The Monitor is a weekly column committed to whatever occurring in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.For a fleeting moment recently, everybody was speaking about bears on drug. Well, one bear on drug. In a movie. Never mind. The point is, for like eight hours on a random Wednesday, as Twitter spun out of control and the US waited to see if rail employees would go on strike, a bunch of netizens got sidetracked by an exceptionally high ursine apex predator on a killing spree. Cocaine Bear (why would you call this motion picture anything else?)
is directed by Elizabeth Banks, who, after Wet Hot American Summertime, the Charlie’s Angels reboot, and the Pitch Perfect films, appears to understand a thing or two about films that get memed. Banks ‘film is also among several coming at the start of 2023 that seem to be made for the internet. Not necessarily that you ‘d wish to see them there– though they all seem primed to stream while you scroll Instagram– but that they’re either born of some piece of internet discourse or designed to be a part of it. With Drug Bear the gimmick is apparent: Make a motion picture so relatively horrific and humorous that people won’t be able to stop themselves from transforming it into one-liners and reaction GIFs. It gets benefit points for also inspiring clinical inquiry into cocaine’s impacts on bears and a chin-scratching Atlantic piece merely titled”Drug Bear: Why?” (For those questioning that scientific question, the 175-pound bear who influenced the movie passed away of an overdose.) The film is likewise a nod to a popular image macro and feels like the sort of film individuals will see just to publish about it. Coming a couple of weeks before Drug Bear’s February 24 release is M3GAN. This column has actually currently explored the wicked doll dance moves that the movie’s trailer influenced, and there’s no need to retread that angle here.
But watching M3GAN’s titular android bend and snap her method through numerous mashups, it was tough not to see the irony of a film about the horrors of artificial intelligence being promoted with a marketing campaign crafted for peak virality, as if the exact same algorithms was accountable for both its script and PR blitz. Speaking of discourse, the Sundance Film Festival revealed its lineup for 2023 this week. Amongst the most eye-catching entries: Feline Person. While it’s based on the New Yorker short story of the very same name, there’s no word yet on whether the movie will follow that story’s narrative completely,
however if it does it will be intriguing to see if it generates the same level of attention and conversation. Originally published in 2017,”Cat Individual” landed in the middle of a flurry of conversations around #MeToo and, as a story about a college sophomore’s complex relationship with an older male, discovered itself at the center of the zeitgeist. It was credited with sending out the web into a”crisis,”and
its virality is mentioned in nearly every referral to it. 5 years later, a retelling might have different impacts, but it does appear poised to ride a similar wave.(Side note: The author of” Cat Person,”Kristen Roupenian, wrote the story on which Bodies Bodies– another movie for the extremely online– was based. )