ReportWire

Tag: 90s

  • A Generation Raised On Manual Mode

    There was a time when convenience had to be earned. You rolled down your car window by hand. You rewound VHS tapes before returning them. You drove to a movie rental store and hoped the one film you wanted was still on the shelf. If the internet disconnected, that was it. You waited.

    This gallery is a lighthearted look at the everyday “struggles” that earlier generations took for granted, long before everything became instant, automated, and on demand.

    From tactile buttons and manual effort to outdated tech that somehow felt more satisfying, these moments remind us how much work used to be baked into daily life.

    There was a reason some products had Patience Required written on the box.

    Ryder

    Source link

  • Pre-Millennium Memes Hit Juuuust Right

    Back in the day, we survived without Google Maps, streaming, or even skip intro buttons… it was truly the dark ages.

    Yet somehow, we managed to thrive on cassette tapes, Tamagotchis, and irrational fear of Y2K. These memes sum up exactly what it felt like to grow up in the wild, wonderful pre-millennium world.

    Hendy

    Source link

  • The Return of Smoking Aligns With the Return of Retro Practices in General

    It’s a “trend” (read: way of life) many have been noticing for the past couple of years: smoking. Its steady rise back into mainstream culture arguably reaching a crescendo with Brat summer, the Charli XCX-fueled phenomenon-by-way-of-an-album that laid out what constitutes a “brat,” at least aesthetically: “pack of cigs, a Bic lighter and a strappy white top with no bra.” Note that pack of cigs was placed at the top of the list, even if XCX was largely just bullshitting/trolling the press…as is the wont of a true brat.

    And yet, it was as though she “manifested” the full-fledged opening of the floodgates when it came to “social smoking” being back in a big way. Unapologetically so. For, where once there was a stigma about it, the summer of 2024 seemed to confirm something that had been brewing for a while: if the “culture” was going to be subjected to the retro practices being consistently touted and implemented by a certain administration helmed by a certain orange creature, then it wanted to at least get back one “good” retro practice out of it: the joy of smoking. No matter that everyone, by now, is well-aware of the bodily harm it guarantees. 

    Here, too, another factor is at play with regard to the “why” of cigarettes a.k.a. “cancer sticks” taking off so much in recent times: it’s apparent that more and more people aren’t seeing much of a viable future for the world, so why not really find (a.k.a. buy, for an extremely exorbitant price) the thing you love and let it kill you? It’s not like there’s going to be an assured tomorrow anyway, n’est-ce pas? So “let it rip.” Or, in this case, let it burn. Put another way by Jared Oviatt a.k.a. “@cigfluencers” (now the go-to person for articles about why cigarettes are “back”), “The dream of stability, owning a home, financial security feels increasingly out of reach. So the question becomes: why not do what you want? Why not smoke? Nothing matters!”

    However, speaking to that aforementioned point about the exorbitant price, the people smoking are actually the ones who can own a home, do have financial security. To be sure, there seems to be something to the idea that “only” celebrities are smoking again (ergo, in some enraged people’s opinions, trying to make it “cool” again)—perhaps because the cost of a pack of cigarettes, to them, amounts to pennies. Which is why Rosalía brought an entire “cigarette bouquet” to Charli XCX for her 32nd birthday on August 2, 2024. Because, while roughly fifteen dollars a pack (when bought from a metropolitan city like L.A.) is alms to the richies, it makes far more of a dent in the average person’s so-called salary. Hence, the popularity of cigarettes among celebrities not necessarily causing a major uptick in smoking among “the commoners.” Who tend to prefer vaping anyway, a much more déclassé form of smoking, with only slightly less harmful health effects. Even so, Lana Del Rey remains committed to it, despite previously being one of the earlier known celebrities of the twenty-first century to parade her cig habit (once an indelible part of her visuals). 

    But then, that’s because Del Rey was always touting twentieth century views and “ideals” in the first place. It’s only now that “everyone else” has “caught up” to her (as she herself presently chooses vaping instead—to which her recent opening act, Addison Rae, would say, “Ew, I hate vaping”) by allowing themselves to fall behind. And why shouldn’t they, when everything around them reflects a society that has entered a time machine, reinvoking the worst of what “hippies” and “crusaders” fought against in the mid-twentieth century: racism, sexism and an overtly patriarchal society.

    Alas, since all of that has bubbled up to the surface again with a vengeance, many seem to think that, at the bare minimum, that should include the erstwhile “glamor” of cigarettes. Before the myth of their “doctor recommended” cachet was debunked with an early 1960s study that definitively concluded cigarettes cause lung cancer. It was in 1964, with the publication of Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service, that things for the tobacco industry started to get really dicey. Because that’s when the PSAs, both in print and on TV, started coming out, making increasingly indelible impressions on people as the decades wore on. 

    The 90s were an especially “anti-smoking” time, in terms of campaigns going hard against tobacco. One ad, seeking to satirize the supposed glamor of smoking now mostly associated with Old Hollywood films, depicted a man and woman with “movie star vibes” as the former asks, “Mind if I smoke?” Her reply: “Care if I die?” The message was out: smoking was decidedly gross, selfish and, worst of all (for men and women alike), caused impotence. And yes, it’s almost certain that’s a problem for “cigfluencer” Matty Healy, who went from dating the “wholesome” Taylor Swift to the “brat-adjacent” Gabbriette, a fellow smoker. Because, despite the 90s being always on-trend with the likes of those in the “Brat orbit,” anti-smoking isn’t something that took hold from that hallowed decade. Besides, even the it girls of the day (e.g., Kate Moss, Chloë Sevigny, Winona Ryder) clearly never paid much attention to such ads. Or the influence their unabashed smoking had on those who wanted to be like them.

    Even so, that didn’t stop the effects of the anti-smoking movement at the government level, with California in particular being ahead of the curve on banning smoking in restaurants, workplaces and bars starting in 1995 (though Beverly Hills specifically started banning smoking in certain public places in 1987). Rather ironic considering that Hollywood was the place that started selling cigarettes as “glamorous” in the first place. The dive that the reputation of the cigarette took by the mid-2000s was so noticeable that it can best be summed up by Aaron Eckhart’s character, Nick Naylor, in 2006’s Thank You For Smoking, when he laments that the only people you see smoking in movies anymore are “RAVs”: Russians, Arabs and villains (the former two often neatly fitting into the latter category for Americans anyway). 

    Enter Mary-Kate Olsen, who, despite her twin also being a smoker, was arguably the first to really bring back cigarettes as a mark of “class” and “wealth.” This while also embodying the brat definition of wielding them as an accessory long before Charli XCX herself crystallized what brat even meant. MK’s cigarette-smoking advocacy reached an apex at her 2015 wedding to Olivier Sarkozy, an event that prompted Page Six to famously describe the reception as having “bowls and bowls filled with cigarettes, and everyone smoked the whole night.” It was a phrase—and scene—that pop culture enthusiasts couldn’t stop obsessing over. And maybe it took XCX’s Brat to “inspire” a new generation glom on to what Mary-Kate had already done for cigs anyway. Well, her and a few other 00s-era “bad girls,” including Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears (as a certain infamous 2008 Rolling Stone article phrased it, “She is an inbred swamp thing who chain-smokes”).

    All of which is to say that, sure, the “coolness” of smoking has survived numerous threats to its clout in the years since the truth about its dangers was made public. But it—smoking—has always been there, just waiting in the wings to reemerge again as a viable thing to do for securing one’s “effortless” chicness. However, the fact that the confluence of retro political policies and stances on gender (de facto, gender roles) has aligned with smoking’s latest renaissance doesn’t seem like a coincidence at all. So much as an additional way to “mirror the past.”  And to further undo all the human progress that was made since.

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • RETRO FIND: Chicken with four legs who beat the odds

    RETRO FIND: Chicken with four legs who beat the odds

    RETRO FIND: Chicken with four legs who beat the odds

    The chicken was aptly named 4Runner.

    12121212. Hey, how come none of these chickens have got four legs. Chickens don’t have four legs. Oh, yes, they do. You want me to take him out? All right. He probably won’t like this real well. Matt Duncan owns *** living example. His £7 broiler really has four legs. 123, the bird’s name 4runner. And he really can run two legs, do the work, the others just sort of get in the way. I was thinking maybe the circus could take him. It’s in town now, you know, Duncan and his brother run *** chicken processing operation for runner was on the fast track to, you know what? That’s when his extra legs saved him. He was spared. The ax for runner is from the Fort Calhoun area. So there are plenty of jokes about how he may have taken *** radiation hit. But the real reason for the extra appendages, I don’t know for sure. Could have been *** double yoke bag or something weird. Most of four runners buddies only live *** few months before they end up on someone’s dinner table. His extra limbs have bought him some extra time from the news. Watch seven live. I’m.

    RETRO FIND: Chicken with four legs who beat the odds

    The chicken was aptly named 4Runner.

    Farm animals born with abnormalities often have a bleak future. This chicken’s unique traits ensured its survival.In 1995, a chicken was born with four legs near Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. It was aptly named 4Runner. 4Runner was owned by two brothers who ran a chicken processing operation. His extra legs bought him some extra time. “He was spared the ax,” his owner said.The persistent bird didn’t waste that time. True to his name, he often dashed around his home in an endearing shuffle, becoming a local curiosity and a family favorite.WATCH the video to see the amazing 4Runner going about his day!If you liked this story, here are a few more blasts from the past:

    FORT CALHOUN, Neb. —

    Farm animals born with abnormalities often have a bleak future. This chicken’s unique traits ensured its survival.

    In 1995, a chicken was born with four legs near Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. It was aptly named 4Runner.

    4Runner was owned by two brothers who ran a chicken processing operation. His extra legs bought him some extra time. “He was spared the ax,” his owner said.

    The persistent bird didn’t waste that time. True to his name, he often dashed around his home in an endearing shuffle, becoming a local curiosity and a family favorite.

    WATCH the video to see the amazing 4Runner going about his day!

    If you liked this story, here are a few more blasts from the past:

    Source link

  • Horrifying and dark sh*t we’re actually glad we grew up with

    Horrifying and dark sh*t we’re actually glad we grew up with

    Zach Nading

    Source link

  • Sh-t Talk: How Did Green Day’s Dookie Start a Trilogy?

    Sh-t Talk: How Did Green Day’s Dookie Start a Trilogy?

    Green Day recently released its 14th studio album, ‘SAVIORS’, calling it the last part in a loose trilogy that begins with 1994’s Dookie and continues with 2004’s American Idiot.

    There are several ways that we can immediately see these three albums as a trilogy, or at least as an attempt at one.

    All three were produced by Rob Cavallo, and the first two were undoubtedly masterpieces. Judging by Green Day’s overwhelming promotion of the album, the band certainly hopes this one will be too.

    The second way is timing. Green Day launched the promotion for ‘SAVIORS’ just as it announced a tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of American Idiot and the 30th anniversary of Dookie.

    Not only will the band be playing both albums in their entirety on the ‘SAVIORS’ tour, but Green Day has gone out of its way to promote new editions of Dookie and updated lyrics to “American Idiot” to tie the three together.

    There’s also the fact that American Idiot came out 10 years after Dookie, and ‘SAVIORS’ came out 20 years after American Idiot.

    And then there’s the third way — the conceptual way. While many have praised Dookie for its influence on the musical landscape of the ’90s, most have focused on how the album embodies the values of the alternative subculture of the early-to-mid-’90s.

    Sure, the album became emblematic of that mid-‘90s slacker subculture, but to write out of that subculture would necessarily mean responding to and challenging its values. Rather than being an album that embodies all that stoner humor and malaise, Dookie pushes against it, asking at every turn, “Is this who we really want to be?”

    American Idiot and ‘SAVIORS’ share an overtly political aesthetic — the politics of both would have to be examined separately — but if these three albums are tied together conceptually, even in a loose way, it’s worth closely reading into Dookie to examine its politics as we celebrate its 30th anniversary.

    How does Dookie start the concept that is carried out across American Idiot and ‘SAVIORS’?

    American Idiot and ‘SAVIORS’ came out in election years, the first in response to one unpopular president and the second in response to the shadow and specter of another one.

    Dookie, however, was written and recorded in 1993 as the band said goodbye to its roots at the famed venue at 924 Gilman St., parting ways with the local Lookout! Records and signing with Warner Music-owned Reprise Records.

    For many, Dookie was Green Day’s sell-out album. The recently revived talk about Green Day losing touch with the punk community and its music has long plagued the band that had humble beginnings playing birthday parties and backyards in the East Bay punk scene as Sweet Children.

    For all those who still feel like Green Day’s best years stopped after Kerplunk in 1991, bassist Mike Dirnt would tell you, as he did in Turn It Around: The Story of East Bay Punk, “I always really thought the idea of selling out would be not following the thing that I love doing and giving up on it because somebody had imposed some sanction on it.”

    In the same documentary, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys agrees that it was Green Day’s dedication to its craft that drove the band to the top of the scene and out into the world. Green Day was not going to turn down opportunities to take its music global, but what message would it lead with?

    Rather than taking on the politics of the time, Green Day’s Dookie instead examines the politics of standing up for yourself when everything around you seems to be pulling you down.

    Starting with the cover, the band’s title explodes out of a world being attacked by dogs, bombing the city with, well, dookie. In the middle of the city, with towers on the right and smokestacks on the left, is a crowd of colorful characters —though more seem inclined to take advantage of one another in this raid than dealing with the dookie. All the while, a God-like figure smiles down from the corner, giving His OK to everything he sees.

    Out of that world depicted on the cover, Green Day starts Dookie with “Burnout,” opening with a literal declaration: “I declare I don’t care no more.”

    That’s not exactly a surprise coming from the slackers passing a joint and hanging out on the street we see in the CD insert, but after all of this, there is surely more going on when making such a declaration is a matter of life or death

    Scribed out in scratchy boxes with sketches of life on the outskirts, the lyrics coming from one who “drive[s] along these shit town lights” tie the idea of burning out together with the resignation of “stepp[ing] in line to walk amongst the dead” and “throw[ing] my emotions in the grave.”

    Throughout Dookie, Green Day questions the declaration to stand for nothing and find exactly where the band stands in a society stuck in a cycle of senseless systems.

    “Having A Blast” and “Chump” would openly object to these systems with the former “mow[ing] down any bullshit that confronts you” and the latter rejecting the “magic man, egocentric plastic man.”

    Other songs would embrace it. “Longview” portrays masturbation as the preferable option to leaving the house and the orgasm as the gateway to “paradise,” but when “masturbation’s lost its fun, you’re fucking lonely.” Note that it is loneliness, not empowerment, the speaker feels upon realizing that their self-indulgent pastimes are no longer fun. Now that “paradise” can no longer be found in the act of self-pleasure, it has to be located somewhere else.

    “Welcome to Paradise,” the very next song after this realization, is the first instance we hear the speaker take a stand for something, and that something is personal freedom. This is freedom not just from their parents, as seen in the transition from “whining” to “laughing” to his mother as time passes after leaving home. It’s also the freedom to make a new start in a “wasteland” filled with “cracked streets and broken homes.”

    The album’s latter half is filled with portraits of the characters who populate this “wasteland,” and each time you see the speaker championing those who break out of the systems they are trapped in and sorrow for those who give into those systems.

    In “She,” we hear the speaker praise the song’s unnamed heroine for “figur[ing] out that all her doubts were someone else’s point of view” and “smash[ing] the silence with the brick of self-control.” Set against the silent self-indulgence of “Longview,” here speaking out with “self-control” is the key to breaking free from being “locked up in a world that’s been planned out for you” and “feeling like a social tool without a use.”

    We see this dynamic again in “Coming Clean,” only this time, “[finding] out what it takes to be a man” means “coming clean for the first time,” confessing one’s secrets and desires to Mom and Dad and finding one’s own path.

    On the contrary, there is a profound sadness to “Pulling Teeth” as we hear from a man stuck in an abusive relationship with a woman, convinced that she really does love and care for him deep down. Recognizing, “Oh God, she’s killin’ me,” the speaker aligns this cycle of abuse with the same death that awaits the speaker of “Burnout” should they step in line.

    “Emenius Sleepus” presents us with a speaker meeting with an old friend who is sad to see what has become of him, asking, “What have you done with all your time? And what went wrong?” Questioning what his friend has done with all their time calls to mind the wasted time we see in “Longview,” especially when the speaker tells us, “It wasn’t long ago that I was just like you.” While it is unclear what went wrong, it is clear that the speaker is seeing that the way he used to be was wrong — idle, self-indulgent, a burnout.

    Rather than being an album that embodies all that stoner humor and malaise, Dookie pushes against it, asking at every turn, “Is this who we really want to be?”

    tweet this

    On its surface, “Sassafras Roots” seems like a cute little romance about “smoking cigarettes, wasting your time,” but take another look at how the speaker describes himself: “I’m just a parasite wasting your time, applying myself to wasting your time.” And it is this parasitic complacency that is ultimately rejected by the speaker of “In The End”:  “Someone to look good with and light your cigarette, is this what you really want?”

    That same parasitic complacency can also be seen in “When I Come Around” as the smug “loser” and “user” speaker chides the person he is addressing for worrying about his whereabouts. In a moment of clarity, the speaker advises the addressee to get out of the cycle that brings them so much sadness: “Go do what you like. Make sure you do it wise,” adding that if the relationship causes this much “self-doubt” it “means nothing was ever there” and “it’s just not right” no matter how much you force it, no matter how many times they show up when the speaker “come[s] around.”

    “In The End” appears to show us that moment of realization: “I figured out what you’re all about, and I don’t think I like what I see. So, I hope I won’t be there in the end if you come around.” Being trapped in a cycle — a job just to have a job, a toxic relationship, addiction — it all leads to a loss of self.

    The speaker of “Basket Case” is brought to the brink of insanity by the loss of self. Going to see a shrink and then a whore, this “melodramatic fool” seeks but never finds the answers to his existential angst in sex or psychiatric institutions because he is too paranoid or stoned to do anything but whine about his problems to anyone who has the time to listen.

    By contrast, the speaker of “F.O.D.,” who is “stuck down in rut of dis-logic and smut” and done with all the two-faced people, ultimately finds peace in “blast[ing] it all to hell.” The reason given: “You’re just a fuck. I can’t explain it ’cause I think you suck.”

    It would be easy to write this off as mere adolescent defiance, but as the album’s heaviest and most powerful chorus, it gets to the core of what Dookie has been exploring through 15 songs. You may not be able to even say what it is that’s bringing you down, but whining about “nothing and everything all at once” does nothing. If you think it sucks, you need to tell it to “fuck off and die.” Death is, as we know from the album’s first song, reserved for those who burn out and step in line.

    Dookie is just the beginning of this story. After focusing on Dookie’s lyrics rather than its creators or their intentions, it is worth noting here that its creators were only 22 when the album came out and were breaking out of a scene that had become all too content to congratulate itself for becoming so insular.

    At the time, standing up and standing out was enough. It would take Green Day another 10 years to figure out what it stood for in American Idiot and another 30 years to figure out what standing for it looked and felt like in ‘SAVIORS’.

    As a nod to Dookie‘s secret song, we’ll close with a non sequitur: “All By Myself,” is the perfect way to end this album. After such a serious look at where they stand in relation to the complacency that surrounds them, these East Bay punks just couldn’t help but sneak in one last masturbation joke. There are, after all, two definitions of paradise presented in this album.





    David Fletcher

    Source link

  • '90s Teen Heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas Seen In Public For First Time In Years! – Perez Hilton

    '90s Teen Heartthrob Jonathan Taylor Thomas Seen In Public For First Time In Years! – Perez Hilton

    Ever wonder where Jonathan Taylor Thomas is these days?

    Starting with his hilarious turn as sarcastic middle child Randy on Home Improvement and going through some indelible Disney teen classics, JTT was the crush of ’90s kids. It was a love that only grew until, some time in the early 2000s, the star just kind of… walked away. Apart from a few appearances on TV dad Tim Allen‘s other sitcom, Last Man Standing, Jonathan hasn’t been onscreen in nearly 20 years!

    So where is he in 2023? Still in Southern California, just… far from Hollywood.

    Video: Macaulay Culkin Reunites With Home Alone Mom At Tear-Filled Walk Of Fame Ceremony!

    This week the first pics of JTT to surface in over two years came out, showing the former star looking all grown up, just a regular 42-year-old guy! See Jonathan looking scruffy and super chill in a beanie, sweater, and jeans (below)!

    Love to see a happy-looking former child star! Someone recognized him as they saw him go into a convenience store, refill his reusable coffee mug, and walk back to his car. To where? Back to anonymity, we guess!

    Back in 2013 JTT explained to People why he stepped away from acting, saying:

    “I’d been going nonstop since I was 8 years old. I wanted to go to school, to travel and have a bit of a break.”

    Using his TV money, he went to Harvard and Columbia, and went and had a normal life. He said at the time he had “no regrets” about no longer being famous either:

    “I never took the fame too seriously. It was a great period in my life, but it doesn’t define me. When I think back on the time, I look at it with a wink. I focus on the good moments I had, not that I was on a lot of magazine covers.”

    Good for him! That celeb life is a lot of stress along with the sweetness. It’s not for everyone, and we’re happy he chose the life that was best for him. And we’ll always have the ’90s to look back on.

    [Image via Disney/YouTube/WENN.]

    Perez Hilton

    Source link

  • WATCH: Candlebox Reflect on 30 Years of Rock

    WATCH: Candlebox Reflect on 30 Years of Rock

    On Friday, Candlebox released their final studio album The Long Goodbye. It caps 30 years of recording, with rock radio staples like “Far Behind” and “You” still receiving airplay.

    Anchored by those two massive hits, the band’s self-titled debut album put them in the conversation with other Seattle bands like Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains. Were they grunge? They looked the part, but Candlebox have always felt like an American hard rock band.

    Their time on the charts was relatively brief, but their influence can be heard in acts like Daughtry, Shinedown, and Seether. They’ve become a bridge band between the grunge era and the commercial theatrical sound that dominated radio in the 2000s.

    But Candlebox isn’t done just yet. Through Oct. 21, the band is on tour with 3 Doors Down. They’re also playing headline shows as part of The Long Goodbye Tour. So if you’ve ever wanted to hear “Far Behind” and “You” live, this is your last chance.

    Jordan Edwards talked to Martin about the band’s history, the making of their final album, and why it’s time to walk away. Watch the full interview below.

    Popdust Presents | Candlebox

    For more from Candlebox, follow them on Instagram and Twitter.

    Staff

    Source link

  • The Beanie Bubble Reminds That The Ultimate Childhood Toy for Millennials Was Also the Ultimate Representation of What It Is to Be Millennial

    The Beanie Bubble Reminds That The Ultimate Childhood Toy for Millennials Was Also the Ultimate Representation of What It Is to Be Millennial

    Perhaps what strikes one the most about The Beanie Bubble isn’t pulling back the curtain behind the “Wizard of Beanie Babies,” Ty Warner, and finding out he was a huge asshole, but rather, the realization of just how millennial the plush toys really were. This doesn’t pertain to the actual era during which they came out, so much as the “toys” being a reflection of what it already meant to be millennial, even (/especially) at tender preteen ages. The fact that even something as theoretically pure as “toys” suddenly had to be slapped with the purpose of “getting a return on one’s investment” couldn’t be more millennial by nature. Having the thing for the sake of having it simply wasn’t an option. It had to “give something back.” Just as millennial children were expected to. And yes, as Malcolm Harris notes in Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials, this was the first generation of children treated this way. As human capital.

    Look to none other than their baby boomer parents for a large part of that reason. The parents who wanted to ensure that their children had nothing but the best and never endured any amount of previously unavoidable pain whatsoever (hence, helicopter parenting). Their childhoods were going to be different. Safer. No playing outside for hours at a time until dinner. No, no. Now, that time had to be accounted for. Monitored. Monetizable (at least somewhere down the line).

    And there’s always more time for self-improvement over “useless” play. This factoring into why Beanie Babies certainly shouldn’t be viewed as actual toys to play with. Gasp! That was a scandalous thought after realizing they were actually laden with value. At times, hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of value. So it is that the book The Beanie Bubble is based on, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute (written by none other than a millennial), reminds that it “had turned into a craze that was the twentieth-century American version of the tulip bubble in 1630s Holland.” It, too, was described as a “mania.” Tulip mania.

    To that end, the precursor to The Beanie Bubble, a 2021 documentary called Beanie Mania, highlights the ways in which boomer parents took something theoretically innocent and fun, and then turned it into something that more closely resembled a chore, an obligation. A means to secure one’s future. In said documentary, a former Beanie-loving child named Michelle makes that apparent when she says, “…it became a multiple trip, do what we can, keep going until you were tired, until there were no other stores in the area that might have what we’re looking for. And then my mom took that to an extreme and it quickly became her thing over mine.”

    The obsession, on the parents’ part, with collecting as many Beanies as possible ultimately had more to do with “winning” at toy-owning/ensuring their child had the best of everything, than it did with “having fun.” For nothing about being a millennial child was ever about just having fun. All of it had to be in service for some “greater purpose.” Some higher aim in service of the competition called life. Something, in the end, that would create a “market bubble” among the buying and selling of millennials themselves. For if every millennial was trained in the same proverbial school of “Be the Best,” it creates a greater likelihood for children (and the adults they become) to be rejected by the various institutions that know “everyone” is both the crème de la crème and willing to work at maximum capacity for minimal payment. That’s what they learned in school, after all. Where “the pedagogical mask,” as Harris refers to it, is meant to conceal that what the children are actually doing is training for a life of unpaid labor (with such labor eventually billed as “just part of the job”), the great Beanie Baby race was a study in how to turn a quick profit. All by asking of a child the one thing you never should: don’t play with your toys.

    What could be a more “reasonable” ask of a generation where competition over things that were formerly innocent had never been at a higher level? As Harris remarks over the retooled school structure of the 90s, “[It’s] built around hypercompetition, from first period, to extracurricular activities, to homework, to the video games kids play when they have a minute of downtime. It’s not a coincidence—none of it. The growth of growth requires lots of different kinds of hard work, and millennials are built for it.” Not just because they’ve been conditioned to expect putting in hours of work with little given back in return, but because they’re the first generation that was taught to always be “plugged in.” To the matrix, that is. Always available, therefore always ready for any opportunity that might arise. Like a higher bidding price on eBay. The famed auction site that aligned with the rise of the secondary market for Beanie Babies. A secondary market that served as a collector’s wet dream. And yes, the entire driving force behind the rise and popularity of Beanie Babies were the collectors. Originally just a group of “cul-de-sac moms” from Naperville, Illinois. Meaning that, perhaps for the only time in history, the Midwest was ahead of the trend curve before everyone else. 

    Dave Sobolewski, the middle child of one of the “original Beanie Ladies,” Mary Beth, himself comes across as a quintessential millennial, simply shrugging off the absurdity with his assessment of market bubbles while also finding the time to flex, “My background, my education, my profession, it’s all finance. Beanie Babies is a case study in just how a few people pushing an idea and enthusiasm…crazy things can happen.” Spoken like someone who has never reckoned with the traumatic experience of being a millennial. Manipulated for profit in much the same manner as Beanie Babies until millennials’ own bubble burst. Instead, Dave writes off the unhinged fanaticism as: “Without the few women that started the entire mania, Beanie Babies never would have been.” It bears mentioning, to be sure, that the women who started it were all white and middle-class, and many of them held formerly high-powered jobs before giving it up to be a “full-time mom” (as though you can’t be that regardless of having a paid job) in the cul-de-sac. Undoubtedly, it sounds a lot like the plot to The Stepford Wives. And maybe there was something “automaton-esque” about their obsession. More, more, more. Feed, feed, feed.

    All of this, in the end, being the philosophy that trickled down to their millennial children, who would not have the benefit of experiencing adulthood in an epoch that allowed for such ease of moneymaking as the boomers did. Ty Warner (played by Zach Galifianakis) himself being such an example of someone who continuously “fell into” money. In large part due to the women he surrounded himself with. Women who are finally given some credit in The Beanie Bubble, structured in an “all over the place” way (that many critics included in part of their panning) to show the different time periods in which Warner was most reliant on them. Patricia Roche was the first on Warner’s list of Women to Fuck Over. Helping him to establish the business, there’s no denying she was instrumental in the initial years of Ty Inc.’s success before Beanie Babies. In the movie, she becomes “Robbie Jones” (played by Elizabeth Banks), while Faith McGowan, his second serious girlfriend, becomes Sheila (Sarah Snook). But the woman he arguably took the most advantage of wasn’t even someone he was dating.

    Instead, it was college student Lina Trivedi, who worked there for twelve dollars an hour from 1992 to 1998 despite the fact that she was the direct cause of the many millions (then billions) of dollars the company would go on to make. In no small part because of her suggestion to implement the use of this thing called “The Internet.” In fact, Ty Inc. was surprisingly ahead of the game on the ways in which the internet could be used. From checking out product information to serving as a place for collectors to connect, Trivedi was the brainchild behind all of that. 

    And the boomers were ready to absorb the technology. This being what amplified and blew up Beanie Mania into pure frenzy. As Joni Hirsch-Blackman in Beanie Mania puts it, “It was a really nice thing for a while…till the adults ruined it.” At least some adults can admit that much. Though they can’t seem to admit that everything about Beanie Baby fever was fueled from a middle-class perspective, with no regard for what else was actually going on in the world (or the havoc they would ultimately wreak upon people’s lives by creating this speculative market). To that point, Joni also foolishly declares, “I think of the 90s as sort of frivolous.” From that skewed view (one that ignores things like the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, the first World Trade Center bombing attempt, the Unabomber, the rise of school shootings, etc.), it left room for the frivolousness of collecting (again, if you were white and middle-class).

    As the early days of trolling for Beanie Babies gave way to something far darker, Joni could admit that the taint was starting to settle in fast on what was once meant to be a child’s toy. However, as she remarks, “This was becoming something different. We don’t play with these things because they’re gonna be worth money. If the tag was creased, you’d ruin the value of your Beanie.” To reiterate, this is decidedly “millennial thinking.” Or rather, the thinking that millennials were inculcated with. Always search for the next hustle, the next scam, the next “get rich quick” scheme. All without seeming to realize that “legitimate” jobs require just as much time and effort as the so-called easy way out. Then, of course, there was all the waste that arose from the obsession with collecting. Not least of which was the McDonald’s collaboration that resulted in “Teenie Beanies,” prompting consumers to just throw away the food after buying excessive amounts of Happy Meals to complete their set. At the height of the fervor in 1998, various fights and thefts would break out at McDonald’s locations across the U.S., necessitating police involvement. The fixation on these bean-filled sacks shaped as animals being of high value meant that, suddenly, the market seemed to be filled solely with sellers. Sellers who were starting to get fed up with the secondary market when inventory wasn’t being unloaded so quickly, or for as much as it had in the past when the bubble started to burst around 1999. 

    Sensing the imminent doom, Warner pulled a stunt announcing Beanie Babies would be discontinued after December 31, 1999 (appropriate, considering their demise would be after the 90s ended anyway). Then, after a buying spike, he polled the collectors (by charging them to vote on the website) if they wanted Beanies to stay—after he had already ratcheted up the demand again in the wake of that “to be discontinued” announcement. This doesn’t make it into The Beanie Bubble, though what comes across overall is that there is no “genius” behind the curtain. In Beanie Mania, Ty even is referred to as the Wizard of Oz. An emperor with no clothes, as it were. Sure, he could be billed as the “eccentric heart” of the designs, but, in the end, he would have been nothing without the women behind him. This was a key element that writer Kristin Gore (that’s right, the daughter of 90s vice president, Al), wanted to convey. Co-directed with her husband, Damian Kulash, The Beanie Bubble does just that. And, although known to many as the lead singer for OK Go, Kulash seems uniquely qualified to co-direct the movie as he contributed a story to a book called Things I’ve Learnt from Women Who’ve Dumped Me. Would that Ty Warner had learned anything from the women who dumped him, least of all humility. And an understanding that his success was a direct result of the rigged system that continues to favor white men. 

    Per Gore on writing the script, “We’ve talked a lot about how there’s this myth of a lone male genius coming up with things. You see it over and over again, benefiting from a system that’s rigged for him and against everyone else. And we wanted to peel back those layers and look at that myth and really show what everyone knows, which is that there’s always so much more to that story. There are always so many more people involved.” In the case of the millennial mentality that insists, “Always be driven, always be competing…with the potential for no payout,” that, too, had many people involved. From the government to parents and, yes, to corporations like Ty Inc.

    What The Beanie Bubble also wants to remind people of is how ugly capitalism makes us. Which is why the film opens with that illustrious truck crash scene (which is, needless to say, hyper-stylized), wherein boxes of Beanies go flying and everyone on the highway starts picking at the remains like vultures. In Beanie Mania, Mary Beth blithely sums a scene like this up with, “The collector’s mentality is that you can never have enough.” But the sentence Mary Beth was really looking for was: “The American consumer’s mentality is that you can never have enough.” And you have to be willing to claw and compete at any (literal) cost to get it. That’s what millennials learned. Yet they’re still somehow shocked that none of their unpaid labor (starting at the school level) has yielded a substantial return.

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • After ‘Barbie,’ Rob Thomas Dedicates Performance of “Push” to Ryan Gosling

    After ‘Barbie,’ Rob Thomas Dedicates Performance of “Push” to Ryan Gosling

    Rob Thomas is embracing his inner Kenergy. A video of the Matchbox Twenty frontman dedicating a performance of his song “Push” to Ryan Gosling—who does a hilarious cover of the song in a key Barbie scene—has gone viral on TikTok.

    TikTok content

    This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

    “I dedicate this next song to Ryan Gosling,” Thomas says in the video, before launching into a rousing rendition of his 1996 alt-rock anthem. Anyone who engaged in Barbenheimer this weekend knows that Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” plays a pivotal role in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, in which Gosling plays Barbie’s male toy counterpart, Ken. (If you don’t want to know more, it’s best to stop reading now).

    After traveling from Barbie world to the human world and learning about the patriarchy, Gosling’s Ken launched a hostile takeover of the pink utopia. He transforms the female-centric world of Barbie into a male-dominated “Kendom,” complete with everything that toxic masculinity entails—including the (straight) male compulsion to serenade women with an acoustic guitar. In one hilarious scene, Gosling and his fellow Kens break out their guitars by a campfire and launch into a cover of “Push” that lasts for literal hours. 

    Gerwig was very intentional about having Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” serve as the unofficial anthem for the unwavering strength of the male ego. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gerwig said that she really wanted Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Gosling’s Ken to each have their own favorite ’90s-era song. “I was like, Well, if Barbies loved Indigo Girls’ ‘Closer to Fine,’ which is one of my favorite songs of all time, the Kens might really attach to Matchbox Twenty,” she said. Born in 1983, Gerwig has fond memories of the song from her youth. “It was playing all the time on Quad 106.5 when I was in seventh grade, and if it wasn’t playing there, it was playing at 107.9,” she said. “I really loved that song. I listened to it all the time and I was like, I feel it. Something’s in this.”

    Though lesser men might chafe at their song serving as the embodiment of toxic masculinity, Thomas took it in stride. In an interview with USA Today, Thomas said that he thought the film’s use of his song “was hilarious.” 

    “I did this thinking I’d be the butt of the joke,” he continued. “And I was fine with that. I’m pretty thick-skinned.” He didn’t mention whether Gerwig also asked Thomas for his permission by personally writing him a letter—like she did for Justin Timberlake when she used his “Cry Me a River” in her solo directorial debut, Lady Bird. What is clear is that Gerwig knows how to pick the right song for the right movie moment. 

    Chris Murphy

    Source link

  • On Mentos’ Apparent Ability to Magically Imbue People With Skills They Should Already Have to Deal With the Inconveniences of Life and How Said Ad Campaign Surely Affected the Millennial Mind

    On Mentos’ Apparent Ability to Magically Imbue People With Skills They Should Already Have to Deal With the Inconveniences of Life and How Said Ad Campaign Surely Affected the Millennial Mind

    Thinking back on all the reasons why millennials might be “the way they are” (i.e., “ill-equipped”), one culprit (apart from helicopter parents) that shouldn’t be overlooked is the ongoing series of Mentos commercials that were on a loop throughout the 90s. Indeed, the first round of Mentos commercials that would make the Dutch (and, later Dutch-Italian—upon merging with Perfetti in 2001) brand a household name in America aired circa 1991, establishing the scotch mints as a staple of 90s pop culture. But, long before that decade, Dutch brothers Michael and Pierre van Melle came up with the idea for a peppermint-flavored candy in 1932 (clearly, they weren’t too worried about Hitler’s impact on European capitalism just yet). By the 60s and 70s, the “freshmaker” was appearing around the globe.

    But one milieu it still had yet to really make strides in was the U.S. In response to an apparent sales stagnation throughout the 70s and 80s, the German marketing team at Pahnke & Partners managed to come up with something for Mentos that even they probably didn’t know the power of until it was unleashed. The VP of Marketing at Mentos, Liam Killeen, also certainly wasn’t aware that not only would it prompt such a positive reaction (at least in terms of sales), but, as time wore on, an entirely negative one. This elucidated by being verbally attacked by a cashier at a video store simply for wearing a jacket with the Mentos logo on it in 1996, when the Mentos commercials had reached an apex of oversaturation—so much so that the campaign had been referenced throughout an entire season of Baywatch, in Gen X movie staple Clueless (released in 1995) and in the Foo Fighters’ video for “Big Me” (released in 1996, with “Footos” replacing the Mentos name, along with Footos’ own slogan: “The Fresh Fighter”). It was the latter video’s director, Jesse Peretz, who summed up the commercials best as “total lobotomized happiness.” Perhaps this was how Europeans saw the “American way of life” from afar as they cashed in on its darkest side of all: a lust for everything related to capitalism. Or maybe life in the Netherlands (or Holland, if you prefer) really is that blissful, and the Dutch company was simply trying to impart its own form of “lobotomized happiness” onto Americans. Either way, from the American perspective, it translated into a parody—a totally ersatz view of the human condition, or, at best, a 1950s spin on the 1990s.

    Whatever the case, the commercials were simultaneously mocked and obsessed over for their “camp” qualities. But the group it truly had a lasting effect on was millennials watching the boob tube with their elder Gen X siblings. Although Gen X had absorbed the commercials while still in their teens and twenties, millennials did so during more mentally susceptible years, letting the notion that any problem could be solved with an unrealistic approach and the flash of a smile seep irrevocably into their brains. As a new decade arrived with the 00s, perhaps many believed that millennials entering their own teens had quickly forgotten all about a commercial that was theoretically buttoned up with the rest of the 90s. But no, somewhere deep down, the “logic” (read: total illogic) presented in the Mentos commercials lingered within the millennial mind, dormant until activated in their adulthood, when it became quickly evident that it would take a lot more than a “lobotomy smile” and the popping of a Mentos to stave off antagonistic forces or even minor inconveniences.

    And it was with this single planting of the idea that a simple, often non sequitur act could make all one’s problems melt away that Mentos created a monster in the next generation. By presenting the concept that, with the pop of a signature scotch mint, suddenly the problem-solving skills and/or acceptance of harsh realities one should already have to begin with will magically materialize, the company perpetuated millennial dependency on crutches that don’t actually work. The only thing that does work, or is real, is enduring hardship. That’s the true essence of existence, particularly if you’re born into non-affluent circumstances. The idea that we can “make lemonade out of lemons” with “no trouble at all” by rolling around in paint to fix the look of our suit, or ripping both heels of our shoes off when one of them breaks, or going through the backseat of someone else’s car to cross the street, or enlisting a group of construction workers to move our blocked car out of a parallel parking spot is part of the fantastical narrative that millennials were sold from the beginning of their youth. It’s not a coincidence that such indoctrination (and, truly, it can’t be overemphasized how frequently these commercials were playing) would lead to a major letdown later on in life, when it became clear that absolutely nothing could be solved with a plucky attitude or an illogical solution with no thought put into strategy.

    As for the thought put into Mentos’ advertising strategy, maybe it was pure, dumb luck that the company was able to tap into some kind of zeitgeist that presaged internet fandoms and fixations on seemingly “niche” things that would turn out to be a phenomenon as a result of “the kitsch factor” (incidentally, Killeen called the Mentos obsession, which extended to a then germinal internet, “Mentophilia”). Or maybe, beyond mere earnestness about a product meant to induce joy, the ad team was speaking to the age-old marketing belief that the more “irksome” an ad campaign, the more effective. And, irritating or not, Mentos secretly warmed the hearts of millions who balked at its madcap, cornball nature. The words to the jingle didn’t even make any sense—for example, “It doesn’t matter what comes, fresh goes better in life.” But they didn’t have to. The important part was the earworm tune set to visuals of people “solving problems” with “effortless” and nonsensical methods that would never work in real life.

    Yet that was the thing about Mentos: it was an ad campaign that truly sparked millennials’ initial foray into “unreality.” A la-la land where they could delude themselves with ideas of happiness secured with no effort whatsoever. Or if there was at least some vague effort involved, it would automatically work on the first try. The non-Mentos universe, alas, would not provide such instant gratification to many a disappointed millennial. And though some might call it “peak millennial” to blame their woes on a commercial from their childhood, it’s not so. What would be peak is trying to sue the company for damages.

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • The Obsession With Marking Time Through Pop Culture

    The Obsession With Marking Time Through Pop Culture

    In the past several years, it’s become more and more common to “celebrate” (or mourn) the passing of milestone anniversaries for films and albums. This year, the sudden trend has evolved into also taking note of which songs were released, specifically, twenty-five years ago. A.k.a. singles that came out in 1998. Some of the more pronounced callouts in media have been Madonna’s “Ray of Light,” Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time,” Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing),” Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine,” Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody?,” Cher’s “Believe,” Christina Aguilera’s “Reflection” and Beastie Boys’ “Intergalactic.”

    In 1998’s defense, of course, it was a particularly momentous year for music. And, as usual, it has to be said, Madonna was the one to set the tone for mainstreaming the genre of the moment—electronica—by releasing Ray of Light in March. Cher would follow auditory suit (likely to Madonna’s eye roll) in October of that year with the release of “Believe” and the album of the same name. Where Madonna stopped at suffusing her music with William Orbit-helmed electronica sounds, Cher pushed further by being among the first to incorporate Auto-Tune in a manner antithetical to its original purpose (which was to disguise being off-key). With her unapologetically warped voice singing the “I Will Survive” of the 90s, Cher rang in a new era of musical manipulation.

    Elsewhere, Brandy and Monica relied on the tried-and-true duet method for their chart success (as did Mariah and Whitney with The Prince of Egypt’s “When You Believe,” for that matter—it was an animated movie soundtrack kind of year, what with Xtina’s “Reflection” being from the Mulan Soundtrack, to boot). But perhaps what stood out more than anything about “The Boy Is Mine” was its totally implausible video, wherein we’re supposed to believe The Boy (Mekhi Phifer) was able to carry off the logistical nightmare of fucking two women who lived next door to each other in the same building.

    “…Baby One More Time,” needless to say, stood out for its sound and visual, with Britney notoriously catering to every man’s Nabokovian fetish for schoolgirls by dressing in a Catholic school uniform throughout most of the Nigel Dick-directed video. It was this moment in pop culture history that perhaps signaled the biggest sea change of all from one decade into another. For, although Britney burst onto the scene (and caused men’s pants to burst in so doing) in the 90s, she was a decidedly 00s pop star. The leading example of what that entailed sonically and visually, with the likes of Jessica Simpson, Willa Ford, Mandy Moore, Hilary Duff and, later, even Taylor Swift emulating what Britney had perfected. That is to say, being a “pop tart.” Prancing around in sequined leotards with fishnets and singing “subtly” about sex. Because, in 1998, the United States was still in love with the idea of losing more of its innocence, a desire immediately established in January of that year, when the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal broke. For not since “Dick” Nixon had the nation been forced to see how little trust they should place in the “highest office in the world.” And all because, like most men, he couldn’t resist a blow J.

    So as America continued to deflower itself in a post-internet existence that was further punctuated by the release of The Matrix in 1999, the music and the videos that came with it seemed to reflect this period in American pop culture history more than any other. Even Next’s “Too Close” was a 1998 hit that talked exclusively about a man’s issues with concealing his boner because a woman dared to get “too close” to him. Therefore, “asking for it,” etc. (or, “You know I can’t help it,” as Next insists). This prompting Vee of Koffee Brown to demand, “Step back, you’re dancin’ kinda close/I feel a little poke comin’ through on you.” It’s a song that encapsulates many a junior high dance of the day, when “freaking” was all the rage among the preadolescent set.

    As mentioned, more than the songs that were about sexual awakenings/yearnings, the music of 1998 was dead-set on innovating. This included the aforementioned “Are You That Somebody?” and “Intergalactic,” as well as Fatboy Slim’s “The Rockafeller Skank,” all awash in sounds that would become a retrospective “time stamp” for the era. In general, that’s part of the reason why many people so love to mark time through pop culture. More than one’s own personal life (with memories triggered by certain songs), it is far likelier to offer a historical snapshot of a particular epoch lost to the quicksand of minutes and then years and then decades. The obsession to mark time as a whole, however, stems not from nostalgia, so much as being part of a capitalistic society in which time is literally money.

    If you look up, “Why do people keep track of time passing?” one of the top answers is extremely telling: “Time tracking is key to understanding how you spend your time, personally and in business. It is key to productivity, insight and a healthy workflow. This is equally important to everybody in an organization, or society.” In other words, if you aren’t productive within the capitalistic machine (complete with the purchasing power to support entertainment industries), then what good are you? Do you even exist? That pop culture is also a buttress for capitalism, thus, makes it inextricably linked to that system. Further solidified by how these anniversaries of album and song releases can provide the catalyst for re-releases that will prompt fans and even casual listeners alike to buy the same product again, whether digitally or as a result of being enticed by some “collector’s edition”-type presentation.

    Underlying capitalistic-driven motivations aside, maybe the reason why some are especially gung-ho about marking the passage of time this year by looking back on 1998 in music is because it was arguably the last time a pioneering shift occurred in said medium. With the dawning of the 2000s, hauntology would come to dominate the musical landscape more than anywhere else, complete with musicians like Amy Winehouse and Arctic Monkeys sounding as though they were pulled straight out of the 1960s rather than the twenty-first century. The same could also later be said of such acts as The Raveonettes, Duffy, Adele and Lana Del Rey.

    And when next year rolls around to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of songs like Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” Bloodhound Gang’s “The Bad Touch,” Sugar Ray’s “Every Morning” and Crazy Town’s “Butterfly,” we’ll perhaps more fully understand the pinpointable instant when things started to take a dive (compounded by 1999 also being the year Napster was launched).

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Resignedly Independent: Pamela, A Love Story

    Resignedly Independent: Pamela, A Love Story

    For those in search of the modern-day answer to the goddess of love, there is no better example of an American (North American, to be clear) version of Aphrodite than Pamela Anderson. For the entirety of the 90s, Anderson was an emblem of sex… and yes, even love. For her relationship with Tommy Lee was held up as a neo-benchmark of Romeo and Juliet-level intensity—complete with a whirlwind timeline for falling in love. Starting from the moment the two met at a Beverly Hills hotspot called Sanctuary (for which Anderson was an investor) in 1994. At the time, Lee was in a relationship (engaged, in fact) with Bobbie Brown (a.k.a. Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” girl) and Anderson was in a situationship with Baywatch co-star Kelly Slater (himself a notorious philanderer). But that didn’t much matter once ecstasy (administered at a Cancun nightclub) came along to unleash their love-at-first-sight feelings at full force.

    Pamela, A Love Story, however, is not just about the marriage that would come to define so much of Anderson’s career and public perception, but rather, the “love goddess’” determination to continue to choose love, and actively search for it—even in the face of all her romantic disappointments. The documentary, directed by Ryan White and co-produced by Anderson’s son, Brandon Lee, opens with Pam unearthing a VHS tape—a “subtle” nod, of course, to the tape that changed the entire course of her life. “God, I’m scared. This is not naked, I hope.” A later close-up on a tape labeled “When Pammy Met Tommy” is accentuated by Anderson remarking, “When I saw those videos, I got so emotional ‘cause I thought, ‘That was it. That was my time to really be in love.’” A shot of Pam and Tommy’s home video on a trip to Venice adds to the bittersweetness of that statement, as though highlighting the notion that a person only gets—if they’re lucky—one great love their entire life (or, as Charlotte York once posited, two great loves). For Pam, it was Tommy—and she admits or alludes to it repeatedly in Pamela, A Love Story. Called as much because Anderson’s entire life has revolved around the search for love… and the love of love. Falling in and out of it over and over again.

    “I’m looking for a feeling I can’t find,” she declares from the outset. That “lightning in a bottle” feeling only being captured during her ephemeral period with Tommy. So desirous of recapturing it that she even got back together with him in 2008, though, unlike the Andersonian counterpart that is Elizabeth Taylor (with Richard Burton), she never remarried him. She would save that privilege, instead, for someone even sleazier: Rick Salomon. Better known for being in Paris Hilton’s sex tape than being married to Anderson twice (the first time around, Anderson cited finding a crack pipe by the Christmas tree as grounds for an annulment). So no, not the best look for Anderson’s taste—but then, neither was Kid Rock a.k.a. Bob Ritchie. These two and so many other men are, ahem, touched on in the documentary, but the one person noticeably missing from any mention is Bret Michaels. For whatever reason, that’s just too trashball for Anderson, it seems.

    For those “intrigued” (read: mystified) by her choice in men, Anderson is only too happy to oblige viewers in enlightening them on part of the reason why she’s so attracted to, well, let’s just say “a certain kind” of man. Someone who was more or less an extension of her alcoholic “huckster” father. To boot, Pam’s cavalier attitude about alcoholism and abuse undeniably stemmed from seeing her own mother’s behavior. And yes, Carol also married Pam’s dad, Barry, a second time. But Carol was of the “do as I say, not as I do” persuasion, with Pamela recounting, “My mom used to always say to me, ‘I feel bad. I set an example for you. I know your dad’s an asshole but I love him. You don’t love these assholes. Rip the Band-Aid off and just get rid of these guys. ‘Cause you don’t love them like I love your father, or like he loves me.’”

    Eventually, Anderson has no choice but to conclude of her taste in men, “I would pick people similar [to my father], I guess, in some ways” and “Maybe because of how I grew up and saw my parents and maybe because of some of the relationships I had, I didn’t equate being in love with… being nice, maybe.”

    But she is by no means alone in that boat. Not just in terms of “seeking the father” in another man, but also with regard to many women’s reactions to themselves (i.e., their bodies) being a result of something that was done to them by a man. Usually, at an early age. And Anderson was very much sexualized from an early age, enduring the trauma of being molested by her babysitter for three to four years before Anderson told her to her face that she wished she would die. The next day, she did. In a car accident. Anderson couldn’t help but feel witchily responsible. For, a testament to her benevolent nature is feeling guilty that her molester actually did die. And yet, her karma couldn’t have been that bad if she managed to experience a Lana Turner at Schwab’s type of discovery story while at a football game. Wearing a Labatt’s Beer shirt, the camera focused Pam on the Jumbotron and the beer company soon after hired her for their promotional materials/commercials. This led to Playboy’s photo editor and “secret weapon” Marilyn Grabowski calling Pam up to ask her to pose for the October 1989 issue of Playboy. When it was over, Grabowski suggested Anderson ought to stick around and become a Playmate. The rest, of course, is history. For the string of “charmed life” incidents kept occurring when Anderson was practically begged by the casting agents of Baywatch to star in their show.

    So maybe all this good luck “had to” be counteracted by the run of bad luck that would beset her in the mid-90s, when she met Tommy and immortalized their sex life forever on tape. As for her attraction to Lee, Anderson said it best when she remarked, “From the beginning, I’ve been drawn to different types of bad guys.” Lee was the prototype of that trope—with a dash of slobbering puppy dog thrown in. So how could Pam resist? Even if they “didn’t know anything about each other… it ended up being one of the wildest, most beautiful love affairs ever.” Again, a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Minus the jealous outbursts and the birthing of two kids, both of whom are active participants in the documentary—nobly demanding that their mother’s honor be restored.

    Pamela, too, is seeking to “take back the narrative,” as it keeps being said. One that’s been taken away from her ever since the distribution of that accursed tape. For even though she was written off as someone who “liked” to be seen naked by the masses, she reminds her viewers that posing for Playboy began as a way to take her power back, regain control of her own sexuality after having it manipulated and tainted by perverts like her babysitter and the twenty-five-year-old guy who raped her when she was twelve. The video was yet another form of rape, with Anderson stating to White’s camera lens, “Playboy was empowering for me. But, in this case, it felt like a rape.” The release of Pam & Tommy, she’s sure to mention later, also brought up that same feeling again. As she rails against the Hulu series that would seek to dredge up one of the worst, most harrowing experiences of her life, it bears noting that the way the show portrayed their courtship and the scenarios leading up to the stolen safe are exactly how she describes it in Pamela, A Love Story. Minus the part where she says she has no idea who stole the tape (it was Rand Gauthier). Though she might not want to admit it, the series is precise in its historical accuracy, including Lily James portraying Anderson during the brutal series of depositions that went on amid the legal battle to cease distribution of the content. Pam recalls of this period, “During the deposition, I remember looking at them and thinking, ‘Why do these men hate me so much? Why do these grown men hate me so much?’” Well, the psychological answer is obvious: men hate all “whores” when they start to “act out of turn.” Try to demand the “rights” of a woman more virginal and chaste.

    Even Pam herself has been infused with the chauvinistic rhetoric about herself, laughing off jokes about being slutty and now, too “old” to be slutty (clearly, she needs to start hanging out with Madonna more often). Case in point, while cooking together in the kitchen, Pam’s mom, Carol, shimmies to suggest the cliché of “sexiness” as she asks, “Where’s all your nice-fitting dresses?” Presently wearing an amorphously-shaped “house dress,” Pam replies, “No one needs to see my body anymore.” Carol reminds, “You can see right through that thing, I’ll have you know.” Pam insists, “Well, a silhouette is much thinner than the real thing.” Having been indoctrinated for so long to view herself as an “object” only worth the youth and beauty she can radiate (hence, the visible amounts of plastic surgery), she echoes Laney Berlin (Dana Wheeler-Nicholson) on the season one episode of Sex and the City called “The Baby Shower” when she asks the camera, “You wanna see [my boobs]?” Backpedaling, she self-deprecatingly adds, “No, I’m kidding. You don’t wanna see them now. They’re in rough shape.” Anderson’s allusions to being on death’s door by Hollywood standards also comes when she jokes of being back in Ladysmith, Canada, “Maybe this is just the time I was supposed to be home, I guess. I’m like a spawning salmon, just coming home to die.” A statement she then laughs off, and yet, there’s more than a shred of truth in her “grim” (read: real) outlook. With this constant self-denigrating acknowledgement of her current “physical state,” it bears noting that it seems only now, at her “advanced” age, when the offers of sex and romance have dwindled, that she appears “willing” (read: resigned) to be alone—almost as if solely because she is no longer “at her peak.”

    And yet, it was no picnic at her peak either, as White dredges up archival interviews of Pamela being asked various questions about her tits (from grossheads like Matt Lauer and Jay Leno), at which time one is reminded of the same thing happening to Britney Spears (and as a teenager no less), all presented back-to-back in Framing Britney Spears. Amid this series of similarly-themed clips, Pam is right to announce, “I think it’s inappropriate to ask women those kinds of questions. There has to be some line that people don’t cross.” But people—namely, men—always felt they had a “right” to cross lines with Anderson. That she was “asking for it” with a career forged in nudity. However, that was just a jumping off point (or so she had hoped) from her perspective, remarking, “I always hoped something would come along where I would do something which would be more interesting to people than my body.” Alas, Americans can be so superficial. Something Anderson might not have fully realized with her Canadian guilelessness. Complete with earnest pronouncements about love, including, “I just want to be loved by one person, and I want to spoil that person rotten.” This said in reference to dating Mario Van Peebles, who she was planning a birthday party for at the time of that particular journal entry (all of them read by a Pam “soundalike”). And yet, that didn’t stop her from scurrying on over to Scott Baio’s house after writing said journal entry. Of so freely admitting in writing to playing the field, she giggles, “Why would I even write that down? ‘Cause God forbid you do a documentary one day in your life and find out what kind of a whore you are.” Once more, with the internalized misogyny regarding her then avant-garde sex positivity practices.

    With Pamela, A Love Story, Anderson also comes across as being dead-set on asserting her independence—that she is with these (deadbeat) men because she chooses to be, not because she has to be. Ergo declaring, “I’m not the damsel in distress. I’m very capable. And some men hate you for being something else.” And when she doesn’t turn out to live up to the image of the “whore” in their Madonna/whore compartmentalizing brain, things always tend to get unpleasant. This being why Pamela nonchalantly rehashes of her previous dynamics with the “very hetero, masculine men” she’s attracted to, “…sometimes they start grabbing you by the hair and throwing you into walls and, like, stripping your clothes off. Craziest stuff would happen,” she concludes. Once more, minimizing and deflecting are her overt survival techniques. Not to mention repeatedly getting married as a means of distraction from the loss of her one true great love, Tommy. That’s part of why she married contractor/her bodyguard Dan Hayhurst in 2020, commenting in the documentary, “He’s a good Canadian guy. Normal. I just thought, ‘Maybe I need to try that.’ Again, sometimes I don’t know if I’m alive or dead.” She rose from the dead long enough to divorce him at the beginning of 2022 though.

    No matter, because another journal entry reads, “I’d rather have loved for an instant than [have] a miserable life.” And yet, a large bulk of Anderson’s life has been objectively miserable. Even if the aim of the documentary is to assert that its subject is no victim. That she is simply someone who “love[s] to live a romantic life every day… want[s] to be really in love and… didn’t want anything less than that.” Enter Tommy—“sweet,” stalker-y Tommy. Who ousted Kelly Slater easily, as Pam had to call and tell him that she wouldn’t be joining him to meet his family in Florida as she had gotten married in Cancun. Besides, in addressing Kelly Slater’s own “playboy” ways, Anderson says, “You don’t own anybody. Nobody owns anybody and you just let them be who they are. Sometimes it’s better…not with you.” As it would turn out, the same would go for her relationship with Lee. Which should have at least been financially profitable for all the trauma she was subjected to (and still is) as a result.

    So it is that when the subject of Pamela’s overall financial disarray is acknowledged in the documentary, White flashes to footage of her being asked by Howard Stern, “You’re not good with money, are you?” She confirms, “I’m not good with money.” Stern’s sidekick, Robin, mentions, “You’re a very famous person and everybody would imagine you’d have a lot of money.” Chuckling away the pain again, Pam quips, “Well, a lot of [other] people have made a lot of money off of me.” There it is: making herself into the whore she assumes everyone sees her as. Like a white girl whose credit card has been cut in half by Daddy, Anderson shrugs, “I just couldn’t wrap my head around the business part of branding myself. I’m not that person when it comes to money. I just want my credit card to work and I wanna be able to get my nails done.” Besides, a woman who values love (or at least the pursuit of love) above all else couldn’t possibly be concerned with such trivial things as little green pieces of paper. As her youngest son, Dylan Lee, says, “She loves getting married, you know. Maybe it’s her favorite thing in the world is falling in love. And then, like, I guess loves the idea of falling out of love, too.”

    Despite this “passion for passion,” Anderson can’t shake the remorse she has for raising her children in an erratic environment re: father figures. “I always felt guilty ‘cause of my kids, I wanted to show them a traditional relationship.” This said more than somewhat ironically as an image is shown of Kid Rock and his son posing with an uncomfortable-looking Brandon and Dylan as Pam stands behind them in her wedding gown. She adds, “Or a marriage, or a man that’s consistent, and giving them good examples in their life.” But they certainly appear well-adjusted enough—and “evolved” enough, for that matter, to not only stand by their mother through everything, but go out of their way to make sure she’s truly seen and understood.

    And what’s plain to see is that she’s been searching for Tommy in every subsequent relationship. Her attachment to that great love crystallized as she watches another random VHS from her archives popped into the player. It turns out to be footage of the birthday decorations Pam put together for Tommy’s birthday as TLC’s “Diggin’ On You” plays in the background (needless to say, the apex of a 90s soundtrack). This time, Brandon is next to her watching as well, and Pam starts to get emotional, telling Brandon and White, “I think I need to take a break, let’s take a break.”

    Pam then schools us on the two types of love: eros and agape. This making the concept of love “very conflicted.” She’s also sure to mention that “Robert A. Johnson says, ‘Romantic love is not sustainable.’ And as soon as I read that I was like, ‘Ugh. This is the worst thing I’ve ever read.’ It’s so disappointing. Why can’t we live a romantic life every day?” It sounds a lot like Kate Moss retroactively asking her mother, “Why not? Why the fuck can’t I have fun all the time?”

    After reemerging from her “break,” Pam tells Brandon, “I was just thinking about it upstairs. I was thinking, you know, and it’s probably gonna get me in a lot of shit for saying this, but I really loved your dad. Like, for all the right reasons and I don’t think I’ve ever loved anybody else.” This, too, harkens back to Madonna saying that Sean Penn has been “the love of her life, all her life” when asked the question in 1991’s Truth or Dare. Tellingly, Madonna has never been able to sustain a monogamous relationship either. Holding back more tears after admitting this, Pam finally declares, “It’s fucked.”

    In the wake of this epiphany, we’re shown a scene of Anderson in the bathtub with the voiceover, “I think what it all comes down to is that I never got over not being able to make it work with the father of my kids. And even though I thought I could recreate a family or fall in love with somebody else, it’s just not me. So I think that’s probably why I keep failing in all my relationships.”

    Like Elizabeth Taylor, who could only really be happy with Richard Burton, but was simultaneously miserable with him, Anderson also assesses, “I think I’d rather be alone than not be with the father of my kids. It’s impossible to be with anybody else…but, I don’t think I could be with Tommy either. It’s almost like a punishment.” But for what? Being a woman who dared to be sexual? To relish what her body could get her and where it could take her in life? In this and so many other ways, it’s clear that all of Pamela’s self-loathing still comes from a place of patriarchal oppression.

    Listening to a podcast in her bathtub, Pamela feels a little too targeted when the woman speaking announces, “…how our wanting to love, our yearning for love, our loving itself, becomes an addiction… [and that’s when it’s time to attend an SLAA meeting]. We who love obsessively are full of fear. Fear of being alone.” And yet, Anderson is convinced that she’s at last “okay” with being alone. Not that it actually has to do with her inherent belief that she’s too “old and decrepit” for passionate, all-consuming romance now. So it is that, throughout the documentary, we see scenes of Pamela picking flowers, pruning them, arranging them. She can not only buy herself flowers, as Miley says, but she can pick them for free. She has become her own romancer out of necessity rather than true willingness.

    Deemed by her surrogate father, of sorts, Hugh Hefner, as the Marilyn Monroe of the 90s (but then, so was Anna-Nicole Smith), it’s only fitting that White should choose to do a close-up on some of the books in Anderson’s collection: Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, A Joseph Campbell Companion and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Not exactly what one would expect of a dumb blonde—the same way no one ever imagined Monroe was such an avid reader, writing her off as nothing more than an oversexed sex symbol.

    It was with being underestimated in mind that Anderson chose to star as Roxie Hart in a 2022 production of Chicago (her last major career moment before the combined release of this documentary and her autobiography, Love, Pamela). Regarding her fear of doing something so different (Broadway), Pamela insisted, “Don’t overthink it. I don’t overthink anything. Thinking is overrated.” Ah, signs she’s been in the U.S. for far too long, not to mention a philosophy that has been obviously proven by some of her previous romantic choices.

    As the credits to Pamela, A Love Story roll, we’re shown outtakes where she says things like, “I figured I’d just do, like, no makeup, no whatever. Who cares?” But of course she cares. Her entire life has been built around caring (and thus, loving) too much…she’s a Cancer, after all. And it is because she has cared too much and been burned so many times that she has to pretend, even if only for a little while, that it’s as she says during the outtakes of the credits: “I never want a husband again, ever… That sucks, too.” Perhaps that’s why, while promoting the documentary on Jimmy Kimmel Live, she said she would actually get married again. If someone will “have” her.

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link

  • Despite Being A Satire, Drop Dead Gorgeous Accurately Mirrored Kirstie Alley’s Politics

    Despite Being A Satire, Drop Dead Gorgeous Accurately Mirrored Kirstie Alley’s Politics

    As is usually the case when a celebrity dies, all former political effrontery tends to be glossed over. This certainly held true for the likes of James Caan (who died earlier this year) and Doris Day (who died in 2019). Granted, these might be prime examples of “Old Hollywood Republicans” (because, believe it or not, it used to be much chicer to be conservative than liberal in that town), but the point is, no one brought up the political leanings that formerly made people cringe once these “icons” were dead. The same seems to go for Kirstie Alley, who was, as a Midwesterner, perhaps an unavoidable Republican. A reality that came to harsh light during the 2016 election, when she announced her intention to vote for Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton. Backpedaling after her declaration was met with verbal reprisals, she claimed, “I hate this election and I’m officially no longer endorsing either candidate.”

    “Endorsing” him or not, Alley still voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 (the ultimate sign of a “die-hard” [read: white supremacist] Republican). Being vocal about it again the latter election year when she tweeted, “I’m voting for @realDonaldTrump because he’s NOT a politician. I voted for him 4 years ago for this reason and shall vote for him again for this reason. He gets things done quickly and he will turn the economy around quickly. There you have it folks there you have it.” The pronouncement was met with a swift barrage of venom, including from the likes of Judd Apatow, who replied, “Shelley [misspelled as Shelly] Long was way funnier than you.” Alley went on The Sean Hannity Show the next day to continue to defend her stance, doubling down once more on her position. All of this is to say that, despite the 1999 mockumentary masterpiece that is Drop Dead Gorgeous being a satire, Alley’s role as pageant mother/head of the pageant organizing committee Gladys Leeman wasn’t that much of a reach for her to embody. Not politically speaking, anyway.

    Directed by Michael Patrick Jann and written by Lona Williams, the latter was highly inspired by her hometown of Rosemount, Minnesota (hence, the name of the town in the movie being Mount Rose, MN) for the story. Complete with over-the-top Minnesota accents that Alley was happy to accommodate as she said on-brand conservative things like, “I know what some of your big city, no bra wearin’, hairy-legged women libbers might say. They might say that a pageant is old-fashioned and ‘demeaning’ to the girls…” Her cohort, Iris (Mindy Sterling), chimes in, “What’s sick is women dressin’ like men!” Gladys agrees, “You betcha, Iris. No, I think you boys are gonna find something a little bit different here in Mount Rose. For one thing, we’re all God-fearin’ folk, every last one of us. And you will not find a ‘back room’ in our video store. No, no. That filth is better left in the Sin Cities.” Iris clarifies, “A.k.a. Minneapolis-St. Paul.”

    Gladys’ carefully-curated image as the perfect mother and homemaker is especially crucial this pageant year as her own daughter, Rebecca “Becky” Leeman (Denise Richards), will be competing. Which is why it’s also so important for Gladys to come up with an “original” theme like “Proud to Be An American.” So much different from previous themes like, “Buy American,” “USA Is A-OK” or “Amer-I-Can!” Although mostly confident that Rebecca has what it takes to win, Gladys isn’t so naïve as to discount the potential of someone such as doe-eyed, blonde Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst) or even Tammy Curry (Brooke Elise Bushman), the dyke archetype who beat out Rebecca to become the president of the Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club. This win being precisely her motive for rigging Tammy’s tractor to blow up.

    The explosion turns out to be a foreshadowing of the comeuppance Gladys will get with another big kabluey at the end of the movie—this time of her own daughter on a giant swan. After fixing the pageant so that Rebecca would win (even though Amber was the clear favorite), it’s obvious the Leemans had no intention of ever letting Rebecca lose in that they had pre-purchased this massive piñata-esque float for their daughter to ride in at the celebratory parade. A parade, by the way, filled with scenes that mirror the most grotesque cliches of American stereotypes as perpetuated by Republicans. Ignorance abounding in shit-kicker aesthetics (from army camouflage to oversized khaki shorts) and behaviors (e.g., mocking a mentally challenged person with their overalls caught in a car door).

    At Rebecca’s funeral, reference to the swan being made in Mexico comes back as the pastor notes to God, “Maybe it’s your way of telling us, ‘Buy American.’” Or that Rebecca’s own win-at-any-cost mother epitomizes the sort of tactics that Trump himself would employ to “get the job done.” Ignore reality, ignore what the majority actually wants and just bulldoze your way to “success.” The “anti-wokeness” of Gladys Leeman—which comes out in dialogue like, “I said I’d move if a cripple came” (re: parking in a handicapped spot)—is an additional foil of Alley’s own nature, which would go on to reveal some very pro-MAGA, QAnon-sympathizing sentiments.

    Determined to wield her “blunt” persona as “telling it like it is,” it became increasingly evident over the course of the post-90s years (particularly with Scientology becoming less tenable for many outside observers and defectors alike, including Leah Remini, who clashed a number of times with Alley after leaving the organization) that her brand was less “freedom of speech” and more mumbo-jumbo. Including her response to the war in Ukraine being that she didn’t “know what’s real or what is fake in this war. So I won’t be commenting. I’ll pray instead.”

    Incidentally, Scientologists don’t subscribe to prayer. Something the aforementioned Remini was eager to point out in her back-handed tribute/condolence to Alley and her family when she said, “Although Scientologists don’t believe in prayers, my prayers do go out to her two children, who are now without their mom.” Another thing Scientologists don’t believe in is seeking cancer treatment before it’s too late, told by the Church that they can conquer such “ailments,” particularly someone who was at Alley’s Operating Thetan Level VIII. Yet another reason it feels all too pointed that fellow Scientologists Kelly Preston and Chick Corea also died of cancer in 2020 in 2021, respectively. And both, like Alley, near the Church’s Flag Building in Clearwater, Florida.

    While there’s no denying Alley had many beloved roles, from Mollie Jensen in the Look Who’s Talking trilogy to Diane Barrows in It Takes Two to Veronica Chase in Veronica’s Closet to a caricaturized version of herself in Fat Actress, her death doesn’t deify her enough to dismiss her often problematic politics. Of the same ilk that Gladys Leeman was only too proud to trumpet under the banner of “Proud to Be An American.”

    Genna Rivieccio

    Source link