Yearning for the ScarJo of Old
Do you guys remember, oh, about 2001, when Scarlett Johansson was a bit of an enigma — a seemingly plain girl with some startlingly grace to her face, the beginnings of a husky voice, full lips, and some sort of kept promise in her eyes? She was the girl who fades into the background in junior high and then comes back to the reunion TOTALLY HOT, and with a Ph.D. in rocket science and a hot Argentine husband.
Ghost World, c. 2002
That was the promise of ScarJo before she was ScarJo, and I loved how that promise seemed to undulate beneath her skin — and had a tremendous effect on all of her costars. ScarJo before she was ScarJo: the Scarlett Johansson of The Horse Whisperer, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Ghost World, Lost in Translation, and even The Girl with the Pearl Earring.
But somewhere along the way — and I’m guessing it’s about the time when she started dating boring-face-Josh-Harnett and signed on for The Island, The Nanny Diaries and Match Point, when she became the beautiful yet meaningless face of Calvin Klein — she became something different. She was suddenly that hot girl at the reunion, but in the process, something was lost. I want to wipe all that make-off right off her face and tell her to stop posing like she’s a B-model in the back pages of the Victoria’s Secret catalog.
Victoria's Secret page 94
Now, when I see her in Vicky Cristina Barcelona or The Avengers, looking all super voluptuous and emanating pure sex, I mourn for the plain ScarJo of old. Now don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with an actress being sexual, being voluptuous, or even posing with her mouth open. I just fear that she, like Marilyn Monroe before her, has been cast as sex for sex’s sake, and in roles that ask her to embody that suggestion and little else.
Star scholars think of star images as “polysemic,” each with several potential meanings, each of which may be “activated” or received differently. In this way, a single star “mean” many things, even contradictory things. Monroe, for example, seemed to mean sex and innocence; Marlon Brando was at once intensely emotional and intensely masculine.
Importantly, the biggest stars — the ones that last — are the complicated ones, the ones that might play the same role over and over again, but that role, combined with the star’s extra-textual life, seems to represent something that matters and resonates with a tremendous and diverse swath of people. Johansson has this — you can see it in the early films — and it’s what made her a star in the first place. But now that she’s become a full-fledged star, marrying and divorcing another full-fledged star, that polysemy seems to have disappeared, just as the luminousness seems to have left her face.
Do you know what I’m talking about? Am I only the only one who sees this? She’s always looked kinda half asleep, but before that half-asleep-ness betrayed a certain desire unfulfilled. Now it’s as if she’s obtained it all, found it wanting, and just decided OH OKAY FINE I’ll be in this Avengers movie.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at her at the end of Lost in Translation — a clip that YouTube won’t let me embed. Or this scene when she goes and explores Japan. Again, there’s a curiosity there, something that doesn’t suggest that her beauty has become so powerful that she completely controls whatever situation she finds herself in, which is basically how I feel about every character she’s played since 2005. Now, there is a an art to playing that type of character, and conveying the pathos that accompanies it — Monroe knew how to do this; so did Garbo, in her way — but Johansson’s sex characters are essentially soulless. I feel nothing for them — no admiration, no lust, not even pity. And we all know that sex without soul is essentially a form of prostitution.
See?
You could argue that Johansson the Person has nothing to do with this — she’s taken roles in films that choose to treat her character a certain way, that exploit her body in a certain way, that make her a yoga instructor with little self-respect and less intelligence. But the star’s image at any moment is the sum of her parts and what she lets the press know about her personal life — and at this moment, she’s all wasted potential and nice breasts.
Posing for ladmags.....boobs boobs boobs....uninteresting.
Of course, I’m placing myself into this narrative: the ScarJo of Ghost World and Lost in Translation is someone I can see myself being friends with, and that’s what we’re generally looking for in a star — someone who’s relatable, with whom you’d like to share a French 75 or four. (There’s another subset of stars — the stars you’d be scared of and just want to look at from afar — in which Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt currently fit). But new ScarJo is neither here nor there, neither best friend nor goddess.
[Sidenote: If you find this new busty/lusty ScarJo sexy and want more and want me to just shut it -- okay, I get it. She's ostensibly hotter these days. But wouldn't that grown-up body be even more compelling if it was more than a body?]
The marriage to Ryan Reynolds seemed symptomatic of this transformation, providing a tanned and toned body to place beside her own. And Reynolds, for what it’s worth, has a tremendous amount of potential — every since I saw him in Van Wilder, I knew this guy was funny, but the roles that try to play him straight and capitalize on his Ken looks/serious-face are so ridiculously boring. The divorce was unexpected, the fling with Sean Penn even more so. Was that her adding something worn and seemingly wise to her life? It didn’t make sense at the time, but that’s only because her last ten roles put with her with smoldering men approximately her age. But think about it: The ScarJo image of old fits perfectly with a craggy-faced Sean Penn.
So I have high hopes, readers. Sure, she’s locked into this silly Avengers franchise that forces her to look like a blow-up doll. BUT WAIT — a Cameron Crowe movie!!! — next year! With Matt Damon! And my new favorite Fanning! About a zoo! THIS COULD BE GREAT! Cameron Crowe might not always be perfect (what was that Kristen Dunst/Orlando Bloom movie? So bad I seriously cannot even spend the time looking up the name) but Almost Famous, sweet Almost Famous. Remember how that movie made Kate Hudson seem like something really, truly special? Like something that wouldn’t go on to date A-Rod and movies that make me embarrassed to be a woman? The Cameron Crowe alchemy can truly do wonders.
And now that she’s got the Penn out of her system, I want the possibility of a new romance, and hopefully with someone unexpected yet interesting? He can be older, he can even be ugly, I just want it to surprise me. OH MY GOD WHAT ABOUT THE FASSBENDER? Another talented star roped into super-hero movies? I’m not seeing any evidence of a Fassbender wife in my cursory Googling? Please, ScarJo, make this happen. He has an Irish accent. He will be Rochester to your Jane Eyre. Do it.
If I can Photoshop their pictures together, IT CAN HAPPEN IN REAL LIFE
I guess I’m saying I want Scarlett Johansson to be interesting again. She used to be something worth talking about. Now she just slips from the mind, and makes me reconsider everything I thought about her in those early films. Does she actually have talent? Is she just a Good Body? I need some reaffirmation — I want that glint of promise and desire and enigma back in her eyes. It’s possible — I still see it in photos from time to time, usually in real life, very rarely when she’s been posed — but I think I need a performance, a really heartbreakingly good performance, to convince me of its existence.
This.
Celebrity Publicity vs. Privacy: The Eternal Debate
Earlier this week, Lainey Gossip posted a particularly critical reading of Reese Witherspoon’s current publicity attempts, with specific attention to the contradiction between Witherspoon complaining about her lack of privacy and the recent sale of her wedding photos to People and OK!
Via People.com
The Witherspoon quote from the Vogue interview/cover story/massive photo spread:
But one thing that hasn’t changed is that she is as private as ever. Indeed, she seems almost constitutionally unsuited for the level of fame she has to live with. At one point, I ask her what is the worst thing about being Reese Witherspoon, and she pauses for a very long time. Finally she says, “I mean, I feel like an ingrate for even thinking anything isn’t good. I’m very, very, very lucky. But . . . umm . . . probably that I parted with my privacy a long time ago. We went different ways. And sometimes I mourn it. Sometimes I will sit in the car and cry. Because I can’t get out. That’s the only thing: I mourn the loss of my privacy.”
And Lainey’s take:
Um, remember when Reese Witherspoon sold her wedding to People Magazine and Hello Magazine?
Oh but she’s just a girl from the South who doesn’t know about these thangs! It’s preposterous to think that Reese would up and marry only to go back to work and sneak in a quickie honeymoon only to have to return to go back to work for anything other than necessity. After all, people like Reese, with access and opportunity and resources, they are bound by necessity, aren’t they? They have NO choices, not in their schedules, not in their spending, in not much at all.
So of course not, Reese could not know about, you know, wedding planning around a theatrical release and the potential effect that could have on a movie’s performance, hell no. She’s way too authentic for that.
There are a number of things going on here — with Witherspoon’s actions, her choice of words in her interview, and Lainey’s response to them — and all of them revolve around claims to authenticity and transparency.
First of all, it’s crucial to understand that the tension between celebrities and stars desiring privacy….in the selfsame moment that they expose themselves to the public via interviews, films, and other products….is absolutely, positively nothing new. Even Charles Lindbergh attempted to fiercely guard his private life, which he thought was, frankly, besides the point when it came to his aviation achievements — even as he continued to make public appearances and profit off his fame. During classic Hollywood, there was less complaining about privacy, in part because every statement from the stars was vetted by the studios themselves, and complaining of lack of privacy was tantamount to complaining about the studios, the fan magazines, and the generalized publicity apparatus that sustained the stars. With the mandate of the studios that employed them, stars shared all manner of details of their “private lives” with the fan magazines and gossip columnists, even if those private lives were actually a sham, conjured to harmonize with their manufactured star images.
As the studio system transformed in the 1950s, stars gradually dearticulated themselves from management at the hands of the studios, hiring their own staffs to handle publicity. At the same time, paparazzi culture became gradually more invasive, especially following the frenzy over Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton filming Cleopatra/holding hands/canoodling in Rome. The fan magazines became increasingly bombastic in their handling of the stars, using scandal-tipped headlines, exclamation points, and other suggestive aesthetic means to imply, if not actually name, scandal. The move was at least partially motivated out of necessity: the stars refused to cooperate and offer access, forcing the magazines to “write around” their lack of content. Which is all to say that there was less explicit collusion between the traditional gossip outlets and the stars — a process that continued for most of the ’60s and ’70s. The stars began to publicly complain of the fan magazines and gossip columnists, something they never would have dared to do during the studio system, when such a complaint could inspire negative coverage and effectively doom his/her career. But by this point, the traditional fan magazines and gossip columnists held less sway, and it became common practice for stars not only to complain about the incursion of authors, photographers, columnists, and other forms of publicity, but to sue them as well. (There were dozens of libel suits levied by stars against various outlets during this period).
In other words, the relationship between the stars themselves and the gossip outlets became antagonistic where it had once been incredibly, necessarily cooperative. Starting with People in 1974, however, the cooperative relationship gradually began to reform, as People, Entertainment Tonight, and their various imitators (Extra, Entertainment Weekly, E!, early versions of Us Magazine) all served explicit promotional functions for the star. Exclusives are approved and vetted by the star and his/her publicist and usually timed to promote the his/her upcoming or ongoing project. Importantly, these outlets do not look for or break scandal. They will report on it out necessity (if they didn’t, they’d seem out of touch), but they do not stir the scandal pot, as it were, and often provide space for stars to tell “their sides of the story.”
When Reese Witherspoon sold her wedding photos to People Magazine, she was doing two things. First, she was promoting her upcoming film, Water for Elephants, in which she stars with Robert Pattinson.
As Lainey and others have pointed out, this film really, really needs to succeed if Witherspoon is to maintain her status as a top female star (with a $15 million per-film pricetag) with the ability to open a major picture. (Her last hit was Walk the Line in 2005; her last major hit was Legally Blonde 2 in 2003). The reason stars have offered themselves up for celebrity gossip in the form of interviews, photo shoots, etc., has always been PROMOTION. For some celebrities, such as Paris Hilton, they are simply promoting their entire image on the hope that the visibility of that image will help sell products emblazoned with it: perfume, books, nail polish, etc. But stars whose stardom is the result of actual skill — singers, actors, etc. — time their gossip availability to coincide with a specific product showcasing that skill. A film, a television premiere, an album release, a voting period for the Oscars, etc. The announcement of Natalie Portman’s pregnancy was no coincidence, and neither is the timing of Witherspoon’s wedding. I know this might be hard to hear, but it is the absolute truth. Of course, Portman (probably) did not time her actual pregnancy. But she (and her publicist) sure as shit planned the announcement.
The reasoning is simple: the more your name, face, and image is on the minds of the public at large, the more likely they will be to consume a product branded with that name, face, and image.
Witherspoon working hard to remind you that she is appearing in a film with ELEPHANTS, coincidentally entitled "Water for Elephants." Photo via Vogue.com
Witherspoon and publicist were (and are) doing their job, attempting to heighten her visibility and, hopefully, open Water for Elephants in a way that makes a statement about her power and popularity.
The problem, then, is that Witherspoon paired her efforts with an interview in which she complains about the incursions of the press. To be specific, however, she was complaining about a lack of privacy, which is generally associated with papping photographers….not interviews with Vogue, or the two carefully chosen photos she offered to People. She’s complaining about unauthorized publicity; she has no problem with authorized publicity. The problem, then, is that the former is generally incited by the latter. Under the studio system, there was no such thing as unsanctioned publicity, as the columnists, magazines, and other interviews were all beholden to the studios. Now, authorized publicity breeds unauthorized publicity.
Witherspoon is obviously game to pose for magazine covers, look great at premieres, present at award shows. All of these contribute directly to the performance of a film and are, most likely (it not specifically) built into the contract she signed. (Star contracts generally require that the star promote the film — attending premieres, junkets, etc.) The problem is that such highly orchestrated photos and stories aren’t nearly as interesting or tantalizing as those obtained without her permission, which seem to offer a window onto the “real,” authentic Witherspoon, valuable in large part due to its scarcity. (Reality stars prove that we don’t simply hunger for authenticity and “being real” — it’s what we don’t have, or haven’t been able to read about, that we hunger for the most. Details of Brangelina’s sex life, for example).
So Witherspoon ends up looking hypocritical, at once seeking and complaining about the spotlight. But think about how you would feel if Witherspoon said she loved the spotlight, loved paparazzi coverage, loved seeing photos of her children all over the place. Wouldn’t we call her Tori Spelling? Isn’t the SPOKEN reticence towards exposure part of what makes certain stars “classy” and likable? If she relished exposure, she would be forsaking her claims to being “just like us,” a “Southern girl,” a dotting mother, modest, etc. The disavowal is thus absolutely crucial to Witherspoon’s image — even if it’s false or an act or contradictory, it needs to be there.
In general, this simultaneous embrace and disavowal of publicity is at the heart of stardom. Stars are stars because the way that they act on screen, combined with what they seem to represent in their “private” lives, seem to embody something that matters to a large swath of people. But in order to be stars and not just actors, they need to make that private life available, even when it leads to unsanctioned, unwanted, invasive and potentially dangerous coverage. With that said, star scholars have long written about the ways in which contradiction composes the very core of stardom: a star is simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, “Just like Us” and absolutely nothing like us. From time to time, that contradiction becomes more visible. The more visible and flagrant the contradiction, with little to smooth it over, the more ridiculous a star seems. See, again, Tori Spelling, but also Gwyneth Paltrow and Tom Cruise. We want our stars to embody contradictions seamlessly, and when the seams show, we reject them. Ultimately, the most enduring, valuable, and esteemed stars are those who, with the help of their publicity teams, manage to hide these seams, even as they expand to contain multitudes, embodying all of the meanings we map onto them. At this point, Witherspoon still seems to be in control. We’ll see how the film fares — and how her subsequent publicity attempts address the perpetual contradictions of stardom.
Dear James Franco,
Dear James Franco,
I am a well-educated young woman adept at dismantling star identities. I have a large vocabulary, used to be a Mathlete, attended a rather overpriced idyllic liberal arts college, and am months away from obtaining a Ph.D. But I cannot. figure. you. out.
I mean, maybe it’s just too easy. You’re a hack. A good-looking, decently-talented hack who’s decided to up his profile by doing kooky, erudite, and unexpected things. You’re a character actor made movie star through clever PR! You’re not *actually* that interesting or smart or different. They let you into the Ph.D. program at Yale because you’re a celebrity, not because you’re actually smart. You claim that your stint on General Hospital was a form of “performance art,” which is a sure sign of your inflated quasi-academic head. You probably make ample use of the word “problematize.” You did a good Ginsburg, sure, and supposedly you’re good at cutting off your own arm in this weekend’s 127 Hours and HAVE MADE MULTIPLE PEOPLE FAINT, HAVE SEIZURES, AND FREAK THE F OUT in the process, but still, you’re the same guy who just looked constipated all the way through the Spiderman movies. YOU WERE IN ANNAPOLIS, JAMES. Sure, you made me cry like a small child in Tristan & Isolde, but your performance’s high point featured you yelling HOW MANY BEFORE ME? [NONE!] HOW MANY AFTER ME! [NONE!]. You were, quite literally, the poor man’s James Dean — starring in a made-for-TV version on Dean’s life. You were the least funny thing about Freaks and Geeks. And Pineapple Express actually sucked, I don’t care what you say. If I were Julia Roberts in Eat, Pray, Love, which thank goodness I am not, as I hate “dancing like no one’s watching,” I would have left you too. Plus you kinda look like a gomer in these recent Gucci ads, the latest of which is currently staring at me from this week’s New Yorker, which you’re probably pretending to read while taking the Amtrak between New Haven and New York because you like to “be with the people” and “explore their texts” (like soap operas). (NOTE: SNIDE COMMENTS IN QUOTES = NOT ACTUALLY FRANCO QUOTES.)
You’re a pretty face in over your head. Are you going to take comprehensive exams, Franco? Huh!?! Are you a member of the graduate student union? Are you surviving on Ramen? (OH WAIT YOU GO TO YALE, where they pay graduate students enough to buy vegetables). Nevertheless, you are an embarrassment to legitimate graduate students — a bastardization of intellectualism spewing half-baked artistic platitudes stolen from skimmed copies of Harper’s and The New York Review of Books.
OR ARE YOU!?!?
Maybe you’re the new Renaissance man, using your power and bankability to help promote small, struggling productions, including the Ginsberg bio-pic. Maybe you actually really love reading first year theory and you’re actually a sweet dude when you make it to seminar class between promoting films. (Maybe you attend grad student potlucks? I hope you bring the dude fall-back of baked ziti or store-bought tortilla chips with some elaborate also-store-bought dip). I mean, you did your assigned reading in-between takes of 127 Hours, whilst wedged in a small cave, which certainly speaks well for you. [I once read feminist theory on the elliptical machine, James! Let's be study buddies!] You flirted with Terri Gross (okay, Justin Timberlake also flirted with Terri Gross, as did Keith Richards, but nonetheless) and told her you were a true fan of Fresh Air. Me too, James. According to native Yale informant Inessentials, who saw you speak on campus a few weeks back, you were generous with your time, pretty smart, and un-pompous. You have “an unusually high metabolism for productivity…a superhuman ability to focus,” which not only means that you’ve been able to obtain 502 degrees over the last few years, but also makes you THE DREAM GRADUATE STUDENT! I bet you even know how to properly pronounce Althusser! I want to hang out with you; will you take a look at my dissertation? So Yale accepted you because you were a movie star…..they also accepted George W. Bush, just because his parents had money. Just sayin’. And so your own films get accepted at Sundance, even if they’re super self-involved. So are Spike Lee’s. Just sayin’. So you fell asleep during a lecture at Columbia. You know what? Happens to the best of us. I once slept through the entirety of The Plow that Broke the Plains, but there was no one to take a picture of me on his/her phone and sell it to TMZ.
You keep buying rights to films that you hope to make; you wrote a script about poet Hart Crane which you’re about to start directing. You’re putting your ideas into practice, mixing theory with production, which is something that we media studies folk love to talk about but seldom have the guts (or means) to do. Admittedly, this is also probably why you’re hard to stomach — jealousy takes many forms — but objectively speaking, when I compare the way that you spend your leisure time with that of, say, Tom Cruise, I cannot help but be impressed.
On that note, let me add that your juxtaposition of really cheesy/brooding/half-constipated Tristan and method acting is TOTALLY HOT. The fact that I can justify my love for that melodramatic mess of a movie by thinking of how good you are in Milk — thank you, James. It’s like you’re Ryan Gosling but make films and take classes instead of collaborating on singing projects with small children’s choirs. The fact that you can alternate roles as Ginsberg with that of a gnarly, smelly, gutsy outdoorsman…..again, this I like, and not just because I’m from the Pacific Northwest and own three pairs of Chacos. I think we call that “talent.”
You’ve also managed to change the conversation about you from one of potential romance and gossip - which is where things seemed to be headed with your early career — to one of intellectual endeavors and explorations. Do you realize how difficult that is to accomplish? Most stars try really hard to deflect attention from their personal lives; with you, the attention’s still on your “personal,” but that personal just seems to be filled with books, thoughts, writing….KINDA LIKE ME, JAMES!! We live the life of the mind!
Turns out living the life of the mind is HARD WORK.
I take back what I said about the Gucci ads, even though I’d like you more if you were reading some Gramsci while wearing those Italian clothes. (You can do that for the next shoot, but make sure you footnote me. My last name is with an “E.”) And you do actually kinda look like James Dean. But Dean was actually somewhat of a hack — following Brando around, not nearly his equal, aping his style. But you, James — I can’t think of someone you’re copying, or a career you’re emulating, or any sort of antecedent for your behavior, and no, Brando’s turn of crazy in the late ’50s onward is not the same as completing multiple graduate degrees. You’re so weird, so cooky, so much more invested in your work as a site of play and experimentation than for purely financial gain….you could only be a graduate student. Get some anxiety, some long-term poverty, a pair of grad-student thick frame glasses, add in a modicum of awkwardness, and you would fit in with any media studies program in the nation. You’re inscrutable because no one can imagine why a good-looking star with a string of potential blockbuster roles would choose to sit in seminar rooms and spend time on projects that will reap little critical or popular acclaim. But isn’t that like me, senior year in high school, full ride to the University of Idaho, where I could’ve totally rocked an MBA and become a high powered accountant and/or lawyer and/or Mathlete, yet choosing to pursuing a liberal arts degree in Rhetoric-Film Studies, a Master’s in English, a Ph.D. in Media Studies? We are slaves to our passions, James. I so understand. Do you want to do a guest blog post at your leisure?
Turns out, I do get you, Franco. It’s pretty simple. You’re a graduate student, just like me. Ultimately, it’s up to all of us to decide whether that means that you’re awesome or awful. For, as Liz Lemon made all too clear, “graduate students….they’re the WORST.”
Why You Love The Goz
How have I not written about The Goz (né Ryan Gosling) until now? He’s on my Freebie Five ; he’s absolutely one of my favorite actors; since Lainey Gossip shares my affection, I read news about/ogle him on a weekly, if not daily basis. When my Whitman friends and I get together, we watch The Notebook (fast-forwarding through the old people parts, of course). He’s a total babe. But why do I — and so many, many others — feel such an attraction?
I first saw Gosling in a very small, very unseen film called The Believer in the U.S. (and Danny Balint overseas). When I lived in Nantes, France for six months during my junior year, I’d go to the 2 Euro theater on a near-daily basis — each week they showed anywhere between 15 and 30 films, starting at 10 am, including older American/French releases (Amelie played there basically for the duration of my stay) and small art house stuff, and auteur retrospectives. I saw Muholland Drive WITHOUT SUBTITLES and you can only imagine the amplification of my confusion. And I also saw Danny Balint, which had won big at Sundance but never got a distribution push stateside. As a Jewish anti-Semite, Gosling is nothing less than brilliant. Seriously: it’s an even more breathtaking (if perhaps less finely nuanced) performance than Half Nelson.
I immediately knew this guy was something — and was frustrated when his next handful of films (Murder by Numbers, The Slaughter Rule, The United States of Leland) weren’t exactly what I was expecting. And I’m sure this string of films was not what longtime fans of Gosling’s teen work in The Mickey Mouse Club and Young Hercules were expecting either.
And then, and then — The Notebook. Gosling’s role as Noah Calhoun serves as the ground note of his star image and the catalyst for the cult of Gos fandom. Here, the similarities between The Notebook and Twilight are quite stunning — both are based on poorly written novels that touch on something deeply romantic and affecting in spite of hackneyed prose. Both films feature performances that animate otherwise stereotypical characters. And most importantly, the “real life” people who play these roles end up together — thus authenticating the romance and powerful understanding of love as forwarded in the original text. Put differently: the fact that the actors who played these roles *also* fell in love means that this type of love story can, and does, happen, even off of the movie screen.
The direction of The Notebook is somewhat of an abomination. There are several super saccharine moments involving birds and sunsets. I cry like a baby when James Garner breaks down, and I still can’t believe they got Gena Rowlands to play this role (oh, yeah, it’s because her SON, Nick Cassevettes, directs the picture). But Gosling and McAdams have chemistry that crackles. They both emanate tremendous star quality — which is part of why the film has enjoyed such a tremendous second life in video/DVD. This is our generation’s Pretty Woman or Dirty Dancing — the film you keep around (as my friend Alaina does) for hungover afternoons and girls’ nights in.
But I’m a bit ahead of myself. If you’re a Gos fan, you know that he and his co-star, Rachel McAdams, dated (and were rumored to be engaged) for around a year. They didn’t get together while filming; rather, when they were nominated for the MTV Movie Award’s Best Kiss — and won — they had to recreate the famous Notebook run-and-jump kiss.
Sparks flew in the aftermath; they got together. (Again, Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson also won this award and recreated their kiss/non-kiss on stage; it was shortly thereafter that photos first surfaced of them holding hands in public. Gosling and McAdams were private (by Hollywood standards), and only a smattering of photos of them together are available. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes they were not. But they were still enough of a golden couple to warrant a moniker for fans of their relationship — McGoslings — and a mention in SNL’s Digital Short “Lazy Sunday.”
They broke up quietly. But both McAdams and Gosling were busy building their resumes during this time. I’ve already theorized McAdams’ star image at length, but as for Gosling, it seems he took a small detour into the mainstream — first with The Notebook, but also with Fracture (2007) — a thriller starring Anthony Hopkins. I kinda love this film and think it’s underrated — but am I blinded by The Gos’ golden light?
It made nearly $100 international, but Gosling hasn’t been in anything nearly as mainstream since. In fact, he’s worked very little, especially in comparison to other “it” Hollywood actors. He was a revelation in Half Nelson (also 2007) — a film which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor.
I also loved him in Lars in the Real Girl. Praise for this film was a bit more muted, but it features truly beautiful, compassionate performances not only from Gosling, but co-stars Paul Schneider and Emily Mortimer. And if an actor can make you love him even with a moustache and sweater like this — that’s something.
These days, he’s promoting his new project, Blue Valentine, with co-stars and fellow indie darling Michelle Williams. He’s been all over the place with this movie — looking preposterously beautiful in Ray-Bans and a white shirt on the Rivera at Cannes; by turns mugging, teasing, and picking up his child co-star, pictured below.
He recently wrapped ensemble dramedy Crazy, Stupid, Love, starring Steve Carrell, Julianne Moore, and Emma Stone (as his love interest), which looks to be somewhat more mainstream — it’s produced by Relativity, distributed by Warner Bros., and will certainly get a more than art-house release. He’s currently filming the heist-thriller Drive with Carey Mulligan, Christina Hendricks, and Bryan Cranston. In short: he’s taking a break from indie dramas.
There’s his resume. But what does he “mean”? And what type of attractive masculinity does he embody? Or, to rephrase, WHY DO WE LIKE HIM?
I solicited answers from many of you via Facebook and Twitter, and it seems to break down into four categories:
1.) His picture personalities are endearing.
Usually Noah (“He can build a house with his own two hands. The Notebook is real, right?”) but also Lars, or, for those who watched him as a teen, as Young Hercules. Apart from the firecrackers/very angry men he played in his early film career, his most recent picture personalities have been of a piece. Even though Lars may seem a far cry from Noah, they are both tremendously caring men — the former manifests his damaged heart in a much more neurotic fashion than the later, but they both encourage the female viewer to care for them. Same for Half Nelson — I want to wrap him up and make him a dinner with vegetables and wash his sheets and put him to bed. Even in Fracture, you want to protect his obvious goodness (and moral-ness) from the negative force that is Anthony Hopkins.
While I’ve been inflecting much of this discussion with my own female, heterosexual attraction to him, many, many men — both gay and straight — like Gosling, and just as many men responded to my query as women. For these respondents, the attraction — perhaps more accurately named “admiration” — is connected to skill in a certain role. Which brings me to….
2.) He’s talented.
“He has range,” he did amazing job in Half Nelson, his work in Lars in the Real Girl was “brave and effortless.” No doubt about it: he’s got talent. And talent makes it easier to esteem him — and also easier to rationalize your own affection. It’s like the difference between admitting your affection for roast chicken and fried chicken: one is refined and worthy, the other mildly shameful, or at least a guilty pleasure. One is Ryan Gosling, the other is Channing Tatum.
Talent also adds a particular nuance to his masculinity. He may not have a body that betrays several dedicated hours in the gym (which is not to say that he’s fat; far from it) but he is dedicated. He’s picked his projects very carefully and worked far less than he could have. The message: he devotes himself to his craft. And that brand of devotion — to a craft, and, by extension, to a woman — is tremendously alluring.
3.) He’s sensitive.
It sounds like a bad way of describing the guy who liked you in 9th grade (or maybe just the ‘ideal guy’ that you described while taking quizzes in the back of Seventeen magazine). But it’s really at the heart of his apparent demeanor: he seems like a caring, sensitive guy. Like he would talk and touch softly; like he wants to hold you or cherish you. Like he’s not an asshole. Of course, part of this perception stems from his picture personality.
But it’s also the way he is with kids, and this is crucial. You’ve seen the pictures above, but his affection and gentleness with kids extends to his musical “side project.” Gosling can sing — just look at him bringing the house down Boyz II Men style with JC Chasez and Justin Timberlake during his Mickey Mouse Club days. But he’s funneled that skill into a curious but wonderful project, Dead Man’s Bones, which regularly collaborates with kids. Here he is playing with a bunch of Halloween-costumed kids in the graveyard; here’s another one with a kids choir (again dressed Halloween-style). His picture personality affirms it — just look at what a good teacher he is in Half Nelson when he’s not totally strung out on heroin! Endearingness levels = off the charts.
4.) He’s attractive.
Attractiveness is subjective. Gosling is not super-hunk attractive: he’s not super jacked, he doesn’t have the facial structure that makes George Clooney/Cary Grant paragons of male attractiveness. But he has something, and he carries it in an unnameable way — call it confidence, call it swagger, call it charisma — that makes him almost faint-worthy. Lainey Gossip regularly warns readers that if they looked at posted pictures, they won’t be able to finish their thought, let alone their work day. It’s true. He’s got it. Visceral affect. (And I use affect on purpose — his appearance acts upon the viewer — a different connotation than effect).
I do think, however, that without the star image — without the aura of sensitivity, romance, and talent — this affect would diminish. Hotness is a compound quality: equal parts how someone looks and how you would imagine him/her interacting with you. The knee-quivering part of The Gos isn’t about how you look at him, but about how you imagine him looking at you. And that — that’s a quality that endures.
So there we have it: Ryan Gosling is basically your ideal boyfriend. He’s talented, passionate, sensitive, and attractive. He’s good with kids, looks at you with desire, looks good in suits, loves dogs.
He’ll write you a song and it won’t be lame or rhyme or sound like Justin Bieber. He’ll build you your dreamhouse and look at you that one way. He’s good with tools but just as good with art. He’s the liberal arts Da Vinci of our generation, and he’s so totally your ideal boyfriend.
Sure, you say, but isn’t every guy I’m attracted to in the movies my ideal boyfriend? No, of course not. I like Channing Tatum (he’s my fried chicken!) but I wouldn’t want to date him; I’d probably get embarrassed when he started doing crazy dance moves everytime we went to a wedding. I like George Clooney and Brad Pitt, but in no way are either of them “ordinary” enough for me to imagine them even looking at me in the first place, let alone hanging out with me and going to coffee shops and actually being my boyfriend. Therein lies the crucial distinction of The Gos: he’s reconciled the ordinary and the extraordinary, both in his films and in his “real” life, in a way that makes him someone you could actually see yourself dating. Granted, it’d be like winning the dating lottery, but it’s something you can visualize.
Granted, this doesn’t explain why guys like The Gos. Or maybe it does: if Gosling is a girl’s ideal boyfriend, then To Be The Gos = to be the ideal boyfriend. And the fact that he’s not gross-out romantic (and super talented) makes him someone that men want to resemble rather than ridicule.
And as for specificity — e.g. what makes Gosling attractive in this moment, and a star of this generation — I’d argue that he’s proof that the artificiality of the star-making machine (specifically, Disney and Mickey Mouse club) can also cultivate talent that signifies as authentic and invested. Not every Mousketeer grows up to be a man or woman with something to add to our understanding of art and talent — I mean, look at JC Chasez — but both Gosling and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, Timberlake, prove that the spectacle and artificial trappings that attend most stars today can be shed. Talent *does* exist; it’s not all auto-tune and lip-syncing.
I’m curious about where Gosling’s image will lead — how will these two mainstream roles challenge, affirm, or texture his current status as our collective boyfriend? Ultimately, though, no matter how the films do, as long as The Notebook stays on continuous replay, and he keeps getting caught by the paparazzi doing things like doing that half-grin and petting dogs and playing music with kids, this current image will endure.
Rafa, The Cutest.
Rafael Nadal’s been on the mind of late — several weeks ago, while roadtripping down from Walla Walla, my travelling companion made us wake up from our beautiful campsite on the Cache La Poudre river at 5 a.m., pack up the tent, and furiously drive two hours to a wireless signal so we could watch the French Open. I’d heard all about this Rafa, this storied rivalry with Federer, but as I lived the last two years of my life without a television, I’d never seen him play. (I’ve always enjoyed tennis; I took lessons for a bit; I know the scoring system; but like my relationship with most sports, it demands a catalyst from someone who authentically cares). Then, in anticipation of Sunday’s Wimbledon, he shows me Shakira’s most recent video, “Gypsy,” feauturing our boy staring longingly into the distance and/or at Shakira’s hips. The best part of the video is an extratextual: her justification for his appearance is that “”I thought that maybe I needed someone I could in some way identify with. And Rafael Nadal is a person who has been totally committed to his career since he was very young. Since he was 17, I believe.” F-ING PRICELESS.
You can watch the video in full below, but first I’ve highlighted some essential screenshots:
So this guy’s somewhat bewitched me. And it’s not that he’s hot, per se, or that he’s tremendously talented, which he obviously is. Rather, he’s flat-out, no-question, The Cutest.
I realize this is a contentious term. Guys hate cute. Vigorous, sweaty dudes aren’t cute. Whatever. Because the difference between a talented athlete and an athletic superstar — the type of player that prompts even the British to come hours in advance for hopes of a glimpse of his practice; the type that enjoys massive and long-term sponsorship deals from Nike; the type that makes casual fans of the sport take note, including the likes of Shakira — is charisma. Charisma has many flavors: The Obama Flavor, the Hitler Flavor, the Robert Downey Jr. Flavor. Just recall that in each instance, it helps us, the minions, to shed any bitterness or animosity we might feel about that person being in power, having more money, attracting more beautiful women. Charisma, in this Weber-ian understanding of the term, legitimates power. Tennis power included.
In the case of Rafa, this cuteness - a mix of the adorable, the naif, the little boy, the unadulterated pleasuring in the sport — encourages us to root for him, even as he gets the girl, the enormous prize money, the yacht off the coast of Majorca, etc. etc.
The Cuteness, In Steps:
1.) He’s a Little Boy.
Sure, he’s young. Born in 1986. But he also has a unique boyishness about his face — something unformed and pure — that hits some women right in the part that makes you want to cuddle him up and start making baked goods. He wears his emotions so plainly; when he’s happy or wins, he does a spread-eagle onto the ground, or, Sunday, pulled a full somersault.
Immediately before collapsing onto the clay….then he stood up and had bright red clay over, but cared not a bit, just like a boy with a kool-aid moustache.
It’s also widely know that he lived with both of his parents on his home in Majorca until their recent split; he stayed in his childhood bedroom and, between tournaments, played video games and presumably gobbled up his mom’s cooking. He’s coached by his Uncle; his family refused to let him leave home as a teen to train in Madrid. When his mom called him on his cellphone during a press conference, he answered it, finishing the call “I love you Mama.” He gulps milk and food in public, totally unconsciously, just like your brother put away 3 bowls of cereal when he was 16. He’s a manchild, but not in that horrible Seth Rogen sort of way — in that earnest, hug-your-mom-in-public sort of way.
2. He’s (Seemingly) Without Artifice
The charming naivite is an extension of his boyishness, and allows affectations that on another, less likable (read: less cute) player might read as cloying or calculated. Take, for example, the biting of the trophies:
The biting has become Rafa’s signature — he does it to all trophies he wins — to differentiate himself from others, like that monographed-sweatered-wearing cheeseball Federer, who normally kiss the trophy.
Up until a few years ago, Rafa was also known for his ‘pirate’ playing uniform: capri pants, sleeveless shirt, bandana, tousled hair.
Once he became the #1 player in the World, Nike apparently convinced him that he needed a look more befitting his status, convincing him to shorten his pant-length to just above the knee and wear a polo shirt.
He’s like the 22-year-old who doesn’t realize that he can’t still wear his basketball shorts and frat shirt when he goes out into the real world. Or doesn’t remember to do his laundry. Or doesn’t even realize that people have things like haircuts. Now, you could look at the entire look as cultivated — trying to differentiate himself as different type of tennis player — or you could think of him as a little boy who felt like short tennis shorts and polo shirts were irritating and didn’t feel good on his skin, kind of like how my 26-year-old brother still refuses to wear 98% of clothing because “it feels scratttttchy, mommy.”
The pirate pants, the trophy-biting, they all fit with the established little boy image — making it all the more difficult to think of them as inauthentic. Or to judge him when he does things like pose for the cover of New York Magazine or a cologne ad as such:
A-Rod does it? Total douche. Rafa, The Cutest — little boy playing at sexy. Because when you see him in actual formal wear, in a real-life situation, at the Wimbledon Ball, you see that all he actually wants to do is grin-big and look like even the most tailored tux can’t cover up his little boy shoulders.
3.) The Girlfriend
And this is at least part of what inoculates the Shakira-ness: he’s been dating a hometown girl for years. Sure, she’s model-gorgeous; sure, she looks great in a bikini. But she’s just a girl from home! They just like to go frolicking and play with float toys together!
And he usually can’t even have her at games, as her presence distracts from his game. Again, A-Rod says this, I think he’s an asshole; Rafa, I think he’s just in love. The fact that he hasn’t impregnanted multiple girls or enmeshed himself in affairs (how could he, he’s too busy sleeping in his bunk beds, like Tom Hanks in Big!) also clearly differentiates him from that other Spanish Iberian athlete with a chiseled chest, Ronaldo.
And with the long-term girlfriend firmly in place, he doesn’t seem lecherous while floor-gyrating with Shakira. Rather, he just seems like he’s living in one of his fantasies, or one of your own — thus the lack of talking, the awkwardness, the fact that he just stares at her hips and doesn’t do anything other than furtively touch. It’s beautiful. Finally —-
4.) The Speech
If you have heard Rafa speak, then I need go no further. If you have not, what you need to know is this: he has just enough mastery of English to make it so that he has to speak without an interpreter; he has just enough tendency towards malapropisms and reverse word order that you hope his skills never ameliorate. I think it’s something to do with the lack of contractions or the simplicity of the adjectives/adverbs, compounded by the resilient Spanish phrasing, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Take, for example:
Well, very special, no, for me. Is a dream win here, one Grand Slam on hard court. I worked very hard the last ‑‑ well, all my life for improve the tennis outside courts, well, outside of clay.
Very happy, no? Very happy for the title. Today was really lot of emotions on court. I was there with the best player I ever saw, like is Roger.
My uncle always told me Rod Laver was the best because he win two times the Grand Slam, the whole Grand Slam, the four in a row, and for like six or seven years he didn’t play. So for that reason he can be.
Everything was very special. Sorry was tough moment for Rog today. I know how tough must be there in important situation from him. But, you know, no, he’s a great champion. He’s the best. And he’s, for sure, very important person for our sport, no?
His voice is boyish and, of course, earnest; when interviewed following victories, he is also quick to compliment the crowd, his opponents, the universe. John McEnroe, commenting on Sunday’s game, said that he is incredibly cocky on the court — again, just like a teenage boy — and incredibly gracious and kind when off, a wonderful “ambassador of our sport.” When manners (just like his mother taught him; I’m sure he clears his plate every night) are combined with accents and half-broken English, the result is pretty much devastating. Here, on his ‘very famous ass’:
In conclusion: He’s The Cutest, and by that I mean he’s of the very best sports has to offer.
Still the Boss: Springsteen and The (Re)activation of Sex Appeal
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ve seen my recent obsession with The Boss in full manifestation. It was prompted — or, rather, re-activated — when Glee used a Boss-penned song, Fire, in this week’s episode. (The Pointer Sisters may have made it famous, but The Boss does it so. much. better.) After watching Kristen Chenoweth and Mr. Shue sing their way through Fire, I began what has amounted to a veritabel odyssey through Springsteen’s collected YouTube clips. There are thousands: low-fi recordings from the ’70s, concert DVD rips, benefit performances, VH1 Storytellers, duets with Michael Stipe and Melissa Ethridge, impromptu duets with Berlin street performers.
Now, I’m a veritable life-long Springsteen fan. The tape of Born in the U.S.A. was a constant companion throughout my childhood; my brother and I would sing the titular song so loud and forcefully that it exacerbated his vocal chord condition/speech impediment. (Basically he got hoarse a lot from being really excited and using too much voice to sing/talk/be. I think that might be the most awesome speech impediment to wish upon a kid).
I have distinct memories of listening to both Human Touch and Lucky Town on my mom’s massive boom box; since I was a devoted nerdy reader of Entertainment Weekly, I knew that the double-release was both novel and risky, but what really mattered was the fact that I liked dancing in my stocking feet to 57 Channels (And Nothing On). (Side note: We only had 36 channels on cable in Nothern Idaho, so I totally thought The Boss was lying).
Now, as a kid, I never knew that Springsteen was, well, basically, sex. By the time I was 10 or so, the only thing I could consider even ‘cute’ was The New Kids on the Block. By the time I was conscious of sex, as opposed to cute, appeal, Springsteen was in his 40s — and teenagers have little appreciation for the sexy, rugged old man. In short, I had missed my window of appreciating Springsteen’s sex appeal.
After college, I underwent a classic rock/folk renaissance of sorts, finding myself obsessed with Zeppelin, old acoustic Bob Dylan, and ’70s-early ’80s Springsteen. Specifically, Nebraska. But I also rediscovered my visceral reaction to the entire Born in the U.S.A. album, amongst others. But still: no YouTube. Not back in 2005. I fell for the voice, and its dripping signification of sex and desire, but not for its embodiment.
Which is all a way of leading you to the fact that this recent detour into the vaste depository of Springsteen concern material has made me wonder how any singer can ever embody sex ever again.
In order to get on the same page as me, consider the following. All well worth your time, I can promise.
Now, each of the above videos conveys sex far more than any of the ‘official’ and highly produced videos — see, for example, the famous ‘Dancing in the Dark’ video, featuring a very young Courtney Cox:
It’s my contention, then, that the presence and ready accessibility not just of footage of Springsteen — the normal YouTube uploads of produced music videos — but of live concert footage that has activated his sex appeal for new generations — and reactivated it for those who felt that power in the ’80s.
But this is a particular brand of sex appeal — and its attractiveness deserves analysis.
1.) Springsteen’s appeal is deeply rooted in the performance of working class masculinity.
If you’re at all familiar with the Springsteen narrative, you also know that he has long signified the plight — and relief — of the working man. He sings about working men; he comes from a family of working men. He grew up in Jersey. But there’s also a particular performance of working class masculinity at work in his image. Of course, it signifies as authentic — in part because of our knowledge of his past — but we must also be mindful of the ways in which Springsteen himself (and his appearance in these videos, in publicity shots, in album covers) has helped reify what working class masculinity should look and sound like.
So look at the videos, and what do you see? Sweat, muscles, more muscles. Bandanas, back drops of American flags. Whiteness, Americanness. Power ballads….power. The musculature and sweat are particularly linked to a physique cultivated not through time in the gym, a la the boys of Jersey Shore — but from actual good hard labor. (Indeed, part of what’s interesting about the performance of ‘guido-dom’ on Jersey Shore is the ways in which it represents ethnicity — and working class ethnicity in particular — completely evacuated of actual labor and culture.)
The sweat shows that even though he’s escaped a life of hard manual labor, he’s still laboring on the stage — and earning our affection and concert dollars. He may be nicknamed The Boss, but he’s really the last bastion of the worker, and the lost American ethic he represents.
The musculature — tight t-shirts, blue jeans — is sharply reminiscent of that of young Marlon Brando. I realize this might sound odd — especially if you haven’t seen Streetcar or On the Waterfront. Of course, Springsteen emanates far more pure joy in expression than Brando ever did; indeed, Brando often looked as if every move, every word, caused him physical and mental anguish. When Pauline Kael first saw Brando in the stage version of Streetcar, she lowered her eyes, embarrassed for him, as she thought he was having a seizure. Her companion had to shake her and say ‘no, he’s acting.’ Sometimes I feel the same way when I watch Springsteen in some of these videos, especially in the ’70s, such as the one for ‘ He’s either seizing or singing or about to die — and that’s pureness of effort and exultation that links the two.
Marlon Brando was also portraying working class characters whose lives were marked by pathos and the despair that accompanies a way of life that has begun to fade….and Springsteen sings about the selfsame ideas. Brando alienated much of Hollywood when he first arrived, not only because his acting style was so different, but because he dared to wear blue jeans and white t-shirts on the streets. And in the 1970s, when much of the music scene was still characterized by glam, disco, or Robert Plant jeans zipped up with a pair of pliers, the Springsteen image was just as foreign.
Which is all to say that the attractiveness of Springsteen, like the smoldering attractiveness of young Brando, is rooted in a physical and artistic manifestation of the life of the working class man, in all its shades of pride, pathos, and cultural history.
2.) The videos drip with authenticity.
Back to the videos in particular. Springsteen did few ‘staged’ music videos. Instead, the vast majority of those found on the YouTubes are concert and other live footage. He’s famous for offering long prologues for his various songs in which he details the backstory that led him to write/contemplate the issues of each song. (The prologues are, at least in part, what helped make the Live ’75-’85 recording the first concert album to debut at number on on the charts). Such ‘real life’ stories obviously authenticate both the music and the artist, further reinforcing Springsteen’s own connection to his equally authentic working class visual image.
There’s also the issue of charisma. I’m thinking specifically of the ‘Fire’ video, but it’s really all over the place. It’s what makes Springsteen Springsteen — and helps him rise above all other rock performers of this particular era; it’s what still motivates fans to pay upwards of $100 for crappy tickets for tours promoting his recent (mediocre) albums. Charisma, to oversimplify the theories of sociologist Max Weber, is what helps us, as lowly non-stars, feel better about allowing those in power be in power. When someone has charisma, we’re much more okay with ceding authority, giving money, being ruled in whatever way. Springsteen’s charisma thus adds to his attractiveness — but it also helps elide the fact that he is, by no means, working class — and hasn’t been for a very long time, and profits off of our perception and nostalgia for that particular brand of authentic working class masculinity.
3.) The videos evoke intense nostalgia.
There’s certainly a nostalgia for youth at play here, especially when these videos are contrasted with the ones of the (still quite agile and handsome yet notably much older) Boss. Such nostalgia is compounded by that for the working class, which been near-wholly decimated over the last forty years. But the videos also evoke a form of technological nostalgia — for a far less mediated time, when such footage, and liveness, and image seemingly couldn’t be faked.
I’m thinking specifically of the video for ‘Prove it All Night,’ which you can watch below. Warning: IT MAY BLOW YOUR MIND. (A special thanks to Evan for sending this my way at the height of my binge). As one commenter put it, “This video should absolutely be promoted to the YouTube home page.”
Are you looking at that lo-fi greatness? The counter on the bottom of the screen? The pretty crappy — but still weirdly incredible — sound? Cell phone cameras take crappy videos everyday; a random browse through the basement of YouTube would reveal millions of them. But there’s a very particular videographic aura to this sort of aura — one that I’m sure Lucas Hildebrand could break down for me — that underscores the fact that we will never again live in a time that manufactures this quality of video for public consumption. The lo-fi-ness reminds me of my childhood, and, similar to my visceral reaction to an Apple IIe or Speak-n-Spells, I’m wistful. Nostalgic for technological simplicity.
Of course, 20 years from now, we’ll be looking at early cell phone photos with the same sort of wistfulness, and we need to continuously critique what, exactly, we’re being nostalgic for, and what says about how we’re (mis)remembering the past. With that said, the particular format, condition, and aesthetics of these videos — and the way that they bolster both the authenticity of the performance and Springsteen’s virility — is tremendously powerful in this particular cultural moment.
I’m curious, then, as to what sort of artifacts will (re)activate the sex appeal of today’s celebrity idols — will it be concert footage on YouTube (or something like it), or will it be something else entirely? Recall that in 1977, when ‘Prove it All Night’ was released, no one could have fathomed a system by which ten minute clips of video were uploaded and made available for hundreds of millions to watch at will, for no cost. In 2020, can I get a hologram of The Boss to sing me I’m on Fire? Well alright then. He’ll be pure sex forever.
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.
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.
What is a Justin Bieber?
A few months back, someone on my Twitter feed asked “What is a Justin Bieber?” Obviously he’s a person, and more specifically, a teenage pop star, but the phrasing of the question highlights he’s particular role in the mediascape today. Justin Bieber isn’t just a teenage boy with a baby face. He’s not just the next New Kid on the Block, nor is he a new Justin Timberlake. His fame is organic to the internet, and he’s either a harbinger of the future of the music industry or a model for a new type of teenage fame.
It’s tempting to just think of him as a pop idol. His songs are pure treacle; he looks like he’s still around 10. But he’s quite different from the likes of, say, Zac Efron, both in his provenance and in the way that he’s manipulated his fame since he was ‘discovered.’
The Bieber Creation story is both fitting with our current digital moment…and somewhat creepy. Bieber taught himself to sing and play multiple instruments, eventually entering some contest in his native Canada and coming in second place. His mom then started posting videos of Bieber covering various songs (like this one from Usher) to YouTube, and poof, several months and several millions hits later, he’d caught the eye of music producer, who flew Bieber to Atlanta and had him sing for Usher, who immediately took interest. (Rumor has it that there was a bidding war between Usher and Timberlake; it’s unconfirmed).
Bieber’s first album, My World, was released in November 2009, featuring the single “One Time” (featuring Usher). The video for the song (see below) has accumulated a RIDICULOUS 65 million hits. He even sparked a riot in a Long Island mall when someone yelled that he was going to appear in Abercrombie Kids.
But I don’t think Bieber really made it into the public consciousness (and by public, I mean people over the age of 17) until the release of his song “Baby” in January. The song, like the rest of the Bieber oeuvre, features benign promises of chaste love and devotion, only this one gets a special rap from an uncharacteristically clean-mouthed Ludacris.
He also got to sing the first verse of the new ‘We Are the World’ to benefit Haiti, prompting many old fogies to remark “who the hell is this kid?” He is the subject of “3 year old Crying Over Justin Bieber,” a glorious and hilarious home video with a inconsolable toddler bawling because “I just love Justin Bieber” and “I know that he loves me back” that went viral last month. Trust me, this video is incredible. Even more recently, he was the ‘recipient’ of an intimate letter from the normally pop culture-phobic Atlantic, and became the pivot of ‘Funny or Die’s’ April Fool’s Joke, in which the website was ‘overtaken’ by Bieber to become “Bieber Or Die,” featuring videos of Bieber gone power crazy, Justin Bieber “just wants to tell you he loves you girl,” and a dozen others.
So what is a Justin Bieber? He’s a transmedia product — and one who has achieved that status without the help of Disney or Nickelodeon. ’Transmedia’ is a term generally applied to storytelling techniques — defined by one transmedia storyteller as “the art of conveying messages themes or storylines to mass audiences through the artful and well planned use of multiple media platforms.” Lost is a good example of transmedia storytelling, as are Heroes, and The Matrix - all of which have had additional content published online or in alternate formats that can be consumed by fans as a means of adding to their understanding of the show and its narrative.
Now, I realize the term and idea of transmedia do not translate perfectly to a star. But I do think that we can think of a star as having a ‘narrative’ — and, as in the case of Bieber, a narrative that has components that are consumed by the majority, while other components are meant for consumption by fans aching for deeper understandings of the ‘story’ that is Bieber. Stars were transmedia before narratives were transmedia: dating back to Classic Hollywood, gossip and ‘story’ magazines lured readers with unknown details (and re-writings) of stars and the narratives in which they were featured (see Janet Staiger’s piece on Marlene Dietrich in Perverse Spectators for a particularly compelling instance). Just as today’s transmedia consumers were lured by the ‘tip of the iceburg’ that is the show/movie proper, so too are fans of stars — you see the star in a movie, on a YouTube video, whatever — and are drawn to seek our further details. To satiate your curiosity, sure, but also as a means of pleasurably expanding your understanding of the star and his/her meanings. Again, compare this activity to that of fans of Lost engaging in discussions, role-playing, fan-fic, and reading deep into the alternate and ‘fringe’ histories beneath the show on The Fuselage. In that case, it’s as if the show were the star, and the backstory provides the same pleasures that seeking personal history, dating habits, etc. function for a celebrity.
How, specifically, does Bieber occupy this position? He regularly Twitters; he has a website; his music videos are on Youtube. None of those things make him all that different from other pop stars. Yet I would argue that it’s the existence and tremendous popularity of his original videos — coupled with ‘stunts’ such as “Bieber or Die,” the Twitter account (with its 1.7 million followers), and dozens of videos Bieber made specifically for fans, including “So How Did I Fracture My Foot with Taylor Swift?” and “Justin’s Favorite Girl Response” that make his transmedia status (at least somewhat) unique. Bieber has an immense footprint on the web — and that, more than his signature haircut and plaintive voice, are what helped make him so successful.
Again, I don’t think Bieber is unique in his status as a transmedia star. Rather, I think that his success underscores the necessity of *being* transmedia — whether through Twitter, writing books, serving as a guest judge on a reality program, or having a website that does more than simply reproduce known facts about the star (as in the case of Tom Cruise’s). If you want to be a star today, whether in music or reality television, you’ve got to offer breadth — room to explore, room to be fascinated, room for your fans to feel like they know more about you than anyone else. At this point, I don’t think the paradigm applies to ‘organic’ movie stars (that is, stars whose stardom is either rooted and long-perpetuated almost exclusively by movie roles, with Johnny Depp, Robert Downey Jr., George Clooney Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt as specimens par excellence) — but then again, I don’t think that transmedia storytelling applies nearly as much to movies as it does to this relatively recent wave of heavily serialized television. To resist that pull is, to quote John Mayer’s analysis of Jennifer Aniston’s career, pretending like you still live in 1997.
To conclude, I could go into elaborate detail about how Bieber’s lyrics and look cater to ‘tween audiences that actually want a highly asexual crush. But instead, I’ll just point you to the startlingly full collection of “Lesbians Who Look Like Justin Bieber.”
Tom Cruise, Rebooted
The blog lives! Sometimes, you teach at a college with a two-week Spring Break, and that Spring Break is extended by an unexpected flu, and suddenly it’s been nearly three weeks since your last blog post. But trust that I spent that break collecting and processing ideas, as well as attending the national conference for media studies scholars (SCMS in L.A.), throwing my best friend a bridal shower in Seattle, and frolicking sunburning and eating my way through my beloved Austin. There should be ample posting in the weeks to come. If you’re even slightly sports-minded, do check out my recent post on Bill Simmons (aka ‘The Sports Guy’) over at Antenna. While you’re there, I’d also recommend looking at star scholar Diane Negra’s brief piece on Sandra Bullock and “Transforming the Academy’s Winners into Losers.”
So Tom Cruise. I’ve thought a tremendous amount about this man and his star image: my first published article (parts of which make me cringe, but whatever) was on Perez Hilton and his treatment of Cruise; this Fall, I wrote about Cruise’s embarrassing attempts to play the new celebrity game, joining Twitter and revamping his website.
And as much as I still believe that Cruise fundamentally misunderstands how stardom works today, you’ve got to hand it to him: he might be back. Not only is he requeued for Mission Impossible 4, but he’s got a new summer blockbuster, Knight and Day.
The trailer speaks for itself, but I can only say that it plays up the very best, most likable, and most charismatic aspects of the Cruise image. There’s not an eyepatch or a bad British accent to be found. Judge for yourself:
So why does this work? First of all, it’s a good trailer. Muse’s “Uprising” at the end is particularly well-chosen. But it works for Cruise for two major reasons:
1.) It reactivates the very best memories of Cruise.
He is cocky here, but not ridiculously so. It’s as if Maverick made Top Gun, switched to covert ops, spent some time as Ethan Hunt, and developed a few neuroses. But now here is he is — still looking young (there is ZERO DOUBT that he’s had some very expensive and very skillful procedures performed) and active and not like a nerdy dad who tries to do the awkward white man air motorcycle dance on BET. He’s not acting serious, he’s not yelling catchphrases that will be ridiculed. In short, he holds himself like a movie star. There’s a sense of regained confidence. And it doesn’t make me cringe or want to make a YouTube remix with him jumping on couches.
2.) There is no explicit romance.
You may disagree with me here, but I think this is absolutely crucial in order to get people into the theaters. There may be actual romance in the film; Cruise and Diaz may make out, they may have sex, who knows; it certainly seems to point in that direction. But there’s no kiss in the trailer. And the reasoning for this, at least to my mind, is that people are not ready to watch Tom Cruise being romantic — Cruise romance is still equated with Katie Holmes mind control, Eiffel Tower proposing, attempts at dirty dancing and above-mentioned couch jumping, and the visceral repulsion is still too strong. When Tom Cruise imploded his career back in 2006, I was most struck by how negatively women of all ages responded to him — many of whom used to consider him one of the sexiest, most attractive, and most romantic of stars. Whether middle-aged, in their late 20s, or teens, the overwhelming response was yuck.
In the end, if Cruise wants to regain his place as leading man and major star, he’ll have a.) make himself less of a punchline and 2.) disassociate himself from the yuck factor. He’s spent the last two years taking slow and deliberate steps in that direction — and grosses for Knight and Day (and the publicity leading up to it) will serve as harbingers for Cruise’s future in Hollywood.
So you watched the trailer. Does he still yuck you out? Or might you see this film?
