Meme Report 8/4/26
Tell Me About A Lady Who Is a Real Piece of Work
Odyssey: Week 2
It wouldn’t be the movie event of the summer if we stopped talking about it after 1 week. We’re still going! The discourse has not changed my opinion on anything except: Emily Wilson. Last week I talked about the difference between a Blockbuster director and a Classicist. While I still believe there is a fundamental disconnect in their relationship to the audience, I now understand that Emily Wilson is playing the same game as many iconic pop culture figures before her: She’s starting a feud.
If Emily Wilson had simply liked Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey adaptation, her story ends here. The nerd is pleased, and we don’t need to hear from her again, but add a little controversy and an Op-Ed in The London Review of Books, and we’ve got some conflict. Without conflict, she’s a minor character in this story. It’s better to be the villain than the woman who fades away from the story after giving her seal of approval. Wilson has bought more time for herself in the spotlight and added a little heat to the best adapted screenplay race in the process.
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I say let her. There’s a reason everybody wants to be famous. It’s intoxicating. Even the people who choose to study and devote their lives to ancient Greek want attention on a mass scale sometimes. Regardless of how anyone feels about her or her work, now she gets to be everyone’s favorite living classicist by virtue of being the only one we know. I’d be willing to be the villain in every story too if it meant I got to keep my field of study relevant and my name at the top of the list. I’m sure there’s a comparison to be made between Wilson and a tragic hero of ancient Greece, but I studied film in college, so the best I can do is the lyrics to the Nicki Minaj song “Chun Li”
“They need rappers like me/They need rappers like me/so they can get on their fucking keyboards/ and make me the bad guy, Chun Li”
Replace rappers with classicists and Chun Li with Emily Wilson, and it’s as accurate a summation of the situation Sophocles could give us. As for the rest of the memes about the movie: Keep Up the Good Work.
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Brand New Chanel$
If you hated the new Charli, because it was a departure from her old stuff, that’s now what Slayyyter is for. I’ve kind of stopped listening when gay guys on Twitter tell me a new album by one of the up-and-coming artists we follow is finally good. I’ve been burned by too many Carly Rae Jepsen album rollouts. Every Slayyyter album has been heralded as her magnum opus the week it comes out and is then quickly forgotten. This time, it’s actually true. Wor$t girl in America is so fun if you love screaming. is so Brand New Chanel$ is the end-of-summer anthem, full of regret about all the fun she’s been having, but the party still rages on. The hangover of success while still trying to relish it. It’s new, it’s fun, It’s grungey club music. I’ve been on the slayyyter train since 2019, but I’ve had one foot out the door the whole time, ready to get off when it was clear it wasn’t going anywhere. I’m glad I stayed.
TikTok
The A-Lister clap
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The loss of social clubs has been largely detrimental to American life. We threw the baby out with the bathwater when previous generations asked, “Why would I pay to be a member of a club with seemingly no benefit besides hanging out?” The answer seems to be: well, what are you doing instead? We never replaced it with anything, and now everyone is lonely and addicted to their phones. Though there is a large portion of our society that would never join a social club because they don’t want their friendships to rely on an outside controlling force, there is also a large portion of society that is seeking connection but needs structure to push things along.
This is why the AMC A-Listers are so obsessed with the program. It’s an arbitrary club we joined that says nothing about us other than “we like movies!” We love being in the club for no reason other than we all decided to join. We create secret rituals and talk about the life of an A-Lister with each other. We pledge fealty to AMC and create new ways to differentiate ourselves from the average moviegoer. The latest iteration is the A-Lister Clap, which, if nothing else, gives us something to do during the commercial where a couple is placed in different movie genres and enjoys an ice-cold Coke at the end. At least we’ve moved on from clapping during the Nicole Kidman ad. I think we can go further than this. There should be A-Lister-only bars separate from the theater. I should have access to the pool on the top of the Lincoln Square AMC. I’d like to be able to say I met the love of my life at the A-Lister’s Ball, held at the AMC at the Grove.
Year Round Birthday Cakes
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Senior Year of High School is one of the most well-planned and emotionally fraught times in a person’s life if they are planning to go to college. It is a year-long process shaped by the same steps that can only be experienced once. The process begins in August when schools are chosen, and continues until the following August, when everyone’s story turns and becomes about the beginning of college, with a new setting and cast of characters. In between, there are several milestones and bittersweet moments. The final game, the final performance, prom, graduation. Some are planned for the students as The Last Time, and some are only realized in retrospect.
There is always an undercurrent of effort to crystallize some of these moments and make them more special while they are happening. The hardest one to pin down is the last night everyone is still in town. It always comes earlier than anyone expects or prepares for. This trend is an attempt to pin it down and imbue it with more meaning than it already has, even if it’s just for the afternoon and someone has to leave early to pack. The kids are making cakes with their high school friends, divided so that everyone gets a section for their birthday. They are making it explicit that this is the last time they will all be together to celebrate their birthdays, instead of what many people do, which is plan to live dual lives and come back “all the time”. It seems they have finally solved that problem by making it text instead of subtext, and the problem of how to spend the last night together. One more thing to add to the seemingly endless list of firsts and lasts experienced during that pivotal year.
Sorority Recruitment Season
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And then it’s on to the next. Soon enough, the very same kids that are wondering if they’ll ever be happy or comfortable again will be running work week and yelling at people who were themselves, scared freshmen, just one short year ago. So we beat on, boats against the current born back ceaselessly into the past, remembering to hit our marks and that nice is not a point on the diamond. Personally, I’m excited to see what they do with themes this year.
This post inspired me to re-listen to Chun Li by Nicki Minaj