Post Malone Discovering a Typewriter Is My Personal ‘American Gothic’

In 1930, when Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” was first unveiled at the Art Institute of Chicago, its reception was huge but varied. Some said Wood was clearly satirizing rural America, some said it was a caricature making fun of Iowan farmers, and Wood himself gave only a few, very vague statements that confused people even more. “There is satire in it,” he once said. “But only as there is satire in any realistic statement.” Really makes you think!

However, the interpretation I’ll be focusing on in this blog is the one where Wood painted “American Gothic” as an emblem of hope during a time of deep economic uncertainty. The Art Institute writes that “Wood intended it to convey a positive image of rural American values, offering a vision of reassurance at the beginning of the Great Depression.” So, based on this interpretation, and as we face a terrifying, livelihood-threatening rise in AI-created content, I believe this clip of Post Malone discovering a typewriter for the first time is a positive image of human-created content, offering reassurance that human-written literature, journalism, poetry, burn books, etc., shall always prevail.

On Friday, Taylor Swift released a behind-the-scenes video of the “Fortnight” music video, featuring Malone, and in one scene, he seemingly uses a typewriter for the first time. “All you do is move it! This is amazing!” the 28-year-old rapper exclaims to Swift. “I feel very steampunk!” Swift responds by saying, “We don’t see working typewriters. Millennials don’t see that shit!” Here is where someone might interpret Malone’s astonishment as satire or parody. “Fortnight,” of course, is the first track off Swift’s latest album, The Tortured Poet’s Department, and in the title song, she sings, “You left your typewriter at my apartment/Straight from the tortured poets department.” But then it gets more brutal: “I think some things I never say/Like, ‘Who uses typewriters anyway?'”