worker"; a late-stage capitalism employee that has already ...
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1:42:30

24: Jack Bauer's Beastly Christian Sovereignty in the State of Emergency
Sagi and Jake take on the toxic political masculinity of Jack Bauer on their own. They speak about how the State of Emergency places Jack in a position outside the law, both beast (criminal) and sovereign. In this state Jack finds a Christian f...
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1:17:45

Middle Age, and Middle Ages: The Tossers' 50th Episode, and Trump's Re-election
Dear, stubborn, listener,Are you still there?For our weirdly unlikely 50th Episode -- mine and Jake's Gold Anniversary or something(?) -- we went populist. Donald Trump's re-election is now fact, but the meaning of that fact remains...
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1:34:59

Cultural Appropriation: The Terror and Promise of ALWAYS having to do it
In this episode we discuss the absurdity of the taboo against cultural appropriation. Introducing specific examples like which Halloween costumes to wear, or which recipes you can and cannot cook, the Tossers argue that culture is itself approp...
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1:33:43

The Substance: The Capital and Narcissistic Horror of The Young Beautiful Woman (Or: Where is my Mother?)
We all loved a movie, oh, actually Jack hated it.This is a perfect episode, you should listen to it. Aside from withering take downs of the myriad misreadings of Coralie Fargeat's new movie The Substance, we introduce you to th...
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1:47:16

The Multiverse: Jesus, What a Racket!
With a healthy dose of disdain, we enter the multiverse via the Marvel movie Deadpool and Wolverine and the Oscar-winning movie Everything Everywhere all at Once.Sagi talks about the hollow nostalgia of the cameo, and ...
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1:23:41

Israel's Fault: The Problem with (a Messiah-less) Zion
Oh boy...This episode is longer than usual, more contentious, as it addresses the current genocidal violence in Gaza in ways that neither 'the left' nor 'the right,' as they are now called (defined?), would stand behind; except perhaps ...
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2:28:41

Muteness Envy: Did We Even Talk about It?
In a political climate of unbearable urgency, the Tossers ask: "What if we just stopped talking?"
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1:52:24

Steve Bannon: Militant of the Western Church
Hello listener,How's it been? Great, right?Right?..This episode follows Naomi Klein's recent book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, and Errol Morris' 2018 documentary around Steve Bannon, called Americ...
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1:38:38

Married... With Children: The Family Abolition Episode
In this episode, we look at one of the longest running sitcoms in Televisual history (1987-1998), Married... with Children.Ostensibly a misogynistic pigpen ripe for retroactive cancelation, we Tossers find the show deligh...
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1:35:12

Heteropessimism: Or, How to Ignore the Sadness of the Sexual Relation
In this episode, we discuss the thought-provoking 2019 New Inquiry essay by Asa Seresin "On Heteropessimism: Heterosexuality is nobody’s personal problem."Andy defends the future of heterosexuality from the sidelines so to say.J...
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1:37:12

Tutt Grudge: I Don't Mind a Parasite, but I Object to a Cut-rate one.
Greetings, audient!Thanks for hanging in there. It can't be easy.This episode tackles the Tossers' own Marx Grudge Star -- come to collect its resentful dues. Karma imposes its menacing presence in the form of a book by Daniel T...
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1:38:20

Parasocial Friends: We Did Not Record This For You
Sagi has recently learned about the Internet and relations that people have on it. We discuss.Parasocial relations lead us to think about a plague of narcissistic personality disorder that capitalism breeds.
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1:25:42

Fear and Loathing in the WWE
Welcome back, listener!No joke with the title, some real Hunter Thompson, Bazooko Circus vibes in hereAnd it seems to be spreading beyond the wrestlers, converting everyone in sight.All are engrossed in a spectacle that perm...
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1:27:13

Barbenheimer: She's the Bomb
The Tossers gave themselves a rather impossible task: prove that Barbie and Oppenheimer are the same movie. In typical Tosser fashion, we try to turn our failure into charm. Our sometimes quiet podcas...
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1:36:44

Cuckoldry: Things that Go Hump in the Night (*)
(*) I refuse to check whether this is/was a porn title. It's finally out, dear listener!Our new episode, long time coming, will take a whack at the concept -- and the social/sexual/political/racial/economic/relig...
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1:31:42

Divided by the Lie: Animal contra Human, Jew contra Christian, Jacques contra Jacques
Though absent from the title, we watched Ricky Gervais's "The Invention of Lying" and Jim Carrey's "Liar Liar" for this episode. Mainly as an excuse to discuss whether lying is something like the fundamental human factor.Jake bund...
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1:39:32

From (Hate to Love and Back Again) Software Retoss: Elden Ring and the Abandonment of the Father
Hello listener, This is a "retoss" of a January 6th (no relation) episode, where we discussed 'From Software' games, particularly Elden Ring, particularly how Sagi sucked at it, which led to his radicalization, with him ex...
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1:26:54
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Larry David vs. Louis C.K.: The Jewish Asshole vs. the Catholic one
Tossers are back. We always come back. This time we compare the "comedy" stylings of Larry David and Louis C.K. The frame for this comparison is that they are both assholes, but they are assholes of a different color: one is Jewish and the othe...
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1:38:23
