Celebrity Proust Questionnaire: Alyx Vesey
1.) What is your name, occupation, website?
I’m Alyx Vesey. I received my MA in media studies from UT Austin back in 2008. I pay the bills as an archival aide and have written for Bitch, Flow, Tom Tom Magazine, I Fry Mine in Butter, Scratched Vinyl, and Elevate Difference. I also volunteer as a music history workshop facilitator for Girls Rock Camp Austin, which prompted me to pick up a guitar. I founded the blog Feminist Music Geek in April 2009. She’s an Aries. I’m a Leo. We get along.
Roseanne was family viewing growing up. I know some friends weren’t allowed to watch it because it was supposedly like Married With Children, which might mean that some adults thought all working-class people were crass and mouthy in the same ways. Anyway, I grew up in a matriarchy, so mom and I bonded over the show. I studied Sara Gilbert because I was obsessed with Darlene. Around this time I also learned that I was more like Lisa Simpson.
3.) Who are your heroes of contemporary celebritude, and why?
Critics and essayists are my heroes and heroines, especially if they write about music. I love getting the scoop, nodding along, arguing, and being knocked over by how they use words to convey elegant ideas. They also kind of disassemble the star system, because they tend to be cash-poor and write their feelings and occasionally look like they haven’t shaved or bathed. This conceptualization of celebrity might have more than anything to do with why I got involved in college radio and started championing independent music. In short, these people seem like they could be friends and I tend to lionize my friends, particularly the ones who write, teach, and take action.
I read Ann Powers obsessively in middle school, and she led me to the late, great Ellen Willis. Some folks whose work I enjoy are Molly Lambert, Maura Johnston, Audra Schroeder, Laina Dawes, Sady Doyle, Stacy Konkiel, Jenny Woolworth, Tom Ewing, Jessica Hopper, Latoya Peterson, Carrie Brownstein, Nelson George, Julie Zeilinger, Jennifer Kelly, Alex Ross, John Leland, John Savage, Simon Reynolds, Joy Press, Patrick Neate, Caroline Coon, Tricia Rose, and the contributors at I Fry Mine in Butter, Sadie Magazine, and Elevate Difference.
I also have a sneaking suspicion that I’d be friends with Jody Rosen and Rob Sheffield-the former because he seems to want someone to argue with him about his absurd love for Brad Paisley and the latter because of our boundless love for new wave girls.
4.) Who are your favorite participants, broadly speaking, in the history of stardom, and why?
5.) You can only be best friends with one person in all of celebritude, past and present. Who? How did you two meet? What’s your favorite thing to do together?
6.) You can only date one person in all of celebritude, past and present. Who? Where would you first date be? What would he/she get you for your birthday?
Ack — of all time? But crushes come and go. Jeff Buckley is my longest-standing crush, but I’m going to leave him out of this because it’s none of your business what we do with our free time. Suffice it to say I like short boys because we can share clothes.
Dating also connotes a certain innocence. If that were the case, I’d like to gallivant with Donald Glover and pump the new Childish Gambino mix before I appear as a guest on Troy and Abed in the Morning. But his star is rising and I don’t know how much free time he has. Also, our connection would seem like the kind honors students might have on a school trip, meaning nothing under the shirt and lights out by midnight.
But if we’re taking innocence out of the situation, it’s Leisha Hailey with our guitars and her gift to me would be reinking the arm tattoo she had removed.
7.) Who do you regard as the lowest depth of celebritude?
9.) What is the greatest/most bombastic moment of celebrity ever?
(Example: A-Rod posing for a photo shoot as a centaur)
10.) Where do you get gossip on your celebrities of interest? Explain more?
11.) How do celebrities and stardom relate to your own work/extra-work activities?
12.) Why is celebrity culture — and our attention, analysis, and discussion of it — important
Guest Post! Pioneer Woman: Betty Crocker for the Digital Age
The following post is from Melanie Haupt, a PhD candidate in English at UT, freelance writer, and blogger extraordinaire. You can find her Celebrity Proust Questionnaire here.
Anne (or, shall I say, DR. PETERSEN) has already done a lot of work here explaining and analyzing how the star image works within the context of Hollywood (I am using “Hollywood” here as a catch-all for the system she describes). I’m here to talk about the Pioneer Woman from a feminist food studies perspective; part of this blog entry is an excerpt from my dissertation, which looks at how women use recipes, cookbooks, food blogs, and other texts to make themselves and their communities of meaning visible both within and outside of the context of domesticity.
In the spring 2011 issue of Bitch magazine, an article contending with the phenomenon of mommy bloggers complained that when Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, appears on the Today show to make cinnamon rolls, she is never asked to discuss her success as a self-made media juggernaut. Rather, she is constrained within the identity of “Mommy” (or some other similarly domesticity-entrenched image) rather than celebrated for her professional success. Sarah McAbee writes,
Despite the complexity of these blogging powerhouses, the mainstream media seems content to categorize them as just, well, moms. Not professional bloggers, not businesspeople, not brands in and of themselves. [...] By emphasizing the domestic and ignoring the professional aspects of these figures, the media ensures that even the blogosphere’s mommy moguls fit neatly into the dominant pop culture narrative in which women have to choose between the competing world of family and career/creative work. Instead, bloggers like [Heather] Armstrong [of Dooce.com] and Drummond have actually made a business of their home life, blurring the boundaries between the domestic and the public spheres.
Well, yes and no. Of course the Pioneer Woman is going to talk about making cinnamon rolls on the Today show, because the Pioneer Woman is a product, not a person. No one is going to tune in to Oprah or a morning magazine news show to hear a woman talk about how she became a media mogul, because the identity of “media mogul” doesn’t fit the persona Ree Drummond has created for herself in the Pioneer Woman. In other words, I don’t think that the Pioneer Woman’s Today show cooking segments are part of some media conspiracy to keep women barefoot and homeschooling in the kitchen. Rather, they are way stations on the trajectory of professional development that Ree Drummond has plotted for herself as a celebrity blogger.
Laura Shapiro, in Something From the Oven (2005), describes the genesis of “live trademarks” in 1950s America that gave rise to the phenomenon of fictional female characters serving as home economics advisers to befuddled housewives. These contrived home economists included Mary Blake for Carnation Evaporated Milk, Chiquita Banana of United Fruit, Mary Alden and Aunt Jemima of Quaker Oats, and, of course, Betty Crocker of General Mills. These characters “were designed to project specific, carefully researched characteristics to women shopping for their households. ‘Ideally, the corporate character is a woman, between the ages of 32 and 40, attractive but not competitively so, mature but youthful-looking, competent yet warm, understanding but not sentimental, interested in the consumer but not involved with her’” (30). The image of Betty Crocker was crafted by General Mills in response to countless housewives writing in needing troubleshooting tips and advice for baking cakes, pies, and biscuits; “The company saw this as a good chance to communicate with customers, so home economists on staff answered every letter, signing them all ‘Betty Crocker’” (32). Some might argue that in addition to serving as the genesis of the live trademark, but also that of conversation marketing, in which a company strikes up a social relationship with the consumer. With that relationship came increased trust and, naturally, increased sales:
General Mills could see that Betty Crocker was unparalleled when it came to reaching homemakers and building trust in the company. The phenomenal success of Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, published in 1950 with a then record-breaking first printing of nearly a million copies, showed just how much home cooks wanted the simply phrased reassurance and reliable advice they associated with her name. (Shapiro 34)
Betty Crocker is best known today as the symbolic figure on the cake-mix box, although Adelaide Cummings portrayed her from 1949-1964 in Betty’s various television appearances, delivering the carefully mediated combination of sentiment, empathy, authority, and references to General Mills products for which her constructed image had become known. Ultimately, Betty’s job was to demystify the process of cooking via emphasizing convenience items like cake mixes, enabling women to unchain themselves from the kitchen while continuing to lovingly provide their families with homemade foods.
Similarly, Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, is a mediated image dedicated (in part) to helping people who are uncomfortable in the kitchen discover a love of cooking via her step-by-step instructional cooking entries. She shares stories of embarrassment and silly behavior, offers up gift suggestions, hosts giveaways of expensive items paid for by revenue generated by the site, and promotes a community of sameness that invites the reader to identify with the Pioneer Woman’s foibles. Only in this case, rather than providing the humanized face of a giant corporation, the brand behind the living trademark is Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman herself.
And yet, this has not always been the case with the Pioneer Woman. Where the blogger named Ree Drummond, writing in 2006 and 2007, frequently uses mild profanity; writes long, revealing entries in which she shares disturbing or humorous episodes from her past; and describes herself as a “malcontented, angst-ridden desperate housewife” (May 12, 2006), the blogger known as the Pioneer Woman writes pithy, self-deprecating entries that follow an established formula and adhere to a consistently breezy tone. However, because the archives of the blog’s early days are still relatively intact, readers can piece together a very different portrait of Ree Drummond, separate from the highly polished, mediated image of the Pioneer Woman of today. For example, the poetry populating the blog’s earliest entries, a series Drummond titled “Poetry of a Madwoman” and presented in “volumes,” is surprisingly candid and evocative. For example, “Volume 7,” published May 12, 2006, reads,
I’m a pool of flesh.
A puddle of exhaustion on the dirty tile floor.
I can’t get up.
I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.
I have no button on a chain around my neck
With which to summon help.
Would that I did so I could be whisked away
In an ambulance.
Sirens blaring.
People staring.
I’d ask them to drop me off at a hotel.
Room service.
Maid service.
Laundry service.
Two days of this heaven
And I’d muster the strength to carry on. Until next month.
Here Drummond expresses a deep sense of fatigue stemming from her duties as a housewife and mother and evokes the pathos of the Life Alert medical protection system commercials that feature feeble elderly people in dangerous positions after falling down. Unlike the people in the commercial, the enfeebled-by-housework Drummond does not have the safety net provided by the electronic assistance alert, and has no one to help her. She expresses a desire to spend two days alone in a hotel where there are staff to assume the duties she is responsible for on a daily basis: cooking, cleaning, and laundry. The underlying mood is that of a woman dissatisfied and exhausted by the grueling and repetitive duties incumbent upon her as a stay-at-home mother. While the tone is somewhat wry, the subtext is that the work of the housewife is Sisyphean and thankless.
A few days later, “Volume 9” (May 22, 2006) reveals a similar dissatisfaction with her body:
I’m fat
So very fat.
These thirteen bastard pounds
Cling to my gut
Like a marsupial suckling.
My thin, shapely legs
Are mankind’s greatest deception.
Just travel north a foot or two
And a blubbery hell awaits.
Bring me cheese.
Fresh mozzarella cheese.
And chocolate by the load.
I’m nothing but a toad.
I’m fat.
Here Drummond ventriloquizes the self-loathing women are expected to express when they carry excess weight, and humorously expresses the tension between feeling anxious about that extra weight and wanting to feed that anxiety with chocolate and cheese. This stands in contrast to the self-deprecating tone Drummond takes in regard to her love handles and jiggly arms in her mediated “Pioneer Woman” image.
This cheery, self-deprecating version of the Pioneer Woman, I should note, is wildly popular. She is wildly popular not because the recipes are particularly remarkable – her repertoire includes chocolate mousse made from Hershey bars, cornbread, cinnamon rolls, chicken spaghetti, all very Midwestern, middle-class fare — or that homeschooling is particularly remarkable, but because she has crafted an online persona that women have responded to almost universally. The site garners more than 20 million hits per month. In a recently published New Yorker profile, Drummond reluctantly admits to bringing in more than $1 million from the site alone (who knows how much she’s netting from the advances and royalties from her books, any Food Network revenue, and Hollywood development deals).
The Pioneer Woman Cooks became a New York Times bestseller and was one of Amazon.com’s Top 10 books of 2010. When Drummond (along with her husband and children) appeared at BookPeople in Austin to promote her cookbook in December 2009, the second floor of the bookstore was packed and people waited in line for more than an hour to get their cookbooks signed. Black Heels to Tractor Wheels was a bestseller on Amazon.com before its February 1, 2011 release. In short, in five years’ time, the Pioneer Woman has become a cultural juggernaut among middle-class American women in an increasingly urbanized country. What’s disturbing about this is the absolute balls-out insanity she inspires in her fan base. At the aforementioned BookPeople event, the crowd chanted, football game style, “Pioneer!” “Woman!” “Pioneer!” “Woman!” When she came down the stairs, you would have thought the Beatles — even the dead ones — were re-enacting the British Invasion. And when Drummond took to the podium to speak, she said absolutely nothing. Oh, she said words, but they were completely devoid of meaning or interest … sort of like on her blog.
Penelope Trunk argues that Pioneer Woman engages in “housewife porn” and has created an online space in which no one ever fights with their spouse about money or is overwhelmed by the laundry (although Drummond does make joking allusions to a never-ending pile of laundry). Women, says Trunk, “don’t want to see themselves reflected back to them.” However, this only explains part of Pioneer Woman’s appeal to women of her approximate demographic. When it comes to the Pioneer Woman, women like to see themselves reflected back to them, because she has cultivated such an affable, folksy image. On the Pioneer Woman’s Facebook fan page, Drummond posts the occasional frivolous status update, like this one from November 10, 2010: “I think I’ll actually do my hair today instead of tying it in a knot and fastening it with a pencil.” This one-line status update garnered hundreds of responses (and “Likes”), including “omg, I do the pencil thing too,” “Mine has a pencil in it right now,” “I resemble that remark,” “That’s my favorite way to do my hair, though,” and “i thought the pencilled knot WAS doing our hair!” Many respondents adopted a tone of familiarity, as though they were addressing a close girlfriend: “oooooo, Miss Fancy!” “Now don’t go crazy. Next you’ll be spraying Sun-In and teasing.” “you go girl!” “Now, now, no need to get all fancy on us!” Women responded with staggering enthusiasm in response to seeing some aspect of their experience, however trivial, reflected back to them via the Pioneer Woman image.
However, this image is tinged with cynicism. The philosopher Kenneth Burke writes in A Rhetoric of Motives (1950):
The extreme heterogeneity of modern life, however, combined with the nature of modern postal agencies, brings up another kind of possibility: the systematic attempt to carve out an audience, as the commercial rhetorician looks not merely for persuasive devices in general, but for the topics that will appeal to the particular “income group” most likely to be interested in his product, or able to buy it. (64)
This aspect of identification is crucial to persuasion and, within the market, cookbook (or romance novel or children’s book) sales, not to mention ad revenue generated simply by surfing to thepioneerwoman.com. So, if Pioneer Woman holds her hair in place with a pencil and I, too, hold my hair in place with a pencil, I identify with Pioneer Woman and feel greater kinship with her. The more kinship I feel with Pioneer Woman, the more likely I am to purchase The Pioneer Woman Cooks ($27.50), Black Heels to Tractor Wheels ($25.99), and Charlie the Ranch Dog (a forthcoming children’s book based on Drummond’s beloved Bassett hound, Charlie, who is featured extensively on the website; $16.99). The success of the Pioneer Woman model depends not on women identifying with the exhausted woman in a puddle on the filthy tile floor, but on identifying with the woman who jokes about her jiggly arms or idly contemplates dyeing a blue streak into her hair. Women will spend money on someone who gives voice to their own insecurities without the inconvenience of meaningful engagement with painful issues.
I see two major reasons behind Pioneer Woman’s appeal to readers. The first is that she (the mediated image) represents an idealized woman, a frontier version of the angel in the house with a 21st-century twist, one who offers up domesticity as escapist entertainment. She offers a nostalgic image of a pastoral Midwestern existence that, while a simulacrum, has found traction in a nation that is increasingly urbanized. Second, in the process of “keepin’ it real,” Drummond-as-Pioneer-Woman regurgitates hegemonic tropes of femininity and masculinity in that she frequently posts worshipful entries extolling her husband’s virtues, which include his chaps-clad rear end and muscular forearms; additionally, her pet name for him, Marlboro Man, conjures up images of rugged Western masculinity and virility while also gesturing toward an iconic advertising campaign for the Marlboro cigarette brand. At the same time, the matrix of feminized domesticity she constructs through her posts about cooking, her children, homeschooling, and home-related product recommendations such as quilts and jewelry-storage systems reinforces the image of Drummond as the angel in the (ranch) house, attending to all things domestic while her rugged, virile, Dr. Pepper-swilling husband attends to manly things outdoors, like working cows and castrating male calves. As the evolution of the blog suggests in its movement from the emotionally visceral to the imaginary, it is in the imaginary that the Pioneer Woman finds her audience. A recent entry (“Ten Important Matters,” January 26, 2011) featured three separate (and previously published) photographs of Marlboro Man’s leather chaps-clad rear end, and dozens of commenters left messages of thanks for these snapshots. Pioneer Woman’s readers vicariously derive pleasure from these images because they identify with Drummond and, therefore, have some claim on Marlboro Man themselves.
This is the relationship that keeps fans flocking to Drummond’s website: she offers up an idealized vision of domestic life, one in which the housewife gripes cheerfully about her neverending chores, extols the virtues of her adorable children, and gives voice to her unwavering desire for her hunk o’ burning love husband. It’s also a vision of idealized whiteness, which I find the most troubling, given Drummond’s runaway success. In the current (May 9, 2011) issue of The New Yorker magazine, Amanda Fortini offers up a profile of Drummond, and describes how the blogger edits a digital photograph of her son:
She deepened the colors, rendering his skin alabaster white, his lips rosebud pink, and his eyes a lovely but artificial shade of blue. Critics complain that her pictures are so digitally enhanced that they distort reality, but that’s the point. She’s painting a fantasyland, where everything — flowers, quilts, kids, hotel rooms on her book tour — looks like dessert.
(image borrowed from thepioneerwoman.com)
This passage took my breath away. It was an aspect of the site that I had not yet noticed or analyzed, probably due to the blind spots of my own white privilege, but there it is, in vivid, living color: Whiteness as dessert. But that’s sort of the narrative of pioneering itself, isn’t it? The pioneers (think Laura Ingalls) are romanticized icons of Western progress, fighting harsh weather, uncertain food supplies, and — worst of all — Indians (*gasp*) in order to realize the promise set forth by Manifest Destiny. The American Dream, while certainly accessible to and enacted by all Americans, is rooted in a rhetoric of whiteness.
So, when Drummond tells Fortini that, “I’m an example that you should never assume that where you are in life or what you’re doing is going to remain exactly as it is forever. If this can happen to me, who knows what you might be capable of doing?” she unwittingly gestures to the 19th century strain of American exceptionalism that believed in white folks’ divine right of conquest. Go West, young man! Come and take it! Anything is possible if you just put your mind to it! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps! Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses!
But even Betty Crocker eventually reflected the “melting pot”:
On the left, Betty Crocker in 1936; on the right, in 1996, a composite of 75 women's faces
Dooce Living
Today’s guest post comes from frequent contributor Alaina Smith, who first introduced me to Dooce’s particular brand of Jack-Mormon, dog-mortifying humor more than five years ago.
Heather Armstrong founded Dooce.com in February, 2001 when she was a single, 28 year-old working as a web designer in L.A. A year later, she was fired from that job, after a co-worker forwarded the link to her blog to the vice presidents of her company.
The incident was picked up on Metafiler, and thus, “dooced” - getting fired from your job because of content on your personal website - entered the modern lexicon. Heather and her husband moved from LA to Salt Lake City to be near their families shortly thereafter, where Heather supplemented writing with freelance design work until she began earning enough advertising revenue to blog full time.
In the last decade, Armstrong’s blog has grown up with her. Heather married her boyfriend, moved back to Mormon country, bought a house, and had two children. What started as the cynical, self-conscious musings of a good-girl-gone-bad, who had escaped her Southern, Mormon, upbringing to drink whiskey and listen to Interpol in LA, morphed into one of the world’s most popular mommy blogs.
When Armstrong had her first child in 2004, she wrote with painful honesty and a wicked sense of humor about both the joy and overwhelming confusion of new parenthood. She also chronicled her battle with post-partum depression – she was diagnosed with clinical depression prior to her pregnancy – including her stay in a mental hospital when her first daughter was six months old. Her trademark style –overshare so funny it’s endearing coupled with gorgeous photographs – and her willingness to admit how hard parenthood often is, endeared her to millions of readers. Many of them were mothers themselves, who expressed their gratitude that someone was finally writing honestly about modern parenthood. (There are also many, many people who despise Heather Armstrong. She and other popular mommy bloggers have entire hate sites devoted to them - but that’s a whole other post.)
Dooce.com is now the full time job of both Heather and her husband, Jon. The blog supports an online community and a merchandise store. Heather is the author of a bestselling book, was named by Forbes as one of the 30 most influential women in media in 2009, and just signed an exclusive development deal with HGTV.
Even though her notoriety has grown immensely over the last decade, Heather Armstrong has maintained a tightly controlled brand. She does not contribute regularly to any publication – online or print – other than her own blog. She has authored only one book, and has not signed any product endorsement deals. Her media appearances have generally addressed only parenthood or blogging. She still blogs about the mundane details of daily life; four recent posts discussed a new necklace, her husband’s fender bender, the party favors at her daughter’s sixth birthday party, and her family’s Sunday morning tradition of baking and eating cinnamon rolls.
The Forbes list of powerful women in Media includes many of the top female journalists in America. The rest are women who appear on lifestyle television, where they tell American women, not just subconsciously, but directly, how to be: Oprah, Tyra Banks, Martha Stewart, Kelly Ripa, Rachel Ray, the ladies of The View.
In the past, Armstrong has strongly denied accusations that she uses her popularity to influence her readers or “bully” companies – see her very detailed, explanatory post following a Twitter firestorm that erupted when she tweeted, to over a million followers, that consumers should boycott Maytag appliances. She also fiercely guards her right to raise her children without depending on the approval of her readers. FAQ number one on her website reads:
Should I send you unsolicited advice?
No.
In a recent post entitled “Check Up for Self Delusion,” Penelope Trunk, another popular female blogger, recently wrote, “Probably the most accurate representation of women is in the blogosphere. There is no filter here, no need to appeal to both Peoria and Pasadena all at once.” She goes on to compare Dooce.com with an even more popular mommy blog, The Pioneer Woman.
“The Pioneer Woman is largely housewife porn. The men are hot and rugged, just like in a romance novel. The author, Ree Drummond, is running an operation similar to Rachel Ray or Martha Stewart, but she markets herself as a stay-at-home mom […] The Pioneer Woman’s traffic is absolutely through the roof, proving the appeal of preposterous escapism. Dooce, on the other hand, is more gritty, and has about half the traffic of Pioneer Woman. [...] I think the truth is that women don’t want to see themselves reflected back to them.”
As Annie has written extensively, the appeal of most popular celebrities, especially female celebrities, lies in our simultaneous identification with and envy of them. The women of lifestyle television must maintain a similar appeal: we identify with Rachel Ray’s desire to make dinner in 30 minutes, but we envy how easy she makes it look.
Heather Armstong is the only internet personality on the Forbes list, one who has built her career on telling us how she IS, vs. how we should BE. Rather than developing an identifiable-yet-enviable star persona, she has built a brand around the precept that Heather the blogger IS Heather the person - if you don’t like it, don’t read it. Her argument seems to be that any influence she has is a byproduct of personal transparency combined with exposure born of popularity - and she has managed her brand as such.
By signing a deal with HGTV, Armstrong has entered new territory - where she will use her brand to develop programming and sell advertising. If the blogosphere offers the least mediated version of American womanhood, its media darling just sold herself to perhaps the most mediated arena in American womanhood: lifestyle television.
All photos sourced from Dooce.com. Heather, if you read this, please don’t sue us - we will take the photos down if we need to.
The Hills Are Alive – with Tragedy
(Today’s Guest Post comes from Liz Ellcessor, a Ph.D. student in media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconson-Madison. Find her fantastic blog at Dis/Embody.)
The latest stage in the neverending, intertextual, multimedia, and much-maligned rise of the stars of MTV’s “reality” series The Hills has centered on Heidi Montag Pratt’s extensive plastic surgery. “10 Procedures at Once!” People, trumpeted, complete with a quotation from Heidi that she is “addicted” to plastic surgery – a believable claim, as this is at least the third set of procedures the 23 year old has had done since emerging on the celebrity scene (a nose job and bigger breasts preceded the most recent improvements).
There has been quite a bit coverage of the stars of The Hills during its 5 seasons. Castmembers including Heidi, her husband Spencer Pratt, Audrina Patridge, Stephanie Pratt, Whitney Port and Brody Jenner have been the subjects - and financial beneficiaries – of celebrity tabloids, particularly US Weekly. Hills star Lauren Conrad, has appeared on more “respectable” covers, as well, including Seventeen, Entertainment Weekly and Cosmopolitan. Heidi and her husband, Spencer Pratt, are largely excluded from these venues, where other co-stars sometimes appear, as well as from cast events that Conrad attends. Due to feud after the second season – involving Lauren, a sex tape, Perez Hilton, and some tasteless interviews by Spencer – subsequent seasons of The Hills largely kept the couple apart from the putative star of the series, cordoning them off in their own plots and excluding them from promotional activities that involved Conrad. Since Conrad’s departure from the show, the Pratts have had a more significant presence, but Heidi was still denied the “starring” role as narrator, a part given to Conrad’s Laguna Beach nemesis Kristin Cavalleri.
Yet, Heidi and Spencer are perhaps the most visible Hills cast members in contemporary celebrity culture. Through their Twitter accounts, Heidi’s music career and Miss Universe performance, appearances on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, a boisterous public religiosity, interviews with David Letterman and a close relationship with Perez Hilton (plus their own hired paparazzi), Speidi are available for consumption at every click of the mouse, push of a button, and trip to the grocery store. Spencer attributes their pop cultural success to their willingness (particularly his) to play the part of the villain, engendering a love-to-hate-them response that carries an audience from outrageous fake Mexican wedding to outrageous fake LA wedding to multiple plastic surgeries.
While this villainous narrative is certainly a part of the plot of The Hills, particularly seasons 3-5, it is most certainly more directly applicable to Spencer than to Heidi – while his vitriol towards Conrad spewed forth, Heidi seemed to retain a desire to regain her friendship with Conrad, and seemed uncomfortable with some of Spencer’s more outré anti-social behavior. Having rewatched early seasons of The Hills recently, I want to suggest an alternative reading of the program and its extensions into gossip blogs and tabloid publications. Removing our focus from the aspirational elements and relatable themes of young women trying to make it in the big city, Heidi’s “character” – a version of herself and her star text - emerges as a potential tragic figure, undercutting the spectacle of the program and her own celebrity with a sense of impending doom.
During the first season of The Hills, Heidi was the second lead. Living with new best friend Lauren Conrad, attending school before beginning a new job, meeting a new boyfriend, and acting as a supportive friend to Lauren’s pathos, Heidi was charming. She was funny, she liked dogs, and while she may have seemed a little professionally unfocused, she carried a youthful optimism and was an important part of the show’s emerging dynamic. Yet, even in these early shows – and her brief appearance in Laguna Beach a retrospective view clearly illuminates what will become Heidi’s tragic flaw – like Macbeth’s, it seems to be ambition. In Heidi’s case, the ambition is not necessarily for a kingdom, but for attention and fame. Her runway kiss with Cavalleri, her desire for a music career, dropping out of college for a PR job, changing her appearance – all seem to point to a young woman eager to be popular, visible, adored.
As Shakespeare’s Macbeth killed the king, Duncan, with the encouragement of Lady Macbeth, giving his ambition full flower and leading to his downfall, Heidi’s ambition bloomed with her relationship with Spencer. In the context of The Hills, Heidi could never become the star – it remained Conrad’s show, and when Heidi moved out at the end of season two (to live with Spencer, whom Conrad disliked), it dramatically shifted her out of the central plots. Short of killing Conrad, what were an ambitious reality starlet and her celebrity hanger-on of a boyfriend to do?
By all appearances, Spencer used the time between seasons to take the text of The Hills well outside the borders of the MTV storyworld and tell the world a different story. Using Perez Hilton to get his message out to the public, Spencer asserted that rich-girl-next-door Conrad had made a sex tape with her drug-addicted ex-boyfriend. This attempt to tarnish Conrad’s image - complete with some extremely personal insults – could have utterly changed the direction of The Hills and Heidi and Spencer’s future success. Had it worked, had audiences turned on Conrad and MTV have released her to cut their losses, Heidi was still in a strong position as the second female lead – the show could easily have reoriented around her story. Though Spencer’s role in the sex tape rumor has been largely acknowledged, Heidi’s possible participation in or support is unclear – in an infamous scene, Conrad screams at Heidi, “you know what you did!”, but, in fact, we don’t know what Heidi did. Did she calculate that professional success, acclaim and attention were worth whatever falling out might ensue with her television friend? Did she turn herself over to a pernicious influence in the form of Spencer, her very own Lady Macbeth?
In the end, this ploy failed – Conrad and the boyfriend denied the rumors, MTV stood behind its proven star, and Heidi and Spencer were increasingly pushed to the periphery of the show. From this position, their newly chosen role as “villains” emerged, as Spencer continued to lambast “LC” and encourage Heidi to revel in the ended friendship. Within the show, Heidi’s discomfort with this was visible in her stated desire to reconnect with Conrad, in her desire for female friendships generally, in her dissatisfaction with her relationship with Spencer – even as they moved toward marriage, the couple fought openly and constantly. Additionally, though, Heidi’s on-screen presence lost its verve and charm. She seemed an increasingly wooden actress going through the motions, as she probably was, given the largely scripted or directed nature of the program. Was Heidi uncomfortable in this story, in this representation of self and image that would follow her outside the television screen?
The sex tape scandal is illustrative of the rise of Speidi outside The Hills as well, as it marked the moment when the extratextual, multiplatform, gossipy discussion surrounding the series became more interesting than what the dream-like reality soap opera could deliver. Suddenly, the “real” story of The Hills was always already happening – events transpired in the tabloids months before they aired, in edited form, on television. Here, then, Heidi and Spencer could shine – generating tabloid stories, staged photo opportunities, new music videos, and more, the couple found an alternative path to achieving a degree of celebrity notoriety. Ambition, then, was realized.
But, as Speidi’s antics evolve, this retrospective reading of Heidi as a tragic character primes us to wonder about her (inevitable?) fall. At what point will the ambition that drove her so far – ending relationships, losing status, staging PR stunts, releasing embarrassing music, getting extensive plastic surgery – begin to harm her? And at that point, what is the responsibility of those of us who watched her transformation from afar? Given the bodily extremity of Heidi’s latest news cycle, the tragic sense of doom seems all the more palpable, and the fall all the more imminent.
Our Golden Globes Hangover
Today’s post features a roundtable of various scholars from the Twitter media studies universe, all of whom (myself included) are invested in the Globes for rather different reasons. Read on — and make sure to weigh on the question posed at post’s end.
Hollywood’s only shining moment of the night
Annie:
I’m going to go ahead and say it: this year’s Globes was a game changer. And while it isn’t in any way predictive of who will actually win the Oscar (or the Emmy), this year’s show was markedly different than those of past years. Different, and, in my humble celebrity opinion, worse. It was more transparently commercial — and the artists involved registered their cognizance of that commerciality (and the general practice of studio bribing) accordingly. (See Nikki Finke’s incisive take down here). To my mind, even though it aired from 5-8 on the West Coast, it had all the trappings of NBC primetime: unfunny, trite, and throwaway. The electricity and spontaneity the Globes historically connote: gone. Here’s a brief break-down of what went wrong.
1.) Gervais stunk. I’m sure we’ll elaborate on this further, but let’s just agree that his particular brand of humor did not lend itself well to the Globes format.
2.) At the risk of sounding elitist — and again, this is a point that we’ll have to discuss at length — several wrong things won for all the wrong reasons. The wins for Glee, Robert Downey Jr., Sandra Bullock, Up in the Air, or Avatar made this much abundantly clear. Now, I’m not saying that I don’t like Glee or RDJ, or that I didn’t appreciate most of Up in the Air, or that I don’t value the achievement and innovation of Avatar. Heck, I even kinda sorta like Sandra Bullock. But they weren’t the best in their categories — that much is near universally agreed upon. They’re popular and likable, but not the best. Which is why I repeatedly Tweeted that this year’s Globes were resembling The People’s Choice awards — not lauds from a group of critics. I’m particularly incensed by Bigelow and Mulligan’s losses.
3.) 90% of the celebrities were wooden. There was obviously not enough champagne drinking going on. Maybe it was the rain? The general spark and spontaneity generally associated with the Globes was gone, and I blame James Cameron’s massive ego for sucking all the oxygen out of the air. When Robert De Niro has the best and juiciest speech (okay, okay, rivaled by that of RDJ) you know something’s off. There was no Pitt Porn, there were few bitch faces (save that of Jessica Lange, who gave two excellent ones — one for Drew (who didn’t even thank her) and another for Cameron’s trite call to “pat ourselves on the back.”) There was one moment when it looked like George Clooney’s Italian Queen was perhaps giving him a happy ending under the table, but they cut away too quickly.
4.) No really. Nothing exciting happened. I thought we were headed for greatness when the now-skeletal Felicity Huffman went off the rails in the early moments of the ceremony, but hers was the last gaff of the evening. I also loved Julia Roberts vintage asshole behavior during the red carpet — with Tom Hanks by her side, she made fun of NBC and yelled “who’s Natalie?!?” when Billy Bush decided to cut his losses and leave them be. But shots of her flirting with Paul McCartney simply couldn’t salvage a dry night.
5.) And I blame the director. Of the broadcast, that is. There was a paucity of choice reaction shots. There were all sorts of opportunities to catch the stars reacting poorly — when Gervais was digging on writers, say — but there was a lot of rushed panning and random celebrities. Why couldn’t we have more shots of William Hurt’s beard? Like all the time? Enough of Julia’s smile and Meryl looking quietly bemused. Let’s get some extended Clooney nookie action, or at least Cameron passive aggressively looking out the corner of his eye at how hot his exwife still is.
It’s like a party where you drank a lot and know you’ll be hungover the next day, but didn’t actually get the feel the joyful and giddy pleasures of being intoxicated. And that’s just the worst. Almost as bad, that is, as Sandra Bullock winning Best Actress for a movie about white people saving black people.
Myles McNutt (Graduate Student, TV Critic/Blogger)
I don’t want to sound as if I’m speaking out in support of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but I think it’s important to clarify that this is not, in fact, a group of critics. They are (primarily) members of the press and little more, closer to tabloid reporters than to a Roger Ebert (not to suggest that Ebert himself is perfect, but he is unquestionably a critic and not a reporter). Perhaps it’s because I’ve spent so much time in the past ranting about how the HFPA fetishizes the new, continues to elevate HBO over the rest of television, and somehow has never realized how inane their supporting acting categories are, but I’ve come to the point where I’m almost rooting for the Globes to go off in bizarre directions.
The problem is that, while most of us have written off the show, the industry has not: the Globes have an influence on the Oscar race (Bullock, for example, is now guaranteed an Oscar nomination), and every star (except for Robert Downey Jr., who revealed the “HFPA are nuts” line of argumentation in his speech) thanks the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as if they are a voting body that deserves to be recognized as a legitimate sign of a film/show/star’s quality. I don’t blame them for this, but I do always worry about providing the show any sense of legitimacy. I might, in a bubble, be fine with Sandra Bullock’s win in terms of the Globes being the only non-fan-voted awards show crazy enough to give her an award for making history as the only woman to topline a film earning more than $200 Million, but I’m not so fine with the idea that her performance could knock out a more deserving competitor (Mulligan is safe, I think) come the Oscars.
What’s convenient about viewing the show from a primarily television perspective, however, is that they have extremely little impact: their love for things which are popular or airing on cable means that few shows are going to be “rescued” by a Golden Globe win, and because there’s such a long gap before the Emmys (and because the Supporting categories are organized so differently) there’s really no correlation. So on that front, I’m sort of glad Glee won a Golden Globe, since its chances of coming close to winning an Emmy are slim; the Globes sit in that liminal space between popular and legitimate, and I think that defines Glee almost perfectly, so it feels “right” (in so much as it feels kind of wrong, but in a way that I’ve come to accept).
I agree with Annie that Gervais was a failure, and would argue it was a combination of both the format not being built for a host (too many categories, too little time to develop rhythms) and Gervais not bothering to try very hard (which I expand upon here). And while there may not have been much exciting happening in the ballroom itself, I thought there was some great banter on Twitter: without the online engagement, I probably would have found the show excruciating. In the end, though, I guess my expectations were such that what we saw felt almost comfortably precisely, and I guess my Golden Globes-related cynicism might finally be close to depletion.
Hopefully next year will provide a refill - I don’t like being the closest thing we might have to an HFPA advocate.
Noel Kirkpatrick (Graduate Student, Blogger)
This had to be the dullest, least surprising Golden Globes in…well…forever (was no one drinking?!). Which is odd, since the thought of Ricky Gervais hosting had all of us very excited. In fact, that Gervais wasn’t very entertaining was probably the biggest surprise of the evening. The Globes don’t have the leisurely pace of the Oscars, and Gervais has always taken over an awards presentation in a leisurely way. There’s no room for him to do his awkward comedy bits (with Steve Carell) when you have to move so briskly. It’s that scruffy, pig-nosed guy coming in from nowhere and tweaking the institution that makes us laugh, not him getting swallowed into it.
I’ve never been a fan of how the Globe organizes its dining tables, and it’s telling. The television folks feel scattered, sometimes way in the back, while the cinema folks are all very up front, easily shot for the cameras (though, the camera work in this telecast was ABYSMAL). It perpetuates this sense of stratification between cinema and television. Indeed, the telecast not only does it with its seating chart, but how it presents awards. The television awards are mostly up first, instead of scattered throughout. Why? To keep the audience, that they assume cares more about movies, watching to see who will win. (Even more telling is the presence of an award for lifetime work in film but not one for television.) This is a well stood upon soapbox, so I won’t belabor the point any longer save to say that people watch these award shows on TV, not on a silver screen and that matters. (Or it should matter more.)
Interestingly, however, I think this ties back into the elitism that Annie mentions. I can’t comment on most of the film winners simply because I haven’t seen most of the nominees, and neither did/could most of the people watching from home (How many people in the home audience saw An Education? My mother hadn’t even heard of The Hurt Locker). Yes, it’s not the People’s Choice Awards, but Bullock, Downey, Jr., and Cameron essentially, as Myles noted in the Twitter conversation, bought their Globes with box office dollars, not with merit. Perhaps in the face of sagging award show ratings, the HFPA decided to do the arty television (notice that we’re not really chiding them for their television votes (except for ignoring Neil Patrick Harris, c’mon people!)) and the mainstream movies to keep people viewing.
I personally always tune in for drunk celebrities.
Lindsay H. Garrison (Ph.D. student, blogger):
So the celebrities weren’t drunk, but the broadcast’s director could have been. So many shaky floor shots and awkward zooms - all for boring reactions and rushed walks to the podium. I’m with Annie: more of William Hurt’s beard, please.
The People’s Choice Awards Golden Globes were less than spectacular last night, with surprising wins that seemed more like picking the quarterback and the head cheerleader for homecoming court than the best acting talent or films. But I’m not sure I’d go as far as calling this a game-changer. While it’s easy to dismiss the HFPA for voting Avatar best picture along with Sandy B. and Meryl as best actresses (in a drama and comedy/musical, respectively), there were at least a few other head nods that didn’t seem like total celebrity suck-up: Best Original Song could have gone to U2 or Paul McCartney, but Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett took home the trophy for Crazy Heart. Jeff Bridges won over George Clooney for Best Actor. (Okay, that’s a stretch; Jeff Bridges isn’t a total ingenue, but his speech was great - who else thanks their stand-in?) Seriously, though. Yes, the Globes felt flat and too mainstream this year, but I’m not sure the Globes were ever really a truly magical event that their mediocrity is something I’m going to mourn for too long. I think their role as an Oscar barometer and box office nudger are still intact.
I mean, Avatar was already a clear front-runner for Best Picture; The Hurt Locker, Inglorious Basterds, and Precious have already made their Oscar mark with dominating wins at the Critic’s Choice Awards. I’m not sure this totally means Oscar failure for them or necessarily guarantees a win for Cameron and Avatar. Streep was already a front runner in the actress category, and yes, Bullock’s win does perhaps make her more of a stronger contender to Streep. So, we’ll see. But in the meantime, here are my thoughts on other parts of last night’s broadcast.
Notable TV win: Julianna Margulies for The Good Wife (in its first season on CBS). Margulies finally wins after being nominated six times for her work on E.R. (did you see her get a congratulatory kiss from George Clooney? Oh, Dr. Ross and Nurse Hathaway.) But The Good Wife is a show that intrigues me; there’s something about it that I really like, but something that keeps me from all-out loving it. Just renewed for its second season, its win here will hopefully allow Margulies and team to develop the show further and let it find its stride.
Most Wheels-Off Presentations: Harrison Ford looked like he hated being there and just wanted to go to bed (hopefully video will find its way online soon). Felicity Huffman could hardly get the words out of her mouth, and Taylor Lautner could hardly be heard over everyone still talking in the ballroom. Presenting the award for Best Comedy suited him well, but even on TV, it was obvious no one was paying him any attention.
Best Moments in Acceptance Speeches: My personal favorite goes to Julianna Margulies, who snuck a jab in at NBC (who was airing the awards show) when she thanked Les Moonves “for believing in the 10:00 drama.” Mo’Nique brought a tear to my eye in her heartfelt speech; too bad it was the first one of the night and seemed to be quickly forgotten. Scorcese gave a great speech in his win for the Cecille B. DeMille Award, captivating the room with his love for the art and desire to see it preserved. And James Cameron, G-d bless him, spoke a sentence or two of Na’vi while accepting the award for Avatar. (I know. Seriously).
Kristen (Phd, Late to the game blogger)
I can only blame CP time for why I’m late to this roundtable. But uh..I’m here. So here it goes.
First, I want to say that this whole section is in great part a conversation I had with some of my most trusted and respected bedfellows. So thanks IC.
Second, I disagree about Gervais. I thought he was a great host. Funny, smart, timely, and not afraid to state things the way they are and not the way publicists would like it to be. I’m not quite sure I want to return to the Hugh Jackman-esque/Billy Crystalitis that has been award show performers. I want someone who can make the celebs a little uncomfortable. They don’t just exist in that ballroom. They exist on the Pacific Coast Highway inebriated to the utmost and bedhobbing from star to star. Let’s not pretend like all is wel just cause you’re in some loaned pretty garments. And that is what I loved about Gervais.
I disagree with Annie on the being irate at the Golden Globes thing. In my opinion, to look to the Golden Globes as an indicator of “quality” like looking to the Nickeoloden summer awards to know who’ll be the next “it” person. A futil enterprise, indeed. I’ve said elsewhwere that I believe the Golden Globes are the Walmart of award ceremonies. Complete with Rollback prices. To expect anything LESS than populist award winners is problematic. As had been said about the “HFPA” (in scare quotes because if they’re journalists, then I’m Lady Gaga..and I ain’t), they are more concerned about partying with celebrities than about actually being concerned about awarding good films their due. Also, as I was reminded in an earlier conversation this move to the popular has slowly been emerging. Recall, the changes made to the Oscars to accommodate more populist movies by expanding the nominees from 5 to 10 selections in various POPULAR categories. Perhaps the Globes are following suit(especially since they can construct the winners as they see fit).
Which leads me to this point: I may sound a bit ornery but really, what is the point of televised award shows? Is it really to elect the “best” film? Is it really to appreciate and give praise to the films we won’t forget about by the time Memorial Day rolls around? No, as Laineygossip says, “it’s about style.” And, you know what, we need to be honest about that and admit that that is what it is. I will remember that Reese Witherspoon wore a fantastic gown and had fantastic hair and makeup. I will remember that Clooney and his Italian new young thang were there and she may have been entertaining him in ways untold underneath that tablecloth. I will remember that Julia Roberts needs to go ahead and retire because it’s over. I will not, however, remember The Hangover. I will not, however, remember The Blind Side (well, I might if it makes into my dissertation). Why? Because they will fade with time. And the things I remember are more about extratextual things rather than the films themselves. Think about it: Aren’t the less televised, lesser known critic circles really where we should be looking to determine what the worthy (that is, respectable, important, relevant, quality) cinema is? Televised award shows are placed in a set of boundaries that pertain to ratings and advertising revenue and popular acceptability. Forget Julia Roberts, “Who’s Natalie?!” deal. Insert into the masses’ mouth: “Who’s Kathryn Bigelow?!” I rest my case.
Finally, I really do think there’s something to minority actors and international actors acceptance speeches that functions to set the tone and generate some sort of appropriation device by which all other winners restate what the formers acceptance speech was. I’m thinking particularly about Mo’nique’s winning speech and Drew Barrymore’s “redo” of that. Drew don’t know Mo’nique. Probably won’t know Mo’nique. So for her to “shout out to her” in that way (despite Barrymore already being a nutter) is interesting.
Enough for now.
Kelli Marshall (UToledo, Unmuzzled Thoughts)
I think everything that can be said about this year’s Golden Globes ceremony has been said:
Ricky Gervais was less than thrilling. However, as some have pointed out, it’s not necessarily all his fault.- NBC (aptly?) was reamed throughout the ceremonies, e.g., “Let’s get going, before they replace me with Jay Leno” (Gervais); “Just want to say thanks to Les Moonves for believing in the 10 o’clock drama” (Julianna Margulies).
- The speeches of Mo’Nique (earnest), Robert Downey, Jr. (sarcastically amusing), and Meryl Streep (reflective) stood out.
- William Hurt’s beard was a highlight of the night. Just ask Noel Kirkpatrick.
- Witnessing The Hangover, The Blind Side, and Sherlock Holmes receive accolades prompted many to rename this year’s broadcast The People’s Choice Awards.
- Slow-talking Harrison Ford and eye-rolling Jennifer Aniston evidently did not want to be presenting.
- Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker were inexplicably shut out.
- De Niro and Di Caprio’s tribute to their mentor and friend, “Marty” Scorsese, was touching, funny, and well deserved.
- Upon accepting his award for Avatar, James Cameron spoke Na’vi. WTF?
My colleagues have already skillfully (and humorously) analyzed many of these events, discrepancies, and surprises. To this end, I will keep my analysis to a minimum, politely redirecting you to the above bullet points. I would like to mention, however, a bit about Twitter and its role in my Golden Globe experience this year.
Generally, I don’t watch award shows in their entirety. With TiVo remote in hand, I often fast-forward only to the categories that interest me (e.g., comedy/musical, drama, best film). This year, however, I decided to view the Golden Globes as they aired, tweeting while I watched.
Last night, my Twitterverse consisted of about 5 of 6 “film and media people,” grad students and professors, firing off tweets at each other about every 30 seconds. (Yeah, it’s hard to keep up!) Short statements about fashion (or lack thereof), awards speeches, winners, and losers flooded our Twitter accounts (apologies to my followers who had no real interest in The Globes). In 140 characters or fewer, we dissected the evening in real-time, cheering virtually for Dexter, Mo’Nique, and Glee, and booing virtually for Sandra Bullock, Sherlock Holmes, and Avatar. It’s a strange little community, Twitter. But it sure does make a three-hour event much more entertaining than it’s ever been before. Perhaps you’ll join us at the Oscars?
Annie Again:
Having slept on my earlier comments, I do agree that this year’s Globes was not as much as a ‘game changer’ as I’d like it to be. I want people to be weirded out by this Globes, but listening to the chatter online, in the blogs, and on the air, no one seems to think this was all that special. WHICH KINDA FLOORS ME. Am I experiencing selective amnesia? Between the show itself (boring) and the chose of awardees (populist), it still seems much different — a return to Weinstein/art-house backlash that brought us a win for Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings over at the Oscars. Thus, in conclusion, I’d love to hear others’ thoughts on whether this particular Globes signified as different or as par for the course….and, of course, your own favorite and least favorite moments. Let the roundtable continue.
