Meme Report 7/27
There's a new Christopher Nolan out that's supposed to be NUTS
The Odyssey
“Something fun. Something for the summertime. Something for the girls to get ready and party to” — Saweetie
I have been looking forward to this all summer. I love Christopher Nolan movies. I love the man himself, Christopher Nolan. I love when everyone sees the same thing. It was fun checking Letterboxd after to see (almost) all of my oomfies give it 4 to 5 stars, and I am friends with very persnickity people who are not so easily taken in by the movie of the moment. Christopher Nolan remains the exception. The thinking man’s blockbuster. Or a semi-competent storyteller's blockbuster.
Every time I read criticism of Christopher Nolan, I get defensive and dismissive. Everyone who is trying to outsmart Christopher Nolan is missing the point. It’s like trying to outsmart 4th of July fireworks. It’s not about a book. It’s not even about a story. It’s about putting on a show. “Did he effectively adapt the text of The Odyssey?” is a stupid question, and also the wrong one. Did he translate the swords and sandals epics of old Hollywood to modern times? Yes! It was awesome! Do Antigone next!
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The Odyssey is a 7 quadrant hit. The jocks identify with Odysseus. The nerds are happy to have something to complain about. Girl Dads and their daughters have another amazing movie to add to their personal canon. Idiot film nerds who think Nolan is “smart Marvel” get more Marvel. Smart film nerds who think Nolan is a master in the craft of blockbusters get to see a blockbuster they actually enjoy. People who just want to have a good time at the movies are the happiest of all. There’s something for everyone, except for my mom who left after the cyclops scene and prefers movies set in nice houses.
We’ll be riding this wave of discourse and memes for at least a few more weeks. And we’ll return to it around Oscar season. Everyone has their niche to explore. Some people are trying to track the relationship between much-maligned translator Emily Wilson and Chris, which seems to now be fraught. It was always going to be: one of them makes things with mass appeal and the other translates ancient Greek. The permanent divide between book and movie people remains. The difference between “I’ll write a book everyone who dislikes me is too stupid to read” and “I’ll make a movie so popular that everyone will see it, even the people who dislike me.” This presumes that everyone who pursues a career in the arts does so out of a place of contempt, which they do, so it’s fine.
My personal interest in Christopher Nolan is to see how his relationship with his daughter shines through, particularly in the casting decisions. His daughter, Flora, is the oldest of his children and 4 years younger than me, so a lot of our reference points are the same. It started with Harry Styles in Dunkirk, when Nolan claimed to have never heard of One Direction, to save her from embarrassment. Oppenheimer was her magnum opus with Josh Hartnett from The Virgin Suicides; Florence Pugh from Little Women; Josh Peck from Drake and Josh; Devin Bostick from the first Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie; Alex Wolf from The Naked Brothers Band; and Michael Angarano aka The kid from Sky High. I would guess all of these titles were played on the Nolan family TV ad nauseum just like they were in mine.
The Odyssey is a little harder to parse for Flora’s hand, mostly because this is clearly a movie for his four sons. There is a clear parallel to be drawn between Odysseus leading his men and Christopher Nolan parenting his army of children. Flora gets all of Interstellar to herself, and the boys’ movie is mostly about how many of them there are and how hard they are to control, even though Odysseus is just trying to save their lives. In the film, they want to eat at Circe’s Island, and in real life they all want to DJ in Berlin.
As for casting decisions in this movie based on his daughter’s interests when she was a teenager, this is the best I can do. Though they are both repeats from previous films, originally Robert Pattinson is clearly from Twilight, and Anne Hathaway got her hooks in young girls early with Princess Diaries 1 and 2, Devil Wears Prada, and maybe even Rachel Getting Married. Zendaya and I1 are a little bit older than her, but I think that makes her more impressive to the younger girls, so while it could be from Euphoria, I have a feeling she got on the train around Shake It Up or KC Undercover. I don’t think Tom Holland, Matt Damon, Benny Safdie, and Jon Bernthal are her picks.
The one I’m not sure about is Hamish Patel. I would guess the whole family watched Station 11 during COVID together, but I could also see Flora seeing Yesterday and really loving it. There’s a world where a senior in high school really attaches themselves to it. It screams “comfort movie while working on college applications”. I wish there were more fun ones to go “I see you girl” like there were in Oppenheimer, but I think in 3 years, he’ll make another movie about being a girl dad and we’ll get like both of the Sprouse twins and maybe Conrad from the Summer I Turned Pretty. Maybe Flora was also a Riverdale girl, and we can get Lili Reinhart on the path to an Oscar.
Jimothy
I like Jimothy. Even though his name is millennial quirk chungus, I think we have to forgive that. Millennials built the apparatus for the entire internet to care about a local animal, especially one that has a disability. Gen Z simply doesn’t have the institutional power to produce something like this and have it in the New York Post the next day. It’s kind of like realizing that Christmas is special because your mom did everything. The cute animal virality industry, which many people from Boomers to Gen Alpha are a part of and proudly support, does not exist without millennial cringe. We take what we can get. Sometimes it’s best to say thank you and move on. Something like this does have the potential to really stick around, which I’m not excited about. I don’t want to be talking about Jimothy in August, and I don’t want people asking more of him than to be a recognizable raccoon about town. He’s a local celebrity with national attention, and if we all play it cool, we can have him in our lives every 6 months for a check-in. For the love of god, do not buy Jimothy merch if you’ve never seen him in person.
He’s From Texas
This edit is not significant to me as someone who has been trying to piece together an understanding of British politics from edits about Tony Blair and his friends/lovers for about 2 years now. What is significant is the social media website where I first saw it: Twitter. Edits have made their way to Twitter at some point earlier this year, probably with Heated Rivalry, but don’t quote me on that. Most of them have not been worth talking about because I saw them first on TikTok. This is the first edit I’ve seen originate on Twitter and gain traction for what it is. People are acting like this kind of posting is a revelation because they’ve never seen it before. Boys who are obsessed with the Iraq war are really getting a kick out of this.
TikTok
New Gracie album
Never in my life have I yelled at a girl like this. I am so so disappointed in Gracie Abrams. I wanted this album to be good so bad. I wanted her to have something as good as “Risk”. Unfortunately, this album didn’t have any of that and was also boring. The glaringly obvious difference is that there’s no Audrey Hobert on this one, except for Minibar, which sounds like a rip-off of an Audrey song. The unfortunate thing about the Audrey influence is that if everything that made Gracie good was Audrey’s songwriting, we would have known that from Audrey’s solo album. Instead, we’ve found out that Audrey is an incredible editor and collaborator. Audrey made Gracie a better writer while keeping Gracie’s voice distinct. She’s as good at writing for Gracie as she is at writing for herself, which we’re learning are two different tasks and Aaron Dessner wasn’t up to the first one. She needs to work with someone who will help her stop being so goddamn boring and vague. Or she needs to go full Theycie Theybrams.
Cherry
I usually don’t have an interest in what happens in the comments of TikTok. Those people have amassed too much power, and we give them too much credit. Their newest thing to say is to post this picture of a cherry on top of a white cake, to say some quote in the TikTok is “the cherry on top.” Everyone thinks they’re so clever. It doesn’t add anything, and it’s not that funny. It can never be posted just once. Multiple commenters have to post it, and I really don’t see the point in saying it more than once. One commenter meme I do love is posting “Leave him or leave us out of it” applied to a baby or a dog.
Bullying Comeback
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I hate anything that involves coaching children to swear. Mostly because they can’t sell it. Children are horrible actors across the board, and most adults can’t convincingly pull off “sassy” as a personality trait. I only want to see children being divas if it’s candid. Writing lines for an 8-year-old that they can’t deliver is a truly horrific exercise for the audience.
Text edit
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Everyone is bored because there’s no good television. Last year we had new TSITP edits hitting the FYP every day. This year we have…. this because no one but me and like 40 other nerds are watching House of the Dragon. Everyone is bored. We need drama back in our lives. The fun kind. If the Gracie Abrams album had been good, we might have edits of that, but it wasn’t, so we don’t. This edit style doesn’t do anything for anyone and is barely a joke. We need something that lends itself to edits on our televisions NOW.
Famously, we’re the same age.
Oooh any predictions re: the next album or TV show to culturally dominate?