Brainrot – Word of the Year
The Oxford Dictionary has declared the noun "brainrot" as the word of the year for 2024. Literally translating to "brain decay," the term has recently been used to describe low-quality content and the consequences of excessive consumption of such material. Over the past year, the term has seen a 230% increase in usage, transcending its origins in online spaces. If we apply this concept to global culture, it becomes evident that "brain decay" has affected not only consumers of intellectually impoverished social media content but also widely respected jury members and experts responsible for identifying the key cultural achievements of the past year.
There is no other way to explain some of the decisions and actions of esteemed European intellectuals, apart from attributing them to "brainrot"—or perhaps "conscience decay." This becomes particularly apparent when the publicly declared intent to evaluate cultural products outside their political context is less about conviction and more about financial incentives. The source of these incentives is easily traceable by asking the question "Cui prodest?" ("Who benefits?").
The consequences of overindulging in political correctness and "objectivity" have led, for example, to the collective "rotting" of the brains and consciences of the entire jury of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival, chaired by director Greta Gerwig ("Barbie"). After all, only by losing one’s ethical compass could they genuinely include in the festival's main competition programme a film about Russian national Bolshevik Eduard Limonov, directed by Russian "dissident" Kirill Serebrennikov. This is the same Serebrennikov who actively seeks to rehabilitate pro-Putin sanctioned oligarchs (notably Fridman and Aven) and openly advocates for recognising the families of deceased Russian occupiers as "victims" on par with Ukrainians.
The jury's decision to award the festival's top prize—the Palme d'Or—to the film Anora, a simplistic dramedy by Sean Baker about a failed romance between a Kazakh stripper and the son of a Russian oligarch from Brighton Beach, can only be explained by a complete lack of judgement. As previously reported by The Gaze, the cast of Anora includes Russian actors who openly star in xenophobic films and series produced by Russian propagandists in their homeland. This includes Yuri Borisov, who plays a secondary role in the film and collaborates with pro-Putin director Andron Konchalovsky.
The Gaze has also published an article about the "difficult" release of the deceitful, politically charged propaganda documentary Russians at War. Initially disguised as a "Canadian production," the film was later shown with mixed success at various European and overseas film festivals.
Another European pseudo-intellectual who seemed so "enchanted" by Russia that he chose to ignore the fact that the country is in its third year of waging a genocidal war against a neighbouring state was French director Gaspar Noé. In August, the Irreversible and Enter the Void filmmaker was spotted partying and DJing at two Moscow nightclubs. Noé, who travelled anonymously to the capital of the fascist state, mingled with Russians in their cultural life, attending not only clubs but also various events associated with Russian cinema.
An entirely predictable event, unfortunately, was the awarding of the Magnitsky Prize in the “Courage Under Fire” category to the most publicised Russian “opposition figure”, Yulia Navalnaya. The sole focus of the widow of the late political prisoner Alexei Navalny in Europe and the US appears to be ignoring questions about reparations for Ukraine, securing European and American grants, renting expensive premises for Russian opposition offices, and organising meaningless “anti-war marches” in European capitals that have no tangible impact.
The final victims of “brain rot” this year were the jury members of the annual Booker Prize, one of the most prestigious and significant literary events. In 2024, the Booker Prize was awarded to British author Samantha Harvey for her fantastical parable Orbital. The novel’s plot caused an outcry among Ukrainian cultural figures. The book tells the story of six astronauts—an Italian, an American, a Briton, a Japanese, and two Russians—who spend a day orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station, reflecting on “the fate of humanity.” The novel is imbued with themes of pacifism and reconciliation, using a micro-model of humanity to suggest how the people of Earth should strive for mutual understanding, leaving aside political disputes and conflicts, and learning to erase cultural and historical barriers between nations.
The astronauts share traumatic memories of their lives on Earth. For example, the Japanese astronaut recounts the aftermath of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, while one of the Russians speaks of his childhood trauma, which the author suggests is comparable to the nuclear bombings of Japan. This trauma is the collapse of the USSR, as well as stifled ambitions and national pride, with the character claiming that Soviet cosmonauts were the first to land on the Moon. The depiction of Russians in Orbital is so caricatured that it is impossible not to recall the Russian cosmonaut Lev Andropov from the film Armageddon, who drunkenly welcomes Bruce Willis’s rescue team aboard the ISS wearing a soldier’s ushanka.
The book, written in 2023, makes no mention whatsoever of Russia’s genocidal war in Ukraine. In describing the ISS’s flight over the Eurasian continent, Samantha Harvey dedicates an entire passage to a depiction of Moscow, which “shines its lights straight into space,” immediately followed by a vague Eastern Europe, where Ukraine, in the author’s view, seemingly has no place. If one continues to ignore Russia’s war crimes, which have unleashed the largest conflict in Europe since the Second World War, then it becomes possible to spout benign nonsense about how “Earth is our shared home” and how all global threats to world security and the very existence of our civilisation appear so small and insignificant from high orbit that they are not even worth mentioning.
If Samantha Harvey’s novel reflects a general sentiment in Western democracies that all global problems on Earth should be resolved in a pacifist manner, by listening to “both sides” and attempting dialogue even with terrorists, then the book’s single significant message to its readers can be summarised in the well-known phrase: “Houston, we have a problem.”