Some like it hot: The pop culture that sums up summer vibes

That summer feeling!

We all know the undeniable mood of summer. It’s inspired musings from poets for millennia, whether wondering how the “smell from a grill could spark up nostalgia” (Will Smith, the Fresh Prince) or exulting those “sweet times, hot nights, everything is going to be alright, in the summertime” (Thirsty Merc’s seasonal librettist, Rai Thistlethwayte).

To help tilt us headlong into summer fun, six of our writers have each selected a piece of pop culture that best sums up the season for them. We can feel the cool rustling of linen pants against our legs already.

Leonardo DiCaprio dancing to MGMT at Coachella

Once you’re no longer a kid, summer loses some of its magical lustre. Remember having six weeks off school to just sit around at home doing nothing, sprawled on the floor watching Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style or those weird episodes of Beverly Hills 90210 where the cast take up jobs at a beach resort? To quote Jonathan Richman, that summer feeling is gonna haunt you one day in your life.

Nowadays you get, what, two weeks off work if you’re lucky? Maybe a road trip to, like, Hyams Beach if you remembered to book it back in June? It’s not the same. And so, reminders of summer’s transcendent possibilities are important. Enter the clip of middle-aged Leonardo DiCaprio, in a polo shirt and loose pyjama shorts, losing his mind to MGMT’s Kids at Coachella in 2014.

Knowing that MGMT’s Kids is the song that Leo DiCaprio loses his mind to already gets me in a festive mood. He would’ve been about 34 when the track was first climbing up the charts in the summer of 2008, and there he is acting like it’s the song he lost his virginity to. And then his dance, a casual shuffle exploding into a haymaker frenzy at the chorus: I put the song on while cooking a braised fennel, kale and chickpea soup last night and I can confirm there’s no other way to dance to that song, Leo is 100 per cent correct.

When summer’s charms seem distant amid the dreary routine of yoghurt-commute-floss, these are the sort of life-affirming prompts we need, like a blast of coconut lotion to your olfactory cortex. It always works for me. Dance, my Hollywood Peter Pan. Dance to MGMT’s Kids. Robert Moran

Balthazar, the demon from Buffy

When I was asked to contribute a piece of pop culture that screams Summer Mood to me, one image came immediately to mind. According to the “Buffyverse Wikipedia”, this image is of Balthazar, “an obese and ugly demon that must live in a large pool of water and constantly be kept wet.” If I’m going to be honest with you, and I would NEVER lie to you – this is my exact summer vibe. I am Balthazar.

The ladle, please.

Not in the evil murderous demon way, but in the way that in summer, I too am a very angry and sweaty-looking fat creature that must be kept in a large pool of water, with someone ladling water onto my body at all times. I’m sure most other people will be choosing fun songs that put you in the summer mood, or pool scenes from a movie, or a perfume that smells like the ocean – but that isn’t the reality of summer for those of us that sweat, and chafe, or run hot. There are some of us that must be kept indoors at all times like the children in The Others. We exist. We are valid. When I think of what summer will be like for me, I always think of Balthazar. Now, go and get the ladle. Rebecca Shaw

Dancing Queen scene in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again

The glittering opening notes of ABBA’s 1976 hit Dancing Queen feel like rays of sunshine in any context, whether descending from the heavens on a dancefloor or lighting up a room at karaoke.

But they’ve never felt more blissful, more transcendent – more like the essence of summer itself – than when accompanied by the sight of Colin Firth embracing Stellan Skarsgard Titanic-style on the bow of a party boat coming to save their shared love child’s wedding in Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

This whole scene, which features a fully choreographed dance number with at least 200 partygoers, is a shot of white-hot serotonin pierced directly into my brain. It is a long, lazy sip of an ice-cold pina colada on a 33-degree day. I don’t think this has been investigated, but I genuinely believe in its potential to cure at least one or two non-life threatening diseases.

To be honest, I think that about the entirety of the Mamma Mia franchise. These two films are guaranteed to make your day brighter on any viewing. And that’s coming from someone who doesn’t even like musicals.

But there’s something about this particular scene that encapsulates the energy I want to take into this (and every) summer. This holiday season I yearn to be Colin Firth on a Greek island: bright, triumphant, loved and – as anyone with eyes on his disco moves can see – unashamedly goofy. Meg Watson

California Games for Commodore 64

When I think of summer, I think of seagulls flapping over the bay, rolling blue waves, bikini bottoms, and wipe-outs – all in gloriously pixelated 8-bit colour. It’s 1989, and I’m in California, baby. Well, I’m actually wedged next to my brother at a computer desk in a dark corner of my family TV room, but in my mind, I’m competing in that famous (completely non-existent) sporting event, the California Games.

A summer of half-pipes, surfing and hacky sack.

Outside, the sun is shining in high definition, but here in front of the Commodore 64, we have all we need, except perhaps vitamin D and cardio fitness. We have corporate sponsors, we have a banging Casiotone soundtrack, and we have the impossible dream of achieving an “axle foley” in “footbag”.

My brother and I would pass the holidays like this, doing gnarly flips on the half-pipe in front of the Hollywood sign, as we alternated turns on the increasingly sweaty computer controls. On the screen, it was a cartoon dream of what summer should be, but that’s not the memory I hold on to. No, I remember the other summer dream: those endless, shapeless weeks of the school holidays, where the whole world was just me and my big brother. Tabitha Carvan

My summer girl scene from Black Books

“I’ve got to get a girlfriend, just for the summer, until this wears off. She’ll be a summery girl. She’ll have hair. She’ll have summery friends who know how to be outside. She’ll play tennis and wear dresses and have bare feet, and in the autumn, I’ll ditch her, because she’s my summer girl!”

In the perpetually gloomy, binge-drinking, misanthropic world of British cult comedy series Black Books, the concept of summer feels both foreign and unrealistic. Which is why the one episode they devote to the hot season is quintessential to me.

Bernard’s desire for a “summer girl” captures the mad aspiration of summer. There’s this strangely optimistic attitude that everyone gets caught up in when summer rolls around, where people believe that just because the sun has gotten huge and angry and the sky overwhelmingly blue, that they can change their lives for the better, shift who they are into something else, make a new year’s resolution to be anyone but yourself. This year, I’ll be someone who knows how to be outside, who will be happy and healthy and fit.

Bernard’s summer girl is emblematic of this wild summer aspiration – this avatar of everything bright and fresh. She’ll have hair. But just like our resolutions, we’ll ditch her in the autumn, and go back to being our regular rat selves. Patrick Lenton

Beach Santa; part dad-bod, part snowsuit, all attitude

At this time of year, you can expect a couple of things: intoxicated aunties, fresh mangos, and, of course, Santa. But here in Australia, we decided to take a perfectly okay thing from Europe, then popped it in budgie smugglers, and left it out in the sun for too long. Turning him into a cultural icon in the process.

Put a Beach Santa on a surfboard, and we all go crazy; spot him running across the beach, and we can’t help but smile. He is Christmas cheer personified. It would possibly be easier if we collectively, as a nation, admitted that embracing a holiday created specifically for the opposite weather system to ours might be a bit, you know, difficult? “No f*cken way”, says we, “grab Santa’s woollen suit and beer cozy, he’s going to Bondi”. Just like a polar bear swimming between ice caps, Beach Santa is a sobering reminder of global warming, and we just can’t get enough of him!

Santa cools off at Bondi.Credit:Peter Morris

“Beach Santa” has become an annual symbol of Australia’s ability to give something a red-hot go even though it’s nonsensical, a cultural specialty we’ve come to expect and love about ourselves. Put everyone in red and white fluffy outfits accompanied by a sprinkle of forty-five-degree sunlight, somehow it just works. Eliza Reilly

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