Perez Hilton Plays Nice
If you’re in touch with the gossip world — or even with the pop culture world, or with your Yahoo! News feeds — you’ll have read that Perez Hilton made a very big announcement yesterday: he’s going to play nice. Stop bullying, stop calling names, stop drawing doodles to resemble crack and semen on celebrity’s faces. The announcement was made on Ellen, published in Out, and picked by everything from the The New York Times to Entertainment Weekly. You can watch the full Ellen interview below; you can read the full piece in Out here.
The basics: in recent weeks, Perez, who is gay, has spoken out about the rash of suicides by young, bullied, gay teens. He filmed his own testimony for Dan Savage’s amazing “It Gets Better” project; he’s used his blog to advocate for more compassion and less hate, especially towards GLBTQ youth. The suicides have also, according to Out, “made him reevaluate his own actions, which have often been portrayed as their own kind of bullying.” In other words: he’s going to stop bullying celebrities in his blog.
Here’s Perez, in his own words, explaining the decision:
It was me not viewing myself as a bully and viewing myself as a blogger — an entertainer — someone who talked about adults that chose to be in the public eye and all these justifications that I kept making for myself. In trying to raise awareness and do everything I possibly could to help the issue of bullying and teen suicides, I saw that so many people were calling me a hypocrite and calling me a big bully myself. And sure, it’s to be expected and OK that will be what some people think but it felt like that was what the majority of people were thinking. And if that’s the case, I want to change that because that’s not who I am or it’s not who I want to be. So, I need to take the steps to do things differently. I can’t be that which I’m criticizing in others. I can’t be that which I’m denouncing in others. And there is going to be a lot of skepticism and that’s OK because I deserve that. Time will tell and I’ve already begun this change. Like I said to Ellen — I’m not trying to lobotomize myself. I’m still going to be sassy and critical but there’s a different way I can do that. I don’t have to call people names. I don’t have to out people. I don’t have to draw inappropriate things on them. I don’t have to go for the cheap joke. I can still be critical and sassy and fun and funny and smarter and just do it in a different way that I can feel good about myself. Like I also said on Ellen — I want to be able to go to the rallies and marches and events within our community — like I have been and will continue to do — but I don’t want to feel like gay people are ashamed of me or embarrassed by me or thinking I’m hurting other gay people. That’s not who I am. That’s not my intention. I don’t want to hurt other gay people. I don’t want to hurt young gay kids.
(Photo from Out.com)
There have been two recurring reactions to this announcement: (1) he won’t stick to his word, because (2) it’s a publicity stunt. As several articles are keen to note, Perez is “a master at maximizing publicity for himself,” and this might be his own way of cashing in on the current cultural interest in bullying and the “It Gets Better” phenomenon. Even Ellen is oddly serious and dubious during his appearance — not only does she make it clear, before he even steps on stage, that she is *not* a fan of his site, but also holds no punches as she indicts him, and others like him, for the hurtful things that were said about her when she first came out and in years since. She does, however, think that people can change, and that’s why she agreed to have him on the show when he told her that he wanted to make the announcement.
So there are two things going on here. First of all, whether or not it is or is not *intended* as a publicity stunt, the fact is that it will, and already has, attracted attention, both for Perez and for the overall crusade against bullying. Perez will profit from this, either in terms of cultural or actual capital. But I don’t believe that the fact that someone profits, literally or figuratively, off of a “charitable” decision necessarily negates the good that that decision does. When George Clooney put together the telethon to benefit Haiti, it certainly benefitted his image, but that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t truly devoted to the cause.
I realize that it’s much easier to be cynical about Perez because he has been, by almost all account, an unmitigated ass. He makes fun of everyone; his stated morals and ethics are contradictory; he’s crass and in poor taste and brassy and frequently just annoying. But Perez Hilton is a celebrity, and like all celebrities, the “real” him, beneath the image, is a real person — a person named Mario Lavanderia. And Mario was teased himself for being gay, and had to navigate a truly cutthroat and unsympathetic industry, where he has been ridiculed for his weight, his looks, and his effeminate characteristics. At the risk of going armchair psychologist, most celebrity gossip columnists, both today and in the past, have been people who were never *quite enough* in show business — Hedda Hopper was a B-list star, so was Sheilah Graham. Louella Parsons was a frump. Rona Barrett was a short and ugly Jersey girl who was ridiculed constantly. The need to write snark about others comes from a place — one which many of us share — where our own insecurities hide and fester.
Celebrity gossip is, in many ways, rooted in bullying. We don’t usually call it that, because it makes it sound really ugly, but talking about the faults and failures of those who have succeeded — at being pretty, at being popular — whether they go to our high school or work next to us or appear on the movie screen, is our own way of venting frustrations. I remember, back in Sunday School, when my teacher told me that gossip was a sin. Now, I don’t believe that, even though “Celebrity Sin, Academic Style,” might be a great blog title. But it doesn’t always reveal our nicest, best selves.
What I’m trying to say is that I do think that Perez believes what he’s saying. He’s finally seen the link between how he wants to be treated — and how he wants all youth fighting to own their identities, whether gay or straight, to be treated — and the way he treats other people.
The problem, then, is that gossip is not about treating people with kid gloves. For that, we have People and Entertainment Tonight, which provide stories, but not gossip. Perez built his brand on snark — on providing an alternativeto the likes of People. As much as people like to complain about his style, over 2 million still go to his sight each month, whether because they love it or love to hate it. He’s changing, or at least going to attempt to change, his flavor, and hoping that people won’t want to spit it out.
I’m not betting on failure. Indeed, if he makes the change significant enough, he might attract gossip readers who genuinely do like their gossip nice — there are millions, most of them already subscribers to People and visiters to sites like “Celebrity Baby Blog.” Those who want snark can always find it at TMZ, or ONTD, or even, more intelligently, at Lainey. Over the last six years, Perez has amassed enough money to float him through any drops in traffic. And while I don’t think that all gossip should be without venom — it is, after all, a way of keeping celebrities accountable — I refuse to decry someone who wants to match his celebrity image, and its accompanying texts, with his own code of ethics.
Contemporary Fan ‘Magazines’ & Digital Interactivity
Note: This post starts where the yesterday’s on Classic Fan Magazines and Analog Interactivity left off.
Part of what I liked about Orgeron’s article on interactivity was the very application of the term to behaviors so distant from what we consider ‘interactivity’ today. In other words, fan interactivity — and even agency — are now ascribed to those who log hours on Discussion Boards, who rally together to save beloved television shows, whose interest is (sometimes) authenticated through actual changes in television narrative, who write fan and slash fic and distribute it within international digital communities. Interactivity has also taken on a connotation of immediacy — you can voice your displeasure with a scene by logging on to the show’s website while you are watching; you can reply directly to a celebrity’s tweet within seconds using your own Twitter account. Digital engagement and interactivity is NOW.
Today’s analog fan magazines - the actual paper magazine that you pick up at the store or receive in your mailbox — contain a large amount of the same interactivity that characterized the classic fan mags. Letters to the editors, polls, second-person address, advertisements that hail the consumer and ask her to judge herself and others. They pale in comparison to that which I discussed in my previous posts, but such features exist nonetheless. With that said, such analog interactivity is so 1992. Today’s gossip industry (and version of fan “magazines,” also known as gossip blogs) has taken interactivity to new level.
For gossip blogs such as Perez Hilton, the form of the blog itself invites commentary. As I think about it, I’ve discussed this at length elsewhere as concerns Perez Hilton: fan comments provide a public platform for readers to voice their opinions quickly and often; while Perez does not engage commenters, the existence of the forum — mostly uncensored — has provided a site for dedicated readers to engage in prolonged discussion of both Perez and the minutae of the celebrities on whom he posts. Perez often concludes a gossip bit/story with the question “What do YOU think?”, explicitly encouraging feedback and implicitly validating their opinions. Below, for example, the typically opinionated Perez defends Jersey Shore ‘star’ Snooki, ending with ‘Thoughts?’
Over the last year, Perez has implemented social media tools — the ability to Facebook ‘Like’, Retweet via Twitter — increasingly present on all information sources (including this one). I don’t want to suggest that reposting a story is a means of interactivity, but when the story is reposted with commentary, the user is obviously interacting with the item…and inviting others to do so as well, either on Perez on via Facebook comments, Twitter replies and retweets, etc.
The analog publciations - People, US Weekly — have cultivated their websites into havens of interactivity, putting them in convergent conversation with their print forms.
The Fashion Police solicit response - and offer immediate feedback.
Reader-response to a picture of Angelina Jolie:
Readers ‘deputized’ as gossip-getters -
The interactivity at Lainey Gossip is a bit more subtle — and rarely referenced by Lainey herself. In fact, the largest form of response comes in the form of Lainey soliciting emails and comments from her readers — not to be posted on the actual blog, but so that she can gage reader sentiment. In fact, she refuses to open up comments sections on posts — it invites a space for hate, and if you’ve seen a Perez comments section, you’ll see that she’s right. She does periodically publish hate mail, and when I first posted on my own experience with Twi-hard hate, way back last fall, she linked to my post as a means of showing that Twi-hate is by no means exclusive to her. She opens every day with ‘Smutty Shout-Outs,’ where readers email their congrats, love, hopes, etc. for others (for example, someone can say that their friend is having a rough time and needs pictures of The Gos, Hot Harry on a Horse, etc.) She also periodically replies on Twitter and through email — or at least she has to me (has she to you?) I suspect that the gesture towards interactactivity, depicted below, is just that — a gesture. It’s certainly very rarely integrated into the gossip posts themselves; she talks about her freebie-five all the time, but certainly doesn’t end each discussion with “go post your own for all to see in the space to your right!!”
Ultimately, the biggest gestures towards interactivity are far more personal than the bigger, more conglomerate sites. See, for example, the recently published pictures from the Smut Soiree — where readers mingle with Lainey. (Speaking of which, attending the Smut Soiree is totally going to be my Ph.D. graduation present from my best friends. Just sayin’.)
People, US Weekly, and even Perez and Lainey are, in many ways, aping the success of TMZ, which encourages interactivity at every turn. The TMZ style is characterized by garishness (both in aesthetics and general rhetoric) and oddness (submit pictures of you grilling!). For myriad reasons, however, TMZ receives more traffic than all of the aforementioned gossip sites combined. Whether the opportunity to interact is part of that allure — well, you can tell me if you’ve submitted pictures of yourself grilling, or phoned in a tip, or voted in a ‘who’s hotter’ poll…..(in all seriousness, please tell me if you have).
Soliciting reader opinion on the Mel Gibson case — can he be forgiven?
(And offers you a chance to ‘live chat’ about it…)
Interactivity ‘puzzles’ — an old National Enquirer trick.
Bestowing readers with power over the site itself :
‘Who’d You Rather,’ a regular TMZ feature (with poll results below)
So how is this different than the analog interactivity described in my last post? I want to argue that what has fundamentally changed is the idea of us, as readers, having any sort of sway over Hollywood or celebrity culture. Part of this disconnect can be linked to general celebrity indifference — long gone are the days when a star would ‘write’ an article in direct response to fan sentiment. And even though celebrities cultivate an aura of authenticity around their official online interactions — on Twitter, on their websites, etc. — there’s still very little sense that our interaction on a gossip site will change the way that Hollywood, the gossip site, the gossip maven, or celebrities in general will behave, dress, etc. And while I think that Twitter has reintroduced a modicum of belief in the power to speak directly to and receive communication directly from the celebrity, it remains a relatively nascent phenomenon.
I also think that there’s a broader understanding of celebrity culture as a machine — an industry unto itself — and thus far more immune to the complaints and suggestions of fans, however univocal their protests may be. In other words, those who are interested in celebrity gossip are more cognizant of the celebrity as a product — of the machinations that go into image creation, of the fact that celebrity gossip itself is entertainment — and less likely to believe in celebrities as actual humans open to suggestions. [I'm not suggesting that everyone was inveigled by the star system during Classic Hollywood, but the illusion was much more easily tended, and thus all the more easier to believe]. When someone comments on one of Perez’s posts, it’s not because she’s under the illusion that the celebrities featured in the post will actually read it — rather, it’s a means of voicing her opinion about the celebrity (and what he/she stands for) and engaging in dialogue (sometimes ethical, other times certainly not) with others. Similarly, acting as ‘fashion police’ on the US Weekly site is less about you policing the actual star and more about policing women’s choice of fashion in general, and what you believe is and is not appropriate (or beautiful, or fashionable) to wear in public.
Does this ring true? Let me know your own experiences with interactivity — and how you think it’s different than the analog interactivity cultivated in the past.
Gossip Product Placement
Quick post today, as I have important business to attend to at the pool. (Recovering from Comp #2 and preparing mentally for Comp #3, which requires a lot of time not reading about celebrity and reading the Jessica Darling novels instead).
But take a look at this — screencapped from Lainey Gossip earlier this week:
So there are a number of things going on in this shot. First, Lainey rehearses her plea for a media object that she likes — this month it’s 500 Days of Summer, sometimes it’s Friday Night Lights or some other smallish film. As I’ve mentioned before (in my original post on Lainey, as well as my explanation of the MiniVan majority) Lainey loathes what she views as vapid films and programming — especially when they lead to the demise of the likes of Friday Night Lights. In general, the things Lainey promotes are not ALSO advertised on the site. I always thought this was odd, as Friday Night Lights would be reaching an audience that had been incredibly primed to like the show. But there’s also the potential for a perception of ‘conflict of interest,’ or at least that she was plugging it not because she actually like it, but because she was being paid to say that she did.
Thus my interest in the ad for 500 Days of Summer — Lainey had been hyping the film for several weeks, so someone — some savvy ad Googler — must have figured out that they should plop an ad on the site. But how does this shift the way that we think about Lainey’s promotions?
Now, Lainey and other gossip columnists are NOT journalists, and thus not subject to the journalistic ethics that should force the likes of The New York Times to acknowledge their financial association with Nora Ephron, the director of Julie and Julia, when they write 502 different articles plugging the movie (not to mention the fact that the newspaper gets a huge plug in the film itself). RIGHT? But Lainey is usually pretty good about labeling posts as “Sponsored” — whether by her recent big sponsor KY Jelly or past sponsors Venus Razors, etc. On Perezhilton, sponsorship is either put in the background — with elaborate wallpapers usually plugging the premiere of a new show — or in special posts that are slightly off-white and have the words SPONSORED in small letters at the top. Like Lainey, he has small ads running up and down the side as well.
Now, I don’t begrudge such ads whatsoever. It makes both Lainey and Perez able to stay home all day and provide me with more gossip. And gossips being ‘sponsored’ is certainly nothing new — when gossip columnists had radio and television shows, they’d have to plug the sponsors product themselves, claiming to use it and love it (just like all other hosts on early radio and television).
So why does this bug me? I think because I want to believe — and have been trained to believe — in Lainey’s “authentic” opinion, and that the opinions voiced on her site, whether concerning celebrities, products, or blind items, are ‘her own.’ To see the ad for the movie next to her love for it undercuts that authenticity. Should she refuse ad money from any program or product that she likes? Or should she just remain mum on her affection if it’s also a product on her site? Or am I being too sensitive and need to realize that subtle internet ads are the way of the future and the only way that the entertainment industry is going to survive as our lives become increasingly mediated?
I have no good answers, but I hope you do. In the meantime, check out Alyx Vesey’s rather hilarious take-down of 500 Days. I agree with her on many, almost all of the points of critique — ESPECIALLY concerning ‘Autumn’ at the end. But I still like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel — and the one glorious moment involving Han Solo — so I’m not going to say that I hated it.
Off to the pool — and when I post again, I’ll be done with comps, foot loose and fancy-free.
