Rant
Is She or Isn’t She? Who cares!?
Among the (many) hypes spinning around in the crazy stratosphere of celebrity, the Pregnancy Speculation has to be the most annoying. Is she or isn’t she? the headlines scream, above photos of some unfortunate female star who’s probably had a plate of pasta for lunch instead of her customary coffee and a cig.
Why are people so fixated with it? Who cares if a celeb is pregnant or not? And why the hounding? Lately Jennifer Garner was finally ‘outed’ as being up the duff after months of gossip on the internet about the exact status of her uterus. The latest victim is poor little Eva Longoria who dared to display a hint (a mere hint!) of a pot belly. And Posh only has to step out in baggy jeans instead of her customary elasticated Cavalli bodysocks and the papers have consigned her to the maternity ward.
As well as being annoying for the celebrity concerned, it’s actually quite insidious as well. The early stages of pregnancy are already fraught with tension and most women don’t want to announce their pregnancy before that critical first scan. Likewise, if the celeb in question isn’t actually pregnant, they’ll go through all sorts of paranoia about whether they’ve put on weight.
So can’t we leave these girls alone and let them gestate in peace, at least until they’re ready to tell the world? Let’s have some proper news.
by Susie Gordon
Rant: Keira, you look lovely in period costume and…..Cut! Get yourself doing some proper acting for a change!
Yawn…and for her next movie feat, Keira Knightley will perform in a…….period piece…again. Yep, this time, century of choice to waltz about in period costume in, is the eighteenth, for a new role as the Duchess of Devonshire. Seriously, I don’t know if I could be less excited. Will this girl never realise that acting is about the range of emotions you can realistically portray not eras your movies cover?
Let’s just have a think about what she’s been in. There was The Edge of Love, that semi-lesbian tussle with Sienna Miller for the love of poet, Dylan Thomas set in the early 1900s and before it, Atonement. Again, this was the same sort of era- this time a wartime romance. Before these, she pouted her way through the mind-numbingly overdone Pride and Prejudice and King Arthur, not to mention all of the never-ending Pirates of the Caribbean films she’s waddled around in.
Not only is it getting increasingly wearisome realising that all character variation is going to be disclosed in the first few seconds of the movie (once we have seen what she is wearing), but also (and I realise this is a low blow as I don’t normally condone physical degradation) but those boob-enhancing bustiers- well, they’re about as futile as handing the Pope a whore-house voucher.
More than all this, I’m getting sick of listening to her cut-glass English accent. You remember when you had to read Shakespeare out loud in school and everyone weirdly started putting on their poshest accent because they all spoke like that in Shakespeare’s time, didn’t they? Keira is actually just that especially pretty girl who, not having feign a posh voice, found her effortless niche and clung to it for dear life. You can’t hide behind your period attire forever. Sooner or later, the public are going to want to hear your finest American / Irish / French / whatever accent and what will you do then?
Rant - Girl Fight!
If the media is anything to go by, behind the scenes of every drama, reality show and soap, female stars are bickering, bitching and backbiting. Most recently the papers have been bursting with rumours of a feud between Danniiiii Minogue and new host Cheryl Cole on the X Factor. Earlier in the year the Sex and the City monster reared its Philip Treacy-clad head once again, stirring up talk of vicious verbal wars between Kim Cattrall and SJP. The pop scene is full of it too. Apparently the Spice Girls were at each others’ throats left right and centre. Likewise All Saints, who reportedly broke up following an argument over who wore a certain coat onstage.
Whether the stories are true or not it makes you wonder why the press are so fixated with it. It’s never the same for male stars. Not in a month of Sundays would you ever see an article about how Westlife broke up over who got to wear which waistcoat.
So why do the press feel the need to fabricate or exaggerate these girl fights? Are they appealing to that particular male fetish – a clean version of the messy all-girl mud wrestle? Or are they kow-towing to that age-old stereotype that women are nothing but malevolent harridans obsessed with petty quarreling?
The whole debacle is such a shame because it persuades women that they have to crawl all over one another (in a non-mud wrestling way…) to be noticed or get ahead. The effects are easy to see in Big Brother – that scratched and slightly distorted mirror that we hold up to society. “I’m well bitchy, innit.” is the favourite tag-line of many a wannabe celeb as she twirls her ratty hair extensions.
It’s a sad state of affairs when the media paints women as modern-day fishwives. What happened to the sisterhood? Is it not fashionable for women to like each other anymore? It’s boring and so bl**dy predictable.
by Susie Gordon
Rant: What the Hell is With Peaches?
What the hell is going on with Peaches Geldof? Haha i accidentally typed Geldog just then and actually I think I like it. From now on she will be known as P.dog. I know I shouldn’t care about the antics of this talentless, self absorbed, celebrity-by-default teenager but is there anyone else really so lacking in substance and yet taking up so many column inches, including these?
The irritating thing about her is that she fascinates us, she’s like a poor man’s Paris Hilton except she makes Paris look like a classy, witty society girl with manners. Following the age old trajectory of fandom, P.dog gets her name in the papers for all the right reasons- stupid statements, drug overdoses, partying and now, best of all, a quickie wedding to some random music dude that she met a month ago- hurrah! Another teen divorcee in the making.
She’s obviously smart, as well as a bit of a smart arse, and that makes all this worse. Because she’s buying into the bollocks that she’s somehow a worthwhile human being because people know her name.
Then, last week we read in the Daily Mail that while her little sister Pixie was invited into the VIP area of the V festival, Peaches wasn’t. Her status as C grade celebrity had dropped off a few points. Two days later and she’s had a quickie wedding in Vegas.
There is no way, no way in the world, that P.dog can actually believe she is going to have a lasting marriage. Like I said, she’s no Britney, she’s actually got some brains. So I for one refuse to believe that she is entering into a marriage with some romantic idea that she’s find ‘the one’. And that actually makes it worse. There is a calculated carelessness in the act. Calculated because she knows it gives her publicity and careless because it has no meaning to her. And while marriage may not have meaning to her, it actually does to the rest of us and it makes me angry to see it cr*pped on for the purpose of getting more media attention.
And here I am adding to it. Bah, the whole thing drives me bonkers. P.dog grow up, get a divorce and get a life and please, god please, get off the news.
Rant: Why The Paparazzi Should Quit Complaining
In the last few weeks, not unlike the rest of the time really, we have seen reports of poor victimised paparazzi being abused by celebrities from Rhys Ifans to Wayne Rooney. Today, according to the Daily Mail, Rooney is being ‘grilled’ over an incident in which he spat at paparazzi.
But here’s the thing, I personally don’t blame Rooney. I’m not condoning something as gross as spitting on people, but the truth is these photographers are aggressive, obnoxious and totally invasive. It’s their job, and fair enough because we are all buying the magazines that show these pictures. But at the same time, I think it’s a risk of the job. It’s kind of like being a fire fighter- sometimes you get burnt.
The truth is these guys love it when celebs go mad at them, because they get great sellable picks of an angry Tom Cruise or a screaming Britney Spears. How much more of a commodity is that than a picture of Posh shopping with her mates on Rodeo Drive? How can you possibly be annoyed when one time out of a hundred a celeb goes mad at you? When you call insults and block a person from moving, that tends to be how anyone would react.
In LA there are new laws being considered to curtail the paparazzi invasion of celebrities lives, but they are vehemently (a bit weirdly perhaps) opposed by LA’s Chief of Police William Bratton. His view is that celebrities should not do things that court attention, naming Britney Spears as an example.
He has a point and there’s obviously a symbiotic relationship between celebrity and photographers. This is why really, the celebs can’t complain. Most people would agree with that- because hey if you have bizillions of dollars, a few Porsches and a Chihuahua named Fifi, then tough luck, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with you whining about being photographed.
But the same goes for photographers. If you get paid $50,000 for a picture of Britney throwing up on a night out, you got to accepts that some of it might end up on your shoes mate. So quit complaining, the pair of you!
Why the BBC need a Kick Up the Bum
As regular readers will know, I thought Bonekickers was the kind of show which deserves to have its tapes unspooled and then used to hang the writers. This isn’t because it was the worst show I’ve ever seen, just the worst waste of money on a show I’ve seen for a while.
And you know why? Let me tell you.
Because the writers/producers/showrunners were so busy going round saying hey you know what’s good? American telly. You know what we should do? Copy it. There is no doubt that the U.S. are the one pushing the boundaries of goodness and wonder in TV, at least in drama anyway. They have bigger budgets, more leeway and generally it seems a more experimental approach. So you can see the writers room at the BBC, replete with their Marks and Spencer’s undies and a cup of tea going ‘mate, lets put some balls in this, lets make a show that’s like one of those U.S. tellybox things’.
This maybe explains why we get lines such as “Use your archeological imagination!” Not to mention a climactic scene that involves a baddie swinging like a pendulum across a gigantic, hilariously obvious blue screen of flames. That. Is. Not. British. Telly.
Now I’m all for experimentation, you know. Like- how should we kill of this week’s character in Hollyoaks… murder? Car crash? Gas explosion? Or the kind of experimentation you get on a third date- can I touch her boob? Yes/no? These are good. What is not good is taking a bunch of stuffy English actors and forcing them to act like someone from Law and Order. I mean it had all the prerequisites of a British drama- ageing character actor, check. Something to do with stuff that’s old. Check. And a setting of marshes and countryside. Check. But then it took these elements and tried to squeeze them sausage-like into the casing that is U.S. drama. Make the lead chick ballsy. Make her like Lara Croft, but crap. And you know what guys? Archaeology is just NOT that exciting. Indy faked us out using explosions and quests for grand things like Jesus’ coffee mug and we were too busy looking at Angie’s boobs in Tomb Raider to notice. So what does that tell us? Archaeology requires, no, demands big boobs, loads of explosions and a never-ending quest. You know what doesn’t work? Your middle aged lead character wondering around a room full of dusty objects, awkwardly murmuring ‘give up your secrets…’ while the camera weaves and stumbles like a drunk outside your local.
This show was, in the words of my house mate, ‘relentlessly cr*p’. And it was cr*p because it tried to be something it wasn’t. It IS a British drama; it is NOT an episode of Without a Trace, the Young Indiana Jones or The Wire. If we are going to blow our budget on a big hitting exciting drama then don’t copy someone else’s gig. Look for our own inventive, experimental style and take a risk on that. It’s not really a risk if you think ‘this worked for them lets do it, but a bit worse’. That’s guaranteed failure. So listen up, the beeb: Do it better, cos that was just embarrassing.
By McGee Noble
Stop Complaining!
Nothing gets my goat quite like TV complaints. You know the sort. Mealy-mouthed letters and emails from ‘Offended of Orpington’ about how outraged they are about some advert with a little bit of raunch, or a soap plotline involving something not quite suburban enough for their tastes.
Most recently there was the furore surrounding Heinz’s rather anodyne advert for deli spreads. The ad shows a male New York deli worker kissing a man to whom he has just served a baguette. It was a mere peck on the lips. Not an orgiastic snog. Not a lascivious lip-lock reminiscent of the last days of Sodom and Gomorrah. And yet people rang up in droves to condemn Heinz for their evil and dastardly promotion of homosexuality. “It’s a travesty!” they cried. “How will we explain this to our children?” Easy. You simply say “Some men love women. Some men love men. End of.” But that’s beside the point. More irksome is the fact that most complainers overlooked the main concept behind the advert. The male deli worker was supposed to be an incarnation of the customer’s wife. Heinz was trying to say that with their tasty new spreads, even a run-of-the-mill housewife will be transformed into a wisecracking Brooklyn deli owner. Simple enough, you might think. Apparently not, for the hundreds who complained.
Another case that annoyed me was the Chris Morris/Brasseye scandal in 2001. This is a prime example of utter idiocy at play. In case you didn’t see it or have forgotten the comic brilliance, the show was a mockumentary about paedophilia. Various celebrities including Gary Lineker and Philippa Forrester lent their support to a fictional anti-paedo campaign called ‘Nonce Sense’, while Richard Blackwood discussed the ‘fact’ that some perverts send ‘noxious gases’ through computer keyboards to subdue children. All pretty far fetched stuff, but the celebrities didn’t twig.
When the show aired there was pandemonium. Around 2000 people complained, and even politicians leapt onto the bandwagon of outrage. One pontificated that the show was “unspeakably sick”, and another claimed to be “dismayed” by it. But the thing is (and you’ll love this) neither of them had seen it. That’s right. They hadn’t even SEEN it.
And do you know what is even more ridiculous? The mind-boggling hypocrisy of the press. After Brasseye aired, the Daily Star (that well-known bastion of editorial supremacy) printed an article condemning Morris right beside a piece about Charlotte Church (then just 15 years old) and her developing mammaries with the headline “She’s a big girl now”… Note to editor – make sure you’re not encouraging your readership to lech over an underage girl at the same time as decrying someone who is ostensibly doing the same. (But Chris Morris wasn’t, that’s the point! It was a joke! Argh, I give up.)
The thing that bugs me most is that it really doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. The majority of people are smart enough to realise that two men kissing on screen isn’t going to rouse the devil from his lair, and that a bit of clever, controversial humour is a credit to our country rather than a scourge.
So if you’re one of the stuffy complaining types, make sure you get your facts straight before you issue forth with your vitriol. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have opinions. But take a step back and you may discover that you’ve missed the point completely.
by Susie Gordon
Soap tragedies are tragic, OK?!!
When a tragedy occurs in a soap, it is very often rather tragic. I want to make it clear that when I use the term tragic here I do not mean useless or pathetic. I mean to make the point that when someone dies in Eastenders or Hollyoaks this is oft quite distressing to watch. By now, I expect half of you to be reeling back in disgust, shaking your head / sniggering at how ridiculous it is for me to even bother to argue that, shock, horror, a soap might be moving. Well, don’t be such a bloody snob.
The prevailing (and frankly, pretty uninteresting) view is that soaps are the lowest of low, the shallowest scum of the dramatic arts, mundane viewing for even more mundane people. But, this simply ain’t so. When a character dies, it matters not whether they happen to be draped over the boards of a west end stage with their hand across their brow spouting “Alas, I am done for” or on the cobbles of a puddle-filled Albert Square with the neighbours clutching pints outside the Queen Vic gawping at their limp body - the catastrophe remains. In a lot of ways, the tragedy is heightened because at the time you’re usually stuffing your face with your tea just as they snuff it leaving you feeling a tad disrespectful as you munch while, Martin Fowler cradles his dead mother. It’s bad enough that you’re left with a mouthful of sausage and mash (which you’re rapidly going off) and tears are streaming down your face, but imagine if the doorbell goes. What is whoever it is at your door going to say? Of course, someone in the next row at the theatre might gladly hand you a hanky but let’s face it, when they glance at the telly you’re going to get ridiculed.
The other thing about disasters in Soapland is that they upset routine, much like real life tragedies, which actually renders them more affecting than a one-off trip to the cinema, during which you are introduced to the characters, watch a bit of their life, see them killed off all within the space of two hours and off you go. You trundle along, as you do in your own life in the belief that things are likely to stay the same, that everything is hunky dory, then bam, someone’s dead. It’s unexpected and thus heart-wrenching.
I’m not saying soaps are always where it’s at for the highest drama. Indeed, some soap disasters are handled in this manner, disastrously. But this is largely down to a poor script and terrible acting. Take for example, Drew’s death in Neighbours…a good few years ago now…he was fine one minute, fell off his horse the next and was dead and buried by the end of the episode! But when they’re done well, the words aren’t too cheesy and the actors are acting their little socks off, there’s no stopping the tears. Max’s death in Hollyoaks last week and his funeral last night left me balling (watch the omnibus this Saturday and tell me I’m wrong).
Fine, all you sceptics, if it makes you feel better, go shed your ‘sophisticated’ tears at some ‘sophisticated’ tragedy. But I resent being made to feel daft for getting emotional over a soap – soap tragedies are tragic, OK?!!
By Susan Allen
Big Brother is a Big Let Down
Big Brother is really doing my nut in. The granddaddy of reality TV, this show has contaminated the airwaves for nearly ten years now. And you know what, we still watch it. Even me and I think it’s the stupidest show ever made. Sure the ratings are down, but there are still over a million people tuning into this show every day.
What does that say? Well let’s have a look:
1. People like stupid people. Why? Because they make us feel less stupid. Even though, ironically, we are pretty stupid for watching the aforementioned stupid people.
2. Watching horrible people do horrible things entertains us. With what result? Horrible people find fame and fortune. Jade Goody still graces the pages of tabloids and yet this racist, mingin woman is famous for what? Being racist and mingin.
3. By watching this show, we affirm for these stupid, horrible people, that they are indeed ‘important’. Take Lisa, in one episode she said: ‘I’ve always thought I was destined for something big, it’s just come a bit later on in life than expected. I could feel it in my spirit.’ What could she be referring to I wonder? Was she working in the third world saving children? A work of art? Maybe she led a world changing protest? No, of course not. She was talking about Big Brother. On what planet does being on Big Brother count as being important? Big? If this is your life ambition you need to get a new ambition. And a new life.
When Big Brother first aired it was fascinating. A window into the mundane that was bizarrely addictive. There was a range of people in the house, we saw people of different backgrounds interact under pressure, we saw friendships forged and enemies made over the most minute chores and conflicts. Today Big Brother is a shadow of itself, relying on a forced mix of kooks, bastards and sexpots to keep things interesting. Yet it’s not. Time to close up shop and put something else on the air, seriously.
Rant: Make up your mind Channel 4! Should women love what they’ve got or get surgery?
Channel 4 need to get their act together on the message they’re sending out to women of the UK. Do they want them to retain a stiff (unbotoxed) upper lip, accept the shape they are and start being more positive about their bodies? Or, do they want women to deem themselves lesser beings for their flaws and therefore jump under the surgeon’s knife to slice them into their ideal?
It seems as if the broadcasting team, as of a tea time, enjoy whipping their female viewers into a self-image frenzy. One evening they’ll show How to Look Good Naked with Gok Wan nonchalantly grabbing women’s flabby bits and telling them how fabulous they look and the next they’ll whack on 10 Years Younger with that Icky Hambleton Jones witch, who basically rips apart women’s confidence by telling them how disturbingly old they look for their age before suggesting that cutting half their face off will improve their life.
Just what are they trying to achieve - a nation of bewildered schizophrenic females unsure whether to twirl around in front of the mirror or break down and sob at the sight? It just ain’t fair. How to Look Good Naked is based on the principle that women do not need to change the way they look, they need to change the way they feel about the way they look. Whereas, 10 Years Younger, although ostensibly also about making women feel good about themselves, actually advocates self-mutilation in frank acknowledgement that what women have got is not good enough. There’s no question that the women don’t have surgery (this part of the programme takes up a good ten minutes).
And what’s more, if the TV schedule wasn’t enough to mess with their heads, the official programme websites even have links to each other as if they are singing from the same hymn sheet. A lady having a good day, pretty sure she’s looking hot can be browsing the HTLGN website, reading about all ‘Gok’s triumphs from the last series’ and finds ‘the perfect fashion’ for her body shape. But then, she spots the link to 10YY and before she knows it has clicked it and is suddenly heading for dangerous water. There’s the “Guess my Age” feature in which she is asked to upload a photo of herself to be judged by the masses. Now, excuse me for my cynicism but there is not going to be much feel good action as a result of that. What person, in their right mind puts their picture up to be scrutinised by the world and trusts that people will be kind?! People will not be kind. They will be just like they are on the programme where women are deemed older than they are (this is what the whole premise of 10YY relies on). Moreover, after the knock-back judgement, not only is Nicky there staring with her unfeeling shark eyes standing among a dentist and plastic surgeon, but the little box at the bottom also begins to look more appealing: ‘Get advice on cosmetic surgery here’.
So, in short, Channel 4, stop sending out mixed messages! Maybe Gok and Nicky both need their voice but recognize that where one is a chirpy Jiminy Cricket the other is Othello’s merciless Iago. Sort out the websites so they don’t look like they’re best buds and give them a Les Dennis/Bob Mortimer boxing match to underscore their differences. That should sort it out.
By Susan Allen
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