Movies: The Big Fat Year in Culture

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In a year's books, TV, movies, music and theater, it's possible to see deeply and clearly into the hearts and minds, the secret dreams and fears of a nation. Until you try explaining The Ketchup Song (Hey Hah). Page 251 of the pop-culture-sociopsychologist's handbook tells us that we must have used this novelty tune as an escape from relentless bad news amid war and recession. O.K., so what did that make Macarena in 1996? If America's fortunes have changed since 1999, why hasn't Harry Potter's popularity? And can any blather about America's longing for superheroes change the fact that a competent adaptation of Spider-Man with Kirsten Dunst in a wet blouse would have been gold in any year you threw a dart at?

It's better to think of America's pop-culture choices not as a monolithic State of the Union address but rather as a mix CD we make every year. The tempo and tone don't always mesh. Some of the songs have a direct message; some have emotional meaning; and some, in gimlet-eyed retrospect, make you wonder why you ever picked them in the first place (this means you, Anna Nicole). But then you play that CD back on the stereo, a few older, fatter years later. Your toe taps. A memory comes back. And you realize that in that nonsensical mess of cotton-candy lyrics and throwaway choruses, you somehow managed to write down your life.

A DATE THAT LIVED IN INFAMY, AGAIN

One of the recurring strains of this year's mix (to finally kill the metaphor) was a gloomy tune from 2001, remixed several different ways. This time last year, we were still asking if and how 9/11 would change pop culture. In 2002 we got some answers. Defying warnings of tragedy fatigue, books about 9/11 (Bush at War, Let's Roll, The Cell) dominated the best-seller lists. CBS drew some 39 million viewers for 9/11, a tear-jerking documentary shot inside the World Trade Center on the day of the attacks. All broadcast and many cable networks tossed out their normal programming schedules (and their advertising) on the anniversary, as if supersaturating the airwaves--turning Sept. 11 into a virtual national holiday--could magically confine the terrible events to history, never to be repeated. There was mawkishness, anger, finger pointing, navel gazing, bathos, pathos--every possible response except forgetting.

But of all the cultural predictions after 9/11, the first proved the wrongest: that grief and war would moderate our culture and elide our differences. Movies would stop blowing up buildings; reality shows would stop humiliating people; comedians would stop being ironic. Atlantic Monthly editor Michael Kelly envisioned a day when American men would again be able to wear fedora hats without smirking. It was a fleeting moment for cultural critics who, like The Great Gatsby's Nick Carraway, longed to see the world "in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever."