What We Learned from Pop Culture this Summer

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Has any movie generated more inexplicable hype than SyFy’s Sharknado? As the name suggests, this made-for-TV campfest focuses on a mega waterspout tornado that sucks up dozens of sharks and launches them at Los Angeles with comedic results. Despite the ridiculous premise and the mere presence of Tara Reid, Sharknado produced more social media activity than "The Red Wedding" episode of Game of Thrones during its initial airing. That's no small feat. 

Sure the special effects never rise above the level of a Sega Dreamcast game, but SyFy caught lightning in a bottle here and proved that the digital generation consumes irony in massive quantities. It’s rare for a movie to become a cult sensation right when it premieres, but Sharknado’s allure likely isn’t meant to be comprehended by us mortals.

With a sequel in the works, it seems like this phenomenon won't be going anywhere any time soon. We can already foresee having to explain to our kids what Sharknado is decades from now as we drive past sold-out showings of Sharknado VI: The Return of Tiger-tsunami.

There is a considerable difference between TV stars and movie stars. With movie stars, we pay to see them blown up to 50 times their normal size on a larger than life screen. They’re always gorgeous, flawless, and iconic. There is a disconnect between the star and the audience that never lets us truly connect to them. TV stars, on the other hand, are in your living room and being watched by your entire family. You get to know them week in and week out, and after a while they become a part of your own family. And no one expects to lose a member of their family.

That’s why James Gandolfini’s death on June 19th had such a profound effect on people. For fans of his work on The Sopranos, this wasn’t just the death of an actor, but of a man that we witnessed grow as a person and as a character over the years. His death got all of us thinking about all of the great roles we would never see him in. The leading man roles he so deserved; the quirky indie comedies where he got to prove he was more than a mobster; maybe even a trip up the aisle during the Academy Awards. There was just so much left of him for us to watch.

This summer, what everyone has pretty much assumed for years was finally confirmed: the government has been spying on your cell phone conversations and Internet activity for years. This was all exposed in a story on The Guardian by a frustrated ex-contractor for the NSA named Edward Snowden, who revealed all of the organization's surveillance secrets.

While Snowden has turned into a folk hero, the Obama administration has taken on a villainous visage, similar to that of a post-Watergate Nixon regime. While some point to the program as a necessary tool in the war on terror, others see it as an Orwellian invasion of our basic civil liberties. We’re still not entirely sure how spying on us while we browse the net for grumpy cat memes or as we bitch anonymously about Ben Affleck being cast as Batman on message boards is going to be the key to protecting us from terrorism.

These NSA revelations haven’t sat well with the American people, nor should they. However, we would be naive to claim that we never thought this was a possibility. Our advice? If you really want to make sure the NSA will stop spying on you, just keep Tonya Harding’s sex tape playing on a loop whenever you’re browsing. The NSA will never look over your shoulder again. 

Wherever politics are, you can be sure that sex won’t be far behind. And this has never been more evident than over the past few months as New Yorkers have seen the dramatic comebacks of two scandalous politicians: Eliot Spitzer and Anthony Weiner. Arguably the most useless liberal pair since FDR’s legs, the sex lives of this depraved duo has staged a classic coup by hijacking the front pages of every newspaper and website this summer.

By focusing on their bare-assed conquests, the media has buried the important issues that New Yorkers should care about, and instead they have given these two unlikely candidates more screen time than the President himself. But you know what? Sex sells, and we’re buying all of it.

Spitzer is currently making a run at the city’s comptroller position after a prostitution scandal almost killed his career a few years ago. One would argue that CNN finished the job. Weiner, on the other hand, is attempting to be the successor to New York’s mayoral soft drink czar, Michael Bloomberg. While Spitzer’s controversy was a classic political fall from grace, Weiner was embroiled in a scandal for the digital age when he was caught sending explicit images of himself to a woman over his public Twitter account.

After years out of the spotlight, Weiner joined the race for mayor earlier this year and was ready to make a shocking jump in the polls during the early summer months. But it was soon revealed that even more sexting went down during his hiatus, this time with a 22-year-old woman. To cover his tracks, he was entered into her phone under the nom de guerre, Carlos Danger. The polls are looking grim for him at the moment, but if Weiner is actually elected, the writers at SNL will have enough material to carry them through the decade. 

Let’s rewind a bit to 2008. This was the definitive year for comic book movie, with gems like Iron Man, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, and The Dark Knight all coming out within two months of each other. For comic book fans everywhere—of which we’re of the diehard variety—we imagined a golden age of comic book cinema was upon us that was going to highlight creativity above commercialism.

Unfortunately this past summer cemented the fact that the superhero trend has become too valuable for studios to take any real risks with. It all started with Iron Man 3, which was touted as a political thriller but wound up making Lethal Weapon 3 look like high art. We don’t know which was worse: Ben Kingsley doing his best Peter Sellers impression as The Mandarin or Guy Pearce inexplicably turning into a fire-breathing CGI laughingstock. This was supposed to be an epic sendoff for the Iron Man solo movie franchise, but instead it bordered on Batman Forever territory.

“Alright,” we thought, “At least we still have Man of Steel to look forward to.” The trailers that made the movie look like a blend of Terrence Malick imagery and Steven Spielberg action, and for a moment we thought this would be the Superman movie we always wanted. Unfortunately, this is still a Zack Snyder film, so of course we wound up with impressive visuals, but a scattered plot and transparent characters. Snyder’s preference for action over character is fully evident in the fact that Superman barely has more than 10 lines throughout the entire movie. We're starting to get the feeling that Superman's kryptonite is Hollywood itself. 

Whoever predicted that The Wolverine would be the best superhero movie of the summer, give yourself a pat on the back. And for everyone who paid good money on tickets to these embarrassments, we feel your pain.

At the beginning of the summer, Steven Spielberg predicted that a series of big-budget Hollywood flops would potentially cause the film industry to implode upon itself. Internet bloggers across the world initially scoffed at Spielberg’s out-of-touch philosophies about filmmaking, but after this summer left a few high-profile movie studios in the red, we think the bearded-one might be onto something.

After years of record profits and sure-fire hits, this summer has seen way more costly flops than we’re accustomed to, with The Lone Ranger going down as the most infamous. This is a movie that Disney just lazily assumed would bring in bank because of the presence of Johnny Depp and his Pirates of the Caribbean pedigree; unfortunately for the House of Mouse, the movie was an overlong chore to sit through, causing critics to spew vitriol at it and audiences to ignore it en masse. Some box office analysts have gone on record predicting that the studio will lose $200+ million from the movie.

Joining The Lone Ranger in the flop brigade were high-profile failures like Pacific Rim, Elysium, After Earth, and The Wolverine, none of which earned the type of money the Internet fanboys predicted. Well, maybe we saw After Earth’s demise coming. But what does this mean for the future of blockbuster movies? While we learned that Steven Spielberg’s prediction of a Hollywood implosion might be true, we’re still not sure what the solution could be. Unfortunately, neither does Hollywood.

While it’s trendy to complain about the sad state of mainstream movies, the truth is that television stations and streaming cable services like HBO, AMC, Showtime, FX, and Netflix are scratching our itch for high-octane dramas and raucous comedies. This summer alone, we have seen the end of an epic season of Game of Thrones, the beginning of the final season of Breaking Bad, the debut of the surprise hit Ray Donovan, and the long-awaited return of Arrested Development.

Couple those hits with new seasons of longtime favorites like True Blood and Dexter, and you have a TV lineup that could rival any roster of Academy Award nominated films. These shows bring cinematic scope and groundbreaking ideas right into your living room without any of the typical Hollywood nonsense like 3D glasses and Ryan Reynolds.

Case in point, take a look at "The Red Wedding" episode of Game of Thrones. The last 10 minutes of that episode turned stomachs of die hard fans nationwide and reduced us to quivering husks of feelings for a week afterwards. Most importantly, it made us feel something. Aside from a few under-the-radar gems from this summer, like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and Fruitvale Station, has a mainstream movie made you feel anything other than an insatiable urge for a refund?

Ever since Val Kilmer made reference to Metropolis in Batman Forever, comic book fans everywhere have dreamed of seeing the Dark Knight and Superman in the same movie together. And earlier this summer, Warner Brothers made geek dreams come true when it officially announced that the sequel to Man of Steel would co-star none other than the Caped Crusader.

Unfortunately, a few weeks after the landmark announcement, the studio cracked the Internet in half by revealing that the new Batman would be played by Academy Award winning director, and former Daredevil, Ben Affleck. Upon hearing the news, comic book fans everywhere threw a digital hissy fit that saw grown men and women across the globe weeping into their underoos. But instead of being productive members of society and learning to live with a little disappointment, more than 30,000 fans sent a petition to the White House, demanding that Affleck be removed from the role. Sure the economy is still in the tank and there are countless civilians being killed by chemical weapons in Syria, but in the world of comic book fandom, no tragedy is as serious as Batfleck.

Are we happy with the news of Affleck’s casting? Not necessarily; we would much rather him boot Zack Snyder to the curb and actually direct Batman/Superman (That’s the title we’re giving it. Deal with it). However, we’re willing to give Affleck a chance, especially after he turned in some solid performances in The Town and Argo. After all, if Robert Downey Jr. can overcome a crack addiction to become Iron Man, Gigli and Daredevil shouldn’t be a problem for Ben Affleck.

It’s a testament to the power of the tabloid age that when a baby is born who might become king in a country that has no political control over us, it can dominate the worldwide news for a month. The birth of Prince William and Duchess Catherine’s first child, Prince George of Cambridge, was arguably the biggest story of the season, and it turned flag-waving U.S. citizens into royal enthusiasts all summer.

William and Kate hit the four quadrants of the paparazzi perfectly: they’re young, powerful, good-looking, and have just enough drama in their lives to stay interesting They’ve become like a better behaved, less hairy version of the Kardashians. Still, despite their high profile, even we weren’t prepared for the media blitz that surrounded the birth of their baby. Every angle was covered; hell, we were prepared to get hour-by-hour updates on how many centimeters Kate was dilated. 

We can’t imagine what Lindsay Lohan was thinking while on the low-budget set of The Canyons. Was she wondering how things went so wrong in her once-promising career? Was she thinking about her next fix? Perhaps. But we doubt she was thinking that this tepid erotic thriller might be her re-entry into Hollywood’s good graces. But in a strange twist of fate, that’s exactly what seems to be happening.

In general, The Canyons got pretty savaged by critics, but Lohan was praised for her work. And since the movie came out last month, the actress left rehab, has been linked to an HBO series with Danny McBride, and was interviewed by Oprah, which is always the precursor to a big-time comeback. Will she stick the landing? We have no idea, but we can't wait to watch it unfold.

Things aren’t all good news in the land of former-child-stars-gone-wrong because, well, Amanda Bynes still exists. According to various reports, Bynes’ parents have filed for conservatorship of her estate earlier this summer, which basically means she may not be able to take care of her own finances for physical or mental health reasons. In addition, this summer has also seen her ordered into an involuntary psychiatric hold because of her erratic behavior.

There is no question these two actresses are at a crossroads, not only in their careers, but in their lives. As Lohan might be on the verge of one of Hollywood’s great reclamation stories, Bynes still seems nuttier than an elephant’s stool. We don't know if she can pull a Lohan, but hopefully we’re talking about her comeback this time next year.

When Miley Cyrus twerked her way to infamy at the MTV Video Music Awards, she created one of the most talked-about, yet wholly unnecessary, news stories of the year. With tongue unfurled, Cyrus proceeded to put on a performance that was more awkward to watch than two epileptics playing a game of Jenga. The highlight of this bizarre set came when Cyrus stripped down to her flesh-toned undergarments and started grinding up on the striped leg of Robin Thicke, who looked like he aped Beetlejuice’s style before the show.

This performance was so sexual that men across the country must have been rushing to the Internet to confirm Cyrus’ age, just in case the VMAs quickly became the largest underage sting operation since To Catch a Predator.

For the next five days, CNN lit fire to its remaining journalistic integrity by dedicating its homepage to the twerk seen ‘round the world. Plus, outlets like NBC, ABC, FOX, and every other network looking to slum for ratings replayed the video over and over to show their disgust. Of course, their disgust didn't stop them from sensationalizing it further. 

Is it really breaking news that a 20-year-old girl decided to flaunt her sexuality in front of a national audience? Was it any worse than all of the other gratuitous sex we get bombarded with every day? Isn’t there anything better to cover? Simply put, if sex offends you, the VMAs probably shouldn’t be on your radar. She’s a young star looking to make a name for herself, and we should all be comfortable with that. Well, everyone except Billy Ray.