Latest news with #decadence
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
'80s icons like Hulk Hogan are dying. Why it's affecting us so much
It was supposed to be the decade that never ended. But with the back-to-back-to-back deaths of 1980s icons Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Ozzy Osbourne and Hulk Hogan, it feels like Generation X is bidding a final farewell to the Decade of Decadence. The losses are feeling particularly heavy for many people because these icons were products of 'the pop culture decade … a decade unlike any other,' said Chris Clews, keynote speaker, author and '80s pop culture expert. The decade was marked by experimentation, innovation and an openness that made it possible for legendary artists to create entertainment that continues to influence pop culture today, he said. The decade was a 'glitter bomb' of 'awesome insanity' and 'larger-than-life characters.' 'They were able to flourish in that decade because there was just this incredible creativity that was happening and people were being who they really wanted to be almost for the first time,' said Clews, who wrote 'Raised on the '80s: 30+ Unexpected Life Lessons from the Movies and Music That Defined Pop Culture's Most Excellent Decade).' Grief is different for everyone, and experts say mourning someone you didn't personally know − a phenomenon called collective or public grief − is a complicated, yet valid, experience. "Collective and public grief, as I call it, is always unique in how we attach," David Kessler, grief expert and founder of previously told USA TODAY. This form of grief can be further compounded when hearing unexpected news of the death of a beloved public figure. It can feel unexpected because we tend to remember people as they were in their prime and compartmentalize them that way in our minds, Clews said. To him, Hogan will always be 'hulking up' during "Saturday Night's Main Event," and Osbourne will always be performing alongside the late, great guitarist Randy Rhoads. 'We think they're never going to die because we don't recognize they're aging,' he said. 'They were in their 20s and 30s and we kind of get stuck with thinking they're always going to be that age.' Suzanne Somers: Why it's OK to grieve as a fan It's also how we tend to think about ourselves, Clews added. As he mourns for these pop culture icons, he also mourns his youth. 'With somebody like Hulk Hogan or Malcolm-Jamal Warner or Ozzy, I immediately go back to a moment in my youth where I remember seeing them or hearing them for the first time,' he said. 'And it suddenly makes me realize that was a long time ago.' The '80s are having a rough week, Clews said. But he encourages his fellow Gen Xers to take advantage of modern streaming services and revisit some of their favorite movies or music from the decade. 'Be thankful you were here to see them and appreciate the people that have the incredible talent to inspire you, to entertain you and to bring you joy at times when you really need it because all three of them (Warner, Osbourne and Hogan) have done just that,' he said. Adrianna Rodriguez is a Millennial (sadly) who can be reached at adrodriguez@ This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hulk Hogan, Ozzy Osbourne: Why saying goodbye to the '80s is so hard Solve the daily Crossword
Irish Times
06-06-2025
- Business
- Irish Times
Sydney Sweeney's bathwater soap for 'dirty little boys' takes the celebrity cast-off biscuit
Peak decadence is here. Western society has reached – or returned to – the most deranged excesses of the late Roman empire. Appointing donkeys as pope. Boiling ortolan in babies' tears. Those sorts of things. We may as well hand the keys of the city straight over to Alaric the Visigoth. Think I'm kidding? It has emerged that Sydney Sweeney , this generation's Betty Grable (if that's not Sabrina Carpenter ), is selling traces of her bathwater to panting fans. You can't just buy a pint of the stuff. It comes embedded in a 'medium grit' soap called Sydney's Bathwater Bliss. 'A perfect combination of the two best places on the planet: The outdoors and Sydney Sweeney's bathtub,' the manufacturer brags . Unsurprisingly, social media was soon queasily reminding itself of a scene from Emerald Fennell's recent film Saltburn . During a moment of passionate desperation, Oliver Quick, in the form of Barry Keoghan , sups thirstily at the plughole while water drains from the tub in which Felix Catton, played sleekly by Jacob Elordi , has just, well, shaken hands with the milkman (as the Bible didn't quite euphemise). Sweeney, star of the hit series Euphoria and films such as Anyone But You, hasn't exactly been backing away from innuendo. 'Hello, you dirty little boys, are you interested in my body' – long pause – 'wash?' she purred in an earlier commercial for the Dr Squatch brand while up to her oxters in bubble bath. READ MORE One can only imagine the requests that came in. When fans start asking for your bathwater, she responded, you can either ignore it or turn it into a bar of soap. 'It's weird in the best way.' Is that really the 'best way' of being weird? If one wished to get hot under the collar one could rank this with the underground trade in alleged celebrity cast-offs. If you want Channing Tatum's old sock then some charlatan will happily sell you something pretending to be that. If one wished to get hotter still one could wearily reference the ancient practice of praying to the sheddings and effusions of the beatified. The alleged finger clippings and trimmed hair of St Clare, an associate of St Francis, are on display in Assisi. A sliver of the tongue of St Anthony of Padua is said to be preserved in Sri Lanka. Is this what has become of us? Is St Sydney of Spokane the contemporary equivalent of those broken on medieval wheels for the sin of Christian belief? Do we now pray to homoeopathically low levels of her bathwater as our grandparents once genuflected to the dandruff of St Bunterbottom? Of course not. If the release of Bathwater Bliss ($8 a bar from the Dr Squatch website, and probably sold out by now) speaks of anything interesting, it is of contemporary stars' shameless enthral to irony. It would require a hugely underdeveloped sense of humour not to recognise the project as an enormous joke. Like Carpenter, Sweeney has had fun marketing the sort of perky, coy sexuality that Grable – a pin-up now almost forgotten but once the most popular star in the United States – exploited during the 1930s and 1940s. Sweeney's earlier bathtub commercial has, appropriately given the setting, a playful cleanliness that suggests all innuendo is for entertainment purposes only. It also reminds us of the wider need for contemporary celebrities to diversify. When Paul Newman launched his Newman's Own salad dressings, in 1982, the project was viewed as an oddball one-off. His fame needed no boost. The profits all went to charity. George Foreman's endorsement, in 1994, of the grill that still bears his name played as an enormous joke. 'It's so good I put my name on it!' he chuckled in the ads. Saltburn: Barry Keoghan in Emerald Fennell's film Business is now a serious business. Celebrity endorsements and side projects are, to contemporary stars, at least as significant as the supposed core activity. Everyone has a booze brand. Steven Soderbergh has a 'floral brandy' . Beyoncé has a 'Scotch-inspired American rye' . Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg have a gin . If you don't secure a liquor deal then, like Jennifer Lopez , Billie Eilish and (no, really) Brian May , you grab one for perfumes. Not even Karl Marx could have envisioned the cynical flexibility of 21st-century capitalism. It is not enough to profit from one source. That seed revenue must then be fed into a matrix of interdependent schemes that transform mere prosperity into obscene wealth. [ Sydney Sweeney's rise: Hollywood finally has an old-school movie star on its hands, and it has no idea what to do Opens in new window ] None of which is to wag a finger at Sweeney for what, rather than a signal of apocalyptic decadence, feels like an amusing jape at the expense of the overzealous fan. Other stars should take note. Glen Powell could flog followers his soiled face wipes. Paul Mescal could cast his used teabags into decorative jewellery. Or maybe not. Never allow a good joke to outstay its welcome.
