a pop culture recap: on reckonings & solidarity

jt, the royals, matthew perry, and sag-aftra

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[Imagine, if you will, the most frenzied voice you've ever heard] Sure, let's do a pop culture recap! Why not? We're all going insane anyway, so why not add pop culture to the mix!

We love a good reckoning

Thanks to Britney Spears’ explosive new memoir (which I haven’t read yet but is on my list!), we have even more reasons to call out Justin Timberlake. So not all is lost.

I know enough to get by at weddings, but I was never a big boy band fan growing up — I was more of a Shakira, Britney, Anastasia soundtrack girlie. Taste, if you will. And yet! I have known for years, as many of us have, that the vibes were off when it comes to Timberlake. First, his general aura. You know what I mean. It is not good. Second, the way he publicly mocked and mistreated Britney for years after they broke up in 2002. Then, the Super Bowl half-time show incident, from which Janet Jackson suffered the consequences while Timberlake got off mostly scot-free.

Timberlake has also long been a — not the, but certainly a — poster-child for cultural appropriation, benefiting from his proximity to Black culture without acknowledging its role in his success, and discarding it, as many non-Black artists do, when it no longer serves him. It is normal for artists to align themselves with more gifted artists — smart, even! Both to grow and to distract people from the limitations of their own talent. But eventually, decades of acting up do have a tendency to catch up with you.  

(I keep having to stop myself from telling Jessica Biel to stand up. Which I know is insane because I don't know her and, as Jada and Meryl have shown us, celebrities' distance from traditional relationships is farther than may appear.)

The collective cup of grief runneth over, I guess

Like 99% of my fellow millennials, I have watched Friends more times than I could count. Like most shows we rewatch as we age and mature, different parts of it have impacted me over time, but Matthew Perry’s turn as Chandler Bing has never failed. The perfect delivery and timing of each of his lines, the constant self-deprecation, the smart mockery and self-awareness … He played it so flawlessly, and it was always so painfully relatable.

When I heard of his passing over the weekend, I was distraught. I did not know him, of course, but that doesn't matter. When someone makes us feel less lonely by lighting up our living rooms for decades, their loss looms large. He wished for his work in and openness around addiction to be the cornerstone of his legacy — I think he’ll have accomplished it. 

Lol not Charles & Camilla going to Kenya right now