It’s back to school! No more beaches and sunburn, drinks on the terrace and naps in the shade… Back in the office, conversations enliven coffee breaks between colleagues, and you feel like you’re out of line? Don’t panic, we’ve prepared a quick catch-up for you on the major cultural outings that shook the web during the summer.
Beyoncé has released a new album… And it would herald the Apocalypse
If you don’t know who Beyoncé is, sorry but we can’t help you. In July, the superstar singer released her 7th album, titled Renaissance : an album awaited by his fans for months, including the first songs Break My Soul Where Alien Superstar exploded streaming audience records and YouTube views. With great inspiration from the 1980s and 1990s, drawing on funk, pop, electro, hip-hop, the return of Queen B delighted her fans… And revived some conspiracy theories around the singer. For several years now, Beyoncé and her husband Jay-Z have been the subject of conspiracy theories, lending them a membership in the Illuminati, this famous secret group of elites who control the world.
This time, the singer would be a harbinger of the Apocalypse, just that. On her latest album, she is seen appearing riding an almost translucent horse, and it’s quite common for Beyoncé to appear on magazine covers alongside or riding a horse. For the past two years, she has notably appeared on the cover of British Vogue or Harper’s Bazaar on frames sometimes red, black or white. With this pouch of Renaissanceit would complete the legend of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (each horse representing the spirit of conquest, war, famine and death) by announcing the end of the world: in any case, this is the rumor that circulates on a few forums and videos… The only risk that we perceive for the moment with this album is not being able to stop dancing.
We crowned the first French drag queen
The last few months have also been marked by the release of Drag Race France, the French franchise of the famous American drag competition. Ten candidates gathered to decide between themselves the title of French queen of drag, all between humorous and artistic challenges, Drag Race France delighted with its adaptation, well beyond the LGBTQ+ community. The show served as the soap opera of the summer, accumulating cult phrases and unveiling incredible sequences, such as the imitation game of Snatch Game : a “cosmic” Fanny Ardent, an Alexandra Rosenfeld eager for “fruit juice”, a talkative Félindra or even a very fit Chantal Ladesou… Each drag-queen had to embody a French celebrity, and make it funny. Successful bet.
And the success of Drag Race France was felt at the level of the hearings: the broadcast of the first episode on France 2, at 11:30 p.m., brought together 914,000 viewers, or 11.6% of audience share. In addition to its broadcast on France TV Slash on Thursday, each episode was broadcast on France 2 on Saturday midnight. Recently, France Télévisions announced that Drag Race France had gathered nearly 7 million viewers on France 2, and that the program had been the most engaging of the summer on Twitter with 230,000 interactions: a more than powerful arrival, especially since the broadcast of the final episode, the August 11, took on the air of the World Cup. Broadcast at the Beaubourg Center and in various bars in the Marais in Paris, we witnessed queues of several tens of meters for the chance to watch the final live and meet the participants of the show, and the big winner , Paloma.
The success of Drag Race France is not about to tarnish, since the participants begin a French tour which will begin on September 1st at the Casino de Paris, sold out. A real enthusiasm which confirms that a season 2 is preparing.
Léna Situations is back for her vlogs… and has opened her hotel
Who says August, says return of the August Vlogs of the famous youtuber and influencer Léna Mahfouf dit Léna Situations. In this concept launched six years ago, the designer publishes a vlog every evening on her YouTube channel, that is to say an on-board camera video of her day, which she shoots and edits in 24 hours. A dive behind the scenes of her life, where she spends time with her friends, goes on a trip, has parties or crazy activities. This 2022 edition is special for two reasons: the first is that the influencer has also launched her own brand, Hôtel Mahfouf, which also designates an ephemeral vegan shop / restaurant, in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. A success that even worried the police, the quiet little street having been invaded by many fans of the youtuber.
This new season of August Vlogs is also special because of the influencer’s silence over the past year: the young woman, a regular victim of cyberbullying and smear campaigns on social networks, expressed the need to slow down, and to take care of their mental health. In a video with more than 2 million views, she explains that she no longer wants to suffer either violence or permanent misogyny on her social networks. It is therefore a much more peaceful Lena that we find in this month of August, who delivers every evening, until September 1, an extract from her daily life. And it feels good.
“Corn Song” is the song of the summer… on Tik Tok
It is very difficult to explain the popularity of the video that will follow without a little context on Tik Tok: the latter is a platform for creating and sharing short videos, maximum a few minutes, where users dance, playback or speak in front of the camera. Unlike other social networks, videos posted on Tik Tok can reach millions of views and then be forgotten forever. It very often happens that the platform is crossed by more or less ephemeral musical trends: this is how the story of the Corn Song. During a video in which children are questioned, one of them explains how much he loves… corn, with overflowing enthusiasm.
Quickly, the video is taken and remixed with a musical background, and has gone viral on the platform: users redouble their inventiveness to explain what they love most in life, from their favorite food to sleeping in. A trend that will surely have disappeared in a few weeks, but that goes into the head.
The first women’s baseball league hits the screens
Unveiled in August on Amazon Prime Video, the series A League of Their Own is a remake of the movie An extraordinary team 1992, where Tom Hanks and Madonna met in the true story of the first women’s baseball league in the middle of World War II in the United States. But in the 2022 version, the men don’t really have the first place: the series follows the practices, games and personal lives of the players of the Rockford Peaches and Max, baseball prodigy.
Beyond dealing with the essential questions of sexism, racism and lesbophobia, A League of Their Own is above all a deeply joyful series, which delights even the most resistant to physical education classes, and marks a turning point in lesbian representation on the small screen.
The film “Nope” conquered the halls (and chilled the blood)
Jordan Peele’s third feature film, after get-out and Us, plunges us into the western United States, a ranch atmosphere sprinkled with strangeness and horror. Otis Junior, son of a horse breeder, witnesses his father’s death in strange circumstances… An isolated incident? Or the beginning of more casualties?
A film that pours more into science fiction than into horror, carried by actor Daniel Kaluuya and actress and singer Keke Palmer: a film that makes you tremble, to gain a little freshness after two months of heat.
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Beyoncé, “Corn Song” and lesbians at bat… It was summer 2022