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
47 episodes
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
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
Everything you Wanted to Know About Mansplaining but Were Afraid to Ask
Oh boy... Well Sagi found this obscure blog written by some academic dropout that had an interesting take on Mansplaining (but after listening to this podcast you will have gotten everything of substance in that ode to desperation this guy call...
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1:23:25
The Shining: Oppression Olympics at the Overlook Hotel
In this episode, about Stanley Kubrick's classic movie The Shining, we divide our interests neatly between sexual trauma and racism. Well, we attempt to divide them neatly. Andy and Alicia on the side of sex, Jake and Sagi on the side ...
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2:01:18
"The Oldest Profession" and the Prostitute: A Match Made in Heaven
Dear, patient listener..We meet again, 2 weeks late, we know.. no creative endeavor is ever an assembly line and we had to drop a dud podcast by the wayside. Maybe it will be unearthed one day by a particularly desperate AI bo...
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1:36:24
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold: A Hardboiled Séance
This week we discuss the movie version of John le Carré's novel The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Alicia leads us in a séance of sorts, asking us to consider why the main character, Alec Leamas (played by Richard Burton) is such an ef...
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1:37:24
It's Always Sunny in the Marquis de Sade's Ass: Of Cannibalism and Hospitality
Oh it's you again.. welcome back!So today it's always sunny in Philadelphia again, this time we're (loosely) talking about the first episode of Season 4, Mac and Dennis: Manhunters (2008). Jake found in it a certain b...
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1:53:16
Bond, Jew's Bond: Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
Welcome back dear listener!5 Star Tossers grudgingly presents: Shakespeare's 1596 play The Merchant of Venice! And boy do the grudges flow in this one: Marx, Jew, Woman, Lacan... even Peggy Kamuf and Beyoncé were pretty miffed ...
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1:57:51
No Zoomers were Injured During the Recording of this Podcast on Sex Panic and Consent
We have a really special episode for you today. Sagi has been temporarily banished, and we replaced him with the absolutely brilliant Alicia. Our cultural object this time around looks at the way Zoomers (Gen Z) relate to to sex. Some people cl...
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1:31:17
The Menu: Swallowing Man's (or Freud's) Folly
We are back this week with a barage of Freudian theories and crisp, clean-sounding microphones! We discuss the movie "The Menu "from the vantage point of Freud's structural metapsychology and his diagnostic distinctions between hysteric and obs...
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2:03:59
Sklaving Them Softly: America Puts the Cap on Thor
Hello listener, and welcome!This episode got a little bit out of hand. Treating of the MCU's metaphysical maneuvering, we had to go deep into the bad air of ressentiment... Availing ourselves to Nietzsche, which sounds reasonable, had unfor...
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1:30:34
From Software: The Tarnished Will Inherit the Earth
Perhaps geared to the most niche part of our listener, in this episode we discuss the bruising and celebrated video game stylings of the company From Software and its auteur creative designer Hidetaka Miyazaki. Jesus returns for the proceedin...
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1:47:41