Culture Slut: The Women Who Ruled 2025
Words: Misha MN
The days are dark, the wind is cold, and once again we find ourselves barrelling into Christmas and the close of yet another year on this accursed space rock. So much has happened, yet it still feels like only yesterday that we were taking down New Year’s Eve banners and eagerly predicting Demi Moore’s Oscar win (don’t talk to me, it still hurts).
I’d like to say that things have gotten better this year, but with the wisdom of continuous aging and the encroaching nihilism of my mid-30s, I’m not very sure that that would be a factual statement. When the 2020s started, we all laughed and said ‘How funny, it’s time for space-age flappers, never-before seen personal freedom, acceptance and peace! Nothing can stop us now! But, alas, here at the end of 2025, half way through the decade, all we have had is disease, war, and legal battles just to stay alive.
Having said that, there were some personal highlights (or points of contention, maybe) in our vast cultural media experience, and I'd like to share them with you now. It’s time to strap in, have a glass of festive fizz, drag your frozen bones a little closer to those burning Harry Potter books, and be prepared to say “God, was that only this year, hasn’t it been such a long time…
The Oscars
OK, I have to talk about it. Demi Moore should have won Best Actress for The Substance. Her singular performance truly defined film for me in 2024, both in her subtleties and her grand grotesqueries, from her heart wrenchingly all-too-familiar self criticisms in the mirror before going on a date to her monstrous final form squeezed into a party dress with earrings dangling off fleshy stubs, ready to twirl and vomit and bleed on stage in front of a crowd. It was like seeing myself on the silver screen. That’s sort of a joke, but also not really, and I think anyone else who has struggled with the idea of physical embodiment would agree.
I’ll never forget this 2025 Oscars night, with Demi in her beautiful gown sitting in the very front row, waiting for the Best Actress announcement, Demi proving that women who the industry had written off could make a come back, that women who were deemed lesser, or unserious, or “popcorn actresses” could truly prove themselves as stars when given material that is actually worthy of them, Demi finally beaten at the last minute by Anora, by the beautiful and charming ingenue Mikey Madison. I truly felt my heart shatter.
I had been on a streak of winning predictions the last several years, and this was the first time I missed since I started taking Oscars wins seriously. I imagined Demi going back to her hotel, her home, taking off that gorgeous silver Armani Prive dress and just looking at herself in the mirror, taking it all in. I don’t know if I could brave an afterparty after that, no matter how it would look to the press, a press that had created you, destroyed you, and then brought you back once again. It’s too much.
What I did enjoy in the aftermath though, was imagining what trends this film could inspire in the future, what actresses that people thought were out for the count could make a glorious return. After 2022’s Tar, I firmly believe that every actress over 40 deserves her own version of that film, a chance to play a complex, intimidating, ambitious, unlikable protagonist that follows her own devolution in the face of an encroaching sense of loss and powerlessness. After The Substance, I think every actress who was written off in the 90s or 00s as just a bit of fluff should be given a role like Sue Sparkle, a meditation on stardom and a woman’s experience of growing older in Hollywood. Who else deserves a Substance-like second chance? Who could take the world (and film twitter) by storm and possibly snatch an oscar out of an ingenue’s hands? Michelle Pfeiffer. Please. I’ll do anything for a Pfeiffer-renaissance. Lena Olin. I love Lena Olin. Give her a grand dame horror performance, I beg you. Who else? BRING GRACE JONES BACK TO CINEMA. VAMP PART 2. I’M NOT ASKING. I’m open to ideas…
Wicked
How many premieres are too many? 75? I feel like there's been about 75 already. The money made by Wicked and its press coverage will surely break records this year, and become a studied subject in the future. I haven’t even seen the second part yet, but I am in no way surprised by the lacklustre response. Splitting the story into two films was always a controversial choice, mainly because the second act of Wicked is famously not as punchy as the first, but the almighty dollar remains the real goal here, rather than artistic merit. Also the story is bonkers. Sometime last year, I was in the Polyester studio telling Ione about the crazy plot of Wicked, before the film came out, and she read out the Wikipedia synopsis to the stunned room, which took about 20 minutes. Does anyone really need a talking goat in films anymore? If it’s not Black Phillip, I don’t want it.
Speaking of too many press tours, what about All’s Fair and the absolute fashion parade that turned into? Law Roach and the rest of those stylists must be truly paying off the college debts of hundreds of professional fashion archivists and assistants with the amount of dipping into the vaults of historical fashion houses they are doing. Have films and shows always had so many premieres and press tours? Or is this a hangover from the incredibly viral Barbie press tour and Margot Robbie’s catalogue of vintage Barbie looks? I love talking about press tours, it makes me feel like a Hollywood Golden Age press agent, like Henry Wilson (maybe not, he was pretty nasty to Rock Hudson actually). Did you know that the last time I felt truly alive was during the Don’t Worry Darling press tour with Florence Pugh, Chris Pine and Harry Styles? God, I’d love to revisit that. To Harry’s credit, that really was a movie that felt like a movie.
Ryan Murphy and Trans Rights
What’s going on there? Well, we know what's going on, Ryan Murphy cares more about making money than using his incredibly influential platform as THE CREATOR OF ALL STREAMING MEDIA to speak out on the injustices of our various right-wing governments. Indya Moore, actor, activist, model, and all round STAR said it best when she called out Ryan on an Instagram live, asking how he could have gone from making something as groundbreaking as Pose, which centred on the lives of black trans women in New York in the 80s and 90s, to now, where he refuses to even mention the backlash against trans people in the 2020s. “The fact that Ryan has been this silent… like, we really pissed you off that much? Janet [Mock] pissed you off that much?”
Janet Mock, a writer, director and producer of Pose, famously made waves earlier when she dared to question why she wasn’t being paid as much as other people in her position. Incidentally, I think a key factor as to why Pose (and some other Murphy shows around that time) was so much better than previous offerings was that Ryan took a backseat in his writing and directing, allowing other creatives to come on and express themselves whilst he just took a producing credit. I’m currently rewatching AHS: Coven, and it really reminds you how Ryan can start strong but totally lose his way part way through a story.
On the subject of Murphy shows, don’t even get me started on the Ed Gein one. I didn’t even finish it. I like when Murphy goes pulpy and trashy, I think it’s funny that every horrendous real-life murderer he focuses on has to be made improbably hot in his cinematic universe (I’m waiting for John Wayne Gacy and some sexy clowns, honestly), but his portrayal of Gein as a fetishistic cross dresser in this era of extreme scrutiny on trans women (and the trans community as a whole) seems at best woefully mistimed, and at worst actively antagonistic.
As I just said, I like pulp, I like trash, and as such I once read a truly great trash book about Gein called Deviant: Ed Gein, The Original Psycho, which was a deep dive into Gein’s crimes and lifestyle. What even that grubby little book managed to pinpoint was that Gein wasn’t actually a proto-Buffalo Bill murdersexual, but a sad and lonely necrophile with not enough community supervision. Maybe instead of Charlie Hunnam wanking in his mother’s brassier, he could have been looking tragically Byron-esque, forlornly daydreaming about all the sleeping beauties he would never know, unless… See? Gross, horrifying, pulpy, and not at all transphobic. It’s not that hard.
I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface on everything that happened this year, and I’m sure as hell not yet ready to start again. I have no Oscar predictions as of yet, definitely not Cynthia Erivo as a serious contender from what I’ve been hearing, maybe Jessie Buckley in Hamnet or Emma Stone in Bugonia (can’t wait to see it), but I’m sure something will materialise for me in January. Like everyone else, I think I’m just limping along the finish line, living week to week until we can all just take a deep breath and get some rest. Ring in the New Year and maybe just stop with the unrelenting horror for a bit. Please. I’m begging.
