TomKat: Six Ways to Breakdown a Breakup
Tom Cruise effectively wrote my first published paper for me. The couchjumping, the Matt Lauer-attacking, the Eiffel-Tower-wooing….and Perez Hilton’s exploitation of Cruise gone mad helped prove how digital technologies could accelerate and accentuate a star’s publicity faux pas (or, in this case, string of faux pas). Cruise is very, very calculating — which is part of the reason that when a hole appears in his finely constructed image, we can’t look away. The Emperor wears no clothes, etc. etc.
A divorce is not a priori scandalous — it was scandalous in, say, the 19th century, especially if you were Christian, but the end of a marriage is not in and of itself scandalous. Something about the end of that marriage has to render it scandalous. Otherwise, it’s just par for the course. Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes get divorced. No big deal. A few murmurs about the way she talked about Leonardo DiCaprio at the Oscars, but whatever. There wasn’t enough traction there — not enough real life evidence.
Sometimes there is something big — like, say, I dunno, a hot movie you’re filming with Angelina Jolie — that renders your divorce scandalous without much effort. But sometimes the gossip magazines need to push: take a string of events and turn them into a narrative that reads not only as scandalous, but as melodrama. Because as anyone who’s consumed melodrama (in reality television, Twilight, Gossip Girl, The Wire) understands, once you’re hooked, you have to consume more.
In today’s celebrity landscape, most stars have established exquisitely fabricated PR exteriors that make such PR debacles impossible. Brangelina calls the shots on their own image, so does Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Beyonce, George Clooney, even RPattz and KStew. Kim Kardashian was actually doing an incredible job with her image until the artifice of her marriage tipped the scales. But those stars keep their images pristine so as to not distract from the large properties to which their names are attached: movie franchies, of course, but also consumer products.
But B- and C-List celebrities need to generate scandal in order to maintain interest in their images and products. They need the melodrama, and the media conglomerates who produce their products facilitate its generation and distribution. See: every cover about The Bachelor, Teen Mom, and Jon and Kate Plus Eight. It’s no accident, for example, that the rise of The Bachelor-cover coincided with ABC’s investment in Us Weekly in the mid-2000s. As you can see below, Us has been trying mightily to make a melodrama out of the current season of Teen Mom. I can’t remember the last time a lack of pregnancy merited the cover of a gossip mag. Oh, wait, yes I can.
As I’ve discussed several times on this site, the form, systems of distribution, and speed of gossip have changed substantially over the last century, but really, everything new is old. And turning star scandals into melodrama — something that resembles the plot of a movie, complete with clear-cut good and bad guys — is nothing new. It happened with Fatty Arbuckle; it happend with Debbie Reynolds-Eddie Fisher-Elizabeth Taylor. Sometimes the roles that stars play in those melodrama change: when Taylor got pneumonia and almost died, she became the victim; when Angelina Jolie gave birth to the so-called Chosen One, she became some version of the whore-turned-Madonna.
Which brings us to TomKat.
There are a few extenuating circumstances that would make this divorce scandalous no matter how skillfully it was handled:
1.) The shroud of secrecy surrounding Cruise’s two previous divorces, including the implication that Cruise broke up with Nicole Kidman on the eve of their seven year wedding anniversary, when the terms of their pre-nump would’ve changed substantially. Kidman also seems to have signed a non-disclosure agreement, which begs the question: why so secretive, Tom Cruise, if you don’t have anything to hide?
2.) The unseemly courtship of Holmes, filled with discourse concerning the fact that she “auditioned” for the role as his “beard.” Others speculated that she had been lobotomized or entrapped; hence the gossip rallying cry to “Free Katie.”
3.) The involvement of Scientology. The religion has never had a “good” reputation, but the longform expose in last year’s New Yorker reinvigorated the whiff of scandal that surrounds the organization. Trailers for P.T. Anderson’s new film — a historical indictment of Scientology — went viral last month. Things do not look good.
4.) Gossip surrounding John Travolta’s alleged inappropriate passes at male masseuses. You might not think this insignificant, but recall that Travolta, like Cruise, has long been rumored to be gay — and that Scientology has allegedly been entrusted with “curing” him of his gayness. Holes in Travolta’s image mean it’ll be even easier to pick holes in Cruise’s.
In other words, even if both Cruise and Holmes release statements attesting to how “amicable” their break-up is, there’d still be lots of gossip. But Holmes gave the outlets something to really work with, and they’re running with it full speed.
If you haven’t been following the aftermath, here’s the details:
- Holmes has been living apart from Cruise for several weeks, if not more. She rented an apartment in New York several weeks ago — separate from the apartment they shared in NYC. Cruise has been filming in Iceland, and when he came to NYC to visit, she was the one who brought Suri to his hotel.
- Holmes is asking for sole/primary custody.
- Cruise did not expect Holmes to ask for sole/primary custody.
- Cruise gave a statement to the effect that he was “disappointed.”
- There were a bunch of cars spotted around Holmes’ homes. There was some speculation that they belonged to Scientologists. It’s since become clear that they were “security.”
- Holmes has acquired a new set of security — a set that never worked for Cruise.
- The Church denies involvement.
Let’s call those the plot points. And with those plot points, various outlets have decided to make six slightly different narratives — let’s call them summer gossip blockbusters. In each of these blockbusters, we have the same cast of characters, the same plot points, but different directors, different ways from getting from Plot Point A to Plot Point B, even potentially different roles for our characters. They have different marketing campaigns, different slogans, different aesthetics. But they’re all the same f-ing movie — just marketed to slightly different audiences.
So let’s take a look the plots being sold:
THE HORROR STORY:
This might be my favorite. Us Weekly found “someone close to the family” (read: someone who is not close to the family) who said that Holes “Felt Like She Was in Rosemary’s Baby” during her marriage:
Katie Holmes‘ Hollywood fairy tale with Tom Cruise definitely did not have a happy ending.
When the 33-year-old actress filed for divorce from Cruise, 49, last Thursday — aggressively moving for sole legal custody of daughter Suri, 6 — it was the culmination of a year-long attempt to break free of a confining, Scientology-influenced marriage to Cruise, sources tell the new Us Weekly, out now.
“Every move she made and everything she did was controlled . . . She felt like she was in Rosemary’s Baby,” says one insider, referring to the classic 1968 horror film, in which an aspiring young actress (Mia Farrow) unwittingly bears a child for her husband’s Satanic cult.
Indeed, her shocking divorce filing, which has blindsided a “furious” Cruise, wasn’t simply about the Kennedys star’s own personal contentment, a Holmes source says.
“This is about protecting her daughter,” the insider explains to Us. “She wants to be in charge of how Suri is being raised and didn’t want her to have an exclusively Scientology education.”
Like many horror stories, the narrative is set-up as a fairy tale — Cruise swept Holmes off her feet; she’d loved him since she was a teen — gone horribly wrong. In this scheme, Cruise is the pawn of a larger, more satanic force — The Church. Note, however, that none of this rhetoric comes directly from Cruise, Holmes, or even the Church. It’s been suggested by a source, and it just happens to fit with the characters, their backstory, and the way we expect Hollywood narratives to work. The “advertisement” for this narrative features the cover at the beginning of this post, highlighting how Katie, like the heroine in a horror film, “breaks free” from the spell of her captor/evil forces/big bad/abject evil/Tom Cruise.
THE CONSPIRACY THRILLER:
TMZ, brilliant dirt digger that it is, put together that Suri had just turned 6, and 6 is when she could be sent to Sea Org, a Scientology “work camp” that has been referred to as glorified child labor. (Read the New Yorker scientology article. I really can’t adequately emphasize how good it is).
The title of the post is great: KATIE HOLMES: Afraid Tom Would Ship Suri To Radical Scientology Org . Radical! Fear! “Ship”! All of it implies force and intrigue. And just take a look at the image:
That is some serious decoupage/Photoshop magic — and perfect for a film poster. That TMZ touts it as an “exclusive” points towards some sort of cover-up, now uncovered — with only you, its readers, privy to the knowledge that Cruise seemed to be planning to send his six-year-old daughter to dig ditches in the Florida swamp. Here’s the full-text:
The final straw in Katie Holmes‘ decision to file for divorce was that she was convincedTom Cruise was going to send 6-year-old Suri away to a hardcore Scientology organization known as Sea Organization … sources connected with Katie tell TMZ.
Sea Org, as it is known, is where the highest levels of Scientology are taught and kids as young as five can be sent to live there … without their parents — and our sources say Tom is a big fan.
Our sources say Katie and Tom had been arguing over Suri’s indoctrination into Scientology — and we’re told the Sea Org was the flashpoint.
The Sea Org has been often compared to a boot camp and several ex-Scientologists (including Oscar winner Paul Haggis) have been outspoken against its military-like conditions. The Freewinds, the massive Scientology boat that was the location of Cruise’s infamous birthday party in 2004, is entirely staffed by Sea Org members.
According to the official Scientology website, members of Sea Org sign “a one-billion-year pledge to symbolize their eternal commitment to the religion and it is still signed by all members today.”
Katie herself has first-hand knowledge of the Sea Org. When Holmes and Cruise first hooked up in 2005, Jessica Feshbach, a prominent Scientologist who had been with the Sea Org since 1994, was transferred and became Katie’s assistant/Scientology chaperone. Feshbach, in one of Katie’s first interviews after getting together with Cruise, was described by a writer for W magazine as “cold-eyed” and “a third-wheel.”
In the end … we’re told Katie felt the only way to save Suri from being shipped off to Sea Org was to file for divorce and seek sole legal custody.
Note: details that seem at home in a Bourne film (or, for that matter, Cruise’s own Mission Impossible), emphasis on the lack of consent, Tom’s implicit endorsement of the organization (that he’s been hiding!) Cruise is the agent who’s too deep to see what’s going on, Jessica Feshbach is Holmes’ devious “cold-eyed” handler, and Holmes is getting out before it’s too late. One billion year pledge! Not even Michael Bay would push the narrative that far!
You might think this sounds insane, but this theory is gaining traction — or, at the very least, the notion that Holmes was getting out before the church took control of Suri. She might not have been headed for Sea Org, but she, like her mother before her, was definitely headed towards something secret.
THE MYSTERY:
A close cousin to the conspiracy thriller, forwarded by People - TMZ’s more cautious conglomerate cousin. The headline “Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise Split: The Scientology Mystery” accompanies the post announcing this week’s cover:
The cover promises to answer the “mystery” of “Why Katie Left Tom” — which includes “Her Dad’s Secret Plan.” Her parents “wanted old Katie back,” which implies that something — something mysterious! - happened to her. The online article leads with the question: “Who are the mysterious men talking on headsets and taking photos outside Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise’s new apartment building in New York City? Their presence has sparked reports that they are Scientology operatives, hired to follow Holmes after her surprise divorce filingfrom Tom Cruise.”
Because People is People, it’s quick to admit that “sources close to the situation say the men aren’t related to Scientology at all – they’re actually a new security team hired by Holmes herself. The Church of Scientology has also denied having Holmes, 33, followed. “There is no truth whatsoever to the [report] that the Church of Scientology has sent anyone to follow or surveil Katie Holmes,” Gary S. Soter, an attorney from the church, said in a statement.”
“Mystery” is just People‘s style: it’s less controversial than the conspiracy theory, less sensational and tabloid-y than the horror story. It’s slightly titillating, but not in poor taste — they don’t want to offend Holmes, whose publicity team gave People first access to the information.
THE TRAGEDY:
Cycling back to Us, which changed its tune from horror story to tragedy to explain the first photos of Holmes out in New Yorks sans wedding ring. The “Somber Katie Holmes Steps Out Without Wedding Ring,” “noticeably somber in a long-sleeved navy blue dress.”
….Holmes’ wedding ring was conspicuously noticeably missing as she made her way to Parsons School of Design in downtown Manhattan.
A source tells Us Weekly, “She looked really sad and was looking at the ground the whole time.”
Holmes called it quits with Cruise, 49, after five years of marriage and one child together, daughter Suri Cruise, 6.
First breaking the news, Holmes’ attorney told Us, “Katie’s primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter’s best interest. This is a personal and private matter for Katie and her family.”
“Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children. . . Please allow them their privacy,” a rep for the Rock of Ages star told Us Weekly Friday. Cruise and his second wife Nicole Kidman share kids Conor, 17, and Isabella, 19.
As Us previously reported, Holmes prepared for her surprise filing by secretly renting a $12,000-month apartment on her own in NYC. For the past couple weeks, she’s been quietly moving into the residence.
“This is about protecting her daughter,” an insider explains to the new issue of Us Weekly, out now. “She wants to be in charge of how Suri is being raised and didn’t want her to have an exclusively Scientology education.”
Again, Us gets the “source” to set the tone — “she looked really sad.” Just think at how easily this could have been skewed otherwise — “she looked really smug.” ”She looked like she didn’t give a shit.” An outlet could get after her for going to work so soon after the announcement, or trying to exploit the divorce to revive her career. But as evidenced by all four narratives, she’s the victim. That’s not in flux. What is in flux is whether Cruise himself or Scientology at large is the “villain,” the “source of the mystery,” or the sadness, or the conspiracy.
THE SATIRE:
No established outlet is really running with this one, but for us avid, engaged consumers of gossip, it’s dominated the coverage. This is the narrative that uses a punchline like “Guess her contract was out!” to sell the story. It was the dominant narrative strategy immediately following the announcement on Twitter, as evidenced by a very small sample size below:
This narrative is subversive — no publicist is encouraging you to believe it. Rather, like any subversive reading, it finds the cracks in ideologies — in this case, that of a purely heteronormative man — and expands them to make humor. In the process, the humor shatters, or at least significantly challenges, the foundation of the image. For those who take pleasure in this narrative, there’s no good guy or bad guy, at least not in the way that we traditionally think about them. Instead, the notion that someone could be as straight as Cruise — and that he would expect us to continue to believe it — is “bad.” What’s “good”? Undermining that understanding. Calling attention to the hilarity and transparency of his machinations — his apparent desperation to maintain his image. Whether or not Cruise is in fact gay doesn’t matter much here….it’s his hilarious, over-indulgent defense of heterosexuality that becomes the butt of the joke, the pivot upon which the satire rests. Within this narrative, Holmes, like Suri, is little more than a prop — like fake vomit or dog poop, her existence (and his frantic-ness around her) is what heightens the satire.
There’s one final way of connecting the dots — and it’s clearly my true favorite.
THE META-NARRATIVE:
This is what’s going on over at Lainey Gossip, it’s what’s going on here. It’s taking a step back from the traditional narrative, disassembling it, putting it back together. Like meta-narrative in film — which acknowledges that the film is, indeed, a film — this narrative is still a narrative. It’s just one telling you that there’s lot of other narratives. There’s no outside of ideology, as the theorist Althusser was fond of asserting. Put differently, just because I can see the other narratives around me doesn’t mean that I’m not participating in one myself.
But you, readers of this blog, like a narrative that challenges you, that forces you to think differently about the characters and what “character” even means. You’re okay with being disappointed, with having your illusions dis-illusioned. You’re fine with low production values and the fact that director of this narrative gets paid little to nothing for her efforts. In fact, that makes you like it even more, because it seems less produced, more authentic, more cerebral, less CGI. You’re the art house audience of gossip narratives, which brings with it a whole set of positive and negative connotations. These meta-narratives are not for everyone. Some people dismiss them as overly intellectual or weird or a poor use of taxpayers’ dollars. But meta-narratives have always fascinated me far more than summer blockbusters….and my hope is that you’ll continue to feel the same.
Disavowing Female Desire: Magic Mike and “Book Club”
It’s no secret: I’m really excited for Magic Mike. You already know that Channing Tatum is My Favorite Doofus. I’m excited it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh, I’m excited about Matthew McConnaghey doing what he does best (read: be hot-sketchy), I’m excited for Channing Tatum dancing, I’m excited it’s getting good reviews.
I’m also unabashedly excited to ogle male bodies. I mean, the trailer is a blatant, unapologetic call to objectify the (finely tuned) male body -
Warner Bros., which produced Magic Mike (budget = $5 million) has naturally channeled its marketing, exploiting the male bodies the same way that a trailer for a film featuring Megan Fox exploits the female body. Lots of imperceptibly slo-mo shots of undulating bodies, abs, and, er, packages. This marketing tactic has predictably alienated a large swath of the male audience — a situation that Tatum and Soderbergh have worked to correct in interviews:
“Look, this is not a movie that is exclusively aimed at women and gay men. To what extent are women going to be able to talk their boyfriends into going? I don’t know. But I don’t think guys will be sitting in the theater thinking, ‘This is torture.’ Ten minutes into the movie, they’ll realize they are not being excluded from this experience at all.”
Does that mean that there’s female nudity in the first ten minutes? Yes, I believe so. But what matters is that this film has been blatantly and almost exclusively marketed to a female audience. Unlike rom-coms, which appeal to a woman’s sense of romance and the specter of sex, these ads appeal very directly to women’s desire.
But that desire is still illicit. No matter how far American society has come in terms of acceptance of sexuality (and its various manifestations) in the public sphere, female sexuality is still sublimated and made abject. You know this: the tremendous flustered anxiety over funding women’s birth control, the GOP censure of the word VAGINA (vagina vagina vagina!). Women should have babies, but they somehow shouldn’t have sex — or, god forbid, sex that doesn’t produce babies.
Magic Mike is thus, in many ways, a perfect counterpoint to the suffocating, frankly misogynistic rhetoric of the last year. But what’s most interesting to me is how the television campaign at once invokes and transgresses this understanding of female desire.
Earlier this week, while watching The Bachelorette (long story), I saw a new set of ads for Magic Mike - all of them invoking “book club.”
I couldn’t find the exact ads on YouTube, but here’s one on Facebook. Watch it.
Or, if something stops you, then here’s what you need to understand:
These intertitles are wedged between shots of abs, gyrating, and leather pants. Right after Matthew McConaughey tells a room of stripper-anticipating ladies that “The law says that you cannot touch! ….. But I think we got a lotta law breakers up in this one.” He’s addressing the audience in the film, but Soderbergh films him head-on, in a manner that suggests direct address. In other words: McConaughey (and, by proxy, the filmmaker, the producer, the studio, the commercial) is acknowledging that you’re going to break the “law” of acceptable female behavior. You’re going to go to this movie, and you’re going to love it.
BUT! You, Bachelorette-watching, romance-loving woman that you are, feel guilty about it. Why? Because patriarchy makes you feel bad about desire that isn’t for your boyfriend/husband/homosexual partner. That’s why you have to tell him you’re going to something as homosocial (meaning: all your own gender) and ostensibly desire-less as book club. (Little does boyfriend know: lots of bookclubs are filled with sex talk about sexy books. It’s not all The Help and cheese plates).
Now, I realize that this ad is supposed to be funny. It is funny. But like most humor, it’s funny because it’s true: in our supposedly liberated, postfeminist society, the only way to make female desire acceptable is to disavow it.
A Concise Case for Leo: The Perfect Gatsby
Did you know that Baz Luhrmann, he of Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, and Moulin Rouge fame, has been filming an adaptation of The Great Gatsby? You didn’t? You’ve obviously not been following me on Twitter or Facebook, because I’m nuts for it.
Luhrmann can be an acquired taste — some are alienated by his fearlessness when it comes to excess. (I’ve been writing about German Expressionism lately, and in some ways, he’s the perfect collision of German Expressionism and postmodernism, combining the surreal, the squalid, and the pure — and coming up with something sneakily political). Some dismiss Luhrmann as pastiche, but they are blind to the massive, pulsing heart that structures and motivates all of his work.
And he’s perfect for Gatsby. If you haven’t read Gatsby since high school, you need to return to it. I’ve returned to it twice in the last three years — one for a class I was taking, once for a class I was teaching — and its magic endures. It’s beautiful, heartbreaking, mournful — a knowing harbinger of the America that was to come. And at its core: excess, regret, love, and a reverence for surfaces. Luhrmann’s forte.
When the trailer for this Gatsby went live earlier this week, there was, of course, much ballyhoo.
Anxiety, judging from the trailer, that it’s going to be one long music video. (My guess = the beginning scenes of the trailer are clips of a big, bombastic opening number — a Luhrmann trademark). Complaints about casting, dormant since the initial decisions were announced, were given new life. [My favorite casting quip from The Hairpin's lengthy discussion: "I want [Kan]Ye As Gatsby, Rick Ross as Nick Carraway, Amber Rose as Daisy Buchanan, and Wocka Flocka as Tom Buchanan].
And no small amount of disdain for DiCaprio as Gatsby:
I’m betting it’s all DiCaprio’s choice. Homie wants that Oscar so bad he can taste it’s smooth golden skin and he angstily reasons that history=GRAVITAS.
I like Leo just fine, but just still don’t think he’s that great an actor. He is very good at having a nice face to look at, and very good at furrowing his brow and looking concerned, but that’s about it. The fact that he’s been cast in SO MANY really excellent movies and hasn’t won an Oscar yet suggests that others share my point of view.
Again, I don’t think he detracts from movies or anything, he’s just never been the one to make a movie really sing for me. But I’m happy to keep looking at him!
He’s not that great! I mean, I understand he’s Marty’s new golden boy, but Leo, even Scorcese didn’t get an Academy Award until The Departed.
Ugh! Leo is going to way too brow furrowing to be Gatsby! Gatsby was cool, collected, understated. That’s what made it so crazy when he did show emotion-and it was basically all of his mysterious sexiness. Leo is going to over dramatize this role to death! Gah!
I WAS the girl with the Leo posters, I will admit. I love me some floppy haired blond boys. But he was the only crush that stuck because, in my opinion, he is an excellent actor. But you’re right about the brow furrowing, and I sort of feel like he’s trying to hard to be Serious Actor, Not Hearthrob?
I admit: DiCaprio is quite the brow-furrower. And as my friend/former colleague Colin Tait has pointed out on this blog, he’s just emerging from a period of serious “beard acting.” I’m sure he wants an Oscar. He does choose he roles very deliberately, and seems to value the dramatic over the light or comedic. He’s become a very particular and very serious sort of actor.
Which is part of what makes him UNBELIEVABLY PERFECT FOR GATSBY. Here’s the truth: DiCaprio’s star image bears remarkable, if imperfect, resemblance to that of Gatsby, one of the most well-known (if often misunderstood) literary “stars” of our time.
Let’s break it down.
Gatsby is:
A self-made man (nouveau riche) who has eschewed his initial image (a nice Midwestern boy) because it was too boring, too flatly attractive, to win the interest of the thing (Daisy) he desired.
DiCaprio is:
A self-made man (movies stars are totally nouveau riche) who has eschewed his initial image (teenage heartthrob) because it was too boring, too flatly attractive, to win the interest of the thing (talented directors) he desired.
Gatsby is:
Preposterously wealthy because of success in a business he wishes not to remember, beautiful, stereotypically-American-attractive.
DiCaprio is:
Preposterously wealthy because of success in a business he wishes not to remember (heartthrob days), beautiful, stereotypically-American-attracive.
Gatsby is:
Obsessed with clothes, but only when they serve his purpose. A means to an end. Looks exquisite in a tux.
DiCaprio is:
Dismissive of clothes (please, I beg you, see his go-to frat outfits in all candids of him ever) but recognizes how his fan base appreciates him in nice ones. A means to an end. Looks exquisite in a tux.
Gatsby’s name:
Is known throughout New York, but no one knows who he is. He is a concept more than an actual man.
DiCaprio’s name:
Is known throughout the world. But apart from some advocacy for the environment, very, very little is known about his private life. He is a concept more than an actual man. (You could say this for all stars, but it’s particularly true of DiCaprio. You need a big, monster star to play this part — someone with charisma, tremendous fame, but something missing).
Gatsby attracts:
Beautiful, perfect women in droves, but seems unsatisfied with them all.
DiCaprio attracts:
Beautiful, perfect women — models! more models! Blake Lively! — but seems unsatisfied with them all.
Gatsby desires:
Affection and adulation from the object of his desire (Daisy) — the driving force of his life.
DiCaprio desires:
Affection and adulation from the object of his desire (Scorsese, Eastwood, The Academy) — the only (visible) driving force of his life.
Gatsby is best friends with Nick Carraway (played by Tobey Maguire)
DiCaprio is best friends with Tobey Maguire (played by Tobey Maguire)
As emphasized above, the role Gatsby is not meant for a good actor, or even a character actor. He must, must be played by a super star — but a superstar whose private life is elusive. Robert Redford was, at least on the surface, a perfect fit for the role - he had the same tan, blank Americanness. But that film fell flat, in part because it was bloodless, and the script was a hack job. This adaptation does not run that risk.
What remains to be seen — and, in my opinion, what will make or break the film — is if DiCaprio can pull off the underlying insecurity that so pains Gatsby, that bubbles up from beneath the calm, controlled exterior when Daisy comes around.
We see that perfect, controlled Gatsby several times in the trailer, most exquisitely at right about the 1:10 mark — and approximated in the production still below.
We have to see Gatsby in his element to understand how out of it he is when he enter’s Daisy’s world. We have to see him with the same swagger and gravitas as he has in, say, Catch Me If You Can, so that we can see him disassembled, brought to the point of confusion and near-delirium of Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island. We need an actor who can be both at once.
And for those of you who think DiCaprio is a bad actor. Maybe he is. But that’s even more perfect, because Gatsby himself is a bad impersonation of a Jazz Age man, a Midwestern con artist posturing as a blue blood. His bad acting is what makes him so tragic, so iconic.
I, for one, think DiCaprio is an amazing actor — good enough, I think, to be a bad actor at life….and a perfect Gatsby.
Decoding the Beyonce Tumblr
Earlier this week, The Beyonce Tumblr went live. And there was much rejoicing: across the web, gossip sites and news organizations alike trumpeted her decision to cultivate a web presence. Various articles figure the “release” of the site in vaguely mystical terms: Beyonce celebrated her fourth anniversary with Jay-Z on April 4th (4/4); she was “born” onto the web on 4/5. This is some crazy stuff, kids. As Jezebel headlined it, “Beyonce Joins Internet; Internet Flips Out.”
But the internet wasn’t just flipping out over some new website. This was Beyonce’s website. Beyonce, a fierce protector of privacy, the woman who, along with Jay-Z, rented out an entire floor of a hospital to avoid coverage of her daughter’s birth. The two are reigning royalty of the music world, in part because of their tremendous talent, but also because of their substantial media savvy. Instead of fleeing paparazzi hungry for a shot of daughter Blue Ivy, they posted a set of frankly adorable pictures to helloblueivycarter.tumblr.com, paired with a note, written in what we are led to believe as Beyonce’s handwriting:
That’s even more savvy than Gwenyth Paltrow, who decided to push the market down for shots of her son, Moses, but simply stepping outside and letting every paparazzi take a picture of her. (It’s not a coincidence that Paltrow and husband Chris Martin are friends with Beyonce and Jay-Z, as evidenced by the tumblr).
The question remains: What is Beyonce doing? No web presence for so long — why now? And what exactly is going on in this tumblr that makes it so compelling?
One at a time:
What is she doing?
She’s refining and reinvigorating her image. Not that she exactly “needs” it — because she’s a private person, and because she’s married to an equally famous person, information about her will be in demand for the foreseeable future. But as little as we know about Beyonce, we do know that she likes control - and by releasing information herself, she’s controlling the conversation about her. Every celebrity (and his/her publicist) attempt to do this; some are just better at it, or have a more interesting conversation to make. Lindsay Lohan is bad at controlling the conversation. Angelina Jolie is, in truth, only okay, and seems to care less and less about whether that conversation is negative or positive (thus the increasing skeletor conversation — if she really wanted people to focus on her films and philanthropy, she’d figure out how to put on some weight, just like she’s been able to figure out how to bulk up for action roles. I’m not kidding). Gwenyth seems less and less adept at controlling the conversation, in part because Goop allows so many refractory points. Her image may be stable as that of an ice queen, but every newsletter allows people to take her words differently than she intended. It’s really a bit of a trainwreck.
Point is: Beyonce is re-sparking conversation about her, but only if it’s on her terms.
But why on the internet? Why not release photos to a magazine, or sit for an extensive profile with Vogue? No web presence for so long — why now?
Because it’s the only way. If Beyonce wants to truly start a conversation about herself, she has to release information digitally. While a lengthy profile — and gorgeous, high-quality photos — would have been excerpted and linked all over the internet, it would still lack the potency of a single site. Sure, aggregators and gossip sites are taking single photos from the tumblr, but all traffic is directed back to the single, entirely controlled site.
Despite the fact that Beyonce’s image is that of a artist on the vanguard of innovation — especially in terms of music and fashion — she’s been an analog star in a digital world. She’s old-fashioned in the way of stars twenty years her elder. She has a Twitter account but, until Thursday, had never posted a Tweet (The Tweet, of course, announced the launch of her site).
Whether Beyonce herself is “old-fashioned” or even a naturally private person is really beyond the point. Her image has acquired a gloss of privacy, and in today’s media environment, saturated with celebrity disclosure, it renders her unique. Information about her is rare and, as a result, far more valuable. You don’t see the launch of a reality star’s tumblr burn through the internet like a forest fire.
But even the most exclusive clubs sometimes need to let someone in the door — otherwise there’s no one to buzz about how exclusive the club is. So Beyonce has to release some material, lest she disappear from discourse entirely. As foreshadowed by the tumblr for Blue Ivy, she and her team have decided that a tumblr-like site is the best way to enact this strategy. My guess is that she still steers clear of Twitter — it’s just a bit too direct of a conduit. I’d even be surprised if the tumblr is updated more than a few times a year. But time will tell. For now, it’s a brilliant strategy for reactivating yet controlling the conversation about her between albums/tours.
But let’s get to the good stuff: why makes this tumblr so compelling?
Because here’s the honest truth: I like, but don’t love Beyonce. But I could look at this tumblr all day.
I’ll divide the appeal into three categories:
1.) AUTHENTICITY
The tumblr is compelling because we know it is Beyonce. I realize this is fairly obvious, but in an age of photoshop, Twitter hacking, and other forms of image manipulation, it is absolutely essential that this tumblr is “the work” of Beyonce. This isn’t a fan site; this isn’t a gossip site. This is her site, that is her husband, that is her sister, this is their tropical vacation. (Which isn’t to suggest that older stars were somehow “more” authentic because their images circulated in a pre-digital-technology world. They had their own issues with image manipulation, and tried to add authenticity to their images through various means, the most popular of which might have been the magazine byline. ["My Story" by Marilyn Monroe, etc.] Of course, such stories were almost always penned by press agents. Manufacturing authenticity is an ironic thing.)
Beyonce further authenticates the site through her “analog” signature. Look, it’s her handwriting! (Or, perhaps, a font modeled after her handwriting!) No matter: handwriting is one of the ways that we authenticate identity, and this handwriting matches the previous note on the Blue Ivy tumblr. No doubt: it’s B. Plus she testifies that “this is my life, today, over the years, through my eyes.” That’s a promise: this is me.
2.) INTIMACY
When it comes to celebrity images, intimacy and authenticity go hand in hand. The more intimate the information appears, the more authentic it seems.
Here’s where the choice of a Tumblr as her main form of web presence (I realize there’s a larger site, beyonce.com, but the tumblr is the real meat) is so effective: it’s all images. Apart from the above welcome, there’s no explanations, no distracting words. Just a waterfall of images — a virtual scrapbook.
Of course, not all photos connote intimacy. Beyonce’s Vogue cover, for example, is the antithesis of intimacy:
I mean, she’s separated from us by actual text! Vogue has also posed her like a mannequin, and everything about her dress, her hair, even her make-up and half-smile scream at a remove! Not friends with you! She’s beautiful, she’s exquisite, but she’s miles away.
Compare this shot with those on her Tumblr:
No make-up. No make-up equals authenticity AND intimacy. If you look closely, you can see that she’s wearing a strapless top of some sort, but at first blush, she looks naked — bare — the very apotheosis of intimacy. Plus she’s smiling, and there’s an inherent warmth to the aesthetic and emotional tone of the photo. She looks relaxed, and people only relax with intimates. You’re invited to her private party — a theme that structures the majority of the photos.
This is funny! Beyonce is funny! (See also: Spiderman).
This photo is goofy, but it’s also unflattering, and therein lies its power. Intimacy means seeing someone at their best and worst, and here you go — Beyonce with a snorkeling mask on her face, not looking at the camera. Granted, she’s wearing a beach shift that probably cost $5000, and the ocean looks gorgeous, but look, googles distort even the most beautiful of faces! Unkempt, unflattering, in a shot that would have been otherwise discarded — it’s as if we have access to the Beyonce “between” the best shots, and we all know that’s where the “real” self lies.
This is one of several “Instagram” style shots on the site — you can tell it’s Instagram by a.) the Polaroid-style border and b.) the distortion of colors to make it look like a photo from a different era. The photo seems to catch Beyonce is a private moment (waiting to take a helicopter ride? More on that below), and her positioning in the corner of the photo, glancing down, strapped in, creates a feeling of vulnerability. The photo’s Instagram-ness, for lack of a better word, suggests something even more intimate: the photo was taken on a cell phone. But someone who was close to Beyonce — someone who also got to go on that helicopter ride. The insinuation, of course, is that it was taken by Jay-Z. (The aesthetics of Instagram only add another layer — a sort of analog, fuzzy, soft intimacy that even the crisp photography from above lack).
This triptych of photos, seemingly taken at the magic hour, offers a similar warmth, but at the same time, the POV of the viewer is clearly that of the camera man. Beyonce vamps for the camera, cracks up, and poses again. The person behind the camera — whose place we take, even for just an instant — is clearly the cause of her glee. In this moment, we make her perform; we zoom-in for her reaction. You probably don’t think of this consciously, but that’s the effect of the close-up, that’s why they included all three images instead of just one: she looks at the camera, but really, in this moment, she seems to be looking at you. Or, alternately, you feel you are privy to an interaction between her and Jay-Z: in this moment, you are inside their marriage. At first glance, they’re just a set of silly photos — but the effect is stunning. Granted, there’s no way to know who took the photos. For all we know they hired a profesional photographer to accompany them on this trip and create a set of images that connoted intimacy. But for a fan (or journalist) to suggest as much makes him/her look cyncial, and read constructiveness into a set of images that suggest a holistic sense of intimacy. There’s no question that the choice of photos adds up to to a construct. But you can’t see the seams, and that’s why it works so well. Whatever they did, they did it right.
3.) CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
Conspicuous consumption, according to Richard Dyer, is the process by which the wealthy display that they are wealthy. It does not have to be garish — it’s not simply something Jay Gatsby would do. Indeed, conspicuous consumption doesn’t necessarily mean diamond rings. It also manifests depictions of leisure: of people doing little more than not working. At least 2/3 of the pictures on the Tumblr were taken on some sort of tropical vacation, exact location uncertain. But this isn’t some getaway to a Mexican mega-resort. They’re on vacation in some place where no one bothers them.
That sort of privacy costs a lot of money. In this way, their conspicuous consumption is, in fact, an absence — the absence of people, the absence of paparazzi, the absence of distractions. This vacation at its most pure, and its filled with snorkles, deserted beaches, and tubing behind a speed boat.
In this video below, for example, Beyonce (addressing Jay-Z, behind the camera, intimacy yet again!) tells the unspecific audience that they woke up, “took a nice little walk,” and found a tree with blue ivy.
No big deal, right — only it’s leisure. Lots and lots of leisure. This is conspicuous consumption done right: it doesn’t make you resent them, it just makes you want to join them. We all know that both Jay-Z and Beyonce do, in fact, work hard. Touring, appearing in public, writing songs — it’s certainly exhausting work, even as they work to elide that work. But we see very little of that difficulty here. Even the images in which Beyonce is obviously preparing to work, such as this one, when she’s in full, intricate make-up for some sort of performance or photo-shoot, do not emphasize labor. The shot is gorgeous, but it’s also included to emphasize the in-formality of the other shots. Take a look at its positioning on the home page (the shot is in the lower right hand corner) -
Beyonce at “work” (black and white) makes her at “play” (the vibrant color) all the more compelling and authentic seeming. The shot on the left is Beyonce-as-Image, while the rest of the page reads as Beyonce-as-Real (which, again, is also an image, but that image is “realness.”) Being a top pop star may be hard work, but we see very little evidence of it here — just the benefits she reaps from that work. [She does seem a bit exhausted in this photo with Paltrow -- but again, black and white is for "work," color is for "real."]
The tumblr is also filled with less discrete examples of conspicuous consumption. Beyonce with a wall of champagne, for example….
…or a shot from a yacht which must, by dint of its white leather and positioning with the skyline, be expensive.
In general, however, Beyonce is more circumspect. Nothing too conspicuous — nothing that would be dissonant with she and Jay-Z’s collective image of class and sophistication. (See: every lyric on Watch the Throne). Since the 1920s and the rise of the “idol of consumption,” we’ve looked to stars and celebrities as aspirational consumptive models. They show what leisure looks like; what consuming often and well looks like; what American capitalism taken to its extension looks like. They’re what make us keep working so as to keep spending. It’s a weirdly cyclical process: we consume (their CDs, their clothing lines) so that they may consume more and, in turn, inspire us to consume more. Late-stage capitalism makes my head explode.
* * * * *
Take a moment and think about your reaction when you first saw these photos. Were you a. pissed; b.) jealous; or c.) just wanted to join the party? If your answer was a.) or b.), please, I beg you, tell me why in the comments. But if it was c.), which was definitely my reaction, then welcome to the party: we’re reacting exactly how Beyonce and her team would like us to. The Tumblr is a public relations triumph, emphasizing that Beyonce may not “run the world,” as one of her most famous songs suggests, but she certainly runs her own image. In a time when image control is increasingly elusive, it’s a feat worthy of praise. And while Beyonce has worked hard to elide the tremendous labour required to construct such an image, my hope is that I’ve helped make that labour — and the discursive and semiotic layers that fuel it — visible. Making things visible doesn’t mean killing the pleasure they evoke…it just makes them more nuanced. I can still look at those photos and want to hang out. But now I don’t feel nearly as bad that I can’t.
Julia Roberts: Same Song, Twenty-Fifth Verse
Back when I was a wee, scared first year Master’s student, I enrolled in course called “Female Hollywood Stars” without any understanding of what it would entail. I liked Hollywood, I liked stars, who knows! But this course, taught byKathleen Rowe Karlyn, was my first introduction to star studies, Richard Dyer’s Stars (the bible of star studies), and my first opportunity to perform my own star study. I totally drank the theoretical kool-aid, as evidenced by my dissertation and this blog, but the first star study was both a marvel and a mess.
I chose Julia Roberts, who has long fascinated me, in part because she starred in the movie I most wanted but was forbidden to see: Pretty Woman. I’d seen Mystic Pizza and learned that you should not buy a dress, wear it, and then return it. My mom said that was unethical. But then my Entertainment Weekly-obsessed self continued to read all about her various travails through the ’90s. I couldn’t ever see the movies (save Hook), but her fling with Kiefer Sutherland, the dark ads for Sleeping with the Enemy, the flop of Mary Reilly — I found it all fascinating. (Obviously I was much more into star studies as a teenager than I ever understood). And then she up and married Lyle Lovett! YOU GUYS, I LOVE LYLE LOVETT. My mom has been listening to him since forever, and I always had a hard time reconciling his crazy hair/face with his beautiful voice, but then Julia Roberts goes and authenticates my love. Stars: They’re Powerful!
Point being, she was the closest thing I had to a movie star from my youth. And in Fall of 2005, she was demonstrating her media savvy with her carefully (yet nonchalant) “reveal” of her twins as she and her husband took them on a walk. I wanted to figure this lady out.
Or, more precisely, I wanted to figure out what Julia Roberts had meant and what she continued to mean. I wanted to figure out exactly what people meant when they said that she was the only remaining female movie star. Never having performed a star study before, I did what most novice scholars do: I did way, way too much research. I read every academic article ever published on any film in which she had appeared (and let me tell you, feminist scholars have had a hay-day with Pretty Woman). More importantly, I read every magazine and newspaper profile from 1988 - 2004. THAT WAS CRAZY. But I did amass a tremendous amount of research, and several “themes” of her star image became abundantly clear. (I also wrote a 55 page seminar paper, which is another problem in and of itself).
Recurring themes of every profile written about Julia Roberts ever:
1.) She is from Smyrna, Georgia. READ: SHE IS SOUTHERN, and her Southernness has made her the person she is today, i.e. polite and private.
2.) Her parents ran an acting school and her brother was an actor. READ: Her talent is natural, and although she grew up around acting, she herself was never “trained.”
3.) She has a beautiful smile and a beautiful laugh, and once you are exposed to it you will be hers forever. READ: She has charisma. She is extraordinary.
4.) She is good friends with everyone on set, from the director to the crew. READ: Stars: They love their hairdressers and lighting techs, just like us!
5.) She is emotional and vulnerable, which explains her various romances, and how much she has been hurt by the press coverage of them. She doesn’t understand what it means to be a “star” and doesn’t care for the lifestyle, which is why she lives in Taos instead of Hollywood. READ: She’s not fake. What you see is what you get.
6.) Pretty Woman was something magnificent. READ: Being a sexual, self-sustaining woman (albeit a sex worker) sucks….until you snag yourself someone who will give you a credit card, take you to the opera, and “rescue you” into monogamy. (That’s where the feminist critique comes in — not so much in the magazine articles, but always in the academic ones).
In many ways, Julia Roberts’ star image is pretty standard. She’s equal parts extraordinary and ordinary, authentic and accessible yet still unfathomably charismatic. She’s a lady and she’s a natural, and her star-making turn in Pretty Woman set the tone for the rest of her star image. As became clear over the course of the next 15 years, when she looked and acted like she did in Pretty Woman (curly, reddish hair, being a general sassy-pants) people went to her movies. When she didn’t look or act that way — meaning, when she strayed from her established star image — they didn’t show up. When she essentially reprised her Pretty Woman role, only this time inflected with politics instead of romance, she won an Oscar. And since then, the pickings have been somewhat slim. Playing somewhat against type in Closer, mocking her own image in Ocean’s 13, voicing Charlotte in Charlotte’s Web. (I did love her in Duplicity, which is horribly underrated. Clive Owen, come back to me! Where have you gone?)
This month, she reappears on the cover of Vanity Fair, publicizing the Tarsem-directed version of Snow White, entitled Mirror, Mirror, which will go head-to-head with the K-Stew-starring version, Snow White and the Huntsman.
If you’ve seen the trailers, the victor of this head-to-head already seems clear.
Mirror, Mirror:
Snow White and the Huntsman:
I mean, obviously K-Stew and Thor are going tromp all over Mirror, Mirror, which has some weird tone issues that I can’t quite put my finger on. Or maybe it’s just Julia Roberts being Julia Roberts? Don’t get me started on annoying voiceover man who just screams Minivan Majority. I could be wrong here; we’ll see somewhat shortly.
But this is Roberts’ first high profile cover in quite some time. Inside and on the cover, she looks great. No doubt.
I mean SERIOUSLY.
Note, however, that her hair looks like a slightly less version of Preferred Julia. Her hair is a bit more brown, but the overall look is how American likes to see her. (Roberts understands this: when she was promoting her comeback in My Best Friend’s Wedding, she told anyone who’d listen that “my hair is red and curly just the way you like it — come see this movie!”
In short, this Julia:
Is not all that different from this Julia, circa Notting Hill.
The pose, the come-hither closed-lip smile, the demurity, even the red accent color for the magazine — it’s all the same. Less belly button, sure, but that’s only appropriate for a woman as modest as Roberts suggests herself to be. (No nudity, just lots of cleavage and midriff).
And, of course, the profile: same song, 22nd verse. I’ve written about the vapidity of the Vanity Fair profile elsewhere (here and here), but this profile had potential. Sam Kashner, he of Bad and the Beautiful and umpteen classic Hollywood profiles (and recent subject of gossip himself), guides the conversation as Mike Nichols, Roberts’ director in Closer and Charlie Wilson’s War, interviews Roberts. This could be interesting, right? Not really, because a Vanity Fair profile is tasked with one thing: being as seemingly revelatory-while-revealing-nothing as possible. Sometimes you get a gem, like when Jennifer Aniston admitted that Brad Pitt had a sensitivity chip missing, but most of the time, it’s all small talk pretending to be big talk. (Which is part of the reason I adored Edith Zimmerman’s GQ profile of Chris Pine).
But I wanted to see if the same story of the 1990s and 2000s could be spun for a 2010s audience. And, of course, it could:
The Laugh makes an appearance in the first paragraph:
“The first thing I heard was laughter from unheard jokes — it was her laugh the same one that we fell in love with when Richard Gere suddenly snapped the jewelry box shut on her in Pretty Woman.”
“If you are lucky enough to make her laugh, which Nichols does effortlessly, her voluptuous mouth breaks into a radiant grin.”
There’s the Uniqueness:
“There has been no one like her for quite a while now.”
“One never tires of her, like seeing a shooting star: where did that come from? You are grateful to simply have seen it all.”
“As far as Tarsem was concerned, the Evil Queen was the first character he was interested in casting. ‘I knew that it would dictate the tone and age of everyone else. I was only interested in Julia.’”
There’s the ‘Natural,’ Effortless Talent:
Nichols: “I don’t know whether you ever found it hard or easy, Julia, because all of the machinery is invisible. It’s a thing of yours in life too. I don’t know whether you work out. I don’t know how you got your shape back in what seemed to be 10 minutes…”
Nichols again: “I’m married to someone (Diane Sawyer) a little bit like you, in that the technique, the machinery of both the person and the work, is not only never discussed, it’s never even considered — it’s so personal that it doesn’t exist. I think tha goes one with what I saw in the first shot of Mystic Pizza — it looks like like; it is life.”
Nichols on first watching Roberts in Pretty Woman. : “I got very excited, because here was this amazing presence. You weren’t young or not young; it had nothing to do with age. The character was all about starting out. But you seemed like you’d always been there.”
There’s the Acting Family:
Kashner: “Julia, do you think you would have become an actor if you didn’t grow up in a theatrical family?”
“I don’t think I woudl have. I would’ve have seen it as a real option if my parents werent’ actors and my siblings…..It just wouldn’t have occurred to me [then lists pedigree]…Going to the theater is such a joyous experience.”
There’s the attempt to read Pretty Woman into her life/career:
Kashner: “Julia, do you see your life as fairy tale?”
[At which point Roberts says something that makes it clear that she doesn't, yet.....]
Kashner: “Your amazing career reads like a fairy tale.”
As evidenced by the exchange above, a star doesn’t decide what parts of his or her backstory will become part of the lore. Sometimes those motifs, pivotal moments, and themes are mapped onto your star image without any input from the star. We understand how this works with negative publicity (a scandal becomes part of the narrative no matter how much a star would like it not to), but it’s crucial that we also see how it happens with more positive events. Angelina Jolie, for example, doesn’t have much positive to say about being the daughter of Jon Voigt — indeed, her mother seems to have been a much, much stronger influence on her — but profiles love to excavate in her Hollywood pedigree. We attribute stars with qualities that make sense, and it makes much more sense that Jolie, for all her uniqueness, would have gotten it through a Hollywood father. What makes sense matters much less than what’s true.
But Roberts surprised me a bit at the end of this quasi-interview. I was absolutely expecting some banality about hating stardom, dropping out of the game, loving her husband, etc. etc. But she offered some actual insight — and as those of you who follow the blog know, there’s nothing I love more than a star who evidences his/her own understanding of the way that star images work. (Most recently: George Clooney).
When Kashner asks her about the “idea of movie stardom,” and whether it’s “a cosmic riddle” she’s been “given to solve,” Roberts replies with a story of being on the streets with her family in Toronto:
“It was on a crowded street, and somebody noticed me, and then another person noticed. Somebody said as we were walking past, ‘oh, That’s Julia Roberts.’ We just kind of kept going, and then Finn said, ‘Yeah, my mom’s Julia Robinson.’ That’s what gives you perspective. It could be Robinson, it could be Johnson, because it has nothing to do with me as a person.”
Indeed. That’s an understanding that only comes with twenty years of the press disarticulating a star image, with its own themes, peaks, and valleys, from your actual life. It doesn’t matter who, exactly, Roberts is. What matters is what she has come to mean.
The Parameters of Indie Stardom
When people hear that I do celebrity studies, one of their favorite things to do is ask if so-and-so is a star. Is Jeremy Lin a star? Is Brad Pitt a star? Is Tom Cruise still a star? How do you know?
If you’ve been reading the blog for awhile, you’re familiar with the definition: a star is a performer whose fame is based on textual lives (for actors and actresses, the way they appear in films; for a basketball player, the way he performs on the court) and their extra-textual lives (everything they do, say, and represent off the court). We also think of stars as people who can “open” in some way — a baseball star brings bodies to seats in the same way that a movie star (used to) bring bodies to seats. (Now, our real “stars,” at least financially, are pre-sold properties, such as The Hunger Games).
So Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, George Clooney….Reese Witherspoon, Matt Damon, Ryan Reynolds, Denzel Washington — they’re still (arguably) stars. And can have an entirely different conversation about television stardom, and how it functions differently (and works to set a certain type for a performer even more effectively than a definitive star role. Jennifer Aniston, for example, will never escape Rachel, no matter how far Friends may seem in the rearview mirror). (For more on television stardom, and if such a thing actually exists, see earlier posts on Aniston and Katie Holmes).
My favorite indie pairing: Laura Linney & Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count on Me
But what of indie stardom? What of Michelle Williams and Laura Linney, of Paul Giametti and Mark Ruffalo, of Joseph Gordon-Levitt? What do we do with these stars who star in little pictures that do little business (but are generally critically acclaimed) and reveal strategic bits of their extra-textual lives to match their “indie” picture personalities. Their involvement oftentimes marks the difference between an independent film getting picked up for theatrical distribution or going straight to IFC or video-on-demand. They are powerful forces….just on a smaller scale. So how does an indie star “mean” differently than a mainstream star? And does it matter?
First things first: we need a little specificity of language. ”Indie” has come to mean many things over the last two decades — some people think “independent” means produced independently (i.e. outside of the major studios), some people think it means financed independently, others think that any film that makes it into an actual movie theater (that is not at a film festival) cannot be “indie.” Personally, I like Michael Newman‘s take, beautifully laid out in his book Indie, in which he approaches “indie” film not as a production culture, but as a confluence of meanings. Indie is thus a way of producing a film, but also a way of watching a film, and an expectation for how a film should look and address the viewer. In other words, lots of things make a film indie, including the actors that appear in them.
Oh hey Joseph Gordon-Levitt, yes, yes I will go see the movie when you have cancer just because you are in it.
When you see the name Joseph Gordon-Levitt attached to a film, you bring a certain understanding of how that film was most likely financed, the type of film it will be, what it will demand from you as a viewer, and even what it will look like. To wit: it will not be a big-budget production, but it will still look professional (his name attached to a project helps garner a modicum of funding); the narrative with be nuanced, quirky, and/or not follow traditional plot rules, and it will make me feel double-capital-E Earned Emotions. I will watch it in a small, art-house theater or via Netflix, and my significant other will come watch it with me because even though there’s a romance, or it’s sad, and it’s indie, so it’s okay. The previews before will most likely be for other indie films starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself or Patricia Clarkston. They won’t have the cheesy voiceover preview guy, because Indie film consumers hate voiceover cheesy guy and the way his presence screams commercial film — instead, the previews might be in a foreign language, or the film might just have an elegant piano score and LOTS AND LOTS of those weird feathers in the shape of a horseshoe with lots of film festival names inside, some more esoteric than others. While we watch this film, we might have artisan popcorns or classic cocktails, depending on whether or not we’re in Austin and watching it at the Violet Crown, surrounded by other early 30-something intellectuals and elderly but engaged matinee-goers. In which case, we probably biked there.
You get the drift: indie films cater to a specific audience, and that audience values specific attributes in their stars. An indie star can’t look like Channing Tatum. It’s just not possible; he’s just too built, too Ken-faced. An indie star has to be schlubby and everyguy (Giamatti, Philip Seymour Hoffman), skinny and emo-looking (Gordon-Levitt), or, if the star’s a woman, untraditionally beautiful (Williams) or older-and-ravishing (Laura Linney, Clarkston). Beautiful women often break-out in indie film and then break-away, as seems to be the case for both Jennifer Lawrence and Elizabeth Olson.
So an indie star needs to appear in indie pictures, broadly conceived. But the indie star must regularly appear in indie pictures. Indie pictures are the main component of their star image — the thing that he/she seems to mean.
And, as a result, the core of the indie star’s image is prestige. The actor doesn’t act for the money or the glamour, but for the love of acting. And with discernment, at least in today’s culture, comes prestige. The less interested you are in making profits, the more interested you are in plot development and, by extension, the more serious you are as an actor.
Mark Ruffalo looks very uncomfortable at the Big Movie Star Avenger Party
So here’s where it gets interesting: because the indie star connotes prestige, his/her involvement in a non-indie production adds prestige. Thus Mark Ruffalo’s involvement in The Avengers makes the film seem less exploitative, and Patricia Clarkston’s role as the mom in Friends with Benefits ups its pedigree. Indie stars gain renown for their powers of discernment — Gordon-Levitt, for example, best known for his stint on Third Rock from the Sun, went back to Hollywood in his early 20s with the contingency that he would only make “good movies.” While all of the films that he’s made since returning have not, necessarily, been turned out as “good movies,” they’ve all at least tried to be good movies. Stop-Loss tried really, really hard to be a good movie, which is more than I can say for 90% of Hollywood blockbusters.
Which brings us to the question of blockbuster involvement. What happens when Gordon-Levitt appears in G.I. Joe? Nothing. Why? Because the vast majority of people who know his name — as an indie star — didn’t go see G.I. Joe. It’s simply not the target audience. Maybe a few die-harders did (I know that it made me look at it twice before deciding it, in all likelihood, would suck big time; reviews tell me I am not wrong). And to the majority of people who did go see the film, which, for all of its bad reviews, did make a bundle at the box office, he was just another handsome supporting guy.
Indie stars can also anchor prestige television. See Steve Buschemi in Boardwalk Empire, Toni Collette in United States of Tara, or Don Cheadle in House of Lies. They have the scent of big-screen stardom on them, but going to TV isn’t a sign of decline, as some have (mistakenly) viewed what’s become of the likes of Alec Baldwin. Rather, appearing on HBO or Showtime show built around them is an extension of their pre-existing prestige. Ironically, stars of small, relatively low-budget films usually land on expensive, high-production-value television.
Indie stars get it both ways: they get recognition, but without the paparazzi frenzy that accompanies wide-scale superstardom. They don’t make as much money, but then again, they don’t have to spend as much money employing and guarding themselves from the publicity apparatus. They are associated with class and prestige, despite the fact that the films they appear in cost a fraction of the truly lavish and expensive Hollywood pictures. When one of their films only makes a million dollars — but garners a ton of buzz — it’s a success. When a film doesn’t make it out of the gate — recent examples include Hesher or Patricia Clarkston’s Cairo Time — it doesn’t really matter, because the film didn’t cost much to make and will probably make back its budget in ancillaries, because people like me like to rent movies with indie stars and watch them on a Saturday night with a bottle of wine. (And by “rent” I mean “stream them on Netflix.”)
When an indie film does succeed, whether by making money or creating a lot of buzz, then the indie star can parlay that success into an appearance in a larger film (Gordon-Levitt’s role in Inception) and, potentially, bring more fans back with you to the small-scale productions you enjoy.
Not anyone can be an indie star. You need to be distinctive, but not too distinctive. You can be somewhat weird looking, but only if you’re really, really talented, and usually only if you’re male. You have to balance really off-the-wall passion projects with slightly more mainstream yet still-labeled-as-indie fare (500 Days of Summer, for example). You can’t do too many mainstream projects, lest you be labeled and hounded like a “real” star (see: Ryan Gosling) and you can’t do too many things in general, lest you be labeled as a publicity hound and a fraud (see: James Franco).
Hey Gos, I really still want to think of you as an Indie Star, but is it really true?
It might be easier to be an indie star: you’re not on the cover of the gossip mags every week, and you don’t need an entourage. You can probably lead a more normal life than, say, Brad Pitt. You don’t make as money, but you have more freedom. As a whole, your products probably suck less. But you also have to maintain a very specific career path, never deviating too far from a specific set of expectations, types of films, and behavior in your extra-textual life (running a website for independent filmmakers, starting a lady blog, dating other indie stars, getting behind environmental causes and blogging about them at Huff Post).
Independent stardom sure looks circumscribed.
Revenge as Postfeminist Dystopia
NOTE: Spoiler-free. Some characteristics/life events are revealed in Episodes 1-3, but nothing earth-shattering.
Revenge has been one of my greatest elliptical machine pleasures this Winter. It’s well-acted, the clothes are fantastic, intricately plotted, and melodramatic as all get out — just how I like a good elliptical machine show. Revenge is (very) loosely based on The Count of Monte Cristo, which is to say that it rotates on the premise of someone who is betrayed by his intimates, sent to jail, realizes that his intimates put him there, and returns, disguised, to take revenge on them.
The twist of Revenge is clever: the betrayed figure dies in prison, but his daughter, a young girl at the time of his imprisonment, returns, now a grown woman with an assumed identity, to their beach house (in the Hamptons, OF COURSE), to take revenge on all the high-powered business men (and their spouses) who betrayed him. What makes it escapist isn’t the revenge narrative, but the beautiful, monied background. Everyone loves a story about The Hamptons — the people are gorgeous, the clothes are immaculate, the parties are so…..planned. And while our main character once had money, she was sent to group homes, and then to juvey, and didn’t get released until she was 18….at which point she discovered that she was half-owner in the TV-world version of Google! I won’t explain the mechanics, but what you need to understand is that she is ridiculously wealthy — the sort of wealthy that proves so handy for screenwriters, who can essentially grant her every privilege, convenience, and beautiful dress she desires.
In other words: this is some good soapy TV. But over the course of the first half of the series, I’ve become increasingly convinced that the female characters in the show, and the harsh realities that face them, represent the ugly flipside of the “freedoms” promised by postfeminism.
Postfeminism is a loaded term. Here’s my simplified and contentious definition:
Postfeminism is, most explicitly, the idea that feminism is no longer necessary. Feminism accomplished its goals in the ’70s and ’80s, and we’re ready to move on and just “be” women, whatever that means. (Suggestions that we live in a “post-race” society often hinge on the idea that a black president means that racism is no longer an issue in our society, let alone a defining issue). We don’t need feminism, we just need “girl power” - a very different concept than the “grrl power” that undergirded the Riot Grrl movement of the early ’90s (which was, itself, a response to the rise of postfeminism). Postfeminism is forgoing freedoms or equal rights in the name of prettier dresses, more expensive make-up, and other sartorial “freedoms” to consume. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman is postfeminism manifest — a self-sustaining (sex worker) who meets her prince, who will allow her to consume (and become her “true” self). Sex & the City is postfeminist. Bridget Jones is postfeminist. 27 Dresses is postfeminist.
In short, the idea that consumption and self-objectification (which usually leads to romantic monogamy) = equal rights and equal treatment is postfeminist.
In text after text of the last twenty years, postfeminist philosophy, for lack of a better word, is portrayed as the path towards happiness and fulfillment. Until, in a text like Revenge, it doesn’t.
To be clear: Revenge is not the first to highlight the negative aspects of postfeminism. I mean, you could read the disasters that were the Sex and the City movies as the dystopic end to the fantasy narrative displayed in the television show. You could also look at the hysteria in the vast majority of female-oriented reality programming and read it as the postfeminist dream of success and “having it all” gone tragically wrong. Put differently, Revenge isn’t the first television show to present the opportunity for such a reading.
But let’s get down to the analysis and look at our two main characters, their postfeminist choices, and the dystopic realities in which they find themselves.
EXAMPLE ONE: VICTORIA GRAYSON
Victoria is vintage Hampton’s. Pilates body, Botox face, age-appropriate yet still sexy gowns, long hair that still connotes beauty (as opposed to middle-aged-ness). A handsome son in his mid-20s, a beautiful daughter in her late teens. A silver fox husband who spends most of his summer in the city and runs a well-regarded global capitol something-or-another. Her name carries tremendous weight. She can ruin someone’s reputation with a single word. People anticipate her parties. She’s apparently the social doyenne of, oh, I dunno, all rich people on the East Coast. Her anniversary is carried on the front page of some section of what appears to be The New York Times. She came from nothing to become the second wife of a major-player capitalist and gets all of the benefits.
BUT WAIT JUST ONE SECOND.
Let’s talk about these benefits:
1.) Sacrifices former identity (seriously — it’s totally sublimated, save the mention of “coming from nothing” every once in awhile) to steal another woman’s husband.
2.) Alienates both of her children for reasons for various unforgivable reasons
3.) But she can ruin her best friend’s reputation! Which she does! When she discovers that said best friend is sleeping with her husband!
4.) She is incapable of showing emotion. I mean that literally: she has a frozen face from plastic surgery and collagen injections, which evacuates her face from expression and suggests (this is a melodrama, after all, when emotion and character traits overflow into the mise-en-scene) a heart that wants, but no longer has the muscle memory, to feel.
5.) Her body is slim and toned (despite lack of toning activity — I’m guessing she has a Pilates Reformer in the basement) but girl never eats. Or even really gets to drink.
6.) Spends a lot of time thinking about how to destroy the younger, seemingly history-less girl who threatens to take her son away via marriage.
7.) Doesn’t read.
8.) Doesn’t know how to use the computer (seriously, one scene with her daughter’s computer confirms as much).
9.) Doesn’t have any hobbies other than party planning, which her party planner does for her, and wearing dresses at all times.
10.) Has no interests or sense of self-worth other than her childrens’ affection, which is now lost to her.
11.) Clearly loathes her husband, who loathes her in return.
12.) Periodically pines for a time when she had a sense of true love, but forsook that true love in the name of money and prestige.
13.) Has no friends. No lady friends, no male friends, no child friends, no underling sidekick friends. No friends, no confidantes, no community. She’s never alone but the loneliest person on the Eastern seaboard.
The lesson of Victoria: if you don’t care about equality or a life of your own, then you can have all of the pretty dresses you want. And be miserable, wholly miserable, in ten years’ time. Victoria Grayson is the first wave of postfeminism, come to fruition and left to rot.
EXAMPLE #2: EMILY THORNE/AMANDA CLARKE
Educated, well-traveled, lovely accent, well-spoken, attractive. Beautiful slightly wavy blonde hair and innovative if somewhat circumscribed fashion taste. Gets the hottest man in her age bracket to fall in love with her in about three days. Allied with the most wealthy man in America. Kind, polite, thoughtful, and spends a lot of time donating her time and energy to philanthropy. Orphaned but has developed a firm sense of self and purpose. Enormously and independently wealthy. Able to bestow favor and fame upon anyone. Wields tremendous (albeit unseen) power. Understands the puppetry of social interactions and how to pull the strings. One savvy young lady.
BUT WAIT JUST ONE MORE SECOND.
Let’s talk about Emily/Amanda’s life:
1.) Due to admittedly tragic circumstances, she spent her youth in foster care (which wronged her) followed by the juvenile detention system (which also wronged her). But instead of spending her newfound and abundant wealth working to right the systemic wrongs that led to a situation like hers, she goes after the individuals that caused her distress. This strategy isn’t necessarily post-feminist, but it is certainly neo-liberal: like Crash or The Blind Side, which suggest that repairing relationships between individuals can correct systemic problems. Her father died; her vendetta is not against society, or against those who might inflect the same sort of process (albeit within different parameters) on someone else, but against the specific individuals who led to the suffering of her and her father.
2.) Has one supposed friend. Apart from the very first scene in the very first episode, when she suggests that they get drunk on champagne, they mostly spend time talking about they’ll spend some quality time together at some later point. Her ostensible friendship with the Google-owner-guy is a mix of passive-aggression and aggression and utilitarianism.
3.) Has no hobbies or interests other than exacting revenge. She can, however, use a computer, but only to exact said revenge.
4.) Has no media interests other than re-watching clips and re-reading newspaper clippings related to her revenge plot.
5.) Has forsaken her childhood bond with a very nice, very working class, very authentic (he has a beard!) man (who named a sailboat after her, jeez) in order to pursue her revenge.
6.) Never enjoys any of her richy-rich toys because she is so busy being revengeful.
7.) Somehow has several mentor figures who provide her with sporadic guidance…on being revengeful, never on self-actualizing or letting go of said revenge and doing something with her one precious life.
8.) Never gets to hang out in any public spaces — life seems to be limited to fleeting visits to the bar to fetch people and the private party circuit (but only private parties hosted by Victoria at that).
9.) Uses beauty and charisma to attract handsome man….who she plans to destroy! But oh no, turns out she has feelings for him??!!?? WHICH SHE MUST DESTROY!
10.) Can never find happiness because she’s living a lie in order to avenge the wrongs of the generation before her.
The lesson of Emily: as the second generation of postfeminism, you are reaping the “awards” of your parents’ decisions. Which, as it turns out, means that you get all of the clothes and good hair and fortune….and nothing to guide you or add meaning to your life, save your elaborate revenge strategy and her beautiful wardrobe.
Revenge is clearly a tragedy: a young girl’s father is taken from her; her life is ruined; she dedicates her life to harming those who caused her (and her father) harm. We’re obviously encouraged to pity Emily — not just because her father was taken from her, but because she’s so hopefully mired in the whirlpool of revenge….and we have no idea how she’ll function once that purpose and drive is taken from her.
But as I’ve demonstrated above, Revenge can also be read as the tragedy of postfeminism: what happens when you trade the politics of feminism for the bounty of consumerism, what happens when you grow up in a world where those are the realities for women set before you, both by the media and the other women in your life.
I’m not saying this works perfectly, but I am saying that our two main characters (and several others in the show) don’t suggest Being a Woman in 21st Century America is Awesome. They suggest that it’s claustrophobic, prescribed, unhappy, and even if you have all the tools that you thought you needed to play the game, deeply, deeply unsatisfying. The moral isn’t just that revenge is never satisfying, but that postfeminism, for all of its glossy, gorgeous surfaces, is rotten at its core.
Channing Tatum: My Favorite Doofus
Image via GQ.com
Think about every time you’ve seen Channing Tatum onscreen.
From Fighting to The Eagle, from Step Up to Dear John, there’s a clear line that runs through his performances:
*He is a (very heterosexual) man — a fact authenticated by a love interest of some kind.
*He’s working class in some form, meaning he’s in the military (either in the present or in Ancient Rome; see Stop/Loss, Dear John, G.I. Joe, and The Eagle), a foster kid doing community service (Step Up), a street peddler (Fighting), a cop (21 Jump Street), or a stripper (the upcoming Magic Mike). [Notable exceptions: "normal" high school kid in She's the Man and Coach Carter; covert operative in Haywire; I honestly can't tell what he is in The Vow, but he seems to drive a crappy car in the trailer, so who knows].
*He’s very sincere.
*He’s very American. HE’S G.I. JOE. He’s the modern American military personified. Sometimes he’s bitter and f-ed up (Stop Loss), more often he’s stoic and honorable (Dear John). Even when he’s playing a Roman Centurian he speaks with an American accent.
*His character’s goal = 1.) find and/or restore honor (to himself, to his family); 2.) find and/or restore love, usually while doing thething that restores honor; 3.) Look good with his shirt off.
Don’t mistake me: I’m not complaining. Because Channing Tatum is by far my favorite lovable doofus, and I’ll seriously watch him in anything. As in I went to the movie theater and watched Fighting all by myself. I am not joking. But what makes him lovable and other bad-acting, Ken-Doll-action-figure-Nicholas-Sparks schmaltzy doofuses intolerable?
Because Channing (Call me ‘Chan’) Tatum is by no means novel. He is the latest in a time-tested lineage of star types, a lineage that includes Gary Cooper, John Wayne, and Bruce Willis. He’s a hard body with a soft heart. His picture personality is static, and his extra-textual life mirrors it with startling symmetry.
Because Channing Tatum, off-screen, is also very heterosexual, with a love interest (read: his wife, who neatly also happened to play his love interest in Step Up; more on that later), (formerly) working class, very sincere, very American, very honorable and loving and LOOKS GOOD WITH HIS SHIRT OFF.
I know these things about Tatum because men’s magazines LOVE HIM. GQ adores him. Details has profiled him twice. He’s been the “next big thing” for the last three years — ever since he landed the lead in G.I. Joe - and the boy is game. For his first big GQ interview, he took his (female) interviewer to his Uncle’s spread in Alabama, where they rode around the place on four-wheelers and drank six-packs of beer. Lots of talk about where Tatum would build his modest cabin on the land (it’s the place where he feels most safe — his escape from the outside world) and how his accent thickens when he gets back home. To wit:
He’s just a normal Joe Schmoe: went to high school, almost flunked out, got a football scholarship to small state college, realized it wasn’t for him, and went in search of menial labor. Easy, familiar, accessible points of personal history.
For his second interview with GQ, published during the ramp-up to the release of The Eagle, he takes his (once again female) interviewer to a tiny old mining town. They’re “breaking all the publicist’s rules” — they get wasted on tequila, buy Snuggies, and sleep in Rite-Aid sleeping bags in the bushes. It’s the Rolling Stone-brand profile taken to its 21st century extension: if you can’t pull an Almost Famous and ride along with the band until you find yourself in an airplane that’s about to crash, then you have to make a crazy situation on your own. But there’s no funny business: Tatum steps out at one point to call his wife; they play pool with a guy named “Ordinary Mike,” even the hangover seems underplayed. (Compare this interview to Edith Zimmerman’s interview with Chris Pine, also in GQ,also known as my favorite interview of all time, in which the narrative becomes much more about Edith and the act of interviewing an otherwise bland star and much less about illuminating down home aspects about the subject).
In the most recent issue of Details, he takes the (male) interviewer to go shoot lots and lots of guns while loading up on whiskey, then takes him home, where his wife is waiting, and Tatum spends time dancing with dog.
That's a very sensitive sweater.
The underlying message of the profile, like every profile of Tatum, is that he’s an awesome guy: a fun, beer-drinking, risk-taking, goofy, loving guy. The sub-title for the middle-of-nowhere GQ profile says it all:
Channing Tatum is crazy. That’s not an epithet. That’s his life’s motto. Don’t believe us? We invite you to spend twenty-four hours deep in the California desert (bring some tequila and a sleeping bag) with probably America’s most fun movie star.
Hick-ing out Crappy Diner Style
Tatum can actually dance. He’s not classically trained (how un-American would that be!); he’s self-taught. In Step Up, he naturally plays a self-taught dancer who “spices up” his love interest’s formal choreography. See for yourself:
[My personal favorite dance moment comes earlier in the film, when Tatum does a weird dippy move and pops his collar. So good, SO BAD!] He rejects all the feminine connotations of “male dancer” — he dances in sweat pants rather than tights; the scene when she makes him do ballet is played for pure laughs. His dancing is physical, improvisational, and marked as amateur.
So the dancing is cute. But the “Dancing” component of Tatum’s star image is packed with meaning -
1.) How he started dancing.
Here’s where it gets so good: Tatum didn’t just start dancing around his living room. He was a STRIPPER. A male exotic dancer. There is tape, and it is right here. SO. MUCH. HAIR. GEL. While Tatum didn’t exactly broadcast the fact during his early film career, once it did arise, he embraced it whole-heartedly. As he told GQ, “I had wanted to tell people [...] I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t regret one thing. I’m not a person who hides shit.”
He then proceeded to make fun of himself all over the place — he laughs about it on Ellen and then gives her a lap dance. He developed a script on the inside of the male stripping “industry,” and Steven Soderbergh jumped to direct it. He’s not just “owning” his past as a stripper, he’s exploiting it. A past as a male stripper could be emasculating, it could be gross, it could be embarrassing. But Tatum, working, I’m sure, with some coaching from his PR team, has rendered it endearing.
2.) Dancing —> Monogamy
Tatum met his wife, Jenna Dewan, while filming Step Up. As they danced together, they fell in love, etc. etc. Fans love it when the actors who play characters who fall in love actually fall in love themselves (McGoslings, Twi-Hards), but this is something a little different. Crucially, Tatum has been with Dewan the entire time that he has been in the public eye.
His star text is that of a pure monogamist. Even in his movies, he’s never a philanderer — always into one girl; in fact, totally, selflessly devoted to one girl. It’s the perfect counterpoint to the ostensible “crazy” of his textual and extra-textual roles: sure, Tatum drinks whiskey and shoots guns, but he loves his wife. The moment in the latest GQ profile when he steps out of the house to call his wife is just pure monogamist gold.
3.) Dancing -> Sincerity
Tatum may be a self-taught dancer. He may play his “route” to dancing as a joke. But dancing is totally a sincere thing. Look at his face when he dances! He is SERIOUS about choreography! At other times, he’s just reveling in the dexterity of his own body. He loves to dance, and he doesn’t care who knows it.
That sort of transparent sincerity inflects Tatum’s entire image. You see it in the very earnest way he professes his love in Dear John, and you see it in the way that he talks about “real people” in nearly every profile. When someone in the bar in the old mining town uses the phrase “shit brickhouse,” he replies
“Oh, my God! Yes! Brick shithouse!” Chan says, slapping his knee the next day at Rusty’s. “See! This is why I wanted to come out here. I love these places. You can’t get this good a time in the city! Real people, man. Real people.”
I’m this close to cringing. But then I remember that it’s coming from Channing Tatum’s big, over-sized, attractive face — that he doesn’t want to observe and laugh at these “real people” so much as go back to the time when he was one of them, that I forgive him all his dopey authenticity-seeking. I mean, look at this closer to the Details interview:
You see this sincere Tatum in half of his pictures — the half when he’s straight-faced and doing awkward things with his body, model-y, mooney-looking things. But something about it makes me love him even more, like the guy writing really bad yet really sincere acrostic love poetry.
Lainey Gossip argues that he out-Matthew McConaughey’s Matthew McConaghey. But these days, McConaghey’s just a douche with his shirt off. Tatum, on the other hand, has three high profile movies coming out this year and two in pre-production. The trick, I think, is that Tatum can do what McConaughey has never quite been able to pull off: he can play his sincerity straight, as he does in nearly every film. But he can also play that sincerity for laughs, as he does in the trailer for 21 Jump Street.
I could be wrong, but this actually looks hilarious — in part because it takes Tatum’s established image and satirizes it. Ultimately, this knowledge forms the crux of Tatum’s success: he and his team know his image and how to exploit it, but they also know how to make fun of it. And that, more than any actual acting skill, is a ticket to stardom.
Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Let’s make this clear: I liked this movie. David Fincher has established himself as a master of making otherwise unexciting and unfilmic activities (computer coding, researching) into heart-pounding, exciting, and filmic montages. The film is still overlong, but it had to set itself up for the sequel and there’s only so much you can cut from a densely plotted narrative in keep it cogent. I don’t think Fincher was trying to be faithful to the book so much as faithful to the actual chain of events: Point A must happen so that Point B can happen, which must also happen so that C can happen, etc. etc. and so on. And while I enjoyed the film more than Mission Impossible: Make People Like Tom Cruise Again, which I saw the day before, my inner crotchedy-ass self has some lingering questions:
1.) No seriously, why the fuck is this film named Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?
This beef is more with the English-language publishers of the book than the film itself, but my complaint holds: in Swedish, the book is titled Men Who Hate Women. This title underlines Larson’s feminist intent with the novels, which was not to make entertainment out of sexual violence, but rather to highlight misogyny in all its manifestations. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo not only makes Lisbeth into a nameless Girl, but also a girl whose overarching signifier is a tattoo. One of the points of the narrative is to encourage us to see Lisbeth as much more than her appearance suggests, and the title does the absolute opposite.
2.) Why is the sexual violence played as catharsis?
The sexual violence against Lisbeth is not cathartic. It’s visceral and horrible and necessary to the plot, and to shy away from it would be to shy away from what makes Lisbeth who she is. (Narratively speaking, it would also decrease her resolution to find the serial rapist/killer). There was a lot of gasping and swearing in the theater by unsuspecting viewers during these scenes. But the scene when Lisbeth takes revenge is essentially played as catharsis: the brutality she inflects upon her rapist is framed not only as just, but as narrative closure. Sure, Lisbeth comes to check up on him, but it’s played for laughs, not as a moment of continued trauma. Within this paradigm, the state, even a progressive state like that of Sweden, will always ignore sexual violence, and it’s up to the victim to take revenge — and after it is taken, she can move on with her life. Do you see how this is problematic? It’s also problematic for the audience, which is encouraged to feel a similar catharsis: that thing that happened to her was horrible, but now that she’s sodomized her killer and blackmailed and tattooed him so that he won’t do it again, whew, problem solved, I feel great, let’s move on to the heady MacBook investigating!
3.) Why is the death of a serial killer played off as a plot point?
YOU GUYS, MARTIN VANGER AND HIS FATHER BRUTALIZED LOTS AND LOTS OF WOMEN. But again, vigilante justice takes precedence: because he dies in giant fireball, his last memory that of a woman (who had just clubbed in the head and forced him to flee) coming slowly towards him, we are to believe that he’s received what’s coming for him. But then nothing! No expose! No information given over to the victims’ families, nothing! He just dies and then we go on to Lisbeth’s dress up party!
In the book, we’re given some hemming and hawing over whether or not the Vanger family should make the information public. But in the film, Martin Vanger dies and we just up and move on to the third act of the film. Seriously! That’s it! There’s not even a mention, save to prompt the woman we believe to be Anita Vanger to contact Harriet.
4.) Why is Lisbeth’s Macbook Pro so much more awesome than mine?
First of all, I couldn’t help thinking of Steig Larson’s totally bizarre fascination with Apple hardware (remember how he detailed the hard drive specifics of each machine Lisbeth touches? I can understand working for accuracy, but there was some serious fetishism going on, and it only gets worse in the (much worse) second and third books). But here’s the thing: we’re used to seeing awesome next-gen technology on-screen. Mission Impossible was filled with it. It makes our heroes seem cooler and more savvy simply because they know that such things exist, let alone how to work them. And we suspend our disbelief in Google Maps that pop on on the windshield of the actual car because we’ve already suspending our disbelief that agents like Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) exist. But Lisbeth is given a machine that is absolutely the same as mine. And they do enough close-ups to make that abundantly clear. But why do her PDFs look so much more vibrant? How does she go through all of them so quickly? Where’s that hacker interface? Can I buy it at the App Store?
Now, I realize that the filmmakers are underlining that Lisbeth does things with “normal” technology that others cannot. She’s not a special agent; she’s just a savant. But instead of making me feel like she’s totally awesome, so makes me feel like I’m a bumbling Grandpa.
5.) How did Fincher manage to turn a narrative about solving an intricate mystery into a contemplation of what Rooney Mara would look like in pretty girl clothes?
Look to the extra-textuals: in the lead-up to the release of the film, nearly every article focused on how Rooney Mara, a cute, blonde, every-girl, transformed herself into an androgynous punk. (See especially the creepy Vogue profile, which I wrote about two months ago). With established stars, a “character” (I won’t say Method) performance such as this one is viewed as an Oscar turn, and most viewers spend a considerable amount of time marveling at how effectively the star has transformed him/herself into something not suggested by his/her image, namely fat, poor, mentally disabled, homeless, genius-level mathematician, etc. But Rooney Mara wasn’t an established star. Her most visible role was a brief appearance in a notable scene in The Social Network. And while many media savvy viewers would have seen pictures of her looking “normal,” many had not. But there’s something in Lisbeth’s facial structure and body that suggests she might be hiding a Hollywood star — the defined cheekbones, the eyes, the near-emaciation that treads the fine line between “hot body” and “obvious eating disorder.”
The film thus becomes a game of “how pretty would this girl be if we could just get some normal clothes on her”? The wonder is only underlined by the scene in which Lisbeth dons expensive, feminine clothing, and physically alters her body to become stereotypically womanly: yes! She’s gorgeous! Look at her legs in those heels! The discourse about Mara’s performance centers on transformation, not the way she portrays vulnerability and strength.
Lisbeth, as is, can’t be beautiful. An actress who actually looks like Lisbeth could never be Lisbeth. She has to be played as masquerade — as something that an otherwise traditionally beautiful girl dresses up as. Otherwise, she, a bisexual, androgynous, intelligent woman who rejects Western standards of beauty, is altogether too troubling of the status quo.
So what are your lingering crotchedy-ass questions? Or do you have answers to mine?
Previously: Five Crotchedy-Ass Questions about X-Men: First Class
The Ryan Gosling Meme Has Jumped the Shark
Three things happened in Ryan Gosling meta-commentary news this week:
1.) The Ryan Gosling Tumblr-sphere expanded to include “Biostatistics Ryan Gosling.” Add it to the pre-existing blogroll of “Medieval History Ryan Gosling,” “Public History Ryan Gosling,” “Feminist Ryan Gosling,” and dozens more discipline-specific Gozes to which I have not even been made aware.
2.) Inside Higher Ed published a (brief) thinkpiece on the phenomenon.
3.) Well-known media theorist Nancy Baym tweeted “What’s up with this Ryan Gosling tumblr meme thing?
4.) My friend Rebecca, pop culture enthusiast and American Studies dissertator, posited “Don’t you think this whole thing has jumped the shark? You need to write about it quick.”
I have to agree. Biostatistics Ryan Gosling is Jumping the Ryan Gosling Tumblr Shark. Not because I don’t like Biology, but because it lacks the very thing that made the original Ryan Gosling Tumblr (Hey Girl) work so well: you could actually imagine Ryan Gosling saying the very phrases that adoring bloggers were photoshopping into his mouth.
To be more precise: The reason “Hey Girl” works is because Ryan Gosling’s image supports it. You can imagine The Goz saying things like….
…because his image is that of a considerate, intelligent, somewhat quirky yet somehow also adorable and amusing man. (For the specifics of Gosling’s image, see my earlier post on “Why You Love the Goz“). His picture personality may dictate otherwise (read: he plays a lot of assholes and weirdos), but somehow the weight of his extratextual image is enough to convince most of America that he’s really Noah Calhoun (of Notebook fame) transplanted off the screen and into the 21st century.
What’s more, the very notion that Ryan Gosling COULD SAY THESE THINGS is reinforced by clips of him being adorable WHILE SAYING THESE THINGS. He knows about the Tumblr; he finds it quite funny (and somewhat absurd); he laughs at himself and his image which, in reality, just reinforces his image. He gets the joke! The Hotness just multiples!
And Feminist Ryan Gosling is “Hey Girl” taken to its natural (feminist) conclusion. Ryan Gosling’s image goes to grad school! But here’s the thing: Ryan Gosling’s image wouldn’t go to get his PhD in Biology. Or Public History. His image has evidenced no interest in biology other than hanging out with those ducks in The Notebook. Ryan Gosling’s image would either sell out and become a lawyer (see, for example, many of his picture personalities) or pursue an altruistic career in the humanities (see Half Nelson), more specifically, English and/or Gender Studies. And I’m not just saying that because I have a Ph.D. in the humanities: if I were interested in making The Goz be part of my cohort, then I’d be arguing that Ryan Gosling Film Studies is awesome, which I’m not. See below).
But Feminist Ryan Gosling is doing more than just placing feminist theory next to well-chosen pictures. It’s combining rigorous feminist theory with something that’s not quite so rigorous — it couples the theoretical stances we believe in with the negotiated way we live them.
Take this image, for example. Yes! I believe that the hegemonic relationship between the state and the prison industrial complex is bullshit, and needs to be eradicated. But I also want someone to hold me! (And in my personal fantasy space, that person could be Ryan Gosling. It couldn’t be, say, Brad Pitt, because his image doesn’t seem like it would want to go to gender studies grad school. Architectural school, sure).
Or here. Yes, gender is a construct. To live that idea everyday — that’s tough (necessary) work. To emphasize it to your students, to your parents, to your kids, to your peers — seriously, that’s tough, because you’re pushing against a whole heavy load of ideology. But again, the idea is paired with the idea that everyone, including those who make theory in personal praxis, enjoy and hunger for human touch and intimacy.
Apart from the fit with Gosling’s image, there’s also an element of pleasure and play at work. As Danielle Henderson, creator of Feminist Ryan Gosling, explains,
Feminists are apparently not supposed to have a sense of humor. I think people are really liking the fact that this site is intelligent while simultaneously silly, and obviously self-referential. A lot of my followers are women’s studies majors, or people who have taken women’s studies classes, and love seeing inside jokes presented in this way. For example, if you’re a women’s studies major, you’ve probably read “The Yellow Wallpaper” at least 18 times. Now matter how much you like that story, it gets a little ridiculous.
There’s a lot of “snark” (hate that word), and a lot of intellectual examination of pop culture going on with most popular feminist sites, but not a lot of fun. I think I’m having fun with feminism, but not making fun of feminism. People recognize and respond to that crucial difference.
That element of play has far less to do with Ryan Gosling’s image and far more to do with feminism‘s image. But again, it only really works because the feminism can actually work with Gosling’s image. Would it work with Will Smith? With Tom Cruise? With Daniel Craig or Jackie Chan or Channing Tatum? You need a very specific constellation of star attributes in order to make it seem plausible that the person in that picture could potentially read, understand, and repeat the theory contained therein. You need an image as inflected with feminism as The Goz’s.
(Note: I realize that part of this process is self-fulfilling and tautological: Gosling’s image seems feminist so feminist theory can be ascribed to him, which, in turn, makes his image seem even more feminist. Star image formation is complicated shit).
As I was writing this post, several of my friends alerted me to “Film Studies Ryan Gosling.” Part of me wants to love this, if only because I want to imagine Gosling’s image’s familiarity with the likes of Bordwell and Thompson. But Ryan Gosling image isn’t that of a cinephile, and it’s most definitely not indicated an interest in apparatus. I so wish he were. If anyone should be responding to these meme, it should be me — someone who loves Gosling AND film theory. But when you apply his name to film studies, it only make sense with knowledge of the meme and its previous application - not by itself. In other words, if “Hey Girl” is Ryan Gosling’s extratextual image turned into a meme, and Feminist Ryan Gosling is the higher ed extension of that image, then there’s just not a space for Ryan Gosling, Film Theoretician.
What’s more, the author gets it wrong: sure, Grad School Gosling would know Mulvey and the theory of the male gaze, but he would also twist the theory so that he wasn’t embodying the very oppressing gaze against which Mulvey was arguing. For Gosling to be the male gaze suggests that he’s fully enveloped in patriarchy — which is the exact opposite of what his image suggests.
Here’s the simple truth: all pop culture phenomenons, especially those which gain traction on the internet, exhaust themselves eventually. Sometimes it happens through overexposure, sometimes it happens by being spread too thin and thus losing their potency. Whether Stuff White People Like or even LOLcatz, there’s a certain point at which the very thing that made it work — made it special, made if hilarious, made it something that you wanted to pass along to your friends and laugh at a common joke — ceases to function in the same way.
Pairing star images with dense theory is funny. Every scholar wants to think that an object of their desire would be interested in the things they’re interested in — would have a discussion in which you share a secret language familiar to a select few (and then, after you’ve had a good debate, you an go to the Farmer’s Market and snuggle). I wish Ryan Gosling’s image wanted to get his PhD in media studies with me. But it doesn’t — he fell in with the gender studies people long ago. That’s where his image belongs. That’s where it works. To take it beyond can be funny……but, if we’re honest with ourselves, misses the point. It’s a meme built on a meme, and thus evacuated of its core.
Maybe Postmodern Ryan Gosling would have something to say about this?
