RIP, the celebrity profile

All glossy magazine superstar covers may look the same from a distance, but inside, you’re never quite sure what you’ll find.

>>Jon CaramanicaThe New York Times
Published : 20 Sept 2018, 09:30 AM
Updated : 20 Sept 2018, 09:30 AM

Take the October issue of GQ, which features Paul McCartney. For decades he has leaned on familiar Beatles anecdotes, presuming that decades-old chestnuts may still pass for warm. But in GQ, over the course of several long conversations, he revealed himself to be unstudied, slightly wishy-washy and much less preoccupied with the sanctity of his own image than you might think — he even offered a recollection about the Beatles’ teenage sexual adventures that led to a characteristically sweaty New York Post headline: “Beat the Meatles.”

The story worked in two ways: For the reader and fan, it was appealingly revealing; for McCartney, who’s been famous so long he is more sculpture than human, it was a welcome softening.

This took a willingness to answer questions, to submit to the give and take that comes with a profile of that scale. But not all big stories demand such transparency of their subjects: say, the September issue of Vogue with Beyoncé on the cover. The accompanying article is titled “Beyoncé in Her Own Words” — not a profile, but a collection of brief, only-occasionally-revealing commentaries on a range of topics: motherhood and family, body acceptance, touring. Anna Wintour refers to the story in her editor’s letter as a “powerful essay” that “Beyoncé herself writes,” as if that were an asset, not a liability. There was a journalist in the room at some point in the process — the piece has an “as told to” credit at the end — but outside perspectives have effectively been erased.

For devotees of Beyoncé, this might not matter (though it should). But for devotees of celebrity journalism — the kind of work that aims to add context and depth to the fame economy, and which is predicated on the productive frisson between an interviewer and interviewee — this portends catastrophe. And it’s not an isolated event. In pop music especially, plenty of the most famous performers essentially eschew the press: Taylor Swift hasn’t given a substantive interview and access to a print publication for at least two years. For Drake, it’s been about a year (and a tumultuous one at that). Frank Ocean has all but disappeared (again).

What’s replaced it isn’t satisfying: either outright silence, or more often, unidirectional narratives offered through social media. Monologue, not dialogue. It threatens to upend the role of the celebrity press.

Since the 1960s, in-depth interviews have been a crucial part of the star-making process, but also a regular feature of high-level celebrity maintenance — artists didn’t abandon their obligations to the media just because they had reached the pinnacle of fame. Answering questions was part of the job. It was the way that the people making the most interesting culture explained themselves, whether it was John Lennon on the breakup of the Beatles, Tupac Shakur speaking out from jail, or Courtney Love in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death. It was illuminating to fans, but also something of a badge of honour for the famous, especially when the conversations were adversarial. Stars like Ice Cube and Madonna used to thrive in those circumstances — the interviews revealed them to be thoughtful, unafraid of being challenged and alive to the creation of their image.

But that was in a climate in which print publications had a disproportionate amount of leverage, and the internet and TMZ hadn’t wrested away narrative control. When stars’ comings and goings began to be documented on a minute-by-minute basis, those changes triggered celebrity reticence. On its own, that wouldn’t signal the death knell of celebrity journalism as it’s been practiced for decades. But the pressure being applied to celebrity journalism from the top might pale in comparison to the threat surging from below, where a new generation of celebrities — YouTube stars, SoundCloud rappers, and various other earnest young people — share extensively on social media on their own terms, moving quickly and decisively (and messily) with no need for the patience and pushback they might encounter in an interview setting.

This generation is one of all-access hyper-documentation, making the promise of celebrity journalism — emphasising intimate perspective and behind-the-scenes access — largely irrelevant.

An emblematic example is the rapper Lil Xan, who in recent months has played out several micro-dramas online: discussing his health struggles and how they put him at odds with his management (his phone was forcibly grabbed from his hand while he was live on Instagram discussing family drama); falling for and then breaking up with Noah Cyrus, Miley’s younger sister. Traditional media might catch up to his story someday, but he’s not waiting to be asked for a comment before providing one. (He recently announced on Instagram that he was filming a series for Netflix, again bypassing old platforms.)

Sometimes, social media posts take the place of what was once the preserve of the tell-all interview: Ariana Grande mourned her ex-boyfriend, Mac Miller, in an Instagram post; the rapper XXXTentacion replied to allegations of sexual assault on his Instagram Story; the YouTube star Logan Paul used his usual platform to apologise for a video in which he filmed a dead body.

These are one-sided stories, with no scrutiny beyond the comments section. And so they’ve become highly visible safe spaces for young celebrities, especially in an era when one’s direct social media audience — via Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat and more — can far exceed the reach of even the most prestigious or popular publication, and in a way that’s laser-targeted to supporters.

All of which leaves celebrity journalism in a likely unsolvable conundrum. The most famous have effectively dispensed with it, and the newly famous have grown up in an age where it was largely irrelevant. Over time, the middle space may well be squeezed into nothingness.

What’s more, creation of content has been diversified — for the casual consumer, it can be difficult to tell the difference between original reporting and aggregation, content created by journalistic outlets and content created by brands. This blurriness incentivises the famous away from traditional media, where they don’t control the final product.

And as old-media extinction looms, the new ecosystem is often used as a corrective — or loud distraction. Selena Gomez is on the cover of Elle this month, and the accompanying story is relatively innocuous. But when it appeared online, she replied with a long Instagram post expressing frustration.

“Speaking from my heart for over an hour to someone who puts those thoughts into paid words can be hard for me,” she wrote. “The older I get the more I want my voice to be mine.” She then listed the specific things she sought to promote in the interview, and lamented that other things — namely, her personal life, and her church — were given too much attention.

And so as the power dynamic tilts in favour of the famous over the press, publications — weakened, desperate, financially fragile — have been forced to find ever more contorted ways to trade, at minimum, the feeling of control in exchange for precious access.

Celebrities guest edit — “edit” — special issues of magazines. And while Swift did appear on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar this year, in the accompanying article, she is the interviewer, asking questions of the rock muse Pattie Boyd. In 2015, Rihanna photographed herself for the cover of The Fader. (The shoot was executed in concert with a professional photographer.) It was, yes, a meta-commentary on panoptic fame, and also the cover star taking her own photograph.

If those options aren’t available, magazines can simply assign a friend of the celebrity to conduct the interview. In Elle, Jennifer Lawrence interviewed Emma Stone. Blake Lively conducted Gigi Hadid’s Harper’s Bazaar May cover interview. Katy Perry’s March Glamour cover interview was by the Instagram affirmation specialist Cleo Wade. Interview, a magazine predicated on these sorts of intra-celebrity conversations, was recently resurrected; in the comeback issue, Raf Simons talks with George Condo (a journalist chimes in occasionally) and Jennifer Jason Leigh talks to Phoebe Cates.

The friend doesn’t even have to be famous. In Rolling Stone’s current feature with the press-shy pop star Sia, the author announces himself as a longtime friend of hers. And New York magazine’s recent exclusive interview with Soon-Yi Previn, Woody Allen’s wife, was conducted by a longtime friend of Allen, to howls of dismay on Twitter.

These stories trade on the perceived intimacy of friendships as a proxy for actual insight, abdicating the role of an objective press in the process. The covenant implicit in celebrity profiles is that the journalist is a proxy for the reader, not the subject. But in the thirst for exclusive access, the old rules get tossed by the wayside — ethics become inconvenient. Friendship should be a disqualifier, not a prerequisite.

That is a disservice to fans, who miss out on what happens when someone in the room is pushing back, not merely taking dictation. Imagine how wildly illuminating probing conversations with Beyoncé about “Lemonade” or Swift about “Reputation” would have been, a boon to the curious as well as an opportunity for the interview subjects to be shown in their full complexity. But rather than engage on those terms, these stars have become hermetic. It’s a shame: We’ll never know the answers to the questions that aren’t asked.

© 2018 New York Times News Service