Clap clap convergence #2
This:Yes, Paris Hilton was there. And yes, Lovefoxx dedicated "Meeting Paris Hilton" to her. Hilton stood on a riser next to the stage and danced through most of CSS' set, which included their cover of L7's "Pretend We're Dead".Plus this:
I repeat: Paris Hilton danced to CSS covering L7. You could not possibly invent a more flabbergasting third-wave feminist mindfuck. Oh wait-- apparently Courtney Love was there, too.
Paris Hilton reportedly has turned to the one man she feels can keep her from serving a 45-day prison sentence: The Governator.Equals this plus this plus what's in the "About" box at the top-right corner of this page here. It's the moment when Paris officially becomes the Courtney Love of the 00s, which says something about the 00s, but anyway it was nice of Court to be there to pass the baton.
The Simple Life star and hotel heiress -- who was sentenced to 45 days in jail for violating her probation on a September 2006 drunken driving misdemeanor on Friday -- posted a message on her MySpace.com page on Monday that urges fans to petition California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to ask that she be pardoned.
Paris before seemed to be actively working to draw attention to her, so that even events that would generally be considered to have originated from someone besides Paris, like the sex tape leak, were assumed to have been engineered by her in some way. But now she's hit escape velocity, overcome the static friction of fame, and so things are now drawn to her, explicitly without her having anything to do with it, and she's now able to respond to things rather than creating them in the first place, which is the more interesting place of meaning-making as I see it. Interestingly, this is because she actively courted fame; Courtney, because she was more ambivalent about it (or, rather, wanted fame on her terms, since she distrusted her own ability to manage her fame, whereas Paris has always seemed happy to take fame as it comes), attracted independent actors much more quickly than Paris did, perhaps because her reluctance to fully embrace the spotlight indicated that she had something to hide. Paris didn't seem to hide anything.[1]
But now she's overcome that handicap, because she's entered into an arena where your participation matters little, if at all: politics! In terms of reality, she should clearly go to jail (get a driver, girl!), but in terms of, you know, art, she's getting into the spirit of the game well after a slow start, with the appeal to Arnold and all. Of course, Arnold will say no, but it's interesting that it's at least plausible, and that context has been created by Arnold himself, who was certainly in at least the same league, spoiled-celebrity-wise (his salvation coming at the hands of politics--you see?), as Paris, and so can be assumed to harbor some sort of sympathy. There's the movie paradigm of "well now she's gone and made trouble for us, how are we gonna handle this, boss?" but also the real-world context of the performance of fame and the community of celebrities that Paris has recognized Arnold straddles the line between it and politics; he's the bridge from parties to jail, and she's trying to get him to lift the drawbridge. It's a brilliant move, even, or especially, if it doesn't work, because it's saying something about the governor that we've mostly forgotten.
All in all, I think it means we have to think about Paris differently now; we can argue about whether her "handlers" (who?) are doing it or she is, but let's say Paris and whether we mean the brand or the woman, it's now a fully self-possessed force.
Oh, and the first thing is great because it contradicts my point in the CSS post. By staying true to the spirit of the original, insofar as "Meeting Paris Hilton" was true to the spirit of Paris rather than mocking her or appropriating her, ends up making more meaning because it's attracted the presence of the original, and the original next to the cover is almost always an interesting thing. It conveys a blessing--which implies a superiority--but also shows the differences, and the proximity allows ideas to richochet off each other in a much more heated way than they could otherwise, and when you add Courtney, well, that's just about critical mass. Point taken.
[1] Even if, the more you consider her, the less sure you are about her.
Labels: convergence, courtney love, css, paris, politics
posted by Mike B. @ 12:44 PM
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