The year that would never end

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/12/2017 (3125 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

How to do a pop culture year-in-review for a year that just seemed to go on and on? The Oscar snafu over Best Picture, the scandal over that misbegotten Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad, the royal Beyoncé birth announcement — don’t these pop culture markers feel as if they happened decades ago?

Staring back over seemingly endless months of anxiety, acrimony and divisiveness, we can see that many of 2017’s headline-grabbing stories were about the politics of culture and the culture of politics, as we collectively confronted issues of power, identity and representation. (OK, and binge-watched Stranger Things 2 and hate-listened to Taylor Swift.)

As 2017 lurches to a close, here’s a brief round-up of the good, the bad, the sad and the Trumpy.

THE WEINSTEIN EFFECT AND THE #METOO MOVEMENT: After some deep-down reporting and the testaments of some resolute women, the sexual misconduct of producer Harvey Weinstein — for decades a so-called “open secret” — was finally dragged into the light.

This public moment became a tipping point in the reckoning against Weinstein and influential men like him, who have not only victimized individual women (as well as some men), but also perpetuated the structural inequalities of Hollywood — those ingrained power dynamics that determine the stories that get told and who gets to tell them.

The Weinstein Effect soon spread — “Your fave is problematic,” as a popular blog used to say — reaching well-known figures in entertainment, media, sports and politics, including TV host Matt Lauer, radio host Garrison Keillor, comedian Louis C.K., broadcaster Charlie Rose, Transparentactor Jeffrey Tambor, opera icon James Levine and celebrity chef Mario Batali.

Time’s cover on the silence-breaking women of #MeToo caught our attention with Ashley Judd and Taylor Swift. But while this conversation started with celebrities, it was the cover’s anonymous elbow, representing a hospital worker who didn’t want her face or name used, that forcibly reminded us the problem of sexual harassment and abuse permeates our entire culture.

OTHER VOICES: Meanwhile, alongside this entrenched horror was some burgeoning hope. From the grim dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale to the popcorn fun of Wonder Woman, from the timely revival of She’s Gotta Have It to the soapy but stealthy-smart drama of Big Little Lies, pop culture offered some new and necessary visions of female power.

THE TV PRESIDENCY: No surprise that the president of the United States is an obsessive television watcher. A ratings-driven impresario, whose reality-TV presidency combines the screaming, scheming melodrama of The Real Housewives franchise with the incessant firings of The Apprentice, Donald Trump even treats potential nuclear war with North Korea as a kind of sweeps-week cliffhanger (“You’ll find out”).

THE TV RESISTANCE: In response to the Trump presidency, late-night television has become a crowded landscape of panic and punchlines. Seth Meyers sets it out, Trevor Noah embodies bemused disbelief and Samantha Bee channels angular female rage. Stephen Colbert’s slightly prim comedy stylings — except for that one unfortunate homophobic joke — make for a nice counterpoint to his target.

It’s Jimmy Kimmel, however, who has reluctantly become one of the Trump administration’s most effective critics. Kimmel, whose son Billy was born in April with a heart problem and whose monologues during the attempted repeals of Obamacare were emotionally raw, delivers satire underpinned with real sincerity.

TRUMP FILTER: Since Trump became president, it’s become common for cultural commentators to talk about the first art exhibition for the Age of Trump, the first novel, the first sitcom, the first Shakespeare play, the first children’s cartoon. Almost everything is now evaluated as newly relevant or completely redundant.

Politically-themed shows like Veep and House of Cards might have fared the worst, their plotlines often trumped by the corruption, incompetence, narcissism and nepotism of the Trump White House. (Of course, House of Cards also has that Kevin Spacey problem. See: the Weinstein Effect.)

THE TRUMP ANTIDOTES: For anyone looking to escape the seemingly unending feedback loop of Trump and his critics, there are always the worthy and morally meaningful works making their way to critics’ Top Ten lists. Or how about some escapist fun?

AT THE MOVIES: In a year that hasn’t yet settled on any Oscar frontrunners, a handful of films stand out for me. Dunkirk was an unbelievably big film, a meticulously constructed and utterly immersive experience of war. Lady Bird was a small film, but worked as an equally immersive exploration of the mother-daughter relationship.

Get Out was a parable about supposedly post-racial America cleverly wrapped up in a horror package, while A Quiet Passion exploded every biopic cliché in its fierce imagining of the life of poet Emily Dickinson. Ghost Story, starring Casey Affleck covered in a bedsheet, was a deeply sad look at loneliness and loss.

PEAK TV AND PROLIFERATING PLATFORMS: Many TV commentators just gave up on Top Ten lists, there being so much dang content out there.

For me, 2017 in TV came down instead to little things: Hopper dancing to Jim Croce in Stranger Things 2; the idiot charms of American Vandal, a crude but ultimately touching parody of true-crime docs; or The Good Place continuing its wacky comic investigation of moral philosophy with an entire episode devoted to “the Trolley Problem.”

SKYNET GOES TO HOGWARTS: Artificial intelligence is coming for our jobs, but if Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash is anything to go by, writers, at least, will be spared for a little while longer. The short piece, algorithmically generated through a text-prediction program, is at once vaguely recognizable and completely nutty. Sample sentence: “‘If you two can’t clump happily, I’m going to get aggressive,’ confessed the reasonable Hermione.”

THE HUNGER GAMES FOR RICH PEOPLE: The Fyre Festival, billed as an experiential, exclusive, eco-friendly, life-altering music festival on a Bahamian island, for which VIP ticketholders had paid up to US$12,000, turned out to be a wasteland of emergency tents, portable toilets and processed cheese sandwiches. Social media had a ball with this schadenfreude-generator of a non-event.

ANIMAL KINGDOM: While humans continued to be predictably horrible this year, animals provided some relief, with social media sensations like Fiona the baby hippo at the Cincinnati Zoo. A plucky preemie, this adorably homely little river horse garnered an international following.

There was also Lulu, the black Labrador pupper who became an internet fave after flunking out of CIA bomb-sniffing school because of her dogged refusal to work for the Man. Good dog, Lulu, good dog.

alison.gillmor@freepress.mb.ca