“Drops of Jupiter” was one of the biggest radio airplay songs of the decade*?

Man, has a) pop culture generally and b) the role of radio changed a lot since 2001.

*I know the song was released in 1998.  Just going by the airplay stats in the linked article.

I really dig this post by quadmoniker over at PostBourgie about the need for Hollywood to get more women directors in the mix.  She writes, of the stunning excellence that is The Hurt Locker (probably my vote for best movie I’ve seen this year):

 I’m not going to say that this was due to Bigelow’s special woman-sense or anything, because we don’t know why she was able to make it so good. That’s kind of the point….If we leave out half the population from movie-making, we’re leaving out half the perspectives that might be able to bring something new to the table. The major studios would be better off if they brought it, because I’d love to see more movies like The Hurt Locker.

The one thing I’d add is that we don’t know that “half the perspectives” would necessarily be gendered.  It turns out that just as I didn’t need a woman to make a movie about enduring female friendships in New York City, I didn’t need someone with specific combat experience to make an astonishing movie about war: I needed Kathryn Bigelow.  The reason to finance movies by female directors is not because you’ve suddenly discovered that shucks, ladies go to the movies and they have all this money to spend on fancy shoes so why not on tickets, and broads will attract broads, right?  The reason to back movies by female directors is that they’re just as well equipped as male directors to capture the entire spectrum of humanity.

Now, my admiration for my Atlantic colleague James Parker’s writing and vision of pop culture is a matter of public record.  But I’ve got some issues with his list of the top popular culture moments of the decade, which seems to me like a fairly good example of why lists like these are more a window into an individual critic’s psyche than into any given set of experiences in any given period of time.

First, only one of his choices, the rise of Jersey Shore and The City, is about women artists, or performers, or whatever.  Leaving gender aside for a moment, it seems to me that if you want to single out reality television about the young and aimless, it makes more sense to pick Laguna Beach, which kicked all of this nonsense off. The show may be less aimless or offensive than either of Parker’s choices, but it’s an origin, a turning point, rather than a culmination.  But the gender stuff does matter.  Especially given that this has been a fascinating, problematic decade for women in popular culture.  What about Britney Spears’ meltdown, the coverage of which was a popular culture phenomenon in and of itself, breaking new ground in invasive coverage of a clearly disturbed woman, and a major transition point away from late 90′s-early aughts mass-produced pop?  What about Helen Mirren conquering the United States and rising as a viable alternative to Meryl Streep, herself in an astonishingly productive period of her career, both of them symbolizing a path to aging into grandness?  What about the absurd genius of Lady Gaga, who may be a late entrant into the aughts, but emerged as the first viable heir to Madonna in two decades?  The fact that black actors and musicians are left off this list bothers me too.  No Kanye West, no matter how ridiculous he may have become over the course of the decade?  The bridging of the gap between indie and hip-hop, and between black audiences and white audiences, seems to me to be a significant hallmark of this decade: thus, OutKast’s B.O.B. topping indie record site  Pitchfork’s songs of the aughts list.

Second, I have no idea how the rise of cable and premium television as not just a viable site but the critical incubator of astonishing entertainment is entirely left off this list.  Grizzly Man may be a good movie, but while James resonates to its pastoral awe, the depictions of urban centers and suburban tension in The Sopranos, The Wire and Mad Men say a great deal more about where our society is at today and how it got there than a fiercely individual movie about a suicidally individual man does.  I don’t mind some of the smaller entrants on this list–the rise of things like tribute bands and fan culture more generally is certainly one of the important developments in popular culture of this decade.  But Grizzly Man just strikes me as too small.

But the thing is, who am I to say this list is entirely wrong?  Or any other critic?  We all see influences and progressions differently, and developments in different garden patches of popular culture register as more or less important on our respective radars.  I understand the urge to define canons: it gets pageviews and sells magazines.  But I actually think best-of lists are more useful as a way of individual critics explaining what they value and why as a service to the readers who rely on them year- and decade-round than of actually establishing definitive bests.

So, during Law & Order marathons, James Patterson is running pretty strange advertisements for his latest novel, I, Alex Cross.  It’s just him on screen, holding up the novel and telling viewers: ”Buy this book.  Or I’ll have to kill off Alex Cross…It’s very good by the way.”  I don’t think of Patterson as an auteur with great artistic integrity, or anything, and I assume it’s an echo of National Lampoon‘s “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, we’ll Kill This Dog” cover, but it still seems unusually ineffective.  Patterson’s not going to kill off a successful character, so the threat is hollow.  And the spot does zero to convince readers who aren’t already familiar with Patterson’s work that the novel is remotely worth reading.  Maybe they assume that anyone who is watching Law & Order marathons is naturally a Patterson-head.  But it’s still a weak pitch.

I basically agree with Ta-Nehisi on whether stereotypes in professional wrestling are harmful:

Truthfully, it doesn’t bother me now and I see it as a kind of vaudeville. The key is that pro wrestling made gimmicks and employed stereotypes fairly equally. I’ll leave to others to speak on how they felt. I think smacking Jimmy Snuka with a coconut was pretty ignorant, but the context of having, say, Roddy Piper as a hot-blooded Scottsman, Hillbilly Jim as an Appalachian hick, Nikita Koloff as “The Russian Nightmare,” The Iron Sheik as the tool of Iranian tyrants, Hacksaw Jim Duggan as a redneck, and Brother Love as a Jimmy Swaggart made it hard to be angry. 

I think professional wrestling tends to walk a fine line between using typing to brand individual characters, and to convey messages and to rope in new audiences.  I don’t think, for example, the branding of the wrestler Sheamus as “the Celtic Warrior” is an ethnically meaningful statement.  I don’t know that there’s strong enough ethnic identity in the United States that having a distinctively Irish wrestler would draw in new audiences, much less that such an ethnic enclave is significant enough to worth disapprobation to draw in with a type.  On the other hand, the increasing Central American immigrant population in the United States is big enough that it makes sense to coopt element of lucha libre, rebrand them within a larger context, and draw in an audience that misses a familiar form, but that’s also interested in embracing American popular culture.

I’m not saying the WWE is exceptionally sensitive.  That fine line in ethnic branding doesn’t exactly apply to WWE divas in the same way it does to the male wrestlers.  The plots are, um, broad.  But I think WWE has been smart, commercially.  They’ve used broad ethnic branding without getting in trouble for it.  And they’ve made a lot of money by doing so.