Taylor Swift: Winning the Celebrity Game
Taylor Swift’s new album, “Speak Now,” sold a million copies this weekend — the first million-plus opening weekend since 2008. She’s being hailed as the savior of the music industry (old news; they said the same when “Fearless” has sold over 6 million copies since its 2008 release. Swift herself is the music industry’s best case scenario: she’s young, beautiful (in a uniquely feline sort of way), confident, unaffiliated with Disney, and without scandal (of her own incitement). Put it this way: she’s not Demi Lovato, nor is she Miley. And she’s certainly not Britney. There are no reports of substance abuse, body issues, or fights with over-bearing and/or exploitative parents. More than Lovato, Cyrus, or Spears, Taylor is business savvy. Her Twitter feed is a publicist’s dream, equal parts cute, confessional, and gracious. For your perusal, a smattering of recent Tweets:
This post is not a lengthy break-down of Taylor Swift’s image — a task that needs to be done. I’d advise you to check out Feminist Music Geek’s take, read Lainey’s coverage of any one of the million cute/nice/endearing things she does (here, here, here), or talk to anyone you know about their feelings about her — she’s seriously the most palatable American media product since, oh, Friends. Which is not to diminish her talent: unlike Feminist Music Geek, I actually like her songs, especially “Fifteen,” and find her pretty charming. The fact that she writes her songs is also heartening, especially in light of the male-producer-female-monsters of late — Ke$ha, I’m talking to you.
The anti-Swifty
She’s still friends with her best friend from high school (who also gets a de-virginization call-out in “Fifteen”) and has sleepovers with celebrity BFF Selena Gomez. She likes sparkly things and doesn’t dress up as a giant bird in her grotesquely sexualized videos. This is a teen music idol I can get behind. (And no, it’s not that I don’t think teenagers and sexuality are mutually exclusive, but the way that Miley or Britney does it — neither one of those are the messages I’m hoping for young girls or, to be honest, for myself).
Celebrity BFFs, iChatting and Twit-Pic-ing the evidence!
And here’s the thing: she seems authentically smart and self-possessed. Again, this is part of her image — she actually has talent! she has good parents! buy her records and endorse America! — but you can’t hide the fact that Swift, herself, is playing the guitar on-stage, which is in itself a stark departure from most teen (female) idols. She’s good at rhyming, at conjuring turns of phrase (I particularly like “You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter), and she invoked my high school favorite Tim McGraw in one of her first singles. More than any contemporary artist, Swift writes about the way that I personally felt as a teenage girl.
Obviously I looked like this every day of high school. Just add in a few more unfortunate button-ups from the Gap and you're set.
[Okay, admitted digression: Obviously I was the type to be super into Fiona Apple and early Sarah McLachlan in high school, but "Shadowboxer" and "Sleep to Dream" spoke to my most angry, tragic feelings -- not the ones that most closely resembled my quotidian existence. Therein lies Swift's palatability: her inoffensive comes off as authenticity as opposed to blandness. Now, I want every girl to experience a bit of angst and rage in their media diet, whether in the form of Go Ask Alice (do teenagers still read this?), Billie Holiday, Neko Case, or Harry Potter. But it's also nice for the middle-ground to be an image that's not hyper-sexualized and obviously collapsing under the weight of our scrutiny.]
Girl may be “on the bleachers,” as she admits in “You Were Made For Me,” but she plays the game, and she plays it well. Thus the crux of my argument: Swift is able to play the game so well because she has so thoroughly intertwined her “product” and her image. Granted, her image is just as much as a product of any other — and we buy it when we consume information about her. But the reason she’s been able to actually MAKE MONEY isn’t simply because she has a sweet voice and writes catchy lyrics, which she obviously does. Listening to a Taylor Swift song is like listening to gossip; following Taylor Swift’s life is basically mapping the future of her next album. And while many musicians write autobiographically, Swift has turned the twinning of song and life into a sport for gossips, media analysts, other celebrities, and music fans to observe.
Swift’s off-key Grammy’s duet with Stevie Nicks soured my affection somewhat, as did her presence in the ABOMINABLE Valentine’s Day — she wasn’t that bad, but her agreement to appear in that movie, even if as a slight spoof on her alter “popular” ego, was ridiculous. My disdain for that movie knows no bounds. It’s like Paris “Ebola” Hilton — touch it and you’re infected, Jessica Biel/Alba/every other bland star.
But this new album — this new album is filled with juice. And here’s where Swift’s skill as game player becomes clear. Because her art is in inherently confessional, each song is a mini gossip column, and will provide weeks, months, YEARS of fodder. This makes the above Tweet about the identity behind Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” all the more compelling — Swift is basically making a dozen of her own “You’re So Vains” for each album. With previous albums, the identities of those involved in the songs were more obscure — a Jonas brother, sure, and some high school dufuses. But now that she’s famous and dates famous people and finds herself in famous-people frays, her songs call out exes and foes Taylor Lautner, John Mayer, and Kanye West.
Here’s Pop Eater on the specifics identities behind her songs:
‘Dear John,’ a song almost certainly about her brief relationship with Mayer. “Don’t you think I was too young to be messed with … Don’t you think nineteen’s too young to be played,” Swift sings on the track, which is accented with, per the Times, “pealing guitar licks, a hilarious and pointed reminder of Mr. Mayer, who’s a master of the style.”
She’s kinder to Lautner, the presumed subject of ‘Back to December.’ Of the track, Swift has said, “Whether it be good or bad or an apology, the person I wrote this song about deserves this. This is about a person who was incredible to me, just perfect to me in a relationship, and I was really careless with him. So, this is a song full of words that I would say to him that he deserves to hear.”
The problem, of course, and the difference between Swift’s “Dear John” and an iconic song like “You’re So Vain” is the amount of discretion. Swift has and will continue to receive a tremendous flurry of coverage not only for admitting to a fling with Mayer, but calling his self-obsessed ass OUT in song. Simon, on the other hand, has riden the supposed obscurity of the reference for DECADES. Warren Beatty? Mick Jagger? David Geffen? She even sold the knowledge of the true identity of its subjects of hundreds of thousands of dollars at an auction. That, readers, is how classic, enduring celebrity is done.
But that sort of esotericism does not work in contemporary media culture. Swift can’t be obscure in her references because people are too lazy, or their attention spans are too short, to actual cogitate on such things. Audiences want to believe they’re in on a secret, but that secret can’t be all that difficult to figure out — see the faux-secret/philosophy of Inception as a prime example, or the frustration with Lost when it got just *too* crazy. Swift’s thinly veiled references are just above a blind item — they titillate, but they, like her Twitter musings, also make her seem honest, transparent, pure, and open: the exact qualities we think we want in a celebrity. Take those qualities too far and you’ve got a reality celebrity; refuse to show them and you’ve got an Angelina Jolie, maligned by many as stuck-up and full of herself. (Where Kanye West lies in this continuum, I’ll leave to you?) For a celebrity to succeed, he/she must cultivate this fine balance of disclosure. Disclose too much? Tom Cruise, circa 2005. Disclose too little, or nothing at all? You’re an actor, not a star.
Swift has found this fine balance — mostly in song, but also in her “real” life, in which she is apparently “hanging out” with Jake Gyllenhaal. Dude’s nine year older than her, which I know isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but that’d be like me dating one of my sophomore students. [When I queried Twitter as to what the two of them could possibly have to talk about, the best reply came from the hilarious @FaybelleineW: "I just see tumbleweeds, or a lot of 'i'm so not gay' necking."] No matter — he’s hanging out backstage while she does SNL; they’re making googily eyes at each other in Big Sur. No making out, no illicit drug use, no breaking up previous relationships. Just good, clean, American fun, which can be gossiped about both now and when she writes the song about it in a year’s time.
This week, she’s on the cover of People, which promises “the untold story” — which, if my swift perusal at the dentist office this morning is to be believed, are actually just her admitting that the songs on her album are about past loves. BIG EXCLUSIVE, PEOPLE. Nevertheless, People speaks to the minivan majority, and her presence on its cover (and the broadcast of “disclosure”) only strengthens her position. More than any movie star, Swift has taken up the mantle of “America’s Sweetheart,” and she’s done it by carefully knitting her products to her personal life, allowing disclosures in one to stand in for confessions in the other. While Ellen does tease her about Jakey G, most of the time, the only thing people want to talk about are these confessional songs — she needs very little extraneous gossip or extra-textual material (no need for scandal!) save to provide future fodder for songs.
The head of Swift’s record company has claimed “The facts say she is the undisputed best communicator that we’ve got. When she says something, when she sings something, when she feels something, it affects more people than anybody else.” I don’t know about that. But I do know that she’s managed to make it seem like when she sings something, it’s communicating something real and authentic about her life — something that can be interchanged freely with an interview, a paparazzi photo, whatever. Her songs are taken as an authentic disclosure and record of her life, and they manage to keep her balanced in fine equilibrium between satisfying and annoying levels of confession and accessibility. She’s may be the savior of the music industry, but she’s also an example of how the celebrity game can be played today — and to tremendous profit. It remains to be seen, however, how long she’ll be able to keep the equilibrium in tact. At what point does songwriting become overindulgent? Will men no longer agree to date her lest they are shunned, scorned, or pitied in her songs? Or is there no greater contemporary celebrity honor than to be such a subject? Swift is the closest we have to a “successful” celebrity today — by which I mean someone who is likable, actually makes money, and even gets good reviews. But again…..can it last? Do 25-year-olds kiss and tell? For her to survive the game, she’ll need to find a new strategy, lest her strategy becomes too transparently manipulative for us to stomach.
Twitter is Ruining Celebrity! (And Other Anxieties)
For whatever reason, last week seemed to be a tipping point for celebrities on Twitter. When Jim Carrey tweeted “Tiger Woods owes nothing 2 anyone but himself,” then criticized Woods’ wife, Elin, posting “No wife is blind enough to miss that much infidelity…Elin had 2 b a willing participant on the ride 4 whatever reason,” it was enough to prompt two separate articles, one from EW, the other on Jezebel, with the shared thesis that ‘Twitter is Ruining Celebrity.’
Here’s Jezebel’s explanation:
I’m just suggesting that certain people reconsider how goddamn annoying they can be. Because it turns out that plenty of high-profile people are not that smart, at least not all the time. Or at least not without the intervention of lots of people whose job it is to make them look good. And sometimes I would just rather not know how far short they fall.
If you’ve ever met a public figure you previously admired, you know it can seriously undermine whatever drew you to them in the first place. When I was pounding the pavement as a media reporter, there were plenty of writers and editors I met who more than lived up to fangirl expectations with their sparkling in-person insights. Then there were the ones that sloppily regurgitated conventional wisdom, or were giant social climbers or total leches. Still sorta ruins it every time I encounter their byline!
Twitter is like that, all the time.
The article then (rather hilariously) details how annoying/banal/mildly offensive some of these celebrities can be: Susan Orlean, who writes good pieces for The New Yorker, is a piss-poor and annoying Tweet author; Margaret Atwood is way too verbose; Kirsty Alley defends mild racism.
And, of course, there’s the whole John Mayer saga, exacerbated by his Twitter presence. Conclusion: when it comes to the Internet, some people should consider shutting up. Or, more specifically, some celebrities should consider shutting up — lest they shatter our illusions of celebrity and its function altogether.
So let’s be clear: these authors aren’t worried about overexposure. God knows the vast majority of celebrities who have taken to Twitter are already throughly, and arguable over, exposed. What seems to be at the crux of this anxiety — and what I find quite interesting — is this anxiety that the ‘authentic,’ unmediated sharing of Twitter will make the celebrity TOO real, TOO authentic…..too much like a real person. (You can see this anxiety invoked in the quote pulled from the Jezebel article in which the author compares Twittering to meeting someone you admire in the hallway — when you meet him/her in the flesh, she becomes an *actual person,* with blemishes, bad breath, bad jokes, whatever).
Undulating beneath both articles is an unstated assumption about celebrities: namely, that they are IMAGES, not people. We are attracted to the ideas — of race, of gender, of relationships, of Capitalism, of America — that they represent, not who they actually are. As I tell my students over and over again, it doesn’t matter who a celebrity is in the flesh, or what he/she ‘truly’ believes, or whether he/she is ‘actually’ a nice person. All that matters is how he/she is mediated — sometimes more successfully than others — and whether the public finds that image salient.
Some Twitter celebrities do a fantastic job of further extending their well-pruned image through Twitter use. Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, Conan O’Brien all come to mind. (Importantly, all three use Twitter somewhat sparingly: their Tweets become fetishized, heavily retweeted, and are rarely all that banal. Each one seems to perfectly fit with the stars established image, as when Bieber tweets “a cool thing about 2day is that North Tonawanda, NY has 32k people in it…just like my town. Maybe the next kid with a dream is there.” It’s cheesy and sincere, but so is Justin Bieber….or, more accurately, so is Justin Bieber’s image.
Celebrities are ‘ruined,’ then, when they become too much like people — and disclose so much, and in such an uncontrolled fashion, that their images are impugned. We want the celebrity image to cultivate the crucial tension between the extraordinary and ordinary — between the knowledge that the celebrity eats food and the also goes to premieres and buys expensive clothes. But when the ordinary overwhelms the extraordinary, it creates an imbalance in the celebrity image. The celebrity image becomes imbalanced via his own disclosures, whether linked to bathroom habits or preference for ‘chocolate’ men. To stick with the metaphor, such imbalance causes the image to fall, causing a rupture….and the unseemly ‘real’ person behind the finely wrought celebrity image seeps through, causing disgust.
When you get down to it, celebrity twitter exposes are desire for celebrities to be ‘just like us’ as a fallacy. We don’t want them to be just like us. We don’t want them to Tweet just like us. We want them to be a simulacrum of ‘just like us.’ Put differently, celebrities should represent our ideal what a ‘real’ person is like, but we can’t look at that representation too closely, or ask it to Tweet….lest it reveal the hollowness beneath.
I’m not suggesting that celebrity culture — or our fascination with it — is hollow, or worthless. Rather, that the anxiety over Twitter (and other new media means of over-disclosure) are highlighting the disparity between what we think we want from celebrities….and what we actually want.
Jen Tries So Very, Very Hard to Get Dirty
Biggest post-Oscar celebrity news: the long-anticipated Jen/Gerry W Cover. Here’s the sneak preview that went viral earlier today, prompting blog posts from both Lainey Gossip (here) and Jezebel (there). And while Lainey did a nice job of pointing out how posed and awkward Gerald Butler looks, she failed to touch on the real juice of the story, passed along by Jezebel — the entire thing was shot by Steven Klein, the man responsible for the (in)famous W Magazine shoot for Brad Pitt and Angelina, pictured (in part) in all its ridiculous glory below.
Recall, please, that this particular spread was published when Aniston and Pitt were still together, way back in 2005. Jolie and Pitt were purportedly posing in simple publicity for the forthcoming Mr. and Mrs. Smith. (It’s widely believed that this particular photo shoot was part of what prompted Jennifer Aniston, in her post-break-up interview with Vanity Fair, to declare that Pitt lacked “a sensitivity chip.” What’s more, as Jezebel points out, Klein is a good friend of Pitt. And so the plot thickens.
So here’s what we know:
1.) Jennifer Aniston is attempting to add much-needed life to her image following the abject failure of Love Happens.
2.) The Bounty Hunter, starring, of course, Aniston and Butler, opens NEXT WEEK. Aniston has been cultivating — but not actually confessing to — the suggestion of a romance for months, through formal appearances (Golden Globes gross-out posing, see below) and ‘gotcha!’ paparazzi photos that effectively suggest that she and Butler have been privately vacationing (read: her publicist and his publicist agreed he should be photographed with her in Mexico).
2.) In that film to succeed, Aniston understands that she needs a viable romance, preferably, but necessarily, with her co-star (See, for example, the hoopla over the ‘supposed engagement’ leading up to the release of The Break-Up). No matter how much John Mayer emphasizes his respect for her, she still doesn’t have a cute relationship to flaunt for the gossip mags and thus keep herself visible. It’s simple old Hollywood logic, and she (and her publicists) knows it well: the more she insinuates the possibility of a relationship with Butler, the more curious people will be to see their chemistry, and more the film will gross.
3.) Aniston is also attempting to diversify her image ever so slightly. To my mind, this is the most transparent attempt to ‘Angelina’ herself that we’ve seen. First off, the film they’re promoting is basically a vanilla version of Mr. and Mrs. Smith (just check out the trailer — it’s like Brangelina Lite… far less sexual gravitas and far more stilted attempts at bad humor).
Secondly, there’s the shoot itself. Oh, look, Jen’s such a bad girl! She’s stealing money! Getting arrested! Role playing, how dirty! (Side note: all images below are screen shots from the W website, as images from the actual spread have yet to be put online — thus the blue lines, which allow you to see how and where to buy the clothes she’s wearing).
Even look at the specific articles of clothing depicted below, all of which she’s wearing in the cover shot. We’re used to thinking of Jennifer Aniston naked and wrapped in the American flag, as she appeared last year on the cover of GQ. But Aniston in quasi-burlesque lingerie? What’s going on here?
The most fascinating attempt to associate Aniston with dirt is, well, quite literal. The ‘Behind the Scenes’ tell-all, Chris McMillan, Aniston’s long-time stylist, ‘best friend,’ and the man behind ‘The Rachel,’ highlights the dirty details of the shoot, both figurative and literal:
This is not exactly Jennifer as we know her.
We got there and the storyboards were kind of Kim Basinger in9 1/2 Weeks. Which is even better, because then it started getting good.
How did you arrive at this particular look for Jennifer’s hair?
Well, Steven [Klein] was talking to Jennifer for about an hour and a half while she was doing fittings and her hair dried into this naturally curly head of hair. So we just refined it from there. But it’s not her typical blown-out hairstyle. It’s a little rougher, we liked seeing the flyaways.
What about day two of the shoot?
At the end of the first day Steven came up to me and goes, “Could you please ask her if she could not wash her hair tonight and just show up tomorrow?” I mean, she was rolling in the dirt, it was windy and she had hairspray in her hair.
She said yes to that? Dirty hair?
Yeah, we left her hair dirty. It just created a nice chunky texture. The key to Jennifer’s hair is no matter what you do with it — straight, frizzy, dirty — it looks like it actually grows out of her head. She’s someone for whom her hair doesn’t wearher, she wears it.
This is a rhetorical gold mine. Main points: Jen conflated with sex star; Jen with a ‘new look’; Jen ‘spends all day rolling in the dirt’; Jen ‘game’ for dirty hair. Adds up to: Jen, crazy, dirty, up for anything girl! In other words, not the staid, always-the-same-blown-out-hair, sartorially and stylistically conservative girl, dumped by Brad for exotic sexpot.
I’m also struck by the visual similarities to another Brangelina photoshoot, also in the Arizona desert, only for Vanity Fair, that was published after the pair came out publicly as a couple -
Now, you might sense an abundance of vitriol directed towards Aniston, and you would be correct. Long time readers (read: those who have read for the 9 months that I’ve maintained this blog) will know that I harbor general disdain for her. Part of disaffection is certainly subjective — there’s just something about her, and about the stock character that she plays, that grates against me. (Note, however, that I really love her in both The Good Girl and Friends with Money — in part because those characters are so different from the recurring-Rachelness of her mainstream fare, but also her role in Friends with Money seems so much more honest about what it feels like to be a woman in her late 30s surrounded by other women with marriages, money, and oscillating levels of happiness).
It’s not that I dislike Aniston for playing the publicity game. Obviously, judging from my general admiration and fascination with The Brange, I don’t dislike those who manipulate their images. Rather, it’s that Aniston is so transparent about that manipulation — but not on purpose. She’s not ridiculously bad at it, like, say, Lindsay Lohan, or ridiculously obvious about it, like Heidi and Spencer. She’s trying play at the level of Pitt and Jolie, and she fails. The efforts of her — and her team — are derivative (again, see the photoshoot….five years too late). A for effort, but a solid B overall.
And here’s where I make a big inflammatory claim and piss people off: I think they’re B level because she’s actually a B level star posing as A-level. Once a television star, always a television star. Not only has her beginning on Friends limited the extent to which she can successfully stretch her star persona (Rachel-like character = success; un-Rachel-like; no-go), but also the limits to which she can successfully manipulate her image. She’s beautiful, yes; she has an incredible body, of course. But is she special? Can she use specialness — that uniqueness that distinguishes the most enduring of movie stars- to elevate her above and help us forget the way she plays the game? I don’t think so. In the end, we see her manipulations so vividly because her star shines so dimly. She’s not a bad star, or an unsuccessful one. But she’s not one for the ages, no matter how dirty she gets her hair.
John Mayer Mis-plays the Celebrity Game…..Or Does He?
If you’re at all in the generation and reception of celebrity, stop what you’re doing, reserve ten minutes, and read this somewhat lengthy and admittedly explicit Playboy interview with John Mayer.
The release of the interview on Playboy’s website has made major waves: everywhere from USA Today to Huff Post, from TMZ to Perez Hilton, from ABC to US Weekly is excerpting and covering the reaction to the piece. Mayer added fuel to the fire earlier today when he Tweeted (to his 3 million followers) to apologize for using the ‘n’ word — in what he claimed to be an attempt to ‘intellectualize’ the word. (Details here; see John Mayer’s Twitter feed here).
There’s no doubt that what Mayer said in this interview was offensive. Inappropriate. Guilty of kiss-and-tell. Weirdly and obsessively honest. Borderline repulsive. Racist, sexist. This is all made very, very clear not only in this particular interview, but in Mayer’s other interviews — see, for example, last month’s equally odd and frank interview with Rolling Stone.
But more interesting, at least in terms of the celebrity paradigm, is the way in which this particular interview functions to produce Mayer as a very certain — and discourse-worthy - type of celebrity. While I do not condone or agree with the behaviors, word choice, or attitudes that he espouses throughout the interview, as one who studies celebrity culture, I find his disclosure and image generation absolutely genius. Disagree if you will, but consider the following:
1.) He’s generating a tremendous aura of authenticity.
Richard DeCordova, following Foucault, argued that the disclosure of sexual secrets is equated, at least in our culture, as the disclosure of the ‘real,’ authentic self. Usually these sexual secrets are disclosed without the consent of the subject — think Fatty Arbuckle, think Tiger Woods — but even when the subject is doing the disclosing himself, it’s still the rawest, most honest, most ‘real’ path of access to the star.
So when John Mayer extrapolates, at length, on his masturbation habits, and reveals that Jessica Simpson is “crack cocaine” for him (“sexual napalm”!), it’s so apparently honest, so apparently not the sort of thing that you’re not supposed to publicly disclose, that it can’t be anything but true. Let me rephrase: because ‘normal’ people, whether celebrities or laymen, are not supposed to talk this way, let alone talk about sex this explicitly, when Mayer does it, breaking those taboos, it is de facto taken as truth.
Which is part of the reason that the anger towards Mayer — at least the anger towards his sexual disclosure — is, at least on some level, amusing. He could be making this up just as easily as he could conjure a tale of him buying roses, making dinner, massaging feet, going on romantic walks, writing poetry, or “sneaking moments,” a la Jennifer Garner’s own disclosure last week concerning her and Ben Affleck’s “romantic” relationship. Mayer’s disclosure reads as pure truth — because who would lie and make themselves look like a douche? — when, in reality, it’s absolutely part of image production. Mayer says over and over again that he just wants to be real, transparent, honest. And isn’t that just as much of a constructed image as a star who puts himself forward as romantic, needy, giving, head over heels in love?
But so what? So he’s ‘real’? Isn’t everyone ‘real’ in the age of reality television? Sort of, but not quite. ’Authenticity’ has long been privileged in the celebrity game — look to Richard Dyer’s seminal essay on Judy Garland and the generation of authenticity — and it often has much to do with a certain coherence between extratextual life and textual narratives. In this way, Mayer’s confessional songwriting style certainly affirms this interpretation. But I think it has far more to do with the fact that Mayer is…
2.) …Playing the celebrity game for the 21st century.
Part of which is, of course, the generation of authenticity and transparency in an era when everything can be digitally enhanced or otherwise manipulated. Mayer generates his authenticity through traditional means of disclosure, e.g. the tell-all interview, which has long been a fixture in a star’s strategy to “set the record straight” or “show my fans the real me.” But he is also a faithful user of Twitter, which, as I’ve argued both here and here, is equated with the star’s unmediated voice. When you read a John Mayer tweet, it’s really him — whereas a quote in a magazine can be doubted, as it’s going through the filter of an interview, an editor, etc.
Mayer, like Ashton Kutcher, understands the ways in which Twitter can, in Kutcher’s words, “take back our own paparazzi.” It’s his means of setting the record straight, of establishing the real and authentic self that will, and should, take precedence over any mediated or unauthorized versions. In his words,
With Twitter, I can show my real voice. Here’s me thinking about stuff: “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could download food?” It has been important for me to keep communicating, even when magazines were calling me a rat and saying I was writing a book.
Indeed, the fact that Mayer even used Twitter to “set the record straight” about this very interview only further authenticates the process. Even more interesting, however, is the way that Mayer contrasts his understanding of celebrity with that of Aniston, who rose to stardom during a very different period. His take:
One of the most significant differences between us was that I was tweeting. There was a rumor that I had been dumped because I was tweeting too much. That wasn’t it, but that was a big difference. The brunt of her success came before TMZ and Twitter. I think she’s still hoping it goes back to 1998. She saw my involvement in technology as courting distraction. And I always said, “These are the new rules.”
For me, such a comment underlines the divide in celebrity culture today — those who know how to play by the new rules, and those who try and play by the rules of the 1990s and before. Tom Cruise obviously had no idea how the new game was played, and Mayer points a fine point on the only means for Cruise to return: I said, “Tom Cruise put on a fat suit.” That pretty much sums up the past decade: Tom Cruise with a comb-over, dancing to Flo Rida in Tropic Thunder. And the world went, “Welcome back, Tom Cruise.”
When the interviewer asks if Jennifer Aniston maybe bittorrented his completed album, he even responds “if Jen knew how to bittorrent I would eat my shoe.” He’s not making fun of her, per se — indeed, he tries to emphasize how much respect and love he has for her throughout the interview — but it underscores the fact that Aniston, and her cohort, have no idea how to operate within the incredibly mediated, networked word. None of them — apart from Demi Moore — know how to use Twitter correctly. Tom Hanks signs all of his Tweets ‘Hanx’ for goodness sakes, which is just like the way that all of my relatives and friends on Facebook over the age of 40 use a salutation at the end of a post, as if it were a letter. (Sorry, over-40s, but you totally do). Mayer knows how his actions will be amplified and proliferate across the internet at a moment’s notice. He knows how Perez operates; he knows how TMZ operates. Which leads me to the conclusion that…
3.) …Mayer is much smarter than you think.
Sexism and bigotry are not smart. But sexism and bigotry are by no means mutually exclusive with intelligence — and celebrity intelligence in particular. Mayer will get flack for this interview; it may or may not alter his overall star text (really, it does little save confirm what most already thought of him). It will most likely not significantly affect the sales of his new album. This is the guy whose most popular songs are “Your Body is a Wonderland” and “Daughters.” Those two images might seem discordant, but such songs only help to diffuse comments such as ”My d*** is sort of like a white supremacist” in reference to his lack of experience with black women in bed.
But when it comes down to it, his name is all over the internet. He’s only heightened interest in his album, his Twitter account, and his celebrity brand. It may be negative attention, but it’s attention nonetheless, and as the maxim goes, all publicity is good publicity. Obviously, he’s a douche. As Lainey Gossip says, he’ll always be that fat nerdy kid on the inside, desperate for you to know that he does, indeed, attract women. But he’s also playing the game better than Brange, and certainly better than Aniston herself, whose staged Mexico getaway photos with upcoming co-star Gerald Butler scream manipulation and desperation. He’ll be around a long time — and I’m not just saying that because I have a secret thing for that “Georgia Why” song from his first album. He’s cunning and adaptable, dynamic and compelling, quotable and effusive — characteristics that describe some of the most durable and enduring of celebrities.
And don’t forget that this is Playboy. There are reasons the interview was framed the way that it was. John Wayne made himself an uncontestable bigot in its pages in the 1970s, and John Mayer, facilitated by its editorial policies and interviewer questions, continues the tradition today.
The Abjection of Jessica Simpson
Last week, gossip spread concerning “Jessica’s Big Oops.” That oops, it seems, was that Jessica Simpson had - wait for it - farted, loudly, in a meeting. According to US Weekly:
“A source tells Hot Stuff Jessica Simpson had a windy moment during a business meeting in January. ’While one of the executives was speaking in a room full of five people, Jessica let out a very loud fart,’ says the insider. ’Her mother was there, and it prompted her to turn around and yell ‘Jessica!’….It wasn’t Jessica’s first brush with public flatulence: she famously cut loose on an episode of Newlyweds, telling then-husband Nick Lachey, ‘You love my stinky ass.’”
Now why am I focusing on a silly bit of gossip like this? Because it got me thinking more about Simpson — and why we’re continually fascinated by her, even when her love life and career appear to be one embarrassment after another. She’s different from Britney Spears, and she’s no Lindsay Lohan. She hasn’t descended into drug abuse, and there are no sex tapes. But Simpson has a particular proclivity towards unfortunate fashion choices, accentuated by her oscillating weight. Perhaps most famously, she rocked a pair of “mom jeans” while singing at a state fair last year, depicted both above and below.
These pictures spread through the internet and gossip mags, ostensibly because they highlighted Simpson’s weight gain. (Really, though, she’s not even overweight — she may have gained a few pounds from before, but she only looks, er, ‘wide’ because of the cut of the jeans coupled with the belt and tank top).
Simpson’s appearance is also repeatedly criticized as “hermy.” This is a rather mean term used to convey the fact that she oftentimes resembles a cross-dressing male. The term has likewise been applied to Gaga and Cameron Diaz — it’s most often prompted by the presence of strong, angular facial features over-accentuated by make-up, as well as square, broad shoulders.
Note that part of what makes Simpson appear somewhat like a man is the presence of large, seemingly fake breasts and wig-like hair — both things that a man dressing as a woman might employ. In other words, it’s not just her face — it’s her entire body, her wardrobe, her hairstyles, her make-up, even her poses and facial expressions.
My contention, then, is what makes Simpson so fascinating — what keeps her in the tabs and on our radar, what was at the core of her relationship with “serious musician” John Mayer — is a distinct quality of abjection.
The theory of abjection was first and most famously pronounced in the work of Julia Kristeva. In Powers of Horror, Kristeva theorized the role of the abject in society-building, from Judaic Law to the present. The common connotation of the abject is of that which is cast away – something wretched – abject poverty, for example, or a rotting corpse.
Now, obviously I am by no means saying that Jessica Simpson is a corpse. But aspects of her image absolutely manifest other aspects of abjection. As I explain above, abjection includes that which is dirty — feces, decay, etc. — but also that which crosses borders and confuses. The Jewish Tribes created laws concerning what was and wasn’t abject so that they wouldn’t die out: people naturally wanted to do things like have sex with their wives when the wives were on their periods, but when you’re living in the desert, as these Judaic Tribes were, you just can’t get yourself clean enough. To do so would be to risk disease and, ultimately, death.
So what do you do? You make a woman’s menstrual cycle into something dirty and shameful — and write laws (still on the books in the bible) that make the woman go hang out in a hut for a week while menstruating. Eating pork was made abject because pigs were dirty animals and likely to pass along diseases — and kill off the tribe. Incest was made abject because sleeping with your family members would result in genetically deformed children — and eventually kill off the tribe. Homosexuality or not acting like your sex was made abject, because if you didn’t have sex that could make babies, you’d kill off the tribe. All sorts of rules were set up around the way that a corpse would be handled — because handling the corpse would pass along bacteria and infection, and, of couse, kill off the tribe. By labeling certain things as gross, the tribe — and society — was able to survive.
Thus, for Kristeva, the abject applies to that which makes her wretch – but it is also, on a deeper level, “what disturbs identity, system, order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite.” Ultimately, the abject – refuse, corpses, blood – is what must be pushed aside, rejected, and labeled as other in order to live. Put differently, by clearly labeling what I am not, I receive a clear understanding of what I am.
Importantly, the abject is at once an object of fascination and of repugnance. It draws in as it repels, seduces as it disgusts. It “fascinates desire,” seduces, calls out, but must, ultimately, be ejected, rejected. Say you’re part of one of these ancient Jewish tribes. You *want* to eat the pig — bacon tastes good! But it’s also dangerous. So in order to make it so that no one will succumb to the temptation of bacon, you’ve got label the pig as disgusting.
Thus the abject is thoroughly shadowed with shame. Trespass into the abject must not only be a societal violation, but a moral one as well. Desire for the chaotic, the border-breaking, the other, is constructed, at least in Judaic society, as an offense to God: to covet is to corrupt one’s inner purity.
Okay, okay, so what does this have to do with Jessica Simpson?
Everything. There’s the association with farts and feces, which are quite straightforwardly abject. There’s the “herminess,” highlighting the ways in which her appearance confuses gender and sex boundaries. There’s her unruly body, overflowing her jeans, her dresses, trespassing the limits of her clothing. She famously confused chicken and fish (“Chicken of the Sea”), emphasizing her own troubles with classification and order. There’s the creepy micro-management of her career by her overbearing father, which hints of incest. (Again, I’m not saying that she and her father have an incestuous relationship — but the suggestion is there, and that’s enough to infuse an image with abjection).
But perhaps most importantly, it seems that all those associated with her — whether Nick Lachey or John Mayer — have demonstrated their shame at being associated with Simpson. They desire her strongly (enough to be in long-term relationships) but they are embarrassed by her. Mayer in particular appeared sheepish when appearing with Simpson, and communicated as much in several interviews. And even if he wasn’t ashamed “in real life,” he was represented as being ashamed — and that’s what makes Simpson appear so thoroughly abject.
She’s fascinating but repulsive, desirable but shameful. And while this blog post may have seemed like a highly theoretical and hypothetical exercise, it’s not. The abject is real — it’s not just a theory. It’s an incredibly compelling way of explaining why we think of some things as disgusting but keep them around nonetheless; why desire and shame are two sides of the same coin. And, at least in recent years, it forms the very foundation of Jessica Simpson’s image. Ultimately, Jessica Simpson, the living, breathing person, with a heart and a mind, is not in and of herself abject. But her image — the way that we consume and experience her — absolutely is.
