We end at the start: Huck’s January 2024 Newsletter

Fair play, 2024 has come out swing­ing. With­in the first week we had: a guy go viral for get­ting his arse stuck in a vase at a New Year’s Eve par­ty in Alaba­ma; the dis­cov­ery of under­ground tun­nels beneath a syn­a­gogue in Brook­lyn that led to police brawls, an onslaught of anti­semet­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, and a video of a dude climb­ing out of what appears to be a storm drain; a round of unsealed court doc­u­ments link­ing Jef­frey Epstein to Bill Clin­ton, Prince Andrew and Alan Der­showitz (who respond­ed to the inclu­sion of his name by attack­ing ​“rad­i­cal fem­i­nists” who don’t con­demn Hamas) among oth­ers. Also, a 16-year-old almost won the darts and said he’d use the prize mon­ey to treat him­self to some more vapes.

All of which is to say: there’s been a lot to keep us stim­u­lat­ed dur­ing what is famous­ly the most mis­er­able month in the solar cal­en­dar, when the sky turns a unique­ly wretched shade of grey and all adver­tis­ing U‑turns from ​‘fuck it, eat / buy the thing! It’s Christ­mas!’ to ​‘look what you’ve done, you hog. Also you owe the tax­man nine grand.’

Per­haps chaos comes to the fore more when cul­ture goes into hiber­na­tion. You could make a strong case for that being busi­ness as usu­al these days, giv­en the over­all con­sis­ten­cy of chaos and the feel­ing that cul­ture is gasp­ing for life. But the indus­tries do actu­al­ly stall in Jan­u­ary because it’s a bad month to ask any­one to spend mon­ey on any­thing. There’s very few new releas­es across music, film, books. Instead we get a fresh crop of real­i­ty TV shows, like The Trai­tors, Real House­wives and Love Island: All-Stars, cap­i­tal­is­ing on the fact that peo­ple are spend­ing more evenings on the couch eat­ing from the same batch of ​‘healthy win­ter chilli’ for a third night in a row.

Mean­while a slew of awards cer­e­monies – the EMMYs, BAF­TAs, GRAM­MYs – cleanse the palette by cel­e­brat­ing what’s already hap­pened, with most of the chat­ter around this year’s EMMYs revolv­ing around The Bear and the actors involved in The Bear, regard­less of whether or not it was about their per­for­mance on The Bear. Jere­my Allen White almost destroyed the fab­ric of soci­ety a few days pri­or by wear­ing some pants for Calvin Klein, Ayo Ede­biri glued it back togeth­er again on the night with her good natured charm and wit, and Mat­ty Math­e­son became poten­tial­ly the first per­son in his­to­ry to begin an accep­tance speech with ​“WHAT’S GOOD???”.

For those work­ing with­in the cul­ture indus­tries, Jan­u­ary also brings the delight­ful trend of job loss­es. FACT Mag­a­zine retired its long-run­ning mix series this month. There are planned lay­offs at the L.A. Times. Pitch­fork, for bet­ter or worse the most deferred to author­i­ty in music jour­nal­ism for the last two decades, has been inex­plic­a­bly fold­ed into GQ, which has felt to some like a final blow for spe­cial­ist music writ­ing – par­tic­u­lar­ly after mass lay­offs at Band­camp last year, the loss of print pub­li­ca­tions like Q in the UK, and VICE sim­i­lar­ly fold­ing Noisey (along with all its oth­er ver­ti­cals) into its main site to let it with­er. This is all espe­cial­ly depress­ing for any­one who, like myself, grew up hav­ing their tastes and ambi­tions shaped by new media. There was an out­law men­tal­i­ty to it that sucked in a lot of peo­ple who oth­er­wise wouldn’t have had a look in. Cer­tain­ly music writ­ing was of lit­tle inter­est to me until the blo­gos­phere explod­ed in the 00s, wrestling influ­ence away from big city news­rooms and tra­di­tion­al gate­keep­ers and hand­ing it over to a glob­al net­work of shit­heads – who cared so deeply – writ­ing in the glow of a lap­top in their bed­room in Min­neso­ta or Ket­ter­ing or wherever. 

The impact of that is only vis­i­ble in the health of cul­ture at large, which is cur­rent­ly on a res­pi­ra­tor. Few­er spe­cial inter­est out­lets devot­ed to niche or as-yet-unknown artists means few­er path­ways for under­ground tal­ent to emerge, or fresh ideas to enter pop­u­lar con­scious­ness. The same trend is vis­i­ble in TV, with the fate of pro­duc­tions rest­ing in the hands of stream­ing plat­forms that can sell up mid­way through a series – tak­ing the fund­ing with it – or dis­ap­pear a show with lit­tle notice.

Few­er grass­roots music venues means less places for new artists to cut their teeth. Hell, even Ice Spice is cry­ing out for robust crit­i­cism that actu­al­ly engages with her music from a place of con­sid­er­a­tion. Of course, none of this is per­ceived by cor­po­rate strate­gists who, as The Guardian’s Deputy Music Edi­tor Lau­ra Snapes put it, ​“con­demn plat­forms that don’t meet their shift­ing goal­posts (remem­ber ​“piv­ot to video”?) to the enshit­ti­fi­ca­tion that is com­ing for the last good parts of the inter­net.” Even if it did reg­is­ter, very few peo­ple in the C‑suite would have a vest­ed inter­est in pro­tect­ing it anyway. 

And so, at the start of anoth­er year, we’re faced with the ques­tion of what hap­pens next. What shape will cul­ture take when it’s teth­ered so care­less­ly to short-term share­hold­er prof­its and fair­weath­er tech plat­forms? How do we move for­ward when every­thing is being eat­en alive by glob­al monop­o­lies that leave every­one else fight­ing for scraps? Most acknowl­edge that the future of media is inde­pen­dent or work­er-owned, which is true, but has to be fol­lowed with a deep breath because it implic­it­ly requires start­ing from scratch. Still, it’ll hap­pen. As depress­ing as it is to watch every­thing once promis­ing about new media get com­plete­ly oblit­er­at­ed with­in the space of a few years by the kind of ​‘line go up’ sick­os who play in an all-CEO rock band called The Merg­er, noth­ing is meant to last for­ev­er. You can’t rebuild with­out knock­ing shit down first. Every­thing ends at the start.

Emma

Emma: Besides mood playlists with stu­pid names like ​‘cozy hob­bit cof­fee shop,’ the only music I’ve been bang­ing late­ly is CASisDEAD’s Famous Last Words. It came out back in Octo­ber and is the reclu­sive rapper’s first prop­er album (his sec­ond full-length project in a two decade peri­od), deliv­er­ing some of the best sto­ry­telling in UK rap. Chuck­ing dystopi­an sci-fi and real-life expe­ri­ence in a blender to cre­ate a world so vivid you can almost smell the rain and see the blood pool­ing on wet con­crete at night. Between the ​‘80s synths, speed­ing cars, drug deals gone wrong, femme fatales with fake French accents and the unex­pect­ed pres­ence of Neil Ten­nant, it’s the kind of hard-nosed com­bi­na­tion of seduc­tion and dan­ger that’s been marked­ly absent from visu­al media in recent years. RIP J.G. Bal­lard, you would have loved it.

Alex (Senior Edi­tor):  2024 can’t be any worse than 2023, right? After my high expec­ta­tions for last year were painful­ly shat­tered, I’ve start­ed 2024 with some dystopi­an cul­ture to pre­vent myself being dis­ap­point­ed by any­thing but the low­est pos­si­ble expec­ta­tions. I got start­ed with the incred­i­ble Para­ble of the Sow­er by Octavia But­ler. Writ­ten in 1993, But­ler gazed into the future and set her nov­el in a spec­u­la­tive future 2024, a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic Earth heav­i­ly affect­ed by cli­mate change and social inequal­i­ty. In the real world, we haven’t quite reached apoc­a­lypse yet but every­thing else in Butler’s vision seems eeri­ly prescient.

Jour­nal­ist Robert Evans’ insight­ful but ter­ri­fy­ing It Could Hap­pen Here (sea­son 1) pod­cast, sketch­es out the few steps we are away from our chaot­ic and increas­ing­ly extrem­ist present to a sec­ond Amer­i­can Civ­il War. But as the US and UK bomb the Houthis with­out any­thing resem­bling a strat­e­gy and Trump inch­es clos­er to reclaim­ing the pres­i­den­cy, the jury real­ly is out on which is more like­ly this year: World War 3 or Civ­il War 2: Elec­tric Booga­loo. The ICJ find­ing in the case brought by South Africa that Israel is undoubt­ed­ly com­mit­ting geno­cide in Gaza and absolute­ly should stop com­mit­ting geno­cide gives some hope. Maybe there are some insti­tu­tions that still func­tion and some in pow­er who have not lost all human­i­ty? No more geno­cide this year please. If that’s one New Year’s Res­o­lu­tion the world can stick to, maybe we can get around to dealign with some of the oth­er major chal­lenges that con­front us as a species.

Andrea (Edi­tor-in-chief): When Blind­boy Boat­club was enlist­ed as Huck’s artist-in-res­i­dence for Issue 80, it gave me the jolt I need­ed to dig back through his pod­cast and lis­ten to some of the 300-plus episodes he’s obses­sive­ly craft­ed, week after week with­out fail. There’s some­thing debil­i­tat­ing­ly inspir­ing about the Irish wordsmith’s approach to sto­ry­telling; how he zig-zags down seem­ing­ly tan­gen­tial paths only to arrive at a kind of eure­ka moment that does a lot of things at once: explor­ing the his­tor­i­cal roots of cul­tur­al absur­di­ties (see: ​‘The Colo­nial His­to­ry of Pump­kin Spice Lattes’) trig­ger­ing a series of gen­er­a­tional awak­en­ings (‘Bar­bie and Mat­tel as Mil­len­ni­al Pavlov­ian Con­di­tion­ing’) and some­how act­ing as self-help ther­a­py at the same time (‘The Men­tal Health of Adults Who Live With Their Par­ents’). It’s riv­et­ing stuff; fun­ny, fas­ci­nat­ing and always sur­pris­ing. Lis­ten in the dark, or blind­fold­ed, for a full ASMR hit.

Ben (Dig­i­tal Edi­tor): As I sit and write this, it is the 67^th day of Jan­u­ary. My bank account has been emp­ty for approx­i­mate­ly 5 days and the few lentils I have left in my cup­board are mock­ing me. Pret­ty much any attempt at ​“dry Jan­u­ary” or ​“healthy eat­ing” has been aban­doned and that per­ma-grey that Emma so beau­ti­ful­ly artic­u­lat­ed above has seeped into my bones. I am one with the cold and the drudgery. In amongst it all, and despite it all, I see lit­tle shoots of hope. The first glim­mers of Spring. Of flow­ers shoot­ing up and our time com­ing. I see it on my thrice-week­ly runs (the sin­gu­lar res­o­lu­tion I have yet to cast aside), and I see it in the what­sapp groups and organ­is­ing meet­ings and ral­lies and strikes across the coun­try, and indeed the world. I see it in the sto­ries of peo­ple and groups cre­at­ing, imag­in­ing and resist­ing that we pub­lish each day on the site. It’s so easy, par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time of year when every fuck­er is broke, cold and mis­er­able, to for­get the pow­er that we have when we come togeth­er, often against insur­mount­able odds and win. In that vein, I’ve spent much of this month revis­it­ing some of the inspir­ing sto­ries from our Sea­son of Hope, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Peace & Jus­tice Project, to keep me going in the meantime.

Josh (Print Edi­tor): As the world of media jour­nal­ism reels from more job cuts (pour one out for those at LA Times and Pitch­fork) my mind keeps return­ing to this piece writ­ten by the bril­liant Ilana Kaplan for the most recent issue of Huck (out now) about why the out­look for media jour­nal­ists is so, so bleak around the world and also why humans (rather than AI and robots) are more vital than ever to deliv­er the news we con­sume. Fun fact – I actu­al­ly dreamt about com­mis­sion­ing Ilana to write this piece while I was in Spain, I mes­saged her in the morn­ing and then I got real­ly, real­ly bad­ly sunburnt.

Isaac (Social Edi­tor & Pho­tog­ra­phy Writer): 

I was put onto the work of Mas­soud Hay­oun a cou­ple of days into the new year, and it’s con­tem­po­rary, social­ly and polit­i­cal­ly charged art at its best. An LA-based jour­nal­ist and author who has piv­ot­ed to fine art, his acrylic paint­ings inter­ro­gate the West and the effects of mod­ern cap­i­tal­ist impe­ri­al­ism in the Mid­dle East. The dead are paint­ed in a ghost­ly blue, with heart aching rep­re­sen­ta­tions of real life events and peo­ple – from Mohamed Bouaz­izi, a Tunisian fruit and veg­etable ven­dor who sparked the Arab Spring after set­ting him­self on fire to Eyad al-Hal­laq, a Pales­tin­ian man with autism who was shot by Israeli police on his way to spe­cial needs school in Jerusalem. Check out his work on Insta­gram, and if you hap­pen to be in Mar­rakech at the begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary, take a vis­it to his exhi­bi­tion at the 1 – 54 Art Fair.

Grab your­self a copy of Huck 80 fea­tur­ing Ziwe and so much more!

Sign up to the new Huck Newslet­ter to get a per­son­al take on the state of media and pop cul­ture from Emma Gar­land in your inbox every month.

Help ensure our future by becom­ing a mem­ber of Club Huck.