I never expected it to come from Donald Trump Jr. But the most astute social and cultural assessment I read last week, the slime I couldn't wipe off while I observed everything else, was his, arrestingly repurposed as the kicker to Jason Zengerle's lovable New York Times Magazine profile of a very unlovable man."The reality is," Trump Jr. told a radio host, "there are no adults in the room anymore."Nowhere was that more hilariously and literally true than during the VMAs, an event disowned by younger people but intended to sum up a culture disowned by older people. The empty rooms and barren cities of the VMAs on Sunday night were both a production solution to and a comment on pandemic-related challenges, but they became an awkward reflection of the desertion of the event itself. The VMAs showed that abandonment is the defining characteristic of pop culture right now, from the news to movies, as younger people ignore it and it ignores them. Everyone, on both sides of the generational power divide, has agreed to just bounce, to leave any shared spaces and retreat to their corners. The aesthetics of abandonment are everywhere, as feeling and as subject.
Music
The mutual parting of ways between older legacy media decision makers and the younger people who consume media is most obvious in music. Music's true big event has been happening for weeks, as Jon Caramanica told us the morning after the big event that was on TV. "WAP" is so obviously the most popular video and song right now, becoming its own ecosystem of dances and memes on TikTok. There's no song that has come even close to its cultural impact this year. Yet the VMAs ignored it. Would we be surprised if the music fanatics who live on TikTok ignored the VMAs? It's kinda like the people who run the VMAs don't really spend much time where the energy in music actually is, and the people who create the energy in music don't really spend much time at the VMAs. It took the VMAs a year to notice Doja Cat, who was not ignored on Sunday night, so maybe next year, "WAP."
MoviesThe most expensive Hollywood movie to be released since March opened to empty theaters this week. "The New Mutants," an X-Men movie, grossed $7 million and cost $200 million. Right now, it's already mostly talked about in the context of the abandoned theaters it's playing in. But it feels destined to become a shorthand for the end of the superhero movie era."The economics for 'Tenet' and other megamovies work only if lots of people their houses and buy tickets to see them in theaters," wrote Brook Barnes. "Studios may have to start making less expensive films."
NewsThere's only one image that's stuck with me from two weeks of party convention coverage. It was the psychedelically cringe-inducing ending to the DNC, when the running mates and their spouses waved to a wall of Zoom faces from an awkwardly empty hall. This, of course, was a necessity. But the feeling of abandonment was woven through not only the production but also the distribution.I caught moments of the DNC not on MSNBC but on the Chapo Trap House Twitch stream, which was tuned not to MSNBC but to C-Span.
Podcasts
One of the most popular podcasts in the world, and the first original hit for Spotify, made abandonment an explicit subject last week. Joe Budden, who had the No. 1 podcast on Spotify, aired out the details of why he's leaving the platform."Spotify never cared about this podcast individually," Budden said. "Spotify only cared about contribution to the platform. Podcast is really another word for community. If you substitute the words "this podcast individually" in Budden's sentence above with the words "us" or "you," it begins to hint at the feeling of betrayal and abandonment that both Budden and his fans must feel. The pathos of Don Jr.'s quote is that it's probably not the first time lately the kids who listen to Joe Budden's podcast feel like there are no adults in the room.
The shorter stuff
Jennifer Garner cried on Instagram because she finished "The Office" while wearing a Dunder Mifflin t-shirt. This show has to be stopped. (Daily Mail)
Aaron Sorkin is preparing new written material for "The West Wing" reunion for those of you who were dying for "The Newsroom" taking on 2020. (NYPost)
Bradley Cooper in costume for Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie has taken attention away from the fact that it also stars Benny Safdie. (Page Six)
Kanye screwed over a tech company so badly that they moved their HQ from Pennsylvania to California to Illinois for him. (Pitchfork)
Olivia Nuzzi gets the irresistible in-person details about Melania Trump's extremely litigious falling out with her ex-friend. (NYM)
Special "Facebook Reality Bites" Section
Oculus has a new logo and it uses a pyramid, which is a symbol that in no way invites any sort of conspiracy-minded paranoia. (Forbes)
Facebook Horizon, which I call "Fortnite for Moms," is slowly inching its way to market. (The Verge)
"Unhinged" has one of the best movie tag lines of all time. (Image)
Dave Itzkoff digs into the relevance of the sleeper hit "The Boys," which, shockingly, is getting its own after-show. (NYT)
The Reagan-era political spy thriller "Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War" actually sounds like one of the more interesting narratives we're going to get in pop culture this year. (WaPo)
Palantir is the only company whose core brand value is "villainy." (NYT)
Triller is so shockingly huge that it has actually put in a bid to buy TikTok. (Bloomberg)
Fintan O'Toole breaks down the medieval symbolism that was conjured by the Democratic party during their convention, and I cannot recommend his analysis enough. (NYRB)