Valerie Trapp

Sharing the culture you love—a beloved song, that book that changed your life—can help translate your inner world to the people you love. Or it might make you look really strange.

Earlier this month, to celebrate a Spotify-streaming milestone, the singer Olivia Rodrigo held an intimate concert in Barcelona while wearing a certain outfit: a floral baby-doll dress, pink bloomers, and knee-high leather boots. The getup almost immediately set off an online maelstrom. Some commenters accused her of dressing like a “sexy baby” and promoting “pedo core” (short for “pedophilia core”); others defended her right to dress however she pleases.

Nowadays, having a New Year’s resolution can seem almost quaint. Social-media influencers push self-improvement trends year-round: The spring has “glow up” challenges, as does the summer. Soon after, the high-discipline “Great Lock-In Challenge” and “Winter Arc” videos begin, many of them urging people to get ahead of the “new year, new me” crowd. Or you can attempt a slew of other self-betterment regimens, whenever the spirit calls.

Since at least the 11th century in Europe, when troubadour musicians crisscrossed the continent singing songs of love and chivalry, one thing has remained fairly consistent: The artist travels; the audience stays put. Of course, there have been exceptions, in which fans made pilgrimages to see their favorite musicians live.

A furry fiend with rabbit ears and a maniacal grin has recently been spotted twerking next to the singer Lizzo, baring its teeth on the former soccer star David Beckham’s Instagram, and flopping against a woman’s Chanel bag while wearing its own Tic Tac–size Chanel bag. The creature in question is Labubu—a soft-bellied plushie that the Chinese company Pop Mart began distributing in 2019, and that has, in the past year, gained hordes of admirers.

At the Brookfield Zoo, near Chicago, sloshing inside bags of oxygen and water, thousands of tadpoles await their transformation into what the Chicago Tribune has already dubbed “celebrity amphibians.” A few months ago, the sapo concho was bound for extinction. The native Puerto Rican toad has long been endangered on the island thanks to habitat loss and invasive species.

What is the correct distance from which to film a dictator? You could give him a close-up, revealing his psychic wounds, in a biopic or drama. You could turn on a spotlight, make him sing and dance onstage. Perhaps it’s best not to put him on-screen at all, and to focus instead on those who suffered at his hands.
Pablo Larraín, the director of the Oscar-nominated black comedy El Conde, wrestled with this question carefully.