NPR podcaster Aisha Harris shares career, pop culture knowledge at Newhouse event

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At the time of the Great Recession in 2009, a Bachelor of Arts degree in theater seemed useless to Aisha Harris. But she came up with a simple solution: go to grad school, study film and become a culture critic.

“I really had dreams of being the next Disney star. I was 20 but looked 15. I thought I could be the next Demi Lovato, Zac Efron,” Harris said. “(But) I was always more comfortable with being a writer than a performer.”

After studying theater at Northwestern University and cinema studies at New York University, Harris worked at Slate from 2012 to 2018 as a staff writer and an editor. On Tuesday evening, she came to the Syracuse University Newhouse School of Public Communications for a moderated Q&A with associate professor Eric Grode, who is the director of the Goldring Arts Journalism program. She is a current co-host on NPR’s podcast “Pop Culture Happy Hour.”

Before an audience of over 20 members of the SU community, the two discussed topics from Harris’ journalism career to subjects in pop culture. Grode invited Harris because of her ability to connect with young people and her skills in podcasting, he said.

“She has a great sound, and she talks in her book about cultivating that,” Grode said.

On “Pop Culture Happy Hour,” she analyzed how films like “The Godfather” both accurately represented and stereotyped Italian-Americans and how “The Color Purple” juxtaposed Black women and Black men. She interviewed individuals involved in producing the movies and others who protested against the films.

Podcasting requires a skillset that Harris said she wasn’t initially prepared for. She prefers conversational podcasts, which makes scriptwriting a challenge.

“When you’re writing for audio you have to be very precise,” Harris said. “You can’t be flowery with your language. You have to learn to read a script without sounding like you’re reading a script.”

Harris is a lover of old film and TV, liking the same things as “cinephiles.” Harris talked about “I Love Lucy” and “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” and said she praises Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne for similar reasons. She laughed about how old a lot of the media she discusses on her podcast is.

“I’ve always wondered if anyone under 30 listens to my podcast,” Harris said.

Rayshaun Sandlin, a graduate student in the Goldring Arts Journalism program, said he was inspired by Harris’ enthusiasm for the older shows.

“‘I Love Lucy’ I’ve heard about, but not the others, so this is an opportunity for me to get into some of the older stuff,” Sandlin said.

Harris said these movies and shows, though certainly products of their time, are surprisingly progressive despite their age. Hollywood transformed radically in the 1960s, with more creativity and less studio control of actors and writers.

While at Slate, Harris found herself at the center of cultural controversies. An essay she wrote, titled “Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore,” stemmed from her childhood experiences. In her house, Santa was always Black, and until she was about 5, she thought he was Black in every household. After this, her father told her that Santa changed races while coming down the chimney depending on which household it was.

“Even when I was 5, I wasn’t buying that,” Harris said.

The essay became a hot topic, especially when Fox News host Megyn Kelly criticized the article, saying, “Santa just is white, Jesus was a white man too.”

Harris said she felt the incident stemmed in part from the slow news cycle around the holidays but also sees it as part of the larger “culture wars.”

“People who are stuck up and racist like to imagine everything has to be traditional, but these stories are always fictional,” Harris said.

Harris also talked about blending personal experiences with cultural analysis. Her article on Addy Walker, the first black American Girl doll, balanced the two, she said.

Harris was critical of the American Girl company for their poor representation of Addy. Harris questioned whether Addy, a former slave, really was a good model for young girls.

“She looked like me, and had similar hair to me, but she had been enslaved, while other dolls that were white, their biggest obstacles were like ‘I wanted a horse,’” Harris said.

Harris said it’s critical to be aware of different kinds of filmmaking, which she found after watching foreign movies like Jackie Chan action flicks. She said she watched 207 films last year alone.

“If I could, I’d spend every weekend watching movies and TV shows because I love it,” Harris said.