Anyways, comments welcome on where it's best for this to live.
It's like The Atlantic.com has become my new Salon. Found a couple of great things on here in the last few days and no doubt I'll blab about the rest in due course. This, however, was simply too delish to ignore. What you'll find here is a great article about the "new papparazzi". I like to think of the new paps as akin to the "New Journalism" - And I wonder if there's a specious argument to be made advancing that idea... I'm thinking, yes. [Incidentally, and this is of no interest to anyone but me in the future reading this, I'm reading Tom Wolfe at the moment and it almost seems like the "vanity" at stake in his novel and his new journalism stylisitics (relation to reality tv?) are a neat match for the idea of "new papparazzi"]. But I digress...
So, David Samuels, our intrepid reporter, gets to grips with the world of the new paps. I won't bore you with the details, but things have changed, my friends - theres a whole new economy of selling photos of stars and the business model is one more example of accelerated, globalised, electronic communication, blahblahblah. Believe me, it's good - just read the damn article for yo'self. What grabbed me though were the minor details seems somehow more revealing in this fascinating story about life today, about - excuse the obscure pun which follows - Us.
Interesting stuff - consider for instance that most of the shooters who work for the new agencies are Brazilian; shooting pics of stars in their Prius as they cruise by the local Starbucks is - get this - their first job in America! Welcome to the land of frikken opportunity! Something about this is so surrealy exciting that it needs a novel devoted to it - seriously. The "shooters" work together in gangs (complete with gang names that also act as trading names: MBF, X17). They shoot video as well as pictures - though the video seems to be used mostly as "proof" of their work tracking and staking out stars.
Then there's the fabulousness of Us Weekly. A magazine which seems to have somehow been responsible with changing the role of photographers, celebs, mags, audiences. You name it. Here's the deal:
"The evolution of Hollywood paparazzi from a marginal nuisance to one of theAnd we haven't even got to the best bit yet [stay tuned fans - Perez Hilton is coming up!] Samuels suggests that this new currency in star photos also tapped into a drive in audiences: not only did we all feel better knowing that Lindsay pumped gas - one step closer for us to our idols, right - but in feeling that bit closer we started to get a taste for "getting personal." Right now, as I type this, there's a mag I've fished out of someone's recycling bin [guilty, your honour], the cover of which features Lindsay Lohan and proclaims beneath "I'm Fat & A Failure." So, you get where this is going yes? If they pump gas just like us, then the have cellulite just like us, drink too much, screw around, get cold sores. Stands to reason. BUT, and here's the kicker, when we get to see them in this less glamourous light we like to attack them for it. Maybe part of it is celebrity schadenfreude ? (Yay! She's wealthy and can do what she pleases but she's also crazy and has fat ankles and ohmigod who let her out of the house in that!) But I'm inclined to think that it's also a big big helping of some of the less flattering aspects of human nature. Something akin to the hothouse social environment of the school yard. Perez Hilton is, probably, the best demonstration of that tendency. And, hell, it's nasty, but it's also funny. Perez is a bitch and he brings out the bitch in his readers, but it sorta seems to me that it's no different to the schtik of Southpark.
most powerful and lucrative forces driving the American news-gathering industry
is a phenomenon that dates back to March 2002, when a women’s magazine editor
named Bonnie Fuller took over a Wenner Media property called Us Weekly [...]
What Fuller brought to Us was a keen understanding of her audience. “...what was
interesting to me was to look at celebrities going to the dry cleaners and
pumping gas. I loved looking at these pictures of celebrities who were just like
us.”
The genius of Bonnie Fuller’s new approach was that almost any picture
of a celebrity doing something ordinary would do, with a little help from an
inventive caption writer who could come up with a snappy one-liner"
Ok, I could go on and on. The last thing that grabbed me is this concept of "giving it up" devised by the paps. "Giving it up" is their term for celebs who are willing, or at least, consenting participants in their own papping. When the see the boys coming they at least try to act natural and do something photo-worthy (like, what, keep on pumping gas?). As Samuels rightly notes this sexualised lingo suggests something nasty and special. Giving it up is all about being popular; like the cheerleaders in the teen movie. Giving it up makes the paps like you, they treat you good, they give you the publicity you need as a starlet confined to driving around LA in search of another double mocha latte. The real worry is, I suppose, the next inevitable step (one which Britney has already taken) instead of metaphorically giving it up to paps stars will give it up "for real" thus ensuring a complete union between the two sides of celebrity industry. Brit might be crazy, but there's method in her madness.
