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Two more days of 2016 – let’s all breathe, shall we? What else can go awry in just two days? (um – maybe not the best question right now) This still being 2016 – you have so outlived your welcome, 2016 – like the messy chaotic houseguest who came and refused to leave and wreaked havoc – I personally would like to just stay in bed through Monday January 2, 2017. Not just in bed: but under the covers! But then, I have to wonder: is writing off 2016 as “horrific’ a way of downplaying its significance? Chalking it up to some kind of global “bad luck” – that will miraculously end on Saturday night at midnight?
READ MORE: Anna Kendrick Has Survived the ‘Good Times and Bum Times’ of 2016 (VIDEO)
For all its nightmares, disappointments, celebrity deaths – major ones – way too many major ones – I feel the need to take a look at what some of these monumental moments, bleak as many are, did to change society and culture – for women, of course, but for everyone. Attempting to write off 2016 as “the worst year in history” diminishes the major ways in which my life – your lives – are all going to change going forward, and if we all don’t look at that, we can’t affect it. And we certainly can’t change it. Complaining about it, grousing, writing funny memes – these are all good ways of blowing off collective steam. But they still leave us in a vacuum.
So, while starting to gather my own New Year’s Resolutions for 2017, I want to look at some of the seemingly – okay, definitely – negative things that happened in – I don’t even want to write the number anymore for fear of bad luck! – “the year about to wrap up” and see if there’s a way to spin them, reinterpret them, as a guide on how to move forward. If we don’t really examine the strange new world we find ourselves in, how can we move on and have that good old-fashioned word favored by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama: HOPE?
There were many many celebrity deaths this year – most of them in the world of pop music – and we’re not even talking about Glenn Frey, Leon Russell, Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire, or Sharon Jones of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. Sure, David Bowie and Leonard Cohen were older and had very large bodies of work; but Prince and George Michael – both only in their fifties – also had very significant bodies of work.
READ MORE: David Bowie’s Sexual Liberation Promotes Diversity
I know that with each of these monumental losses, I went back and downloaded so many of all these artists’ songs – really indulged myself in their music, their lyrics, their voices, their more obscure songs – and their places in history and culture. Bowie and Cohen were the original voices of the nineteen seventies: they both had incredible careers and influence for about FIFTY YEARS. It proves the staying power of truly great pop music, of lyrics (Bob Dylan winning the Nobel Prize for Poetry really solidifies that), and how all of these artists morphed and changed throughout their careers pretty much defines the meaning of the word: “talent.” I know it made me a lot pickier about what I listen to – and what I’ll listen to in the future.
Had the pleasure of knowing George Michael in the 80s. Voice of an angel. Now he can sing for them.
— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) December 26, 2016
Sure, today’s popular music has importance – and it sure makes a lot of money – but how can you compare Katy Perry, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, all the mega-star dj’s – and today’s top twenty – with that? Maybe we re-evaluated that what we’ve been listening to now (with some exceptions: Beyonce’, Kendrick Lamar, Beck, Adele) – sounds like muzak compared to these amazing and original artists – who came from a time of protest, revolution, reinvention?
I think it’s time we get off off mainstream radio and rock – and make some of the more obscure artists out there much more listened to. Pop music used to be about amazing individuals and their self-creations: now it’s about pretty girls, great clothes, hair and makeup, and cute couples. Is that really good enough? Is Taylor Swift’s love life and parade of boyfriends anything to compare to the work of Prince and Bowie?
READ MORE: Taylor Swift’s 5 Best Breakup Songs: Listen Up Calvin Harris and Tom Hiddleston
Time to wake up, people! And radio! And MTV!
Okay, Kendall Jenner is a very pretty girl and a good model. Gigi Hadid, same. For those of us in Los Angeles, it’s nice to have supermodels from somewhere other than New York, Milan, Paris or Russia. But these girls took over the media, along with Taylor Swift. Kylie Jenner and Khloe Kardashian became ka-jillionaires just through dieting, dying their hair, and amazing marketing, no doubt helped along by Kris Jenner.
@KimKardashian is staging her own robbery now? She is that desperate for attention? Well she was the reason the family is popular #rayjay
— Lucas Spray (@lspray35) October 3, 2016
trump: so…
kanye: uhh
trump: umm
kanye: i uh…
trump: …hmm
kanye: ..we both have lots of money?
trump: i like you
kanye: i like me too
— KANYE WEST (@OfficiaIKanye) December 13, 2016
But, while the younger clan was cashing in, Kim and Kanye’s control of the entertainment media reached critical mass with their staged (and very greedy) Paris robbery, the curtailing of their E! show, and Kanye’s rants and meltdowns and Trump meeting. Are we going to continue to worship at the altar of pretty rich people – mostly pretty because they’re rich, let’s face it – or are we – and the mainstream media – going to start focusing more on real talent, real acting, great television (of which there was TONS this year)?
It’s been out there forever, of course, but social media and the farce of the 2016 election made it almost impossible to tell real news from fake. Fake news and propaganda – underhanded and misleading – won Donald Trump the election. (Okay, maybe the Russians helped.)
READ MORE: 5 Celebrity Reactions to Donald Trump’s Electoral College Win
Now our media tycoons like Mark Zuckerberg and the Google guys and the creators of Twitter and Instagram and You Tube have to be much more vigilant about at least separating fake news from real. And we will all start monitoring the outlets we trust in print, tv, online news.
I’ve never experienced a rollercoaster of emotions as intense as what I felt when reading the Queen Elizabeth “news” then seeing it was fake
— Rachel Simon (@Rachel_Simon) December 29, 2016
Maybe people will start taking the important sources – major newspapers, cable channels, online news sites – more seriously than just wacky headlines and empty promises? Certainly the New York Times, The New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, Salon, the L.A. Times, the S.F. Chronicle, The Miami Herald all deserve a lot of credit for trying to separate the sublimely real to the ridiculously absurd. And the fact is, most journalists for any and all of these outlets are seriously underpaid. They’re not rewarded the way reality stars are – or even YouTube stars.
Okay, these movies – there seems to be about one a month released – have made highly paid stars of some really good actors: Robert Downey Jr., Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, and this year, Ryan Reynolds (but Marvel didn’t do much for Ben Affleck or Henry Cavill) – but the really good thing about big budget bloated blockbusters??? They forced people looking for alternatives to these movies – and this year proved there are a lot of us! – to help advance the rise of Netflix and Amazon original programming, as well as new great stuff on HBO, Showtime, FX, etc.
Nobody can dispute that watching Stranger Things, The Crown. Mozart in the Jungle, Transparent, Mr. Robot, Silicon Valley, season six of Game of Thrones, Billions, etc was so much more interesting than watching most movies! And 2017 promises even more TV options to make up for how few good films are being made now.
READ MORE: Netflix Royally Announces New Original Series “The Crown”
And maybe that should be the takeaway of 2016: promises of a better future. It’s impossible to say what 2017 will bring. However, if 2016 did one thing right, it was helping us be prepared for anything.
