Ordinary Unhappiness

157: Wild Analysis: Backrooms Teaser

• Abby Kluchin, Patrick Blanchfield, and Dan Yowell • Episode 157

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Abby, Patrick, and Dan venture deep into the labyrinthine warrens of Kane Parson’s smash-hit movie, Backrooms (2026). Eschewing the impulse to pin the film down to background “lore” or a single interpretative meaning, they instead take up both the film and its success as symptomatic expressions of an overdetermined multitude of anxieties, cultural experiences, and generational touchstones. From the uncanny to creepypastas to strip-malls to COVID to therapy to internet surveillance and beyond, Abby, Patrick, and Dan excavate the materials that fill the backrooms of our culture’s networked unconscious, asking questions that implicate the conditions of the work of art under conditions of AI reproduction and our fears about interiority itself.

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A podcast about psychoanalysis, politics, pop culture, and the ways we suffer now. New episodes on Saturdays. Find us online:

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