Moments from pop culture that I think about regularly

My "Roman Empires", if you will...

If you’ve been on social media in the last month, you might’ve seen women in your feeds asking men in their lives how often they think about the Roman Empire.

In what can only be a massive unspoken conspiracy, white men from around the world are answering that they think about the Roman Empire all the time. Me? I’ve only really thought about the Roman Empire once in my adult life and it was because the guy I was dating tried to justify doing anal because “The Roman’s did it” and I said something like “Yeah but they also had sex with little boys… Do you wanna do that too?” Understandably, he was no longer in the mood for sex at all, let alone anal.

Since the advent of this Roman Empire trend, which does not appear to apply to men of colour (perhaps because Black Romans have been erased from history), the internet has been speculating about what the girl version is.

While it seems obvious to me that the girl version of the Roman Empire is the Romanov Family, thanks to the 90’s animated flick Anastasia, I started to think about more recent moments in pop culture that seem to pop into my head semi-regularly.

Kanye West and Mike Myers at the Hurricane Katrina telethon

While presenting on TV for a Hurricane Katrina fundraiser, Kanye West goes off script and says “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

Watching the clip today, it’s obvious that West is deeply affected by the tragedy (which disproportionately impacted Black Americans) and potentially nervous about speaking on live TV. This was the first of his televised interruptions, and I won’t speculate about the state of his mental health here. The thing is: he was absolutely right.

Tony Abbott eats a raw onion

It might seem crazy, but during the years of Scott Morrison, I kind of missed our buffoon Prime Minister. I disagree with all of his politics and abhor him as a person (David Marr’s essay ‘Political Animal’ does a great job of profiling him), but you could always count on old Tone for a funny gaffe.

This is a moment in history that I think about frequently. In 2019, I genuinely thought about Tony eating a raw brown onion two to three times a week. It’s a puzzling act that can only be described as Costanza-esque. But, while a glasses-less George Costanza mistook a peeled raw onion for an apple, Australia’s own Tony Abbott could presumably see that it was, in fact, an onion in his hand.

Many asked why he would bite into a raw onion like any other hand fruit, but the thing that niggles at me is that he ate it with the skin on.

Kendall Jenner’s BLM Pepsi ad

Produced by Pepsi in 2017, five years after the BLM movement started (see timeline here), Kendall Jenner stars as herself in an ad that sees her leave a photoshoot to attend a protest. She joins the protest, smiling joyfully (guess she loves civil disobedience), before reaching a row of police decked out in riot gear.

Given that the Black Lives Matter movement had already been going for five years, and had been further inflamed after the inauguration of Donald Trump as President, it’s truly befuddling that corporate America thought their consumers would buy into this narrative. Sometimes, I like to imagine a room full of (white) executives pitching the idea. Maybe, in their world, we can achieve unity and peace by worshipping our one true god (capitalism).

They say that the devil works hard and Kris Jenner works harder, but our favourite momager really dropped the ball here.

Azealia Banks says that Eminem makes “school shooter music”

This line appears buried deep in one of Azealia’s lengthy Instagram captions, so you’d be forgiven for missing it. You might have been tempted to stop reading after she said Jamie Callum was better than James Blake, and I wouldn’t blame you if you did. Majority of the caption nonsensically rants about queer counter culture, and is just generally unhinged, but I guess a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Much like any of Azealia’s insults, this one is funny because it’s vivid as well as being incredibly apt. Does Grimes smell like a roll of nickels? I don’t know, but it seems entirely plausible. Why did we let Eminem get away with that song about killing his wife?

Drew Barrymore’s Cinderella asks Anjelica Huston’s evil stepmother if she ever loved her

Okay, this is fictional, but I do think about it every time I get a pebble stuck in my shoe. Given that I wear Crocs, Tevas and Birks 80% of the time, it happens quite a lot.

What are your Roman Empires? Let me know in the comments…