RIP 2015: Pop Culture in Memoriam

Are you tired? We're tired. And while over here at Complex Pop, we're all really big pop culture fans, the huge breadth of movies, TV, video games, etc. that we consumed this year is making us in desperate need of a Calgon bath and a Rip Van Winkle level nap to prepare ourselves for 2016.

But we can't complain that much, since 2015 was truly a wealth of riches from the celebs we got to speak to, the TV we watched, the films we loved and even the disappointments that the squad suffered.

As we head into 2016, the pop culture horizon is looking bright, yet again full of comic book movies, #peaktelevision and godwilling a more diverse pop culture landscape in front of and behind the camera. So, there's some stuff that we think needs to stay back in 2015, our future pop culture landscape is brighter without it going forward.

Let's pour one out to some of 2015's pop culture that needs to stay in 2015.

Look, technically "Netflix and chill" will never die. Netflix and chill will continue to live on forever and it has existed even before Netflix was a thing, only it was probably like "Blockbuster and chill" or something. (Lol or "Hollywood Video and chill.") Okay I mean, there was no memeable name for it, but the concept is as old as time. So in that sense, this isn't an RIP Netflix and chill. This is an RIP "Netflix and chill."

Pause. Quick meme lesson for those not in the know (how, and who are you): "Netflix and chill" is that thing where you invite potential bae over to casually watch Netflix and "chill" except "chill" means—plot twist—BONING. Because you never just wanna be like "HEY WANNA COME OVER AND TOUCH EACH OTHER" you have to mask it as like "We are just casually watching a movie together." But then you get closer on the couch as the night goes on and if you're lucky, proper chilling happens (which has actually sprouted another meme). And that is "10 minutes into Netflix and chill and he/she gives you this look" along with a picture of someone looking horny. These are usually pretty funny, I guess.

But "Netflix and chill," the phrase, has gotten so out of hand, with all these remarkably unfunny spin-offs, that it's time to lay it to rest. I think it's come to that era of a meme when parents and—shudder—brands find it funny/cool/hip and thus it's no longer cool with the in-crowd (that means it's OVER, okay?). Like one time I got a PR email about Netflix and chill condoms that read "Netflix and chill is one D away from Netflix and child" and I screamed and threw my laptop. I hope no one is earnestly fucking with NETFLIX AND CHILL CONDOMS. And then the insufferable Netflix and Chill FESTIVAL happened this year, and I wanted to eject myself from this millennial lifestyle.

Being a film lover, I find it offensive that anyone would want to STOP a movie and do something else instead. Ugh. Can't we just literally Netflix and chill and then have deep discussions about the thematic elements of the film we just watched?—Kristen Yoonsoo Kim

This past May, David Letterman ended his illustrious 33-year run on late-night TV, and I was glad to see him go. Mind you, I stayed up way past my old man bedtime to see President Obama throw some playful shade, a star-filled Top 10 list, and managed to not shed one tear while Foo Fighters played the show to a close, although, truth be told, there was no way I was going to shed a tear. Why?

Because it didn’t shift the late-night scene one iota.

We’re talking about a medium—the late night TV talk show format—that isn’t very inclusive to people of my particular pigment. Hell, I haven’t properly fucked with late night TV talk shows since Arsenio Hall’s show was canceled (and only really watch his return once or twice, primarily when I was in a hotel in a strange land and didn’t ante up for the cable package, because I don’t have Letterman money). So while Letterman’s legacy is cemented in TV history, it’s not like I’m sobbing over him not being around.

What’s even sadder is that while Comedy Central has made some non-white male hires for their late night shows (first Larry Wilmore for The Nightly Show, then Trevor Noah as Jon Stewart’s replacement on The Daily Show), there is still a very white, male slant on the late-night scene. Fallon, Kimmel, Myers, and whoever else is on when I should be in bed can be funny, and have viral moments on the regular, but really, we’re moving at one volume during each of their programs. Most of that is by design, I know, but while I’m happy to see one of the long-standing white males stepping down from their mantle, it hasn’t made me want to dive head first into the world of late-night TV.

Wake me when NBC hires a person of color to replace one of their funny white men. Literally, wake me when it happens, because I’m usually sleep during those shows and don’t want to miss it.—khal

Sigh, Blake Lively. Blake Lively is one of those character actresses who can’t seem to divorce her IRL image from an insufferable dimwit she once played on television—no offense, Serena van der Woodsen. While I’m sure Blake is a perfectly kindhearted person with well-meaning intentions, 2015 was the year the Internet hounds killed her millennial-targeted lifestyle sitePreserve—and good on them because it was, for lack of a better term, fucking racist.

Preserve, for those who aren’t familiar (god bless), was a quasi-GOOP ecommerce and lifestyle advice blog that purported to “preserve” the long-forgotten traditions of the Antebellum South. You can probably see where this is a problem, what with slavery and other aspects of this part of American history that can do without tasteless nostalgia. For a sampling of how this manifested, an editorial titled “Allure of Antebellum” included the following passage, per Jezebel:

Perhaps this comes as little surprise from a woman who was married on a plantation. But then there was that time Preserve dropped a recipe for “B's Blueberry Stud Muffins” during Black History Month that for some horrible reason evoked African American suffering as its selling point:

“The Blues evoke a time and a place that romances us with nostalgia,” it added. “Let’s go there. Blue looks good on you, baby.” The Internet responded appropriately but collectively asking, Excuse me, but what in the ever-living fuck, Blake Lively? As if all of this weren’t enough of a steaming pile of horse shit, the site also plagiarized because of course. Preserve officially decided to cut its losses in October, but not for any of the aforementioned reasons.

Officially, Lively told Vogue that she’d shuttered the site because her concept wasn’t fully baked before its launch. “We have an incredible team of people who do beautiful work, but we launched the site before it was ready,” she said, “and it never caught up to its original mission: It’s not making a difference in people’s lives, whether superficially or in a meaningful way.” But here’s the catch: Preserve may be coming back. She added:

No word yet on what that “plan” actually entails, or whether it’ll also be inherently racist. So, RIP Preserve in 2015. Let’s hope to Christ we’re not looking at a similar endeavor resurfacing in the New Year.—Catie Keck

Since her introduction to the world via trash man Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" music video, Emily Ratajkowski has felt like she has been EVERYWHERE, even though her IMDB page highly suggests that wasn't the case. In 2014, she was only in Gone Girl, playing mistress to trash man Ben Affleck's trash man Nick Dunne. It was a small part, but Ratajowski's Andie and her pouting (and her boobs) landed her on the map for 2015.

So in 2015, Ratajkowski played love interest in two bro staples of the summer, Entourage and Complex Pop's Andrew Gruttadaro's most reviled film of the year We Are Your Friends, and while I haven't seen the latter, she is just there in the Entourage movie. She plays a thinly fictionalized version of herself and is only Vince's love interest. There's not much more to it than that. For a woman so beautiful (yes, she's very stunning), she has no presence at all which I can assume is par for the course in We Are Your Friends. Yeah, it's completely rude of me to assume that she has nothing else up her sleeve but 2015 hasn't proven to me that she does. So I'd be fine if Hollywood decided to cut their losses with Ratajkowski.

Never have the words of wise sage Regina George been so pertinent in a situation.

Remember those trailers for Black Mass? They provided us with Johnny Depp optimism for the first time in years, providing hope that the teen heartthrob turned perpetual weirdo may not be washed for good. After all, his acting has never really been the problem. He dives into characters consistently well, from drug kingpins to a variety of heavily made-up freaks. The problem is that his decision making is on par with an affluent teen with absentee parents. Dude hasn’t landed in a solid, non-animated film since Sweeney Todd (excluding his phenomenal cameo in 22 Jump Street). Those weirdo roles have been leading him astray from The Lone Ranger to Alice in Wonderland to Into the Woods, with one too many leaps into the mind of Hunter S. Thompson thrown in the mix (The Rum Diary), as well as a few flubbed crime/thriller roles (Public Enemies, The Tourist) and the beat-to-death Pirates franchise. And let’s not forget this year’s Mortdecai, perhaps his most tragic flop yet.

But then came those Black Mass trailers. Depp was downright chilling as notorious Boston gangster Whitey Bulger.. His dinner monologue espousing the values of “stop snitching,” even when it comes to family recipes, had us as shook as David Harbour’s John Morris. And his resemblance to the psychopathic Irish mob boss was uncanny—his eyes menacing, hair gaunt, and teeth rotten. Was Black Mass about to begin the Johnny Depp comeback?

Nah.

Black Mass was too boring, and a full viewing of the film reminded us that Depp plays with (extreme) makeup far too often. His performance was fine enough but it had little exploration behind what made such a monstrous character tick so cruelly in a full two-hour runtime. None of the murders he ordered or carried out himself had enough weight to make us hate him that much. Blow was a far more compelling film, which is one of the few nice things you can say about Blow.

Gone are our hopes for Johnny Depp to make a triumphant return. Dude still can’t pick movies to save his reputation, and he’s now surpassed Adam Sandler as Hollywood’s most overpaid actor which can't be seen as a good thing.—Ian Servantes

It was early in the afternoon in late October, a pretty unremarkable fall day, when the New York Times Magazine decided to tweet. The publication is usually pretty highbrow, but on this day they decided to ask their readers a question, one that sparked a pretty short lived, but nevertheless intense debate about one of the most vile human beings to ever walk this earth. “If you could go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” The question, which truly came out of left field, was accompanied by a graphic of a blue rattle, a pseudo pie chart that documented the answers of diligent readers who (allegedly) participated in the survey. That was it. No context. No info on how many people were polled. The question wasn’t tied to an article. It wasn’t tied to anything. Still, we ran off with it.

Baby Hitler is one of 2015’s most insufferable memes. Sure, there was serious dialogue about the moral implications of killing an infant, but like so many other things that go viral, it presented an internet-wide preoccupation that not only illuminates how obsessive we can be as a community, but is disconcerting in other ways too. Like “The Dress” before it, “Baby Hitler” is internet escapism, a need we share to collectively drop what we’re doing and give attention to something that we know, deep down, says nothing about anything. “Baby Hitler” inspired new graphics, anecdotes, jokes, intense criticism, and some revolting threads. It revealed who had a sense of humor and who didn’t. But, and this is the reason why it should stay in 2015, what did it really do for us other than offer a brief distraction from our routine? At the time it may have been funny, particularly because it came from such a place like the New York Times Magazine and in such a fashion. Months later, however, it just seems pathetic. Is that all it takes to grab our attention? Are we that bored with ourselves?—Eric Eidelstein