That’s Entertainment…News?
Not even 15 minutes after a lecture on the dangers of too much entertainment coverage, a group that I will affectionately call the peanut gallery* went into a frenzy of discussion on interesting topics including Toni Braxton’s new look, Tyra Banks’ soon to be husband, the benefits of wearing boxer briefs, and the final episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race; that we were hit by this new shocking revelation from People magazine.
Sandra, Her new son, and his interesting facial expression.
Sandra Bullock’s got a baby?!
Apparently Bullock has been going through the adoption process without anyone’s knowledge and has officially adopted a baby from New Orleans. Going past issues of interracial adoption, as well as international vs national adoption, we (yes I will include myself as one of the said peanut gallery) quickly tried to figure out what was going on because as one of the anonymous members of this club had said before, “I like Sandra Bullock and I hate what’s happened to her.”
I wasn’t going to write about this topic because celebrity news is celebrity news and is driven more by humans as species building communities than anything else, but reading this article from Jezebel on the Bullock revelation changed my mind especially this final bit:
“Sandra’s story just underscores that all celebrity “news” is a charade. With all the claims made by “an insider close to Sandra” in the past few months, not a single one even hinted that she had adopted a child. If Sandra could evade the paparazzi, what does that say about the celebrities who get “caught” by photographers and the stories we do read about?”
Sandra has managed to control a situation revealing what needed to be revealed at the right time, but not only has she revealed her new son, she has also poked a hole in the system of celebrity news. In the end we get the news because we want the news.
During the lecture, they talked a lot about online real state, the fact that often there isn’t a clear line between celebrity news and what’s considered hard news and we only have ourselves the individual cater that the internet allows. Where a newspaper allows for easy division and categorization, the same can not be said for the internet where the main page is about capturing a person’s eye and content management
Celebrity news magazine with Merna Loy on the cover.
systems are built to give the person what they want. The more I’m on Netflix, the more they offer me foreign films because I watch foreign films, if I don’t feel like watching a foreign film but that’s all that’s recommended to me who do I blame: the CMS for trying to get to know me or myself? What I’m saying here is that in the end maybe news sources shouldn’t rely on whims of the public (they can’t easily flow with the internet) if they want to offer balanced news (see Issues is Journalism).
In the end, I think it’s best to say that I agree with the thought that it’s not more celebrity news, just more celebrities. Because in one way or another, the press has always been in the business of knowing someone’s business whether it is a socialite, a movie star, or the President. And as more news outlets become consolidated there will be a blurring of the lines.
And finally, there was a statement made during the lecture that celebrity news has gotten worse over the years and I want to refute that with this clip from The Women made in 1939.**
It hasn’t gotten worse, there are just pictures now.
*Peanut Gallery: an audience that heckles the performer. The term originated in the days of vaudeville as a nickname for the cheapest (and ostensibly rowdiest) seats in the theater; the cheapest snack served at the theater would often be peanuts, which the patrons would sometimes throw at the performers on stage to show their disapproval. The phrases “no comments from the peanut gallery” or “quiet in the peanut gallery” are extensions of the name. In the late 1940s the Howdy Doody show adopted the name to represent their audience of 40 children.
**Sorry this video goes out of sync part of the way in but you get the general jist of what’s going on here. Please enjoy it.
