As most of you probably already know, one of my many useless talents is my incredible ability to retain information on celebrity pop culture. I have yet to meet someone who surpasses my recall ability in this department. I would also say that I maintain a healthy attitude towards the allure of celebrity--that is, I am perfectly aware that the people we see in our magazines and televisions are public "brands" and by no means "real" people. A new blog I found recently (http://www.annehelenpetersen.com/) has some very interesting posts on celebrity culture with an academic spin--take a look if you're interested in this sort of thing. As a starter, there was an interesting one about Miley Cyrus at the VMAs and how a musician's reputation is affected differently than say an actor's.
The analogy I've often used in regards to EP is that I've let it simmer on the back-burner for the last six years, occasionally tossing in a juicy idea or two and letting it stew for a while. Since I've brought it to the forefront of my life these days, I've had to do a lot more mental grinding regarding how I plan to approach things. In particular, one aspect I've been thinking about lately is the idea of celebrity, boiled down to the premise that Rory is placed on this pedestal of stardom within the social sphere of Eden.
The inspiration behind Rory came from many female singers I admired in my teenage years. Her eccentric fashion and physical attributes were markedly inspired by Olivia Lufkin, who in turn has been greatly influenced (and introduced me to) by the legendary Bjork. Her fierceness and forthright personality was inspired by Garbage's Shirley Manson, who never seems to be afraid to say exactly what she means--a quality I desperately wish I had when I was in high school. Her wild charisma and stage presence were inspired by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
These were the women I looked up to as a teenager: unique, confident, powerful. And, I've come to realize something else: none of these women truly relied on their sex appeal to sell records. One quote from Shirley Manson struck me in particular:
"I am not a sexy woman, I'm not beautiful, I'm not a sex kitten, I don't flirt with people, yet I've been tagged more of sex symbol than women who truly are and I that's solely because I don't reveal too much: people are curious."Something else that Shirley Manson commented on caught my attention. In an interview, she talks about how the female pop singers these days seem declawed and defanged, compared to the female singers that came out in the 90's. I was still in elementary school in the nineties and paid little attention to pop music at the time, but her words got me thinking about the most prominent female pop stars today: Beyonce, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift. How I feel about the public personae of these ladies could take up an entire post on its own, but for the purposes of what I'm trying to do here, I'm going to focus on one person in particular.
There's something about Rihanna. Ever since she went all good-girl-gone-bad and chopped her hair for "Umbrella," I haven't been able to look away. It's a strange phenomenon, because I am her polar opposite in so many ways. I have always stubbornly refused to smoke, be it cigarettes or weed. I rather prudish with my personal life and would never be as forthcoming as Rihanna has been about her sexuality. As Hachi once put it, I am the sheep in wolf's clothing--I may look intimidating, but I'm as goody-goody as it gets. Yet despite all this, I've managed to retain a weird fondness for Rihanna. She's cultivated this aura of unapologetic impenetrability that's sharp and wicked in a similar vein to what drew me to Shirley Manson. Yeah, I was dismayed when she reunited with Chris Brown, but I wasn't angry--nor did I lament on her "stupidity" or whatnot. Because what I saw was a young woman just three years older than me, whose brain told her to leave but her heart told her to stay. I can think of all sorts of girls around me who've fallen into this trap--but their choices weren't magnified and dissected in the gossip coliseum. I'll grant that there are things I don't necessarily look positively upon--like her tendency to show up late to her own shows. But hey--I don't know her, and it's none of my business (unless I'm paying a ticket for her show, perhaps).
Anyways. I've been thinking long and hard about how I'm gonna depict Rory's fall. It's kind of awful, in that I feel like I'm purposely throwing one of my children into the path of an incoming vehicle. But I'd already decided a long time ago that Charlotte and Rory's stories take on opposite trajectories. The idea that has been gaining the most traction recently is built on the idea that we have a tendency of building up celebrities and then tearing them down. Some people manage to maintain a veneer of impenetrability--think Shirley or Rihanna. Others become crushed by the weight of stardom--and in this case, exuding that permanent mask of confidence becomes more than Rory can handle.
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