#GRWM To Kidnap Jerry Langford

Hey, Team.

I’m on a Scorsese Kick which is not that problematic or at least not as problematic as a Tarantino Kick. I rewatched The King of Comedy, a movie I watched a lot as a teenager.¹ It’s a worst case scenario kind of parasociality tale, Misery’s cousin over on the coast up in Manhattan. I’m also in a heightened anxious state so I’ve been watching a lot of grwm (get ready with me) content. Naturally, I’ve determined these two things are complimentary topics.

That’s a joke; Rupert Pupkin doesn’t have enough of a grifter’s instinct to do podcasts. But (if it’s not a fantasy sequence) a book tour is certainly a start. Maybe in the nineties he’ll end up a political pundit on a conservative radio program.

At my (all girls, Catholic) high school, the student lounge had only three DVDs: It’s A Boy Girl Thing, Hard Candy, and The King of Comedy. Boy Girl barely got any run time, more often than not Hard Candy was playing, Patrick Wilson screaming on behalf of his balls while students worked on essays or scrolled Facebook. And at least once a month someone would put on The King of Comedy. I think what influenced our tastes was a joy in the degradation.

Rupert puts on an affable “oh gee of course, sir” act but he knows he’s being humiliated. It’s in the way he drops the receptionist’s phone with a sharp clatter the first time he visits Langford’s office, how his gentle chuckles get harsher and shorter as Rita jokes about his signature in the autograph book, the way his body contorts into a hooked form with an accusing finger jabbing the air as he bickers with Masha on the streets of New York. His fantasy of marrying Rita on television, officiated by his principal whose whole sermon is begging for Rupert’s forgiveness cracks his interiority wide open: he absolutely has fantasized about suicide just for the thought of people crying over him, he absolutely believes the world has wronged him and for that it must pay dearly. He’s embittered, impotent, and entitled.

He works on his act, which, for what it’s worth, would do annoyingly well at some open mics, but no evidence appears to suggest he’s performed it outside of his Joker studio lair in his mother’s basement. He doesn’t want to work for the glory, he just wants the adoration now. He wants all his doubters to grovel now. He’s also completely delusional. Robert De Niro if only you didn’t suck as a person! You’re such a fucking good actor! Treat your assistants right, you ancient piece of shit!

An interlude that speaks to my own interests directly and is the whole thesis statement of this self congratulatory bathroom stall of a newsletter, is Jerry on the street. He strides, his long legs stiff and his step anxious, down the streets of Manhattan. Trying and failing to pretend he’s comfortable with his notoriety. A cab crawls alongside the sidewalk, something that would make any non-cishet man break into a cold sweat, the driver banters with Jerry. There’s no danger here, but he’s not at ease. Passersby greet him enthusiastically, calling out his name, he’s peppered with unwanted attention. Construction workers whoop down at him. He waves, playing as nice as he can. A woman at a payphone talking to her son in the hospital excitedly asks for an autograph, and then if maybe he could talk to her son. When at last Jerry meekly sets a boundary, mumbling a nervous excuse about being late, he’s met with vitriol. “I hope you get cancer!” she spits at him, wishing her own son’s agony upon him. She rattles off insults to his character into the receiver of the payphone as he scurries away, shoulders hunched. His body is a commodity, his time is a bauble for the public to play with. His lack of anonymity strips him of his humanity.

I see a parallel not just to parasociality as a spectrum of emotions and possessiveness, I see also the fluctuations of othering non cishet, non white people. They love him until they don’t, they’ll protect him until they won’t. Through the body of a male talk show host, and via the context of fame, Scorsese presented in that scene an allegory for being a non-cishet (white) man in public.

I’m also reminded of Chappell Roan beseeching her fans to respect the privacy of her family, to allow her to live as a civilian when she is not performing, and being met with accusations of entitlement, ungratefulness, of being Difficult(™). They love her until they don’t, they protect her until they won’t. On the smaller stages and in less public spaces, this refrain spins in the air, a dull hum reminding anyone who isn’t a white, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied man that the door may have been opened wide, but there are plenty itching to fling them back out and slam it shut. Entering alleged safe spaces and interacting with self-proclaimed allies can only ever be approached as if it were a minefield. They’ll love you until they don’t, they’ll protect you until they won’t. The body bends and the voice softens, constantly reassuring the threatening figures: “I’m not a threat,” And they’ll believe it for as long as no difficulty arises. Difficulty arises. Microaggressions compound with interest, accommodations must be administered, hard truths must be heard. Or in Chappell and Jerry’s cases, the horror of horrors: a famous person reveals they were a person this whole time.

As a film major in recovery, Masha and Rupert’s vehicular pursuit of Jerry is a favorite scene. It’s an encapsulation of Scorsese as a filmmaker. The city traffic b-roll operating like POV footage as the pair mutter to each other has such a clear influence from French New Wave, it’s like a moment of Breathless was plucked from Paris, colorized, and dropped into the lap of Manhattan. Coupled with this is a combination of Scorsese terror and comedy: Pupkin is awkward and clumsy, dropping his fake gun and fumbling over the car doors as he snatches Jerry off the street. His disguise can only be described as “The Killing Joke goes to the optometrist,” and for all Jerry knows, this pair who have proven to be obsessed beyond reason with him, are going to be the last faces he ever sees after who knows what humiliations and tortures they may inflict upon him. The sweater Masha is working on² is too small, by the way. The color is nice but it’s definitely too tight.

Full disclosure, I’m a devotee of Trixie Cosmetics. I became one because I am a fan of the brand’s founder, the drag queen Trixie Mattel. It is incredibly good fortune for me that her products are consistently of good quality, even so far as introducing some staples in my beauty routine. I inherently trust the quality of the products because of a two fold reasoning: one is the parasocial “I like her and therefore trust her to not sell me literal dog shit in a tube” the other is the established lore of being a working drag queen and DJ who would require products that can endure sweat and long wear without fucking up her skin or giving her a stye. And so, here I am with my little cutie pie heart shaped bullet lipsticks and cream blush, regretting many things but not those items. And not losing sight of the fact it’s a celebrity beauty brand. Many of these products entered my radar because of watching her YouTube channel, passively absorbing the advertisements inherent in her get ready with me videos. She’ll even occasionally admit when another brand has a better product. No, no, Trixie! I think to myself, You’re good at what you do! The exchange is the fostering of authenticity which psychologist and author Pamela Rutledge identifies as “the precursor to trust.” This trust being “what gets people to buy into the story and (...) influences our purchase behaviors.” When discussing the phenomenon of celebrity-branded beauty products, Laura Jane Atelier summarizes simply, “When you buy Rare Beauty, you’re buying into Selena (Gomez)’s vulnerability, when you grab Rhode Skin, you’re embracing Hayley (Bieber)’s effortless chic.”

When I pat my orange blush into my cheeks, I’m adorning myself with my idea of Trixie Mattel. I’m digging deep here to come up with what the idea of Trixie is to me. I'm resisting typing it out because it’s technically introspection and I hate thinking too hard about what is going on inside of me. Do you know how long it took for me to admit I’m non-binary? The delay was not caused by any threat to my personhood, I just hated thinking about myself that much! When I wear that blush or dab on my glittering green eyeshadow, I’m applying signifiers of a hard worker with a deranged sense of humor and a knack for glamor. Don’t fucking look at me. Just keep reading.

A month or so back, I burped out my amazement at actors in New York conducting closet sales. As far as I could find the majority of these sales would go to a charity of some sort, a delicious little tax write off, in exchange for letting throngs of admirers dig through sanctioned belongings with the goal of walking away with a totem or two. By clearing out archival couture, they provide a point of access for fans to relate to them in some way. Walking away clutching a scarf or shrunken cardigan Chloe Sevigny doesn’t want anymore doesn’t mean you become her. But perhaps by simply trying on one of her Hermès pieces, you might connect to her ideals, values, and what she represents. It’s as if it were an attainable and livable sensation. These agnostic deities are projections of the ideal self, in marketing this is the aspirational (and ever moving) goal post for fully embodying our most prized values and qualities. These famous faces become so valuable, so sanctified, because they represent what we want to see in others, what we delight in catching glimmers of in ourselves. The dissolution of barriers and boundaries courtesy of the direct-to-consumer functionality of social media has cranked the appetite for access and ownership to voracious levels. Pilgrims travel miles to behold a desiccated body part that may have belonged to someone holy (or may have been plucked from an unconsenting random corpse). Fans wait in lines curling around a city block in a sweaty whorl of enthusiasm to maybe touch some fabric that once draped a well-known stranger’s form. For those that don’t live near gentrified neighborhoods in New York City, there is the alternative of beauty products. The clothing may be too expensive, the locale of these sales too Absolutely-Inaccessible-To-The-Average-Person, but a blush, a perfume, a cleanser? When you can’t go to the Vatican, you get a crucifix. There is always a way to broadcast your affiliations and values, and lucky us it’s pay-what-you-can.

When my brain was particularly hardened and cold during the first couple years of the pandemic, I would watch #grwm videos to soothe myself. (Often) Women would wash their faces, apply moisturizer, and begin their sometimes simple, sometimes elaborate applications of makeup, careful styling of their hair. It was an escapism, watching these blithe figures groom and maintain themselves, as I huddled indoors and covered the lower half of my face. An account I followed would go live every Saturday morning. She would apply make-up and chat with anyone commenting in the feed. It created a simulation of an older sister, or a cool and collected girl dispensing tips for shaping your eyebrows like it was a special secret. Which is more romantic than the reality: a hoard of observers and one lone figure pretending to be having a video call with with a friend.³ Products would be named and promptly vanish from shelves. Whenever a location is surprisingly crowded, or an item suddenly missing at the store, I jokingly ask, “Who posted?” But seriously who posted, I have blisters on my feet and all the hydrocolloid patches are missing.

GRWM content is so popular because it provides a feeling of normalcy, a sense of regularity, nothing more troubling than difficulty sharpening a brow pencil can happen here. It imitates a feeling of closeness with another person. Sitting on the floor with a friend and carefully applying false lashes, trying to help each other keep them from looking unnatural, musing about what to do with our hair. The popularity of these videos are proof to me that people are herd animals. People aren’t isolated in a solipsistic way, they’re isolated because the current structure of society and capitalism needs them isolated. People are incentivized to avoid each other. Self checkout, no contact delivery (I use no-contact for Covid cautious reasons), phone navigation that completely eradicates any person-to-person communication, union busting.

The absolute flood of social media platforms and chat applications wouldn’t exist if people didn’t want to connect. It’s getting harder to connect in the flesh. I live in a city full of bars, venues, parks, events, I encounter people all the time. Outside of the cities, the internet is all a person might have. Watching a familiar stranger blow on the glue of their half lash provides a half-life simulacra of the connection a person craves. One of the big hurdles a television show had to get over during the early days of the home television set was to be the sort of thing an audience member would want in their home. The people on the screen weren’t just performers, they were guests in thousands of living rooms. They were household names because they had become a part of the household. Parasociality didn’t start there but it’s certainly where it got its sealegs.

It’s the same with social media. Twitter shattered the peace of PR teams everywhere in a reverse move on what television did. Instead of welcoming the famous into our homes, the famous were welcoming us into their homes, bathrooms, vacations, family dinners, minds. It spread from there to us now knowing the layout of houses we’ve never been in, the walls of rooms we’ll never enter. I don’t watch as many GRWMs as I used to, but as I said at the start, I’m feeling Stressed(™) so I’ve been watching some favorites– a trans model setting her under eyes with powder as she waits for her her hair to cool in their curlers, a horror film critic walking viewers through her favorite eyeshadows, and yes, Trixie Mattel getting into drag with the help of her latest product launch.

Originally a two thirds majority (something along 66.6repeating% of the senate) needed to end a filibuster but after 1975 it was reduced to three fifths (60% of the senate). I hated double checking the meaning of this. I also hate Chuck Schumer.

People are losing their minds over this campaign. I’m typing this out on my phone bc it’s just — Team, I get it. I get it. But calm down, damn. I just had a crash out over public lust for Pedro Pascal. I can't keep being the shrill killjoy! The whole point of a Calvin Klein underwear campaign is the sexualización of the masculine body, so like, yeah, I get it. And I agree! Holy shit that ad is incredible! I literally just joked about wanting to Blue Skidoo into that ad, I promise you I get it. I’ll be honest I have chuckled over posts of men pretending to be confused why EoO keeps playing on their girlfriend’s phones, or one instance of a woman taking on the role of a concerned tía letting Benito know dropping that ad on a Tuesday was very inconvenient for everyone, that’s the sort of thing for a Friday night ¿entiendes? But, to be annoying, the fetishization of Latinx, especially Black and brown Latinx bodies is not to be ignored. Some (white) folks are being weird about this one, honestly!. He’s hunky but he’s not meat and some of these reactions read like reviews of a steak, damn. I’ve gotten pissed off about this before. Ok done typing on mobile back to properly typed up stuff.

This is #grwm’s fucked-up hyper consumerist homunculus. I've said that hustle culture scammed us into viewing moments of rest into "free time" that has to be turned into a fresh outlet of production but now we’ve got the morning shed over here pushing the idea that even sleep has to be optimized. These anti-aging routines improve what, exactly? The majority of the faces in serums and tapes and silicone wraps are under 30, their followers even younger. The consumerism is just compulsive at this point.

Many of these items individually are reasonable for care— a bonnet for hair, a particularly emollient balm for chapped lips, etc. This is standard, normal, even. What is being pushed instead looks more along the lines of postoperative care; you could never convince me this doesn’t majorly hinder a night’s rest. There's nothing to maintain or prevent here, as you age there will be signs. That's just how it is! Self-flagellation has been rebranded as empowering self care. And shocker: it's just selling garbage! What do you mean you need to tape your mouth shut before sleeping? Are you at risk of nightly possession by spiders georg? Let your mouth move in the night stop purchasing that stop selling that what the FUCK