My 2021 in Pop Culture

2021. What a weird year. At least the television, movies, books and music were good! Here's a list of my favourites.

Favourite Recommendation from a Friend

I am notoriously bad at following up on pop culture recommendations from friends (books optimistically borrowed go onto my shelves only to gather dust for months, often years). The honest truth is that most of the time consuming the piece of media in question feels like horribly like homework, and in true procrastinator fashion I usually put off doing it as long as possible. But twice this year I managed to follow through and found two new all time favourites.

The first was Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell, recommended to me by my Amanda via her cat Echo with the irresistible description: "it's like Bridget Jones' Diary but with a grumpy Scottish second-hand bookseller". I devoured it in a weekend. Bythell's slice-of-life memoir offers hilarious insight into the wildly frustrating and occasionally rewarding life of bookselling, and paints a gorgeous picture of Wigtown, the coastal Scottish town in which he and the colourful cast of supporting characters live, including Nicky, the dumpster-diving Jehovah's Witness employee who spends most of her time causing chaos rather helping out at the store. Bythell himself is straight out of a Richard Curtis film, a man who tries to project a gruff and cynical exterior to the world but clearly harbours an undying love for his small community. I've been reading the sequel for over four months now, a little at a time, because I don't want it to end.

The second recommendation came from Sean, who has guided me through the mind-blowing discography of Hikaru Utada, an incredible Japanese musician. I'm simultaneously furious with myself for not expanding my musical horizons enough to have encountered this titan of pop previously, and delighted that I have the opportunity to delve into Utada's seven-album oevre all at once. I've loved every single song (none of which I understand) but I have a particular soft spot for Nijikan Dake no Vacance, a duet with Sheena Ringo with a stunning video that Sean affectionately describes as "lesbians in space".

Favourite Ship

Ya know, now that I'm 30, I thought I might be getting - to paraphrase Danny Glover - too old for this ship. But fuck it, when you have a pairing as simultaneously hilarious and complex as Tom and Greg from Succession, how can you not delight in it?? Anyway, the biggest shippers of Tom/Greg seem to be the Succession writers, as well as Matthew McFadyen and Nicholas Braun themselves, who laid it on thick this season, to the point where I was almost convinced they were going to kiss in the scene below. But it's one ship where I don't care whether they get together or not. The tension is all part of the fun.

Best Character Name

Sorry Duncan Idaho, there can only be one.

Favourite YouTube Video

A month ago, when Spotify bundled up our music taste and presented it to us in a cute little package, many joked "thank God there's not a Youtube Unwrapped", knowing that this would expose ourselves more to the world far more than the any of the music we listen to. We turn to YouTube to find media that makes us laugh, brings us comfort, numbs us, turns us on, over and over again. So, in the spirit of vulnerability, I will admit my number one video is once again Eric Prydz's Call On Me, an outrageously exploitative piece of filmmaking that verges on softcore porn, but with a weird sort of mid-2000s naive wholesomeness. I've probably watched it more than 100 times, for reasons I don't fully understand. My obsession has taken me down some truly fascinating rabbit holes, which I'll be exploring more on this blog in the future. Watch this space.

Runner up: this disastrous BTS self-interview from 2018 that launched a thousand memes. "I love hamburger... AND SPRITE!"

Favourite Song

I'll be honest, if we're talking songs that rocked my world and changed the trajectory of my year, BTS' Butter would probably be #1. However, since that song has 660 million views on Youtube and my second choice has less than a million, I thought I'd highlight the latter. Spinning, a collaboration between No Rome, Charli XCX and The 1975, is a hyperpop bonanza that gives new meaning to the Wall of Sound. It's the sonic equivalent of a sugar rush, and I became completely addicted. Other songs I loved included Caroline Polachek's So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings, Olivia Rodrigo's Good 4 U, Lorde's Mood Ring, Tinashe's Undo (Back to My Heart), Tipene, Maisey Rika and Troy Kingi's Turangawaewae and Vera Ellen's YOU!

Favourite Album

My beloved synth-pop legends CHVRCHES returned this year with a new album, Screen Violence. Using the imagery and tropes of horror to explore themes of loneliness, fear and failure, it felt just right for 2021. In my favourite track on the album, Better If You Don't, band members Lauren Mayberry, Martin Doherty and Iain Cook go quieter to talk about the disappointments of growing older, and the complicated feelings of returning home:

TV's on but facing at the wall
Can they tell I don't like me at all?
I'm never as alone as I am back home
Pulling every thread
Seemed like a thing to do
Now I can't give it back
My favourite kind of blue
It's better if I don't dwell but if I do
I won't call on you again

Favourite Local Entertainment

God, there was so much good local content this year, from the bananas post-apocalyptic drama Creamery, to the occasionally frustrating but mostly heart-warming singing competition Popstars, to Rose Matafeo and Alice Snedden's fabulous reverse-Notting Hill romcom Starstruck. (RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under, we shall not speak of ye). It would take a bloody incredible show to wrestle #1 from Starstruck in the heart of this undying Matafan, but Taskmaster NZ season 2 did it. I knew when the cast was announced it would be absolute carnage, but I was still not prepared. Everything that happened made Drag Race UK look like bloody Antiques Roadshow. David threatened to drown poor Matt Heath in his own blood! Guy Montgomery sang about fucking a fox. Laura Daniel stole all their girls, in a moment that's gone weirdly but not surprisingly viral on Tumblr. And these are barely the tip of the iceberg when it comes hilarious moments in this wonderful show. Watching it, I felt something strangely close to national pride.

Favourite Reality Show (Category: Reality)

There's no real competition for this one - Rupaul's Drag Race UK (Season 2) just blew every other piece of reality television I watched out of the water. The casting was perfect, with fast-talking Welsh goddess Tayce in particular carving herself out a place amongst the pantheon of all-time great talking heads.

The moments of drama were incredible - early exits of favourites! Self-eliminations! Covid shutting down production! A'Whora getting eliminated for talking about her Granny's gaping arsehole too much! And finally, it featured the year's campest bop, UK Hun? (Say it with me: RELEASE THE BEST... BIMINI!). Everyone on this show outdid themselves. Go forth and spread fabulousness, you absolute hounds.

Favourite Television Show (Category: Funny)

Despite being a millennial, I had never watched one second of Saved By the Bell, a quite bad-seeming 90s teen sitcom that nonetheless seems to inspire a lot of nostalgia amongst people in my age group. However, on a whim I checked out the 2020 reboot and guys: this show is a fucking delight. It's Happy Endings for teens, except it's not really for teens at all: the sole audience for its numerous pop culture references are extremely online people aged 27 - 37 (aka me). To whit: jokes about Showgirls, Joss Whedon, and Laura Dern losing the election for the presidency of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (!). It also has no problem lampshading the problematic nature of many of the past iteration's storylines. But even without the meta-humour, it's still really fun. Josie Totah is the standout as mean girl Lexi (her delivery is genuinely incredible), but all of the teens are excellent. And the adults - who reprise their roles from the original series - are totally game and even bring a bit of pathos to the characters, who are still trying to figure out who they are in their 40s. Who knew I would ship a pairing involving Mario Lopez in 2021?? (The "older and wiser lovers" trope always gets me). Finally: with four of the five male leads being dumb as a rock but with a heart of gold, this show is himbo heaven.

Favourite Television Show (Category: Intense)

I don't often watch television dramas. I get too caught up in the characters' worlds and often end up feeling fairly distressed and anxious - feelings I already feel a lot just going about my life and want to avoid when winding down from my day. But It's a Sin, Squid Game and Move to Heaven drew me in despite dealing with the impending horror of death, and the traumatic aftermath. These shows left me wide awake in bed, with nightmares and sobbing hysterically, but I don't regret a thing - they were incredible. However, I had the most intense experience watching I May Destroy You, Michaela Coel's miniseries about the after-affects of a rape on a young novelist, Arabella. It was beautiful, complex, messy and cathartic. It was also unbelievably upsetting, yet I felt safe in Coel's hands the entire time. And it all came together with a stunning final episode that left me breathless with its audacity and its perfection. I'll never watch it again, but everything about this show will stay with forever.

Favourite Television Show (Category: Surreal)

I've just finished Mike Nichols' 2003 adaptation of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America and it makes Taskmaster NZ season 2 look like Country Calendar. I knew before watching it was Important play about the AIDS crisis, but no one told me just how balls to the fucking wall it is. Emma Thompson's eight-vagina'd angel bursting through the ceiling, cawing and giving Meryl Streep's Mormon mother an unearthly orgasm, Jeffrey Wright playing a character called "Mr. Lies" and a giant book of prophecies bursting through the floor in 2003 VFX are just three examples, but you really need to experience it for yourself. It's dense, complex, lyrical, and yes, important, but it's also melodramatic, camp, and funny as fuck.

Favourite Book

Compared to the amount of television I watched, my "books read in 2021" list of is comically puny. Unfortunately, I think I've internalised the idea that reading books is something you do to make yourself a better person, instead of like, you know, something you can just do for fun. Nevertheless, I did read one truly amazing novel, Susannah Clarke's fantasy Piranesi. I don't want to give anything away because part of the joy of the book is how it slowly reveals itself to you. I will say Clarke's description of the main character's world was so evocative that a year after reading it I can still walk through its grand halls when I close my eyes.

Favourite Film

For months, I joked about I'm Your Man with my darling friends Rachel and Ellen, referring to it as "the Dan Stevens robot boyfriend movie". When we finally got to see it at the NZIFF, I was prepared to have good laugh and ogle at Stevens, however, I didn't expect to fall so deeply in love with this beautiful science-fiction romantic comedy, easily my favourite movie of the year. Set in an alternate present day where a company has developed the technology to create personalised love robots, Maren Eggert plays Alma, cynical archeologist required to test one out to inform an ethics committee's decision on whether to allow their existence, while Stevens plays the android in question. Rather than go huge with the premise, director Maria Schrader keeps it grounded and humanistic, while still indulging in moments of comedy that Stevens plays to perfection. But it's the romance that pulled me in, with Alma trying her best to resist falling in love despite her fascination with Tom, the guileless robot who just wants to be with her. While the film stays focused on its two protagonists, it also gently nods its head at big philosophical questions about artificial intelligence, loneliness, ageing and the nature of true love.

Favourite Performance

It feels a bit silly to write about Dan Stevens again after waxing lyrical about his movie for the whole previous paragraph, but he truly did give my favourite performance of the year as Tom, android lover. Like most of my favourite performances, there's an artifice to the way Stevens plays Tom: an uncanny valley dreamboat, Cary Grant meets Bishop from Aliens. But there's also a deep humanism to him, a wide-eyed curiosity about Alma and the world around her. Despite getting rejected again and again, he continues to love her. And despite knowing that's exactly what he's programmed to do, you still believe in his devotion and will her to love him back.

Obsession of the Year (Category: Not BTS)

The pre-BTS portion of 2021 (January - June) is a little hazy. You know when you meet someone and they become so entrenched in your life that you can't really remember what it was like without them? Yeah, it's very much like that. Having said that, I do recall my intense obsession with teen drama Love Victor, a television sequel to the groundbreaking Greg Berlanti movie Love Simon. Despite the inconsistent acting and often dubious attempts at teenage dialogue, I fell deeply in love with the sweet, low-key Dawson's Creek energy of this show. The first season, intended for Disney+, is a cute delight, while the second season, written for Hulu, gets more complex, messier - and better (Grindr, lube and Catholic guilt are involved). My obsession has cooled slightly since season 2 dropped in June, but I'll still be pulling an all-nighter to watch season 3 next year.

Crush of the Year (Category: Not BTS)

This is a three-way tie. You know me, I love to crush.

1. To quote Jessie, you know you're getting old when you're attracted to the parents in the teen show rather than main characters. But I think viewers of any age would fall in love with Ana Ortiz and James Martinez in Love Victor. Put simply, these are two of most stunning actors on TV and putting them on screen together resulted in a fucking inferno. I convinced Ellen to watch the show and most of our Facebook messages about it were "OMG THE PARENTS WERE SO HOT".

2. What is there to say about Symone, winner of RuPaul's Drag Race season 13? Well, to paraphrase Christina Aguilera: she's got soul, she's got class; she's got style; she's badass. From the second she walked on the stage in a dress made of polaroid selfies to perform Janet Jackson's Pleasure Principle, I knew she was a superstar in the making. Her uniquely expressive lip syncs and unforgettable runway moments just sealed the deal. The Ebony Enchantress is HERE, darling!

3. Mike Wozniak from season 11 of Taskmaster is somewhat of less conventional hottie, but anyone who's witnessed this delightful mustachio'd man in action will understand and share in my love for him. Dressed in an unassuming suit and tie, gracefully skipping from scene to scene with the cadence of Kermit the Frog, he just threw his whole heart and soul into every task whilst being unfailingly kind and polite. Tick tock, it's crush o'clock!

Obsession and Crush of the Year (Category: BTS)

Why deny it? The second half of my 2021 was dominated by the terrifyingly popular K-Pop group BTS. Given my propensity to fall deeply and irrevocably in love with hot celebrities, it wasn't so much a matter of if I would become obsessed with this group of seven incredibly charismatic and good-looking young men, but when. And when was June 2021, which was just as well, because shortly afterwards Covid reappeared in New Zealand and everything turned to shit. Without their music, Youtube videos and silly little reality shows to get me through lockdown, I would have struggled even more than I did. I'm now in deep, having attended two virtual concerts, put more than one poster on my wall and created an ever-expanding group chat of kind and indulgent friends to share links with. Is my obsession cool? Is it wise? Is it a good life decision for a 30 year old? The answer to all three is probably no, but do I care? Also no. I regret nothing.

Favourite Shared Pop Culture Experience

This is really a list of what got me through this terrible year. So the most important category in this post is about the moments I shared with you, my wonderful friends. So here's a little of my favourite memories (in no particular order). I haven't named the people I did these things with, but you know who you are ❤️

• Entering a trance like haze dancing to FRED at the Botanic Gardens.
• Watching the Reb Fountain perform at the Flying Nun Anniversary Concert.
• Giggling with delight at the appearance of the Russian music technician in Dawn Raid.
• Drinking and laughing and appreciating the force of hotness that is Keanu Reeves in Point Break and Speed.
• Watching Annette and listening to my friend lose it every time the titular character showed up on screen, and then debriefing on the film with another friend on a long walk afterwards.
• Watching Spider-Man: No Way Home and pointing and gasping at every single celebrity cameo ("Disney has Jamie Foxx money!")
• Preparing an elaborate lotto-like set up for a lockdown film festival, and then pulling Cats out of the hat on the first go. Watching Cats, and then Tampopo, which was somehow weirder but far more wonderful.
• Watching I'm Your Man and sighing every time Dan Stevens did something adorable.
• Debriefing on Succession and the insane Jeremy Strong New Yorker profile over beers.
• Getting way too invested in the wonderful young contestants of Popstars.
• Dancing with my friend at her first Chelsea Jade concert (she fell in love, as all who have experienced the magic of CJ do), then being convinced to get my set list signed by her.
• Experiencing the insanity of the Peachy Keen music festival.
• Drag Race brunches: cringing and laughing and cheering and eating really good food.
• Singing along with a packed crowd to Courtney Barnett's performance of Depreston, tears welling up in my eyes.
• Discussing Lorde's album Solar Polar for no less than four hours on an incredibly intense and wonderful Zoom listening party.
• Drunkenly watching BTS videos and dancing to Super Tuna at the stroke of midnight at New Year's.

Inevitably I will have left off a cherished memory, not because it wasn't important to me but because it's very late, I've been typing for hours and my brain is feeling a bit defunct. Please forgive me.

Anyway, thanks for reading this very long piece. I'm excited to do some more writing this year - let's see where it goes.

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