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Photo courtesy of Plume<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Thanks to the endless coverage of Justin Bieber\u2019s Segway trips<\/a>\u00a0it can seem like our society has reached the nadir of celebrity obsession, but gossiping about stars has been a vibrant pastime since at least the early 20th century. For the last several years, academic Anne Helen Petersen has been opening the history books (and vintage issues of US Weekly<\/i>), analyzing the gossip industry, and arguing that celebrities illuminate important aspects of American culture.\u00a0<\/p>\n After Petersen finished her dissertation on the history of gossip and received her PhD from University of Texas, Austin, in 2011, she spent several years teaching. In between classes, she updated her personal blog Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style<\/a>\u00a0and wrote a column on the Hairpin called Scandals of Classic Hollywood<\/a>\u00a0that explored old celebrity gossip through an academic lens. Earlier this year, her online writing became so popular that\u00a0BuzzFeed offered her a full-time job<\/a>.\u00a0She accepted the position, making her one of the few academics to ever write articles millions of people enjoy reading. (I mean that as a very big compliment.) \u00a0<\/p>\n Plume recently released Petersen\u2019s new book<\/a> (also called Scandals of Classic Hollywood<\/i>), which features\u00a0essays about stars like Judy Garland, Clara Bow, and Fatty Arbuckle. After I finished the addictive, engrossing, and illuminating book, I called Petersen to discuss her unique approach to writing, Judy Garland\u2019s suicide attempts, and the state of today\u2019s gossip magazines.\u00a0<\/p>\n VICE: What\u2019s the difference between reading a tabloid for fun and reading gossip as an academic? <\/b> How is your new book different than other books about Hollywood?<\/b> The other type of coverage is scandal-mongering coverage. People love to believe the worst, and the far end of of the spectrum is where people say, \u201cThe stars were almost disgusting in their hedonism.\u201d The problem with that for me is that\u2014especially for women\u2014these narratives become the narratives of the star. Until very recently the Wikipedia page for Clara Bow perpetuated the story that she slept with the entire USC football team. It\u2019s not telling the truth, and its not fair to the way that she\u2019s remembered.\u00a0<\/p>\n Clara Bow. Photo via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Your book discusses how the star system controlled young actors\u2019 lives. Is there an analogy to be made between the studio system and Disney and Nickelodeon\u2019s child star factories?<\/b> When I read the Judy Garland chapter I thought, Oh my god, this is like Britney Spears<\/i>. \u00a0<\/b> Judy Garland. Photo via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Knowing what you know about classic Hollywood stars like Garland, do you look at today\u2019s stars and think, I see what you\u2019re doing, I can see through your shtick?<\/i><\/b> As society progresses, does the gossip industry improve, or do tabloids and blogs remain as bad as ever? <\/b> Why should we take the gossip industry more seriously?<\/b> Follow Emalie Marthe on Twitter<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n \n<\/div>\n
Anne Helen Petersen:\u00a0<\/b>A lot of times people, whatever their education level, will read celebrity gossip as they would any other kind of pop culture mode of entertainment, like watching reality television or going to blockbuster movies, and know that it\u2019s enjoyable. But they don\u2019t necessarily understand why they like it, or want to understand how these images are made or why we find them compelling or why we want to hear stories about people we otherwise don\u2019t know at all. I saw that lots of people really want to think at a deeper level about celebrity gossip the same way that people want to read film criticism or television recaps. An academic approach to gossip asks how celebrity images are made, how they function ideologically, and how they point to things that matter in our society.<\/p>\n
Most books about Hollywood stars are very flattering. They\u2019re either hagiographies in which the star is essentially sainted, or they use a lot of testimony from people many decades after the fact who say that they know something, like, \u201cI am the person who can tell you that Cary Grant was gay. I know someone who slept with Cary Grant, and that is the truth.\u201d They\u2019re really trying to arrive at what is the truth of what happened, and for me, it\u2019s always a matter less of what the truth is and more about how information about [the star]\u00a0was mediated. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Totally. I think that Nickelodeon and especially Disney are the new version of the star system, and even some of the companies that seek out YouTube stars and then contract them control [the YouTube stars\u2019] behavior.<\/p>\n
The difference in Britney\u2019s case\u2014with legal intervention and the way that her parents functioned differently\u2014she didn\u2019t go down the complete spiral that Garland went down, but I think it really easily could have gone that way. So many people are struck by the Garland chapter because of how publicly she was called an \u201cugly duckling\u201d and ridiculed for her weight gain, but also the public knowledge of her suicide attempts and the anger directed towards her studio\u2014which really played out in a visible way that we don\u2019t usually think of in the 1950s. People knew that she attempted suicide, but the gossip columnists also blamed MGM for what they had done to her. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yes. Part of that is just publicity and trying to create a coherent image is always going to be the same, no matter if the star is from the 1930s or 2010s. The difference is really that the means of producing that image are different. Beyonce is producing an image using Tumblr and Instagram, which obviously stars in the 30s didn\u2019t have, but she\u2019s still trying to create a very specific understanding of the type of woman that she is. She\u2019s trying to also make it seem like there isn\u2019t<\/i> a publicity campaign and that she\u2019s not doing that, which was also done in the 1930s.<\/p>\n
I think that gossip is most often\u2014even when we gossip about our friends\u2014used as a way of socially policing behaviors, to see if someone is adhering to the status quo or not. I think that that line [defining the] status quo is always changing, so there are different ways that we police someone. In the 1930s, if someone was accused of being too sexual on screen by showing too much of her thighs, that was a certain sort of policing of female sexuality. Today it\u2019s not so much a question of nudity, but [a question of] if someone is linked with too many men, or if they\u2019re bisexual instead of declaring themselves as gay or straight in that very strict delineation, or if they don\u2019t have kids. There are all sorts of behaviors that are still policed.<\/p>\n
I think that, at any given point in history, you can look at the people who were the main stars and celebrities and extrapolate so much about what American society valued or was feeling anxiety about at that time. If you take that lens and use it historically, but also on the way that we talk about celebrities now, it\u2019s very illuminating.\u00a0<\/p>\n