2014 was a year of perfectly adequate things. Isn't that outrageous?!
As you can’t fail to have noticed, 2014 was a year of intense and largely negative emotions: from horror at the relentless awfulness of the news headlines to anger at the state of society. And then – as Slate reminded us in a special edition this week – there was outrage: wave after wave of outrage, sometimes justified, often not.
But there were other stories, too – and I’m not talking about the occasional overwhelmingly joyful tales that reaffirmed one’s faith in humanity. A lot of things happened in 2014 that belonged to a third category: they were fairly engaging, slightly thought-provoking, a little annoying or pretty good ... in a generally adequate sort of way.
The click-hungry internet rarely celebrates these middling emotions anymore, but they’re as crucial a part of our emotional repertoire as any other, and we shouldn’t forget them. Let’s take a moment, then, to remember some of the most mildly interesting developments of 2014.
True Detective
True Detective was pretty good. It was no Breaking Bad orTop of the Lake: it was gorgeously produced, and well-written, but unlike those shows – which revealed depths you’d never have guessed at the outset – Nic Pizzolatto’s series kept hinting that it might become more than another serial-killer whodunit, yet never did. There was a half-hearted debate about its portrayal of women – was it problematic, or intentional? – and Pizzolatto responded rather obnoxiously. Oh, and there was some kind ofconfusing plagiarism accusation that never really went anywhere. Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad I watched it. But put it like this: if the pasta sauce I was making needed my attention mid-episode, it wasn’t a press-pause situation. It was more of a keep-watching-from-over-the-kitchen-island kind of scenario.
The abdication of King Juan Carlos I of Spain
In a year marked by horrifying terror attacks, missing airliners, police brutality, and the threat of a new world war between either Russia or North Korea and the west, the abdication in June of Spain’s King Juan Carlos Alfonso Victor Maria de Borbon y Borbon-Dos Sicilias in favor of his son Felipe barely raised international eyebrows, to be honest. The then-president of the European Commission paid tribute to him as a “believer in Europeanism”, and Barack Obama thanked him for his “steadfast promotion of democracy”, so that was nice. And this was all a big deal within Spain, obviously. But what with everything kicking off in Ukraine, and Obama’s deployment of military advisers to Iraq, it was a busy time; the world’s attention proved limited. I doubt I’m alone in saying I hadn’t thought of Juan Carlos at all between the week I heard he was calling it quits and today.
Munchkin, the Shih Tzu dressed as a teddy bear
Buzzfeed tried hard to make Munchkin happen. And it’s difficult to deny that the micro-sized dog with her face stuck through the head of a teddy bear broke new ground, in terms of the effort invested in creating an online cuteness sensation. (The bear’s face had been removed beforehand, in a manner reminiscent of the 1997 action thriller Face/Off, starring John Travolta and Nic Cage.) But I can’t say I experienced “cute overload” as a result of watching her antics. Shih Tzus strike me as being a bit try-hard in the cuteness stakes to begin with, and the addition of the “faceless bear” element was as creepy as it was adorable. In the final analysis, these things canceled each other out, so that the main feeling evoked was one of middling amusement tinged with the tiniest suggestion of nausea.
The ice bucket challenge
Honduras versus France in the 2014 Fifa World Cup
Not a really, really boring match – like, say, the Netherlands versus Argentina in the semi-finals, which seems to have won the internet’s vote as the dullest game of the competition. After all, extreme boredom is a form of intense emotion, so that wouldn’t belong here. Instead, France’s 3-0 victory over Honduras was a good example of a game that filled me with a profound feeling of having no particular feelings about it either way, except perhaps making me question the wisdom of having abandoned a lifelong lack of interest in soccer in order to follow the World Cup. People who care about the sport more than me say this match was important because it was the first time goal-line technology was relied upon in a World Cup confrontation. Fair enough.
Conscious uncoupling
The world seemed determined to deride Gwyneth Paltrow’s description of the manner of her separation from Chris Martin. (Martin is, incidentally, perhaps the most talented creator of somewhat-but-not-especially moving ballads in the history of popular music. If this article had a soundtrack, it would be by Coldplay.) But there was a discernible lack of fit between the levels of scorn and the offence. Paltrow says a lot of things that are worthy of this degree of ridicule, so people were primed and ready to mock: she seems to believe, for example, that negative thoughts can change the structure of water. Conscious uncoupling, on the other hand, is just a slightly pretentious phrase for a pretty good idea. It’s not really so ridiculous to want to use the occasion of a separation as an opportunity for self-understanding and growth, is it? It’s sensible.
The Apple watch
There was much excited hype in advance of the official launch of the Apple watch in early September, including a set of images implying it might be an incredibly beautiful smooth glass bracelet with integrated curved screen. (That was just a mock-up by a product designer who didn’t work for Apple, it turned out.) In reality it’s just a screen with a wristband attached. It doesn’t look bad; it does a bunch of stuff; I can certainly see why you’d want one, if you like that sort of thing. Heck, I might even buy one, once it’s released next year. If I do, I have little doubt that it will be perfectly adequate for my needs – and, like so many things in the world, generally just totally OK.
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