Pop-culture signposts in year of Adele, Caitlyn and Star Wars
From Trudeaumania 2.0 to Mad Men’s send-off and hoverboards, we are in the Blockbuster Age
When people look back at 2015 a decade from now, what will they remember?
The obvious things, of course: Adele, Donald Trump, Caitlyn Jenner, Jurassic World, Star Wars.
These are the tentpoles: the stuff of commemorative magazines and TV retrospectives, colourful representations of the year that was. But it’s not the whole story. When you dig beneath the surface, what really defines 2015 is a world in the throes of a pop-culture revolution, where big trumps small, nostalgia is the driving force and anything original is considered a fringe product.
It’s the Blockbuster Age, with a few mega-winners that coast on a wave of corporate hype and everything else, as Trump would boldly submit, in the loser camp.
It’s no longer about degrees of engagement: you like this, you don’t like that.
As entertainment options have splintered into barely detectable sub-genres on the edges of public consciousness, you’re either in or out, part of the in crowd or non-existent.
In other words, you either like “Uptown Funk” and Star Wars: The Force Awakens or you spend a lot of time in the corner, keeping to yourself.
But as with any trend, there are aberrations, peepholes of light on the road to oblivion.
Among the year’s pop-culture signposts:
Trudeaumania 2.0
Jeez, whatever happened to stiff-upperlip Stephen Harper, with his budget cuts, debt reduction and vengeful crackdown on niqabs?
After nine years of Darth Vader austerity, there’s a new sheriff in town, another Trudeau, less belligerent than his rabble-rousing father, but every bit as determined.
And like the ’68 version, he’s redefining Canada as a country that’s hip, young and on the move. The pages of Vogue magazine are calling to us. Just over a year from now, we’ll celebrate our nation’s sesquicentennial. Maybe we’ll have a cake.
“Chewie, we’re home!”
It’s been 32 years since the original trilogy, but after a series of subpar prequels, Star Wars is back to seduce another generation with its endearing combination of whiz-bang effects, beeping robots and righteous battles between good and evil. Personally, I squirmed through it because I’m an elitist hack with highfalutin’ ideas about cinema, but the film has an 81-per-cent rating on the aggregate site metacritic and is on track to become the biggest movie of all time. There’s no point trying to escape.
Rocky vs. The Terminator: The Geriatric Years
Sylvester Stallone, whose bittersweet return as an older, more reflective Rocky in the movie Creed may earn him an Oscar nomination, scored a knockout against his former box-office nemesis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose resurrection as an aging cyborg in Terminator: Genisys proved that without his youthful vigour and ripped torso, his elusive charm is gone.
Superwhat?
Supergirl landed on TV amidst a media frenzy that hails it as a provocative, cutting-edge statement about gender politics. The problem: the show isn’t very good, its girl-power premise dodgy and, as it wobbled between effects-driven action and goofy workplace comedy, ratings dropped from 13 million to 7.25 mil- lion within a few weeks.
So long, Jian Ghomeshi. Hello . . . what was your name again?
It’s Shad. And after a gruelling audition process that saw a conga line of wannabes going down in flames, the former Waterloo resident was installed as the new host of CBC’s flagship radio show Q when his scandalplagued predecessor was forcibly given the boot. At first, it seemed like a good fit. The 33-year-old rapper was everything Ghomeshi wasn’t: easygoing, pliable, a team player. But it soon became apparent he didn’t have the goods, the rare radio host who can make an interview with the Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde seem tedious as he studiously followed his script, failed to engage on a personal level and appeared so laid-back that listeners suspected he might actually be lying on the floor. Ratings, needless to say, are on the downswing.
Don Draper would like to buy the world a Coke
The acclaimed TV drama Mad Men said goodbye after seven seasons. Ah, Don, I miss you already, you cynical, philandering, alcoholic genius.
Mr. Spock dies. Why? Why?
All my life, I’ve wanted to be a Vulcan — me and U.S. President Barack Obama and all the other nerds. Now that the greatest TV alien of all time, portrayed by the great Leonard Nimoy, has passed into the great beyond, we’re on our own, trying to project unflappable stoicism as football jocks make fun of our pocket protectors and give us atomic wedgies. Thanks to Spock, we at least have our dignity.
Taylor Swift sticks it to the Man
When Apple Music announced it wouldn’t pay artists for its threemonth trial period, Swifty came out swinging, demanding they pay up or she’d withhold her billion-selling album from its new streaming service. Apple buckled and Swift was a hero, prompting even those who hate her on principle to applaud wildly. And then she streamed her album on Apple, made millions and everyone went back to sleep.
Take that, Hollywood
American Sniper and Straight Outta Compton, incendiary anti-blockbusters that stick it to the Hollywood franchise factory, became massive box-office hits. One is the result of director Clint Eastwood’s cagey, non-partisan take on the story of an American killing machine that acts as a Rorschach inkblot to left and right wingers alike. The other is a kinetically charged take on racism set in 1988 that feels torn from today’s headlines. Both prove that if you can engage viewers on an emotional level, then corporate backing be damned, you can still rule at the box office.
Amy Schumer creates a new template for feminism
The smartest, funniest four-and-a- half minutes of comedy you’ll see this year was on Inside Amy Schumer, in which 2015’s comedy It Girl helped former Seinfeld actress Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 54, celebrate her demotion to supporting roles as mothers and grandmothers while her male peers carry on, oblivious to the passage of time.
“You know how Sally Field was Tom Hank’s love interest in Punchline,” Tina Fey informed Schumer, wide-eyed and gullible. “And then, like 20 minutes later, she was his mom in Forrest Gump! Look it up on YouTube. You won’t regret it.
Hoverboards have arrived . . . well, sort of
They call them hoverboards, but they’re nothing like the levitating skateboard Michael J. Fox zipped around on in 1989’s Back to the Future Part II.
For one thing, these two wheeled, self-balancing electric mini-scooters don’t hover. For another, they’re hard to manoeuvre. And sometimes — ahem — they explode.