Twisters. An Oasis reunion. The Dune: Part Two popcorn bucket. Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter. AI slop. The end of Eras.
And who could forget the Great Glasgow Willy Wonka Disaster of 2024?
There was no shortage of pop culture this year. Here, we look at five of the moments that defined 2024.
Australian breakdancer breaks the internet
The Olympics are always a reliable source for viral pop culture moments, and this summer’s games were no exception.
Raygun, a.k.a. Rachael Gunn, a breaker from Down Under, infamously scored straight zeros — was it the kangaroo hop? — for her breakdancing performance in July, inspiring memes, Halloween costumes and even, briefly, a parody musical before it was shut down by Gunn’s legal team.
FRANK FRANKLIN / ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES
Australia’s Rachael Gunn, known as Raygun, scored nothing but zeros during her breakdance
routine at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
People were divided on Raygun’s Olympic showing, with some calling it entertaining and others it an embarrassment to both Australia and breakdancing itself.
Either way, it all went too far: in November, Gunn announced she would be retiring from competition because of all the vitriol she had received.
Brat Green, Brat Summer
In the summer, a queasy shade of slime green started appearing everywhere.
Pop singer Charli XCX was responsible for all things brat.
It all started with British electropop artist Charli XCX, whose 2024 album Brat boasted deceptively simple cover artwork: a square of the not-quite-lime, not-quite-chartreuse hue with the word “brat” in a stretched and pixelated sans-serif font in the centre. (I say “deceptive” because per the New York Times, the cover’s designer looked at 500 shades of green.)
Brat Green became the official colour of Brat Summer — an embrace of all things messy, bold and irreverent. Pundits tried to define it, brands co-opted it and then brat — the colour, the summer and the vibe — was over.
Elmo’s just checking in
Is there a more vivid sign of the times than thousands of people trauma-dumping on Elmo?
The fuzzy red Sesame Street denizen who refers to himself in the third person took to X at the end of January to ask a simple question: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?”
Elmo learned people aren’t feeling great.
The post had more than 20,000 responses (!), many of them genuinely upsetting. People told Elmo about their depression, their climate anxiety and their grief. How is everybody doing? Not good, Elmo. Not good.
Elmo had another viral check-in later in the year, this time with Andrew Garfield. The English actor recently lost his mom and shared about in a way that was not only striking in its emotional vulnerability, but in the way he spoke about grief.
Elmo tells Garfield he feels sad when he misses somebody.
“Oh yeah, me too. Me too,” Garfield answers. “But you know that sadness, it’s kind of a gift. It’s kind of a lovely thing to feel in a way because it means you really loved somebody when you miss them.”
Tiny hippo, big moment
Moo Deng, a baby pygmy hippo at Thailand’s Khao Kheow Open Zoo, made the internet collectively squee in September with her li’l chonky body — her name, fittingly, roughly translates to “bouncy pork” in English — and her dewy complexion and spunky personality.
SAKCHAI LALIT / ASSOCIATED PRESS FILES
People around the world fell in love with pygmy hippo Moo Deng this year.
Cue the memes, the merch and even the makeup tutorials. It wasn’t long before Moo Deng was everywhere — including SNL’s Weekend Update. Cast member Bowen Yang dressed as the famously moisturized, ungovernable hippo to draw a parallel between pop supernova Chappell Roan and her callout of invasive fan behaviour (another pop culture moment) and the increasingly poor treatment of Moo Deng. Visitors to her zoo in Thailand had started splashing her and throwing things at her to wake her up.
It seems people have learned nothing from the fate of Freya, the viral sunbathing walrus who enjoyed sinking people’s pleasurecraft with her impressive heft on Norway’s southeastern coast. Freya also had people throw things at her and crowd her — and she ended up being euthanized.
Wicked casts a spell
Cynthia Erivo delivered a gravity-defying performance as Elphaba in Jon Chu’s sumptuous adaptation of the Broadway juggernaut, which opened in theatres at the end of November.
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Cynthia Erivo (left) and Ariana Grande star in Wicked, 2024’s Barbie.
The musical serves as an origin story for the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz and focuses on the unlikely friendship between bookish outcast Elphaba, whose green skin makes her a target of mockery and exclusion, and pretty, popular Glinda (Ariana Grande).
Both Erivo and Grande had big shoes to fill — Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth originated the roles of Elphaba and Glinda, respectively, on Broadway — but they made these iconic characters their own.
Wicked was very much this year’s Barbie in terms of marketing tie-ins and brand collabs, with makeup, skincare and clothing galore. Green and pink are the new magenta, evidently.
jen.zoratti@winnipegfreepress.com
Jen ZorattiColumnist
Jen Zoratti is a columnist and feature writer working in the Arts & Life department, as well as the author of the weekly newsletter NEXT. A National Newspaper Award finalist for arts and entertainment writing, Jen is a graduate of the Creative Communications program at RRC Polytech and was a music writer before joining the Free Press in 2013. Read more about Jen.
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