22 december 2012. A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY. pourquoi?

because macaulay culkin ate alone at taco bell.

(via the daily mail)

if you’ve been around here any length of time, you know that this is one of my favorite stories ever.

in part because it is AMAZING. in other part because, in the daily mail‘s ongoing epic reportage on the life of macaulay culkin, this tale is the first in an AMAZING 2012/2013 story-telling trilogy of “the sad, solitary, alone taco bell incident,” “the one time macaulay culkin was“healthy and happy” because he was seen carrying a hudson news bag at laguardia,” and “macaulay culkin gets a girl.”

you see how the narrative arc there is dependent upon “the sad, solitary, alone taco bell incident”? you see how crucial a crisis that becomes in retrospect?

well, actually, that’s a bunch of baloney about retrospect. for, this crisis was felt to be crucial at the time too.

look at the alarm bells:

ALONE AT CHRISTMAS! A TROUBLED CHILD STAR! A SOLITARY LUNCH FOR ONE! … AT TACO BELL! there is basically no word in this headline that is not intent on exciting our emotions.

i do rather wonder what taco bell ever did to the daily mail because they kinda come at them claws out. it is made very clear that it is not just eating alone that equates to hitting rock bottom. no. it is eating alone at TACO BELL. the horror.

and so if macaulay culkin is ok, it is in spite of TACO BELL.

and yet really the narrative thrust of this article is actually claiming that macaulay culkin is just like us! 

because i have spent every day since 24 december 2012 writing a dissertation about how celebrities reflect the human condition and we are all going to die and, therefore, on some deep existential level, we are all alone, a fact which celebrities and the feelings of connection they engender helps us to evade/makes more palatable, of course, revisiting this ridiculous article now, i am like: RIGHT ON DAILY MAIL!!! 

except i don’t really think that’s what they were getting at.

it’s important to note the shift that occurs here, between the 24 december 2012 report on the 22 december taco bell incident and the replay of that incident in the mail‘s culkin report of 13 january 2013. i’m arguing that the taco bell story is amazing and can stand on its own, but that it is also the first in a trilogy. and it is within this trilogy that it accrues new, troubling meanings.

in the 24 december 2012 report, we can conclude that macaulay culkin is just like us. like us, on 22 december, he went christmas shopping and ate lunch.

with the 13 january 2013 report, however, we are informed that, actually, this situation was dire and abnormal, a circumstance about which we have apparently spent the intervening weeks worrying.

(via daily mail)

key passage: “a lot of people worried… So when he landed in Laguardia Airport in New York on a flight from Miami on Saturday appearing more clean cut than he has in weeks the collective sigh of relief could be heard.”

thank god for this new set of photographs of culkin with the hudson news bag. otherwise, we might not have understood the full force of the images of him eating alone at taco bell. for it is within the story of “the one time macaulay culkin was“healthy and happy” because he was seen carrying a hudson news bag at laguardia,” that the story of “the sad, solitary, alone taco bell incident” assumes its full tragic dimensions.

this is also where culkin’s eating alone at taco bell is implicitly connected to his former relationship with mila kunis:

A NARRATIVE IS BEING BORN, ya’ll!!! a narrative that will come to full flower in “macaulay culkin gets a girl” later that year and continue developing in pretty much every article about culkin or kunis published by the daily mail since.

so where are we now?

(via the daily mail)

he looks healthy, happy, and i covet his blazer. omg, what will happen next?? 2016 here we come…

© Copyright CBS Broadcasting Inc.; Credit: CBS Photo Archive

so there’s been a natalie portman jackie movie in the works for awhile, scheduled for release in 2017, and they’ve doled out a promo image to excite us all and prove they’re in production.

i’ve this complaint which always seems to come up- recently at dinner and previously here- in the context of the national nightmare that was naomi watts’ diana. i’mma call it When Hollywood Knowingly Gets It Wrong And Simply Does Not Care. meaning: hollywood elides a ludicrously easy historical fact, in this case a fact of fashion, for seemingly no reason at all.

possible case in point… possible because this is a film that has not been made and i have not seen it, BUT given it’s a film about the weekend after JFK was killed in november 1963, there’s something that makes no sense in this image above. namely, that it features an outfit from february 1962.

we know this was february 1962 because, y’know, HISTORY.

Lebanon Daily News, Pennsylvania, 14 February 1962

(history + typos!)

and also because it was central to the establishment of historical time in the opener of the second season of mad men.

given that it was february 1962 and this new jackie movie is set in november 1963, it seems unlikely that this costume is going to feature in anything more than a jackie-as-first-lady photo montage.

this is the extremely teeniest of teeny tiny points, but i want to dig in because i think this is a calculated choice and that there are actually a number of reasons for the red suit that illuminate Giant And Meaningful Cultural Things.

so it’s this red suit as opposed to, say, the age old standby:

jacques lowe

or, given the context of this movie and the current cultural preoccupation with this garment, the pink suit.

the red suit of the white house tour does a number of significant other things.

it is also just as culturally freighted, although that is perhaps a fact of which we are less conscious than with the pink suit and the yellow dress.

it is, for one thing, what she wore while she spoke.

(no small feat given oleg cassini, in his sketch, doesn’t even give her a mouth.)

the white house tour was the first prime-time documentary intended to appeal to a female demographic and the first program where a woman provided a significant portion of the narration.

it’s early television so it’s HELLA AWKWARD. but the red suit she wears in it is inextricably linked to sound.

in contrast, the pink suit and the yellow dress are images steeped in silence and stillness.

CBS /Landov

in the red suit, she’s talking and walking- at least until her husband comes in the room.

at which point she slips into silence.

to speak is to have power.

the yellow dress and the pink suit have both come to signify innocence and the before times: before she was first lady, before he was killed.

but the red suit is power. pure power.

© Bettmann/CORBIS

power in her job. power in her home.

it is also, by virtue of being a public performance in a home, a provocative collision of the public and private. a public figure in a domestic- if not wholly private- setting.

i’ve written before (gosh, it’s beginning to feel like i’ve written about everything before…) about how we fail to see the first lady’s work as work and, in particular, how the white house restoration (which this program is publicizing) is not classified as work.

the red suit is cheery and merry and the broadcast is going out on valentine’s day so there are reasons for the suit’s color in spite of the documentary’s being filmed in black and white. but this is also power dressing.

she is clearly running this show.

and also its star.

this is why jfk’s appearance at the end is so depressing. because he seems to lumber in and take all the wind out of her sails.

suddenly this woman who has been dazzling us with her smarts, sits meekly beside her husband. awkwardly, they sit before a desk littered with rolled up treaties, uncertain what they are to do or how to be, together with the cameras rolling.

he is, notably, not in the room here.

which makes sense as it’s a movie entitled jackie and focusing on the weekend after his death.

we are also upstairs, in the private quarters of the white house, rather than downstairs in the blue room or some such.

white house, upstairs, center hall, kennedy administration

i feel like that’s the point where half the room just went, oline, get a life! but HOLD IT. i’ve brought you to the buffet and now i’m gonna put it all on your plate.

my point is this: these images are in our culture and they are RICH. and there’s a reason these filmmakers have chosen the red suit for this one.

the red suit is powerful jackie, safe jackie, unsullied jackie. it is jackie at her administrative best.

as is the story of november 1963, though it is decidedly more grim and, therefore, less pretty as a promo image.

6 december 1963

the story of jfk’s funeral- the story this film starring natalie portman is reportedly going to tell- is and always has been, in the real life jacqueline kennedy onassis’s life narrative as conveyed by the press and a zillion biographies, an administrative triumph.

it has been depicted this way from the very very beginning. even before life wrote up a dramatic recounting in its 6 december 1963 issue, the story of jackie at jfk’s funeral was already circulating with these overtones of congratulations and cheers for her administrative bravado.

6 december 1963, pg. 48

and in a culture deeply ill at ease with death, in which emotional expression of grief was discouraged and prolonged mourning was taboo, this depiction makes total sense.

but it is a depiction. we are reading, here, a story. a narrative.

it is an interpretation of a series of events. it is not the only interpretation. it is not the only story, nor the only way this particular story can be told.

it is a depiction that, fyi, she DEPLORED, telling a priest a few weeks later, “i don’t  like to hear people say that i am poised and maintaining a good appearance. i am not a movie actress.”

24 november 1963

because she was a human being. and this was her life.

24 november 1963

which is not to say that her decisions did not shape the solemn pageantry. rather, it is a complaint that this is where the story stops, so that we never get at the human being behind those administrative decisions because we’re so blinded by the admin.

which, well, i honestly did not see this post going here, but WOMEN AND ADMIN. boom.

but i don’t think this is entirely about gender. in 1969, when america landed men on the moon and safely brought them back, time magazine wrote something to the effect that the moon landing appealed to the best of american values, and listed as chief among these “organizational skill.”

so we, as a people, seem to prize administrative ability more than most. and this seems to be one of the ways in which we tell stories about ourselves.

24 november 1963

but what goes missing in all of this?

the story of jfk’s funeral as jackie’s administrative triumph overwrites the story of jfk’s death as the worst day of jackie’s life, a day which ushered in a period of profound grief, post-traumatic stress, and just really deeply shit times.

if they’re going to make a movie about jackie in the week after jfk’s death, i don’t want to see an administrative goddess, a woman who excels at the multi-task. i want her to be broken. not because i am a horrible sadist, but because i think she was. i think anyone would be.

and i do not think the extent of the horror of what happened to her will ever be conveyed through our culture’s ongoing celebration of the fact that, after witnessing a murder at close range, she put on one of the great funerals of all time.

25 november 1963

a funeral which moved americans and made americans feel better about themselves.

when she died in 1994, there was a lot of talk about grace and dignity and about how she made americans feel during that weekend in november 1963.

she is, almost always, about america and her story has historically been and continues to be a part of the conversation america is having about itself.

what this is means is that we so often fail to imagine her humanity.

25 november 1963

we fail to remember this was not a movie, it was her life.

years later, the poet stephen spender asked her what she considered her greatest accomplishment. she said it was that, after some bad things had happened to her, she remained “comparatively sane.”

that is a story we should tell.

june 1972

in things i made a huge, big deal about and then never followed-up on, my boyfriend adrien brody debuted his Art at art basel a few weeks ago.

(via adrien brody, instagram)

because yeah, art basel happened.

apparently nothing much else did as we didn’t hear a whole lot about it like that one time demi moore went or the time my forever love leo dicaprio (though i’m beginning to rethink that… stay tuned…) allegedly left a club with 20 women. which leaves me to assume art basel was a bit of a dud this year as all we got this go-round was some fahionz.

(though HOW DESPERATELY DO I WANT THIS GREEN VELVET BLAZER AND MATCHING SWEATPANTS???

MIAMI BEACH, FL – DECEMBER 03: Matty Mo attends Spotify Brunch hosted by Cecilia Dean & James Kaliardos of Visionaire @ Soho Beach House during Art Basel Miami 2015 at Soho Beach House on December 3, 2015 in Miami Beach, Florida. (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Soho House & Co)

I WANT IT SO BAD, ya’ll. SO BAD.

because far too few people dare to see the fashionable potentialities latent within this:

WELL PLAYED, matty mo. well played.)

and, of course, my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, and his artistic debut. (see also: franco-ing.)

“hotdogs, hamburgers and handguns.”

i swear i still cannot read the words “lulu laboratorium” and not see lululemon, but oh well. that’s a branding problem i’m sure they already know they’ve got.

anyway, i’ll be brief.

his heart is in the right place:

(via adrien brody, instagram)

his use of emoticons is stellar:

(via adrien brody, instagram)

in a show on handguns and hamburgers, obviously only a revolver and a hamburger will do. and obviously there’s a PSA implicit within this advertising the need for a hotdog emoji so there’s that too.

i’m less enthusiastic about the flags of the world leather jacket:

MIAMI, FL – DECEMBER 02: Adrien Brody attends Haute Living And Zacapa Rum Present Domingo Zapata At Lulu Laboratorium on December 2, 2015 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Gustavo Caballero/Getty Images for Haute Living)

and the fact that my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, apparently makes people perform push-ups if they’re not carrying toy weaponry.

re: the art, there are glimmers of franco:

brody, 2015 (via adrien brody, instagram)

(james franco, 2010)

which is probably less to do with actual franconian influences in brody and more to do with a shared fondness for Things Strewn About the Art Area art.

as you will note, brody’s vibe is  minimalist mike kelley via breaking bad while franco’s is more art brut via anthropologie.

so, aesthetically there’s little comparison. if they are alike, it is in that they are celebrities.

(via james franco, instagram, and adrien brody, instagram)

newsweek‘s website SUCKS, and crashed so many times in my attempt to read the report on brody and art basel that i ran out of complimentary newsweek articles for the entire month, so i’ve not read the whole article but from what i did read it looked interesting. and they make the point that the whole set-up of art basel these days is celebrity-driven:

Both Brody and Zapata are part of Basel’s coterie of celebrity regulars. The art world they occupy is one that is closely tied to fashion and fame, less so one that is celebrated in museums. Brody and Zapata’s exhibition at Lulu Laboratorium—some of Zapata’s works are on display as well—is everything academics and certain New York gallerists have come to detest about Basel. The most important thing to come out of it will be a press release. Nevertheless, Brody is determined to isolate his career as an artist from his career as an actor.

this is basically an intersection of funnels. celebrities versus academics and curators: the artistic throwdown.

(via adrien brody, instagram)

fyi, my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, wants NOTHING to do with his celebrity.

“I threw it out,” he says bluntly of his celebrity. “I threw it out today. It comes with me, obviously, as baggage, but I threw it out. Today, I’m ‘Brody.’ I asked them to take the name ‘Adrien’ off the thing. I’m Brody. I’m an artist. Obviously, I appreciate it, because there’s interest and I’m a known person, and there’s some curiosity as to what I should be up to—”

which, well. DUDE.

you know, sometimes britney isn’t enough…

sometimes only ahhhhhhhhhhndrea will do…

so i say this from a place of love, but dear my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, you would not have a show at art basel were you not adrien brody, celebrity.

i mean, maaaaaaybe if you were somewhere else, we could make a case that this was all about the art, but this is art basel- the celebrity art event that brought us the rumor of my forever boyfriend leo dicap leaving the club with 20 women. so yeah, no.

dance with the boy that brung you, dude.

(adrien brody, 2003)

dear everyone among us who wants to be famous: this is your catch-22.

if you are a celebrity, your art may be incredible, but if your celebrity pre-dates it, then your celebrity colors the production/reception/consumption of said art.

drop your first name if you want, but everyone already knows who you are.

the story is “adrien brody’s art debut at art basel,” not “random nobody we’ve never heart of’s art debut at art basel.”

to pretend that those are the same story is to profoundly misjudge the reality.

(adrien brody, 2007)

this isn’t to say that my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, cannot be an artist or that he is not already an artist. (i’d argue if he’s making art then he’s an artist- it’s not the job title that’s up for debate but the quality of the artistic output.)

rather, it’s an acknowledgement of the impossibility of escaping one’s celebrity once one is a celebrity. the option of throwing out your celebrity, in reality, does not exist.

point 1: i’m using “you” in a general sense. i do not flatter myself that i’m speaking directly to my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, nor is what i’m saying applicable only to him. file this as another addendum to my “dear famous person” guides.

point 2: i would, of course, think this way because my understanding of celebrity is rooted in my being a biographer and my taking the view that celebrity is not an event…

as it is traditionally portrayed. but, rather, an ongoing condition…

that, once it happens, remains fundamental within your life experience from then on.

we see this in the fact that, even if you lose your celebrity, your life is impacted by the loss, so that your having once been a celebrity is fundamental to your experience of not being a celebrity. in actuality, the loss of your celebrity can become the overriding narrative and make you a born again celebrity- famous for having been more famous before.

think of every television show and article premised on the notion of “where are they now?”

(via the daily mail)

those narratives arise from the notion that these people were once celebrities. that these stories are written at all attests to the fact that they are, in some way, still celebrities and we still care.

so celebrity is not something one can throw out or check at the door. as my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, knows. let’s go back to the quote, which i have, so far, been grotesquely distorting so i could make the above point.

“I threw it out,” he says bluntly of his celebrity. “I threw it out today. It comes with me, obviously, as baggage, but I threw it out.”

so he threw it out, but look how quickly the impossibility of that emerges here.

“I threw it out.”

“I threw it out today.”

“It comes with me, obviously, as baggage, but I threw it out.” 

is it just me or is that hella poetic?!

(adrien brody, art basel)

it’s an effort to take control of something over which one can actually have very little control.which is just as true of the condition of celebrity as it is true for the condition of being alive.

i roughed him in my analysis earlier because i wanted to make a point about celebrity. but it’s a point my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, makes very well himself here.

“I threw it out. I threw it out today. It comes with me, obviously, as baggage, but I threw it out.”

(via adrien brody, instagram)

in writing about jackie onassis, i often find myself highlighting how she did certain things in spite of there being an easier option.

going out in capri, for example, when she knew there would be photographers and people everywhere and there was a rumor in circulation that her marriage was on the rocks.

(jackie onassis, august 1970, by ron gallela)

it would’ve been easier to stay on the yacht, to hide away. but instead she goes out, goes shopping and gives us this immortal image of her eating an ice cream cone.

repeatedly, in response to her complaints that she was surveilled by photographers, people in the papers suggest that she’s made a choice and, if she really didn’t want the attention, she could live in seclusion instead of going out. as though that were a real option. as though any of us would want that to be our only option. because, as an option, that amounts to not living your life and that is deeply shitty.

so jackie went out and had her fun.

which doesn’t mean she did everything she wanted to do. at an exhibition of the photographer peter beard’s work, she reportedly took him aside and said she really wished she could do what he did. but that she couldn’t.

he took this to mean that she didn’t have the confidence because she knew that anything she did would receive ludicrous quantities of attention and criticism and she couldn’t bear it.

she felt she was limited by who she was.

don’t we all, at some point or another, feel limited by who we are?

as usual, i would direct us to one of the most insightful things i have read. EVER. no, it’s not adam gopnik’s “two ships”. it’s the line in the A.V. club’s 2009 recap of buffy, the vampire slayer, season 4, episode 1:

we are who we are. and a lot of life is about learning to live with that, but also to stretch the boundaries of it.

there are echoes of all of this the statement by my boyfriend adrien brody, artist.

“I threw it out. I threw it out today. It comes with me, obviously, as baggage, but I threw it out.”

so much that one sees in celebrity and art chimes with the experience of being alive and this is, i think, why celebrity is currently one of our culture’s primary art forms and it is why writing about celebrities is such an interesting and rich way to think about the way we write about lives and the way we live now.

it’s easy to laugh at a man wearing an ill-advised leather jacket and making a political statement about fast food and violence with stuffed animals and finger guns.

as an academic, as someone who wants/needs to publish a book, i roll my eyes ahhhhhhhhhndrea zuckerman-style, cite CELEBRITY PRIVILEGE! and say, my boyfriend adrien brody, artist, COME ON.

but, as a human being and as a biographer constantly trying to circle us all back around to the reality that celebrities are people too, i fiercely admire his chutzpah. not because it makes for a good story but because it seems a wise and interesting way to live.

we are all limited by who we are and by what has happened to us. how bold to try to stretch beyond that. how daunting to have the whole world watching when you do.

“I threw it out. I threw it out today. It comes with me, obviously, as baggage, but I threw it out.”

say what you will about his art, he took the risk. he did it. how many of us do?

(via adrien brody, instagram)

another day, another instant-classic of award-winning alarmist reportage from the daily mail. let’s dig in…

first off:

WHAT?? are christmas cards really a barometer of marital bliss? (apparently daily mail deep readings of royal christmas cards are a barometer of slow news seasons)

well, yeah. because…

DIANA.

and so, because DIANA…

we see here the daily mail doing what the daily mail does best: narrating a photograph.

note the caption:

do you think william’s rethinking his choice to squat on the right? the mail makes it sound like there’s a country mile between them when he and kate are actually touching. he’s on the side but he’s hardly on the sidelines.

do you think william’s rethinking whatever he did to piss off the daily mail? because, for real, NOT TO PUT TOO FINE A POINT ON IT, but that was harsh.

dear william; you’re bald, you’ve opted to crouch in such a way that this is very very obvious, and you look like you’ve crashed your own christmas card.

safe to say the daily mail would’ve been perfectly glad with this:

OH BUT WAIT, they’re not for that either.

so the holy trinity is “understandable” but “slightly tactless.” and the daily mail‘s got tact in spades so they don’t go for that.

BUT WHAT ARE WE TO DO??

castigate william for being boring, but of course.

NOT TO PUT TOO FINE A POINT ON IT, but william is not glam.

the daily mail then goes on for paragraphs and paragraphs putting a very fine point on how not glam william is in contrast to his wife and how everyone is sad now when she doesn’t show up. this, in itself, is vair vair boring so i’mma skip to the good stuff and you can go see for yourself here.

so… in recent months there has been a tiny tempest brewing in the UK press around the matter of prince william. perhaps you were dazzled by the ongoing nonsense about harry and pippa and therefore missed this but it is out there and it is ongoing, though this letter from kensington palace (ie. the cambridges’ american press secretary) to the british press, which was sent in august, went over like a bunch of lead balloons and pretty much acted as a declaration of war.

the mail mentions this…

then pulls back…

and heaps praises upon her…

LITERALLY two weeks after saying she looked “absolutely shattered.”

(via)

alas, no more. this week, she’s on a christmas card and her hair is glossy and she’s a star.

NOT TO PUT TOO FINE A POINT ON IT, but this is an article based on photographic evidence from a christmas card, making the argument that kate is eclipsing william, and yet the article keep circling back to mention how william hardly merits mention.

despite the 8 paragraphs on kate’s hair and clothing, i find william the far more compelling character in this piece.

seriously. did this paragraph not reel you in???

that is like something out of shakespeare!! (though admittedly, the mail is taking some creative license in their paraphrase.) where is that guy in this story?

it’s like the mail, angered by his “sometimes extraordinary complaints about life in the spotlight,” is actively trying to undermine him by looking at his christmas card and telling us he’s irrelevant.

because, OF COURSE, william, no doubt, consults the daily mail every morning to see how he might be his best self, the mail‘s got his back…

“a white shirt might become a blue shirt” = WORST.ADVICE.EVER. seriously. we’ve just told you you’re bald, aesthetically unappealing on your christmas card and your wife is completely eclipsing you in your public life. william has many many problems and a blue shirt’s gonna solve ’em all.

“it’s not simply the case that an average-looking, balding man will always be in the shadow of a wife as beautiful as kate.” ETERNAL TRUTH. WORDS TO LIVE BY.

i like to imagine that kate is, at this very moment, up in her women’s auxiliary at sandringham embroidering that on a pillow.

the daily mail is nothing if not life-affirming.

so this does not have to be william’s destiny. except, you know, DIANA. and harry.

i feel like maybe we need to have an intervention with the people on the street so that they might be stirred to give the royals equal attention during walk-abouts and we might be spared daily mail interpretations of the happiness of royal marriages based on christmas cards. that would be a beginning at least.

you would think this was all leading up to a divorce announcement (her hair is glossy, but she steals my thunder!) but the mail ends its indictment on a quasi-happy note.

“broadly, yes”?? WHAT DO THAT MEAN?? his minding is deep and wide?

ok, so “with the exception of minor details,” he minds ALL OF THE TIME.

got it.

but lo, a christmas miracle amongst the ruins:

prince william is not an ego maniac commanding protection officers to shoot photographers!!! huzzah. he is simply a concerned spouse.

moreover, in things that might not have occurred to you during this opus on his loss of star power to his wife, william has star power all his own.

HIS WHOLE LIFE IS THUNDER. omg, it’s almost like he’s a PRINCE and will one day be KING. plus, you know, DIANA.

seriously, among the many competing narratives in play here, obvi i’m all about william calling photographers terrorists- that seems the more creatively rich- but this whole Everything Comes Back to Diana (christmas cards, william’s dullness, william’s star power) narrative cycle is pretty amazing too.

so william’s really good one-on-one. as someone who is also really good one-on-one, i get that and i applaud it.

you guys, the daily mail– counting on us, as they always do, not to read to the end- has built us a house of cards. watch it all come down…

WAIT. WHAT??! they’ve told us repeatedly here, from the insight they gained in looking at a christmas card, that william is like charles and william’s marriage is in threat. now, in the penultimate paragraph, the big reveal: his marriage “seems happy and stable.”

so his home life is fine. all is well. you know what the problem is?

the cropping. and you know who did that? tabloid editors.

round and round and round we go.

Royal Wedding COLOR © John Cole,The Scranton Times-Tribune

it’s an open secret that i hope to, eventually, write a book about tonya harding.

because i find her a compelling character, and am fascinated by how little her public presentation of herself has modified over time.

but also because i love stories and looking at the shifts within our telling of certain stories, stories of famous women of the late 20th century most especially.

in writing about jackie, i am always asked a version of the same question: is it really true she did [insert whatever rumor here]?

in telling people that i hope, one day to write about tonya harding, i am, again, asked a question: oh, she was the girl who clubbed that other girl, right? 

in both instances, the speaker is drawing on preexisting knowledge. but, with jackie, there is doubt. did she really sleep with her brother-in-law? did she really buy sweaters in every color? did she really talk in that babykins voice in real life?

in these conversations i always get the sense that the speaker is seeking a debunking. they want me to tell them how it really was, because they suspect they’ve not got the story right.

with tonya, there is no such uncertainty. with tonya, they’re just double-checking that, by tonya harding, i mean that girl who clubbed nancy kerrigan. i have not yet once been asked if she actually did.

which is STUNNING.

because she didn’t.

he did:

and yet…

do you remember the “infamous tonya harding and nancy kerrigan feud”? did it look anything like this?

ok. yeah. the last one there looks pretty accurate. but beyond that, according to people who were there, it looked nothing like this.

“this huge man,” she said.

you guys, we have reached a historical moment where the story of “this huge man” with a crowbar has transmogrified into a story where tonya harding walked up to nancy kerrigan and clubbed her on the knee.

perhaps i shouldn’t be so surprised because the groundwork for this narrative was laid early on…

and perhaps it was bound to always wind up this way given that girl-on-girl drama is a deeply entrenched literary trope.

and the story of girl drama on the ice…

17 FEB 1994: NANCY KERRIGAN AND TONYA HARDING OF THE UNITED STATES PASS EACH OTHER WITHOUT NOTICE DURING A PRACTICE SESSI0N AT THE 1994 LILLEHAMMER WINTER OLYMPICS. Mandatory Credit: Pascal Rondeau/ALLSPORT

is prettier and more immediately compelling than the story that this guy:

with his cosby cardigans and mustache (NEVER trust a man in a turtleneck, yo!), hired this dude:

to hit kerrigan with a crowbar.

in the story of tonya clubbing nancy, there is competition, emotional investment. LEOTARDS! LACE!

in the story of that rando guy clubbing kerrigan, there is simply money changing hands.

one story is the stuff of high drama. the other is just business. which do you prefer?

but the thing is, in reducing this story in this way, we are rewriting ONE OF THE GREATEST, MOST COMPLICATED, STUPID CRIME STORIES OF OUR TIME.

in the cultural shorthand, “pulling a tonya harding”…

equates to bad sportsmanship.

(i’m going to avoid the rabbit hole of trying to figure out what was happening with this in regard to gender politics in 2007, but here you go…

in case you need it.)

i’ve argued again and again that rhetoric like this sticks. i’ve written about how it stuck in my own life and how this has led to pretty much all of the topics i write about now.

but what is perhaps most profoundly disturbing about this is how unaware we are of these shifts in stories.

so that people who were alive in 1994, people who followed the story of tonya harding and nancy kerrigan in 1994, are no longer all that clear on the facts of what went down.

they, too, assume harding clubbed kerrigan.

that later story almost entirely overwrites the original.

is this to do with sheer repetition?

with imagery?

with our preference for simple narratives rather than the complex?

because there is nothing simple about this story.

not just because it’s ONE OF THE GREATEST STUPID CRIME STORIES OF OUR TIME, but because, at its core, it is about knowing.

i am interested in writing the life of tonya harding for many reasons, but chief among them is the fact that the story seems to me to hinge upon the question of when did tonya know what she knew.

something which, no matter how much i know about her, i will never ever be able to prove.

undoubtedly, at some point, she discovered her ex-husband- that guy:

had conspired with these other clowns:

PORTLAND, : Shawn Eric Eckardt (L), bodyguard of figure skater Tonya Harding, and fellow defendant Derrick Smith (R) are joined by Smith’s attorney Robert Goffredi 14 January 1994 as they face Judge Donald Londer during their arraignment on charges of conspiracy to commit assault in the attack on skater Nancy Kerrigan. The two men were charged for the 06 January 1994 attack on Kerrigan. (Photo credit: CHRIS WILKINS/AFP/Getty Images)

all of which culminated in the infamous attack:

but when did she know this? and what were the circumstances of her knowing this?

harding doesn’t exactly help us out here, because her story has changed over time.

details of sexual assault have gradually entered the telling.

from there, celebrity boxing and a series of bizarre and violent incidents in her personal life- several of them involving her truck- have only added to the generally accepted notion that she’s trailer trash, an image that has always been used to dehumanize her and justify our use of her as a cultural laughingstock.

hers is, as i see it, a story of bad choices and rotten luck.

but it is also the story of a woman who has never really seemed to fit into the times in which she lives. a woman who has never been feminine enough, pretty enough, artistic enough, classy enough, sorry enough.

she is also a woman who has, for over twenty years now, refused to apologize for that.

18 february 1992, the san bernardino county sun

aaron schock. remember him?

aaron schock, instagram

the republican from illinois…

the first member of congress of my generation…

reputed to be the fittest…

he of the riveting instagram…

aaron schock, instagram

this infamous ensemble…

and felled by the downton abbey themed office on this day in history last year?

let’s back up…

downton abbey is a little show that aired on the BBC from 2010 to 2015 and which aired in the US on PBS.

it was about days of yore and changing times in britain, the dismantling (somewhat) of the class system, and pretty people coping with change. (i use the past tense because it is over in britain… i know, i know, it is alive and ongoing yet for ya’ll in the US.)

it’s worth pointing out that downton abbey was set in BRITAIN, that the characters were BRITISH, and that some of them were vair vair wealthy.

one wonders how this story would differ had the decor in schock’s office revolved around the good wife or scandal…

but lo:

beware: out of necessity and interest, i am going to vastly oversimplify this story. to say that aaron schock was forced to resign because of his downton abbey office is much like saying richard nixon resigned because some people bugged DNC headquarters in the summer of 1972. yeah, you could say that, but actually about a slew of other things connected to bring out the resignation. it wasn’t just the one.

aaron schock’s downton abbey office was one of the things, but “financial malfeasance” perhaps more accurately captures the spirit of events (the guardian has a useful guide to instagrammed evidence).

the guardian

though, let’s face it, “death by decor” makes for the more ludicrous- therefore, BETTER- headline.

the designer, annie brahler of illinois, seems to have been pleased with her work, for it is she who led ben terris on the tour of schock’s office which led to the displeasure of schock’s communications director and the resulting article in the washington post on schock’s staff’s squeamishness about having the newly done up downton decor photographed. (note how this begins to sound like a children’s book…)

reception area, aaron schock’s office, via the washington post

there was debate about schock’s sexuality prior to the downton development. the aforementioned belt and abs being the primary evidence in a narrative that the downton office appeared to further support. and much of the press coverage in the wake of the revelation of the downton decor had a certain wink-wink-nudge-nudge vibe re: the campiness of decorating one’s office in the style of a soap opera.

what intrigues me, however, is the clash of culture: the notion of an american congressman decorating his office in british style.

much as we love “the special relationship,” this would seem a bit close for comfort.

a situation in no way helped by the fact that the firm doing the decor was literally named EURO TRASH.

consider the optics: a congressman from middle america gets his office refurbished for free in the style of a british soap opera by a company peddling the european sensibility.

not smart.

there are many problems within this story and schock appears to have done a number of financially malfeasant things, but i think the key to the joke here, the reason why this downton story is so especially ridiculous, is because it is downton. and, as a result, it looks so inevitable, so obvious that this would go wrong.

downton abbey is, first and foremost, a soap opera. a british soap opera.

and so to decorate one’s office à la downton is kinda like if margaret thatcher had decorated her digs à la guiding light. 

i know, i know, it is actually nothing like that but i really wanted an excuse to mention guiding light and evoke the spirt of alan-michael spauling and his love triangle with eleni and frank.

♥♥♥♥♥

ANYWAY. aaron schock. this guy.

aaron schock, instagram

(if asked to pinpoint the moment where his instagram jumped the shark, i would have to cite the above. and fyi, aaron schock’s downton abbey office appears to have been the nail in the coffin of aaron schock’s instagram….

which is sad for a number of reasons, one of which is this:

ANYWAY…)

there’d be an almost jamesian element to this story were it not already set in america.

naive, trusting american undone by european decadence. let us never forget, the decorating company was literally named EURO TRASH. just the reality of how bad that sounds should have sent off warning bells with someone on his staff!

perhaps there’s a musical to be found in the contours of this story… a hamilton-esque revival of the aaron schock story wherein aaron schock is isabel archer and annie brahler of euro trash is the scheming madam merle. alas aaron as isabel had no ralph touchett.

aaron schock, instagram

i’m reminded here of the brouhaha over jackie’s francophile tendencies. decor drama, in DC, is nothing new.

but jackie was wizened and circumvented this brouhaha by decorating the white house in the style of jefferson- great american president, lover of all things french.

13 December, 1961, White House Rooms, Christmas decorations: East Room, Red Room, Green Room, Blue Room, State Dining Room, Cross Hall (Robert Knudsen. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)

decor can be done diplomatically (ie. sneakily), with a nod to one’s own culture rather than rubbernecking the atlantic.

surely there was a famous illinoisian who spent some time in britain. surely schock’s office could have been decorated in the spirit of that’s man’s library or some such, and then problem = solved.

alas, they looked to pop culture and soap operas rather than History and america. there were ways around this. it needn’t have been so bad.

financial perspicacity being, obviously, step one. but a little historical research and the problem of britishness would’ve been elided as well.

if there’s a moral to be had here, it’s probably that it would behoove us all to be more wary of red rooms as they seem to get everyone into trouble. though, i guess, if we’re speaking of historically red rooms, we must remember: it could also have been much worse…

i am writing about feelings. i am writing about the past. i am analyzing culture.

i am analyzing a culture in which it does not feel safe to write about the feelings i have about this woman (for the record, i second all of this), and i am also analyzing the feeling that i am not entitled to these feelings and what that tells us about our culture.

i am writing about hillary clinton because i find it troubling and awful and angering that hillary clinton is someone it does not feel safe to write about.

i’ve written before about how hillary hurts.

i’ve written before about why i believe that is.

i’ve repeatedly said i do not want to write about hillary clinton.

i’ll also acknowledge that i usually wind up doing what i say i absolutely know i do not want to do.

so there’s that.

let’s do this.

to crib a line from ecclesiastes: what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

you guys, NONE OF THIS IS NEW. it is simply not possible to over-exaggerate this.

THIS IS NOT NEW. it was new-ish in 1992, MAYBE. maybe you could make a case for that, but not now. in spite of our cultural amnesia, it is most definitely not new now.

before the emails, before benghazi, before instagram, before 2008, before lewinsky, before the widespread use of the internet, before whitewater, before the death of vince foster, before healthcare, before the travel office scandal, before her husband was even elected, this woman was hated.

and this was, as far back as 1992, associated with her having a voice and having opinions.

this has to do with, i believe, the fact that something deeply strange was happening with feminism at the time. something i’m probably going to spend the next few years unpacking around tonya harding and hillary clinton, but which would help explain why HRC is now loathed with equal vigor by women on opposite ends of the political spectrum.

fyi, so that i can stop having conversations like this one…

feminism is about equality, not superiority. not man-hating and bra-burning. it really is just that women are the equals of men and the acknowledgment that they are often not treated as such.

there’s confusion now around this definition. a confusion that is also a problem which- SURPRISE!- we’ve inherited from the 90s.

29 june 1998

“many women have come to see the feminist movement as anti-male, anti-child, anti-family, anti-feminine,” the new york times’ political columnist william safire quoted the novelist sally quinn as saying in 1992. were that not damning enough, quinn is alleged to have expounded that these ideologies were served up “often with overtones of lesbianism and man-hating.”

but, readers need not lose heart, for, safire suggested, if “macho feminism” was dead, there was a “new natural womanism” of “lasting partnership and personal fulfillment,” as embodied by hillary clinton and marilyn quayle.

at the dawn of 1992, even safire—a nixonian conservative—was optimistic for this “new” feminism.

The Clintons at the Democratic National Convention. July 15, 1992. (AP Photo/Doug Mills)

sadly, the charms of “new” feminism didn’t last long.

10 may 1993

four years later, in a times op-ed entitled “blizzard of lies,” safire would brand clinton a “congenital liar.” a compelling case was being made, he wrote, “that she is compelled to mislead, and to ensnare her subordinates and friends in a web of deceit.”

“she had good reasons to lie,” safire contended, “she is in the longtime habit of lying; and she has never been called to account for lying herself or in suborning lying in her aides and friends.”

i, of course, remember reading this as a girl because the word “congenital” seemed so shocking to my prudish 15-year-old self. it seemed especially profane applied to the first lady.

in june 1994, bill clinton complained to newsweek’s eleanor clift: ‘what’s really amazing is that if [hillary] weren’t my wife, people would be throwing garlands at her feet, probably, for all the stuff she’s accomplished. but if you’re somebody’s wife, you’re still not supposed to have a mind.”

a great quote. and one i’ve always assumed would probably be true. but now i wonder… is it not just that she was his wife but that she was a woman? would not being bill clinton’s wife have been enough? does it really have anything to do with him?

would we have hated her regardless because she happened to enter public life at a time when we didn’t want women who spoke their minds?

“no other wannabe first lady has caught so much flak as mrs. clinton while still on the campaign trail,” the syndicated columnist sandy grady wrote in april 1992, a full three months before her husband became his party’s candidate. “you hear sidewalk critics call her the ice queen, the school-marm, the lady legal eagle, the fem radical, the yuppie wife from hell.”

it was a furor he found puzzling, because she seemed to him the realization of all the aims of the women’s liberation movement: “isn’t someone who’s a yale law grad, activist lawyer, campaign partner, wife and mother supposedly a paragon of the new american woman who has it all?”

“who do they want,” he wondered, “another mamie eisenhower?”

i would argue, no…

jacques lowe

for, in the early 90s, the jackie nostalgia is already percolating.

in a 1990 article on the return of the jackie kennedy look in fashion, the author speculated that the pillbox hats and sleek shift dresses of jackie’s kennedy days were evocative of “what many american women have worked hard not to be in the intervening 30 years,” and noted that their current vogue signaled that this was “what some are yearning to be—or seem—again.”

san bernardino county sun, 14 march 1990

she’s referencing a peter lindbergh spread in the march 1990 vogue, featuring helena christensen (who bore more than a passing resemblance to JKO).

peter lindbergh, vogue, march 1990

peter lindbergh, vogue, march 1990

this wasn’t limited to the US. in september 1990, italian vogue featured a similarly JKO-ish homage.

Vogue Italia, september 1990. Model- Linda Evangelista Photographer- Patrick Demarchelier

so JKO nostalgia was already in the culture and, with JKO’s death in may 1994, this yearning would move even more vividly to the forefront at a time when HRC was under fire in the whitewater investigation. (fyi, JKO doesn’t get out of this unscathed, a circumstance to which i will return towards the end.)

my point here is that HRC came to public prominence at a time when there was A LOT ‘O CONFLICT amongst women about what kind of public woman they wanted and also a lot of anxiety in the culture more generally about what kind of a lady hillary clinton was.

1993

october 1995

reading fashion magazine headlines isn’t necessarily the best way to predict cultural trends, but as of december 1992, vogue was advocating “soft, simple, and sexy.”

US vogue, december 1992

it is perhaps significant that hillary clinton has never been portrayed as being any of those things.

what she has been, for over 20 years now, is a rorschach.

in particular, i would argue, a rorschach for women in which we consider the problem of “having it all” and the reality that we cannot.

i’ve written before about inequalities in the work place, double-standards that persist to this day. the other day, a friend sent me this article on yes men and no women and said that, combined with my article on women and admin, it pretty much provided a summary of her whole work life.

via the cut

THIS BROKE MY HEART.

which was further wrenched by this new york times article on HRC’s voice and sexism…

NYT, 4 february 2016

wherein i stumbled upon this:

which, well, good for denise graveline fulfilling a need, but that this should be a need is heart-breaking.

as is the fact that it is about “moderating” panels rather than featuring on them. to moderate a panel is admin. to be on a panel is to be identified as an expert, and to be the star. that there, my friends, is inequality.

HRC was aware of this endemic inequality and women’s struggle to cope with it and she hoped, in 1992, that her story might get a conversation going to mitigate it and bring about change.

alas, over twenty years later, we are still struggling to have that conversation- as we see in the aforementioned yes-men/no-women article from the cut:

and we are still using hillary clinton to do so.

the fate of the name “hillary” seems evidence of our ongoing wariness as regards this.

via the washington post

it’s worth noting that this maybe isn’t as damning as it initially appears…

as most names tend to drop off. but it is provocative that hillary dips as it’s on the rise, and that the sharpness of its decline is as precipitous as that of barack.

three years ago, i began doing a phd for which i intended to write a biography of jackie onassis. in explaining to my supervisors the importance of jackie onassis, again and again, i returned to hillary clinton. i could not think about why jackie onassis mattered to me without putting jackie onassis’ life in the historical context of hillary clinton’s being first lady. i could not write jackie onassis’ life without mentioning the 90s.

two years ago, during a trip to paris and a long weekend after, i began writing an article for an academic journal on jackie onassis’ “silence.” about how she was not silent but, when she died in 1994, she was memorialized as such and her “silence” was fetishized to such an extent that many people now believe she never gave an interview.

this article is a huge ‘ol mess, and it seems unlikely to ever see the light of day. but what it was getting at, though i did not know it at the time, was my continuing anger over women’s voicelessness in american society.

it’s an anger stemming from my own experience of the 90s and the resulting confusion.

[trans: When XXXXXXX and I spoke today she asked me if I believed in equal rights for women. I said that I did. She seemed quite shocked by my reply. She told me women should be submissive to their husbands. I didn’t say anything else but I now wonder if I’m for equal rights. I’m certainly against sexism and the abuse women receive because of their sex. I don’t think that is fair. But I do think women deserved the right to vote, hold property, be in Congress, and have opinions. And I do hope that I shall live to see the first female president. I guess I am a feminist, but I don’t see anything wrong with that unless one takes a violent approach. I hope my views weren’t out of line. I would never actually express them.
F.C.]

fun fact: jackie’s voice was controversial too. “why would a married woman with two children wish to dress and talk in a 13-year-old ‘kittenish’ manner?’ one viewer asked the el paso herald-post, after the 1962 broadcast of the white house tour. “to do so, as an average housewife, would be ridiculous; however, to do so in the white house is disgusting.”

when jackie onassis died on 19 may 1994, she was hailed as the greatest first lady in history but her voice remained the only dissonant note.

“only her voice, whisper-thin and high-pitched, was at odds with her regal bearing,” the philadelphia inquirer observed, an especially damning judgement in light of the fact that “even her incessant smoking didn’t mar her noble image.”

i would contextualize that will the contemporary attitudes towards hillary and say, OF COURSE her voice was bound to be problematic in a society that wanted silent women.

and here we are, with hillary now. a woman who has been speaking in public for over 20 years and whose voice we do not like. “shrill,” they say.

not to keep driving everyone back to my “women and admin” post, BUT, as i wrote then…

i wonder: is the worry of being shrill a feature of the male experience?…

i fear i am sounding shrill. i am pathologically afraid of sounding shrill. i have felt, as long as i can remember, that i must never, ever allow others to feel that i sound shrill…

i am less afraid of sounding strident than sounding shrill because i assume stridency is a distant country whilst shrill is my natural register.

true story: i still hope to live to see the day the united states has its first female president.

another true story: because of all of the above and our lack of understanding about it or awareness of it, i honestly do not believe that i will.

L.A., october 2014

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Tonya Harding. Specifically, I wrote about how tonya harding’s story is très très complicated and it gets très très simplified in its current, cultural shorthand form.

Yo, voilà:

Let’s take a look…

We’ll begin with this 31^st January article, where some dude who runs some show I’ve never heard of on the UK’s Channel 4 basically equates Tonya Harding with Macbeth.

Again, here, Harding is cultural shorthand for cutthroat competition. This is usually how she’s used.

Provocatively, this parallel is specifically applied to female participants on the show. Which is, again, how Harding is usually used.

She is a symbol of competitive womanhood.

Which, let’s face it, is culturally not something we prize.

This dude on this show I’ve never heard of is evoking the ghost of Tonya to excite viewership. He is trying to lure viewers with the notion that there will be blood!

Never mind the historical inaccuracy that there was neither stabbing nor poisoning in the Tonya Harding episode.

As I mentioned previously, the Tonya Harding episode is about knowledge.

Knowledge is clearly not what this show is about. And knowledge is something that it is really hard to represent in a cultural archetype, which is what Harding has become.

Exhibit B:

Full disclosure: this is hands down one of the strangest uses of Harding that I have seen since I started paying attention to our cultural use of her. Historically, it makes absolutely no sense.

If you follow politics at all or encounter the news in any way, you no doubt know that there’s a political brouhaha brewing over the recently deceased Antonin Scalia’s replacement on the Supreme Court.

Perhaps you wonder, what the hell does that have to do with Tonya Harding? This headline might lead you to believe that it has something to do with her, but, in reality, I assure you, it does not.

Though Harding is prominent in the headline, in the article itself, we do not get to her until the end. At which point we have this:

Let’s break this down.

Barry Bonds allegedly took performance enhancing drugs. In 2007, he was indicted on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. The perjury charges were later dropped and while he was convicted of obstruction of justice, this was later overturned. He was not banned from MLB.

Lance Armstrong was dogged by allegations of doping for over a DECADE. He repeatedly lied about his use of performance enhancing drugs and threatened teammates and journalists.

Bill Belichick is coach of the Patriots. In 2007, a Patriots spy was caught filming the defensive signals of the New York Jets from the sidelines. Sanctions were imposed on Belichick but he wasn’t fired.

Tonya Harding, in contrast, was separated from someone who allegedly conspired to attack her competition.

At some point, it is alleged, she found out about this and did not immediately go to the authorities.

This may or may not have been because she felt her life was at risk.

Please note: THESE STORIES ARE IN NO WAY THE SAME.

Like, even remotely. Armstrong, Belichick and Bonds were all accused of cheating. They all chose to cheat.

Harding was accused of knowing. She made choices too, but- outside of the media- it has not been alleged that the conspiracy to injure Nancy Kerrigan was done at Harding’s behest.

To put her on par with these three dudes is to grossly misunderstand and distort her story. To put in her in the headline as though she is representative of the entire phenomenon of cheating and is a “big-time cheater” herself  is to perpetrate an ongoing myth about what she actually did. It is both cheap and irresponsible.

My google alert on Tonya Harding maybe only 1 time out of 50 actually brings up something on Tonya Harding. Those other 49 times, it brings up stuff like this, where Tonya Harding’s name is used as a cultural shorthand or a joke, in such a way that it really has nothing to do with what happened to Tonya Harding.

I’ve only a couple scattered lines written for the book I eventually hope to write about Tonya Harding, but early on in what I have, there is this:

There’s this thing that happens with your story, where people already assume that they know it, own it, and when they ask you to tell it, they no longer even really listen. 

It is, we have been repeatedly told, Leonardo DiCaprio’s year.

(via replaceface)

Because, y’know, he survived the making of a movie.

December 2015

(While we’re here, in things I cannot unsee…

RIGHT?!?!!!

While we’re here, let’s also go here, and marvel at this most marvelous bit of Revenant marketing…

January 2016

Because DID YOU EVEN KNOW SUCH A PUBLICATION EXISTED?!?! Much less that it was “The Premier Magazine of the West”?? Anyway…)

As I said, it is, we have repeatedly been told, Leo’s year.

Even his effort to win an Academy Award has become an endurance test. Not unlike the presidential primaries.

Endorsements have been given…

On the off-chance that he loses, the Russians are crafting a homemade Oscar.

(FYI, Gerard Depardieu is having none of it.)

IT IS LEO’S YEAR, ya’ll. Or so we’ve been told. LEO WILL WIN THE OSCAR, guys. Or so we’ve been led to believe.

Because somewhere between his nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for the Wolf of Wall Street in 2014 and his nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for The Revenant in 2016, Leonard DiCaprio has become the Susan Lucci of the Academy Awards.

Between 1978 and 1998, Lucci, you will no doubt recall, was nominated 18 times for an Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Daytime Emmy. Having paid relatively little attention to daytime dramas, I nonetheless remember the DRAMA when she finally won in 1999.

For real, it was a big deal. Check out the recap from Wikipedia:

After 18 failed nominations, she finally won in 1999.^[16][17] When presenter Shemar Moore announced Lucci’s name, stating “the streak is over,” the audience erupted in a standing ovation, lasting several minutes. As Lucci took to the stage, cameras caught All My Children co-stars Kelly Ripa and Marcy Walker weeping openly, along with long-time supporter, actress and television host Rosie O’Donnell. Actor Ingo Rademacher was seen bowing in the aisles and talk show host Oprah Winfrey rushing the stage cheering from the wings.

For the record, this is only Leo’s fifth Oscar nomination in 22 years. By Lucci standards, that ain’t nothing.

But this narrative of Leo’s being “rather infamously” denied an Oscar, has roots in his 2014 loss, when there was a notable tilt towards the narrative line of “HOW LONG WILL LEO BE DENIED??”

Hence the feeling of “it’s Leo’s year”… it was already pretty much decided in 2014 that the next time should be it. Never mind that he’s been regaling us with stories of his survival for the last six months. (Actually, maybe it’s only been three months, but doesn’t it feel like six??)

This narrative is interesting in that it seems to be coexisting with the mainstreaming of the “Leo is a modelizing toxic bachelor” narrative.

Behold:

via Slate.com

If you’ve been even casually following the love life of Leonardo Dicaprio, then it will come as no surprise that he dates models. That he is what Candace Bushnell’s Carrie Bradshaw would call a “modelizer.”

Leo dates younger women who are models. So what? This is old news.  It was a joke at the 2014 Golden Globes.

Fundamentally, the story has not changed as regards to its particulars. However, it has migrated. It’s too simple to characterize this as a migration from gossip to mainstream, as so much of our news is rooted in gossip anyway. Perhaps it is better to characterize it as a slippage from the gossip of the few into a statement of accepted fact.

It is, then, perhaps a hop, skip and a month to this:

I hesitate to call this the most alarmingly stupid thing the Daily Mail has produced this year, as the year is young and the Daily Mail is nothing if not a publication all-out committed to constantly out-doing itself. But, still, this thing is AWFUL.

It is the Daily Mail‘s version of rolling out the welcome mat when DiCaprio recently visited London for the BAFTAs. I’m not even sure he’d left before this hit the Mail‘s site.

Full disclosure: I’ve long been bothered by the disconnect between DiCaprio’s public and private lives. The disconnect captured in this juxtaposition:

I am bothered by this because I am selfish and I want us all to be our best selves and to have perfectly aligned professional and private lives. Being a biographer, I know this is an impossibility. I also know that, as people, we are all horrible paradoxes and there are huge chunks of our lives that don’t make sense to us, much less to other people, and that that is part of the wonder of being human- the irreconcilability of all those diverse pieces.

So I’m not criticizing DiCaprio’s choices here. I’m criticizing the way he is written about.

Because I think we are, currently, doing something culturally interesting with that disconnect between his public persona, his professional and private lives.

My work looks at the flow of stories through culture, and the changes that accrue in those stories over time.

This story has not changed. It has been here, like this, all along. But it is, in the present moment, in this Oscar season, moving to the fore in bizarro ways.

There are two things that, I think, have directly contributed to this: (1) Leonardo DiCaprio turned 40 (he is, currently, 41), and (2) George Clooney got married.

George Clooney’s marriage left a vacancy in the ranks of Hollywood’s leading, unmarried, middle-aged(ish) toxic bachelor men. Because he is now squarely in the age at which America deems it desirable that men be married and making families, DiCaprio has received this hand-me-down narrative.

In interviews, he’s now asked about marriage and family.

This has been going on approximately since the Great Gatsby junket in 2013, so it probably has more to do with his age than with Clooney, but Clooney helps.

Besides DiCaprio, since the marriage of Clooney, I can think of no other unmarried man in Hollywood whose love life gets this kind of attention.

It’s not this kind of attention, mind you:

Because men, typically, do not get cover of celebrity magazines kind of attention unless they’re attached to a famous woman and/or married. But, much as was the case for so many years with Clooney, we seem to have some strange cultural investment in Leonardo DiCaprio’s success- on both a professional and romantical scale.

But I do not remember Clooney coming in for the kind of criticism that DiCaprio has gotten. Yes, Clooney’s showgirls and actresses were gently mocked on gossip sites, but there wasn’t the viciousness, nor the moralizing, that there is around the critique of DiCaprio.

Let’s return to the Daily Mail, Bastion of Values and Sound Moral Judgements…

That got real dark real fast, non? Wait for it…

Notice the juxtaposition of his work and his private life. This lede is in his work, but this is a critique, not of his work, but of his self.

Note the extremes. He is #1, the biggest, and the most wretched.

I’ve been teaching Ovid this week and, seriously, doesn’t sound like the rape of Europa or something?

As her fear was

Little by little diminished, he offered his chest for her virgin

Hand to caress and his horns to be decked with fresh flowers. The royal

Maiden, not knowing on whom she was sitting, was even so bold as

Also to climb on the back of the bull. As the god very slowly

Inched from the shore and the dry land he planted his spurious footprints

Deep in the shallows. Thus swimming out farther, he carried his prey off

Into the midst of the sea. Almost fainting with terror she glanced back,

As she was carried away, at the shore left behind. As she gripped one

Horn in her right hand while clutching the back of the beast with the other,

Meanwhile her fluttering draperies billowed behind on the sea breeze.

(Ovid, The Metamorphoses, The Rape of Europa, Book II)

Gillis Coignet: The Rape of Europa

It certainly doesn’t sound like  writing about a real person.

Oh but wait, it goes on…

HOW MYTHIC IS THAT?! SERIOUSLY. Someone get on this. Rewrite the Metamorphoses with Leo as Jove.

L’enlèvement d’Europe, 1727, Museum of Art, Philadelphia

And, lo, the moralizing…

Mayhaps you are wondering where Clooney is in all of this. Fear Not! He’s here…

The sentence structure is confusing. Is DiCaprio meant to do better than Clooney? Or is Clooney the example of how DiCaprio can better himself? Or is it both??

“Even George Clooney settled down and got married!” Note the implication that one must marry if one is not to be “sad and seedy,” if one is to have companionship in one’s “twilight years.” I mean, dear God, how much do you want to go hugJack Nicholson here??

I write about the way we write about women’s lives differently than we write the lives of men. But sometimes, we don’t. Sometimes, and I’m beginning to wonder how much this has to do with age, we write men and women’s lives the exact same way.

Leo must marry lest he be sad and alone. About how many women has the same thing been said?

Look at the commendations for Leo’s prior girlfriends…

First of all, I HATE it when adults are demeaned through comparison to children in sweet shops. Jackie got this all the time. It’s grotesque. We can do better.

Secondly… who both “went on to marry and start families.” Because what single person doesn’t long to have their love life publicly compared to the successful loves lives of their exes?

And if you think this isn’t about us, think again…

DON’T LAUGH, WE DO NOT WANT TO BE LEO BECAUSE IT WILL ONLY LEAD TO THE CORRODING OF OUR SOULS!!!!!

Along with his being an only child (an analysis which, as a fellow only child, I feel qualified to declare REEKS of Person Who Had Siblings elitism), DiCaprio’s mother seems to take the fall for this…

Which ties in nicely with the article the Mail subsequently published on his relationship with his mom…

But seriously. This is some hard-core concern-trolling of leo’s love life, no?

It is his year! He will win the Oscar! It’s provocative that at a time when his professional success seems a foregone conclusion, the narrative around his love life would move so prominently to the fore. It suggests we’ve some pretty hefty anxiety going on about men and marriage and masculinity.

Leo is my forever love. Because, like many, I was a 14 year-old girl when Romeo & Juliet was released and he was shoved into a corner of my heart I’d not previously known existed.

I have not seen The Revenant. I do not expect to, because it seems quite clearly to be a movie that was not made with me in mind.

This Daily Mail article was written by a woman, as was the critique on Slate. It seems a long leap of the imagination and logic to suggest that we women are punishing Leo for repeatedly making movies that don’t really appeal to us- movies which, sometimes, actually seem intended to alienate us. But then, in analyzing culture, it is often the least plausible explanation which winds up making the most sense in the end.

Jack Dawson encouraged Rose DeWitt Bukater. She was smart and daring and he was ok with that. A message with an extraordinary appeal to a generation of girls so often subjected to culture that reenforced a sense of their limitations.

Culture isn’t universal and my interpretation of the dynamic existing between women and Leonardo DiCaprio could be total bunk.

More than anything, I want to suggest that no one alive in the world right now benefits from articles so silly and judgmental as this. But also I want to bookmark this cultural moment, to pinpoint the strange thing I see happening though I can’t quite identify what it is, so that once time has passed, once the story has developed more, we can all come back here and, from a point of greater clarity, think, “Oh, yeah, that was weird,” with a slightly greater understanding of why that was.

Man, the unmarried men are taking a beating this week. And lest you imagine this is confined to the pages of the Daily Mail and the person of Leo “Lothario” DiCaprio, nope, ’tis not. Enter US Weekly and Prince Harry.

We have, of course, been here before. Twice before, actually. This has also had something to do with age- specifically, Harry’s 30th birthday in 2014, whereupon there was a noticeable increase in the narrative of Harry Has To Marry RightNOW.

The Mail, of course, sounded the alarm in August 2014:

And then in May 2015, Harry gave an interview where he said this:

“There come times when you think now is the time to settle down or now is not. But I don’t think you can force these things. You know, it will happen when it’s going to happen. Of course, I would love to have kids right now, but there’s a process … that one has to go through.”

The Guardian, in turn, in its coverage of the tabloids’ coverage of this interview, took things a step further and asked:

Noting…

And suggesting…

The latter point I’d agree with 100%. That we’re finding parity in shitty, marriage plot storytelling rather than expanding the possibilities for everyone, however, I find grim.

The Guardian‘s claim (and this Bridget Jones parallel does seem to have arisen in the Guardian‘s reportage rather than that of the tabloids), of course, somewhat predictably led to this declaration from the Prince:

So we live in a world where Prince Harry is on the record as having officially denied that he is Bridget Jones. (Is it really such a stretch then that Donald Trump is running for the Presidency??)

Which brings us to The Now and back to US Weekly…

As LaineyGossip has pointed out, one of the great hilarities of this article is that, fed up with the single life and ready to settle down with a princess, Harry is pursuing two women.

Sounds like some princely American-style dating, no?

Seriously, odds are 9,000 to 1 that Talia Ergas is American. I’ve never heard a single British person talk about putting themselves out there.

Talia is also, I imagine, Team Chelsey (I mean, really, aren’t we all?), an inclination indicated by this little non sequitur…

Though the phrasing in this paragraph makes it sound like Davy is one of the things the Prince has to “get done before settling down.”

This is, you will note, a SIGNIFICANTLY frothier piece that what the Daily Mail did to Leo. Harry may be “fed up with the single life,” but US Weekly takes it as an article of faith that he will not “end up miserable and alone.”

In their responses to the question of whether they will marry, DiCaprio and Prince Harry are essentially saying the same thing: it’ll happen when it happens. Since Harry is royal, there’s an assumption that it MUST happen for him eventually, whereas this is an arena in which DiCaprio- free of dynastic demands- has far more free will and choice.

There is, however, one key difference in the way these quite similar stories are being told. Did you catch it?

Prince Harry is “Fed Up.” He wants to be married. This is what leads to the Bridget Jones parallel- the sense that he wants to be married and he is not.

DiCaprio is also not married but the assumption about him is precisely the opposite, which is probably what leads to the extreme moralizing in the Daily Mail piece.

Leo does not appear to be fed up with the single life, and he is not publicly lamenting his unmarried status. If anything, he appears to revel in it.

How does loving the single life turn out? Not pretty, if the Daily Mail is to be believed…

NEVER FORGET…

If, as the Guardian claims, we are starting to write men’s love lives as we write about those of women, then I’m intrigued about where the “Lothario DiCaprio” narrative fits in. When women are unmarried, they are typically written as Prince Harry “Bridget Jones” Windsor is here- albeit with less generosity and the assumption of more personal blame in their sad and lonely unmarried fates.

But what about when women are single by choice? I’m trying to think of a female celebrity where that is the narrative and I can’t think of one. The story is always one of finding love, losing love, wanting to find love, finding love again, losing love forever, remembering the love one once had.

Women, it seems, do nothing but fall in and out of love. And, of course, marry.

Perhaps this is the story because of a cultural assumption that no woman is single by choice, and so women’s stories always hinge upon either marriage or the tragedy of its denial.

But the lesson we learn from Leo is that there’s a similar plot for men. It looks different, yes. Leo, here, has choices, and it is those choices that the Daily Mail is taking issue with.

His ex-girlfriends have married and started families. Leo has chosen to be with models and remain a bachelor. He is not “fed up” with being single and does not appear to be longing to “settle down.”

Nowhere in this 984 word article does the author consider that maybe the life Leo is living is, in fact, the life Leo wants.

There was loads ‘o brouhaha around the 20th anniversary of The Wacking. There was, however- surprise, surprise- almost jack doodely around the 25th anniversary of Tonya Harding’s landing of the triple axel at the U.S. Nationals on 16 February 1991.

A jubilant Tonya Harding acknowledged the crowd as she came out of her successful triple axel on her way to winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on Feb. 16, 1991 in Minneapolis. Harding, of Portland, Oregon, became the first American woman to perform a triple axel in competition. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

A milestone that is significant because, in the 25 years since, only one other American woman has managed it and Harding remains the only American woman to have completed it in international competition.

A jubilant Tonya Harding acknowledged the crowd as she came out of her successful triple axel on her way to winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championships on Feb. 16, 1991 in Minneapolis. Harding, of Portland, Oregon, became the first American woman to perform a triple axel in competition. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

HUGE BIG DEAL, ya’ll, because only five women EVAH have completed it in international competition.

At the time, way back in ’91, Harding’s accomplishment was “historic.”

The San Bernardino County Sun, 17 February 1991

In part, I gather, because the Soviet Union was still a thing and had ten months of life left in it, and the Americans were especially keen on racking up accomplishments the Soviets had yet to get.

So huzzah, America. Way to win.

Santa Cruz Sentinel, 17 February 1991

It’s perhaps no surprise that Harding’s narrative here was vair, vair bootstraps. And also has some amazing gender business going on.

Santa Cruz Sentinel, 17 February 1991

“… which some men don’t do…”!!! BURN.

I remind you: this is 1991.

The USSR still exists.

Desert Storm is happening.

Which means Wolf Blitzer was just a wee youngin…

and I was learning long division.

She…

was married to someone who was not yet officially running for the presidency.

1991, yo.

In the midst of this… AMERICA FOR THE WIN.

Skating-wise, it was America’s year.

Tonya Harding of Portland, Ore., raises her trophies after winning the U.S. Figure Skating Championship in Minneapolis, Minn., on Saturday, Feb. 16, 1991. Harding became the first American woman to successfully complete a triple axel in competition at the event. At left is Kristi Yamaguchi, with third place Nancy Kerrigan at right. (AP Photo/Larry Salzman)

At the World Championship the following month, there was some musical chairs on the podium but it was still a U.S. sweep.

And there was much togetherness amid flags…

Though Yamaguchi was clearly the winner…

It was supposed to be the triple axel that initially changed Tonya Harding’s life. In retrospect, we know that that was not to be the case for long, but it was for awhile, as the New York Times noted before the World Championships that March.

“A Triple Axel With Rippling Effects,” NYT, 12 March 1991

At the Worlds, Harding did another triple axle, but it wasn’t enough to put her over Yamaguchi, who skated clean and was lauded as an “artist” whereas Harding was always primarily an athlete. And a bold one at that.

“A Triple Axel With Rippling Effects,” NYT, 12 March 1991

One of my favorite things about Harding is that she continued doing the triple axel. She didn’t always go for it. When she did, she didn’t always land it. But on through to 1994, it remained a part of her program and, when it happened, it was a thing of beauty.

I still remember the awe in Verne Lundquist’s voice when she whipped one out during an Olympic warm-up.

She kept it in when the impulse would have been to cut it. It was too risky, too daring; at a certain point, the odds of her landing it in competition became very slim. But she kept it in.

In retrospect, it’s easy to read this as desperation. I think it was, at the time, sheer guts.

seriously, has there ever been a more appropriate moment for that word popularized by everyone’s 2012 olympic boyfriend ryan lochte?

JEAH!

and lo, this became an impossibility…

let’s take stock…

i never thought i’d be applauding the mail for diversity in word choice but the phrase “long-overdue” looks innovative in this context, given the fact that it seems to have been a requirement of every headline writer in the world that the word “finally” be included in the announcement of dicaprio’s win.

it is used with such frequency that i wonder if we have lost touch with the meaning of this word…

given that the idea that dicaprio was due an oscar arose in 2014…

as ET pointed out, after his loss for wolf of wall street, the internet collectively decided his Time had come…

so by “FINALLY,” what we mean is the period from 2 march 2014 to 28 february 2016.

by “FINALLY,” we are referring to a 728 day span of time wherein the world had decided leo should have an oscar and wherein he did not.

728 days. only 88 days longer than an elephant pregnancy and 367 days shorter than the duration of my phd program.

if days were pages, leo’s wait would be approximately only half the length of margaret  mitchell’s gone with the wind.

by which i mean, NOT A LOT OF TIME HAS PASSED.

of course, the way this is being tabulated is from his first nomination in 1994 to now. so leo has been waiting for TWENTY-TWO years, ever since he was a pipsqueak.

that is why he is being likened to susan lucci. it’s the duration of the waiting rather than the chances for a win.

please note how, nearly 17 years after her win, susan lucci is STILL the patron saint of People Who Take a Long Time To Win Things. (also, please appreciate that writing about leo this oscar season has now led to the creation of a “susan lucci” category for this blog.)

in thinking about culture and the movement of stories in culture, i tend to argue that we get the narratives we need and apparently, in a world where donald trump is running for president, we really really really need jack dawson to win an academy award.

which is… interesting.

the man himself seems pretty zen.

he’s not holding on to it for dear life or anything so that’s pretty good.

and i’m 99.9% certain the hysteria around his win will die down by the end of this week- if super tuesday hasn’t already blown it out of the news cycle.

so what was that all about? why did it seem to matter so much there for those few weeks?

in part, it was because dicaprio himself was campaigning HARD for the last two months. but we seem to have wanted it pretty hard for him as well.

i do wonder if this wasn’t something to do with the more general cultural resurgence of the 1990s which we appear to be in the midst of.

had i not just spent years looking at 50s nostalgia in the 1970s, i might go, HAHAHAHA, oline, you’re being a loon. but i’ve seen that this is how stories work, so i think there’s some validity to what i’m suggesting here.

several weeks ago, a friend sent me a new yorker article that likened american crime story: the people vs. oj simpson to a “a tasty Proustian cronut that makes you remember the events of not only 1995 but 2015.”

an UH-MAZING metaphor and sentence, which beautifully captures our connection to so many of these things and the dynamic that also, i believe, lies at the heart of the leo narrative this oscar season. if not for dicaprio himself then certainly for us.

the connection we feel to him in the present, often harkens back to the past.

so that he is himself a proustian cronut- a connection between the present and past, both ours and his…

my diary

i’ve written about this before but it’s worth quoting because it is, i think, so essential to the way that we feel about celebrities we have been watching for a long time…

watching titanic with croftie the other day, just the introductory music was enough to bring a nostalgic tear to our eyes. we recalled sitting in backseats on long vacation rides, sniffling to james horner’s plaintive notes and wiping our eyes on flannel shirtsleeves. we remembered thinking my life is so tragic– though we couldn’t recall why and we’re pretty sure it wasn’t.

2016, ya’ll. i’m in paris at the moment and wanted to cobble together a parallel to p.t. barnum so i just googled him and was reminded that he was “un entrepreneur de spectacles américain.” which sounds about right for our current times. DE SPECTACLES AMERICAIN!

anyhoo, a funny thing has been happening with obituaries this election season. have you heard/seen?

(via)

while i don’t know that i would go so far as to call this a “nationwide movement,” it does seem to be an interesting election season trend emerging in obituary composition.

(via)

(via)

(via)

HRC has prompted similar requests.

(via)

(via)

perhaps this is what comes of front-runner status these days, as there appear not to be similar requests re: cruz, rubio, kaisch, or o’malley.

sanders also received an endorsement…

(via)

(via)

and, quite bizarrely, the obituary has emerged as a political weapon.

in nevada, the day before the primary, a campaign volunteer reportedly tried to publish an obituary of hillary clinton and got in a world ‘o trouble with the secret service.

(via)

CNN has characterized the obituary phenomenon as “dead man talking”…

(via)

noting:

The coffin has long doubled as a pulpit, with candidates speculating on the erstwhile electoral preferences of departed dignitaries. Today, though, the deceased are becoming more adept at leaving their mark on the political scene.

but i think “dead man talking” is inaccurate (+ sexist!) and it’s a phenomenon perhaps better characterized as “dead person voting.”

i’m a big fan of betty jo lewis’s…

(via)

because she “liked to bake and made a mean peach pie” and “In her alone time, she never missed an episode of ‘Days of Our Lives,’ was an avid reader of The Independent and took in about every piece of political commentary she could find.”

as is traditionally the case in this unorthodox development, the political message occurs at the end of the obituary. however, unlike most of the other examples- which say “please don’t/do vote for…”- lewis’s obituary explicitly includes the reason for the request:

(via)

“she is surely disappointed she won’t get the chance.”

we see this same sentiment in the statement from one of alba keus’s daughters, who said, “We just thought that this was her last way to get her vote in.”

and so the obituary becomes a way of participating in an election one will not live to see, a way of compensating for a vote lost because one did not live till november to cast it.

as a biographer, i often wonder how we’re going to factor twitter into future biographical accounts. as a human being, i sooooooooooo want to read the book that kanye west’s future biographer is going to produce.

behold the greatness…

(excerpts via @kanyewest)

and now, for some frivolity!

come, join me in the magical wonderland of this music video…

déjà vu anyone? because uHHHHHHUMUMMMMMM…

i mean, it’s not frame-by-frame, but, cinematically, it feels rather homage-y, non?

albeit waaaaaaaaaay less hip.

because, let’s be real, there is nothing hip about this dude.

a square extraordinaire who bears more than a passing resemblance to group captain james hewitt…

except that he’s très très square. even when he is clearly trying to be hip.

that shirt! those pockets! ALL OF THE DENIMS. my god.

so, the narrative here seems to be unfolding in three locales.

a chainlink fence, possibly around a baseball diamond or a playground:

obviously in that hour of the day when the sun is at its brightest and red heads would be advised to stay indoors.

an underpass in the dead of night:

and the worst wedding reception of all time:

our protagonist is, of course, rick astley/james hewitt:

he’s thinking of “full commitment.” he wants to tell us how he’s feeling and promises to make us understand.

for serious, i do not think he makes a convincing case. in giant part, because- in a 3 minute and 32 second song- he promises he’s never going to let us go.

our protagonist is accompanied by his two blonde dancing lady friends.

since he pays absolutely no attention to them and doesn’t interact with them in any way, i’mma surmise that they are not the objects of his affection and promises.

this:

i do not know.

though- after careful arm movement analysis- i hypothesize that it belongs to the breakdancing blonde man who appears in the underpass a minute later and busts out some pretty serious pirouettes.

thus putting to shame the moves of the aforementioned blonde women, who are essentially doing that dancing that women do in TV shows when their character has one episode wherein, because she’s briefly flirting with the idea of becoming a model, she does a photo shoot montage.

as opposed to the moves of underpass blonde man and this guy:

 for realz.

i’m honestly not sure how we get from here…

to here…

because this is a fairly low-energy song and jumping splits seem rather overly aerobic. but, yo, here we are.

even he is confused:

he swears he is never going to give us up or let us go or run around or desert us or make us cry or hurt us or tell a lie or say goodbye.

what’re the odds that the one thing he is gonna do is make promises he can’t keep?

you guys, i don’t even know…

and i don’t think he does either.

fyi, lyrically, this is all kinda hella creepy:

We’ve known each other for so long
Your heart’s been aching, but
You’re too shy to say it
Inside, we both know what’s been going on
We know the game and we’re gonna play it

I just wanna tell you how I’m feeling
Gotta make you understand

you know how he’s gonna make us understand? by beating us into submission with this chorus.

he is NEVER going to give us up.

fortunately, this is a 3 minute and 32 second song, so time is not on his side.

fyi, the david silverness of his dance moves is INESCAPABLE.  

just saying.

as the music fades out, he is literally saying he will never say goodbye or let us go. LIES, man. lies.

now we know: if i hadn’t been doing a dissertation all this time, i apparently could have been producing ground-breaking albeit random celebrity/gossip/history/culture content every freaking day.

so, hmmmmmm….

(via US Weekly)

i was asked the other day if i thought if jackie, were she alive, would participate in the selfie culture. i think the question now becomes, if jackie were alive, would she wear a t-shirt with her own name on it?

(via gerard darel)

and would she wear these clogs???

(via US Weekly)

formal declaration from her biographer: um… no.

so gerard darel has a new jackie-inspired collection.

google translate seems uncertain as to whether this collection should be called “in the shoes of an icon”…

(via journal des femmes)

or “in the skin of an icon.”

personally, i’d go with the former because the latter is a little bit hannibal lector, non?

anyhoo, this collection is a tie-in to the exhibit “her name was jackie,” which stalked me all over paris last summer…

a somewhat wackily organized…

note the “jackie without kennedy and jackie onassis” gallery

and incomprehensible…

is this real??? idk.

exhibit that i bummbled upon and which is now opening at the galerie ferraro in nice.

and which, fyi, does not begin to hold a candle to the exhibit at Museum THE KENNEDYS in berlin, entitled “jackie lady in the first place.”

(berlin, 2012)

with the possible exception of this:

“PROBABLY NEVER.” a phrase which, for anyone who’s ever done work on jackie at the JFK library, will send a dagger through yo heart.

incidentally, shout out to the fact-checkers at US:

(via US Weekly)

it does truly seem to be “shoes” rather than “skin”…

(via gerardderal.com)

so oops that.

ok, because i need to transition to the critical analysis portion of our programming, i will now ask- at the risk of positing a maloofianly demeaning line of inquiry: why jackie?

well, gerard darel is gerard and daniele darel and it seems daniele darel is a GIANT fan. in 1996, she bought a necklace at the soethby’s auction (in contrast, my fandom extended only so far as a catalog), and the company has subsequently sold a redesign.

(via ebay)

much of the press for this line is in french, which is highly mad libs when run through google translate.

and so we are told that the collection “breathe the air sixties.” and we have some rather serious pronoun problems: because “jackie kennedy is an icon of style and elegance,” “its timeless looks continue to shape the codes of contemporary fashion,” bringing us “oversized sunglasses on the nose, glass bead necklace around his neck and little black dresses or colored by way of uniform, fashion model is copied again and again.” 

“dressing casual chic feminine”!

an obvious mangling of the original, but i think the underlying argument is that her style belongs “in the ideal cloakroom” simply by virtue of the fact that it has endured.

but the subheader captures the tensions…

so 60s! (in parts)… timeless! (but modern)… all circumstances chic!

significantly, the collection itself is a pastiche of 60s and 70s jackie, but i’d argue it’s titling towards the 70s.

sure, the phrase “sixties” is being repeated multiple times, but this is obviously the aesthetic…

(1974, via vogue)

(1973, via vogue)

(via the times magazine, settimio garritano/courtesy of tod’s)

not this…

(jacques lowe)

or even late 60s…

06 Nov 1967, Cambodia — Jackie Kennedy with Norodom Sihanouk — Image by © Bettmann/CORBIS

these shoes we’re walking in are distinctly 70s.

(Jackie Onassis and Caroline Kennedy Walking On 85th Street After Shopping, 5 October 1971, by Ron Galella)

what does that matter? well, i think it points to some ongoing cultural strange.

we❤ jackie. but culturally, we still do not❤ her marriage to onassis. (as i continue to find out, the story of her marriage to onassis is a hard hard sell.) BUT. her aesthetic during the time of her marriage to onassis is still popular, still marketable, and still sellable.

it’s just that it’s repackaged in sixties nostalgia and she is positioned as a sixties figure.

seriously. ain’t nothing sixties about that font…

(via gerarddarel.com)

google image search “70s font”…

as opposed to 60s font…

and yes, that was some MAJOR phd-level research there.

but my point is this: why is there this skirting of the fact that 70s jackie rocked?

(by Peter Beard)

for reasons far more interesting than the commonly cited blah sixties reasons of “dignity,” “grace,” “chic.”

i don’t believe in decades so it pains me that i keep strictly delineating between the sixties and seventies. in actuality, it’s a split between her kennedy image and her onassis image- an equally crude definition because it’s dependent upon the men she married, but a more culturally accurate one as those are typically seen as two distinct images. and it gets at the fact that elements of her style from the period during which she was married to onassis are being sold under a kennedy guise.

or, seen the other way round, her kennedy magic is being grafted onto her onassis style to make it more palatable.

(september 1972)

i’m nearly certain that “jackie lady in the first place” was an unfortunate translation of “jackie: a first lady,” but it captures the demands made upon her image in our culture now.

she is a LADY, firstly, and almost exclusively.

this is a demand that typically restricts portrayals of her to the period of her marriage to JFK or after ari’s death. hence the narrative black-out from october 1968-march 1975. hence also, i think, the need here to portray her 1970s style in terms of the 1960s, and to remind us of her “charm” and “elegance”- as though those were the limits of her interestingness.

this is how we sell clothes. i know that. what disturbs me is that i picked out the funny business at play in the marketing copy here because it mimics so much of the story-telling about her more generally in the last twenty years.

i’m in the business of telling lives. it’s a business that should be different from the business of selling clothes- with different tactics, different vocabularies, different tales. whether it is, i’m really not so sure.

we seem stuck always with the same old stories, the same old words, the same old jackie. that same jackie that i’ve been saying for years now is so, so boring. and, more importantly, SO MUCH LESS INTERESTING than the jackie i see.

when she was alive, the common complaint was that there was an excess of jackies. so many jackies that, in talking to her friends, you never knew which jackie you were going to get.

because when we are alive, we are all unlimited. our selves and our presentation of them can be infinite and varied. it’s death that applies limits.

evidently, in our responses to someone’s death, our cultural impulse is to streamline and simply the story, to make it meaningful and to make it make sense. but the result of this is that we make people far less interesting than they were in life. we limited them.

i do not approve. i want unlimited jackies, jackie’s as far as the eye can see. jackies that are messy and do not make sense or neatly align.

(1970s: Getty Images)

(ain cocke, 2004)

please know: in my efforts to find photos from the launch of selfish to illustrate what i’m about to write about selfish, i just saw SO.MUCH.KIM.KARDASHIAN. her instagram is A LOT, yo. so i’mma call on my emotionally incontinent face celebrity double britney to ease us all in.

fist things first: kim kardashian’s instagram was a reminder of how much this eye makeup rocked my world many moons ago…

(via @kimkardashian)

and how divisive this was…

(via @kimkardashian)

so there’s that. now on to business.

am i correct in assuming that no one here has read selfish?

am i correct also in my assumption that it’s controversial to suggest that selfish is something that one might read?

(via @ohlighn)

(and does my asking those questions betray the fact that i’ve been teaching a bunch ‘o undergrads who don’t read their assigned texts?!)

for the record, yes, selfish is something one can read.

which is not to say that many people have.

when it was released in may 2015, selfish met with… howshallwesay… NOT SUCCESS.

(via @kimkardashian)

(via the daily mail)

so what is this thing i am banging on about that no one has read?

selfish: kim kardashian’s book of selfies.

(via @kimkardashian)

because it was a book of photos, i always assumed it was a coffee table book, until i encountered it in a bookstore and discovered it’s actually about the size of a walkman and the thickness of a bible.

so a book of kim kardashian’s selfies with captions written by kim kardashian.

(via @kimkardashian)

in writing about selfish, i wrestle with genre. do i want to frame it as a memoir?

because memoir and autobiography are often used as though they mean the same thing and they do not, let’s clarify:

thus, a memoir is scenes from the life and an autobiography is a more complete account of the life.

by this account, selfish is a memoir. it’s kim kardashian’s life, circa 2006-2014.

a huge chunk of it arises from her instagram feed. albeit not all because (fun factz!) instagram wasn’t invented until october 2010 and she didn’t join until february 2012.

(via @kimkardashian)

the thing that interests me about selfish is that it’s a memoir, using photos and captions. in that, it seems new media and modern. but there are few formats more traditional than the book and there are few stories more conventional than the marriage plot. and that is what selfish ultimately becomes.

i know, i know. but, no, really.

confession: i was vair vair skeptical about selfish.

if you have stuck with me this far, you are probably also skeptical about selfish.

and i’m uncertain how to sway your opinion because i honestly do not know how to convey the narrative tension of pages like this…

because that looks downright ridic here in a post wherein i’m making an argument about Literachoore.

but, in reading selfish, when i got to this page, it was legitimately cathartic.

the starvation. the suddenness with which the starvation was overcome. the barrage of exclamation points. the ambiguity inherent in the line: “spain was a wild trip.” (because they starved? because they finally ate? because what? she does not tell.)

in reading selfish, a funny thing happened. i got into it.

like, surprisingly really into it.

which is why i was also surprised by how ENRAGED i was by the ending.

as someone who is alive in 2016, i know kim kardashian is married to kanye west.

but, as someone reading selfish, somehow i expected more than the standard marriage plot.

which, i admit, is perhaps a wildly misguided expectation for a book by kim kardashian about her selfies.

alas, no.

perhaps my anger has something to do with my having stuck it out through the hefty centerfold section of bikini and nude pics- the point, for me, where selfish jumped the shark.

in its review, the telegraph noted that the book is “oddly moving” until 2012, when “the fun disappears.” the reviewer contends this is because kardashian’s “selfie face” kicks in, but i think it’s something else.

the arrival of kanye, 200 pages in, signals a major shift in the narrative.

(selfish, p. 204)

prior to kanye’s arrival, selfish makes no mention of romance. reggie bush has been erased as has the marriage to kris humphreys.

which is a bit rich. (contrast this with mercy, who was around for a hot second and yet gets two pages [pp. 240-241]… and who also goes down in history with justin beiber’s monkey as having the saddest of sad celebrity pet lives.)

but the effect of these erasures is a portrayal of a woman’s life where her love life isn’t just not the most interesting thing about her. it’s a non-issue.

you guys, that is revelatory.

because women’s lives are so so so soooooooooooooo seldom portrayed that way.

and it’s a portrayal the value of which only becomes evident when kanye enters the tale.

(selfish, p. 218)

the book by no means becomes all about him- he’s a shadowy presence at best. BUT, we get kanye and then we are submerged into a centerfold portfolio of bedroom, bra, and nude shots (pp. 256-299) which, due to the positioning within the book, feel as though they’re meant for kanye.

it’s a sensation reenforced by the fact that immediately after the conclusion of this section (p. 300), we land in 2013…

(selfish, p. 300)

and she’s engaged.

many of the tit pics were leaked in the sony hack, and so this could be seen as empowering. but, again due to placement in the book, positioned just before the engagement, they feel like a guide for “Using Sexy Selfies to Get Him to Put a Ring on It.”

which was a plot twist that made me want to hurl selfish across the room.

and so, rather unexpectedly, the most interesting aspect of selfish is everything that comes before kanye. to such a degree that the rest of the book feels like filler.

she’s still traveling, still doing stuff, but it’s like she had waaaaaaay more fun assembling the first half then totally checked out.

there’s 20 pages on a trip to thailand. hilariously “the prettiest place” she’s ever been and, of course, we see none of it because we’re only seeing selfies.

of the first half, the telegraph concluded “It should be dreadful, but it isn’t. Surprisingly, it’s a rather enchanting document,” which probably explains why i was so annoyed by the ending. this rather silly, sweet story is indeed enchanting- because it feels both familiar (we’ve been looking at kardashian for years) and refreshingly not precious.

the problem is this: for the first half of selfish, i was surprised by kim kardashian. the whole second half, i wasn’t.

BUT. perhaps i’ve wrongly blamed kanye here.

kim kardashian didn’t join instagram until february 2012. 2012 is the point in selfish when, per the telegraph, “the fun disappears.”

perhaps the narrative shift that so bothered me has nothing to do with kanye. perhaps it doesn’t have anything to do with stories or words either.

maybe it’s just the joie de vivre of photographs taken for pleasure versus photographs intended for public consumption from the outset.

as sontag writes in on photography, “the camera makes everyone a tourist in other people’s reality, and eventually in one’s own.”

sontag contended that “a photograph could also be described as a quotation, which makes a book of photographs like a book of quotations,” and that “because they [photographs and quotations] are taken to be pieces of reality,” they are seen as being “more authentic than extended literary narratives.”

perhaps selfish irked me because, reading it, i thought it would transcend the standard boring literary tropes. it’s failure to do so, especially after displaying such promise in the first 200 pages, made it doubly frustrating.

photographs are “measuring the lost past…, taking the temperature of the present,” sontag claimed. as a book of photographs and as a memoir, selfish illuminates the ways in which we have progressed in our story-telling about women’s lives- and, of course, by extension, the way women are actually living their lives now- whilst also setting in high relief the ambiguities inherent in such a course.

the daily mail published an article on macaulay culkin wherein mila kunis was not mentioned once. i keep waiting for them to realize this and throw in five paragraphs on her or that one time he ate at taco bell.

hey. it’s me. (hey-o, is matchbox twenty’s “long day” in your head now too?? [and did you remember rob thomas rocking the double-hoops?!? which OF COURSE sends me down memory lane right back to david silver’s lady earring…

can it be that david silver was really on trend? or, THE HORROR, ahead of the curve?!?]).

i feel like patty duke- whom this post is actually about- would really appreciate that digression.

(Ryan Miller/Invision/AP)

you know what i think she would not appreciate? the guardian‘s obituary. let’s take a look…

(the guardian)

WHAT IS THAT?! obviously it is going to be the narrative arc of this obituary, a choice that makes me wonder if ronald bergan is a miracle worker super-fan.

and so we are told her career “could be said to have peaked”- which, let’s face it, is pretty much saying it did.

“there were other highs” but, given that they aren’t listed, presumably they were negligible.

an opening salvo that makes the third paragraph highly confusing.

(the guardian)

she peaked… and remained there? or was it a slow descent?

it’s “grossly unfair to say that it was downhill all the way for Duke from then on.”

if it’s unfair to say that, then precisely what is being said here?

would it be moderately unfair to say that it was downhill part of the way for awhile? reasonable to say that it wasn’t just lolling about the summit?

riddle me this: what would it be fair to say here? instead of the ambiguous thing being said here.

i honestly have no idea.

(btw, isn’t the patty duke show something of a broadcasting landmark for women on TV? there’s been lucy and… who else? that girl is 1966. [and it wasn’t the marlo thomas show.] the mary tyler moore show isn’t till 1970. ok. you’ve got lucy, judy garland, and donna reed all on in 1963, but DAMN, that is good company for a 16-year-old to be in, non?)

(ABC)

and lo, we pivot to the capsule biography part of the obit.

the capsule biography is the part of the obituary which, i assume, was pre-composed in an editorial practice i DEPLORE… there’s family, childhood, marriages, the 60s, the 70s, her undiagnosed bipolar, the 2000s. we go absolutely FLYING over these, which means valley of the dolls is two sentences.

(the guardian)

and, of course, the fact that she had a fairly epic tabloid life in the early 1970s…

October 1970

June 1971

wherein she incurred the wrath of ms. lucille ball…

is never mentioned.

i’ve written about obituaries before. about how the way we write them is wrong and about how the stories of women are particularly affected by this.

i saw patty duke speak a few years ago, at a valley of the dolls sing-along in chicago. she was charming and lovely and gentle and generally game. the disconnect between her joie de vivre there and the stale description of her here saddens me.

(Rick Aguilar)

there is one quote from patty duke in patty duke’s obituary. it’s half a sentence (in contrast to the COMPLETE STANZA from the patty duke show theme song) but it’s a good one.

(the guardian)

it made me want more.

this is an elaborate story – popularly known as “the war on terrier“- that i don’t really want to go into but basically…

a year ago, amber heard went to visit johnny depp during the filming of pirates of the caribbean “why is this movie even existing?” 5. when she did so, she snuck her two dogs into town without doing the proper paperwork/quarantine. thus, heard violated australian biosecurity laws.

today, the ruling came down and, lo, we are given the gift of this legally required apology video…

thoughts that arise…

these are ACTORS. whycome they are so unconvincing as contrite people?

(via youtube)

i seriously want depp’s reading of the line “it has to be protected” as my ringtone.

this line makes me wonder: did he ever read for a part in lord of the rings?

or, was lord of the rings his inspiration here? is this a method performance?

(via youtube)

but they appear to be acting in different films, non?

she is playing the part of scarlett johansson in he’s just not the into you and he is playing the part of bono in a documentary on the AIDS epidemic in africa.

(via youtube)

when depp tells us that australians are as unique as their wildlife, there was something weird in his cadences. it’s an element of this, innit?

(via youtube)

omg, the defeat when he tells us to “declare everything when you enter australia.” it sounds like he is saying this at gunpoint and it looks like he’s been the loser in a bar brawl.

(via youtube)

riddle me this: what are the odds this video is played onboard every airplane that lands in australia from this day forward? YES, PLEASE.