9 Happy Things in 2017

2017 hasn't been the kindest year. In fact, it often reminded me of the scene in Twin Peaks when Laura Palmer’s other version lets out the endless, silent, scream inside the red room. Yup, that was 2017. But that doesn’t mean it was all bad. In fact, there were some genuinely wonderful, lovely, and unforgettable moments of bliss and happiness through the year. Especially when it came to my enjoyment of pop culture. 2017 was definitely the year where I started to get a better hold on how I enjoy and consume my pop culture. 

One thing they don’t tell you when you start a Phd, is that it will really mess up how you approach everything from reading to watching movies. When the overwhelming amount of your time is suddenly focused on watching TV or movies, and reading everything in sight, those activities start to become your job, instead of your free time or a way to relax. After finishing the thesis and defending, it was noticeably difficult to just read something for fun. Even sitting down to watch a mediocre movie felt like it had to have a purpose. Suddenly, even binging a couple episodes of a new show without evaluating it for inclusion into a paper or chapter felt like wasting time. Did I really rewatch Twin Peaks if I didn’t write a think piece about it? This way of seeing pop culture actually translated to me reading far less, and going to far fewer movies, than I normally would. Fortunately, 2017 marked a turn in that for me. I’ve read more, watched more, and all around just enjoyed the experience more.

So, in retrospect to that, I’m not doing a best books, or best TV of the year post. Though I probably could. Instead, I just want to point towards nine parts of pop culture that really made me happy this year. Because that is what it is about. Most of us will never be able to agree on the best movie to come out in the year, and we may forget what that best of 2017 was in 2023, but hopefully we all got some great joy out of a few things. And here are mine:

1. Awaken My Love by Childish Gambino: Childish Gambino, a.k.a Donald Glover has had a pretty incredible couple of years. His show Atlanta not only scored him an Emmy for the incredible episode “Juneteenth”, but is one of the best first seasons of any show I have come across. Then this year he made the smooth cameo in Spider-Man: Homecoming as the uncle to an unnamed Mile Morales (though let’s be honest, he should have been Spider-Man, he should have been Miles Morales, and it will take a while for me to forgive that particular indiscretion). And while all of that was going on, he has been filming the new young Han Solo film as a young Lando Calrissian. But even with all of that, he dropped the one album that I have been listening to nonstop this year.

          While his past albums have been incredible examples of Hip Hop, Awaken My Love came out of nowhere with a mix of funk, R&B, and jazz that is so smooth, it could easily make reentry into earth’s atmosphere. “Redbone” is the song that got most of the airplay and is probably the most recognizable song from the album, but if you are picking and choosing songs (why are you doing that!? Get the whole album, listen from beginning to end.) do not miss the pure funk energy of “Riot”, or the haunting soul of “Zombie”. And of course, props to the easter egg of the album being tucked away in some office shots in his Emmy winning episode.

2. Legion on FX: If even a year ago you would have told me that I would spend a whole weekend binging a TV show based on an obscure X-Men character, with Amanda, and we would both really dig it, I would have called you a liar, flat out. While I was already excited for the potential of the show just from the trailers, Amanda has never been a big fan of superheroes as a whole. But really, superhero isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe Legion. Take Aubrey Plaza, cameos by Jemaine Clement, a touch of Wes Anderson’s visual aesthetic, and then cause the viewer to question if they are the crazy one, and you have Legion. It is weird, in the absolutely best sense of that word. I actually wanted to teach an episode of it with some X-Men comics in my Comics as Lit classes, but it is too weird. Even if I somehow assigned the whole first season, I wouldn’t know where to go from there.

The X-Men as a frame work for storytelling is limitless. The overt ideas of racism and homophobia are obvious, but Legion dives deep into the idea that going through puberty and becoming near limitlessly powerful in one big lump could drive you insane, or at least make you feel insane. The structure of the entire season goes to great lengths to not only tell that story, but to make the viewer feel as though their grasp on things is tenuous at best, and completely unhinged at worst. The performances by everyone, especially Plaza and Dan Stevens, are all on point. In fact, Plaza’s acting alone has made me look a little differently at every Parks & Rec meme and gif I run across.

3. Shade, the Changing Girl by Cecil Castellucci & Marley Zarcone: Starting in 2016, DC Comics really started to turn their comic lines around. Not only did they launch their very popular “Rebirth” initiative for their main titles, but they also announced the curating of special imprints to some talented people. One was a relaunch of the big 90s properties The Wild Storm helmed by internet Jesus and futurist Warren Ellis (see #7 below) and the other was giving former My Chemical Romance frontman, Gerard Way, control of an imprint called Young Animal. While almost all of the Young Animal books have been solid, Shade, the Changing Girl blew me away. with Castellucci on words and Zarcone on art, the team took the classic 90s Vertigo character, Shade, and reimagined him as a young woman and the struggles that come with it. This version of Shade knows the original Shade through his poetry and decides she needs to visit earth like he did. Using her predecessor’s Madness Vest, she inhabits the recently deceased body of a high school’s notorious Mean Girl.

The art work is surreal, colorful, and imaginative. It gives the reader a sense of seeing what is on the page, but not necessarily believing what they are seeing. Mix that with the almost maddening qualities of high school, clicks, and teen angst and you have an incredible look at what the teen experience in a digital age could be. Loma Shade is a girl who decides she wants to be her own person, to do her own thing, and when she does, she ends up in the body of someone that everyone hates. The metaphors of growing up and the expectations and goal posts we, and others, set for us to achieve are pretty obvious, but you also get a healthy dose of humor. What if the Manic Pixie Dream Girl decided to tell the male protagonist to fuck off because she was working on her own shit and making this her story? Oh, and she could just obliterate everyone and everything if she really needed to.

4. Wonder Woman: We all knew this was going to end up on this list. I also don’t think I need to go into much depth about why. I already did a post about it and how amazing it was. If you haven’t seen it yet, I don’t know what more I could say to get you to watch it, but come on, just watch it and feel better about everything for a couple of hours. And if you want a little bit more to make you feel good about the movie and the people involved with it, read this story about how Gal Gadot was able to use the patriarchy’s bull shit to get rid of known sexual harasser and creep Brett Ratner at WB. Since the male executives didn’t expect Wonder Woman to do well, they didn’t sign Gadot to a multi-picture deal like her male JL costars. So if they wanted a sequel, they had to sweeten the deal quite a bit.

5. Robin Wright: First, she was one of the most badass Amazons in Wonder Woman, and if anyone wants to do an Antiope solo film or TV series, I will watch that all day long. Then she rolls in as the police chief in Blade Runner 2049. Yeah, it was a smaller part, but she handles it so well. Then we get the announcement that instead of just canceling House of Cards after the news about Spacey, they are going to do a final season that is just Claire Underwood specific. Hey, Netflix, if you just want to start over and have a Robin Wright centric House of Cards, or really any political drama, I am on board. She is one of those actresses that just seemed to show up all over my 2017, and I still feel like it wasn’t enough. Because I need so many more amazing, complicated, and well written women in all of my pop culture right now.

6. Laura Dern: If 2017 has taught us anything, it is that the first rule of the Dernaissance is that she can rock any hair color you need. Laura Dern was one of the consistent high points (arguably the best part) of the new Twin Peaks season, sporting platinum blond hair. Every scene she showed up in, it was like the camera had to be there. Her story was the story that had to be told among a group of intricate, crazy, and gorgeous stories. Then at the end of the year, she went from blond to purple as Vice Admiral Holdo in The Last Jedi. 

The Last Jedi, as a whole, was an incredible and enjoyable movie. And one of the most enjoyable aspects was the strong women that weren’t going to put up with ineffectual, fragile, male bull shit. Normally, when a character like Poe tells the female commander that she is wrong, and that he has a way out of the difficult situation, the narrative bares out his assertion. Not here, Poe is an idiot and Holdo was right from the beginning. Plus, Laura Dern got one of the most memorable moments in that film. While there are lots of visually stunning and engaging scenes, when Dern takes the helm, turns the ship around, and jumps to hyperspace it is AMAZING! Amazing both narratively, and visually. My 2017 pop culture consumption has taught me one important thing, the future is female, and we need to get on board, because it is fantastic.

7. The Wild Storm by Warren Ellis & John Davis-Hunt: As I already mentioned, DC Comics has been handing out some imprints to some really talented people. Wildstorm actually dates back to the 90s (wait, are we hitting peak 90s nostalgia in comics?) and the founding of Image Comics. Jim Lee’s unique label in that new comic company was Wildstorm. While the art was innovative and the sudden presence of super violent and super sexual heroes was new to a lot of readers, those early books were just a lot of big bombs, big biceps, and big boobs. The image of anatomically incorrect, scantily clad women next to guys with 1800 pouches on their belts and shoulders wasn’t quite born at Wildstorm, but it had a comfortable home. Eventually, Lee sold his characters and title to DC Comics. At the time, Wildstorm was really turning around and creators like Warren Ellis and Alan Moore were coming up with some exciting, genre defying, and well created books. Gone were the guns a boobs, being replaced with some in depth storytelling. It was actually during this time that Warren Ellis wrote my favorite comic of all time; Planetary. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I am all in on his new takes on the characters in The Wild Storm.

Instead of having these characters exist in superpowered worlds with unbelievable technology, Ellis has constructed a world were technology is just a step beyond the bleeding edge of where we are, and where corporations function much like they do today, they just got away with hiring military contractors to murder their opponents. Imagine Steve Jobs having a hit put out on him by Jeff Bezos because Bezos wants Alexa to go sentient and takeover a country before Siri can. And that is really where some of Ellis’ bast work comes from, his perceptions and expectations of the very near future. Ellis obviously has a skeptical and nihilistic view of our future as we become more integrated with our technology and those who provide it to us, but in The Wild Storm, you get to see a bit of his hope. That given the right tools, the right space, we can do some mad, disruptive, world saving shit. And nothing can stop our potential to do all of that. You see a similar thread run through his and Declan Shalvey’s Injection. A book, by the way, that I have been constantly loving, but it started before 2016, so didn’t make the list. But hey, go pick up both and have an Ellis readathon. Then finish it up with Trees and Planetary.

8. Runaways on Hulu: Marvel has been turning out some great, some alright, and some terrible TV shows of late. I have completely lost the thread of Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D. and Iron Fist, as I’ve stated before, was awful. Defenders saved some of that and in March I get a new season of Jessica Jones (still the best of their Netflix shows.), but I haven’t even watched the first episode of Inhumans. I’m scared, it is going to be terrible. I just know it. I was also really getting into The Punisher when it dropped. But then, I was interrupted. I was always going to watch Runaways. The comics that the show is based on were really enjoyable. I love most everything Brian K. Vaughn writes, but that series wasn’t a canonical book for me. So I expected the show to have some of that same affect. I would enjoy it, but I wouldn’t be revisiting it. So when Hulu dropped the first three episodes early, I thought I would take a break from The Punisher and watch episode 1. Still haven’t been back to finish The Punisher.

Runaways has two huge things working for it: first, the aesthetic alone has me. The opening credits are how I imagine my life would look if I moved to California. The costumes, set design, right down to the high school setting are so on point. When you read comics or watch TV, you can tell if the artists or costume people have ever looked at a fashion magazine. In comics, this is a much bigger problem, so many artists have no clue what kind of pants girls wear. But when we are introduced to Gurt, wearing her pink pussy hat, perfection. That one creative choice and detail let me know that this was a show that understood all of its context, and who the characters were. Second: it knows who its audience is, and it knows what the real world looks like. I have said it to my students, and this list should reinforce that, but I’m getting board with the same old, white-het-cis-male narratives. The diversity of the cast, the fact that their California isn’t just populated by an Aryan cloning facility, helps it feel real, even in the world of magic, super science, and alien powers. 

After mainlining those first three episodes, I gushed about it to my Comics as Lit students. Most hadn’t heard about it, or were kind of unsure. By the next class period half the class insisted that we talk about the show because of how into it they were. I call that a win in my book.

9. Cork Dork by Bianca Bosker: I read some really great books this year. I have also gotten more into my kitchen and into food writing. Added bonus, I teach Writing about Food online for SUU. Though of all the food books I have read this year, Cork Dork was one that I was sure I would like, but I never expected to love it as much as I did. My relationship with alcohol, and by extension wine, is messed up to say the least. Being raised in a religion that forbids drinking, and a mom that once grounded me for suggesting that I may want to own a bar some day, I don’t always know how to talk about or work with the stuff. But as I got into food writing, more into food, and watching some amazing documentaries like Somm, I knew I needed to build a better relationship with our fermented and distilled friends. Cork Dork seemed like a good place to start.

The book is at heart a travelog of Bosker's journey through the often intimidating, some times bewildering, and endlessly fascinating world of wine. She quits her tech writing job to spend a year training to be a Sommelier. Her journey is infectious. I don’t want to become a Sommelier any time soon, but I do want to better understand the stuff. That is where Bosker succeeds most in her book. She gives the reader permission to just enjoy wine, and screw anyone that gives you shit for liking some Trader Joes 2 Buck Chuck. Yes there are levels, and yes there are dudes out there spending, literally, tens of thousands of dollars on bottles, but you don’t need to if you want to enjoy the world of wine. Bosker is also great with details of the wines she drinks, the tastings she attends, the science she learns, and the fellow wine lovers she encounters. I had one of my biggest smiles reading a book when she talks about one young, potential, Master Sommelier who gave up Magic the Gathering because there wasn’t enough cards or combinations to fulfill his hungry curiosity, so he moved to wine.