I mentioned to someone the other day that I had no intention of watching One Battle After Another because, for the most part, I don’t vibe with Paul Thomas Anderson movies, so I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it. The person replied that they go out of their way not to know things about celebrities because actors and so forth are “just people doing a job,” and it’s not important to know things about them. And I find this an utterly bizarre take on multiple levels, not the least of which is that knowing what kind of movies someone makes is just basic to knowing about movies.
So okay, I freely admit that half my job around here is Knowing Things About Celebrities. And yeah, I have removed people from my schedule when I learned bad things about them. I don’t want to pay tribute to the work of someone who did not learn as a child that no means no and we don’t touch people without their consent. Maybe this guy wouldn’t; I don’t know. And there is the perpetual conversation about Separating The Art From The Artist, to which I generally respond that there’s a difference between consuming art from Patricia Highsmith and consuming art from J.K. Rowling. Highsmith is dead, and she’s never going to know if I read a Ripley book or not and won’t use my reading it to say I support her work.
I do also think it’s insulting to actors, directors, and writers to call them “just people doing a job.” I suspect that person isn’t terribly creative and doesn’t understand what goes into a lot of film industry jobs. You can’t just drudge your way through it without it being obvious onscreen. Just ask Ben Affleck. Yeah, a lot of people in the industry are doing the jobs they can get, but they still have to put something of themselves into it. We also know that a lot of people are doing things they’re genuinely excited about and are throwing themselves into it. Just ask Iman Vellani.
I try to draw a line in my work. You don’t have to do a ton of reading of my celebrity columns to encounter my saying that something is none of my business, and for the most part I focus on their public life ahead of their relationships. I wrote an entire article about Jennifer Aniston without once mentioning the name of anyone she’s been in a relationship with, because my whole point was that we should care less. Did I talk about how A.J. Langer is now a member of the British aristocracy? Yes, because that’s bonkers and fascinating. Mostly, who celebrities are boinking is their business.
Mostly. Because I will die on the hill that Marvel should’ve been paying better attention to the rumour mill and maybe looked a little deeper into a certain person’s background. Is it hard, watching his appearances and knowing? Yes, but since one of them was Quantumania, it was just going to be. But I’d rather know. Yes, it’s ruined the work of several people whose work I really enjoyed. On the other hand, I’d also rather know if all kinds of other people “just doing jobs” were doing the sort of thing some celebrities have done, too, especially if they were doing it without consequences. I’m not naming names, but come on.
About the writer
Gillian Nelson
Gillian Nelson is a forty-something bipolar woman living in the Pacific Northwest after growing up in Los Angeles County. She and her boyfriend have one son and one daughter, and she gave a child up for adoption. She fills her days by chasing around her kids, watching a lot of movies, and reading. She particularly enjoys pre-Code films, blaxploitation, and live-action Disney movies of the '60s and '70s. She has a Patreon account.
Gillian Nelson’s ProfileTags for this article
More articles by Gillian Nelson
Attention Must Be Paid
Arnold Stang, who appeared in a movie with "Arnold Strong" once.
Intrusive Thoughts
There was a time when musicals were about having the biggest gimmick possible.
Camera Obscura
One woman does what she can to help foster kids until she kind of becomes Cary Grant.
The Rockford Files Files
In which Jim is not exactly a bad mother, but his client is.
Department of
Conversation
It’s a line like everything, I think. If you fucking murder or beat someone, if you spend your money trying to strip people’s rights, then into the trash bin you go. If you go on a podcast with a shitty person, IDK. If you’ve been dead for fifty years, I generally do not care. But it’s also just that personal level of comfort or lack of comfort. I haven’t been able to read or watch Ruroni Kenshin, but I am watching the show based on the work of one of the mangaka’s greatest defenders. Does that make me a hypocrite? Or is the actual act the line? I don’t know, honestly.
I think the problem is that it isn’t a line, exactly. On the anti-creationist stuff I watch, the example they use is where does “red” end and “orange” begin? You know, over there somewhere. And I still did watch the Kang stuff, and I’ll probably rewatch Loki at some point, and that’s probably not great of me. But at least he’s suffering consequences for his actions, and that means I’d rather watch that stuff than the stuff of someone who’s a known terrible person to whom nothing is happening. I’ll almost certainly never rewatch Dead Boy Detective Agency, even though I really liked it, because [gestures]. It’s somewhere in the gradient between red and orange.
That’s a good metaphor, the colors. I’m not sure I’ll finish Dead Boy Detectives, and I’ve been terribly fond of those two since that issue of Sandman traumatized me back in the day. (I took my collected volumes of that comic and donated them a while back, for that matter. And Cerebus.)
The metaphor was developed for the species concept–what’s the line between one species and what that species evolves into?–but I find it helpful for a lot of stuff. I think most stuff is on some kind of spectrum. My Gaimans are going into a box until he dies and I can read them again, except Good Omens, which is sanctified by the Pratchett connection. Though it’s also the only thing I own that Neil Gaiman has actually touched, as my copy is signed by both of them.