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Decoding the Beyonce Tumblr
Earlier this week, The Beyonce Tumblr went live. And there was much rejoicing: across the web, gossip sites and news organizations alike trumpeted her decision to cultivate a web presence. Various articles figure the “release” of the site in vaguely mystical terms: Beyonce celebrated her fourth anniversary with Jay-Z on April 4th (4/4); she was “born” onto the web on 4/5. This is some crazy stuff, kids. As Jezebel headlined it, “Beyonce Joins Internet; Internet Flips Out.”
But the internet wasn’t just flipping out over some new website. This was Beyonce’s website. Beyonce, a fierce protector of privacy, the woman who, along with Jay-Z, rented out an entire floor of a hospital to avoid coverage of her daughter’s birth. The two are reigning royalty of the music world, in part because of their tremendous talent, but also because of their substantial media savvy. Instead of fleeing paparazzi hungry for a shot of daughter Blue Ivy, they posted a set of frankly adorable pictures to helloblueivycarter.tumblr.com, paired with a note, written in what we are led to believe as Beyonce’s handwriting:
That’s even more savvy than Gwenyth Paltrow, who decided to push the market down for shots of her son, Moses, but simply stepping outside and letting every paparazzi take a picture of her. (It’s not a coincidence that Paltrow and husband Chris Martin are friends with Beyonce and Jay-Z, as evidenced by the tumblr).
The question remains: What is Beyonce doing? No web presence for so long — why now? And what exactly is going on in this tumblr that makes it so compelling?
One at a time:
What is she doing?
She’s refining and reinvigorating her image. Not that she exactly “needs” it — because she’s a private person, and because she’s married to an equally famous person, information about her will be in demand for the foreseeable future. But as little as we know about Beyonce, we do know that she likes control – and by releasing information herself, she’s controlling the conversation about her. Every celebrity (and his/her publicist) attempt to do this; some are just better at it, or have a more interesting conversation to make. Lindsay Lohan is bad at controlling the conversation. Angelina Jolie is, in truth, only okay, and seems to care less and less about whether that conversation is negative or positive (thus the increasing skeletor conversation — if she really wanted people to focus on her films and philanthropy, she’d figure out how to put on some weight, just like she’s been able to figure out how to bulk up for action roles. I’m not kidding). Gwenyth seems less and less adept at controlling the conversation, in part because Goop allows so many refractory points. Her image may be stable as that of an ice queen, but every newsletter allows people to take her words differently than she intended. It’s really a bit of a trainwreck.
Point is: Beyonce is re-sparking conversation about her, but only if it’s on her terms.
But why on the internet? Why not release photos to a magazine, or sit for an extensive profile with Vogue? No web presence for so long — why now?
Because it’s the only way. If Beyonce wants to truly start a conversation about herself, she has to release information digitally. While a lengthy profile — and gorgeous, high-quality photos — would have been excerpted and linked all over the internet, it would still lack the potency of a single site. Sure, aggregators and gossip sites are taking single photos from the tumblr, but all traffic is directed back to the single, entirely controlled site.
Despite the fact that Beyonce’s image is that of a artist on the vanguard of innovation — especially in terms of music and fashion — she’s been an analog star in a digital world. She’s old-fashioned in the way of stars twenty years her elder. She has a Twitter account but, until Thursday, had never posted a Tweet (The Tweet, of course, announced the launch of her site).
Whether Beyonce herself is “old-fashioned” or even a naturally private person is really beyond the point. Her image has acquired a gloss of privacy, and in today’s media environment, saturated with celebrity disclosure, it renders her unique. Information about her is rare and, as a result, far more valuable. You don’t see the launch of a reality star’s tumblr burn through the internet like a forest fire.
But even the most exclusive clubs sometimes need to let someone in the door — otherwise there’s no one to buzz about how exclusive the club is. So Beyonce has to release some material, lest she disappear from discourse entirely. As foreshadowed by the tumblr for Blue Ivy, she and her team have decided that a tumblr-like site is the best way to enact this strategy. My guess is that she still steers clear of Twitter — it’s just a bit too direct of a conduit. I’d even be surprised if the tumblr is updated more than a few times a year. But time will tell. For now, it’s a brilliant strategy for reactivating yet controlling the conversation about her between albums/tours.
But let’s get to the good stuff: why makes this tumblr so compelling?
Because here’s the honest truth: I like, but don’t love Beyonce. But I could look at this tumblr all day.
I’ll divide the appeal into three categories:
1.) AUTHENTICITY
The tumblr is compelling because we know it is Beyonce. I realize this is fairly obvious, but in an age of photoshop, Twitter hacking, and other forms of image manipulation, it is absolutely essential that this tumblr is “the work” of Beyonce. This isn’t a fan site; this isn’t a gossip site. This is her site, that is her husband, that is her sister, this is their tropical vacation. (Which isn’t to suggest that older stars were somehow “more” authentic because their images circulated in a pre-digital-technology world. They had their own issues with image manipulation, and tried to add authenticity to their images through various means, the most popular of which might have been the magazine byline. ["My Story" by Marilyn Monroe, etc.] Of course, such stories were almost always penned by press agents. Manufacturing authenticity is an ironic thing.)
Beyonce further authenticates the site through her “analog” signature. Look, it’s her handwriting! (Or, perhaps, a font modeled after her handwriting!) No matter: handwriting is one of the ways that we authenticate identity, and this handwriting matches the previous note on the Blue Ivy tumblr. No doubt: it’s B. Plus she testifies that “this is my life, today, over the years, through my eyes.” That’s a promise: this is me.
2.) INTIMACY
When it comes to celebrity images, intimacy and authenticity go hand in hand. The more intimate the information appears, the more authentic it seems.
Here’s where the choice of a Tumblr as her main form of web presence (I realize there’s a larger site, beyonce.com, but the tumblr is the real meat) is so effective: it’s all images. Apart from the above welcome, there’s no explanations, no distracting words. Just a waterfall of images — a virtual scrapbook.
Of course, not all photos connote intimacy. Beyonce’s Vogue cover, for example, is the antithesis of intimacy:
I mean, she’s separated from us by actual text! Vogue has also posed her like a mannequin, and everything about her dress, her hair, even her make-up and half-smile scream at a remove! Not friends with you! She’s beautiful, she’s exquisite, but she’s miles away.
Compare this shot with those on her Tumblr:
No make-up. No make-up equals authenticity AND intimacy. If you look closely, you can see that she’s wearing a strapless top of some sort, but at first blush, she looks naked — bare — the very apotheosis of intimacy. Plus she’s smiling, and there’s an inherent warmth to the aesthetic and emotional tone of the photo. She looks relaxed, and people only relax with intimates. You’re invited to her private party — a theme that structures the majority of the photos.
This is funny! Beyonce is funny! (See also: Spiderman).
This photo is goofy, but it’s also unflattering, and therein lies its power. Intimacy means seeing someone at their best and worst, and here you go — Beyonce with a snorkeling mask on her face, not looking at the camera. Granted, she’s wearing a beach shift that probably cost $5000, and the ocean looks gorgeous, but look, googles distort even the most beautiful of faces! Unkempt, unflattering, in a shot that would have been otherwise discarded — it’s as if we have access to the Beyonce “between” the best shots, and we all know that’s where the “real” self lies.
This is one of several “Instagram” style shots on the site — you can tell it’s Instagram by a.) the Polaroid-style border and b.) the distortion of colors to make it look like a photo from a different era. The photo seems to catch Beyonce is a private moment (waiting to take a helicopter ride? More on that below), and her positioning in the corner of the photo, glancing down, strapped in, creates a feeling of vulnerability. The photo’s Instagram-ness, for lack of a better word, suggests something even more intimate: the photo was taken on a cell phone. But someone who was close to Beyonce — someone who also got to go on that helicopter ride. The insinuation, of course, is that it was taken by Jay-Z. (The aesthetics of Instagram only add another layer — a sort of analog, fuzzy, soft intimacy that even the crisp photography from above lack).
This triptych of photos, seemingly taken at the magic hour, offers a similar warmth, but at the same time, the POV of the viewer is clearly that of the camera man. Beyonce vamps for the camera, cracks up, and poses again. The person behind the camera — whose place we take, even for just an instant — is clearly the cause of her glee. In this moment, we make her perform; we zoom-in for her reaction. You probably don’t think of this consciously, but that’s the effect of the close-up, that’s why they included all three images instead of just one: she looks at the camera, but really, in this moment, she seems to be looking at you. Or, alternately, you feel you are privy to an interaction between her and Jay-Z: in this moment, you are inside their marriage. At first glance, they’re just a set of silly photos — but the effect is stunning. Granted, there’s no way to know who took the photos. For all we know they hired a profesional photographer to accompany them on this trip and create a set of images that connoted intimacy. But for a fan (or journalist) to suggest as much makes him/her look cyncial, and read constructiveness into a set of images that suggest a holistic sense of intimacy. There’s no question that the choice of photos adds up to to a construct. But you can’t see the seams, and that’s why it works so well. Whatever they did, they did it right.
3.) CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
Conspicuous consumption, according to Richard Dyer, is the process by which the wealthy display that they are wealthy. It does not have to be garish — it’s not simply something Jay Gatsby would do. Indeed, conspicuous consumption doesn’t necessarily mean diamond rings. It also manifests depictions of leisure: of people doing little more than not working. At least 2/3 of the pictures on the Tumblr were taken on some sort of tropical vacation, exact location uncertain. But this isn’t some getaway to a Mexican mega-resort. They’re on vacation in some place where no one bothers them.
That sort of privacy costs a lot of money. In this way, their conspicuous consumption is, in fact, an absence — the absence of people, the absence of paparazzi, the absence of distractions. This vacation at its most pure, and its filled with snorkles, deserted beaches, and tubing behind a speed boat.
In this video below, for example, Beyonce (addressing Jay-Z, behind the camera, intimacy yet again!) tells the unspecific audience that they woke up, “took a nice little walk,” and found a tree with blue ivy.
No big deal, right — only it’s leisure. Lots and lots of leisure. This is conspicuous consumption done right: it doesn’t make you resent them, it just makes you want to join them. We all know that both Jay-Z and Beyonce do, in fact, work hard. Touring, appearing in public, writing songs — it’s certainly exhausting work, even as they work to elide that work. But we see very little of that difficulty here. Even the images in which Beyonce is obviously preparing to work, such as this one, when she’s in full, intricate make-up for some sort of performance or photo-shoot, do not emphasize labor. The shot is gorgeous, but it’s also included to emphasize the in-formality of the other shots. Take a look at its positioning on the home page (the shot is in the lower right hand corner) –
Beyonce at “work” (black and white) makes her at “play” (the vibrant color) all the more compelling and authentic seeming. The shot on the left is Beyonce-as-Image, while the rest of the page reads as Beyonce-as-Real (which, again, is also an image, but that image is “realness.”) Being a top pop star may be hard work, but we see very little evidence of it here — just the benefits she reaps from that work. [She does seem a bit exhausted in this photo with Paltrow -- but again, black and white is for "work," color is for "real."]
The tumblr is also filled with less discrete examples of conspicuous consumption. Beyonce with a wall of champagne, for example….
…or a shot from a yacht which must, by dint of its white leather and positioning with the skyline, be expensive.
In general, however, Beyonce is more circumspect. Nothing too conspicuous — nothing that would be dissonant with she and Jay-Z’s collective image of class and sophistication. (See: every lyric on Watch the Throne). Since the 1920s and the rise of the “idol of consumption,” we’ve looked to stars and celebrities as aspirational consumptive models. They show what leisure looks like; what consuming often and well looks like; what American capitalism taken to its extension looks like. They’re what make us keep working so as to keep spending. It’s a weirdly cyclical process: we consume (their CDs, their clothing lines) so that they may consume more and, in turn, inspire us to consume more. Late-stage capitalism makes my head explode.
* * * * *
Take a moment and think about your reaction when you first saw these photos. Were you a. pissed; b.) jealous; or c.) just wanted to join the party? If your answer was a.) or b.), please, I beg you, tell me why in the comments. But if it was c.), which was definitely my reaction, then welcome to the party: we’re reacting exactly how Beyonce and her team would like us to. The Tumblr is a public relations triumph, emphasizing that Beyonce may not “run the world,” as one of her most famous songs suggests, but she certainly runs her own image. In a time when image control is increasingly elusive, it’s a feat worthy of praise. And while Beyonce has worked hard to elide the tremendous labour required to construct such an image, my hope is that I’ve helped make that labour — and the discursive and semiotic layers that fuel it — visible. Making things visible doesn’t mean killing the pleasure they evoke…it just makes them more nuanced. I can still look at those photos and want to hang out. But now I don’t feel nearly as bad that I can’t.
Julia Roberts: Same Song, Twenty-Fifth Verse
Back when I was a wee, scared first year Master’s student, I enrolled in course called “Female Hollywood Stars” without any understanding of what it would entail. I liked Hollywood, I liked stars, who knows! But this course, taught byKathleen Rowe Karlyn, was my first introduction to star studies, Richard Dyer’s Stars (the bible of star studies), and my first opportunity to perform my own star study. I totally drank the theoretical kool-aid, as evidenced by my dissertation and this blog, but the first star study was both a marvel and a mess.
I chose Julia Roberts, who has long fascinated me, in part because she starred in the movie I most wanted but was forbidden to see: Pretty Woman. I’d seen Mystic Pizza and learned that you should not buy a dress, wear it, and then return it. My mom said that was unethical. But then my Entertainment Weekly-obsessed self continued to read all about her various travails through the ’90s. I couldn’t ever see the movies (save Hook), but her fling with Kiefer Sutherland, the dark ads for Sleeping with the Enemy, the flop of Mary Reilly — I found it all fascinating. (Obviously I was much more into star studies as a teenager than I ever understood). And then she up and married Lyle Lovett! YOU GUYS, I LOVE LYLE LOVETT. My mom has been listening to him since forever, and I always had a hard time reconciling his crazy hair/face with his beautiful voice, but then Julia Roberts goes and authenticates my love. Stars: They’re Powerful!
Point being, she was the closest thing I had to a movie star from my youth. And in Fall of 2005, she was demonstrating her media savvy with her carefully (yet nonchalant) “reveal” of her twins as she and her husband took them on a walk. I wanted to figure this lady out.
Or, more precisely, I wanted to figure out what Julia Roberts had meant and what she continued to mean. I wanted to figure out exactly what people meant when they said that she was the only remaining female movie star. Never having performed a star study before, I did what most novice scholars do: I did way, way too much research. I read every academic article ever published on any film in which she had appeared (and let me tell you, feminist scholars have had a hay-day with Pretty Woman). More importantly, I read every magazine and newspaper profile from 1988 – 2004. THAT WAS CRAZY. But I did amass a tremendous amount of research, and several “themes” of her star image became abundantly clear. (I also wrote a 55 page seminar paper, which is another problem in and of itself).
Recurring themes of every profile written about Julia Roberts ever:
1.) She is from Smyrna, Georgia. READ: SHE IS SOUTHERN, and her Southernness has made her the person she is today, i.e. polite and private.
2.) Her parents ran an acting school and her brother was an actor. READ: Her talent is natural, and although she grew up around acting, she herself was never “trained.”
3.) She has a beautiful smile and a beautiful laugh, and once you are exposed to it you will be hers forever. READ: She has charisma. She is extraordinary.
4.) She is good friends with everyone on set, from the director to the crew. READ: Stars: They love their hairdressers and lighting techs, just like us!
5.) She is emotional and vulnerable, which explains her various romances, and how much she has been hurt by the press coverage of them. She doesn’t understand what it means to be a “star” and doesn’t care for the lifestyle, which is why she lives in Taos instead of Hollywood. READ: She’s not fake. What you see is what you get.
6.) Pretty Woman was something magnificent. READ: Being a sexual, self-sustaining woman (albeit a sex worker) sucks….until you snag yourself someone who will give you a credit card, take you to the opera, and “rescue you” into monogamy. (That’s where the feminist critique comes in — not so much in the magazine articles, but always in the academic ones).
In many ways, Julia Roberts’ star image is pretty standard. She’s equal parts extraordinary and ordinary, authentic and accessible yet still unfathomably charismatic. She’s a lady and she’s a natural, and her star-making turn in Pretty Woman set the tone for the rest of her star image. As became clear over the course of the next 15 years, when she looked and acted like she did in Pretty Woman (curly, reddish hair, being a general sassy-pants) people went to her movies. When she didn’t look or act that way — meaning, when she strayed from her established star image — they didn’t show up. When she essentially reprised her Pretty Woman role, only this time inflected with politics instead of romance, she won an Oscar. And since then, the pickings have been somewhat slim. Playing somewhat against type in Closer, mocking her own image in Ocean’s 13, voicing Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web. (I did love her in Duplicity, which is horribly underrated. Clive Owen, come back to me! Where have you gone?)
This month, she reappears on the cover of Vanity Fair, publicizing the Tarsem-directed version of Snow White, entitled Mirror, Mirror, which will go head-to-head with the K-Stew-starring version, Snow White and the Huntsman.
If you’ve seen the trailers, the victor of this head-to-head already seems clear.
Mirror, Mirror:
Snow White and the Huntsman:
I mean, obviously K-Stew and Thor are going tromp all over Mirror, Mirror, which has some weird tone issues that I can’t quite put my finger on. Or maybe it’s just Julia Roberts being Julia Roberts? Don’t get me started on annoying voiceover man who just screams Minivan Majority. I could be wrong here; we’ll see somewhat shortly.
But this is Roberts’ first high profile cover in quite some time. Inside and on the cover, she looks great. No doubt.
I mean SERIOUSLY.
Note, however, that her hair looks like a slightly less version of Preferred Julia. Her hair is a bit more brown, but the overall look is how American likes to see her. (Roberts understands this: when she was promoting her comeback in My Best Friend’s Wedding, she told anyone who’d listen that “my hair is red and curly just the way you like it — come see this movie!”
In short, this Julia:
Is not all that different from this Julia, circa Notting Hill.
The pose, the come-hither closed-lip smile, the demurity, even the red accent color for the magazine — it’s all the same. Less belly button, sure, but that’s only appropriate for a woman as modest as Roberts suggests herself to be. (No nudity, just lots of cleavage and midriff).
And, of course, the profile: same song, 22nd verse. I’ve written about the vapidity of the Vanity Fair profile elsewhere (here and here), but this profile had potential. Sam Kashner, he of Bad and the Beautiful and umpteen classic Hollywood profiles (and recent subject of gossip himself), guides the conversation as Mike Nichols, Roberts’ director in Closer and Charlie Wilson’s War, interviews Roberts. This could be interesting, right? Not really, because a Vanity Fair profile is tasked with one thing: being as seemingly revelatory-while-revealing-nothing as possible. Sometimes you get a gem, like when Jennifer Aniston admitted that Brad Pitt had a sensitivity chip missing, but most of the time, it’s all small talk pretending to be big talk. (Which is part of the reason I adored Edith Zimmerman’s GQ profile of Chris Pine).
But I wanted to see if the same story of the 1990s and 2000s could be spun for a 2010s audience. And, of course, it could:
The Laugh makes an appearance in the first paragraph:
“The first thing I heard was laughter from unheard jokes — it was her laugh the same one that we fell in love with when Richard Gere suddenly snapped the jewelry box shut on her in Pretty Woman.”
“If you are lucky enough to make her laugh, which Nichols does effortlessly, her voluptuous mouth breaks into a radiant grin.”
There’s the Uniqueness:
“There has been no one like her for quite a while now.”
“One never tires of her, like seeing a shooting star: where did that come from? You are grateful to simply have seen it all.”
“As far as Tarsem was concerned, the Evil Queen was the first character he was interested in casting. ‘I knew that it would dictate the tone and age of everyone else. I was only interested in Julia.’”
There’s the ‘Natural,’ Effortless Talent:
Nichols: “I don’t know whether you ever found it hard or easy, Julia, because all of the machinery is invisible. It’s a thing of yours in life too. I don’t know whether you work out. I don’t know how you got your shape back in what seemed to be 10 minutes…”
Nichols again: “I’m married to someone (Diane Sawyer) a little bit like you, in that the technique, the machinery of both the person and the work, is not only never discussed, it’s never even considered — it’s so personal that it doesn’t exist. I think tha goes one with what I saw in the first shot of Mystic Pizza — it looks like like; it is life.”
Nichols on first watching Roberts in Pretty Woman. : “I got very excited, because here was this amazing presence. You weren’t young or not young; it had nothing to do with age. The character was all about starting out. But you seemed like you’d always been there.”
There’s the Acting Family:
Kashner: “Julia, do you think you would have become an actor if you didn’t grow up in a theatrical family?”
“I don’t think I woudl have. I would’ve have seen it as a real option if my parents werent’ actors and my siblings…..It just wouldn’t have occurred to me [then lists pedigree]…Going to the theater is such a joyous experience.”
There’s the attempt to read Pretty Woman into her life/career:
Kashner: “Julia, do you see your life as fairy tale?”
[At which point Roberts says something that makes it clear that she doesn't, yet.....]
Kashner: “Your amazing career reads like a fairy tale.”
As evidenced by the exchange above, a star doesn’t decide what parts of his or her backstory will become part of the lore. Sometimes those motifs, pivotal moments, and themes are mapped onto your star image without any input from the star. We understand how this works with negative publicity (a scandal becomes part of the narrative no matter how much a star would like it not to), but it’s crucial that we also see how it happens with more positive events. Angelina Jolie, for example, doesn’t have much positive to say about being the daughter of Jon Voigt — indeed, her mother seems to have been a much, much stronger influence on her — but profiles love to excavate in her Hollywood pedigree. We attribute stars with qualities that make sense, and it makes much more sense that Jolie, for all her uniqueness, would have gotten it through a Hollywood father. What makes sense matters much less than what’s true.
But Roberts surprised me a bit at the end of this quasi-interview. I was absolutely expecting some banality about hating stardom, dropping out of the game, loving her husband, etc. etc. But she offered some actual insight — and as those of you who follow the blog know, there’s nothing I love more than a star who evidences his/her own understanding of the way that star images work. (Most recently: George Clooney).
When Kashner asks her about the “idea of movie stardom,” and whether it’s “a cosmic riddle” she’s been “given to solve,” Roberts replies with a story of being on the streets with her family in Toronto:
“It was on a crowded street, and somebody noticed me, and then another person noticed. Somebody said as we were walking past, ‘oh, That’s Julia Roberts.’ We just kind of kept going, and then Finn said, ‘Yeah, my mom’s Julia Robinson.’ That’s what gives you perspective. It could be Robinson, it could be Johnson, because it has nothing to do with me as a person.”
Indeed. That’s an understanding that only comes with twenty years of the press disarticulating a star image, with its own themes, peaks, and valleys, from your actual life. It doesn’t matter who, exactly, Roberts is. What matters is what she has come to mean.
The Parameters of Indie Stardom
When people hear that I do celebrity studies, one of their favorite things to do is ask if so-and-so is a star. Is Jeremy Lin a star? Is Brad Pitt a star? Is Tom Cruise still a star? How do you know?
If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile, you’re familiar with the definition: a star is a performer whose fame is based on textual lives (for actors and actresses, the way they appear in films; for a basketball player, the way he performs on the court) and their extra-textual lives (everything they do, say, and represent off the court). We also think of stars as people who can “open” in some way — a baseball star brings bodies to seats in the same way that a movie star (used to) bring bodies to seats. (Now, our real “stars,” at least financially, are pre-sold properties, such as The Hunger Games).
The Brange: Not Indie Stars
So Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney….Reese Witherspoon, Matt Damon, Ryan Reynolds, Denzel Washington — they’re still (arguably) stars. And can have an entirely different conversation about television stardom, and how it functions differently (and works to set a certain type for a performer even more effectively than a definitive star role. Jennifer Aniston, for example, will never escape Rachel, no matter how far Friends may seem in the rearview mirror). (For more on television stardom, and if such a thing actually exists, see earlier posts on Aniston and Katie Holmes).
My favorite indie pairing: Laura Linney & Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me
But what of indie stardom? What of Michelle Williams and Laura Linney, of Paul Giametti and Mark Ruffalo, of Joseph Gordon-Levitt? What do we do with these stars who star in little pictures that do little business (but are generally critically acclaimed) and reveal strategic bits of their extra-textual lives to match their “indie” picture personalities. Their involvement oftentimes marks the difference between an independent film getting picked up for theatrical distribution or going straight to IFC or video-on-demand. They are powerful forces….just on a smaller scale. So how does an indie star “mean” differently than a mainstream star? And does it matter?
First things first: we need a little specificity of language. ”Indie” has come to mean many things over the last two decades — some people think “independent” means produced independently (i.e. outside of the major studios), some people think it means financed independently, others think that any film that makes it into an actual movie theater (that is not at a film festival) cannot be “indie.” Personally, I like Michael Newman‘s take, beautifully laid out in his book Indie, in which he approaches “indie” film not as a production culture, but as a confluence of meanings. Indie is thus a way of producing a film, but also a way of watching a film, and an expectation for how a film should look and address the viewer. In other words, lots of things make a film indie, including the actors that appear in them.
Oh hey Joseph Gordon-Levitt, yes, yes I will go see the movie when you have cancer just because you are in it.
When you see the name Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached to a film, you bring a certain understanding of how that film was most likely financed, the type of film it will be, what it will demand from you as a viewer, and even what it will look like. To wit: it will not be a big-budget production, but it will still look professional (his name attached to a project helps garner a modicum of funding); the narrative with be nuanced, quirky, and/or not follow traditional plot rules, and it will make me feel double-capital-E Earned Emotions. I will watch it in a small, art-house theater or via Netflix, and my significant other will come watch it with me because even though there’s a romance, or it’s sad, and it’s indie, so it’s okay. The previews before will most likely be for other indie films starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself or Patricia Clarkston. They won’t have the cheesy voiceover preview guy, because Indie film consumers hate voiceover cheesy guy and the way his presence screams commercial film — instead, the previews might be in a foreign language, or the film might just have an elegant piano score and LOTS AND LOTS of those weird feathers in the shape of a horseshoe with lots of film festival names inside, some more esoteric than others. While we watch this film, we might have artisan popcorns or classic cocktails, depending on whether or not we’re in Austin and watching it at the Violet Crown, surrounded by other early 30-something intellectuals and elderly but engaged matinee-goers. In which case, we probably biked there.
You get the drift: indie films cater to a specific audience, and that audience values specific attributes in their stars. An indie star can’t look like Channing Tatum. It’s just not possible; he’s just too built, too Ken-faced. An indie star has to be schlubby and everyguy (Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman), skinny and emo-looking (Gordon-Levitt), or, if the star’s a woman, untraditionally beautiful (Williams) or older-and-ravishing (Laura Linney, Clarkston). Beautiful women often break-out in indie film and then break-away, as seems to be the case for both Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Olson.
So an indie star needs to appear in indie pictures, broadly conceived. But the indie star must regularly appear in indie pictures. Indie pictures are the main component of their star image — the thing that he/she seems to mean.
And, as a result, the core of the indie star’s image is prestige. The actor doesn’t act for the money or the glamour, but for the love of acting. And with discernment, at least in today’s culture, comes prestige. The less interested you are in making profits, the more interested you are in plot development and, by extension, the more serious you are as an actor.
Mark Ruffalo looks very uncomfortable at the Big Movie Star Avenger Party
So here’s where it gets interesting: because the indie star connotes prestige, his/her involvement in a non-indie production adds prestige. Thus Mark Ruffalo’s involvement in The Avengers makes the film seem less exploitative, and Patricia Clarkston’s role as the mom in Friends with Benefits ups its pedigree. Indie stars gain renown for their powers of discernment — Gordon-Levitt, for example, best known for his stint on Third Rock from the Sun, went back to Hollywood in his early 20s with the contingency that he would only make “good movies.” While all of the films that he’s made since returning have not, necessarily, been turned out as “good movies,” they’ve all at least tried to be good movies. Stop-Loss tried really, really hard to be a good movie, which is more than I can say for 90% of Hollywood blockbusters.
Which brings us to the question of blockbuster involvement. What happens when Gordon-Levitt appears in G.I. Joe? Nothing. Why? Because the vast majority of people who know his name — as an indie star — didn’t go see G.I. Joe. It’s simply not the target audience. Maybe a few die-harders did (I know that it made me look at it twice before deciding it, in all likelihood, would suck big time; reviews tell me I am not wrong). And to the majority of people who did go see the film, which, for all of its bad reviews, did make a bundle at the box office, he was just another handsome supporting guy.
Indie stars can also anchor prestige television. See Steve Buschemi in Boardwalk Empire, Toni Collette in United States of Tara, or Don Cheadle in House of Lies. They have the scent of big-screen stardom on them, but going to TV isn’t a sign of decline, as some have (mistakenly) viewed what’s become of the likes of Alec Baldwin. Rather, appearing on HBO or Showtime show built around them is an extension of their pre-existing prestige. Ironically, stars of small, relatively low-budget films usually land on expensive, high-production-value television.
Indie stars get it both ways: they get recognition, but without the paparazzi frenzy that accompanies wide-scale superstardom. They don’t make as much money, but then again, they don’t have to spend as much money employing and guarding themselves from the publicity apparatus. They are associated with class and prestige, despite the fact that the films they appear in cost a fraction of the truly lavish and expensive Hollywood pictures. When one of their films only makes a million dollars — but garners a ton of buzz — it’s a success. When a film doesn’t make it out of the gate — recent examples include Hesher or Patricia Clarkston’s Cairo Time — it doesn’t really matter, because the film didn’t cost much to make and will probably make back its budget in ancillaries, because people like me like to rent movies with indie stars and watch them on a Saturday night with a bottle of wine. (And by “rent” I mean “stream them on Netflix.”)
When an indie film does succeed, whether by making money or creating a lot of buzz, then the indie star can parlay that success into an appearance in a larger film (Gordon-Levitt’s role in Inception) and, potentially, bring more fans back with you to the small-scale productions you enjoy.
Not anyone can be an indie star. You need to be distinctive, but not too distinctive. You can be somewhat weird looking, but only if you’re really, really talented, and usually only if you’re male. You have to balance really off-the-wall passion projects with slightly more mainstream yet still-labeled-as-indie fare (500 Days of Summer, for example). You can’t do too many mainstream projects, lest you be labeled and hounded like a “real” star (see: Ryan Gosling) and you can’t do too many things in general, lest you be labeled as a publicity hound and a fraud (see: James Franco).
Hey Gos, I really still want to think of you as an Indie Star, but is it really true?
It might be easier to be an indie star: you’re not on the cover of the gossip mags every week, and you don’t need an entourage. You can probably lead a more normal life than, say, Brad Pitt. You don’t make as money, but you have more freedom. As a whole, your products probably suck less. But you also have to maintain a very specific career path, never deviating too far from a specific set of expectations, types of films, and behavior in your extra-textual life (running a website for independent filmmakers, starting a lady blog, dating other indie stars, getting behind environmental causes and blogging about them at Huff Post).
Independent stardom sure looks circumscribed.
Revenge as Postfeminist Dystopia
NOTE: Spoiler-free. Some characteristics/life events are revealed in Episodes 1-3, but nothing earth-shattering.
Revenge has been one of my greatest elliptical machine pleasures this Winter. It’s well-acted, the clothes are fantastic, intricately plotted, and melodramatic as all get out — just how I like a good elliptical machine show. Revenge is (very) loosely based on The Count of Monte Cristo, which is to say that it rotates on the premise of someone who is betrayed by his intimates, sent to jail, realizes that his intimates put him there, and returns, disguised, to take revenge on them.
The twist of Revenge is clever: the betrayed figure dies in prison, but his daughter, a young girl at the time of his imprisonment, returns, now a grown woman with an assumed identity, to their beach house (in the Hamptons, OF COURSE), to take revenge on all the high-powered business men (and their spouses) who betrayed him. What makes it escapist isn’t the revenge narrative, but the beautiful, monied background. Everyone loves a story about The Hamptons — the people are gorgeous, the clothes are immaculate, the parties are so…..planned. And while our main character once had money, she was sent to group homes, and then to juvey, and didn’t get released until she was 18….at which point she discovered that she was half-owner in the TV-world version of Google! I won’t explain the mechanics, but what you need to understand is that she is ridiculously wealthy — the sort of wealthy that proves so handy for screenwriters, who can essentially grant her every privilege, convenience, and beautiful dress she desires.
In other words: this is some good soapy TV. But over the course of the first half of the series, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the female characters in the show, and the harsh realities that face them, represent the ugly flipside of the “freedoms” promised by postfeminism.
Postfeminism is a loaded term. Here’s my simplified and contentious definition:
Postfeminism is, most explicitly, the idea that feminism is no longer necessary. Feminism accomplished its goals in the ’70s and ’80s, and we’re ready to move on and just “be” women, whatever that means. (Suggestions that we live in a “post-race” society often hinge on the idea that a black president means that racism is no longer an issue in our society, let alone a defining issue). We don’t need feminism, we just need “girl power” – a very different concept than the “grrl power” that undergirded the Riot Grrl movement of the early ’90s (which was, itself, a response to the rise of postfeminism). Postfeminism is forgoing freedoms or equal rights in the name of prettier dresses, more expensive make-up, and other sartorial “freedoms” to consume. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman is postfeminism manifest — a self-sustaining (sex worker) who meets her prince, who will allow her to consume (and become her “true” self). Sex & the City is postfeminist. Bridget Jones is postfeminist. 27 Dresses is postfeminist.
In short, the idea that consumption and self-objectification (which usually leads to romantic monogamy) = equal rights and equal treatment is postfeminist.
In text after text of the last twenty years, postfeminist philosophy, for lack of a better word, is portrayed as the path towards happiness and fulfillment. Until, in a text like Revenge, it doesn’t.
To be clear: Revenge is not the first to highlight the negative aspects of postfeminism. I mean, you could read the disasters that were the Sex and the City movies as the dystopic end to the fantasy narrative displayed in the television show. You could also look at the hysteria in the vast majority of female-oriented reality programming and read it as the postfeminist dream of success and “having it all” gone tragically wrong. Put differently, Revenge isn’t the first television show to present the opportunity for such a reading.
But let’s get down to the analysis and look at our two main characters, their postfeminist choices, and the dystopic realities in which they find themselves.
EXAMPLE ONE: VICTORIA GRAYSON
Victoria is vintage Hampton’s. Pilates body, Botox face, age-appropriate yet still sexy gowns, long hair that still connotes beauty (as opposed to middle-aged-ness). A handsome son in his mid-20s, a beautiful daughter in her late teens. A silver fox husband who spends most of his summer in the city and runs a well-regarded global capitol something-or-another. Her name carries tremendous weight. She can ruin someone’s reputation with a single word. People anticipate her parties. She’s apparently the social doyenne of, oh, I dunno, all rich people on the East Coast. Her anniversary is carried on the front page of some section of what appears to be The New York Times. She came from nothing to become the second wife of a major-player capitalist and gets all of the benefits.
BUT WAIT JUST ONE SECOND.
Let’s talk about these benefits:
1.) Sacrifices former identity (seriously — it’s totally sublimated, save the mention of “coming from nothing” every once in awhile) to steal another woman’s husband.
2.) Alienates both of her children for reasons for various unforgivable reasons
3.) But she can ruin her best friend’s reputation! Which she does! When she discovers that said best friend is sleeping with her husband!
4.) She is incapable of showing emotion. I mean that literally: she has a frozen face from plastic surgery and collagen injections, which evacuates her face from expression and suggests (this is a melodrama, after all, when emotion and character traits overflow into the mise-en-scene) a heart that wants, but no longer has the muscle memory, to feel.
5.) Her body is slim and toned (despite lack of toning activity — I’m guessing she has a Pilates Reformer in the basement) but girl never eats. Or even really gets to drink.
6.) Spends a lot of time thinking about how to destroy the younger, seemingly history-less girl who threatens to take her son away via marriage.
7.) Doesn’t read.
8.) Doesn’t know how to use the computer (seriously, one scene with her daughter’s computer confirms as much).
9.) Doesn’t have any hobbies other than party planning, which her party planner does for her, and wearing dresses at all times.
10.) Has no interests or sense of self-worth other than her childrens’ affection, which is now lost to her.
11.) Clearly loathes her husband, who loathes her in return.
12.) Periodically pines for a time when she had a sense of true love, but forsook that true love in the name of money and prestige.
13.) Has no friends. No lady friends, no male friends, no child friends, no underling sidekick friends. No friends, no confidantes, no community. She’s never alone but the loneliest person on the Eastern seaboard.
The lesson of Victoria: if you don’t care about equality or a life of your own, then you can have all of the pretty dresses you want. And be miserable, wholly miserable, in ten years’ time. Victoria Grayson is the first wave of postfeminism, come to fruition and left to rot.
EXAMPLE #2: EMILY THORNE/AMANDA CLARKE
Educated, well-traveled, lovely accent, well-spoken, attractive. Beautiful slightly wavy blonde hair and innovative if somewhat circumscribed fashion taste. Gets the hottest man in her age bracket to fall in love with her in about three days. Allied with the most wealthy man in America. Kind, polite, thoughtful, and spends a lot of time donating her time and energy to philanthropy. Orphaned but has developed a firm sense of self and purpose. Enormously and independently wealthy. Able to bestow favor and fame upon anyone. Wields tremendous (albeit unseen) power. Understands the puppetry of social interactions and how to pull the strings. One savvy young lady.
BUT WAIT JUST ONE MORE SECOND.
Let’s talk about Emily/Amanda’s life:
1.) Due to admittedly tragic circumstances, she spent her youth in foster care (which wronged her) followed by the juvenile detention system (which also wronged her). But instead of spending her newfound and abundant wealth working to right the systemic wrongs that led to a situation like hers, she goes after the individuals that caused her distress. This strategy isn’t necessarily post-feminist, but it is certainly neo-liberal: like Crash or The Blind Side, which suggest that repairing relationships between individuals can correct systemic problems. Her father died; her vendetta is not against society, or against those who might inflect the same sort of process (albeit within different parameters) on someone else, but against the specific individuals who led to the suffering of her and her father.
2.) Has one supposed friend. Apart from the very first scene in the very first episode, when she suggests that they get drunk on champagne, they mostly spend time talking about they’ll spend some quality time together at some later point. Her ostensible friendship with the Google-owner-guy is a mix of passive-aggression and aggression and utilitarianism.
3.) Has no hobbies or interests other than exacting revenge. She can, however, use a computer, but only to exact said revenge.
4.) Has no media interests other than re-watching clips and re-reading newspaper clippings related to her revenge plot.
5.) Has forsaken her childhood bond with a very nice, very working class, very authentic (he has a beard!) man (who named a sailboat after her, jeez) in order to pursue her revenge.
6.) Never enjoys any of her richy-rich toys because she is so busy being revengeful.
7.) Somehow has several mentor figures who provide her with sporadic guidance…on being revengeful, never on self-actualizing or letting go of said revenge and doing something with her one precious life.
8.) Never gets to hang out in any public spaces — life seems to be limited to fleeting visits to the bar to fetch people and the private party circuit (but only private parties hosted by Victoria at that).
9.) Uses beauty and charisma to attract handsome man….who she plans to destroy! But oh no, turns out she has feelings for him??!!?? WHICH SHE MUST DESTROY!
10.) Can never find happiness because she’s living a lie in order to avenge the wrongs of the generation before her.
The lesson of Emily: as the second generation of postfeminism, you are reaping the “awards” of your parents’ decisions. Which, as it turns out, means that you get all of the clothes and good hair and fortune….and nothing to guide you or add meaning to your life, save your elaborate revenge strategy and her beautiful wardrobe.
Revenge is clearly a tragedy: a young girl’s father is taken from her; her life is ruined; she dedicates her life to harming those who caused her (and her father) harm. We’re obviously encouraged to pity Emily — not just because her father was taken from her, but because she’s so hopefully mired in the whirlpool of revenge….and we have no idea how she’ll function once that purpose and drive is taken from her.
But as I’ve demonstrated above, Revenge can also be read as the tragedy of postfeminism: what happens when you trade the politics of feminism for the bounty of consumerism, what happens when you grow up in a world where those are the realities for women set before you, both by the media and the other women in your life.
I’m not saying this works perfectly, but I am saying that our two main characters (and several others in the show) don’t suggest Being a Woman in 21st Century America is Awesome. They suggest that it’s claustrophobic, prescribed, unhappy, and even if you have all the tools that you thought you needed to play the game, deeply, deeply unsatisfying. The moral isn’t just that revenge is never satisfying, but that postfeminism, for all of its glossy, gorgeous surfaces, is rotten at its core.
Joining the Slumberparty: A Response to Molly Fischer’s “Ladyblog” Critique
I’ve been distracted all day. Or at least ever since reading Molly Fischer’s recent piece in n+1, “So Many Feelings,” outlining the demise of the ladies’ magazine and the rise of what she terms the “ladyblog.” Sassy and Jane are dead; Cosmo and Glamour aren’t hip; Vogue is for people who don’t actually exist. In their place, we have now have Jezebel, The Hairpin and, more recently, XOJane and Rookie. I’m going to quote Fischer’s piece at length below, but here’s the gist: ladyblogs don’t grapple with serious issues. They’re either self-effacing and whimsical (The Hairpin) or working really hard to be P.C. (Jezebel) and thus evacuate the site of any real feminist or political work. Because these sites are neither radical nor unceasingly serious, they’re essentially spectacle and/or pablum for the (middle-class, educated) masses.
To wit:
The Hairpin was sort of about women, but really it was about editor Edith Zimmerman’s sensibility: internet-fluent and self-consciously eccentric, with a nostalgic streak for both childhood and history. There were photographs of brightly colored items organized by color, a list of “Things to Name Your Oregon Trail Family,” and a discussion of 17th-century dildo pranks. Creepy dolls were objects of ongoing fascination, and Steve Buscemi was included in a game of Fuck/Marry/Kill. This was cute performed for an audience that disliked Zooey Deschanel but still liked reading about eco-friendly cat bonnets. It was cute that was always also a joke about being cute, with hyperbole or alcohol or icky things thrown in to make sure everyone got the joke. Accompanying some posts were Zimmerman’s own shaky little line drawings of a dolphin, a birthday cake, a disembodied smile.
The Hairpin’s media criticism tended toward the observational, peculiar, and irrefutable. (In what must have been her most popular post of all time, Zimmerman presented “Women Laughing Alone With Salad,” a collection of stock photos, without commentary.) The exception was posts by Liz Colville, who at first sat below Zimmerman on the masthead. Seemingly there to legitimize The Hairpin’s status as a “women’s website,” Colville dealt straightforwardly with gender and politics; many of her posts wouldn’t have been out of place on early Jezebel. Last January, Colville posted “How Lady Magazines Fared in 2010,” an earnest breakdown of 2010 circulation figures and cover subjects for women’s magazines. “The data suggests that in a lot of cases women just aren’t getting what they want from a magazine,” she concluded. Her post appeared back-to-back with Zimmerman’s “Oo-ooh, Someone’s Mad at the New Yorker,” about a woman who was demanding a refund because the vast majority of the magazine’s writers were men. “Does this bother you?” Zimmerman wrote. “This doesn’t bother me. If you like a magazine, read it; if you don’t, don’t. Also, if you’re mad at a magazine, sounding like a total drag can’t be the best way to get what you want.” By January, Colville had left the website.
After this weird insinuation that Edith essentially offed Liz for being “too feminist,” the piece goes on to belittle other columnists and past and current Hairpin editors, segues into an overview of XOJane and Rookie, and concludes with the following:
My own mother went to college in the early ‘70s. She started a women’s resource center with a newsletter; it was called The Bimonthly Period. She retains a second-wave feminist’s fondness for the very deliberate use of the word “woman.” She is a doctor, though, and occasionally she says “lady” when discussing gynecological matters. (“Sometimes ladies need a few stitches after labor.”) The word allows a certain decorous remove from discomfort—it is a polite way to acknowledge the listener’s presumed squeamishness or embarrassment about anything particular to her sex.
On the ladyblogs, adult womanhood is a source of discomfort, and so when we write posts or comments, we tend to call ourselves ladies. We also might be tempted, at slightly braver moments, to call ourselves feminists. Indeed, each ladyblog’s approach appears intended to counter a particular brand of easy misogyny. Women are not mindless consumers, declares Jezebel; women are funny, proclaims The Hairpin.
But the ladyblogs are not feminist simply by virtue of offering women an alternative to traditional female media—feminist blogs are of a different genre, with a specific and explicitly political project. The ladyblogs are fundamentally mainstream general interest outlets, even if a façade of superiority to the mainstream (edginess, quirkiness, knowingness) constitutes part of their appeal. Neither Jezebel or the Hairpin concerns itself with the harder to articulate, more insidious expectations about women’s behavior. Neither knows how to write for and about women without almost embarrassing itself in its eagerness to please. Jezebel is too painstakingly inoffensive to hurt anyone’s feelings. The Hairpin is too charmingly self-effacing to take itself seriously, too tirelessly entertaining to ever bore a visitor. They bake pies with low-hanging fruit: they are helpful, agreeable, relatable, and above all likable.
Surely one can’t, and shouldn’t, strive to like and be liked all the time. But how else can one be? This is not a likable enough question for the ladyblogs to entertain. In the end, they tell us less about how to be than about how to belong, and they are better at this than Sassy ever was, because no place is better for performing inclusion than the internet. Readers write to The Hairpin’s advice columns in painful imitations of the house style. (“SO MANY FEELINGS.”) Commenters squeal over plans for real-life meet-ups in bars. (“I registered just so I could RSVP YES to this!”) The internet, it turned out, was a place to make people like you: the world’s biggest slumber party, and the best place to trade tokens of slumber party intimacy—makeup tips, girl crushes, endless inside jokes. The notion that women might share some fundamental experience and interests, a notion on which women’s websites would seem to depend—“sisterhood,” let’s call it—has curdled into BFF-ship.
I would strongly suggest reading the piece in its entirety (here’s the link one more time, go for it, I’ll be waiting). And full disclosure, my brother, Charles Petersen, is an editor for n+1, although he gave me no indication that this piece was in the pipeline. And, of course, I am a regular contributor to The Hairpin, and I am proud to associate its good name with my own. Which is precisely why I take such umbrage at this piece: Fischer’s critique of The Hairpin (and ladybloggers) not only applies to The Hairpin, but my own writing on The Hairpin, and, by extension, this blog.
I challenge Fischer’s argument on several levels, but the most crucial thing she gets wrong is perhaps the simplest. She suggests that feminism and fun are mutually exclusive, and that a site that makes room for eyeliner techniques doesn’t also have room to talk about women’s reproductive rights, historical (problematic, hilarious) representations of women, American Dolls, being a queer woman today, white wine, and (ahem) scandals of classic Hollywood.
The urge to delineate between “good” and “bad” feminisms has divided women for YEARS. Decades! The Porn Wars divided an entire generation of women against one another! YOU GUYS, THAT IS TOTALLY WHAT PATRIARCHY LOVES! Divide and conquer….. YOURSELVES! Jezebel vs. Hairpin, Second Wave Feminists vs. Third Wave Feminists, Feminists of Color vs. Feminists Not-of-Color. We just keep on thinking of ways to disagree with one another instead of uniting around the issues that make a difference in our material realities. Sometimes those issues are Capital Letter Big Issues like “Do I have the right to get an abortion?” or “Do I receive equal pay?”; sometimes they’re lower-case issues like “How do I negotiate the pleasure I take in non-feminist texts, like Twilight?” or “I like how my eyes look with make-up on; is that okay, and if so, can you teach me how to do it better?” It’s not that we shouldn’t talk about these things, but when we do, we should talk about them in a way that’s fair and
Some people like a solid dose of didactic, self-serious, in-your-face, militaristic feminism everyday. That’s what makes them feel energized to be a person in the world. Other people encounter issues that make them think about the place of feminism in our world EVERYDAY. Take a look at my life: I interact with 15-18 year old girls constantly. In the classroom, in the place where I live, while eating, while working out — I am constantly thinking about what feminism means to both myself and to these girls. Put differently, because I am a feminist, feminism inflects everything that I do, everything that I write, everything that I read. Sometimes my feminism manifests itself critically, sometimes it’s trying to work through my apathy, sometimes it’s disgusted, other times it feels proud, especially when I see things like the teens here organizing a male-and-female feminism group on their own accord. Because here’s one thing that feminism should never be: prescriptive. I don’t necessarily agree with women who see sex work as liberating, but I also don’t hate them, or tell them that they’re doing feminism wrong. Why? Because I still want them on my team, and want to continue the conversation, and talk about what each of thinks about how sex work functions within patriarchy. I don’t call them sluts, and they don’t tell me that all I want in life is happy f-ing sleepovers.
And that’s exactly what I feel Fischer is attempting to do. But I don’t need to prove it to you, because The Hairpin commenterati has done the work for me. (See the comment in their ever-growing entirety here). Ultimately, I’m less concerned with my own reaction to the piece and more interested in what the Hairpin readership has had to say in response, which demonstrates their particular awareness of the site, its balance between the (ostensibly) frivolous and the explicitly political, and the benefits of cultivating a commenting atmosphere that is inclusive (and not, crucially, without disagreement — it’s just that people aren’t being assholes when they don’t believe the exact same thing).
Here’s a sampling of my favorites, at once serious and hilarious….which, if you’re picking up what I’m putting down, doesn’t mean that they’re not also good, or smart, or political, or feminist.
******
Come to think of it, I am getting sick of the hairpin being fun to read and the commenters being funny and welcoming.
******
And yo, if you don’t catch any smart, important shit on this site, you ain’t readin’ it.
******
That’s the thing. People, (ladies and dudes, or as that writer would prefer, MEN AND WOMEN) come to the Hairpin because the comments section is that unicorn of the internet: intelligent, funny, humane and most of all, civilised. The recent Bob and Eli thread is a perfect example. All the while I was reading the thread and and admiring people’s insight and perspicacity, and laughing at the funny stuff, I was thinking that on nearly any other site, no matter what its remit or readership, the civilised comment response to that letter would almost immediately be swamped by irrational fury, ad hominen attacks on other commenters, rampant misogyny, prejudice, racism etc etc etc. The Hairpin is a haven for commenters who are like real life friends. That’s why it’s great.
******
Just because the writing can be a bit whimsical doesn’t mean it’s glib.
******
Her last sentence:”The notion that women might share some fundamental experience and interests, a notion on which women’s websites would seem to depend—’sisterhood,’ let’s call it—has curdled into BFF-ship.”
I mean, I don’t even get why she thinks sisterhood would “curdle” if it becomes “BFF-ship.” Shouldn’t sisterhood encompass that, or does she have this imagined notion that “sisterhood” is adulterated if it’s not always unequivocally and expressly written with the intent to stick it to the patriarchy?
The Hairpin sincerely trying to connect with readers and commenters on a “hey friend” level sounds gravy to me. Just because she doesn’t like the tone of it doesn’t make it wrong–if you don’t like slumber parties where we drink Qream and listen to Robyn while talking about pertinent issues, then don’t come. But you’re still invited, anyway.
******
Ladyblogs are a big enough ‘thing’ now to warrant a critical media eye and thinkpieces. Yay?
Regardless, ladyblogs were some of the first places where it was … cool to be a girl, again. A woman. A feminist. And not just because we were raised to believe we were equals and could do it all, but because we could be MORE than equals. The “silly” things we value and enjoy didn’t have to be silly at all. No need to pretend to like dude stuff, just to get dude approval. What do YOU actually like? From political to profane to pretty, baby, you can have whatever you like. Let’s talk about Roe and our reproductive rights, debunk the economic value of Newt’s proposed simplified tax code, have a chat about hair-pulling during sex and then let’s all make paper snowflakes, apply fake eyelashes and drink Qream, shall we? SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT ALL OF THOSE!
Ladyblogs also, I think, taught a lot of people about how to name yourself as a feminist and be okay with that. And they brought the language and knowledge of the LBGTQ community to the forefront. If only in vocab(cis-gender, transwhatever, hell, the idea of queer itself) but also so much more.
I get the concept of ladyblog as a likeable on-line slumber party, but what I don’t get is why that’s a bad thing. The readership and commentariat is self-selecting. And there are many places to go. If I choose to seek out the blogs that resemble me the most because that’s what I like…I fail to see the problem.
*****
I have so much gratitude to Jezebel and Hairpin, for reasons beyond makeup tips, girl crushes and endless inside jokes.
Both sites SHOWED me what a feminist is, what it means to be a positive, responsible person, what it means to command self-respect and self-confidence. Y’all called out Rich Santos’ bullshit and made me less willing to take that bullshit in real life. Jez and the Pin introduced me to LGBTQ issues, and to issues around race and privilege. AND all this in a fun, sometimes funny, but always approachable manner.
Thanks for the slumber party.
*****
I think there’s a point worth looking at there, but also not? It does get sort of disappointingly vapid in the “Friday Bargain Bin” posts or likewise sometimes. If I had to venture a guess, I would say it’s because the women reading this site *are* super-smart feminists who feel uncomfortable talking about lipstick and rompers in their real lives and here they are provided the space to talk about them with the implication being that it’s safe to do so without being judged as vapid (heh, I proved them wrong?), because it’s a defined “smart -lady blog”. That’s cool and I appreciate it, but I sometimes do feel like it can tip in mindless consumerism, especially when some of the more absurd things (like crazy high heels or rompers you can’t pee in without discomfort) are presented without commentary as to just how absurd they are and maybe we should look at *why* we like the things instead of snapping them up like magpies. <3 you, Edith & Jane et. al, and also aware that I can just not read what I don’t like, but I kind of wanted to speak up on this, because it’s been itching me for a while.
Blogging and Advertisements: Where’s the line?
So here’s a meta-post for you:
What do I do about all these offers to advertise on my blog? How can I say yes? Or, more importantly, how can I say no?
My blog garners moderate traffic — generally between 1500 and 2000 hits a day, although that number jumps considerably when I have a post up at The Hairpin (or a new post on the blog). That’s by no means rockstar traffic. But I nevertheless receive at least one email every week offering compensation for various forms of advertisement, from streaming car videos to links to other celebrity sites.
Now, this isn’t an elaborate humblebrag — most of these solicitors most likely see the “celebrity” in my blog title and little else — but it does bring up a genuine question concerning blogging (and “academic” blogging in particular) and compensation.
As I tweeted a few weeks ago, a decent blog post of average length (around 2000 words) takes at least four hours to complete. With zero compensation, I am paid zero dollars an hour for that work. But then again, I am also paid zero dollars an hour for the work I put in on every academic article, and am at times even asked to pay for the privilege of submitting my work for potential publication. I am effectively paying to do work so that massive academic publishing companies can make money by selling their journals at exorbitant rates to libraries.
But my blog is not peer-reviewed. It will not get me tenure, although, as Jason Mittell points out in his recent post on blogging and its relationship to tenure, a blog may not = tenure, but it will increasingly be considered part of the constellation of a candidate’s body of scholarship. It may not be as serious (or proof-read) or vetted as the work that he/she does for, say, Cinema Journal, but it’s still an extension of the scholar’s thought process and (as loathe as I know many are to use this word) their academic “image.”
For many reasons, some warranted, others silly, academia and “making money” have been deemed mutually exclusive. In other words, scholarship that turns a profit is suspect; work that sells to libraries and other academics is highly valued. It follows, then, that a blog that makes any sort of profit is, by default, not as serious or academic (or valuable, ironically) as a blog that does not have advertisements. I can understand the rationale — an academic’s work should not be biased by sponsors — but I cannot understand the poverty mentality. Perhaps I’ve lived too long with the economic realities of being an academic in the humanities, and am too much in debt: but this is bullshit. I really like writing this blog, but I’m working so hard on actually making money to pay off my loans that I can’t write nearly as often as I’d like. Obviously this situation is ridiculous.
But because I have a a job, and am no longer on the market, I made an executive decision. When an ad salesman emailed me asking if I’d put a non-obstrusive link to AT&T U-Verse on my homepage and, in exchange, he’d pay me $200 for every six months that I stayed there, I went for it. Was I implicitly endorsing U-Verse? Perhaps. Was I explicitly doing so? Not at all. Was I finally being compensated for intellectual labor? Yes. Did you, as a reader, get pissed at me and think that I had compromised my academic ethics? You tell me.
I started thinking about Google Ads. What if I just put a little banner on the side? Is that okay? You’re exposed to Google Ads all day, every day — and they don’t make you think less of various sites; they only make you realize that they have an imperative to actually turn a profit if they wish to employ writers and pay them salaries and give them health benefits. But here’s the ridiculous thing: after four months of using Google Ads, four months of 1,000-2,000 people a day seeing a banner directed towards them (but not necessarily clicking through on said banner), do you know how much I earned? GUESS.
No seriously, guess.
I bet your guess was nowhere near…..
20 CENTS!
I’m yanking these ads soon — the visual distraction (and clear commerciality) is not worth less than half a cent a day. I think most readers would agree that it’s okay to get paid something to blog, so long as it doesn’t compromise the integrity of the blog. But the other day I received an interesting offer — one on which I’d like your advice, whether as an academic or a non-academic.
On Monday, I received the following email:
Hello,
I was doing research for one of my clients and came across your web page - annehelenpetersen.com. Your site stands out as an excellent candidate for a partnership with my client. Specifically, they are interested in placing a resource on one of your pages that would be relevant to your content and useful to your visitors.
You would receive compensation in exchange for your partnership as well as relevant future partnership offers. I would appreciate the chance to discuss this proposal in further detail. Please let me know if you have any interest, and I’ll send you specifics.
Thanks in advance!
Seemed pretty vague, but I thought I’d see what this person had to offer. I requested further details, and the guy, who works at an ad company, responded with the following:
Thanks for your response. The client is the Nipissing University and they’re just looking for a simple anchor text link. Here are the details:
We would like to use this page:
http://www.annehelenpetersen.com/?p=2413
The placement would be in a short sentence with the anchor text: masters of education
We would prefer that the link be placed within your existing content near the sentence in the second paragraph of the section SECOND, THE JOB : My undergraduate and M.A. degrees qualify me to teach English; my five years of teaching experience qualify me to teach; my two summers teaching gifted and talented high school students qualified me to teach high school students.
We must first check with the client to confirm the specific sentence and placement and permission to use the page. Hopefully this email provides you with a basic idea of what we’d like. I will follow up shortly with the sentence and wording we want so you know exactly what we’re looking for.
We can pay $25.00 a month for this link in this format on your site. Once the link is up, we can remit payment using PayPal immediately and use an auto-pay system that will post your payments on the same day each month. Is this the correct e-mail address for your PayPal account?
We work with a number of reputable clients in various verticals and will continue to offer you additional relevant link opportunities once we’ve established a partnership. Thanks again! I look forward to working with you.
To summarize: I would need to place a link to Nipissing University, a public, liberal arts institution in Ontario, in the body of the blog post that I wrote last year about getting my job here at The Putney School. I wouldn’t need to explicitly endorse it, but in the paragraph where I mention my teaching experience and M.A., that link would need to pop up.
The first question is whether or not it would be ethical for me to accept this sort of advertising. (Is it ethical that I have that link to U-Verse over there? You tell me). The second, more complicated question, and on on which I am honestly confused, is whether an ostensibly “academic” blog should accept advertising at all.
Channing Tatum: My Favorite Doofus
Image via GQ.com
Think about every time you’ve seen Channing Tatum onscreen.
From Fighting to The Eagle, from Step Up to Dear John, there’s a clear line that runs through his performances:
*He is a (very heterosexual) man — a fact authenticated by a love interest of some kind.
*He’s working class in some form, meaning he’s in the military (either in the present or in Ancient Rome; see Stop/Loss, Dear John, G.I. Joe, and The Eagle), a foster kid doing community service (Step Up), a street peddler (Fighting), a cop (21 Jump Street), or a stripper (the upcoming Magic Mike). [Notable exceptions: "normal" high school kid in She's the Man and Coach Carter; covert operative in Haywire; I honestly can't tell what he is in The Vow, but he seems to drive a crappy car in the trailer, so who knows].
*He’s very sincere.
*He’s very American. HE’S G.I. JOE. He’s the modern American military personified. Sometimes he’s bitter and f-ed up (Stop Loss), more often he’s stoic and honorable (Dear John). Even when he’s playing a Roman Centurian he speaks with an American accent.
*His character’s goal = 1.) find and/or restore honor (to himself, to his family); 2.) find and/or restore love, usually while doing thething that restores honor; 3.) Look good with his shirt off.
Shirtless in Dear John
Don’t mistake me: I’m not complaining. Because Channing Tatum is by far my favorite lovable doofus, and I’ll seriously watch him in anything. As in I went to the movie theater and watched Fighting all by myself. I am not joking. But what makes him lovable and other bad-acting, Ken-Doll-action-figure-Nicholas-Sparks schmaltzy doofuses intolerable?
Because Channing (Call me ‘Chan’) Tatum is by no means novel. He is the latest in a time-tested lineage of star types, a lineage that includes Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Bruce Willis. He’s a hard body with a soft heart. His picture personality is static, and his extra-textual life mirrors it with startling symmetry.
Because Channing Tatum, off-screen, is also very heterosexual, with a love interest (read: his wife, who neatly also happened to play his love interest in Step Up; more on that later), (formerly) working class, very sincere, very American, very honorable and loving and LOOKS GOOD WITH HIS SHIRT OFF.
ahem.
I know these things about Tatum because men’s magazines LOVE HIM. GQ adores him. Details has profiled him twice. He’s been the “next big thing” for the last three years — ever since he landed the lead in G.I. Joe – and the boy is game. For his first big GQ interview, he took his (female) interviewer to his Uncle’s spread in Alabama, where they rode around the place on four-wheelers and drank six-packs of beer. Lots of talk about where Tatum would build his modest cabin on the land (it’s the place where he feels most safe — his escape from the outside world) and how his accent thickens when he gets back home. To wit:
He’s just a normal Joe Schmoe: went to high school, almost flunked out, got a football scholarship to small state college, realized it wasn’t for him, and went in search of menial labor. Easy, familiar, accessible points of personal history.
For his second interview with GQ, published during the ramp-up to the release of The Eagle, he takes his (once again female) interviewer to a tiny old mining town. They’re “breaking all the publicist’s rules” — they get wasted on tequila, buy Snuggies, and sleep in Rite-Aid sleeping bags in the bushes. It’s the Rolling Stone-brand profile taken to its 21st century extension: if you can’t pull an Almost Famous and ride along with the band until you find yourself in an airplane that’s about to crash, then you have to make a crazy situation on your own. But there’s no funny business: Tatum steps out at one point to call his wife; they play pool with a guy named “Ordinary Mike,” even the hangover seems underplayed. (Compare this interview to Edith Zimmerman’s interview with Chris Pine, also in GQ,also known as my favorite interview of all time, in which the narrative becomes much more about Edith and the act of interviewing an otherwise bland star and much less about illuminating down home aspects about the subject).
In the most recent issue of Details, he takes the (male) interviewer to go shoot lots and lots of guns while loading up on whiskey, then takes him home, where his wife is waiting, and Tatum spends time dancing with dog.
That's a very sensitive sweater.
The underlying message of the profile, like every profile of Tatum, is that he’s an awesome guy: a fun, beer-drinking, risk-taking, goofy, loving guy. The sub-title for the middle-of-nowhere GQ profile says it all:
Channing Tatum is crazy. That’s not an epithet. That’s his life’s motto. Don’t believe us? We invite you to spend twenty-four hours deep in the California desert (bring some tequila and a sleeping bag) with probably America’s most fun movie star.
Hick-ing out Crappy Diner Style
Tatum can actually dance. He’s not classically trained (how un-American would that be!); he’s self-taught. In Step Up, he naturally plays a self-taught dancer who “spices up” his love interest’s formal choreography. See for yourself:
[My personal favorite dance moment comes earlier in the film, when Tatum does a weird dippy move and pops his collar. So good, SO BAD!] He rejects all the feminine connotations of “male dancer” — he dances in sweat pants rather than tights; the scene when she makes him do ballet is played for pure laughs. His dancing is physical, improvisational, and marked as amateur.
So the dancing is cute. But the “Dancing” component of Tatum’s star image is packed with meaning –
1.) How he started dancing.
Here’s where it gets so good: Tatum didn’t just start dancing around his living room. He was a STRIPPER. A male exotic dancer. There is tape, and it is right here. SO. MUCH. HAIR. GEL. While Tatum didn’t exactly broadcast the fact during his early film career, once it did arise, he embraced it whole-heartedly. As he told GQ, “I had wanted to tell people [...] I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t regret one thing. I’m not a person who hides shit.”
He then proceeded to make fun of himself all over the place — he laughs about it on Ellen and then gives her a lap dance. He developed a script on the inside of the male stripping “industry,” and Steven Soderbergh jumped to direct it. He’s not just “owning” his past as a stripper, he’s exploiting it. A past as a male stripper could be emasculating, it could be gross, it could be embarrassing. But Tatum, working, I’m sure, with some coaching from his PR team, has rendered it endearing.
2.) Dancing —> Monogamy
Tatum met his wife, Jenna Dewan, while filming Step Up. As they danced together, they fell in love, etc. etc. Fans love it when the actors who play characters who fall in love actually fall in love themselves (McGoslings, Twi-Hards), but this is something a little different. Crucially, Tatum has been with Dewan the entire time that he has been in the public eye.
His star text is that of a pure monogamist. Even in his movies, he’s never a philanderer — always into one girl; in fact, totally, selflessly devoted to one girl. It’s the perfect counterpoint to the ostensible “crazy” of his textual and extra-textual roles: sure, Tatum drinks whiskey and shoots guns, but he loves his wife. The moment in the latest GQ profile when he steps out of the house to call his wife is just pure monogamist gold.
3.) Dancing –> Sincerity
Tatum may be a self-taught dancer. He may play his “route” to dancing as a joke. But dancing is totally a sincere thing. Look at his face when he dances! He is SERIOUS about choreography! At other times, he’s just reveling in the dexterity of his own body. He loves to dance, and he doesn’t care who knows it.
That sort of transparent sincerity inflects Tatum’s entire image. You see it in the very earnest way he professes his love in Dear John, and you see it in the way that he talks about “real people” in nearly every profile. When someone in the bar in the old mining town uses the phrase “shit brickhouse,” he replies
“Oh, my God! Yes! Brick shithouse!” Chan says, slapping his knee the next day at Rusty’s. “See! This is why I wanted to come out here. I love these places. You can’t get this good a time in the city! Real people, man. Real people.”
I’m this close to cringing. But then I remember that it’s coming from Channing Tatum’s big, over-sized, attractive face — that he doesn’t want to observe and laugh at these “real people” so much as go back to the time when he was one of them, that I forgive him all his dopey authenticity-seeking. I mean, look at this closer to the Details interview:
You see this sincere Tatum in half of his pictures — the half when he’s straight-faced and doing awkward things with his body, model-y, mooney-looking things. But something about it makes me love him even more, like the guy writing really bad yet really sincere acrostic love poetry.
Lainey Gossip argues that he out-Matthew McConaughey’s Matthew McConaghey. But these days, McConaghey’s just a douche with his shirt off. Tatum, on the other hand, has three high profile movies coming out this year and two in pre-production. The trick, I think, is that Tatum can do what McConaughey has never quite been able to pull off: he can play his sincerity straight, as he does in nearly every film. But he can also play that sincerity for laughs, as he does in the trailer for 21 Jump Street.
I could be wrong, but this actually looks hilarious — in part because it takes Tatum’s established image and satirizes it. Ultimately, this knowledge forms the crux of Tatum’s success: he and his team know his image and how to exploit it, but they also know how to make fun of it. And that, more than any actual acting skill, is a ticket to stardom.
Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Let’s make this clear: I liked this movie. David Fincher has established himself as a master of making otherwise unexciting and unfilmic activities (computer coding, researching) into heart-pounding, exciting, and filmic montages. The film is still overlong, but it had to set itself up for the sequel and there’s only so much you can cut from a densely plotted narrative in keep it cogent. I don’t think Fincher was trying to be faithful to the book so much as faithful to the actual chain of events: Point A must happen so that Point B can happen, which must also happen so that C can happen, etc. etc. and so on. And while I enjoyed the film more than Mission Impossible: Make People Like Tom Cruise Again, which I saw the day before, my inner crotchedy-ass self has some lingering questions:
1.) No seriously, why the fuck is this film named Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?
This beef is more with the English-language publishers of the book than the film itself, but my complaint holds: in Swedish, the book is titled Men Who Hate Women. This title underlines Larson’s feminist intent with the novels, which was not to make entertainment out of sexual violence, but rather to highlight misogyny in all its manifestations. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo not only makes Lisbeth into a nameless Girl, but also a girl whose overarching signifier is a tattoo. One of the points of the narrative is to encourage us to see Lisbeth as much more than her appearance suggests, and the title does the absolute opposite.
2.) Why is the sexual violence played as catharsis?
The sexual violence against Lisbeth is not cathartic. It’s visceral and horrible and necessary to the plot, and to shy away from it would be to shy away from what makes Lisbeth who she is. (Narratively speaking, it would also decrease her resolution to find the serial rapist/killer). There was a lot of gasping and swearing in the theater by unsuspecting viewers during these scenes. But the scene when Lisbeth takes revenge is essentially played as catharsis: the brutality she inflects upon her rapist is framed not only as just, but as narrative closure. Sure, Lisbeth comes to check up on him, but it’s played for laughs, not as a moment of continued trauma. Within this paradigm, the state, even a progressive state like that of Sweden, will always ignore sexual violence, and it’s up to the victim to take revenge — and after it is taken, she can move on with her life. Do you see how this is problematic? It’s also problematic for the audience, which is encouraged to feel a similar catharsis: that thing that happened to her was horrible, but now that she’s sodomized her killer and blackmailed and tattooed him so that he won’t do it again, whew, problem solved, I feel great, let’s move on to the heady MacBook investigating!
3.) Why is the death of a serial killer played off as a plot point?
YOU GUYS, MARTIN VANGER AND HIS FATHER BRUTALIZED LOTS AND LOTS OF WOMEN. But again, vigilante justice takes precedence: because he dies in giant fireball, his last memory that of a woman (who had just clubbed in the head and forced him to flee) coming slowly towards him, we are to believe that he’s received what’s coming for him. But then nothing! No expose! No information given over to the victims’ families, nothing! He just dies and then we go on to Lisbeth’s dress up party!
In the book, we’re given some hemming and hawing over whether or not the Vanger family should make the information public. But in the film, Martin Vanger dies and we just up and move on to the third act of the film. Seriously! That’s it! There’s not even a mention, save to prompt the woman we believe to be Anita Vanger to contact Harriet.
4.) Why is Lisbeth’s Macbook Pro so much more awesome than mine?
First of all, I couldn’t help thinking of Steig Larson’s totally bizarre fascination with Apple hardware (remember how he detailed the hard drive specifics of each machine Lisbeth touches? I can understand working for accuracy, but there was some serious fetishism going on, and it only gets worse in the (much worse) second and third books). But here’s the thing: we’re used to seeing awesome next-gen technology on-screen. Mission Impossible was filled with it. It makes our heroes seem cooler and more savvy simply because they know that such things exist, let alone how to work them. And we suspend our disbelief in Google Maps that pop on on the windshield of the actual car because we’ve already suspending our disbelief that agents like Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) exist. But Lisbeth is given a machine that is absolutely the same as mine. And they do enough close-ups to make that abundantly clear. But why do her PDFs look so much more vibrant? How does she go through all of them so quickly? Where’s that hacker interface? Can I buy it at the App Store?
Now, I realize that the filmmakers are underlining that Lisbeth does things with “normal” technology that others cannot. She’s not a special agent; she’s just a savant. But instead of making me feel like she’s totally awesome, so makes me feel like I’m a bumbling Grandpa.
5.) How did Fincher manage to turn a narrative about solving an intricate mystery into a contemplation of what Rooney Mara would look like in pretty girl clothes?
Look to the extra-textuals: in the lead-up to the release of the film, nearly every article focused on how Rooney Mara, a cute, blonde, every-girl, transformed herself into an androgynous punk. (See especially the creepy Vogue profile, which I wrote about two months ago). With established stars, a “character” (I won’t say Method) performance such as this one is viewed as an Oscar turn, and most viewers spend a considerable amount of time marveling at how effectively the star has transformed him/herself into something not suggested by his/her image, namely fat, poor, mentally disabled, homeless, genius-level mathematician, etc. But Rooney Mara wasn’t an established star. Her most visible role was a brief appearance in a notable scene in The Social Network. And while many media savvy viewers would have seen pictures of her looking “normal,” many had not. But there’s something in Lisbeth’s facial structure and body that suggests she might be hiding a Hollywood star — the defined cheekbones, the eyes, the near-emaciation that treads the fine line between “hot body” and “obvious eating disorder.”
The film thus becomes a game of “how pretty would this girl be if we could just get some normal clothes on her”? The wonder is only underlined by the scene in which Lisbeth dons expensive, feminine clothing, and physically alters her body to become stereotypically womanly: yes! She’s gorgeous! Look at her legs in those heels! The discourse about Mara’s performance centers on transformation, not the way she portrays vulnerability and strength.
Lisbeth, as is, can’t be beautiful. An actress who actually looks like Lisbeth could never be Lisbeth. She has to be played as masquerade — as something that an otherwise traditionally beautiful girl dresses up as. Otherwise, she, a bisexual, androgynous, intelligent woman who rejects Western standards of beauty, is altogether too troubling of the status quo.
So what are your lingering crotchedy-ass questions? Or do you have answers to mine?
Previously: Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about X-Men: First Class
The Ryan Gosling Meme Has Jumped the Shark
Three things happened in Ryan Gosling meta-commentary news this week:
1.) The Ryan Gosling Tumblr-sphere expanded to include “Biostatistics Ryan Gosling.” Add it to the pre-existing blogroll of “Medieval History Ryan Gosling,” “Public History Ryan Gosling,” “Feminist Ryan Gosling,” and dozens more discipline-specific Gozes to which I have not even been made aware.
2.) Inside Higher Ed published a (brief) thinkpiece on the phenomenon.
3.) Well-known media theorist Nancy Baym tweeted “What’s up with this Ryan Gosling tumblr meme thing?
4.) My friend Rebecca, pop culture enthusiast and American Studies dissertator, posited “Don’t you think this whole thing has jumped the shark? You need to write about it quick.”
I have to agree. Biostatistics Ryan Gosling is Jumping the Ryan Gosling Tumblr Shark. Not because I don’t like Biology, but because it lacks the very thing that made the original Ryan Gosling Tumblr (Hey Girl) work so well: you could actually imagine Ryan Gosling saying the very phrases that adoring bloggers were photoshopping into his mouth.
To be more precise: The reason “Hey Girl” works is because Ryan Gosling’s image supports it. You can imagine The Goz saying things like….
…because his image is that of a considerate, intelligent, somewhat quirky yet somehow also adorable and amusing man. (For the specifics of Gosling’s image, see my earlier post on “Why You Love the Goz“). His picture personality may dictate otherwise (read: he plays a lot of assholes and weirdos), but somehow the weight of his extratextual image is enough to convince most of America that he’s really Noah Calhoun (of Notebook fame) transplanted off the screen and into the 21st century.
What’s more, the very notion that Ryan Gosling COULD SAY THESE THINGS is reinforced by clips of him being adorable WHILE SAYING THESE THINGS. He knows about the Tumblr; he finds it quite funny (and somewhat absurd); he laughs at himself and his image which, in reality, just reinforces his image. He gets the joke! The Hotness just multiples!
And Feminist Ryan Gosling is “Hey Girl” taken to its natural (feminist) conclusion. Ryan Gosling’s image goes to grad school! But here’s the thing: Ryan Gosling’s image wouldn’t go to get his PhD in Biology. Or Public History. His image has evidenced no interest in biology other than hanging out with those ducks in The Notebook. Ryan Gosling’s image would either sell out and become a lawyer (see, for example, many of his picture personalities) or pursue an altruistic career in the humanities (see Half Nelson), more specifically, English and/or Gender Studies. And I’m not just saying that because I have a Ph.D. in the humanities: if I were interested in making The Goz be part of my cohort, then I’d be arguing that Ryan Gosling Film Studies is awesome, which I’m not. See below).
But Feminist Ryan Gosling is doing more than just placing feminist theory next to well-chosen pictures. It’s combining rigorous feminist theory with something that’s not quite so rigorous — it couples the theoretical stances we believe in with the negotiated way we live them.
Take this image, for example. Yes! I believe that the hegemonic relationship between the state and the prison industrial complex is bullshit, and needs to be eradicated. But I also want someone to hold me! (And in my personal fantasy space, that person could be Ryan Gosling. It couldn’t be, say, Brad Pitt, because his image doesn’t seem like it would want to go to gender studies grad school. Architectural school, sure).
Or here. Yes, gender is a construct. To live that idea everyday — that’s tough (necessary) work. To emphasize it to your students, to your parents, to your kids, to your peers — seriously, that’s tough, because you’re pushing against a whole heavy load of ideology. But again, the idea is paired with the idea that everyone, including those who make theory in personal praxis, enjoy and hunger for human touch and intimacy.
Apart from the fit with Gosling’s image, there’s also an element of pleasure and play at work. As Danielle Henderson, creator of Feminist Ryan Gosling, explains,
Feminists are apparently not supposed to have a sense of humor. I think people are really liking the fact that this site is intelligent while simultaneously silly, and obviously self-referential. A lot of my followers are women’s studies majors, or people who have taken women’s studies classes, and love seeing inside jokes presented in this way. For example, if you’re a women’s studies major, you’ve probably read “The Yellow Wallpaper” at least 18 times. Now matter how much you like that story, it gets a little ridiculous.
There’s a lot of “snark” (hate that word), and a lot of intellectual examination of pop culture going on with most popular feminist sites, but not a lot of fun. I think I’m having fun with feminism, but not making fun of feminism. People recognize and respond to that crucial difference.
That element of play has far less to do with Ryan Gosling’s image and far more to do with feminism‘s image. But again, it only really works because the feminism can actually work with Gosling’s image. Would it work with Will Smith? With Tom Cruise? With Daniel Craig or Jackie Chan or Channing Tatum? You need a very specific constellation of star attributes in order to make it seem plausible that the person in that picture could potentially read, understand, and repeat the theory contained therein. You need an image as inflected with feminism as The Goz’s.
(Note: I realize that part of this process is self-fulfilling and tautological: Gosling’s image seems feminist so feminist theory can be ascribed to him, which, in turn, makes his image seem even more feminist. Star image formation is complicated shit).
As I was writing this post, several of my friends alerted me to “Film Studies Ryan Gosling.” Part of me wants to love this, if only because I want to imagine Gosling’s image’s familiarity with the likes of Bordwell and Thompson. But Ryan Gosling image isn’t that of a cinephile, and it’s most definitely not indicated an interest in apparatus. I so wish he were. If anyone should be responding to these meme, it should be me — someone who loves Gosling AND film theory. But when you apply his name to film studies, it only make sense with knowledge of the meme and its previous application – not by itself. In other words, if “Hey Girl” is Ryan Gosling’s extratextual image turned into a meme, and Feminist Ryan Gosling is the higher ed extension of that image, then there’s just not a space for Ryan Gosling, Film Theoretician.
What’s more, the author gets it wrong: sure, Grad School Gosling would know Mulvey and the theory of the male gaze, but he would also twist the theory so that he wasn’t embodying the very oppressing gaze against which Mulvey was arguing. For Gosling to be the male gaze suggests that he’s fully enveloped in patriarchy — which is the exact opposite of what his image suggests.
Here’s the simple truth: all pop culture phenomenons, especially those which gain traction on the internet, exhaust themselves eventually. Sometimes it happens through overexposure, sometimes it happens by being spread too thin and thus losing their potency. Whether Stuff White People Like or even LOLcatz, there’s a certain point at which the very thing that made it work — made it special, made if hilarious, made it something that you wanted to pass along to your friends and laugh at a common joke — ceases to function in the same way.
Pairing star images with dense theory is funny. Every scholar wants to think that an object of their desire would be interested in the things they’re interested in — would have a discussion in which you share a secret language familiar to a select few (and then, after you’ve had a good debate, you an go to the Farmer’s Market and snuggle). I wish Ryan Gosling’s image wanted to get his PhD in media studies with me. But it doesn’t — he fell in with the gender studies people long ago. That’s where his image belongs. That’s where it works. To take it beyond can be funny……but, if we’re honest with ourselves, misses the point. It’s a meme built on a meme, and thus evacuated of its core.
Maybe Postmodern Ryan Gosling would have something to say about this?
Why You Love The Fassbender
Am I getting ahead of myself? Do you even know The Fassbender? If you do, then you know why this column is worth your time. If you do not, let’s begin with a down-and-dirty orientation.
Plainly put, Michael Fassbender is the next big thing. GQ just put him on its cover as 2010′s Breakout Star, and it’s no joke: this guy was all over the place, but in the very best of ways.
After toiling for many years on the periphery of visibility, Fassbender’s big break came in the form of Steve McQueen’s Hunger, in which he plays the lead role of an IRA hunger striker. The film won the Camera d’Or at Cannes, and both McQueen and Fassbender were suddenly very visible. (Link to disturbing image of Fassbender’s emaciation here).
Fassbender followed Hunger with Fish Tank, a totally awesome and under-seen (in the United States, at least) film about a British teenager and the, uh, unique relationship between her and her mother’s boyfriend. Lots of film festival awards, Jury Prize at Cannes, BAFTA for Best British Film. But Fassbender didn’t become truly visible to American eyes until Inglourious Basterds, in which he plays a British spy (in one of the tensest moments of the film, and that’s saying something).
Basterds led to Jonah Hex, which was primed to be a big blockbuster. All the pieces were in place: big lead stars (Josh Brolin, John Malkovich), sexy girl-on-the-side (Megan Fox), pre-sold comic book franchise….but the film was a STINKBOMB. Panned across the board (12% Rotten Tomatoes score!) and made back only $10 million of its $47 million budget. But Fassbender was already off and filming what would become his gangbuster 2011: Rochester in Jane Eyre, Young Magneto in the rebooted X-Men, Carl Jung in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, repaired with Steve McQueen as a sex addict in Shame, some sort of secret agentness in Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire (Winter 2012), and the male lead (android) in Ridley Scott’s new sci-fi film Prometheus (Summer 2012).
We’re right in the middle of that list right now: both A Dangerous Method and Shame are in limited release right now, with Oscar Buzz slowly accumulating around Fassbender’s performance in the later.
Add in the fact that Fassbender is spectacularly, unequivocally, viscerally handsome.
But handsomeness does not make a star. And it certainly does not make a cult of fandom, the way that The Fassbender has recently inspired (if you follow the blog’s feed on Facebook, you know what exactly what I’m talking about).
[Quick Clarifying Note: When I title a post using the "second person," insinuating I magically know Why You Love The Fassbender (or, before, The Goz -- who knows, maybe this will become a regular column?), I'm not so much suggesting that I know why you, specifically, find him endearing/attractive/compelling so much as why society/Hollywood has found him endearing/attractive/compelling, a grouping of which the magic 'you' are obviously a part. Perhaps that much is obvious].
So here’s the big (somewhat obviously) revelation: You love The Fassbender because He’s a Method Actor. That seems obvious and facile, so let’s break it down:
1.) THE PRETTY FACE + THE TALENT
First and foremost. Pretty face is one thing, pretty face that can act — and act astoundingly well, in myriad and diverse parts, is like taking “pretty face” and squaring it. It makes the hotness level go off the charts. Pretty face without talent is two dimensional eye candy — a model in a fashion magazine, not someone with whom you’d actually want (or be able) to interact. Pretty face with talent = three-dimensional. Suddenly you can imagine having a discussion. Touching his face. It’s not just because he’s acting, three-dimensionally, on the screen, but because he seems less like a pin-up and more like a person. That’s what skill does to people: it makes them interesting.
And Fassbender isn’t just a decent actor. In all the articles I read preparing for this post, I saw him compared to Daniel Day-Lewis at least a dozen times. That sort of praise is not fucking around. You can nonchalantly compare someone to, say, Brad Pitt, or George Clooney — underlining the way he matches charisma with skill, etc. etc. But Day-Lewis is the contemporary actor par excellence. He is our moment’s Method Actor.
The comparison between Fassbender and Day-Lewis stems from two qualities: Fassbender’s devotion to specific characters, and the diversity of characters to which he has devoted himself. Profiles love to retell the methods of “The Method” — how he holed up and fasted for weeks to emaciate himself for Hunger, subsisting on sardines and nuts. For the famous 17-minute unbroken take in the film, he and his co-star moved in together, practicing the scene twelve times a day. CRAZYTIME. When A Dangerous Method screened at the Venice Film Festival, Fassbender had so effectively become Jung (and not “Fassbender”) that he had to introduce himself and his character when he went on stage afterwards.
Cronenberg calls him a “working class actor,” by which he means that Fassbender works for each role, spends hours devoting himself to the script and losing himself within the character. According to one interview, “To prepare for a role, he’ll read a screenplay as many as 300 times in daily shifts of seven hours.” He’s best known for his performances in minor keys: moody sad-sacks with little way out. Rochester, his character in Shame, Magneto. But his character in Fish Tank is a marvel to behold, all smiles and sun-kissed charisma. Cronenberg calls him a shape-shifter, a chameleon.
From Fish Tank (2009)
In some ways, a chameleon is frightening: you never know which Fassbender you’ll get onscreen, whether he’ll terrify or seduce you. But that chance is also extremely beguiling, and the talent it takes to affect that sort of transformation is, on a meta-level, extremely attractive.
As Carl Jung in A Dangerous Method
2.) THE INTELLIGENCE.
Or, more specifically, the intelligence that stems from Method Acting.
Here, for example, is Fassbender’s take on Rochester:
“[Rochester is]….A Byronic character burnt by experience, arrogant but also eloquent and introspective. He’s world-weary and jaded, sensual, selfdestructive, yet there’s a good sense of humor in there, and at the end of the day a good heart. He sees the freshness and beauty in Jane when everybody else looks past her.”
As Rochester in Jane Eyre
I don’t think Fassbender is smart about everything, but he has evidenced himself to be extremely intelligent about people – and he’s done so not only in the way he speaks about characters (who are, in fact, people) but in the way his performances underline a deep understanding of the diversity of human experience. To be a method actor is to be capable of understanding how other people work, and embodying that understanding with your performance. Fassbender is thus intelligent in the way that all method actors are intelligent. Consider our current crop of method actors: Day-Lewis, Meryl Streep, Robert De Niro, Sean Penn. We associate each of these mena nd women with intelligence. (Poor choices sometimes, yes, especially in the case of De Niro’s late film career, but intelligence nonetheless). Actors that “play themselves,” like, say, Gary Cooper, are likable, but we don’t think of them as necessarily smart. Method Acting is a learned and difficult skill, and it differentiates those who excel at it from the rest of Hollywood.
You — readers of this blog who like to think deeply about the popular culture you consume — are most likely attracted to thoughtful, intelligent men, whether as friends or as objects of affection. With his close association with The Method, ratified by his own meta-textual perceptiveness, The Fassbender is this man.
3.) THE BLANK SLATE.
If you’ve only seen Jane Eyre and X-Men Origins, you might think Fassbender is a type. I certainly did. But having watched his other films, I’ve become convinced of the Method/Talent stuff up above. As mentioned above, I have no idea what this man could do, what character he could embody next, whether or not he’ll be creepy or endearing. He could be anyone.
Including Your Total Boyfriend. Your Best Guy Friend. You can paint him into your elaborate fantasy and it so totally works.
It’s because he’s a Method Actor, but it’s also because he’s Not a Real Movie Star. I know this comes as a surprise — haven’t I been saying that he’s the next big thing? Isn’t he on all of these magazines? — but he’s not a movie star in the same way that Brad Pitt, or Will Smith, or Ben Affleck are movie stars. Not because he’s not a blockbuster star — because with Ridley Scott’s film, he will be — but because we know virtually nothing of his extra-textual life.
Because as much as people love to argue this point,
Star = Picture Personality (accumulation of roles) + Extra-Textual Personality (the image of their lifestyle off screen).
Fassbender has submitted to dozens of interviews. He’s posed for GQ fashion shoots. He’s super visible. But what do you know of his homelife? Sure, you know a bit about his family — that his father is German, that he lived in Germany — but that was emphasized to explain his near-perfect (if accented) German in Basterds. Maybe you know that his father is a chef. Maybe you know that he dated Zoe Kravitz, his co-star in X-Men, over the summer. But it’s unlikely that you knew that, because they were caught a total of ONCE by photographers. The man is intensely guarded about his private life. In fact, the most illuminating thing he’s said about his private life is that he’d like to to model his career on Viggo Morgensten’s, which is to say he’d like to remain intensely private and choose his roles carefully, balancing high profile films with personal projects.
This level of privacy — and the resultant blank slate of his private life — is part of the reason he’s able to recede into his roles so effectively. Even tremendous, transformative actors — like Brad Pitt– can only go so far with a role, if only because every time you see his face, you’re reminded of his everpresent star image. Fassbender, in his current iteration, is free of the heft of a star image.
As a result, we can project our own fantasies of “what he’s really like” onto Fassbender’s highly mutable image, and Fassbender can continue to refine his non-star-image as a method actor. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle. The less we know about him, the more Method he seems, the hotter he becomes…..and The More You Love The Fassbender.
THE FASSBENDER.
[IN RESPONSE] I feel like at the Hairpin, the assumption is that everyone here is smart enough to understand absurdity when we see it, even if we simultaneously enjoy (ironically, guiltily, or just plain enjoy) it in whatever form it takes.
*****
I’m a raging feminist complete with Dr. Tiller pins and a chip on my shoulder everywhere I go, but if I felt that part of being a srs bsns feminist was completely detaching myself from all problematic media, products, websites, etc….well, I would not have much to do, and that would be pretty fucking boring. After all, you don’t really get to judge and impact a culture without participating in it.
*****
The assumption that Girl Things are stupid because they are Girl Things is just flat poisonous. And I say this as someone who is by and large just not into most feminine frippery, so I don’t even want to think about the message being broadcast at someone who can’t get enough of it. The idea that shoes and make-up and nail art is stupid and shallow but gadgets and weight-lifting and performance cars are serious things for serious people is fucked up and bullshit.
*****
As a woman who has never been into a lot of traditional feminine stuff I think reading the Hairpin has helped me get over some of my own unconscious partaking of this attitude about Girl Things. Seeing eye shadow posts discussed by the same folks who are talking about nerdy books and art history has made me realize how much I have in common with ladies who don’t pick the same presentation style as I do but still have brains and senses of humor. It’s terrible, but I didn’t realize how much I was sort of automatically dismissing women who read as ‘too girly’ to me – or how much I was assuming that they dismiss me.