EPISODE 824: BE BARBIE. BE VERY BARBIE.
Spice not included.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
Hello and welcome to Pop Culture Spirit Wow, the newsletter that dares to try and love everything. I’m your faithful writer (okay, semi-faithful) Jim McDermott. Today I have for you Tears and Earthquakes, Olivia Colman, Barbie and Daydreaming.
Let’s do it!
THE WOWND UP
Lots of pop culture news floating around this week. Disney’s latest TV show Secret Invasion ended this week, and it was just about so secret that no one’s talking about it. (Actually, even though it featured one of most egregious acts of killing a female character to motivate a man in the Marvel universe, it also featured yet another brilliant performance by Olivia Colman, and established a new character who is literally the most powerful character in any universe ever. This lady would curb stomp Superman back to Krypton. I have no idea what Marvel plans to do with her, but she is awesome.)
Meanwhile in Seattle, the sheer force of the passion of Taylor Swift’s fans actually caused a small earthquake, surprising no one, least of all them ha ha ha please don’t hurt me with your earthshaking powers Swifties, while Kristin Bell and husband Dax Shepard made themselves a little airport bedroom amongst the seats at Logan Airport last week after spending 7 hours in the airport waiting to fly home only to learn their flight had been rescheduled for the next day. (Eventually they were thrown out.)
And Sinéad O’Connor died, damn it. There have been so many great tributes to her. Gen X hero and college admissions wizard Ken Anselment shared with me one of my favorites, from Smiths’ lead singer Morrissey. “The cruel playpen of fame gushes with praise for Sinéad today…with the usual moronic labels of ‘icon’ and ‘legend.’ You praise her now ONLY because it is too late. You hadn’t the guts to support her when she was alive and she was looking for you.” As someone who bought completely into the “That Irish lady so crazy” movement in the ‘90s, I feel that criticism hard.
I AM EMOTIONALLY-DEVASTATED BARBIE
I saw Barbie over the weekend. It had such an impact on me I don’t quite know what to say. It’s definitely one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. I cried multiple times, and in that *I am desperately trying to keep it together because if I don’t I will sob uncontrollably for a long time* kind of way. My eyes got so salty they burned.
It immediately entered my top five Jim Cries at Screens:
MY TOP FIVE TV/MOVIE SOBS
5. MAY 25, 1988 — ST. ELSEWHERE FINALE
I don’t remember where I was—almost certainly at home with my parents—but I do remember being so upset about these characters not being in my life (particularly Dr. Auschlander; Norman Lloyd, I will always love you) that for the first time ever as a response to watching a program I completely freaking lost it.
4. JULY 29, 2023—BARBIE
Honestly, this film.
3. DECEMBER 17, 2003—RETURN OF THE KING
I saw Return of the King at Randhurst Mall in my hometown of Mt. Prospect, Illinois. I had cried an awful lot the year before during The Two Towers, and I don’t think I imagined Return of the King could really top it. But the cumulative effect of all the endings (there were so many) was like waves battering the stony walls of my heart.
This event also had one of the key elements of any true Weep Fest in my life—I was alone. I literally sat in the theater as the credits rolled and bawled.
2. JANUARY 16, 2003—SCRUBS EPISODE 213, “WAITING FOR MY REAL LIFE TO BEGIN”
There’s nothing significant plot-wise about this episode of Scrubs. It’s just J.D. and Turk and the gang dealing with the normal helping of laughter, pathos and shame. (Oh, J.D., you gossamer ball of anxiety you.) But one of the characters-of-the-week that they’re helping has an incredible storyline with a Colin Hay song hook that I watched over and over, as though to leech every single molecule of my water out of my body.
1. MAY 23, 2023—LOST FINALE
Lost was a complicated show that started strong and then had a very rough middle. But in the last two years it really came back to itself. The last season had many moments that I found very emotional, and the finale, in which so many characters experienced reunion, forgiveness or finally redemption just absolutely destroyed me. I literally sat in an empty house on the Jersey shore wailing.
Is it weird that it took me ten minutes to come up with this list, complete with dates?
Also on my insta-brain rolodex:
TOP FIVE OLIVIA COLMAN ROLES
5. Queen Anne, The Favourite
I adore a movie and a performance that takes enormous risks, and this one absolutely delivers. (As the kids say, this Blu-Ray slaps.)
4. Queen Elizabeth, The Crown
Colman’s work is exquisite, a culmination of her entire body of work to that point.
3. Sarah Nelson, Heartstopper
Colman has maybe 2 minutes in Heartstopper’s season 1 as Nick’s mom. She was still so perfect she won an Emmy for it. (The new season drops Thursday SQUEE.)
2. Godmother, Fleabag
I had no idea that Colman could play the viciously passive-aggressive monster she is in Fleabag. She’s so damn good at it that I found myself constantly anxious that she was going to turn my way and destroy me, too.
Seriously, stop it, Olivia. Stop it. I’m not kidding. Stop. God, seriously! Stop! Please?!
1. D.S. Ellie Miller, Broadchurch
This is the role that made Colman an international star. And as much as I delight in her more offbeat or specific characters, I love her most like this, as a person who might be my neighbor, my aunt or my mom, showing the kind of strength and courage that I want to believe is inside all of us.
THE NEEDS OF THE BARBIE OUTWEIGH THE NEEDS OF THE KENS
I don’t want the spoil the Barbie movie. (I truly can’t believe that a movie about a doll can be spoiled.) I am going to write about it next week.
For the moment, here’s some fun stuff I’ve found related to it.
Under the Category of “If you know, you know.”
Hat tip to friend of the Wow Rob Kotecki for posting this The Fly nod, which sings to my little Gen X heart. Rob, this week’s title is just for you.
Barbie’s Last Name is Gesserit.
Spice not included.
You Will Always…Be My…Barbie.
MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE: HAPPY FEAST DAY, DAYDREAMERS
Today is the feast of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the guy whose spiritual experiences became the foundation of the Jesuits and Ignatian spirituality. By most accounts he was a contradictory character: stern and ascetical to a fault—in his later years he suffered from ailments that seem to have been entirely a result of the way he mistreated himself earlier in life; and yet at the same time his entire spirituality is built around the movement of the Spirit in one’s imagination, which is by nature a lush, fertile endeavor, the kind of adventure whose end point cannot be anticipated.
Given that there’s both so much to this man, and so much that doesn’t all fit neatly together, it’s probably no surprise that listening to people talk about him is a Rorschach test. Some will talk about Ignatius the first superior general of the Jesuits, who spent the last sixteen years of his life in Rome, writing the founding documents for the Jesuits and answering letters, which was how the organization was run.
I’ve heard one of my friends of a wonderfully existential bent present the story of Ignatius’ life as a journey toward ego-death. Ignatius always had these big “Aren’t I awesome” dreams for himself: first he was going to be a knight; later, even as he said he wanted to surrender his life completely to God, he still imagined himself becoming not just a good Catholic but St. Francis. But then instead of getting to do all that he got stuck in Rome being a bureaucrat. And at the end of his life he would die all alone; he’d been sick, but he’d been sick before and the Jesuits were more worried about some other sick guy.
He’d wanted to be in the hands of God, and at the end of his life he finally got it. (Yeah, it’s dark. Obviously, I kind of love it.)
Personally I think of Ignatius as the saint of daydreamer. As kids we’re taught to avoid daydreaming, to above all pay attention, that to do otherwise is unserious and also discourteous.
But for Ignatius, there was nothing more worth paying attention to, more serious and important than your daydreams. It was in noticing how his heart was stirred by daydreams of different possible futures for himself that Ignatius figured out who he wanted to be, and also how God most clearly spoke to him. He spent the rest of his life trying to teach people to trust their daydreams, too.
If you’re looking for something to do today, maybe give yourself a little time and freedom to daydream. Who knows where you might end up…
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Coming Thursday: The Ouroboros of Lasagna-Hating Christian Moms
I used an image of a bumper sticker of Christian moms protesting Garfield a few weeks ago, then got obsessed with what exactly Christian moms hated about Garfield.
What I found was wild.
See you then!