by Alice-Ginevra Micheli, Contributing Writer
We all have that feeling. You know the one: You finish watching a movie and something about it hits you in just the right spot. Whether it was the theme, the story, or even the characters, there was a quality about it that almost makes you want to turn around and go back a second, third, or even fourth time!
Bar the reality of living in the movie theater for the rest of your days, you turn to the rest of pop culture and start to look for other avenues where you can find that same feeling.
Well I’m here to make this plight easier for all. Each month, I take a piece of pop culture that was prevalent in the social consciousness — whether it is a movie, TV show, or something else — and then recommend other forms of media for those who want to stay in that world a little bit longer.
Welcome to your One Stop Pop, internet!
That’s right, this time we’re doing things a little differently. I could have just made this a pure Barbie column, but the uniqueness of Barbenheimeris a movie phenomenon that has to be documented as much as possible for future historians. Especially if, like myself, you walked into both with high expectations, and found that they were met in strangely similar ways.
So for this month’s recommendations, we’ll be having the first two recommendations relate to Greta Gerwig’s social commentary masked as a pink paradise film, Barbie, and the last two relate to Christopher Nolan’s existential and moral crisis story, Oppenheimer.
So without further ado, let us commence with our first Barbie pick…
Book: Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
This might seem like a strange recommendation. However, if you’ve been one of the many, many, many people who have gone to the cinema to check Barbie out, then you know that a major theme is about recognizing the extraordinary nature of being ordinary. It explores themes of femininity, masculinity, and what it means to stand out in society, and be forced into an uncomfortable position as a result.
These are all themes that are also explored in Gail Honeyman’s fiction novel, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine. In it, we are introduced to our titular character, who struggles with appropriate social skills, and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking, preferring to isolate herself rather than take part in society.
However, everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, and they in turn get acquainted with an elderly gentleman, Sammy. Together, the soon-to-be friends rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living, and ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her profoundly damaged heart.
It’s a brutal book, I’m not going to lie to you, but it’s also one that delves deep into the human ability to deny, recover, and re-open badly closed wounds in order to properly heal them. It’s about revelation of self, and allows the reader to reflect on their own responses as they watch Eleanor evolve from someone lesser to a better version of herself.
A great read overall, I would also recommend having some tissues on hand for the end.
Album: Manic Dream Pixie by Peach PRC
Now for something that’s a lot more on theme with the bubblegum, pink aesthetic of Gerwig’s future classic. It’s undeniable that music is a significant player in the success of the film. With unique songs having been created by some of the world’s biggest pop icons, your viewing experience is sure to leave you humming along, long after you’ve left the cinema.
Rather than recommend an album by one of the obvious artists, however, I want to showcase a new star who’s made herself very well known in a short time, particularly for her pink fairy princess aesthetic, Peach PRC. While she already has quite a few singles out, I recommend beginners turn their eye to her debut extended play, Manic Dream Pixie, which boasts a list of six eclectic and exciting new songs.
Described as a throwback to the bubblegum pop era of the early 2000s, Peach herself has related the extended play to a response to the more serious music of now, and an attempt to bring some levity back to the popular music scene.
Filled with high-energy beats, rhythms, and ear-worm inducing lyrics, these six tracks invoke many of the same feelings one might have after watching the equally energetic Barbie film, but in a wholly unique way.
It will elicit feelings of nostalgia, but with a modern telling of the story, allowing your 16-year-old self to finally connect with the slightly more jaded adult version that exists now. Trust me, it’s something that can bring some clarity to the soul.
TV Show: Chernobyl
Now we move to the darker of the two films, in general hue as well as overall topic, Oppenheimer. With that, we will also begin our recommendations with the most obvious one to come to mind — not just because of the actual topic specific to the film, but also because of the gut-punch it delivers when you understand what it’s about.
I am of course talking about the HBO smash-hit miniseries that is Chernobyl.Released in 2019, this five-part story revolves around the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the cleanup efforts that followed.
The description itself seems rather benign when you look at it from the outside, just like how Christopher Nolan’s most recent epic might seem like a biopic focusing on a mild-mannered physicist. However, just like the latter, the former will have viewers grappling with the limits of their humanity as they witness the consequences to unlimited human ambition. Whether it be for war or for scientific innovation, what has brought about progress has also brought about tragedy, and nothing works such a sense of collective shame, shock, and horror like these two forms of media, especially when watched in succession.
Now, I can’t in good conscience recommend that you cannonball both of these at once, as you might just devolve into a puddle of pure despair that can seldom be clawed out of; however, if you have a harder emotional shell, then this is in fact quite a nice coupling content-wise, if only from a cerebral perspective.
Video Game: Papers, Please
The final recommendation for today is about taking the moral quandary that you passively deal with in the above mentioned media and the movie of the moment, and placing you directly in the drivers seat.
Inspired by the infamous dystopian epic, 1984, Papers, Please is a dystopian document thriller. You play an overworked and underpaid border inspector who must control the flow of people entering your country. Using only the documents provided by travellers, you must decide who can enter and who will be turned away or arrested.
So, you can imagine, this is quite heavy.
Multi-award winning, and quite easy to get into from the off, this game is all about challenging your own moral stance, and unconscious biases, as you literally hold people’s lives in the palm of your hands.
While the 2D visual design seems simple from the outside, the gameplay is as intricate as one can get. Filled with evolved character and background storytelling, this one actually has multiple endings, all with entirely different consequences.
Ultimately, the lives of yourself and your family rest on your shoulders, as one wrong move might find you all starving in the streets. However, if you choose to only act selfishly, the lives of countless others lay on the line, it’s really up to you and your morals to decide what you can live with — both in and out of the game.
A mammoth column for a mammoth month. A recommendation for every mood you could possibly be in, no matter the circumstance. Happy or sad? Depressed or excited? Angry or hopeful? I guarantee you’ll be able to quench whatever thirst you’re dealing with at the present moment.
We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming in September, with a recommendation for whatever gets the most chins wagging over the next few weeks.
Until then, thank you for visiting SiftPop’s One Stop Pop. We hope to see you again soon!
You can read more from Alice-Ginevra Micheli, and follow her on Instagram and Letterboxd