Gawker
In Salon today, Rebecca Traister argues that "the golden age of celebrity gossip is grinding to an end." Ah, the golden age! When Starlets yet new! Traister notes the ever-increasing number of relatively random, famous-for-famousness' sake photo fodder who are splashed on the pages of fading mags like In Touch, Star, and People (only Us Weekly increased its readership last year). She says we're overloaded with inexplicable images, coupled with those "???" headlines hand-crafted by "evil geniuses" like Janice Min. Have we reached critical mass? She asks, "what heart of celebrity darkness is there to be exposed?" A good question. Surely something else about these people's lives can be laid bare. Though it may be scary and sad, like Traister suggests, and we may not like what we uncover. Sort of like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
One strange thing about the piece is that it focuses solely on print media, ignoring completely the lurching, belching, bilious gossip monster that lives in your computer. Aren't we partly (mostly?) to blame for the daily glut of whispers and pictures and bitchy headlines that used to only abuse you once a week? The printed magazines, sure, are what get you by at the airport or in waiting rooms, but gossip blogs and the like get you through those forty heinous hours you spend dreaming of beaches and your sofa. What the blogs have done, IMHO (that's what you say, right?), is make reading gossip as banal, ordinary, and habitual a task as checking the weather or stock quotes (people check "stock quotes," right?). It may not be as exciting or memorable as it once was (Traister swoons particularly over the Brangelina vs. Jen thing), but it's become ingrained. Gossip is a part of you now.
And maybe that's what killed it! Maybe it's all become too mundane, as the brief, not so wondrous life of PageSix.com may show. As long as the actual end of "the golden age of celebrity gossip" is spurred by Heidi Montag stealing fire from the gods and Ashley Tisdale opening a sealed jar that inadvertently unleashes all of mankind's evil upon the world, well, maybe it was enough.
Comments
That was the boringest article about celebrity gossip ever, and I haven't even read the Britney piece in The Atlantic yet.
I never thought I'd see the day.
Umm, thank you, Jesus.
Celebrity vegetables. Gossip about celebrity vegetables.
But you didn't hear it from me.
Celebrities are done.
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Wasn't that also the headline for Anna Nicole's obit?
@TedSez: I was referring, of course, to the article on Salon, not this post.
Frankly, mags like Star and Us and OK! made themselves redundant by climbing into bed with celebrities and printing the PR-friendly crap they used to (pretend to) refute. Now when I open one of the glossies I'm expected to see photos of Rock Hudson and his lovely wife Phyllis enjoying a typical, romantic night at home
Funny that Traister longs for the 1950s Photoplay stories. How many did she read? The template for celebrity stories was set in the 1940s Photoplay and Modern Screen magazines: judgement and envy in equal parts. Hmm...just like today.
@Colonel Mustard: "I am expectING". Fuck.
Hell, I read celebrity gossip like I read craigslist missed connections (several times a work day, a few times a weekend, for the rest of my life if I had my way). I can't tell which is a worse habit: caring about the imminent demise of Miley Cyrus or checking to see if anyone noticed my ass on the train.
Is anybody else a bit tired of Salon telling us about everything. They're correct, I guess, on this one, but, well, Their film critic bagged on "There Will Be Blood" and "No Country for Old Men." This means she's retarded. Salon pays her, so, by extension, they are retarded as well. There are countless other examples on Salon of their obnoxious for the sake of it contrarianism. Salon: my yawn just had a baby and a tumor was discovered on the baby and after a biopsy the tumor was discovered to be full of yawns.
YouTube: I make TV of myself
Facebook: I make a devotional shrine to myself
Twitter: I make friends aware of myself
OkCupid: I try to touch myself less
Gawker: I make a fool of myself
In short, I feel too damn self-important and self-involved to pay attention to other supposedly "famous" people. They do nothing more deviating than I do. Hah.
@belltolls: Actually, I have a few movie mags from the late 1920s when my uncle was a young male ingenue, and they are about the same as Photoplay, etc. Mostly bullshit stories that the studios endorsed and stars talking about their latest picture, but you'd be surprised at some of the snark.
Plus I'm pretty sure they have ads for penis enlargement.
We all suffering from gossip fatigue. As the troubled starlets go from one staged drama to the next, no scandal has the ability to shock me anymore. And what good are naughty whispers when they fail to titillate our fancy? Let's blame Perez!
The real problem here is we are actually missing most of the stories and only hearing the crappy pr friendly bullshit fed to US or tips from the public, which are 75% incorrect.
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