Category Archives: Pop Culture

Melancholy

In High Fidelity, Nick Hornby’s pop music-obsessed narrator Rob Fleming asks, following his most recent in a spate of romantic failures, while slumped in his apartment feeling desperately sorry for himself: “What came first – the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?”

—Ujala Sehgal

TV will break your heart

Once you’re committed [to a TV show], however, there is trouble on the horizon. There are two possible outcomes. The series keeps up its quality and maintains your loyalty and offers you years of enjoyment. Then it is canceled. This is outrageous. You have lost some friends. Alternatively, the series declines in quality, and this makes you unhappy. You may drift away. Either way, your devotion has been spit upon.

It’s true that there is a third possibility. You might die before the series ends. How comforting is that?

With film you’re in and you’re out and you go on with your life. TV is like a long relationship that ends abruptly or wistfully. One way or another, TV will break your heart.

—David Bordwell

Kindness

It’s a lovely moment at the end when [David] Letterman comes to the most human question of all, which is just this: “Boy, I feel like I want to do something for you. Can I do something for you?” And when [Michael] Douglas says, “Awwww, gimme a hug!” you realize that they’ve actually each offered a kindness: Letterman gave him the hug and Douglas let that be the thing that Dave could do for him.

—Linda Holmes

I’ll gladly answer to “slacker”

In truth, like many people my age, I hated high school and my 20s sucked as much as they rocked. So while we may take the baby barrettes out of our graying hair and no longer fit the description of grrrl, my generation has been pretty busy spending the last few decades living its life, starting its zines, cranking out some great music and generally not giving much of a crap about its hotness to begin with. I’ll gladly answer to “slacker,” but even if it’s with a wink and a self-deprecating laugh over pleather miniskirts gone by, don’t call me “formerly” anything. Because I’m not ready to assume my best years are behind me. And I don’t ever want to define myself by what I’ve been.

—Mary Elizabeth Williams

Horsepucky

What [The Bachelor] is, at its core, is an extremely effective cautionary tale about the meaningless of all the romantic trappings in which it specializes. … This is what’s so great about the fact that these relationships almost never last and often implode spectacularly. The Bachelor sets up phony love stories, implies they are real love stories, and is then foiled by the fact that none of this ritualistic, overblown horsepucky has anything to do with love.

—Linda Holmes

(Horsepucky. Now there’s a word that should get more use.)