Ya, I'll admit it. I'm hooked on American culture. Actually, I think I'm hooked on following American culture rather than the culture itself. I guess that's my attempt to be in the world but not of the world. So I was very interested in Entertainment Weekly's recent article on pop-culture characters of the last 20 years. From the introduction to their article:
To help celebrate Entertainment Weekly‘s 20th anniversary, the writers and editors have carefully curated a list of the 100 greatest characters in pop-culture over the last 20 years. Whether the fictional women, men, ogres, muppets, babies, and cartoon rockers who made our list were initially created before 1990 didn’t matter so long as they made a lasting impact in the culture after 1990.
Their complete list has 100 names, but the top three are:
#3: Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer
#2: Harry Potter from the Harry Potter series
#1: Homer Simpson from The Simpsons
What do you think? Is Homer Simpson the greatest character in pop-culture over the last 20 years? And if he is, what does that say about the state of entertainment in America? Of course, these lists are made to try to get arguments started as everyone will have a different opinion. But there's not much to argue about here. The list is a sad statement of the decline of standards, principles and morals in our country. There are a couple of nice entries on the list, Woody from the Toy Story series (#25) and Napoleon Dynamite from Napoleon Dynamite (#88), but beyond that, there's not much to feel good about. Most either represent the sex (Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City), violence (Master Chief from the Halo series), or depravity (Eric Cartman from South Park) of our world. We wonder why there are so many problems in our world. Leave it to Entertainment Weekly to show us.
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