Hypocrite Lecteurs
Caryn James delivers the shocking verdict: a lavishly produced photo spread in Vanity Fair fails to convincingly establish the health of the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes family! This news will hopefully save quite a few people the $7 they might have otherwise spent, crossing their fingers for a satisfying reassurance -- a Restoration, if you will, of a House whose flirtation with madness has nearly cost them their rule over an imaginar -- if profitable -- kingdom of Public Opinion.
Dropping the typically overworked sarcasm for a minute: is James out of her mind? Does she imagine that any person with more than half a wit left to them could find, in a freakin' Annie Leibovitz photoshoot in Vanity Fair, evidence of anything relating to the real world? I suppose if James wishes to treat the performance of "celebrity" as a Wildean art, in and of itself, she might have cause to devote a "Critic's Notebook" (love the title -- it claims authority while disavowing responisbility, almost like a blog!) to the phenomenon. But by restricting herself to the question of whether or not Tom and Katie are successfully appearing as "normal" as we say we want them to be, she doesn't deal in terms more transcendent than the mechanics of P.R.:
What [Cruise] really needs to do is ask his former publicist, Pat Kingsley, to forgive him for firing her and take him back. He needs somebody on his side who can convince the public that he knows the difference between a celebrity photo shoot and real life, whether he actually knows the difference or not.
Who is this public of which James speaks? Are the Critic and her Notebook part of it? Either critics are now sublimely appreciative of the efforts of publicists to shape impressions (in which case, really, it's the publicist who's the Wildean artist -- or perhaps the Shavian one?); or else James is able to stand aside from the In Touch-reading masses, commenting dryly on how the right operaive is needed to massage their primitive celebro-receptors.
I think, to give her credit, James would say that the former is the case, and not the latter. But why, then, doesn't an essay like this at least gesture at the obvious point, the great big TomKat in the room. Unlike wacky aristocrats of yore, Tom and Katie hold their titles by dint of the mass application of Attention. We are their lords and masters. We created them and sustain them. The moment -- a moment which inevitably arrives, despite its unpredictability -- our attention wanes, they will evaporate. We clearly wanted and needed Tom Cruise's mania, his Oprah-antics, his lightning alliance with a younger star, and the secretive fruit of their union. We wanted it. We wanted a telenovela-level romantic triangle, and got Brangelina. We begged for a Britney to play the Bad Mommy in public.
And, in case you were wondering: it means that we suck.