Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman team up for a blockbuster movie opening, Gen Z wonders how much is too much blush, and candy bowl salad is trending. But first:
Slang of the Week: “Brainrot”
A term used to casually describe a state of hyper fixation that is fueled by online distraction. Falling into a Dr. Doom research rabbit hole after Robert Downey Jr. announced his return to the MCU? Brainrot. Can’t focus on your geometry without an ever-shifting soundtrack of ASMR in the background? Brainrot. Neglecting your chores because your notifications are blowing up on Snap? Brainrot. It’s a word that recognizes the way smartphones and social media have impacted a generation—and how that generation feels about it. For more on this, check out this article in our free “Everything Smartphone” Toolkit.
Three Big Conversations
1. Sweet and Sour
What it is: For months, people have been posting about throwing a bunch of different types of candy into a bowl and calling it a candy salad. Now the trend has taken a darker turn with the addition of “trauma dumping” to the recipe.
What it looks like: “Trauma dumping” is when someone verbally unloads their heaviest experiences on somebody else without warning. For a candy salad trauma dump, several people will announce something hard they survived. Abuse from a family member, witnessing a violent crime, and having cancer as a child are all examples of what a participant might name before breezily stating the type of candy they’ve brought for the “salad” and pouring it into a shared candy bowl. A cynic might say this is an example of teens using tragedy for online clout. A more generous take is that even though teens understand that heavy things happen, life doesn’t necessarily stop moving, and they’re trying to make light of that truth.
Continue the conversation: What type of candy would you add to a “candy bowl salad”?
2. Blushing Hard
What it is: Heavy layers of blush application, a la Sabrina Carpenter’s signature look, is the makeup statement of the summer. Teens are already asking themselves if they’re so caught up in the trend that they are getting “blush blindness.”
Why it’s trending: A person leaning too heavily into what was trendy used to be called a “fashion victim.” Gen Z and Gen Alpha are less heavy-handed, calling this tendency “beauty blindness.” Teens today look back at the thick, bushy brows of the early 2010s, tall teased-out hairstyles of the 80s, and wonder how people couldn’t recognize how “overdone” it all looked. They also have the self-awareness to recognize that photos of themselves with two shades of liquid blush, a color balm, bronzer and a highlighter might be seen the same way in ten years or less.
Continue the conversation: What’s your “desert island” beauty or self-care product?
3. Deadpool & Wolverine
What it is: The new superhero crossover movie made more money on its opening weekend than any R-rated movie ever, and had the eighth biggest opening weekend of all time.
What parents should know: At first glance, Deadpool seems like the perfect superhero for a nihilistic age. Deadpool & Wolverine is a near-continuous stream of gay jokes, breaking the fourth wall, profanity, and gratuitous, stylized violence (usually synced to songs like “Bye Bye Bye” and “Like a Virgin” for maximum irony). Deadpool’s commentary often sounds like Eminem put on a costume and tried to join the Avengers. Pairing this irreverent antihero with a brooding, morose Wolverine makes for an interesting contrast; and when we finally get to scenes about Wolverine’s regrets, the sincerity feels earned. But most interesting of all is how, even in the midst of so much postmodern vulgarity, one of the central themes of Christianity rises to the forefront.
Let’s go deeper on this one…
The Marvel Jesus?
When Deadpool starts calling himself “Marvel Jesus” about one-third of the way through this movie, several things come together. By explicitly naming his franchise, Deadpool is breaking the fourth wall, like he often does. And for Christians, there will also be an element of sacrilege at play when we see someone so profane put himself in the same category as Jesus.
Yet at the same time, and in the most unexpected way, Deadpool ends up embodying the kind of self-sacrifice that sits at the center of the Christian faith.
Deadpool wants to stop the universe from collapsing in on his friends, and has to work through accusations that “he’ll never matter,” and that he “just isn’t the world-saving type” in order to do so. In the end (spoiler alert) he and Wolverine lay down their lives, letting matter and antimatter combine in their bodies to stop the malevolent Cassandra from destroying every branch of the multiverse (including their own). They know it will likely kill them—but they do it anyway.
In John 15:13, Jesus says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Even in the midst of a story as belligerently irreverent as Deadpool & Wolverine, the picture of self-sacrifice rises to the surface.
In a little book called Epic, John Eldredge wrote, “What if all the great stories that have ever moved you, brought you joy or tears–what if they are telling you something about the true Story into which you were born, the Epic into which you have been cast?” In the same way, maybe the plotline of self-sacrifice keeps showing up in movie after movie because at the deepest part of the human heart, we know that that is what keeps our world going.
For a full “translation” of everything in this issue, check out our Monday Roundtable podcast on Spotify or Apple. In the meantime, here are three questions to spark conversation with your teens:
- Why do you think Deadpool is so popular with teens?
- What’s one movie that changed the way you think about the world?
- Do you think people have to know the gospel before they recognize elements of it in culture?
Parenting together,
The Axis Team
PS: This week we interviewed Dr. Bill Brown on how pop culture shapes teens’ worldviews. Check it out here!