Look, I am nothing if not a collage of confounding and often conflicting pop culture references in a push-up bra, and this list is a reflection of that. I have often found the leap from Mariah Carey to Einstein isn’t as far as you think. Voldemort to Chicago? Covered in a lone musical number. A baby haka to Spike Lee dropping pearls? It’s right there – you just need someone brave enough to draw a (very curly) line between them all. Let me be your hero, baby.
1. ‘The Wicked Witch of the East, bro’
Look, it’s a classic of the Tumblr era for a reason. This biffo over whether Glinda in the Wizard Of Oz is a witch or a princess could end a friendship, end a family, end a war … or start one. I tend to use, “She came down in a bubble, Doug” as conversational shorthand for a dispute that’s inconsequential. The girlies who get it, get it.
2. Spike Lee’s Oscar victory lap
A hilarious comment from SPIKE LEE in response to Green Book (2018) winning the Oscar for Best Picture. pic.twitter.com/e7tc20Yhc2
— All The Right Movies (@ATRightMovies) August 4, 2023
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Spike Lee should have won an Academy Award back in 1990 for Do the Right Thing, which was up for best original screenplay and should have been up for best picture … a trophy that ended up going to Driving Miss Daisy (big yikes). Since the Oscars fucked that up – as they often do – it was almost two decades before one of our greatest living film-makers got his win for BlacKkKlansman (best adapted screenplay). Considering BlacKkKlansman lost best picture to Green Book (bigger yikes), Lee’s win was one of the few highlights of the 2019 ceremony: not just because he deserved it, but because he so gleefully knew he deserved it.
Lee is famous for giving great quotes and on this night he didn’t disappoint. I revisit this clip to feel good watching a petty king work. From the “Are you British? Are you British?” you know he’s cooking, but it’s the delivery of the punchline and mischievous hopping from side to side while clutching his Oscar that seals it.
3. ‘It’s a f**king emu, man!’
“you’re walking a fuckin ostrich you daft cunt”
— paul rudd (@philsadelphia) October 6, 2019
“it’s a fucking emu” pic.twitter.com/fetLhMfdgV
Up there with “Oh my God, they were roommates” for completely random, ridiculous, real-world moments someone had the foresight to capture on camera. Otherwise, how else can one appreciate the absurdity of a northerner walking an emu?
4. Hannibal Lecter yelling facts about people
hannibal lecter yelling facts about people pic.twitter.com/8pk1CnNOgq
— Chris Fleming (@chrisfluming) August 15, 2019
Chris Fleming is a master of his craft, having a chokehold on a certain corner of the internet thanks to his absurdist, niche and often extremely physical comedy. Better known for his peacock standup special Hell, it’s his skewering of very specific pop cultural touchstones that crushes (see also The Phantom of the Opera trying to dock his boat and driving like Nausicaä Valley of the Wind). They’re usually off the cuff, as evidenced by the lo-fi filming location and him breaking character, but he nails everything.
5. The Snowman snowman
mister police. you could have saved her. i gave you all the clues. pic.twitter.com/HMSaqGAYPU
— Quentin Norris (@ZombiMonkey9001) October 20, 2017
Vale Film Twitter, a once joyous place that could turn the marketing campaign for one of the worst movies of 2017 – where they forgot to shoot a quarter of the script – into a meme that outlived any real estate The Snowman had in the discourse.
The super serious Scandi-noir having a poster that looks like it was drawn by a four-yea-old held upside down is funny enough on its own, but it’s the seemingly endless and inventive stretching of this joke that endures.
6. Who said E = mc2?
It was a physical and emotional challenge for me to pick just one piece of Mariah Carey-related internet content. In a world where “I don’t know her” and the Barbara Walters “I didn’t know she sung, I thought she rapped or … whatever” interview exists, how do you choose?
I went with this video because it makes me snort-guffaw every time as she answers with such confidence, referring to a Mariah Carey album that only a few people know and only the most hardcore of Lambs cherish. “Who’s Ein-stein?” was even incorporated into Oppenheimer memes.
7. Kevin Smith v Jon Peters on Superman Lives
Kevin Smith is a great storyteller. His “true Hollywood story” of being hired to write the ill-fated Tim Burton/Nic Cage Superman film in the 1990s is one of the all-timers. It’s not just because of the insight it gives into the absurdity of working within the studio system itself, but the nutso machinations of the comic-book-movie-industrial-complex that make it memorable.
Comics are one of my first great loves and I’ve been fortunate to work for the two giants (DC Comics, on a project that was killed in the first of two mergers; and Marvel, on superhero novel Mockingbird: Strike Out). These characters are carefully guarded and there are a lot of hoops that need to be jumped through, as Smith hilariously outlines. His encounters with notorious producer Jon Peters – Barbara Streisand’s hairdresser turned boyfriend turned Hollywood heavyweight – are the juice here. From Peters’ obsession with putting giant spiders in every movie he produces to his famous line about coming from the streets – as immortalised by Bradley Cooper who played him in Licorice Pizza – this is a great showbiz story.
8. Cardi B’s crooked teeth
Cardi B has always been Cardi B. Whether that’s the present-day music mogul or the stripper-turned-underground rapper, she has always been unashamedly herself. That’s what people love about her.
This clip from reality series Love & Hip Hop – of which she was a favourite cast member – is a classic example of that. When she’s given advice about dressing more conservatively in business meetings, she responds honestly, openly and surprisingly: “I got crooked teeth, I don’t want people to look at my crooked teeth, so I’d rather them look at my tiddies.”
9. Baby haka
This is more sweet than funny, but whether it’s the fifth or 50th time I’ve watched this, I find the smile on my face growing wider and wider until I’m chuckling. Danny Heke is one of the co-founders of Mozzy Foundation – a Brisbane-based organisation that focuses on promoting and empowering the Māori worldview – and that mantra is in action here. This pēpē is so keen to be part of his culture and to perform his own haka as his dad leads him off camera, it doesn’t matter that he can’t verbalise all the te reo or – crucially – walk properly yet. He’s 100% committed, attitude fierce, mana evident.
10. Voldemort in the 1938 Hogwarts production of Chicago
This falls into the category of dumb funny. As in, it’s so dumb, it’s funny. Not really a lot to explain about this one except the visual of the shoddily put-together Voldemort cosplay really throwing themselves into the Hot Honey Rag choreography just … kills me.
Maria Lewis’ latest novel The Graveyard Shift is out now.
