by Tyler Fransen
I know it seems a little early for the “year in review, ” but since this is the last Crite issue of the semester, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at all the great memories of the year 2016.
Then I did take a look back at 2016 and realized there were in fact, no such happy memories.
There is so much crap to sort through; I feel like Andy Dufresne at the end of “Shawshank Redemption,” crawling through 500 yards of prison sewage. Except for this time I don’t have Morgan Freeman narrating as I swim in poo.
Where do I even begin with this dumpster fire of a year? Let’s start with the unholy amount of celebrity deaths. Sure, celebrities die every year, but this was no ordinary year. And these were not just some D-Listers who once made a cameo on “The Andy Griffith Show.” Nope, we lost Prince, David Bowie, Alan Rickman, Gene Wilder, Christina Grimmie, Maurice White, Merle Haggard, Glenn Frey, Muhammad Ali, Arnold Palmer, Gordie Howe, Jose Fernandez, Dennis Green, Pat Summitt, I mean the list just goes on and on and on!
If you were even slightly famous in 2016, you had your last will and testament ready to go at a moment’s notice.
But it wasn’t just celebrities who died this year. We had mass shootings, police killings, the Syrian civil war, Hurricane Matthew, ISIS, the Zika virus, bombing in Belgium; it just keeps piling up.
In the world of politics, things were about as pleasant as wiping yourself with a cactus, and it wasn’t just U.S. politics.
In the United Kingdom, citizens voted to either leave the European Union or stay, and they voted to leave, in a movement that would be dubbed, “Brexit.” Brexit crashed their economy, put former Prime Minister David Cameron out of a job, arguably fueled racist anti-immigrant sentiment and paved the way for guys named Nigel and Boris to be the new, hideous faces of U.K. parliamentary politics.
And then there’s the nightmare fuel that is the U.S. presidential election. Hillary Clinton was slated to be the first female president of the United States. Instead, we got a Cheeto-covered talking hairpiece that I imagine was the failed experiment of turning Fox News into a person.
I know the election has been beaten to death, but just as the last word, do you think it’s any coincidence that multiple states voted for legal weed at the same time as Trump’s win?
So where do we go when the world needs escapism? More often than not, we turn to sports. And as you can imagine, the sports world was not immune to the atrocities of 2016. Sure, I’m happy that the Broncos won the Super Bowl and yeah I suppose the Cubs winning is cool, but still the sports world had its share of what will now be called, “2016-itus.”
The Olympics were rocked with “2016-itus,” from Russia’s cheating to the facilities in Rio not being done, to the rivers being covered in trash, the Ryan Lochte fiasco and Hope Solo.
At home, the NFL had no clue how to handle Colin Kaepernick’s protest of the national anthem, the Stanford rapist Brock Turner seemingly got a slap on the wrist for his crime because he was an excellent swimmer and his daddy came to his rescue, the never ending saga of deflategate and more.
So when sports proved scandal clad, we turned to entertainment. Well, guess what? Hollywood caught “2016-itus, ” and they caught it hard. Whitewashing in movies (the practice of casting white actors in non-white roles) was rampant in movies and the awards shows. The movies were all remakes, reboots, sequels, spinoffs, or just terrible. Hollywood has run out of ideas, and just as an example of this; they’re making a movie about emojis. I wish I were kidding. It’s called “The Emoji Movie.” Seriously go look it up.
But even when the outside world seemed like it was caving in, a lot of us still had love to look to and heal us in our darkest of times. Oh wait, I forgot, love died in 2016. Brangelina broke up, YouTube lovers Colleen and Josh Evans got divorced, Taylor Swift broke up with everybody, Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne were apparently going to get a divorce but then called it off, I don’t know, the moral of the story is: love is dead.
Seriously, were there any positives to 2016? Any at all? Hamilton? Sure, if you could even get tickets to it. “Rogue One” is coming out in December, so that’s exciting. Although technically it’s a prequel, and we all know what happens when you try to make a Star Wars prequel. I seriously cannot think of any positives to 2016.
I mean sure, I have a good job, I love writing these columns, I’m in relatively good health, and I have tremendous people that support me day in and day out. And yeah I suppose my days of being stressed out are a reminder that I’m working hard for what I want to do in life, and that I’m not dead or in jail.
Other than that, 2016 can eat rocks and die.
