Sympathy for The Beaver
As Nikki Finke reported last Thursday, Summit will release The Beaver, otherwise known as the unfortunately named Mel Gibson starring vehicle, this Spring. The one-sheet is out (see below) and the trailer is circulating. And here’s the kicker: this film, which I should, by all accounts, hate — especially since Gibson has repeatedly revealed himself to be a uber-conservative, racist, misogynist — looks…..well, really good. The trailer totally takes advantage of me. The question of this post, then, is whether this movie has the potential to salvage Gibson’s career….or, alternately, whether a good film with a great performance can be saved from the image of its most prominent star.
The Beaver was set-up as a redemptive vehicle for Gibson: it was directed by long-time friend Jodie Foster, and the script for the film (penned by Kyle Killen — the guy behind the quickly cancelled critical darling Lone Star who came to speak at the Flow Conference) was #1 on Hollywood’s 2008 “Black List,” which lists the best unproduced screenplays circulating in Hollywood. (The creation story of The Black List is actually super fascinating — I highly recommend listening to Kim Masters’ “The Business” podcast interview with its founder).
Once Foster optioned the script, Jim Carrey and Steve Carrell were both attached to star at various points — but she decided on Gibson. This was after the anti-semitic sugar-tits rant…and before the misogynistic and super offensive voice mails to ex-girlfriend (and mother of his child) Oksana Grigorieva. So take a minute and watch the trailer, embedded below:
There’s something touching, no? That beautiful scene with Gibson floating in pool with the stream rising around him; the utterly hang-dog look to his face — it seems like he really is sorry for something.
But I also think that Summit — and Foster, if she had approval over the trailer — are very aware of the intertextuality between Gibson’s own life and the narrative of the film. A few choice quotes:
From the voice-over narration:
“This is the story of Walter Black, a hopelessly depressed individual.”
“The successful and loving family man he used to be has gone missing….and no matter what he’s tried, he can’t bring him back.”
“Walter is a man who has lost all hope.”
From the voice of The Beaver:
Walter: “I’m sick.” The Beaver: ”Do you want to get better?”
The Beaver: “This man is a dead end. He’s gone.”
From Walter’s wife, played by Jodie Foster:
“I fought for you, and I will continue to fight for you….”
All that’s missing is a stand-in for Summit saying “WE BELIEVE IN YOU AND YOUR RESILIENT FANBASE! THE CHRISTIANS, THEY LOVE YOU!”
The point being: we’re meant to see this film as Gibson’s personal and professional redemption. A chance for him to prove that he was, indeed, sick, but that he wants to get better, and to prove to the people who love him (his fans, Foster, whomever) that that is indeed possible. The Beaver even speaks in an Australian accent — a version of Gibson’s own “real” voice. The Beaver is Gibson’s true core, encouraging his broken exterior to become a better man.
A year ago, this would’ve played brilliantly. Hollywood loves a redemption story — see especially Robert Downey Jr. — especially when the subject of such redemption is male. (Females have a harder time — their weaknesses are less forgivable. Winona Ryder, etc.) The film would’ve been released as Oscar bait, would’ve almost certainly garnered several noms, and Gibson would be given the opportunity to reclaim his former Braveheart glory, a changed man, cognizant of the mistakes he had made and ready to rejoin Hollywood. I’d guess a Vanity Fair cover, complete with confessional disclosure, an Oprah interview, maybe even a slot on Barbara Walter’s Most Interesting People. He’d be doing promotional rounds RIGHT NOW.
Instead, the film is pushed to the Spring — well known as the place where once-potential prestige films go to die. (Granted, Silence of the Lambs, featuring Foster, was released in January and still managed to keep steam through the next year’s award season, but the game has changed since 1991). Summit is good at clever/exploitative marketing, and managed to keep The Hurt Locker alive in critic’s minds after a minuscule summer release. But I don’t think an aura of prestige is going to do much for this film.
Summit needs to use the selfsame narrative that they would’ve used if this were an Oscar film and Gibson’s relationship with his exgirlfriend hadn’t exploded across TMZ and the rest of the mediascape. They need to elide the fact that the film was made before those revelations and play it like a redemption for those mistakes as well. And this trailer proves they know such a strategy is imperative: Foster’s character’s exclamation that “I fought for you, and I will continue to fight for you” is almost identical to the way she has defended Gibson to the press.
According to a CBS/Vanity Fair poll, 76% of respondents said that “Gibson’s personal troubles would have no effect on whether they would see one of his movies.” To be clear: 76% would be uninfluenced by his “personal troubles.” But of that 76%, how many would actually be COMPELLED to SEE one of his films if it co-opted and commented on his personal troubles? And how many of the 24% who said that they would be “affected” could potentially be “affected” to go see it, so long as it sent a message of transformation?
This is the power of star image — when co-opted correctly, it can push a film or performance into legend. That could’ve been Gibson’s fate. But even a month ago, it was uncertain if the film would even see a release. The decision to go forward is most likely based on the relative silence on the Gibson front — not to mention the fact that several holes have been poked in Grigorieva’s case. The seas have calmed, as it were. This film — and Gibson’s career — could either fade away or be reborn.
I want to make it clear that no matter what Gibson once was, alcohol and power have turned him into a nasty human being. I don’t think it’s okay to talk to women the way that he did; I don’t think it’s okay to use racial or derogatory slurs. Obviously. But I find myself torn: am I willing to attend the film of a man who makes these remarks? Is it unfeminist to do so? But don’t I also watch movies made by Roman Polanski, Woody Allen? Starring Christian Bale? Is it possible to dislike the man and like the performance — hate the sin, love the sinner?
So tell me: will you have sympathy for The Beaver?
Sandy Blindsides the Gossip World
The details: Sandra Bullock is/has adopted a baby from New Orleans, Louis Bardo Bullock. Bullock and estranged husband Jesse James began the adoption process four years ago; they took Louis home in January, but chose to keep the adoption a secret at the time. In March, it was revealed that James had engaged in multiple affairs, including one with a woman who had dabbled with Neo-Nazi apparel/performance. Now that Bullock has separated from James and announced plans to seek a divorce, she has continued the adoption process as a single parent.
The Strategy: Bullock enjoyed an enormous amount of positive press surrounding her Golden Globe/Oscar win — she had at last usurped Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon as America’s reigning sweetheart; she was box office gold (just forget about that pesky All About Steve; and even if the critics lambasted The Blind Side, America loved it. She looked gorgeous at the Oscar’s and accepted her award with grace and poise — all with Jesse James by her side. The revelation of James’ affairs — including one dalliance that apparently took place when Bullock was accepting an award — was the equivalent of beating an adorable and likable puppy. (Side note: women always get compared to objects in situations like this — John Mayer’s treatment of Jen Aniston was like ‘burning the American flag.’ Find me an instance when a man is turned into an object to describe his treatment at the hands of another?) When I heard the news, I actually gasped. Not because I necessarily love Sandra Bullock — I actually only really like her in Hope Floats — but because the scandal, and its timing, was so ridiculously unexpected.
Bullock basically maintained media silence since the James story broke. She moved out; she apparently wasn’t wearing her wedding ring, she made an announcement clarifying that she and James had not, as rumored, made a sex tape. But she kept her visibility to a minimum. This was crucial, as it effectively amplifies the current announcement…and makes it seem far less manipulative, or, at the very least, less part of an overall strategy. The message of a singular, unified message, with a singular, unified story is clear: Sandy just wants to be happy — and she’ll let us have this one glimpse, but she doesn’t play that celebrity game!
What’s not being said: While many outlets, from E! to Lainey Gossip, are expressing surprise and admiration that Bullock was able to keep the secret for this long, very few are being explicit about what a truly adroit move this is on Bullock’s part. But the finesse isn’t limited to the fact that she kept it secret this long: Bullock made three crucial decisions concerning the adoption of this baby and the publicity surrounding it.
1.) Keeping Quiet During Awards Season.
To my mind, this is the most crucial move — and the one that no one, at least no mainstream outlets, are talking about. In the interview with People, Bullock explains the silence around her adoption as ‘it being so crazy.’ In other words, she’d be all over the place promoting the film and her awards run, and wouldn’t be able to handle the concurrent publicity. Okay, fine, maybe.
But pause for a second and consider WHAT A HUGE CLUSTERF*** it would be if Bullock would’ve announced the adoption of a black kid while campaigning to win Hollywood’s highest honors for playing the role of a woman who ADOPTS A BLACK KID.
Of course, we want our stars’ extra-textual lives to mirror their textual lives, but usually this mirror-effect is reserved for personality traits and relationships. Not the adoption of children. And no matter how much Bullock emphasized the fact that she had begun the adoption process four years ago, the timing would read as highly manipulative, and her actions would seem ingenious…..the exactly opposite of Bullock’s star image.
My guess is if the news would’ve come out, Bullock wouldn’t have won the Oscar. Not because Hollywood frowns upon adoption (or inter-racial adoption), but because it would’ve read as too calculated….and the predominant wisdom in Hollywood is that Bullock won not on the strength of her performance, but on the strength of her likable personality in the business. This move = not likable, at least not in the awards run-up, no matter how they spun it.
2.) Keeping Quiet During the Maelstrom
Again, crucial for appearances. One of my students referred to the adoption (and the concurrent divorce announcement) as the equivalent of the ‘break-up puppy.’ In other words, the dog that someone gets after a break-up to sooth one’s emotions. Now, please do not mistake this analogy as me actually calling this young child a dog, but the comparison — a new lovable distraction — holds.
The baby thus functions as the redress necessary for Bullock to move beyond this scandal. Scandal theorists have written at length about how every scandal — whether Bush’s mistake in going to war in Iraq or the revelation of Tiger’s sexual activities — demands some sort of redressive action in order for society to smooth over the rupture caused by the revelation of the transgression. There has been no redress for the Iraqi War — and thus it is still a scandal — and Tiger’s attempt at an apology (accompanied by a trip to sex rehab) was no true salve. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie adopted a child and had a baby; Rita Hayworth married a prince and gave birth to a princess. And Sandra Bullock — who actually wasn’t the cause of the scandal, but the victim of it — adopts a baby.
But how does a baby function to redress the scandal? First, babies are a distraction. They’re adorable and become the topic of discussion. Why talk about how your husband had sex with a tattoo model when you could talk about how cute your baby is? The adoption/birth process effectively changes the narrative — a strategy that political strategists have long employed. From this point onward, Bullock’s narrative is all about moving on, growing up, and being happy — with a child of her own.
But in order for this narrative to monopolize the gossip space, Bullock had to wait until things quieted down. James went to sex addiction therapy; her things were out of the house. She even filed for divorce last Friday — a move that went undetected, as she filed under mixed-up versions of both of their initials. Now, when the story comes out, it functions as a complete and clean break.
Babies are also a signifier of wholesomeness. Bullock is rejecting the aspects of her past that have emerged as unsavory — specifically, the Hitler-costume wearing, motorcycle-repairing husband — and re-embraced her domestic image. The movie is exactly what will please her ‘Female Forever Fans’ most — a demographic I theorized at length here.
3.) Keeping Quiet Until a People Magazine Cover Can Be Arranged
Bullock (or rather, Bullock’s PR team) approached People. This is no secret — the managing editor of the magazine just talked about it on The Today Show. For those unversed with the celebrity game, this might seem like Sandy was just trying to allow fans a window into her life and inspire those who want to start over again. Okay, fine. But People is where stars go to announce big decisions — see, for example, myriad announcements of homosexuality, pictures of babies (even Brangelina’s), Elizabeth Edward’s decision to seek a divorce, etc. It’s sanctioned, it’s totally clean, it holds punches and, chances are strong that Bullock got full approval of the text of the article (not to mention the pictures) before it went to press.
I’d also echo Jezebel’s point in “Five Biggest Questions Sandra Bullock and Her Baby” that the fact that Bullock effectively hid a child for nearly five months underscores the fact that most ‘breaking news’ in the celebrity world is planted…and calls our understanding of what is and is not sanctioned (including paparazzi photos) into question. Put differently, if you can hide a baby, you can certainly hide a budding romance, and anyone who says that the were attempting to stay low key is not only lying, but attempting to garner press attention. Bullock’s ability to hide illuminates somewhat ironically illuminates the machinery of the celebrity industrial complex. And that makes us all feel somewhat ashamed in buying the spontaneity its selling.
And so she pulled it off. And it’s the biggest gossip news of the week, even the month. The other gossip magazines are most likely seething…and preparing their own covers for next week. But what ideologies are undulating beneath this move — and the semiotic playground of the pictures/feature itself?
First off, look at the cover. And look at Baby Louis, in close-up below.
As Jezebel (and many others) have pointed out, the beaded necklace signifies, for better or worse, as ethnic or African. Apparently the necklace was a gift from Bullock’s other daughter, Sunny, one of James’ kids from another marriage, and is intended to represent all of the kids in the family. [I'm unclear as to whether Bullock officially adopted Sunny, and what role she will play in those kids' lives from now on.]
Which brings us back to the glaring question that no one’s really talking about — DID YOU NOTICE THAT THIS CHILD IS BLACK? Please don’t mistake me: I think that adoption is so wonderful and necessary, and I think that the fact that most white parents in America don’t want to adopt black children (many of them are adopted by European parents) illuminates some crucial tensions still very present in American culture. What I want to emphasize, then, is that the adoption is a ideologically potent decision, underscored by the fact that her soon-to-be ex-husband IS A BIGOT. Take, for example, Bullock’s own (deflection) on the topic:
I want him to know no limits on where he can go. I want him to experience all culture, nationalities, countries and people like I did. I want his mind to be open and free. We were raised that we are all the same. No one greater, smarter, more powerful. We are all equal. I would love for Louis to know that . He has a big, beautiful, diverse family. As long as he know he is loved and protected and given the opportunity to touch and see everything, then I will have done my job as a mama.
This is multi-cultural rhetoric at its height — and has been espoused throughout both Crash (also starring Bullock) and The Blind Side. What it neglects is cultural specificity. Again, I think that every child deserves a loving home, but to neglect the power of this decision — and the fact that Louis is black — is to pretend we live in a post-racist/racial world, which we definitively do not. Again, this isn’t to say that mixed-race adoption is bad, but that there are a whole set of considerations when dealing with the white adoption of black children…ones that we haven’t entirely worked through in America.
When I posted the cover photo on Facebook, I garnered a number of responses, including the following one from my aunt:
i suppose it just isn’t possible that she wanted a baby, found a baby that needed a home, adopted that baby, and loves him to pieces? and sadly, in the process, some one didnt know how to behave like a grown up and she had the fortitude to kick him to the curb?
My aunt’s response encapsulates what a lot of Americans are feeling about the announcement today — and legitimately so. It’s certainly the message of the article and the specifics of its release. And, to step out of my analytical role for a second, I really do think that Bullock will love and cherish this child. But at the same time, we need to remember that yes, Bullock is a real person, with real desires and emotions, but she is also an image. And what that image does — and our response to it — says so much about our current understandings of the way that race, sex, family, and single motherhood function in our society today.
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 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.
Brangelina: Only Over When They Say So.
See this PR machine? It'll only break when it's good and ready.
Maybe you didn’t hear the news on Saturday night. Maybe you weren’t like me, at home, preparing a journal article at 7 pm, and were thus out of reach of all internet gossip. But if you were online or in any way attached to social media, chances are you heard or saw the tsunami-like progress of the Brangelina Break-Up through the internet. Of course, it was false. But for a few hours, for many, it felt very true.
Lainey Gossip does a superb job of laying out the very specific reasons why this rumor could not have been true. As she underlines,
These two are manipulative and obsessively controlling. Especially HIM. And they’re not lazy. They’re not Tiger Woods. They are experienced. They lock their sh-t down tight. And for something like this, if they really are prepared to call it off, it would have been engineered and masterminded months ago. They would have had a game plan in mind to run the message the way they want to run the message. Just like Pitt made the announcement of his split from Jennifer Aniston strategically on a Friday afternoon, after everyone had gone home, while he was away on holiday, as the least opportune time for the media.
In other words, they’re the best. I’m not saying this because I like them or I’m fascinated by them; I’m saying this because they have a tested and true record of brilliant and immaculate publicity manipulation. Please recall: Angelina Jolie, whose image had theretofore been characterized by brother-kissing, amulet-wearing, and associations with the likes of Billy Bob Thorton, “steals” Brad Pitt from all-American Jennifer Aniston. They don’t get married. They adopt many, many non-white children; they have three children out of wedlock. And they got away with it! Not only that, they are beloved. Indeed, they are, without a doubt, the biggest stars in America. Their auras are the largest; they may not be able to open a film like, say, oh, John Travolta in Wild Hogs, but trust me, their brands are much, much more valuable.
This wasn’t some magic trick or intrinsic quality; it was the product of impeccable and incredibly savvy P.R. Just see Nikki Finke on Jolie’s manager, Guyer Kosinski, who was recently hired by Nicole Kidman to revamp her struggling career. He may be referred to as “Guyer the Liar” and have a general reputation in Hollywood for sleaziness, but the guy is so effective that Jolie does not even have an agent. Many of you already know this about Pitt and Jolie. But for those of you who don’t, the lesson is: when, and if, they ever separate, it will be a masterpiece of P.R. manipulation.
And it will most certainly not come from the likes of The News of the World, whose story, published on Saturday afternoon, was the source of the rumor. Now, as Lainey again points out, U.S. tabloids have been trumpeting the demise of Brange for the last four years. Life and Style is especially keen on declaring the various reasons for their tragic break-up: Angelina cheats on Brad with tutor, Brad’s secret rendezvous with Jen, etc. etc. But when you read it in Life and Style in the supermarket aisle, the vast majority of us, even those who love gossip, put absolutely zero stock in such a claim. Why? We’ve been trained. We’ve seen so many false claims on the tabs — and I’m not necessarily talking about The National Enquirer, which, as the John Edwards and Tiger Woods cases prove, are actually oftentimes ahead of the curve — but the truly unresearched, sensational, and derivative tabs like L&S, The Sun, and The Star.
Why, then, did so many believe it? Let’s be a bit more specific. Why did so many Americans believe it? The answer is pretty simple: lack of international media literacy. In other words, they didn’t realize that News of the World was a British tabloid. Doesn’t it kind of sound like, oh, I dunno, The Globe and Mail? Or something else super official? It’s promising to offer the News of the World! Not Life and Style!
And many people believed this story — including reputable people — which only facilitated the spread of the rumor. Even Roger Ebert, who’s developed quite the devoted Twitter following, retweeted the news. When it first broke, I was in Twitter “conversation” (oh god, supernerdtastic) with fellow media scholars Christine Becker and Alisa Perren, and all of us were looking for TMZ to break the news. And if you ever hear news of such a split again — or of any major celebrity news — that’s where I’d absolutely advise going to confirm. As I argue in my recent article on TMZ, which just came out in print in Television & New Media, TMZ has a rock-solid network of informants, inside-men/women in the legal system, and immaculate fact checking. They’re basically lawsuit proof, in part because they don’t publish rumor. They publish confirmed facts. When they broke news of Michael Jackson’s death hours before anyone else, it wasn’t because they were jumping the gun. He was dead on arrival, and they had the sources within the ambulance/EMT network to confirm it. But they’re more than just libel-proof — they’re also right. No matter your feelings about their garish and intrusive style, they get the dirt, and they publish it first, and if it’s not there, it’s not true.
Of course, when Pitt and Jolie (and their publicists) realized they needed to counter this unexpected rumor, they didn’t call TMZ. TMZ rarely trucks in publicists. Instead, they called People, which relayed an official statement as to the continuing integrity of their relationship. And while official statements are often bunk, this one rings true. Again, if they were going to break up, it most certainly would not be leaked, scooped, or scandalous. It would be handled with kid-gloves, it would sustain the auras of both Pitt and Jolie, and it would make all involved parties look saintly.
So let this be our lesson: don’t trust British tabloids, don’t trust sources just because they have “news” in the title, and don’t believe a Brangelina break-up tale until it involves an official statement, TMZ confirmation, and a dramatic surge of damage control pictures featuring beautiful children.
