2012 was, without question, the Year of Accelerated Celebrity Snark.
Angelina Jolie posing before the 84th Academy Awards in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles.
By JEN CHANEY
Washington Post
On the surface, at least, the celebrity news machine of 2012 appeared to run the same way it did in 2011.
Babies were born to pop divas and movie stars.
Curse words and inappropriate hand gestures made unexpected appearances in widely viewed television events.
Incredibly talented performers left this Earth way too soon.
Couples who we never thought would last so long and others we naively believed would overcome the challenges of maintaining a Hollywood marriage called it quits.
In a way, the predictability of it all was comforting. If we would count on nothing else in a nation headed swiftly toward a budgetary “fiscal cliff,” we could rely on the fact that Linday Lohan will always, forever and ever, get herself in messy situations that generate TMZ headlines.
But although the nature of the events being reported in the celebrity blogosphere didn’t change much, our responses to them did - 2012 was, without question, the Year of Accelerated Celebrity Snark.
Slate recently summarized the big news events of the past year via selected tweets from a variety of now-famous Twitter parody accounts. Which seems absolutely right, because that was how the Internet responded to nearly every zeitgeist moment, celebrity-oriented or otherwise, in the past 12 months. Angelina Jolie is showing too much leg at the Academy Awards? Clint Eastwood is talking to an empty chair at the Republican National Convention? Well then, give that leg and empty chair their own Twitter feeds. It’s the only way to process it all.
Last month, the Oxford American Dictionary dubbed GIF – the term for an image file format that can be used to create simple, prone-to-go-viral animations – its Word of the Year, and that seems right, too. If faux Twitter feeds didn’t help us make sense of pop culture, then GIFs and memes gamely stepped in, allowing us endless hours (or just minutes, because who has the time anymore?) of chuckling over gymnast McKayla Maroney’s inability to be impressed or how Carl from “The Walking Dead” really needs to get out of here.
The notion of giggling about celebrities and pop culture phenomena is not exactly new. It’s been a thing ever since a blogger blasted a fashion choice by Britney Spears while said blogger was secretly wearing a pair of mismatched polka-dot socks. But every year, the enthusiasm and urgency we bring to slicing and dicing the major entertainment stories of the day only increases. I am convinced that right now, somewhere on YouTube, a mash-up of Seth MacFarlane gags from the 2013 Oscars exists even though the ceremony won’t actually occur for two months.
It all makes me wonder if, in 2012, we might have reached the equivalent of our fiscal cliff of accelerated celebrity snark, necessitating a total recovery and reboot in 2013. This Celebritologist loves sarcasm. As a Gen X-er, I subsist on it much the way I do on food, water and a low-simmering resentment toward Baby Boomers who just refuse to retire. But even I wonder whether it’s healthy to be engaged in an ongoing mad dash toward the smartest, fastest celebrity-inspired gag.
At a recent press screening of “Les Miserables,” I watched Anne Hathaway’s anguished performance of “I Dreamed a Dream,” one that unfolds in a single, mercilessly tight shot on the actress’s face and will likely result in an Academy Award nomination. It was a moving moment. Yet my brain kept imagining how some clever Tumblr or Buzzfeed writer would probably break down this scene, frame by frame, to capture every wildly distraught Hathaway expression. I could already see the post being passed around on Facebook, yet Anne Hathaway – poor, impoverished-in-France-with-barely-any-hair Anne Hathaway – hadn’t even gotten to the part in the number where life kills the dreams she’s dreamed.
And I thought: You know, there will be time later for mining the comedy from musical-theater-tragedy. For now, for God’s sake, just appreciate the song.