Post by garbagefiend on Aug 25, 2012 0:14:44 GMT -5
Time wastes too fast: every letter I trace tells me with what rapidity Life follows my pen..."
Thus complains Tristram Shandy, the eponymous narrator of Laurence Sterne's 18th-century novel, which satirically explores the artifice required to capture a life in writing, how one can only create a narrative through omission and addition ("how much of it he is to cast into a shade – and whereabouts he is to throw his light") and, most of all, the way that real time will always overtake narrative time.
This brings us, obviously, to "Jennifer Aniston". Not Jennifer Aniston the actual person, whose heart's desires and emotional needs are known only to the very few, but the fictional character "Jennifer Aniston", whose every passing thought and sexual encounter is instantly communicated by the world's media thanks to various "sources" and "unnamed friends".
"Jennifer Aniston" – or Poor Jen, to use the shorthand – was coined back in 2005 when the real-life Aniston's husband, Brad Pitt, was stolen in the dead of night by the Bad Witch Angelina Jolie, who ripped the helpless Pitt from his marital bed, threw him across her black steed and galloped away to hurl him into her sex dungeon, leaving Poor Jen with nothing to do but spend every waking hour Desperately Searching For Love (some of that tale may be truer to "Jennifer Aniston" than Jennifer Aniston). While Aniston herself appeared to live, by any sentient person's standards, a damn good life post-2005 – earning gazillions of dollars, going on holidays with girlfriends and dating handsome men – Poor Jen was deemed a modern-day Gollum, wide eyed and skeletal, tearing through the eligible men of the western world only to discard them over her shoulder like animal bones sucked dry of meat as she searched in vain for her Precious, now in the possession of Baggins Jolie.
No matter how often Aniston issued statements to the contrary, Poor Jen, according to the agreed media narrative, was "desperate" for marriage, "desperate" for children, so "desperate" that she scared men away with her overwhelming odour of desperate desperation. Never mind that no halfway intelligent woman – as Aniston has always appeared to be, despite her awful film choices and her decision to shill for something called Smart Water – with a craving for marriage would keep company with pretty-boy douchebag John Mayer, as Aniston did for a year. Never mind that Aniston has always given the impression of being pretty happy with her lot. In medialand, Poor Jen's parental and marital status define her as both perverse and tragic.
Aniston, more than any other female celebrity, has proven that in many corners of the western world feminism simply hasn't happened. And so, while the media insisted that Jolie and Poor Jen completely detest one another, it was the media that appeared the most determined to destroy Poor Jen, bullying her with pity.
Aniston occasionally expressed bafflement at how this narrative had developed, but the reason is simple. Celebrities think their job is to make movies, write albums, and so on. Actually, it is to be photographed by the paparazzi. From these photographs, celebrity journalists write little narratives around them – you know, like those photo casebook studies in the Sun, featuring various anxious-looking folk bedecked with fretful speech bubbles – and Aniston's narrative was that she was insane with loneliness.
As in politics, so in celebrity, in that once a narrative becomes established (George Clooney is a glamorous ladykiller, Keanu Reeves is an airhead), the press sticks to it tenaciously. So established is this view of Aniston that it has moved out of its hot pink niche of celebrity journalism and into the bright lights of the news media, with the London Evening Standard reporting on its page three only last week that Aniston stole her latest paramour, Justin Theroux, from his previous girlfriend, having, the paper avowed with its intimate knowledge of the situation, "pursued him". Selfish, desperate Poor Jen. And, oh, those poor helpless menfolk, the likes of Pitt and Theroux so vulnerable to deranged females who steal them away from their rightful lady partners.
Thus, when the latest issue of America's Star magazine appeared with the cover line "IT'S OVER!" beneath photos of Theroux and Aniston and further "exclusive photos of the night they split" inside, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Indeed, so familiar was this story that Star's claim that this was a WORLD EXCLUSIVE and ONLY IN STAR seemed improbably optimistic. And so it proved, as it is also on the front of the current issue of Grazia. In the article inside, Grazia confidently quotes the usual unnamed friends who assure the magazine, "It's pretty much all been over", and, "It's looking fairly unlikely they'll survive the next few weeks", blaming Theroux's "lack of commitment". So far, so Poor Jen.
Except, this week, an unexpected problem arose.
"Write as I will, and rush as I may into the middle of things, […] I shall never overtake myself," claimed Tristram Shandy.
But on this point Aniston differs from Shandy because she did overtake herself, or at least overtook Poor Jen, because by the time Grazia and Star were sitting in the newsstands, Aniston's publicist had announced that Aniston and Theroux were not broken up. They are engaged.
Not that the media were going to give up their beloved Poor Jen without a good ol' fight. Most gossip media outlets noted that Pitt and Jolie's wedding is allegedly imminent and thus Aniston is clearly trying to "outdo" them (never mind that it was Theroux, not Aniston, who did the proposing and was therefore in control of the timing). There was a general expression of condescension disguised as relief that Poor Jen had "finally found Mr Right". A certain British tabloid that need not be named trumpeted on the front page, "Aniston to wed at 43", in the way that others might say: "Peter Andre to be the head of Mensa with an IQ of 17." Needless to say, it is unlikely that Pitt's marriage will be discussed with references to his age (49). Inside, like the worst kind of best man's speech, the paper celebrated Aniston's happiness with a double-page spread of her "dating disasters", including three photos of her ex-husband.
So is this farewell to Poor Jen, that media construct that has proven so useful for insinuating that any woman is a failure, no matter how brilliant her life appears to be, if she doesn't have a husband and seven children? Don't be absurd. We can now look forward to tales of Poor Jen being a "bridezilla", her "baby agony" and every other allegation the tabloid press likes to throw at famous women as punishment for being female. But the narrative for Poor Jen has definitely changed.
So is there another famous woman who can pick up that mantle? Another who can be pilloried for no longer being in a tabloid-friendly relationship? One who can be trailed by paparazzi in the hope of catching her making an awkward expression that will be translated as longing for a love that once was?
Hello, Kristen Stewart.
From TheGuardian.co.uk
Thus complains Tristram Shandy, the eponymous narrator of Laurence Sterne's 18th-century novel, which satirically explores the artifice required to capture a life in writing, how one can only create a narrative through omission and addition ("how much of it he is to cast into a shade – and whereabouts he is to throw his light") and, most of all, the way that real time will always overtake narrative time.
This brings us, obviously, to "Jennifer Aniston". Not Jennifer Aniston the actual person, whose heart's desires and emotional needs are known only to the very few, but the fictional character "Jennifer Aniston", whose every passing thought and sexual encounter is instantly communicated by the world's media thanks to various "sources" and "unnamed friends".
"Jennifer Aniston" – or Poor Jen, to use the shorthand – was coined back in 2005 when the real-life Aniston's husband, Brad Pitt, was stolen in the dead of night by the Bad Witch Angelina Jolie, who ripped the helpless Pitt from his marital bed, threw him across her black steed and galloped away to hurl him into her sex dungeon, leaving Poor Jen with nothing to do but spend every waking hour Desperately Searching For Love (some of that tale may be truer to "Jennifer Aniston" than Jennifer Aniston). While Aniston herself appeared to live, by any sentient person's standards, a damn good life post-2005 – earning gazillions of dollars, going on holidays with girlfriends and dating handsome men – Poor Jen was deemed a modern-day Gollum, wide eyed and skeletal, tearing through the eligible men of the western world only to discard them over her shoulder like animal bones sucked dry of meat as she searched in vain for her Precious, now in the possession of Baggins Jolie.
No matter how often Aniston issued statements to the contrary, Poor Jen, according to the agreed media narrative, was "desperate" for marriage, "desperate" for children, so "desperate" that she scared men away with her overwhelming odour of desperate desperation. Never mind that no halfway intelligent woman – as Aniston has always appeared to be, despite her awful film choices and her decision to shill for something called Smart Water – with a craving for marriage would keep company with pretty-boy douchebag John Mayer, as Aniston did for a year. Never mind that Aniston has always given the impression of being pretty happy with her lot. In medialand, Poor Jen's parental and marital status define her as both perverse and tragic.
Aniston, more than any other female celebrity, has proven that in many corners of the western world feminism simply hasn't happened. And so, while the media insisted that Jolie and Poor Jen completely detest one another, it was the media that appeared the most determined to destroy Poor Jen, bullying her with pity.
Aniston occasionally expressed bafflement at how this narrative had developed, but the reason is simple. Celebrities think their job is to make movies, write albums, and so on. Actually, it is to be photographed by the paparazzi. From these photographs, celebrity journalists write little narratives around them – you know, like those photo casebook studies in the Sun, featuring various anxious-looking folk bedecked with fretful speech bubbles – and Aniston's narrative was that she was insane with loneliness.
As in politics, so in celebrity, in that once a narrative becomes established (George Clooney is a glamorous ladykiller, Keanu Reeves is an airhead), the press sticks to it tenaciously. So established is this view of Aniston that it has moved out of its hot pink niche of celebrity journalism and into the bright lights of the news media, with the London Evening Standard reporting on its page three only last week that Aniston stole her latest paramour, Justin Theroux, from his previous girlfriend, having, the paper avowed with its intimate knowledge of the situation, "pursued him". Selfish, desperate Poor Jen. And, oh, those poor helpless menfolk, the likes of Pitt and Theroux so vulnerable to deranged females who steal them away from their rightful lady partners.
Thus, when the latest issue of America's Star magazine appeared with the cover line "IT'S OVER!" beneath photos of Theroux and Aniston and further "exclusive photos of the night they split" inside, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Indeed, so familiar was this story that Star's claim that this was a WORLD EXCLUSIVE and ONLY IN STAR seemed improbably optimistic. And so it proved, as it is also on the front of the current issue of Grazia. In the article inside, Grazia confidently quotes the usual unnamed friends who assure the magazine, "It's pretty much all been over", and, "It's looking fairly unlikely they'll survive the next few weeks", blaming Theroux's "lack of commitment". So far, so Poor Jen.
Except, this week, an unexpected problem arose.
"Write as I will, and rush as I may into the middle of things, […] I shall never overtake myself," claimed Tristram Shandy.
But on this point Aniston differs from Shandy because she did overtake herself, or at least overtook Poor Jen, because by the time Grazia and Star were sitting in the newsstands, Aniston's publicist had announced that Aniston and Theroux were not broken up. They are engaged.
Not that the media were going to give up their beloved Poor Jen without a good ol' fight. Most gossip media outlets noted that Pitt and Jolie's wedding is allegedly imminent and thus Aniston is clearly trying to "outdo" them (never mind that it was Theroux, not Aniston, who did the proposing and was therefore in control of the timing). There was a general expression of condescension disguised as relief that Poor Jen had "finally found Mr Right". A certain British tabloid that need not be named trumpeted on the front page, "Aniston to wed at 43", in the way that others might say: "Peter Andre to be the head of Mensa with an IQ of 17." Needless to say, it is unlikely that Pitt's marriage will be discussed with references to his age (49). Inside, like the worst kind of best man's speech, the paper celebrated Aniston's happiness with a double-page spread of her "dating disasters", including three photos of her ex-husband.
So is this farewell to Poor Jen, that media construct that has proven so useful for insinuating that any woman is a failure, no matter how brilliant her life appears to be, if she doesn't have a husband and seven children? Don't be absurd. We can now look forward to tales of Poor Jen being a "bridezilla", her "baby agony" and every other allegation the tabloid press likes to throw at famous women as punishment for being female. But the narrative for Poor Jen has definitely changed.
So is there another famous woman who can pick up that mantle? Another who can be pilloried for no longer being in a tabloid-friendly relationship? One who can be trailed by paparazzi in the hope of catching her making an awkward expression that will be translated as longing for a love that once was?
Hello, Kristen Stewart.
From TheGuardian.co.uk