Post by ♥~KarinaKay~♥ on Dec 27, 2008 1:23:40 GMT -11
The year celebrity scandal died - click here for the complete article
Dec. 26, 2008 | If you care deeply about Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt -- "The Hills" stars whose cloying mugs and romantic melodrama dominated the cover of an alarming number of gossip rags -- then 2008 was a banner year for you. If you savor hand-wringing debate over Miley Cyrus' exposed body parts, if you actually give a rip that Madonna ditched her husband for a baseball star who resembles a wax statue, if you crave constant updates on the spermination of Angelina Jolie -- well, then, this was a great year in celebrity scandal.
For the rest of us? Not so much. The year kicked off on January 22 with the shocking accidental death of Heath Ledger. The story had all the familiar and sordid mixings of juicy tabloid tragedy: Drugs! Depression! A heartbroken (and famous) ex-wife! An Olsen twin! And yet, Ledger's death wasn't fun, wasn't funny, wasn't the kind of downward spiral whose images you pass around like Christmas snapshots -- images like, say, a bald Britney Spears banging on an SUV with an umbrella or Lindsay Lohan passed out in a car. No, the demise of Heath Ledger was dark, baffling, sad. For years, as celebrity shenanigans grew increasingly more ridiculous, more desperate and anguished, it seemed inevitable that some public tragedy would cast a pall over the bitchy fun of celebrity gossip. Who knew it would involve a spotlight-shunning actor who had only just completed his most stunning performance yet?
The celebrity industrial complex was already maxing out in 2007, when Heather Havrilesky wrote, "What's fascinating and disturbing about this moment in our culture is this pervasive feeling of vertigo, the push and pull of new media marginalizing the more historically weighty stories while the flashiest trivia holds the camera's gaze." It seemed that nothing mattered as much as David Hasselhoff drunkenly snarfing a burger or Alec Baldwin screaming at his poor daughter, and it looked like that trend might continue until, as Mike Judge had joked in his 2006 satire "Idiocracy," the country was run by a camera-hogging professional wrestler. Celebrity minutiae and misdeeds became a kind of media wallpaper overshadowing real stories like the war in Iraq and concern about the economy. (The economy? Who cared about the economy?)
But then, the culture shifted. Politics seemed, weirdly, like something we could believe in again. Empty gossip felt, well, emptier. As Rebecca Traister wrote back in March, in a terrific and prescient piece about the demise of celebrity gossip, "The pleasure we take in snurfling through the trash bins of those more rich and famous than we seems to be waning, leaving me a little sad," Traister wrote, "but perhaps, at the end of the day, just a little less dumb."
As the most stirring election in recent memory revved up, the daily banalities of A-list celebs like Tom Cruise, Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney and Brad Pitt took a back seat to rumor-mongering about Sarah Palin and a discussion of whether or not Barack Obama wore boxers or briefs. In May, Us Weekly editor Janice Min told the New York Times, "When you look at the great celebrity dramas of the last few years, you have Team Aniston, Team Jolie, Team Heidi and Team Lauren. And now we have Team Hillary and Team Barack."
But it wasn't merely the high voltage of the political season that tanked celebrity gossip. The industry itself had badly overreached -- like Wall Street, the real estate market, Starbucks and every other American enterprise bent on total domination. Supermarket stands had become a hot mess of tawdry tabloids. (Who were the people so unsatisfied with Star, People and Us Weekly that they required Celebrity Living, too? Well, whoever they were, there weren't enough of them. The magazine folded earlier this year.)
Dec. 26, 2008 | If you care deeply about Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt -- "The Hills" stars whose cloying mugs and romantic melodrama dominated the cover of an alarming number of gossip rags -- then 2008 was a banner year for you. If you savor hand-wringing debate over Miley Cyrus' exposed body parts, if you actually give a rip that Madonna ditched her husband for a baseball star who resembles a wax statue, if you crave constant updates on the spermination of Angelina Jolie -- well, then, this was a great year in celebrity scandal.
For the rest of us? Not so much. The year kicked off on January 22 with the shocking accidental death of Heath Ledger. The story had all the familiar and sordid mixings of juicy tabloid tragedy: Drugs! Depression! A heartbroken (and famous) ex-wife! An Olsen twin! And yet, Ledger's death wasn't fun, wasn't funny, wasn't the kind of downward spiral whose images you pass around like Christmas snapshots -- images like, say, a bald Britney Spears banging on an SUV with an umbrella or Lindsay Lohan passed out in a car. No, the demise of Heath Ledger was dark, baffling, sad. For years, as celebrity shenanigans grew increasingly more ridiculous, more desperate and anguished, it seemed inevitable that some public tragedy would cast a pall over the bitchy fun of celebrity gossip. Who knew it would involve a spotlight-shunning actor who had only just completed his most stunning performance yet?
The celebrity industrial complex was already maxing out in 2007, when Heather Havrilesky wrote, "What's fascinating and disturbing about this moment in our culture is this pervasive feeling of vertigo, the push and pull of new media marginalizing the more historically weighty stories while the flashiest trivia holds the camera's gaze." It seemed that nothing mattered as much as David Hasselhoff drunkenly snarfing a burger or Alec Baldwin screaming at his poor daughter, and it looked like that trend might continue until, as Mike Judge had joked in his 2006 satire "Idiocracy," the country was run by a camera-hogging professional wrestler. Celebrity minutiae and misdeeds became a kind of media wallpaper overshadowing real stories like the war in Iraq and concern about the economy. (The economy? Who cared about the economy?)
But then, the culture shifted. Politics seemed, weirdly, like something we could believe in again. Empty gossip felt, well, emptier. As Rebecca Traister wrote back in March, in a terrific and prescient piece about the demise of celebrity gossip, "The pleasure we take in snurfling through the trash bins of those more rich and famous than we seems to be waning, leaving me a little sad," Traister wrote, "but perhaps, at the end of the day, just a little less dumb."
As the most stirring election in recent memory revved up, the daily banalities of A-list celebs like Tom Cruise, Jennifer Aniston, George Clooney and Brad Pitt took a back seat to rumor-mongering about Sarah Palin and a discussion of whether or not Barack Obama wore boxers or briefs. In May, Us Weekly editor Janice Min told the New York Times, "When you look at the great celebrity dramas of the last few years, you have Team Aniston, Team Jolie, Team Heidi and Team Lauren. And now we have Team Hillary and Team Barack."
But it wasn't merely the high voltage of the political season that tanked celebrity gossip. The industry itself had badly overreached -- like Wall Street, the real estate market, Starbucks and every other American enterprise bent on total domination. Supermarket stands had become a hot mess of tawdry tabloids. (Who were the people so unsatisfied with Star, People and Us Weekly that they required Celebrity Living, too? Well, whoever they were, there weren't enough of them. The magazine folded earlier this year.)