When the name of a well-known person begins to trend, I immediately assume, before any expectation of great success or notable kindness, that they are dead or have been cancelled. After the great mortal-coil-shuffling of 2016, which saw popular culture’s most beloved icons checking out en masse, adopting the former as the brace position is reasonable, but these days, who knows? Cancel culture is always hungry, never sated.

Last week, the Mona Lisa was cancelled. The New York Times art critic Jason Farago wrote a provocative and convincing column headlined “It’s Time To Take Down the Mona Lisa”. Farago called her “the Kim Kardashian of 16th-century Italian portraiture” and said that she had become “a black hole of anti-art who has turned [the Louvre] inside out”. She was an attention-seeker who has caused terrible overcrowding at the museum and to see the painting up close is not even all that satisfying.

I felt a crackle of pleasure upon reading it. I don’t have anything against the Mona Lisa and have trekked around the Louvre to see her, though, to prove Farago’s point, I can barely remember catching a glimpse. But it is wonderful to watch a sacred cow being put out to pasture. In an interview last week, the writer André Aciman was asked to rearrange the literary canon, and he chose to demote Virginia Woolf. “Mrs Dalloway is an overrated novel that I don’t find particularly gripping or interesting. I’m not even sure it’s well written,” he said. Mrs Dalloway is my favourite novel of all time, but even so, I applaud the sentiment. Rip it up and start again.

I grew up in an era where the musicians I worshipped took pride in declaring that they hated the Beatles. To say you hated the Beatles was a sign that you were DIY and punk and wanted to smash the system. I was desperate to hate the Beatles, but unfortunately I’ve only ever loved them, even when the piano heralds the arrival of Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, a song so bad that John Lennon thought it rubbish.

There is a fantastic segment on Greg James’s Radio 1 breakfast show called Unpopular Opinion, in which listeners and guests take absolute joy in simply putting something out there. Star Wars is overrated; Will Ferrell is not funny; it is not necessary to wash one’s legs in the shower. These small declarations of cultural anarchy are a welcome and rare thrill. PS. The ending of Dublin Murders was really annoying. God, that feels good.

Eleanor Tomlinson: sounds like she got a Brum deal

Eleanor Tomlinson, of Demelza from Poldark fame, could have been a contender in another BBC period drama, as she told Jonathan Ross on his chatshow last week. Having explained that she kept her corset from Poldark as a souvenir, for its jovial and light-hearted but actually-quite-bleak-under-the-surface memories (“Now I can eat a burger and chips and be able to enjoy as opposed to not be able to finish it,” she said), she also talked about trying out for, and being rejected from, Peaky Blinders.

“I auditioned for Peaky Blinders when it was first starting, but they said, ‘You need to be able to do a Birmingham accent’.”

That will be news to anyone who has seen the show, given that its dedication to regional authenticity has never quite reached the vocal cords of its actors. The cast’s various attempts at a West Midlands accent appear to have been on a magical mystery tour of Wales and Liverpool via a stint across the Irish Sea.

“I tried and they said, ‘You just can’t do it, can you, love?’” Tomlinson recalled. With all due respect, how bad must it have been to be too bad for Peaky Blinders?

James Dean: anyone for lights, camera, resurrection?

James Dean has joined the likes of Tupac, Roy Orbison and Whitney Houston in the booming business of the digital afterlife. The actor, who died in 1955, has been announced as one of the leads in new Vietnam movie Finding Jack, which is, in many ways, so inspirational that it should have a curly-font Instagram meme made about it. “Don’t let half a century of death stand in the way of living xoxo”, or something along those lines.

The film’s producer, Anton Ernst, has explained this casting decision with unintentionally hilarious justifications that sound as if they’ve been ripped straight from Brass Eye. “We searched high and low for the perfect character to portray the role of Rogan. After months of research, we decided on James Dean,” he said, clearly not worried about endearing himself to any actor he’s ever likely to work with in the future. Chris Evans, aka Captain America, who was himself digitally rendered into a normal non-buff human being for parts of the Marvel movies, is one of a number of actors objecting to casting choices being carried out via historical pick’n’mix. “The complete lack of understanding here is shameful,” he wrote.

Like self-service checkouts, using old footage and CGI to recreate a long-dead star in a new movie may get the job done, or a job done, unless you’re buying anything loose or requiring ID, that is, but it’s never going to be the same as having a chat with Theresa on the tills. What is good for inexplicably maintaining the careers of people who died during the last century is not so great for all those present-day employees with human-being-adjacent jobs like catering, hair and makeup, and the people who drive those little golf carts around, yet somehow resist the urge to make racing car noises while doing it.

• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist