On January 24, News of the World, a British publication, sent American gossip media into overdrive with an article entitled, “Brad Split”. The article claimed that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had signed a contract to divide their assets and organize visiting times with their six children. Reps for the stars and anonymous sources mobilized, coming to the couple’s defense and calling the rumors bullshit. Evidence of their stable union increases tenfold every minute on the Internet, creating a hyper-fragmented narrative unraveling in real time: Remember the false alarm that they split last June? Look, they’re buying coordinating outfits to the Oscars! Brad just visited their French château, where Angelina is staying with the kids! They’re not going to the Oscars? Must be a personal stand against the rigid arm of Hollywood power politics! Go Brangelina! Hold on, Howard Stern just said they’re through…
The power of celebrity lies in its ability to simultaneously reaffirm and deny our vision that absolute happiness can be found in contemporary America. On one hand, celebrity couples epitomize this happiness because they prove that it is possible to have your cake and eat it too: you can be beautiful, rich, and in love. These elements comprise the mass-marketed American holy trinity. The other end of the spectrum echoes an equally American maxim: when celebrity couples fail, they uphold a puritanical world-view that denies the achievement of such lofty heights to average humans. Celebrity gossip exists in these two poles, and the pleasure that these poles elicit from readers and their particularly strained relationship to their place in the American dream.
The celebrity gossip industry addresses this relationship between reader and their fantasies of picture perfect happiness through never-ending narration; every celebrity’s life is essentially an endless cliffhanger. For every fairy-tale moment there is a gruesome scandal that keeps the scale of reward and punishment, pleasure and denial, perfectly balanced in the continued calculation of each celebrity’s mass appeal. As long as the scale remains balanced, readers stay happy in the carefully constructed world of gossip media. It’s no coincidence that celebrity gossip media has remained one of the largest grossing industries in the country.
The unique position of judgment that gossip media holds over popular imagination is further manifested by its ability to not only cover events in any light which they see fit, but to single handedly enhance and define the brand of any celebrity. The determination of merit, which directly engages reader fascination with the tabloids, constitutes nothing less than a hierarchy of celebrity worth. Consequentially, coverage of a popular brand entails higher magazine sales. Ethan Lyon, a blogger for Sparxoo, a digital marketing company, notes that Pitt and Jolie, as Brangelina, are a combined brand. “Co-branding,” Lyon states, “is a powerful way to create more publicity, generate revenues and develop new products.” Pitt and Jolie are powerful because they are together; this is why most mainstream media will follow the line that Brangelina is alive and well. We have become accustomed to consuming this particular flavor of celebrity culture, and, as a result, the coverage of a deeply personal crisis is considered in terms of numbers-crunching and brand power.
In the wake of Andy Dick’s most recent arrest, The Post leaked a backstage interview between Dick and journalist Mandy Stadtmiller from August 2006. In the interview, Dick, who is clearly intoxicated, moans, “Please, baby, write something good about me…[the press] hates me…” over and over again. Dick, who alternates between verbal abuse and hangdog behavior throughout the course of the interview, drives to the very center of the notion of celebrity as a cog in the wheel of the gossip industry. Why are images made, then broken? What agency does one have once their identity becomes a part of popular culture and enters the public sphere? The gossip media does not weigh these questions; the profits continue to roll into the tabloid industry, and the desire for contemporary American saga is sated.
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