celebrity gossip, academic style

1.) What is your name, occupation, website (if applicable)?
Melanie Haupt, PhD candidate in English at UT-Austin, where I teach Women’s Popular Genres (read: Twilight in the college classroom!). I’m also a freelance writer for the Austin Chronicle (archive here). I keep a food-and-family blog here. (Annie’s note: Melanie also wrote the profile of this blog for the Austin Chronicle, which is how we became fast social media friends).

2.) What is your first memory of being drawn to a star or celebrity?
I have two discrete memories of being drawn to a star or celebrity. The first is an early obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder. I am pretty sure that the Little House books were the first series that I gobbled up and reread multiple times. Back then, I didn’t really understand Ma’s racism or the fact that Almanzo was much, much older than Laura (creepy!). I just really loved the evocative way in which Wilder wrote of pioneering life. This love of the books extended to an obsessive love of the TV show, which I watched religiously every week until it ended in 1982. I even watched “A New Beginning” when it started, but lost interest quickly. (I should note now that I absolutely don’t find pioneers or pioneering even remotely romantic; in fact, I find it kind of gross.)

The other memory I have is of being totally and completely obsessed with Olivia Newton-John (this is in the very early ’80s, right after Grease). Physical was the very first album I ever bought — with my very own money, I might add. Dudes, I was NINE. And I was listening to my hero sing, “Let’s get animal/animal/I wanna get animal”?! WHUT. Of course, I had no idea what any of it meant. And I remember being very shocked and confused when I heard her speaking voice (and Australian accent). I think my mom was amused by having to explain to me why my beloved Olivia talked so funny.

3.) Who are your heroes of contemporary celebritude, and why?

Oh, gosh, that’s a tough one. At 38 and as a mother of two, I don’t really have the mental space to have celebrity heroes, but if I had to pick one right off the top of my head, it would have to be Annette Bening. I don’t think she’s a very good actress, and I thought that her performance in The Kids Are All Right was beyond shrill (and don’t get me started on how that movie is SO NOT PROGRESSIVE), but I admire the fact that her face looks like a 50-something woman’s face and that she has managed to keep her private life private (once the initial splash of her marriage to Warren Beatty subsided).

Oh, and Kathryn Bigelow, who not only spells “Kathryn” correctly (that’s my middle name), but is one bad-ass filmmaker. The Hurt Locker rocked my world, and I think it’s a story that could only have been told by a woman.

By the way, I feel like I’m really aging myself here.

4.) Who are your favorite participants, broadly speaking, in the history of stardom, and why?
Elizabeth Taylor, because she just did her thing, man, and no-one was going to stop her.
Audrey Hepburn, such a classy lady. I think of her as just that, a lady, graceful and glamorous and good.

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?
Michelle Williams and I met browsing in the classics section at BookPeople, and our favorite thing to do together is drink wine and eat moules frites at Vino Vino and talk about great books and our kids, and sometimes movies. Sometimes I ask her for the real dirt on celebrities she’s worked with, but I don’t want to exploit that part of our friendship. But mostly we talk about our kids because that’s what moms do. Sometimes, after we’ve killed a bottle or two, she talks about Heath Ledger and we both cry.

6.) You can only date one person in all of celebritude, past and present. Who? Where would your first date be? What would he/she get you for your birthday?
If you’d asked me this 10 years ago, I would have said Russell Crowe, and my answer about what our first date would look like would be too filthy to publish.

These days I’d say Jeremy Renner, even though I’m pretty sure I’m taller than he is, and our first date would be at a really awesome sushi place in Boulder that I love. He would drink sake and I would drink pinot grigio and we would get one of those giant boats of sushi and just eat and talk for hours. And then we would walk up and down the Pearl Street Mall and talk and talk until it’s time to chastely say goodnight. For my birthday, he would get me a new iPod loaded with a bunch of mixes he hand-picked for me (and they’re all perfect because he just knows what I like). That and some roses.

7.) Who do you regard as the lowest depth of celebritude?
Anyone who has ever been a castmember of the Real Housewives franchise. Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Speidi. The Kardashians. Fucking Snooki and her crew.

8.) Name a celebrity that is
a.) Overrated: Sorry, Annie, but that is Angelina Jolie. You can only ride the allure of steak lips so far. Oh, and Zooey Deschanel. You can only ride big ole blue pixie eyes so far.
b.) Underrated: Jeremy Renner. Until he is nominated for and wins Master Of The Universe, he is underrated.
c.) Appropriately rated: Joseph Gordon Levitt, I guess?

9.) What is your favorite celebrity nickname and/or celebrity culture-related slang? (e.g. “Manslinger” for Kate Hudson)
I really love all of those couple portmanteaus, like Bennifer and Swiftenhaal. If there is one for Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard, that is automatically my favorite.

10.) What is the greatest/most bombastic moment of celebrity ever? (Example: A-Rod posing for a photo shoot as a centaur)
File under bombastic: Kanye West’s infamous “I’ma let you finish, but….”

11.) Where do you get gossip on your celebrities of interest? Explain more?
I really hate to say this, but I get most of my celebrity gossip from Jezebel and Gawker. I am too busy frittering away my internet time on food blogs. Oh, and Entertainment Weekly. Does that count as gossip, tho?

12.) How do celebrities and stardom relate to your own work/extra-work activites?
Well, I think any cultural critic worth her salt is conversant in the ways of celebrities and stardom. I find that my students really like to talk about star images and how they relate to what they see in the movies and on TV. (I’m thinking in terms of Kristin Stewart/Bella.) Also, I am a notorious sticky-beak and just love to know what everybody’s doing. (Except for Snooki. That trash can just go away now.) Which means that I devour every issue of Entertainment Weekly while on the elliptical.

13.) Why is celebrity culture — and our attention, analysis, and discussion of it — important?

Well, I think celebrity culture is a reflection of our cultural moment, no? I totally agree with you when you say that we work out things that are difficult to talk about via talking about celebrities and their images. That said, I find it kind of tiresome to see celebrities mucking about in world affairs. I don’t really care what Ashton Kutcher has to say (or Tweet, if you will) about Egypt, you know?