I worship at the altar of Brangelina

I went for a drink with two old friends recently, and one of them asked me who I'd rather see the celebrity deathclock start on soonest, Britney Spears or Amy Winehouse? I didn't really have to think about it, I'd much rather have another Amy Winehouse album than a Britney album, so I marked miss Spears for Death. My other friend protested that caring about celebrities personal lives is for women and homosexuals.

I don't agree, it's pure performance art. What we think of as a celebrity's 'private' life is a gestalt entity consisting of their actual private life, the publicists' and agents' spin on their private lives, tabloid journalists idea of what will sell more copies and the public need for entertaining scandals. By the time you read about it, if it bears any resemblance to reality, somebody hasn't been doing their job. If you think that a magazine has any idea what Brad Pitt's private life is like, you're an idiot. It's an industry that involves hundreds of thousands of people building scandals out of the most mundane and unremarkable things.



'The Hollywood insider' (not the magazine) is the character that makes a lot of gossip journalism possible. These are usually failed celebrities themselves, and they can be either bitter or benevolent about it. They're the people who hang out at the parties and then sell their stories to the papers. The jilted lovers, the confidantes eager to write tell-all books, the gal pals who write the gushing blurbs about the dresses at the wedding, or the simplicity of the decor. Or they can be the people 'revealing' drug problems, eating disorders, etc. Usually anonymously, always for the stars' own benefit, of course. Seeing as they are betraying the confidences of their so-called friends, there is really no reason to take anything they say to heart.



Why are the lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous so compelling? It's not just the gossip, there's something archetypical going on here. The whole Brangelina thing has seriously religious overtones, for me at least. Brad is a bit like a sun god avatar, a blonde, smiling, good-natured actor, who marries Angelina Jolie, who always reminded me of Kali, the blood obsession, the tattoos, and she just looks like the pictures. Beautiful but deadly, and a mother. They've slid firmly into the part of my brain that keeps various religious cosmologies apart, probably because they spent a lot of time and money tapping into the same archetypes as those gods. The Greek pantheon is filled with jealousy, rage, adultery, murder, incest and rape. They realised that seeing the divine dragged through the mud is one of the great joys of life. Perfection is as boring as it gets.

I also can't enough of the ridiculous excess. If all the money and the fame doesn't create larger than life personalities, then what does? Having so much money you don't even know what to do with it anymore, can't be good for you, nor can being recognised on the street give you a humble disposition. I was spellbound watching "The Fabulous Life of Celebrity Pets". I can't see why anybody wouldn't want to watch a documentary on how to spend a middle management salary a day on a dog. It's the kind of lunacy that just makes me happy. If you don't like that attitude, feel free to be horrified that there's a dog that's richer, more famous and that has a better life than you, and not because it can talk or cured cancer in a whimsical laboratory accident. That is at least as valid a reason to keep watching.



If I ever become famous, my friends have my permission to sell any stories, real or imagined to the press. Though I prefer imagined, because I don't think there's anything I've done in the last ten years that qualifies as a scandal. I'm thinking something along these lines:

"He sat in the room, covered in coconut oil and wearing only lederhosen, forcing the midgets to dance with his whip, while he halfheartedly tried to strangle the swan. It was then that I realised that Hollywood had changed him."

In fact, let's make it contest. Whoever leaves the best interview snippet in the comments section along with his name and postal address, will get my copy of "The Man Who was Thursday" by G.K. Chesterton. Make your entry 100 words or less. Contest closes the 16th of May. I will not correspond with you about whether or not you've won. The winner will be announced on this blog on the 17th.