This week’s podcast is the beginning of a series on the films of Whit Stillman, the poet of the preppie class, the ironist of the romantic comedy — as people sometimes say, America’s own Jane Austen. I am joined by our own @flaggtaylor and our common friend Carl Eric Scott for a discussion of Damsels in Distress, a delightful comedy about an American liberal arts college, constructed with an admirable respect for the rules of comedy and almost entirely free of the sordid. Almost everything you see is laughable and there is a sophisticated way of getting to distinguish what we are inclined to laugh at because of our common sense and what is merely laughable because of our prejudices.