James Franco on General Hospital?!: Thinking about Stars and/in Soap Operas

Confession: It’s the week before finals. Not only am I still enrolled in two classes (the last two classes of my LIFE) but I’m also conferencing with 60 students concerning final papers. And giving a final. And packing up my entire life to move to Walla Walla, WA for the semester. So we’re going to have a few guest posts to tide us over — including the following, from the uber-talented Racquel Gonzales, a graduate student in the RTF Department and soap opera (and soap fandom) expert extraordinaire.

James Franco on GH (credit: ABC/Medianet)

In case you haven’t heard, James Franco of Freaks and Geeks, Spiderman, and Pineapple Express fame officially started his guest star stint November 20th on General Hospital, the long-running ABC soap.  If you are scratching your heads, you are in great company with news outlets, gossip columnists, and arguably many Franco fans who just saw him in the Oscar-winning film Milk with a guest star appearance for 30 Rock.  I’m not going to focus on James Franco’s reasons for temporarily showing off his acting chops in Port Charles because it has been exhaustively scrutinized, investigated, and rumored by almost everyone covering the story (including soap sites and fans in comment sections): Why is Franco acting on GH, a [insert dismissive, snarky comment regarding low budget/bad acting/cardboard sets]?  Was it a bet gone wrong with Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow?  Is he on drugs?  Is it a school project?  Why Franco why?  Everybody wants justification as to why Franco, a movie star, would want to be on a soap opera, a supposed vast, vapid, bottom-of-the-barrel wasteland of entertainment and acting talent.  I’d like to point out Franco has received ridiculously massive attention and publicity over this decision, possibly even more than garnered with previous projects.  Ask not what Franco can do for GH, but what is GH doing for Franco?

I’d like to shed a little light on the other side: How did/do GH fans react to James Franco coming onto their soap?  People not engaged in soap opera discussion or fandom may assume that viewers were verklempt and moon-eyed that a famous movie star came down from the heavens of Hollywood to guest star on their lil’ daytime show.  While some were, I found other reactions a bit more complicated.  As a media scholar, one of my research concerns is the negotiations between the contemporary daytime industry and fan communities online.  I am still grappling with the potential differences between online and offline soap viewers, so I am speaking specifically about those fans that engage online.  There were and continue to be varied reactions to the news.  Understandably, there was a lot of confusion and dismissal of the news as a hoax because the story spread on soap message boards days before there were official blog entries confirming it on entertainment sites.  How?  A little tweet by Jillian Michaels about Franco coming on for two months.  Who is Michaels to the soap world?  Besides being a trainer on The Biggest Loser, she is also best friends with Vanessa Marcil.  Some of you may know her from Beverly Hills 90210 or Las Vegas. If you’re a gossip follower, she is Brian Austin Green’s ex and mom to the little boy frequently accompanying Megan Fox in paparazzi pictures.  However, GH viewers know her as Brenda Barrett, half of arguably the biggest supercouple of the 90’s and a third of the most popular soap triangle.  A GH fan tweeted Michaels about Marcil coming back to GH, Michaels responded, and then the investigation started across several soap boards and on Twitter (including several tweets to a clueless Bob Harper, one of the other trainers of The Biggest Loser).  Officially confirmation occurred after Steve Burton, aka GH’s Jason Morgan, spilled the beans on Twitter.  The contemporary gossip industry is always in a fight over breaking the news first.  And in this case, online soap communities spread the story with each other even before soap gossip sites picked it up.  I find this particularly interesting because calculated or not, it was a very successful way to get online fans invested in the news by way of a scavenger hunt.

Franco’s first day on General Hospital

Understandably, there was wide spread excitement and anticipation because there are Franco fans who are GH fans  and vice versa.  The lines between soap viewing, primetime show viewing, and film-going aren’t as strongly demarcated as they may appear though barriers are placed there.  Based on some comments, Franco’s presence actually hooked lapsed GH fans into watching again—undoubtedly one of the goals of the ABC Daytime executives (Did I mention his character is named “Franco”?  Just so there is no doubt about Franco and GH’s mutual exploitation of each other).  However for others, there is annoyance and dismay, because Franco follows many recent guest star appearances on GH (see Bruce Weitz and Vincent Pastore) that typically result in stalled storylines across the canvas, a centralized focus on violence, and little to no long-term effects because these casting stunts are quick attempts to boost the ratings.  Franco’s star power is more widely known than Weitz or Pastore, which prompted apprehensive considerations about how his character would affect other characters’ airtimes.  Surprisingly, indifference seems to pervade fan debates about whether or not Franco is really that big of a star to merit such attention.  He may be a good actor, but is he a star?  On various forums, early shorthand for Franco was “that Spiderman guy” or “the dude from Freaks and Geeks,” which raises questions about how stars are defined in particular communities and points to a potential hierarchy in fan star-making.

James Franco as "Franco" the avant-garde artist (Credit: ABC/Medianet)

Believe it or not, the most talked about soap appearance within the last few months for GH was actually not James Franco, but the return of Jonathan Jackson as Lucky Spencer.  This news was released days before Franco’s yet dominated conversation for several weeks.  Why would this news rival the appearance of Franco?  First, Lucky is the son of Luke and Laura, the soap supercouple whose 1981 wedding still holds the Nielsen daytime ratings record.  They were not just a soap phenomenon, but a significant part of American popular culture.  If you think Franco is a big deal for the soap world, keep in mind that Luke and Laura’s wedding featured Elizabeth Taylor as the guest star.  Therefore, there are strong historical connections between GH fans and Jackson, who played Lucky from childhood to a young adult, allowing the audience to see him grow up on screen from 1993-1999.  Some have been hoping for his return to soaps though he has moved on to larger projects like playing Kyle Reese in the now cancelled Terminator: Sarah Conner Chronicles.  While Franco is a huge star, he and his character have no ties to the GH canvas like Jackson and the character of Lucky Spencer.  The daytime soap industry has traditionally used viewing memory and nostalgia to reward (and exploit) fan loyalty and tap into their textual investment.  The “return” has always been an important narrative choice in the serial medium because of its emotional resonance with fans who have long viewing histories with a show.  You’ll find really memorable soap episodes often feature guest returns by former actors and utilize flashbacks like One Life to Live’s 9,999th and 10,000th episode celebration in 2007.  Nathan Fillion endeared himself to the entire soap community by reprising his role as Joey Buchanan for these episodes as a way of honoring his show business start, rather than trying to hide it.  For many viewers, watching Fillion’s Joey reunite with old cougar flame Dorian in the 2007 episodes during his grandfather’s funeral conjures up their viewing memories of a relationship that began in 1994 (do check out Fillion’s adorable early 90’s ‘do)

I bring up Fillion’s case because it highlights the complicated negotiation between soap operas and its stars like having multiple actors in a single role.  Though a fan favorite, Fillion was one of six different actors to play Joey Buchanan on OLTL.  His tenure was from 1994-1997 and the aforementioned 2007 return episodes, however he was the fourth Joey and not even the actor to have played the role the longest.  But he is seen as the quintessential “Joey” and soap fans followed him to his subsequent TV and film projects.  However, other roles occupied by multiple actors can end up being a site of contention among soap audiences.  This division of fan loyalty is often referred to online as being a character fan first (characterFF), an actor fan first (actorFF), and even a couple and show fan first, delineating where your loyalities lie.  Due to the long, serialized nature of soap operas, recasting is a necessity since characters can exist for decades on the canvas and sometimes outlive their portrayers.  Fans often have hierarchies in their loyalties towards particular actors or to soap characters regardless who is currently in the role, though preferences are made known.  Quite common, fans follow their favorite soap stars when/if the actors migrate to another soap or even primetime.  Soap stars may make daytime their permanent home like Susan Lucci (Erica Kane on All My Children) or move from soap star to primetime TV or film stardom like Josh Duhamel (ex-Leo on AMC).  There is cultural caché that circulates around soap message boards about “discovering” a star first or being a fan before an actor makes it big since soaps comprise the early careers of many actors.

Jonathan Jackson back as Lucky (Credit: ABC/Medianet)

This division is the core issue over Jackson’s return as Lucky and a central reason why the news overshadowed Franco’s appearance.  Plain and simple, it was old fashion drama behind the scenes.  Jackson’s return was announced while Greg Vaughan, the third actor to play the character, was still in the role and starring in episodes.  Likewise, Jackson made his premiere while Vaughan’s face was still in the opening credits of the show.  This is not the first time ABC has switched between the recast and original portrayer.  For example, AMC’s “The Real Greenlee” ad campaign celebrated the return of Rebecca Budig, the role’s orginator, while the recast Greenlee was still occupying the role.  While that campaign garnered a lot of online fan criticism, the Jackson casting news was particularly angering to some GH fans because Vaughan had played Lucky the longest (from 2003-2009).  Soap loyalty is cultivated with an actor-character’s constant presence on a show.  But on the flipside, there are fan loyalties for the actors who originated the roles.  And of course, many fans were caught between their love of both Jackson and Vaughan’s Luckys due to viewing memories with both.

Adding fuel to the fire, Vaughan tweeted shortly after the news broke that GH had decided to go in a different direction, thus letting him go to hire Jackson.  In contrast, GH and ABC’s official stance was Vaughan asked to be let out of his contract.  Soap forums erupted in various heated conversations: which actor was the true/real/only/most soulful Lucky?  Are you a LuckyFF or a GVFF or a JJFF?  Is ABC telling the truth or Vaughan?  And possibly the most curious, was Jackson told Vaughan was leaving or getting fired so Jackson could return?  Twitter remained part of these discussions as current GH actors tweeted their personal reactions to Vaughan’s departure.  In regards to Vaughan’s truthfulness, countless posters defended him by pointing to his steadfast performance of Lucky during what many fans claim to be the worst period in GH writing history.  During Jackson’s years, Lucky was a core character and written in a completely different light than under the current tenure, where Vaughan’s Lucky was written as a low-level antagonist to the mobster heroes currently central.  If what partly makes a star is the role or roles he/she plays, how do we deal with multiple actors in a single role?  These debates about the true Lucky brought out comparisons of fans’ viewing histories and their personal attachment to Jackson, Vaughan, and occasionally Jacob Young, who played Lucky #2 from 2000-2003.  While recasting upsets are prevalent in the entertainment industry, comparison is difficult due to the shifting in-and-out of actors in a constantly moving, decades-long story.  I would be curious to see the online reactions if the next Bond film had an accompanying “Sean Connery: The REAL James Bond” ad campaign while Daniel Craig got booted.  Though I wouldn’t be surprised if a “Who is the true James Bond?” discussion hasn’t already taken place for many fans of the franchise.

Greg Vaughan as Lucky (Credit: ABC/Medianet)

Throughout, Vaughan and Jackson’s personal lives and personalities were central to conversations.  Fans shared personal anecdotes from meeting the actors and from reading about each from soap magazines and soap gossip websites.  Soap stars are produced and consumed for and by soap fans in very similar ways to those of film stars.  At the grocery store checkout, the soap magazines are right next to In Touch, US Weekly, and People.  There are soap gossip sites (and some “hidden”) that deliver rumors, casting decisions, behind-the-scenes antics, and industry practices for fans to devour or refute.  Historically, the boundary between soap fans and soap stars has been purposefully collapsed in many ways to foster personal relationships (or feelings of one) to ensure viewers.  Fan investment is the key to a soap opera’s success and this is one way to achieve closeness to the text—through its stars.  Soap magazines typically talk about an actor in contrast or comparison to their on-screen counterpart, blurring the lines between character and actor.  Furthermore, news about former soap stars (like Duhamel getting married to Fergie) always make the soap gossip circuit as do blind items.  With the exception of The Young and the Restless, opening sequences that feature character montages don’t display actors’ names so that character identification is priority.

The daytime industry, ABC especially, promotes fan interaction with soap stars at events like Super Soap Weekend.  Every year, the official GH Fan Club holds Fan Club Weekend in Southern California where fans can meet their favorite GH stars and other fans for a healthy piece of change.  These events allow fans to take pictures, get autographs, and talk with soap stars as well as enter auctions to visit and tour the GH set.  Most uniquely, the Fan Club Weekend event and smaller meet-and-greets throughout the year allow fans to Q&A with their soap favorites about future storylines, their personal likes and dislikes, and voice their frustration or admiration about the direction of the show.  In fact, myriad online defenses for Vaughan became personal fan accounts about his cordial nature at these events and his honesty about Lucky’s unfortunate story direction.  Thus, it’s important to note that relationships cultivated with soap stars are both an emotional investment of time and viewing loyalty, but also an economical one as these fan events are not cheap when factoring in travel arrangements and club dues.  All these situations work primarily to keep fans invested in the soap opera text regardless of whether or not they are currently happy with the show.

Looking at soap fandom can provide another layer to the question “how are stars made and disseminated amongst fans?”  As an on-again/off-again soap viewer and soap scholar, I find that the internet has made the negotiations among soap fan, soap star, and soap industry quite muddled and dynamic especially with star identification.  If you are curious for extra reading, I highly recommend C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby’s Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life and Nancy K. Baym’s Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Community.  Both are great pieces discussing soap fans as well as core texts used in academic conversations about the fan-star relationships in general.  Also, check out the upcoming The Survival of the Soap Opera: Strategies for a New Media Era (University of Mississippi Press, 2010), a collection of various scholarship on contemporary soap issues in the digital age, including a personal article about GH nostalgia, industry-fan negotiations, and critical discourse surrounding General Hospital: Night Shift.

Much appreciation and thanks to Annie for providing me the space and opportunity to talk about James Franco, Lucky Spencers, and General Hospital.

What $258.8 Million Could Mean

What a $258.8 million dollar audience looks like

$258.8 million.  That’s the worldwide 5-day gross for New Moon.

That’s $140.7 million domestic.  The film also broke the All-Time Single Day and Friday Opening records, not to mention the Biggest 2-Day total.

It’s now the third biggest opening of all time — following only Spiderman 3 and The Dark Knight.

And it did all of this in NOVEMBER, when kids still have to go to school and the masses aren’t seeking the theater for heat relief.  Crucially, the budget for New Moon = Just under $50 million.  Add in $25 million for promotion, and you’ve already got a film (and franchise) firmly in the black.

The rhetoric flooding the film blogosphere is filled with words like “jaw-dropping,” “huge surprise,” and “phenomenal.”  Nikki Finke and Variety both point out that not even the film’s distributor, Summit Entertainment, thought the film would open this big — estimates were for between $100-$110 million domestic, no small number itself.  Why?  Because it’s what is known as a “two quadrant” film (the four audience ‘quadrants’ = men under 25, men over 25, women under 25, women over 25.  Most blockbusters are films that appeal to all four quadrants — see Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Dark Knight, Titanic, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc.).

The audience is not only ‘two quadrant’ (apparently 80% female) but young.  50% of attendees were under 21.  Variety sums it up best:  “the female-fueled New Moon explodes the myth that you need an all-audience film to do that level of biz, or that fanboys hold all the power.”

So does that answer my question?  Is that what $258.8 million could mean? That girls can power movies — especially when there’s a romance (and abstinence porn) involved?

Sorta.  Because it could also mean much, much more.

*It could legitimize the female market.

After big openings for Sex and the City, The Proposal, and Julie and Julia, risk-adverse studios may begin to invest more earnestly (and consistently) in properties that cater specifically (and unabashedly) to the female market.  Of course, the studios have long counterprogrammed with ‘girly’ fare, but the key word is counterprogram — they try to pick up the ‘dregs’ who aren’t flocking to the supposedly four-quadrant blockbuster released the same weekend.  This weekend is actually a fascinating example of counterprogramming, as The Blind Side, starring Sandra Bullock, did surprisingly well — presumably picking up the anti-Twilight female audience and scattered males who had been convinced by the football-time ad campaign that sold the film as a football-oriented triumph-of-the-will.

*It could (and already has) opened the female market to misogynist and ageist critique.

This is the ugly underbelly to what might otherwise be viewed as a ‘girl power’ triumph.  For as anyone familiar with the franchise knows, the text is not immune to criticism.   The original text has been criticized for its conservative, anti-feminist views; the second film in particular has been subject to scathing reviews from most popular critics.  I’ve seen denigrating, clearly misogynist critiques of the film, from both men and women, on a diverse set of blogs and Twitter feeds — many of which interpret the success of the film as the failure of America, reason to hate themselves, their family, their loved ones, the end of the world, etc.  I realize that some of this quips are in jest, but they also interpret a mass movement of females — seeking out a specific type of pleasure — as nigh-apocalyptic.  As if the success of Twilight somehow ushers in the end of good taste.

Such a critique is misogynistic not only because it demonstrates a clear case of cultural amnesia — if any success indicated the end of good taste, it was that of horror porn and boy-oriented Transformers — but also because it explicitly and unabashedly constructs female consumers as rabid, mindless, brainwashed schmucks.  Whatever one thinks of Twilight (and I’m not saying that the text should be exempt from critique), we still need to recognize the fact that the audience is not monolithic, nor is it mindless.  By reproducing those beliefs, we (as scholars, as film critics, as film bloggers and cultural critics more generally) extend the general subjugation of women’s pleasures, tastes, desires, etc.  Indeed, such beliefs contribute to the ghettoization of female-oriented art and artistry in a broad sense — whether female-directed film (if you need a reminder that it’s tough for women in Hollywood, just check out A.O. Scott’s recollection of the most important films of the last decade.  Not a female director to be found.)

I heed the argument that the success of Twilight might contribute to the marginalization of less hegemonic products (with less traditional interpretations).  But I also want to underline the fact that many women — and not just feminist women like the ones with whom I attended the premiere — are engaging in negotiated readings of this text.   Some are reading it as satire, some are rewriting the ending using fanfic.  But as is the case with almost any text, audiences make the text meet them where they are — a 13-year-old girl might love the romance, another might identify with the plainness of Bella, others might crave the family dynamic of the Cullens, older women may crave the thrill of first romance, and others may just relish the chance to escape — either in the books or the films — and become absorbed by a text.

In other words, the females who attended New Moon got to be ‘fan-girls.’  Is there something threatening and wrong with that?

*It will lower the bar for the sequels.

This is a crucial and disheartening point.  New Moon very clearly had higher production values than Twilight — the stunts are far less cheesy, there are CGI wolves, and they hired Dakota Fanning and Michael Sheen to play the baddie vampires.  They shot in Rome; they had all sorts of sweet helicopter and trick shots.  The lighting was more even; the Native Americans’ wigs were less visible.  Why, then, would the bar be lowered? Because Twilight is a superior film.  There.  I said it.  I’m curious to know if I’m in the minority here, but I felt far less magic in the second film — no matter of CGI wolves could make up for the absence of Catherine Hardwicke, who helmed the first film.  Hardwicke, who also directed the superb Thirteen, has a certain way with teen situations.  The way she directed the scenes at the high school — and the deviations from the book, including the classic line “This dress makes my boobs look totally awesome” — absolutely made the film for me.  I could gloss over the clunky vampire jumping from tree to tree — so long as I had the intimate moments between Bella and her dad, Bella and her awkward teenage friends.

Now that New Moon, with its streamlined narrative, has garnered such a substantially higher gross than the original,  it’s only natural that the forthcoming films will heed its lessons.  I’d love for the series to take a Harry Potter bent, exploring various color palettes, alterations in tone, and senses of burgeoning humor with each director.    This seems unlikely.  As Transformers 2, Spiderman 3, and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 have proven, a sequel, however bloated, however much it pales in comparison to the original, will do even better business.  So why concern yourself with quality?

Stars in the making? I'm not so sure.

*It won’t necessarily make stars out of Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner.

This might seem counter-intuitive.  They attract huge crowds!  People put their faces on their t-shirts!  But these actors have become so incredibly wed to their characters, it’ll take critical and financial success in non-Twilight roles to break away from their picture personalities as Bella, Edward, and Jacob, respectively.

My bet for non-Twilight success is firmly on K-Stew, whose forthcoming turn as Joan Jett in The Runaways seems poised to do at least moderately well.  She’s already wrapped Welcome to the Rileys, a small production that should continue to bolster her cred as an actual actress.  (She has to sigh and look scared a lot in the Twilight saga, but I do think the girl can act.)

RPattz might be doomed to Edward-style brooding, as exemplified by his role in Remember Me.

It stars Chris Cooper, Pierce Brosnen, and that girl from Lost, but is it a hit?  Middling?  Fueled by Twilight fans?  (They tried to make that work with RPattz as Salvador Dali this summer in Little Ashes, but I couldn’t even watch the preview (complete with Pattinson in Dali moustache) without laughing.  Pattinson is scheduled for two additional films, Unbound Captives and Bel Ami,  in pre-production — both with big names, if not big directors, attached.  His future outside of Twilight will depend wholly upon the success of such non-vampiric roles.

As for Taylor Lautner, he’s already filmed a small part in the Love Actually-esque Valentine’s Day (opposite his supposed love Taylor Swift, no less).  But other than Eclipse, he’s got nothing.  Not even in pre-production.  He’s the most wooden of the three, and he’ll have to secure another romantic turn — presumably in a teen-geared comedy/drama of some sort — in order to sustain his fan base.  He’ll also have to sustain gossip, either through authenticating his relationship with the other Taylor, re-dating Disney star Selena Gomez, or creating new teen hand-holding buzz.  Odds of success = slim.  He may have great shoulder muscles, but so does Matthew McConaughey.

So what does $258.8 million mean?  It means we have an opportunity to reconsider the way the industry works.  Everytime a movie hits big — and especially when it outperforms expectations — we reach a similar landmark.  A chance for people like me to challenge the idea that the way that Hollywood works is ‘natural,’ inevitable, or necessary.  As director Kevin Smith tweeted following the release of the Friday numbers, “Tween girls can get shit DONE, man.”  Indeed they can — and so can 30 and 40 something moms with their daughters, and 20-something women prefunking with white wine and flasks.  And it’s a lesson we — and Hollywood — is still learning.

Sandra Bullock and Her Female Forever Fans

“I just love that Sandra Bullock.”

“Oh, I know!  She’s so natural and perky and down to earth!”

“She was great in that one movie — oh, you know the one I’m talking about, that one with the guy, and they’re from the South, and oh, it’s just adorable.  She’s just adorable.”

“Oh I know, I watch that one every year.  She’s just great.  I just love her.”

This is not an actual transcription of a conversation, but an approximation of one I’ve heard numerous times  — at church potlucks, on airplanes, in the waiting room at the doctor’s office.  Because WOMEN LOVE SANDRA BULLOCK.  More specifically, middle-aged women, many of them members of the ever powerful minivan majority, love Sandra Bullock.  They love her for her inoffensive humor; they love her natural, unexotic beauty.  They love the fact that she ends up with normal looking, wholly likable white bread men in the movies (Bill Pullman, Harry Connick Jr., Hugh Grant, Benjamin Bratt, Ryan Reynolds) but they most especially love the consistency of her roles.

Normal looking nice guy makes normal looking nice girl happy!

Of course, these women are victims of selective amnesia:  Bullock has attempted to complicate her star image with risky roles, including parts in Crash, Murder by Numbers, and the second of the two Capote films, Infamous. (She played the Harper Lee character.)  But such roles have done little to alter her overarching image as likable, slightly madcap, and always the recipient of  pure and genuine love.

For Bullock is no sex object.  She’s a girls’ star — a Julia Roberts, a Meg Ryan.  Men do not generally find her attractive, but girls want to be her best friend.   The director of The Proposal explained “After I met Sandy for the first time, I remember thinking, This woman has been my friend for 100 years.”  She has a beautiful body, skin, and hair, but such attributes are generally revealed through the course of a narrative — she starts out an ugly, somewhat masculine, awkward duckling, only to be transformed through the quiet yet strong love of a good, honest man.   Indeed, she is often nearly asexual at the beginning of a film — see her business-minded superboss in The Proposal or her scorned, weepy break-up victim in Hope Floats.

You can tell she loves her career too much by the suit and the unmussed hair.

Bullock’s picture personalities is infused with promises and possibilities: you, too, fair viewer, can be transformed by the power of love.  Not all of her films are makeover fantasies — indeed, only Miss Congeniality features an explicit makeover — but the most popular of films repeatedly position a non-glamorous protagonist as a site for transformation, both emotional and physical.  Bullock’s presence in the lead encourages identification; she’s an awkward Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts with her makeup off and hair flat.  She’s the supporting actor/best friend made central, and women love her for it.

Her extra-textual persona supports this image.  In Glamour, she is described as follows:

Sandy loves her job but is not defined by it. And she knows how to have a life outside of Hollywood: She splits her time between L.A. and Austin, Texas, where she owns a popular bistro, Bess. She has a barn. She’s done a ton of good work for charities, like giving money to a New Orleans high school impacted by Hurricane Katrina. Hello, she even does her own home renovations, like tearing down walls with her bare hands! (OK, I might be exaggerating a bit.) But if I had to pinpoint what sets her apart, it’d be this: She’s humble. She’s real. It’s easy to lose yourself in this business, but Sandy hasn’t gotten swept up in any of it.

See!  She likes people!  She’d be friends with you!  “She’s humble. She’s real.”  She’s not a diva.  She probably makes her own food and drives her own car and goes to the grocery store.  Or so we are led to believe.

The other day, my friends and I were attempting to make a list of stars that our parents just love: stars who make them feel comfortable.  Stars whose movies they’ll rent without any foreknowledge of plot; stars who will entice them to go to the movie theater for one of their 2-4 yearly trips.  Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts made the cut.  But Sandra Bullock was the most unanimous nominee: there’s something so wholly inoffensive and uniquely attractive about her, something that Julia Roberts has lost and Jennifer Aniston never really had.  She makes 50 year-olds go see her fall in love with Ryan Reynolds.  Her films make big bucks overseas.  Her style and charisma translate.  She appears virtually ageless, but not in an envy-inducing manner (Demi More) or as a grotesque (Nicole Kidman, Sharon Stone).  She’s not stuck up (Renee Zelwegger/Aniston/Courtney Cox), she’s not intimidating (Jolie), she’s not perfect (Halle Berry)  and she’s not too madcap (Roseanne).

Indeed, the only thing potentially controversial about Bullock is her choice of husband: motorcycle producer and heavily-tateooed Jesse James.

Bullock and Her Teddy Bear

Discursively, James has been constructed as the culmination of Bullock’s domestic fairytale.  After being chased by many a prince (Tate Donovan, Troy Aikman, Ryan Gosling, Matthew McConaughey, Keanu Reeves) she settled with the least moviestarsish, least expected of the bunch — a man who simply made her happy.  (And, coincidentally, recreated a narrative conclusion manifested in her most successful films).

In recent weeks, Bullock has been in the gossip weeklies — not to promote her upcoming The Blind Side or to apologize for the train wreck that was All About Steve, but because of her attempts to adopt James’ daughter from a previous marriage.   In US Weekly, the article’s title declares her “Battle for Her Stepdaughter.”  Bullock and James are attempting to receive full custody of James five-year-old daughter, whose mother, Janine Lindemulder, is a former drug addict, porn star, and general ne’er-do-well.  The article is smattered with pictures of a dressed-down, casual Bullock carrying and holding hands with the young girl.  Bullock’s image is placed in sharp contrast with the girl’s porn star birth mother: she is everything this blonde bimbo is not.  Bullock is quoted declaring “My greatest joy is…being a good wife, a good stepmom.”  She loves this child – and that’s what she’ll fight for.  (Again, sounds mysteriously similar to the storyline of one of her films — only The Blind Side involves a black male high school student, not a cherubic blond girl).

Bullock says she doesn’t want to do rom-coms anymore — in fact, with something like The Proposal, she’s attempting to forge a path for the ‘female Judd Apatow film.’  Whether or not this is true is beside the point.  For while The Blind Side is certainly not a rom-com, as evidenced by the trailer, it most certainly is a family melodrama.  As such, the film caters to virtually the same demographic as the rom-com: females, both single and married, between the ages of 20 and 60.  (Did you hear The Fray in the background?  Yep, they’re talking to you, Grey’s Anatomy fans.  Selfsame demo).

With that said, Bullock does not pull in the lower echelons of that demo.  She’s got what I’ve termed her Forever Fans — the 30-60-year-olds who will always see her films, like our mothers — but she has failed to attract a younger demographic.  Part of this is merely a matter of age — Sandra Bullock portrays 30-somethings and mothers, not teens and post-grads — but I’d also posit that it has something to do with her star image and its particular resonance.  Her particular brand of spunk, quirk, Southernness, and romance seems very 1990s to me.  Just as The Blind Side appears to be a remake of every film that’s ever told the story of white people saving black people, so too does Bullock’s star image seem to function as a reactivation and deradicalization of a certain type of female star: she’s Bette Davis without the teeth, Joan Crawford without the snarl.  Davis and Crawford often ended their films happily coupled, but just as often they ended them alone — sometimes in tears, but nonetheless triumphant.  Bullock’s characters never end unhappy; they rarely weather a storm without a silver lining already firmly in view.  Bullock is soft, quick to weep, and quicker to give in,  where Davis, Crawford, and even Stanwyk (especially in Stella Dallas) are steely, with a fierceness belied by their porcelain faces.  These women were also points of identification, but the women in the theaters at the time were hard-bitten by the times — hungry, over-worked, exhausted, and oftentimes, due to the demands of The Depression and World War II, without even the dream of the help of a man or romance.  The endings provided by the ’30s and ’40s melodramas emphasized a female independence that wasn’t simply a madcap act, neutralized by film’s end: it was a way of survival, a way of life.

Joan Crawford might eat Sandra Bullock alive…

Indeed, the ’softness’ and heteronormatively-coupled endings of Bullock’s films have everything to do with 1990s in general: I could describe most of Julia Roberts’ films using the same language I’ve employed to describe Bullock.  These films’ tone and conclusion likewise speaks to  what women — and 30-40 year-old women in particular –  imagine for themselves: how far they can reach, and what that place, and its potential splendors, might resemble.

Judging from Bullock’s recent films, happiness and fulfillment can come in the shape of a younger man, a retreat from strict professionalism, or venturing out of suburbia to participate in first-hand philanthropy.  To me, all of these choices seem to present female self-reliance and independence as a hollow promise; that those women who sacrificed marriage and family for professional development will realize, sooner or later, that they too need a man, a cause, something greater than themselves.  We can view this as selfless and a form of sacrifice…or as a troubling message that cultivating oneself, and one’s own desires, will never truly provide fulfillment.

I don’t dislike Sandra Bullock.  I like her (early) films.  But I do think that those who fail to understand her and her tremendous draw — as most clearly evidenced in Richard Rushfield’s perceptive yet reductive answer to “Why is Sandra Bullock Still a Star?” over at Gawker — they also demonstrate their lack of understanding of a key, if sometimes quiet, demographic.  Middle aged women may not ‘open’ a film at number one, but they certainly can keep a film going strong when everyone else is off Megan Fox getting chased by giant robots.  Media observers often express surprise when a film like The Proposal goes on to grosses $300 million international (on a budget of $40 million, no less).  Those very same observers — oftentimes male — simply forget the tremendous power, however ‘unglamorous’  it may be, of neglected demographics.

This post explicitly concerns Sandra Bullock, but I’m also writing it as hundreds of thousands of girls and women head to the theaters to screen New Moon, which is now headed for a ridiculously huge international opening gross.  Industry critics keep patting Summit Entertainment on the back for their luck in optioning the teen text, yet to attribute it to luck is to miss the point:  someone at Summit realized that the text wouldn’t just exploit the teen girl demographic, but the adult female one as well.  For The Proposal opened big ($33 million), but New Moon will open with $80 million domestic, if not more.  Why?  Women.  Some of them already Forever Fans.

To answer Rushfield’s question, Sandra Bullock is still a star — and will remain a star — so long as her forever fans keep consuming.  Her movies cost relatively little to make; even a bomb like All About Steve will not compromise her consistent palatablity.  And with small costs and a built-in audience, she’s a much more reliable bet than Angelina Jolie or the over-priced Julia Roberts.  The challenge for execs is how to cultivate new stars, equally inoffensive and socio-temporally resonant, to take her place in the years to come.  Who will be our Sandra Bullock?  Is it Jennifer Aniston?  Gennifer Goodwin?  Isla Fischer?  Kate Hudson?  Regardless, it’ll most likely be someone who men disdain, hot cultural critics ignore, and studios relegate to counter-programming.

Sandra Bullock matters, and is still a star, because women and their pocketbooks do, in fact, matter — and no number of billion dollar grossing smashfests will alter that fact.

Absurd Masculinity: The Time-Bending Comic Persona of Will Ferrell

The following is a guest post from R. Colin Tait, RTF Ph.D. student and my personal informant on all things Canadian, including Rachel McAdams, hockey, universal healthcare, and not paying for grad school.

Will Ferrell's Nostalgic Masculinity in Semi-Pro

Brennan: You know what?  I still hate you, but you have a pretty awesome collection of nudie mags.

Dale: Yeah, I got ‘em from the seventies, eighties and nineties. It’s like masturbating in a time machine.

-          Brennan (Will Ferrell) to Dale (John C. Reilly) in Step Brothers

First off, I want to thank Annie for letting me do some cyber-squatting on her otherwise excellent blog, and second, let me state at the outset that these thoughts are part of a larger work-in-progress, tentatively titled “Absurd Masculinity: The Time-Bending Comic Persona of Will Ferrell.” So thanks to all of you in advance for entertaining some of these half-formed (or perhaps malformed) thoughts.

This project is motivated by my larger interest in film nostalgia, particularly for the 1970s and as replayed in contemporary film culture. My central question begins and ends with Anchorman as well as a whole wealth of comedies, all of which highlight the absurdities of excessive masculinity across different time periods. I am interested in comedies set in the recent past – including Superbad (which seems to be set in the eighties), The Wedding Singer, in addition to The Royal Tennenbaums — a comedy(?) set simultaneously in a strange in-between place that is the seventies and the present.

Will Ferrell’s portrayal of Ron Burgundy is the chief illustration of this trend. We can add a series of films where the male protagonists depict man-children of a certain age (around the 40-Year Old Virgin mark) who haven’t “grown up” or are stuck in some sort of state of adolescent sexuality or man-child-ness. These films not only include the recent “Bromances” (I Love You Man, Role Models) but also the residents of “Old School” and certainly almost every one of Adam Sandler’s films, whose characters live in either a literal or figurative past.

70s Masculine Icon Ron Burgundy

Will Ferrell is the latest and most successful within this larger phenomenon, not only because of his appealing comic persona, but in the way that he seemingly destabilizes traditional notions of history, sexuality, and politics through his excessively absurd portrayals of childhood, adolescence, in addition to retaining a core stable of comic traits. I will argue that part of Ferrell’s appeal (and ultimately why he is so funny) is his willingness to pierce traditional notions of male power, to put his naked body in the service of destabilizing concepts such as attractiveness, and ultimately his association with eras that he has obviously lived through, representing the full range of childish or adolescent sexuality from the perspective of absurd critique. This work involves looking at the core of Ferrell’s comic traits including key scenes, as well as linking Ferrell’s success to a nostalgic depiction of both the way things were, but also the way that they never were. In this sense, I propose that Ferrell’s persona is “time-bending;” my allusion to the idea of gender bending but through his revisitation in particular eras. The reward of watching his films is built upon the fact that his comedy depends on our built-in foreknowledge that Ferrell is presenting us with the absurdities and excesses rather than the defenses of the eras he’s referring to.

The not-so-successful remake of "Bewitched"

In terms of contemporary film stardom, Ferrell is a consistent draw at the box-office, with some very big exceptions such as big studio films like Bewitched and most recently Land of the Lost. For the most part, his films from Anchorman onward (and his collaborations with Adam McKay) are consistently profitable and generally over-perform at the box-office. Additionally, as retrospectives of the first decade of the new millennium begin to show their faces, we can see that the 2000s were marked, in part, by the rise and peak within Ferrell’s career as he moves from the sidelines as a memorable bit player (some might say the most memorable player in certain films such as Old School and Zoolander) and emerges as a genuine box-office comedy star. As recently as this last week New York Times critic A. O. Scott listed the best of the last decade he almost mentioned Ferrell as a significant afterthought.

While sometimes associated with the larger movement somewhat problematically called the “Frat Pack” which is even more commonly associated with writer/producer Judd Apatow – whose “laugh factory” includes what could be effectively called a reparatory company of actors and writers such as Vince Vaughan, Ben Stiller, Jason Segel, Leslie Mann, Paul Rudd among many others – Ferrell brings his own brand of comic sensibility to the discussion, which may begin with Apatow, McKay and others, but remains consistently and uniquely linked to the actor’s comic persona.

Will Ferrell’s comic persona is unique insofar as it possesses the following “time-bending” features, “man as child,” “man as adolescent,” “man as reactionary” and “man out of time.” The best of Ferrell’s characters generally overlap these categories. First, Ferrell is associated with a “man as child” childish grown-up, prone to temper tantrums (and yelling) and wearing clothes that are far too tight.

(Quintessential Ferrell vehicle Elf)

This first category accounts for the actor’s first hits, particularly as he moves from a sideline and TV player to a bona fide box-office draw and carries through (somewhat more perversely) to Step Brothers.

The second category, “man as adolescent” is best embodied by “Frank the Tank” in Old School in addition to his depiction of President George W. Bush on Saturday Night Live and You’re Welcome America: An Evening With George W. Bush.

(Frank the Tank while still married)

The third category, “man as reactionary,” presents a man who is simultaneously in and out of his time, best embodied by North Carolina race car driver Ricky Bobby. In the case of Bobby, the childhood trauma of his father’s abandonment forces him to question his excessive materialist (and perhaps American) values at the end of the film.

(Ricky Bobby espouses the family values of a white baby Jesus and capitalism, brought to you by Pizza Hut and Taco Bell)

The most interesting of these categories for me (and ultimately what draws me to Ferrell as a performer) is “man out of time.” The atemporality of Ferrell’s portrayal usually infuses his characters with a self-reflexive commentary on the era his characters are set in. The fact that Ron Burgundy plays the jazz flute, an anachronism in our era to say the least, is part of this humor, as is the claim by designer Mugatu (in Zoolander) that his claim to fame was inventing the piano-key necktie.

(Ron Burgundy plays the jazz flute)

The reflexive presence of hyper-masculine Ron Burgundy, Ferrell’s portrayal as one half of the Woodward and Bernstein team (in Dick), the association of designer Mugatu as a former member of 80s group Frankie Goes to Hollywood, are examples of how this phenomenon plays out.

Ferrell’s best characters are borne of this temporal gray area. They are literally man-children born in the 1970s – sometimes literally like Brennan of Step-Brothers or Buddy from Elf, or are associated in some way with a previous decade – Ron Burgundy, the 70s anchorman, 70s Detroit basketball team owner Jackie Moon, or the cowbell player from the famous “more cowbell” sketch.

(My apologies, but this is the best version of this available on youtube)

Importantly, all of these characters are men seemingly “out of time,” males whose extreme whiteness and overdetermined masculinity are made absurd through the process of the film or (sketch’s) narrative. It is as if because Ferrell is of a particular age (moving onto forty, if not right in his forties) he best embodies this “arrested development” inherent in contemporary masculinity, which he both explodes the expectations of, while simultaneously reconstituting a new formulation of it.

History

I would like to suggest that Will Ferrell’s emergence as a star as dependent on two factors. First, Ferrell’s developed a distinctive comic personality over the course of the 1990s on Saturday Night Live during his tenure from 1995-2006. Second, I imagine that Ferrell’s depiction of a hysterical rendition of excessive masculinity corresponds with the nostalgic paradoxes of the post-9/11 era. Importantly, this “excessive masculinity” is really funny.

This initial period is formative for Ferrell and for his audiences, in part because of his collaboration with then-SNL writer Adam McKay. The duo would go on to form an effective partnership which accounts for Ferrell’s greatest successes, including his three biggest films, Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Step Brothers. We can also see Saturday Night Live as an effective producer of pop-cultural personalities, references and star personas. In this way, it nearly resembles an earlier version of stardom in the Vaudeville era, where performers enter a market with fully-rendered star persona traits. To be certain, some performers fare better than others, but Saturday Night Live has more often than not been successful precisely because it so effectively creates and cultivates stars on its show. Although billed as an ensemble program, gradually it elevates certain performers over others, grooming them eventually for film stardom as others in the cast recede or become supporting actors in this system.

We can see Ferrell’s rise as following performers such as Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Chris Farley, Eddie Murphy and John Belushi, each of whom effectively constructed comedic star personas that expanded outward after years of apprenticeship in this staging ground. At the same time, we can see that the range of these actors and their roles remains consistent throughout their subsequent careers, so that the kinds of films that Myers, Sandler and others follow a limited set of traits and which usually exploit the personality traits honed on the  Show.

For Ferrell, these traits included what are now staples within his film repertoire. They include the aforementioned temper tantrums, (as seen in one of his earliest sketches featured Ferrell as a father at Thanksgiving dinner who repeatedly threw over the kitchen table, declaring a censored “Fuck this, I’m leaving!”) in addition to imitating antiquated pop-cultural figures, including Neil Diamond, Robert Goulet and Alex Trebek (who is nearly atemporal as he exists in reruns and syndication) and the “more cowbell” guy.

Robert Goulet “Raps”

In each case, Ferrell can be expected to throw some sort of temper tantrum, sing, or embody an outdated mode of male-ness, that has long since gone out of style. Ferrell’s physicality – and often enough what has been described as his “doughy nudity” – achieves comedic precisely because of its inappropriateness and its deviation from the norm. As with all Saturday Night Live comedians, Ferrell also became famous by imitating George W. Bush throughout his presidency.

This depiction of Bush as a petulant frat-boy is also interesting as a historical phenomenon. It is worth pursuing how these comedy traits carry over into different aspects of pop-culture, particularly as Ferrell crosses media into the talk show circuit (sometimes taking entire characters with him) and further expanding his comic presence across media industries.

(A fictional character pitching a real product)

(“Robert Goulet” appears on Conan O’Brien)

In this vein, Ferrell can be seen as embodying an older style of comic personality, such as Groucho Marx’s hosting game shows, and his later appearances on shows such as Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett.

History and Masculinity in Crisis?

Moving on to the specifics of Ferrell’s contingent history, I would like to follow some comments such as those made by K.W. Kusz who in his essay “Remasculinizing American White Guys in/Through New Millennium American Sport Films,” suggests that the ascent of comics such as Ferrell, Vince Vaughan and Judd Apatow’s are historically-contingent on the post-9/11 era and are reacting to a particular crisis of American masculinity under threat during the “War on Terror.”

While I find some of these ideas convincing – particularly Peter Alilunas’ excellent study across Vince Vaughan’s career, which certainly intersects with Ferrell’s – I find some of the valances of these arguments slightly problematic. This is especially true of the critical engagement with Talladega Nights, a film that Heather Laine Talley and Monica J. Casper state that they “are deeply concerned” with the possibility that the film presents another opportunity to “laugh at ‘gay men’” “Southerners,” or “the working class without “being critical of the assumptions that this humor depends on” (Laine and Casper 2007). Part of the problem with these analyses is that they take the films (and their various plot points) entirely seriously (which may be something that I am admittedly guilty of here) whereas Ferrell’s comedy leaves room for a certain amount of “play” and perhaps even some critique to take place. Added to this I would argue that what makes Ferrell’s persona so likable is he manages to take standard representations of gender, of maturity, of sexuality, and presents their absurdity for comedic effect.

The actor’s various outbursts during crisis points serve as part of this effect (such as Mugatu’s screaming of “I invented the piano-key neck-tie!” during the climax of the film) or as Ricky Bobby strips down to his underwear to run around the racetrack in Talladega Nights when he imagines himself to be on fire.

(Mugatu faces off against “Blue Steel”)

(Ricky Bobby is on “fire”)

In both cases, it is the inappropriateness the outbursts that provide the humor within these scenes in addition to Ferrell’s obvious and near-nudity.

Ferrell’s physical comedy is also important here, as one of the trademarks of this public persona is presented by the absurdity of his ubiquitous nudity. The most famous example of this is in Old School where Frank the Tank’s “Let’s go streaking!” provides one of the film’s most humorous moments. In addition, his climactic “ribbon dance” may have marked a turning point in the actor’s career. We can also expect Ferrell to break into an overly sentimental song from the 70s, 80s or 90s, as he does in this scene from Old School, but also in almost every other one of his films.

Frank the Tank’s “Ribbon Dance”

(Frank sings “Dust in the Wind” – a rendition that is as comedic as it is earnest)

In both examples, Ferrell seemingly explodes both the expectations of male camaraderie and love in addition to a bravura display of sentimentality and an implosion of gender expectations.

Finally, this expansion of boundaries can be seen in the penultimate scene in Talladega Nights as the actor’s climactic run to the finish line in order to beat gay French racecar rival Jean Girard.

(“You taste of America”)

What is interesting to me about this clip is the way that it combines and problematizes the notions of masculinity (and politics) as it simultaneously presents an ideological message (complete with a waving American flag in the background) in addition to a long man-on-man kiss at the end of the scene. Once again, the inclusion of all things, a Pat Benetar song is important, as it aids in evoking the simultaneity of the past and present, and its ongoing association with Ferrell’s comic personality.

Gender Politics and Sensitive Expressivity

I would like to end on this note, as I believe that Ferrell’s films and his comic stardom raises some interesting questions within a larger discourse of contemporary masculinity. The first of these ideas relates to the setting of many of these films, presenting absurdly anachronistic versions of “normative” masculine behavior and how in almost every case, Ferrell’s humor derives entirely on deflating and expanding these gender norms. Relating back to my earlier discussion of Ferrell’s “time-bending” qualities, Ferrell infuses past and present depictions of masculinity with either a childish or adolescent sensibility, in addition to his willingness to go over the top by way of a sickly-sweet sensitivity. Added to this is the notion that somehow Ferrell embodies “the way things” were in a hyper-stylized manner that ultimately opens the past up for ridicule.

Buddy the Elf is clearly the best (and perhaps most successful) example of this fusion of the man-child within a contemporary cynical sphere (New York City no less), but there are clearly numerous other examples. As the actor continues to be associated with specific periods and characters who live in the past, Ferrell’s inappropriate comic appropriation of these eras ultimately reward us with the big laughs that we get from watching one of his films.

Finally, Ferrell’s portrayal and association with George W. Bush, throughout and after his presidency may provide us with an interesting window through which we can view the political effect of Ferrell’s comedy. As opposed to critics like Kusz, who is prepared to take Ferrell’s films at face value as part of a larger movement of reactionary gender politics, perhaps we can see the comic’s portrayal of Bush as largely countering these claims.

In (one of) his most recent releases, Ferrell portrays the ex-President as a petulant and bratty Frat-boy, undercutting his potency as a hyper-masculine figure and great leader.

(“How come you’re the only one in our family that speaks with a Texas accent?”)

What is especially interesting to me about this scene is how the line between the portrayal of George Bush and Will Ferrell is so fine, and how this particular story allows Ferrell to use the full range of his comic persona, submerged within a larger historical figure. At the heart of things, it would seem to me that this presents an absurd critique of the excessive masculine patriotism that emerged during this specific time.

Maybe we’ll have to wait until Anchorman 2 to see how all of this plays out, but for now, I hope that I have outlined some of the larger points about Ferrell’s comic personality and made a case for his “time-bending” comic persona.

If not, I had lots of fun stringing a bunch of great clips together which is just as important to me. Thanks to all for reading.

Works Cited (or parenthetically referred to )

Alilunas, Peter, Nothing I Ever Do Is Good Enough: Masculinities in the Films of Vince Vaughan. MA Thesis, The University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

—. “Male Masculinity as the Celebration of Failure: The Frat Pack, Women, and the Trauma of Victimization in the ‘Dude Flick.’” Mediascape, UCLA (Spring, 2008).

Kusz, Kyle W., “Remasculinizing American White Guys in/Through New Millennium American Sport Films,” Sport in Society,2008, 11:2,209-226.

Talley, Heather Laine and Casper, Monica J., “A Response to the Motion Picture Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” in Journal of Sport and Social Issues 2007; 31; 434

The Politics of Twilight Web Traffic

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart Caught in the Act — And now they’ll give me web traffic!

(Image from Pop Sugar; originally nabbed by X17)

FACT: Talk about Twilight, and you will get web traffic.

FACT: Passionate, angry, and upset fans may attack you based on your post, but you will still have web traffic.

FACT: Simply by posting the image above — the first “irrefutable” evidence of a romance between the two stars of Twilight — I will up my daily web traffic by as much as 1000 visitors a day.  Some arrive simply to view the image, but many stay and read the article that surrounds it.  I know because their comments continue to accumulate.

FACT: Academic blogs (like this one) may not be fueled by numbers of visitors, but for-profit ones most certainly are.

FINAL FACT: Twilight posts, sneak peeks, trailers, gossip, and speculation have turned into a self-perpetuating phenomenon: even if people don’t necessarily care about them, and even if there’s not really news, if you post it, the fans will come.  And the fans will continue to come as more information is promised — as my friend Nick recently posited in our co-authored forthcoming article on celebrity twittering, “there can never be enough information on a star; therefore, more information is always needed.”  The fan hopes for one crucial piece of info — a picture, a quip, a video snippet — that promises provide access to the authentic kernel of the star.  In the case of Twilight, the revelation of the apparent Pattinson/Stewart relationship only further expands the desire for more information: now that we’ve seen them touching, can’t we see them kissing?  Won’t that tell us everything we need to know?  About them, our own hopes invested in their romance, and love in general?

Of course not.  But the promise of fulfillment continues to guide the currents of web traffic.  In many ways, the phenomenon isn’t that different from the dilemma facing magazine publishers every week: if a magazine puts Pattinson on the cover, as Vanity Fair did this month, they will come.

If you put him on the cover, they will come....

But with so much celebrity discourse and photo/video evidence available for free online, they may not buy.  Which is exactly why Vanity Fair pulled the brilliant (if obvious) move of not only putting its Pattinson story behind a pay wall, but also leaking excerpts early and promising additional photos to further encourage ‘hard copy’ purchase.

One of many outtakes from the Robert Pattinson Vanity Fair shoot

But there’s something slightly different at stake when it comes to internet traffic.  Print journalists — especially those associated with long established magazines such as People, US Weekly, or Vanity Fair — love a high sell-through number, but they aren’t individually tasked with cultivating a sustained readership for a particular internet site.  In the fickle world of internet traffic, readers are sometimes loyal, but rarely.  If they are loyal, it’s often to a syndicater — a home blog that links regularly to sites of interest, such as Perez Hilton, Huffington Post, Jezebel, etc.  Thus the impetus is both on the syndicater (to find links) and the satellite blogs (to get linked).

The ultimate goal: go viral.  And while very few stories or pictures go as ’singularly’ viral as, say, The JK Wedding Video or “Dick in a Box,” you still want your particular story to be widely linked.  Some sites, including the Gawker Media Family, have historically based their pay scale on the amount of hits garnered, thus encouraging authors to post the most salacious, scandalous, or outrageous material possible in hopes of going viral.  (Gawker has supposedly since ceased such practices).

Well-paid bloggers have a particular impetus to garner massive amounts of hits. Take, for example, Nikki Finke.  As Anne Thompson recently reported, Finke is frustrated by the pressure to regularly pull in large numbers at her new home with mail.com, regularly forefronts what she names “shameless plug for Twilight traffic,” as evidenced below:

Of course, Thompson herself courts Twilight traffic from her new home at Indiewire — she’s posted her one-on-one (and admittedly adorable) video with Pattinson twice in the last week alone (while also hyping the new V.F. cover, including a sneak-peak excerpt).  And while Lainey Gossip declares a general dislike for the saga, she nevertheless has cornered the market on on-set filming updates from her home base of Vancouver, B.C.

But Twilight fuels more than just blogs like Deadline Hollywood Daily, Thompson on Hollywood, and Cinematical.  It also drives traffic to social networking and corporate sites; indeed, following the premiere of the New Moon trailer on the MTV Movie Awards, Finke declared the traffic stats “astounding“:

Summit Entertainment has a count of 4.2 million views for the New Moon trailer from MySpace, and another 1.6 million from MTV.com, so that’s 5.8 million combined views in the first 24 hours from its two domestic online launch partners. By comparison, the 3rd (and last) trailer for Twilight received 3.2 million views in its first 48 hours on MySpace, piddling compared to viewership for the sequel’s trailer.

The hype — and monetary potential — is huge.  In a tight market, Twilight content has emerged as one of the few sure bets.

Which is also why Twilight drives the content of small and middling blogs, including this one.  While I honestly did not write my post “Why Kristen Stewart Matters” with the intent of garnering massive attention, part of me certainly did know that such a post was more likely to get picked up by the likes of MovieCityNews, which had previously linked to several of my star-based posts.  And yet, as I’ve explained before, I had no idea that a small blog post could spread — or be valuable — to as many readers as it did.  It was Tweeted and re-Tweeted, Facebooked, posted on a dozen Twilight blogs, discussion boards, and Livejournals.  When Lainey Gossip linked to me, the traffic went through the roof — over 12,500 hits in a single 24-hour period.  I’m still regularly receiving new links to the original post (and the meta-post on Twilight hate mail that followed).

And then there’s the photos.  One of the photos I posted of Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson has already garnered 40,000 hits.  It’s nested in the piece, of course, but people get there via some sort of image search — which means that such hits do and do not count.  Some stay and read the piece; most are just looking for a picture of them touching each other in magic hour lighting (see below).

KStew and RPattz's Money Shot (at least as far as my blog goes)

Of course, since I’m a non-profit blogger, hits have very little financial value.  But what happens when I attempt to use my blog as a proto-academic achievement?  How do I emphasize the reach of my posts and the blog in general?  Are hits an appropriate measure?  If they are, shouldn’t I just switch the entire topic of this blog to Twilight?  Alternately, if I want to use advertising to pay off the student loans accrued while attending an academic institution that insists on paying its Ph.D. students beneath the poverty line while requiring us to pay up to $1000 per semester in ‘fees’ (n.b., I have no qualms in outing our university, especially since state law prevents us from unionizing and thus challenging exploitative labor practices), hits certainly do matter.

Which is all to say that content — ‘professional,’ ‘journalistic,’ academic, gossip — is motivated by trends and results.  It’s not necessarily rooted in what’s happening in the industry (although Twilight and its production company, Summit, are certainly indicative of currents in the industry as a whole) but in what audiences are most motivated.  This is why some shows with small but vocal (and motivated) fan bases can compel certain shows to stay on the air: not because networks are necessarily sympathetic to pleas of ‘it’s quality TV,’ but because they recognize the potency of the show’s fans.  And Twilight fans, like those of Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries, are female, between the ages of 12 and 40, and ready to spend.  On spin-offs, for info, for premiere tickets, to see sneak preview footage.  They pay with actual dollars, but they also pay with their time: through internet searches, repeat trailer viewings, and gossip site searches.

Richard Corman’s famous “Peter Pan Theory” stated that you should always pitch a movie to a 19-year-old boy in order to get the broadest audience.  The enormous summer gross of Transformers 2 certainly proves the thesis true.  But Twilight, whose four books have dominated the New York Times best seller list for the last two years (and, with New Moon, is poised to become one of the top advance ticket sellers of all time) is proving that the cross-mediated text — and its enormous potential for exploitation — should cater to the girls.

Major League Baseball, meet the Minivan Majority.

Today’s excellent post comes courtesy of fellow UT media studies grad student Mabel Rosenheck, whose undying passion for the Phillies has *almost* convinced me to put away my Minnesota Twins Homer Hankie.

(Or maybe it’s just Chase Utley, who can really say).

Wholesome and Hardworking Chase Utley

And specifically, Chase Utley meet the minivan majority and minivan majority meet Chase Utley.  Chase Utley is the Philadelphia Phillies 30 year old second baseman. Since getting the call up to the big leagues in 2003, Utley has been named an all-star 4 times, the best offensive player at his position three times and to Team USA at the World Baseball Classic twice. He hits for average (career .295) and power (20+ home runs and close to 100 RBI in his 5 full seasons as an everyday player). He has speed (stealing 23 bases this year, a career high). He has defense. He catches balls that should be hits in right field and throws to first to complete the double play. He is what baseball people call a five-tool player, a Mickey Mantle, a Hank Aaron.

He is also adorable. Not only does he have all-American good lucks replete with deep blue eyes that can send a 95 mile an hour fastball into the stands, but he has also been voted People magazine’s sexiest man in the World Series. Sexier than Derek Jeter. Sexier than Alex Rodriguez. Chase Utley is sexier than Kate Hudson’s boyfriend (or if you prefer a brunette on television, sexier than Minka Kelly’s boyfriend).

He’s also worried about the environment. And he loves puppies. Every athlete has a pet charity, Utley’s comes courtesy of his wife’s dedication to the PSPCA. And the reason she got so involved with the PSPCA? Because she wanted a life of her own when her husband is on the road.

Chase and Jennifer Utley Support the Puppies

But there’s more.

In 2007, Utley signed a 7-year, $85 million contract, foregoing arbitration and opting not to test the free agent market when his initial contract would have expired in 2012. In other words, he is loyal. And though 11 million is nothing to scoff at, with top players like Alex Rodriguez making close to $30 million, and Utley’s worth undoubtedly closer to 20 million than 10… It’s hard to call the guy greedy.

And the list goes on. He hates the spotlight. He just wants to be left alone so he can play the game he loves. He doesn’t want to be a hero. He just wants to help his team and win the World Series. He’s incredibly wholesome, but he’s also just crazy enough to drop the F-bomb on live television.

What Phillies fans have known for years, the rest of the country, and perhaps the minivan majority in particular have discovered this postseason. Chase Utley is not only the man, he just might be their man. The Yankees may have won but Utley may have been the one to make the impression.

There are two linked star systems which must be explored in order to better understand where Utley’s stardom is, where it is not and why. First we should return to a few key points in Annie’s initial blog posting on the minivan majority and second we should examine the construction of sports stardom generally and baseball specifically.

The idea that “people of any race, color, creed or background can make something of themselves with hard work” is of course, the foundation of the American dream of success and affluence. It is also the idea that, perhaps more than any other, underpins the ideology of sport. Fundamental to Utley’s stardom is his dedication to the team and the game. Stories on him often refer to his aggressive workouts, playing injured and incessant game tape viewing. There are a few interesting contrasts to Utley here. One is the perceived laziness of a player like Manny Ramirez who, particularly when playing in Boston in 2008 was criticized for not running out grounders or hustling to fly balls. Another is the undisciplined bodies of big players like Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia who is 6’7” and 290 pounds whose size was somewhat inexplicably remarked upon repeatedly in game 4 of this year’s World Series. The point here is that hard work and the disciplined body are linked to a series of discourses which are vital to the game as America’s game, and both the game and the minivan majority as embodiments of America and the American dream.

The Utleys are the Best of Philadelphia

Yet also important to note is that Utley’s body is not too disciplined. He is a model of moderation in every way. In his Phillies uniform we never see flexed biceps or rippling abs. The most we are treated to is a sly glance at his cute butt in tight baseball pants if the camera happens to be cooperating. Though some players conduct shirtless interviews in the clubhouse, never Utley. In endorsements, if not in his uniform, he wears baggy (but not too baggy) athletic shorts and a t-shirt tucked in to the waistband. Though drafted out of high school, he opted instead to attend UCLA where he met his future wife. They dated for 6 years, most of those years long distance, before marrying. Yet they do not embody strict gender roles. Though only now beginning to get press coverage, she is always portrayed as his equal and her confidence in front of the camera is in stark contrast to Chase’s shyness. She is a twenty-first century woman and he a twenty-first century man. They are conservative, as in “those who would like to conserve the current state of things.” She is not a radical feminist, but neither is she Victoria Beckham (or Kate Hudson).

This issue of moderation further speaks to stardom as a dialectic between the ordinary and the extraordinary. One of the brilliant things about sports stardom is how it upholds beauty standards in this dialectic. Utley doesn’t wear makeup on the field, he really looks like that. But we don’t love him for the way he looks (which after all is in part only extraordinary compared to his competition), rather we love him for the way he plays (which has its own aesthetics). And this dialectic is worth highlighting. His athleticism in concert with his good looks provides a powerful moment for awestruck gazes of both women and men, which I would argue is an important function of sports stardom for the minivan majority. Among the recent publicized examples of the male love affair with Utley are Mac’s love letter on a recent episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Joe Posnaski’s ode to Utley’s swing on espn.com. There has also been coverage in People and elsewhere of this team’s sex appeal for women. It is noteworthy here that minivan majority celebrity gossip outlets like People and Access Hollywood have developed an investment in Utley’s stardom and his start text in the past week or so. Though I’m sure they regularly follow Alex Rodriguez and Kate Hudson, there are never interviews with Jimmy Rollins’ fiancé, or C.C. Sabathia’s wife but there are with Jennifer Utley.

That Chase Utley swing.

Though I could further explore the fascinating gender politics at stake in the Utleys, instead I wish to use this as a segue to another of Annie’s points about members of the minivan majority and the Utleys, they are white. Contemporary sports are generally dominated by blacks (and in baseball’s case, latinos). The NBA is 76% black, the NFL, 66%, Major League Baseball? 60% white (about 8% black, and %30 Latino). MLB, with a star like Chase Utley would seem primed for the minivan majority to launch him into superstardom. But the problem with Utley, I think, is that the sports media doesn’t know what to do with him. Because of his intense privacy (and being a legendarily terrible interviewee and never having any soundbites worth airing again and again and again), they can do nothing but watch him play, watch his white, male body in motion and watch that swing. and I think there is a discomfort there that prevents Utley from becoming a more conventional sports star. This is also however, what makes him potentially the perfect embodiment of the star. As Orin Starn related for the New York Times “we want these athletes to astonish us, but we also want to imagine them as someone like us.” With no fixed identity, Utley’s authentic, white masculinity allows the minivan majority– both male and female– to imagine away. He embodies (and brings forth) the anxiety of both the male gaze and the active female gaze up on the white male body. Thus far, People and Access Hollywood (though also It’s Always Sunny) seem to have been more successful in capitalizing on that anxiety which he embodies. It remains to be seen whether the sports media, ESPN or Major League Baseball will find a way to parlay Chase Utley into the minivan majority icon that he clearly could be.

Does Maybe Gaybe Matter?

(Note: The following post is another ‘co-production’ with my friend Alaina Smith,with whom I have debated the subject of many a blind item.)

“If every closeted actor in Hollywood came out, now, that would be something…
since I can count all the straight leading men on one hand.“
-Commentor BugMeNot on Deadline Hollywood Daily

Gay rumors in Hollywood are as old as the proverbial hills – from Cary Grant’s roommate to John Travolta’s apparent disregard for the conventions of the man hug. Any given week, Gawker’s blind item roundup includes at least one item about a closeted gay actor, and many of Lainey Gossip’s blind items address gay rumors (check out Cuba and Chocolate, Trailer Visits, and Two Boys in the City. And then there’s the one about the Flying Star.)

In light of this recent article in in the LA Weekly, and Nikke Finke’s response, we thought we’d take another look at gay rumors in Hollywood, some notable comings-out, and ask the questions: Do the rumors really matter? Is coming out career suicide? Or is America finally ready for its girls-next-door, action heroes, and/or certain well-known Scientologists to come out of the closet? (Hint: the lawyers don’t think so.)

Before we begin, we might take a step back and consider how rumor plays into the formation of star image. A few years back, I (Annie) published a piece in Jump Cut on Perez Hilton and celebrity gossip blogging. In addition to exploring the role of gossip blogging in the “new” game of star production, I considered how Hilton’s dissemination of rumor (especially concerning homosexuality) functioned: does speculating something about a star have the same weight as asserting it? Put differently, how do certain rumors potentially alter what that star signifies or “means”? A star may not, in fact, be gay – but how does hinting at homosexuality damage (or elevate) his/her image?

Cruise’s “accuser” Kyle Bradford

If gossip and rumors weren’t powerful, they wouldn’t be prosecutable. As multiple defamation and libel suits have claimed, associating someone’s “good name” with “bad behavior” may damage his/her potential as an earner. This argument was most forcefully articulated in Tom Cruise’s 2001 defamation suit against Chad Taylor, aka Kyle Bradford, who sold his story of a homosexual encounter with Cruise to a Spanish tabloid. Cruise’s lawyers claimed the following:

“Bradford’s defamatory remarks are of the kind calculated to cause Cruise harm in his profession and his ability to earn [...] Losing the respect and enthusiasm of a substantial segment of the movie-going public would cause Cruise very substantial sums. While the plaintiff believes in the right of others to follow their own sexual preference, vast numbers of public throughout the world do not share that view and believing that he had a homosexual affair and did so during his marriage, they will be less inclined to patronize Cruise’s films…” (Complaint is available in full at The Smoking Gun.)

Cruise and his lawyers thus construct rumor – and rumor of homosexuality in particular – as economically damaging. Cruise sued Bradford not only because Bradford’s story, according to Cruise, was not true – but also because even the implication that it might be true could damage Cruise’s career.

Perez Hilton and others have attacked this standpoint, arguing that it represents an antiquated and anachronistic understanding of society and its growing tolerance of homosexuality. Indeed, some celebrities are arguably more famous and successful after they come out of the closet than before: Ellen DeGeneres, Neil Patrick Harris. Additionally, some celebrities seem to be unaffected by admission or rumors of homosexuality – see the examples of Cynthia Nixon and Jake Gyllenhall.

Cynthia Nixon, most famous for her role as Miranda Hobbes on Sex and the City, was married to a man and raising children during the early part of the series (while her character, a ball-busting lawyer with short hair and tailored suits, was commonly mistaken for a lesbian).

Miranda before Nixon entered a homosexual relationship … and after

Nixon began a relationship with a woman in 2003, which became public in 2004, shortly before the end of the series. Arguably, Nixon’s personal relationship has had no major impact on her career; Sex and the City: The Movie (2008) had the biggest recorded opening for a film starring all women, and Nixon has played both homosexual and heterosexual characters since the series ended. Nixon has said she felt more stigma revealing her battle with breast cancer than her homosexual relationship.

Jake Gyllenhaal made his name in the early part of this decade play brooding, sensitive (heterosexual) types in films like October Sky, Donnie Darko, The Good Girl, Moonlight Mile and Proof. In 2005, he won popular and critical acclaim playing a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain. He has been in serious relationships with actresses Kirsten Dunst and, recently, Reese Witherspoon.

At the same time, he is most famous for a role where he played a gay man, and he is strongly associated with E! Online columnist Ted Casablanca’s four-year-old blind item Toothy Tile, about a young, up-and-coming actor who pretends to be straight by maintaining high-profile relationships with women, but is secretly dating a man/men. There are entire blogs devoted to guessing the subject of this blind item – and Gyllenhaal is often the only, repeated guess. Yet, his star is also undoubtedly on the rise – he is up next in the eagerly-anticipated Brothers and the big-budget Prince of Persia, and appears weekly in tabloids with Reese Witherspoon and her children.

So why don’t revelations like Nixon’s, and the rumors like those surrounding Gyllenhaal, matter? Let’s look again at the underlying assumption of Cruise’s lawyers’ claims, namely, that insinuating gayness = defamation. That such an argument stood in court – and would most likely continue to stand – speaks loudly as to how far we haven’t come in terms of tolerance and acceptance. But it also implies that what’s really scandalous about ‘maybe gaybe’ rumors is not only the implication of homosexual sexual activity, but the revelation that a star has duped his/her public.

There’s an interesting tension here: the stars most fearful of gay rumors or scared to come out may be those with traditional (read: hetero) sex-symbol status, like male action stars or women who star in romantic comedies. This tension seems to have everything to do with the implicit contract negotiated between stars and fans, e.g., “I am what my image says I am.” When that contract is based on sex appeal (rather than talent or identification) and it is broken — usually through some sort of scandal, generally sexual — fans rebel, renege their fandom, or become generally disillusioned.

What’s at stake with ‘maybe gaybe,’ then, is not only the suggestion of “non-traditional” sexuality, but whether a star has duped or defrauded his/her public. Thus the reluctance of the anonymous celebrities and stars cited in the LA Weekly article: they’re scared not only of the massive task of renegotiating their images (even with the help of coming-out facilitator Howard Bragment), but of how such a renegotiation would compromise their relation to fans.

Neil Patrick Harris hosts the Emmys, to popular acclaim

But let’s be clear: more than anything, these stars are scared. Scared of losing roles, of the new labor that would be required to establish themselves (and their lifestyles) as the type of ‘gay’ that’s palatable (think Ellen), of losing their livelihood altogether. And that fear is justified, as much as we’d like to believe it isn’t. For Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen are in many ways the exceptions that prove the rule: Americans have not yet demonstrated their willingness to financially endorse a homosexual actor in non-niche, non-television roles.

But who knows? Maybe a star could announce his or her homosexuality and continue to play diverse, entertaining, and profitable roles. Fact is, we don’t know how the public would react if one of our leading heartthrobs announced that he was gay – whether that be Cruise, Travolta, Will Smith, or Zac Efron – because no one ever has.

American Idol winner Adam Lambert’s new album cover

In other words, it’s one thing for a niche star like T.R. Knight or Neil Patrick Harris, or a new star like Adam Lambert, to announce or confirm his homosexuality. It’s quite another, as underlined above, to admit to inveigling your audience for years. Thus, it’s this fear of the unknown – of what could happen when that contract between star and fan is so brashly broken – that reinforces and sustains the culture of silence and secrecy in Hollywood.

So, does ‘maybe gaybe’ matter? Gossip theorists believe that talking about the lifestyles and personal choices of stars and celebrities is a way of talking through our own identities – in other words, we displace issues and anxieties that have bearing on our day-to-day lives onto the lives of those in the magazines, making it easier (and less threatening) to work through sensitive issues. While rumors of homosexuality are by no means novel, they have certainly become more salient, and, to a certain extent, more audible, as the internet facilitates both the proliferation of blind items and potentially incriminating photos and the speculation they generate.

Maybe we talk more now about ‘maybe gaybe’ stars because we talk more about gayness and its place in society in general. And while it’s still somewhat dismaying that public opinion and public action don’t always correlate – as evidenced in Tuesday’s election – we may nevertheless think of how stars, and rumors about them, open up space for discourse and potential, if plodding, social change.

Bloggingheads Video with Susan Murray

(Note: The Blogginghead embedding isn’t playing well with WordPress, so you’ll have to go to the site and interview here.)

Last week, I was contacted by Bloggingheads.tv to casually discuss Balloon Boy and its implications, specifically as relates to the state of reality television and celebrity.  I was paired with Susan Murray, a scholar whom I’ve long respected (and a fellow UT RTF alum!) an whose work has proven incredibly influential on my own.  We had a sweet time, even though we each had to wear geeky headsets, and you can find our musings in full here, including our thoughts on Jon and Kate, reality television ‘narrative complexity,’ and the connection, if any, between the desperation now associated with reality television and our current economic milieu.  There’s a lively discussion currently taking place in the comments section.  I strongly suggest checking back often at Bloggingheads — they regularly feature scholars and thinkers talking through issues as diverse as probability, feminism, legislation, international policy, and, of course, pop culture.  (You can read more about their mission/history here.)

I’m bashful about appearing on video, but I’d love to do it again.  At least I didn’t look bald.

Rachel McAdams: The Thinking Man’s Pin-Up?

Is she or isn’t she?

Rachel McAdams has movie-star wattage.  She’s got a big smile, sparkling eyes, lots of roles, and no bad press.  She looks good in many different hair colors.  She’s Canadian.  She’s never abrasive.  If she can a.) get an Oscar nom, b.) star in a runaway hit with a truly star-making role (and no The Time Traveler’s Wife is not that movie) or c.) engage in a super high profile romance, full-out stardom is hers for the taking.

Rachel McAdams is NOT Lindsay Lohan

She got her first big breaks as the eponymous Hot Chick and embodying vapidity in Mean Girls.  Since then, she was the gorgeous ’straight woman’ in Wedding Crashers; she garnered praise for working the thriller in Red Eye; she played a believable intellectual sister in The Family Stone.

Getting ready to make me weep

Oh, did I mention she’s in a little film called The Notebook, no question the biggest weepie of the decade?  Millions of fans have hitched their hopes and fantasies to the McAdams and Gosling’s portrayal of young love.  So when the two met again at the MTV Movie Award to re-enact their ‘best kiss,’ sparks flew, and naturally they got together.

Reenacting the Famous Notebook Kiss

The message: their onscreen story was so powerful that it even rubbed off on the stars!  And you, dear viewer, can experience the same sort of romance, simply by viewing The Notebook.  On repeat.  (Or, like me, just fastforwarding through the old people parts).  McGosling (the new name for McAdams and ‘The Goz‘ – and I highly recommend clicking on that link, as it offers a fantastic and profane read on Gosling’s hotness, courtesy of The Stranger) became a sort of weird cultural touchstone: as Andy Samberg and Chris Parnell rap in “Lazy Sunday,” “I love those cupcakes like McAdams loves Gosling.”

McAdams has been called “The Next Julia Roberts” — in part for her  megawatt smile, but also for her brand of intrinsic charisma.  There’s something about Rachel McAdams – she doesn’t play that fantastic of unique roles, her love life, apart from a two dalliances with The Notebook costar Ryan Gosling, is private and unremarkable.  So what is it?

Personally, I love myself some McAdams.  I love her sparkly eyes, I love her playfulness.  Or let me modify: I love how those characteristics manifest themselves in all of her roles, because I’ve actually seen very little (and read even less) about the ‘real’ McAdams.  But she’s convinced me that that’s the kind of person that she is, and through relatively few roles: my understanding of her picture personality depends (perhaps too much) on her roles in The Notebook, The Family Stone, and most recently, State and Play and The Time Traveler’s Wife.  It’s as if her turns in The Hot Chick, Mean Girls, and Wedding Crashers simply convince me that the ‘real’ her is the one of her other, more ‘natural’ roles.  And I want to be her friend, and many men I know want to be her boyfriend.  In other words, she’s the perfect star: well-rounded, likable, and desirable.  She’s the anti Megan Fox, and, in truth, the anti Julia Roberts — who many men claim to find unattractive.  She’s got it all.

And she has the affection of my kid brother.

My brother isn’t wont to celebrity romances: apart from a juvenile dalliance with Carrie Fischer (which had everything to do with Princess Lea and her bronze brassiere) I can’t think of any star he’s ever told me he finds attractive.  But then there’s McAdams.  He even has a favorite photo.

My brother, like me, is a nerd.  He used to play a lot of Panzer War General; in his early college years, he asked for a complete collection of Proust.  For Christmas.  Dude  reads Hegel for fun.  So what is it about McAdams that make her accessible to the thinking man?  Or, as I suggest in the title, the perfect thinking man’s pin-up?  Granted, nerds love movie actresses.  But that’s a different type of nerd altogether — we’re talking fanboys (and all the derogatory stereotypes associated with them) and their affection for Angelina Jolie, Megan Fox, and others soft on the eyes and unchallenging to the mind.  But McAdams offers a different allure.

Which is why I’ve asked my brother to virtually hang out with me.  He recently quit his gig at The New York Review of Books to go live in the middle of nowhere in Montana, freelance, and do things like write blog posts with his sister.  I told him that I’d tell him why I thought he liked McAdams, and he told me he’d tell me why I was wrong.  So here goes.

I think you like Rachel McAdams for a few reasons:
1.) Her beauty and body aren’t traditionally fetishized, which would rub you and your thinking man’s sensibilities the wrong way.
2.) Liking her doesn’t make you into a dude; in fact, liking her makes other women think you’re a good guy.
3.) In one of her roles — The Family Stone, the one we saw together for our annual Christmas Day movie — she plays a woman who embodies the qualities of snark, intelligence, vulnerability, and beauty that you would find desirable in your own potential girlfriend.  In other words, you’d want to date her, and you’d even let her meet me, and even tell Mom about her, and she’d probably put up with you reading philosophy for leisure but call you on your bullshit.

Am I right OR AM I RIGHT.

–

Brother respondz:

I would like, if possible, to move this discussion into the past tense: Why did I like Rachel McAdams? Because I’m not sure that I still do. I just saw two of her more recent films, Red Eye and State of Play, and I can’t say I really cared that much about her in either. Though it was nice that she was there. Oh, it’s Rachel! Did I ever tell you about the time I rode the elevator with her at work? There were a lot of film production companies in my building. That was a good day. But I didn’t really care. And I’m not even sure this is a change: there’s a desire for academics or other figures with cultural capital (I’m now a writer) to take an interest in pop culture. If you have to make small talk with someone in the mail room (or your sister — or those with lots of cultural capital who hate taking about ideas, a common occurrence in NYC), it’s helpful to have some assumed cultural center around which you can banter. Sports is one possibility; pop music another; movies stars another. But the fact is that I chose Rachel (we’re on a first name basis in case you haven’t noticed) as mine. Why?

Now that I’ve started to think about it, which I didn’t really do at first, I’m a little disturbed. A few points:

1. Rachel McAdams is the ultimate WASP. The first role I saw her in was Wedding Crashers, where she plays, I believe, the daughter of the Secretary of State or something. Then she went on to play this bratty daughter of a mainline Philadelphia (?) or some other old New England type clan in The Family Stone. She’s supposed to be a kind of universal materialist So-Cal materialist type in Mean Girls, and not all the Mean Girls in that film are white and WASP-y, but she’s clearly the leader because she’s the natural born WASP. Oh right, she’s the southern belle daughter of some aristocratic family in The Notebook. And then there’s Red Eye, where she runs a high class Florida hotel at the age of like 25 with her classy charms, and in the process saves the Assistant Director of the Department of Homeland Security. Which leaves a question: Is Rachel a Republican?

2. So I just watched State of Play, because I wanted to be a good brother and do some actual research for my sister’s blog, and then I read some of the reviews, and J. Hoberman, I believe, makes the obvious joke that Russel Crowe and Rachel are kinda like Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in that other great newspaper movie, His Girl Friday. Except of course State of Play kinda sucks and is trying much harder to be like All the President’s Men. I don’t think it would be unfair to say the movie is a cross between a little 30s screwball and 70s earnestness — part of why it doesn’t work at all. But then there’s The Family Stone, which is explicitly modeled on a 30s screwball, with the animated opening montage and all, even though again that movie totally sucks. But I don’t think it’s unfair to say that Rachel McAdams is most reminiscent of a 30s screwball star, perhaps specifically Rosalind Russell. And Rosalind Russell was famous, as I remember David Thomson telling me — because please, I’m not actually going to go and watch those lame old Rosalind Russell films — but she was famous for her very morally proper melodramas: His Girl Friday was just Howard Hawks figuring out how to make her sternness interesting, it was a total outlier. I think David Thomson calls Rosalind Russell a Republican.

Making sternness as attractive as possible

3. So we’re left with a few basic facts about Rachel: she walked out of the Vanity Fair nude cover shoot with Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley; she hasn’t done any nudity in any of her films, except the very early no budget My Name is Tanino, when she had no control over which rolls to take (I know this, among other reasons, thanks to a to-do list an editor I know once posted on the Stranger’s blog: “2. Look up naked pictures of Rachel McAdams” or something like that); she has attempted, if I haven’t missed anything, no indie films whatsoever. Sorry, Nick Cassavetes, you’re not your dad. Maybe I’ve missed this, but she doesn’t play the game of celebrity at all — which is boring and very let’s say bourgeois. Rachel seems to be something of a prude.

4. Shouldn’t the thinking man’s pin-up be Maggie Gyllenhaal?

5. But the fact remains that she is the closest thing we have today to, if not Katharine Hepburn, then maybe Irene Dunne in The Awful Truth? I don’t know if I can imagine any other actress today playing that role. Or any of the other classic screwball roles. I’m a little uncertain what I think of Rachel’s can-do powder-puff feminism. She plays football with the guys in Wedding Crashers. She beats the crap out of an assassin in Red Eye (though he’s killed at the end by her dad — what can you do, it’s a Wes Craven film). She will apparently hand-cuff Sherlock Holmes to a bed and extort him in the film you and I will be watching this Christmas Day (Holmes, yes! finally something good will be at the Lewiston, Idaho theater on December 25). So maybe Rachel is really a third-wave feminist, and her refusal to play the celebrity game or do nudity reflects not the attitudes of a reactionary but those of a highly-developed twenty-first century popular female consciousness? Ha.

6. To sum up the three reasons you give for why I like Rachel — her body isn’t traditionally fetishized; liking her makes other women like me; she has spunk — all three, I think, can be put down to her resemblance to a classic Hollywood 30s screwball star, in which context her body certainly would have been fetishized (check out the dimple), most female stars, even at the time, would not have reflected badly on the men who liked them, and all women, in comedy at least, had real personality. It should be very very telling that we can’t imagine Rachel in a Judd Apatow film. Now that’s a real reactionary. And perhaps why she hasn’t gotten any very good roles, despite Manohla Dargis, in the ‘inside tips’ she and Tony Scott pretended to give out to Hollywood last year, shouting: “Give Rachel McAdams more roles!”

7. Maybe I still love Rachel? Should I? Please tell!

–

Sister briefly responds:
She has done an indy picture – Married Life — it just received a very limited release, in part because it wasn’t very good.  I saw it; she has bleach blond hair and we’re supposed to believe she loves Chris Cooper.  It’s odd, in part because it doesn’t compliment the McAdams image.  The screwball comparison honestly had not even crossed my mind, which is ridiculous.  You love screwballs!  So do I, but I should’ve recalled that your favorite female roles are those fast-talking, verbally eviscerating females of His Girl Friday and The Awful Truth.  But I don’t think McAdams is our screwball hero.  She’s not, on her face, ’smart’ enough.  I don’t watch her in The Notebook and think that she’s tremendously smart and cunning; I watch her and think she has a specific and irresistible type of beauty and would probably be fun to hang out with.  In State of Play, I wish she were in my grad program.  Her picture personality is indeed assertive, but, as you point out, assertive in a Condi Rice sort of way, as opposed to, say, Tina Fey, who might actually hold the contemporary screwball comedienne mantel.  (And you’re right: Maggie Gyllenhaal is the thinking-man’s pin-up, but that’s because she’s a 21st century Mae West, who had much more of a pin-up body than any of the screwball comedians you mention.  Men were attracted to the minds and flirtatiousness of Hepburn, Dunne, and Russell, not necessarily their bodies, were were, as a rule, long, lean, and the opposite of voluptuous.)

But I’m not ready to label her a ‘Republican.’  How do you reconcile her role in The Family Stone?  She has a canvas NPR bag and drives a Volvo!  And she’s attempting to bring down big corrupt government (and protecting the fourth estate!) and State of Play.  As for the idea of third wave feminism — possible.  Distancing herself from the clearly postfeminist body politics of ScarJo and Keira Knightly certainly speaks loudly.  But she’s said little else.  Which is part of the problem, of course — our speculation is based near wholly on her picture personality, leaving us to either map the characteristics of her characters onto the ‘real’ Rachel or fill in the gaps ourselves.  (As you can do in your mind: Rachel would love me!  I hang out in the West Village!)

In other words, the fact that she hasn’t attempted to flesh our her star image has made it easy first for you to like her, just as it has now made it easy  for you to dislike her.  Her image is subject to your shifting sense of who you are.  I mean, when we watched The Family Stone, I don’t think either one of us was fully conscious of what WASP meant, or what the Diane-Keaton-headed family of that film represented.  Now, in hindsight, after you’ve lived in New York for three years, it’s easier to find those depictions problematic, and your affection for her dated.  Finally, her lack of public image once was endearing; now it renders her a prude.

Ultimately, your experience illuminates greater trends in celebrity and fan culture: stars become stars because they mean something important to enough people at a certain time.  The stars that we like — that we want to be friends with, that we desire, that we think would offend us — speak loudly as to the type of people that we are. Because I’m your sister and I know everything, I know that you’ve changed a lot over the last five years.  Along with the fact that you now own towels and pillowcases, you also don’t like Rachel McAdams, or at least the part of you that liked her has matured, learned more, become disillusioned, become attached to different female and cultural ideals.  I mean, you didn’t always like screwball heroines — but when you figured out that you did, or when you tell other people that you do, that signifies something crucial about the type of person that you are, the type of things you find funny, the type of woman who challenges you.

So you don’t have to like Rachel McAdams anymore.  And maybe the fact that you won’t find another actress to love — other than Irene Dunne — is all that you, or your friends, need to know.
–

Brother concludez:
Shouldn’t the fact that I own towels and pillowcases just make me love Rachel more? I bet she has lots of towels and pillowcases, with very high thread counts. (By the way, I’ve always owned a towel and a pillowcase, just maybe not plural.)

I don’t think Tina Fey could play a screwball heroine. She’s completely afraid! She’s like the female Judd Apatow. I haven’t seen 30 Rock since the first season but if it’s stayed the same that show is all about Tina Fey getting put in her place by the wise Alec Baldwin, whose explicit conservatism always turns out miraculously right in the end. And Tina Fey writes that show. Amazing.

There is the question, since we have no idea who Rachel really is, of what we take for her most representative role. Certainly she’s most famous for The Notebook. But I first saw her in Wedding Crashers, where, I have to say I haven’t seen that film since it came out, but I remember thinking she was quick witted and tended to put Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn in their place. You’re right that she doesn’t strike us as incredibly intelligent. But neither does Irene Dunne or most of the screwball heroines, even Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby. For me I think the above confusions do show a great deal about how I’ve changed, and not how Rachel has changed. And it’s not like there’s anything wrong with loving a WASP. Guess what, all of the classic screwball women are WASPs! Like really really waspy.

I also don’t think my disappointment with the films Rachel has made since Wedding Crashers is mine alone. She just hasn’t gotten very good scripts. And I would hypothesize that this has much more to do with the contemporary state of Hollywood than it does with Rachel. You don’t have to be super smart to be a screwball star; you just have to be quick and alive; and I think Rachel is quick and alive. But I don’t think Hollywood is. You mentioned that she’s been called “the next Julia Roberts.” Given what you’ve been writing about the decline of stars, it’s not clear to me we’re going to have another Julia Roberts, much less another Katharine Hepburn or Irene Dunne — or Barbara Stanwyck! How did I leave her out?

The true love of my life

Sister has the last word:
INDEED.

What Makes a Scandal Most? Paul Haggis and the Scientology Letter

Paul Haggis Takes on Big Religion

The facts: Paul Haggis, director of Crash, screenwriter of Million Dollar Baby, and 35-year member of the Church of Scientology, penned a letter of resignation to Tommy Davis, master church spokesman.  He released the letter to a number of close friends; one of those friends passed the letter along to ex-Scientologist and blogger Marty Rathbun, who published it on his site.

The letter has thus gone viral over the course of a few hours — since I woke up this morning, dozens of prominent sites have glossed and interpreted the letter.  The best overview and analysis can be found here at Gawker; Lainey Gossip provides some warranted caution on her front page.

Here’s the meat of the Gawker post:

The entire letter to—of all people—creepy Church spokescreature Tommy Davis is below, but here are the highlights: Haggis has been asking the church to resign their support of Proposition 8. He registered his distaste for the church’s stances on homosexuality via phone calls and letters. Davis told Haggis that “heads would roll” over this about ten months ago. Davis apparently drew up a press release he showed to Haggis, which eventually got canned. Haggis views the church’s actions as “cowardly,” and thus, after thirty-five years of membership, is resigning.

Furthermore, Haggis saw Davis’ interview on CNN, when Davis denied the existence of a “disconnection” policy in which the church orders members to cut non-members out of their lives, as they pose some kind of negative threat towards the work of the church in members’ lives.

It’s a policy that’s been well documented in the press, but especially by the reporting done by the St. Petersburg Times, who’ve chronicled many members who were once forced to “disconnect” people from their lives. Then comes another bomb: Haggis’ wife cut off contact with her parents when they defected from the church. And then another: Haggis cites the aforementioned reporting by the St. Petersburg Times, which including some of Scientology’s most high-profile defectors in its history, as accurate and astonishing, considering the level of the defectors. “Say what you will about them now,” writes Haggis, “[but] these were staunch defenders of the church, including Mike Rinder, the church’s official spokesman for 20 years!” Scientology has claimed that their high-profile defectors hold personal grudges against them for demotions and other bureaucratic failings.

Gawker and Lainey do a good job of pointing out the fact that this is no casual denouncement — Haggis has been a longtime member of the church, and has documentation and personal experience to back up his damaging claims.  In other words, these attacks aren’t originating from your run-of-the-mill Scientology denouncers.  Haggis was an insider; his words and criticism cannot be taken lightly.

But we also need to consider the massive publicity machinery that the Scientology network has in place.  If you think Scientology is just a network of weird people who ask you to come into their massive buildings and take personality tests, as they do here in Austin, you’re wrong.  Scientology is tremendously endowed, incredibly connected, and supported by some of the biggest movers and shakers in all of Hollywood (and the world, for that matter).  (See here for a list of Hollywood-associated Scientologists — importantly, it’s not just big names, but ‘below-the-line’ talent that make up the majority of the business)

For more on their recruitment centers and a rather subtle yet scathing indictment, see The New Yorker’s truly fabulous take on “Chateau Scientology” here; see also Time’s critique of the church’s financial policies.  In brief, Scientology attempts — and, in some cases, has been successful — in shutting down critical discourse.  They failed to coerce Google and Yahoo to omit search engine results critical of the church; they nearly succeeded in their attempt to get Comedy Central to shut down the South Park Tom Cruise episode (in which a cartoon rendering of Cruise, er, ‘comes out of the closet’).  Wikipedia has even gone so far as to ban Scientology IP addresses from editing.  Yet for every controversy (and there are many, as evidenced by the Wikipedia page devoted entirely to the topic) there have been many that have been erased from public memory or prevented from entering discourse in the first place.

Whatever you think of the religion, including its esoteric and, for lack of a better word, ‘different’ theological teachings, for our purposes, what matters is how it will be handled.  In other words, will this be the beginning of something big — something that will affect all of those touched by Scientology in Hollywood and abroad — or will it fade with the next news cycle.

At this moment, it could go either way — much depends on the response of the church, the potential responses of prominent Scientologists (Tom Cruise and John Travolta in particular), and when, or if, Haggis decides to speak out again.  Haggis’ attack is two-pronged, after all: he decries the church’s general policies and denounces the church as homophobic and bigoted.  The first attack is nothing new — as his letter points out, several articles have gone after the general policies of Scientology and the ’severing of ties’ policy in particular.   But this second claim — the assertion that the church, and, by extension, all those associated with it, are bigots — is a bombshell.  It’s one thing for your religion to have strict policies to which one voluntary submits.  Mormonism, for one, practices ex-communication and requires tremendous sacrifice, both financial and personal, on the part of its members. It’s quite another to be overtly bigoted and homophobic, especially in Hollywood, where Scientology has made its most public headway.  Sure, most Christian religions aren’t crazy about the gays.  But again: those religions aren’t striving to attract the most wealthy names in Hollywood as their public members and financial backers.

I’ve done a tremendous amount of reading and thinking about the way that scandal works.  Events aren’t scandalous by nature — it’s all about a specific moment in time, the status quo at that moment, and the transgression of societal norms.  (For a truly excellent take on Hollywood scandal in particular, see Adrienne McLean and David Cook’s edited collection Headline Hollywood).

For instance, black face was not scandalous in 1920; nor was it scandalous in 1962, as we learned in a recent episode of Mad Men.  Having a baby out of wedlock was scandalous enough for Ingrid Bergman to be denounced on the senate floor in the 1950s; today, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt can have as many so-called ‘bastard’ babies as they’d like, and not just because they’re pretty.

The scandal of Haggis’s letter, then, is not that he denounced a church of which he has long been a part; nor is it the confirmation of one of the church’s most controversial practices.  As alluded above, it’s the allegation of homophobia.  Because in Hollywood in 2009, it’s not okay to actively not like gay people.  It’s especially not okay to support legislation against giving rights to gay people.  The scandal is the idea the church and its members would support a position so brazenly transgressive of the Hollywood societal norms.  Can you imagine what would happen if Tom Cruise had denounced homosexuality instead of psychiatry when he went on The Today Show with Matt Laeur?  What if John Travolta, who dressed as a woman in Hairspray, said that all crossdressing was evil?  What if Kirstie Alley, with all of her various endorsement deals, criticized the marriage of Ellen and Portia di Rossi?  Haggis claims that the church and its members are doing this very thing — only covertly, lest it lose its all-important big name support.

Of course, Cruise, back under the control of a micro-managing publicist, would never dare alienate such a section of his public.  But the now strong public association between Cruise and Scientology might allow the letter — if its message continues to reverberate throughout the mediascape — to damage the Cruise image, not to mention the images of the dozens of other prominent names associated with the religion.

Again, we’ll see what happens in the next day or two.  To my mind, however, there’s very little that the Scientologists could do to counter this narrative.  Haggis is respected; his position in the church offers his statements credence; the bigotry implied is explosive.  What’s more, it’s already gone viral — there’s no way to kill the story, lest they stop the major news outlets from posting.  The New York Times has yet to post a story, neither, oddly, has TMZ, but The Washington Post and dozens of others have.  If and when you find more information — or more complicated reactions — please post them below.  In the meantime, we’ll see how this scandal is handled, dismantled, or blown to the wind.