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Obamacore is not just anything that was popular during Barack Obamas presidency.
(Breaking Bad, Adele, andThe Hunger Gamesare not on the list.)
The story of Obamacore has three chapters.
The first covers 2009 to 2012, Obamas first term.
The second covers 2013 to 2015, the high summer of Obamacore.
To keep things interesting, we also ruled ineligible any TV appearances by an actual political figure.
So put your hands up, youre reading this list, the butterflies fly away.
(Watching the GIFs likeyeah, clicking the links likeyeah.)
Gather round, you grumpy cats and yas queens: You know its gonna be okay.
.Core Text:Glee
.
(Onscreen, at least.)
.Mascot: Bacon
Maybe it was a recession-era back to basics mentality.
Maybe it was the election of Americas first nerd president.
Bacon was manly in an unthreatening, apolitical way, embraced by role models as diverse asRon SwansonandJames Deen.
What the fuck is mad men?
I’m a mad man if you don’t pick me the hell up."
When Justin Halpern launched the Twitter account@ShitMyDadSaysin August 2009, he didnt just land abook dealandCBS sitcom.
He also created one of the most viral sentence structures of the coming decade.
The first wave of these jokes often incorporated gentle self-mockery from the bourgeoisie.
The second, exemplified by Francesca RamseysShit White Girls Say … to Black Girls,turned the gaze around.
White people discovered they did not own subjectivity.
Families had gay people in them now.
Generational divides were blurred.
Few exemplified the coming Millennial hegemony more than Ke$has Tik Tok, the first No.
1 of the 2010s.
Her lines about brushing her teeth with a bottle of Jack were jokes.
Her DGAF attitude wasnt.
like do not be cynical, he urged young viewers.
Thats a girl-power hat trick, and it was only sweeter since Bigelow wonover her ex James Cameron.
Novelty accounts that got book deals
Did we really have it that easy?
It was canceled after one season.
Thats the Rosewood mentality, the rapper, producer, and G.O.O.D.
Monster is a tentpole of a time of luxe-rap maximalism, of star-studded posse cuts and sky-high ambition.
Minaj infiltrated commercial raps boys club by force of virtuosity and ego.
Louis C.K.
on Marc MaronsWTF
Subsequent eventshave made it uncomfortable to acknowledge the cultural influence wielded by Louis C.K.
during the Obama era.
But to some people living before 2017, he was the closest thing to Dylan in the 60s.
The next year brought FXsLouie, a semi-autobiographical dramedy that became the decades most-imitated TV show.
But the high-water mark of the C.K.
project was his October 2010 appearance onWTF With Marc Maron, which Slate declaredthe greatest podcast episode ever.
The setup: C.K.
as the auteur in his pomp; Maron the old friend whod been left behind.
Their resulting conversation felt like the model of new masculinity, especially when C.K.
teared up talking about his daughters birth.
Katy Perrys Firework
Of the five separate No.
1 hits from Katy PerrysTeenage Dreamalbum, three became timeless pop classics.
(The other two are E.T.
and Last Friday Night.)
Fear, he told the host, had won in a shutout.
Now, every town is Humans Of-ified.
The artist brushed off the rumor Would that be so terrible?
Almost instantaneously, Born This Way became the decades defining queer anthem.
Normies called them hipsters, but real hipsters usually hated them.
Headlines did better, but the adage from The Motto You only live once percolated for years.
Internet Boyfriends
In the parlance of the time: not all men.
From here, we got the Hey Girl meme, which receiveda feminist remixfrom Danielle Henderson three years later.
Mostly, they wereactors, but there were alsoporn stars,French economists, eventhe Pope.
Undercuts
Around 2011, hair began to disappear from the sides of American heads.
The undercut took four specific, yet interrelated, forms.
(It was later reclaimed by white supremacists.)
Experts pegged the trend to the voguish interest in clean lines and trim silhouettes.
It also represented a radical break from the immediate past.
Small wonder it appealed to DJs, grown-up teenyboppers, and fascists alike.
Its lo-fi sound, full of ukulele and tape loops, fit squarely in the eras analog ideals.
The 10s were marked by white liberals rising racial consciousness, mirrored in turn by a rising self-consciousness.
As her readers parasocial attachment grew, their questions became more urgent and existential in their dimensions.
But at one point, we were all just her little sweet peas.
Girlsdiscourse
Even before it premiered in April 2012,Girlswas a sociopolitical tinderbox.
Was the HBO dramedy a critique of millennial narcissism or an embodiment of it?
Was it nepotism to hire the drummer from Bad Companys daughter?
Werent they actually satirizing people with zero Black friends?
Politics and race followed its own logic.
Borowitzscontemporary criticsaccurately pegged the blogs overall sense of smugness.
With hindsight, what is even more apparent is itsoverwhelmingcomplacency.
The pets themselves didnt always seem happy to be there.
Cloud Atlas
I dont see color, movie-fied.
He told viewers to get off the couch, embrace travel, and move.
Later, Bourdains perspective would shift during hisParts Unknownperiod as his personal life grew darker.
He reflected a world that was growing darker too.
All sunny falsetto, gospel harmonies, and swelling hand-claps, the song is relentless cheer bordering on mania.
It makes Bobby McFerrins Dont Worry Be Happy sound like Johnny Cashs Hurt.
Happys path to chart dominance started with the release of its turbocharged, 24-hour-long music video.
With its parade of celebrity cameos (Steve Carell!
and ostentatious flourishes (Bollywood dancers!
), it doubles as a time capsule and absurd display of economic excess.
But the trendBillboards No.
Both weredown-to-earthandenjoyably crude, withexpressivefacesthat worked well as GIFs.
Rapey was Obamacore in miniature.
(And then she could also come out as bi.)
Its villains became institutions, corporate greed, and cruelty fueled by unshakable systemic racism.
Miley CyrussBangerzera
Back in 2008, Miley Cyrus was still Hannah Montana.
Does anything sum up 2013 online humor more thanBetty Whitecoming in on a Wrecking Ball?
Things are a little different these days with Twitters waning cultural power and societys souring relationship with the internet.
But the Twitter Main Character never truly went away, only shifting platforms.
Just ask West Elm Caleb.
Its the jaded internet-forum poster excited by knowing something you dont.
I was gonna say that during the speech.
In time, Macklemore learned to mackle less.
and rubrics (Make me laugh) that would become the show Bible studied by future contestants.
This wasnt a local bar in Kansas anymore.
WhileJezebel bloggersmay have objected, few others did.
It wasnt all fantasy, though.
Years later, Adnan Syed was released from prison pending an appeal filed by Lees family.
Why is your penis on a dead girls phone?
The show arrived at a moment in Daviss own career when her prominence contradicted her opportunities.
In the 2010s, this relationship grew much stranger.
The internet wanted famous people to just kind of stand there, not really doing anything.
Both spoke to the belief that the internet, diffuse though it was, nevertheless possessed a unified culture.
#OscarsSoWhite
#OscarsSoWhitethey asked to touch my hair.
In January 2015, April Reign tweeted, #OscarsSoWhite they asked to touch my hair.
Whether that has created meaningful change in the industry overall isanother matter entirely.
Alright, the jewel of the album, was a blunt-force blast of a boundless but near-extinct optimism.
But their condensed, feature-length run times felt like abbreviated history.
Games were hot spots where tech execs would go to be seen.
Its tech-billionaire owners believed the franchise couldMoneyballits way into a forever dynasty.
Steph Curry gave the Warriors a joyful face.
The Warriors, too, would mirror Silicon Valleys decline in goodwill.
By the 201617 season, the team became so rich and unstoppable they were designated as the leagues villains.
Drake, of course, became the immovable heel we know today.
And in the overlap between the two flourished Aziz Ansari and Alan YangsMaster of None.
The high-water mark for this approach was Ryan Cooglers November 2015 film,Creed.
That it also featured some of the most thrilling fight scenes ever filmed was a bonus.
20152016
III.TheCrowningofHillarycore
Its all been leading up to this.
One presidential administration later, Obamas unofficial court artist unveiled his opus.
These defensive contortions were all too telling about Clintons struggle to rekindle that old 2008 feeling.
.Mascot: Female Ghostbusters
Women,busting ghosts?
Think of everything Daisy Ridley went through while playing Rey in the latestStar Warstrilogy.
Who didnt want to recapture creatures from their childhood in a post-recession state of millennial arrested development?
It was Pokemon Gover.
Competing O.J.
Simpson projects
More than 20 years after the not-guilty verdict in the O.J.
- Despite those divergent approaches,O.J.
Made in AmericaandThe People vs. O.J.
(Nonetheless, a St. Paul police departmentused the filmin its annual anti-bias and equity training.)
But what makesZootopiaa true piece of Hillarycore is its theme song, Try Everything.
Unfortunately, when Macklemore did this in his 2012 hit songSame Love,he wasnt joking.
Its actually The Bad Place.
After his win the following year,SNLs November 12 cold open was a mea culpa.
