Welcome to We Have to Talk, a fortnightly newsletter in which Sam and George exchange their most pressing and ridiculous reflections on pop culture. Subscribe to get a hot mess of tepid takes directly into your inbox, twice a month.
This week, the boys discuss Addison Rae’s new EP, the Sabrina Brier industrial complex, and alleged homophobe Faye Dunaway.
S - Hey George, great to be back for issue two of We Have to Talk, and indeed, there is much to discuss! I was down with a case of something last week, and wiled away my downtime discovering three hour compilations of Sandra Bernhard appearing on the David Letterman Show in the 1980s. Her outrageous star quality felt of another time; she came out there again and again thriving only on aggressive sexual charisma and animosity from the host and audience. Her anarchic appearances felt a million miles from anything you’d get from the adult baby sitting services that are James Cordon or Jimmy Fallon’s shows.
That same week, Billboard published a piece on the challenges of launching pop stars in today's streaming era. When algorithms reward conformity, and app users want to get to know “relatable” celebrities in the mundanity of their quotidian surroundings, how do you convince social media musicians to risk being booed on the stages of the touring circuit, where they could actually learn to command a crowd and build a lasting fanbase? Part of the fun of Addison Rae’s new EP for example, seems premised on the idea that she’s merely cosplaying as a pop star, a girl next door singing into her hairbrush.
I want to know, in the age of social anxiety, have we lost our appetite for crazy personalities and risk takers, for people who skate by on the power of personal charisma alone? We may all be in the gutter, but why are none of us looking for the stars anymore?
G - Hello from the gutter, Sam - I’ve also been deathly ill this past week, a walking petri dish of whatever new Covid strain was spawned in the depths of the Victoria line. As a result, I’ve spent a lot more time than I normally do on TikTok - I’ve been a slow adapter, but am gently bedding myself in - and have coincidentally been thinking about this too: what is fame anymore? Is it just virality, or is it something more?
My litmus test for movie stars, for example, used to be fairly basic: I remember staring at the banner of names on the poster for Greta Gerwig’s Little Women and wondering who my mum would actually recognise (Meryl Streep and Emma Watson, probably, but maybe Saoirse Ronan if I reminded her that she loved Brooklyn). Now I wonder if that generational gap is no longer useful, for myriad reasons that all make me feel a bit depressed.
Since I’ve been working in a fairly non-creative job outside the arts, I’ve been fascinated by what compels people who aren’t usually interested in movies to go to the cinema, and as it turns out, there’s not a lot. People are busier and poorer than ever, and with streaming, phones, TikTok, Netflix, I do wonder if the simplest explanation is the best explanation - that cinematic ‘events,’ carried by the Tom Cruises and Julia Robertses of the world, just aren’t enough to get people out of the house anymore. I remember being chilled to the bone last year hearing a mid-30s heterosexual colleague tell another that he and his girlfriend, on their quarterly cinema outing, had settled on the new Fantastic Beasts film because they hadn’t recognised anything else on offer.
In an attempt to tie all these thoughts together, I wonder whether it’s maybe about overstimulation eroding our threshold for ‘star power’. Maybe we’re just being pulled in too many different directions? I feel it myself: I’ll find someone fairly charismatic on TikTok, and suddenly have watched 15 of their videos, arguably as compelled to learn about their life as I might be about Angelina Jolie. At the same time, I do miss that god-among-us feeling when you truly revere someone; while I’m enjoying the Addison Rae songs, they don’t have me by the throat as much as my favourite Rae (Carly), because, as you say, I’m not convinced I’m not just listening to karaoke.
S - Sounds like we’ve both been going through it. I think your point about overstimulation gets to the heart of the matter. In yesteryear, stars had to convince people to get out the house and towards a cash register; that’s a bar you no longer need to clear. It’s become so deconsecrated that you can watch a made for TV movie starring Gal Gadot while chilling on the sofa in your underwear, scarfing down doritos. No respect! But tell me - who have you been stalking on TikTok, and what’s the secret to their magnetism; are you finding real weirdos on there, or do you prefer the smooth brained, smooth faced, good-vibes-only creators?
G - First off, I actually really want to watch that Gal Gadot movie to scratch my Mission Impossible itch. It can’t be any worse than two hours on TikTok, surely.
My TikTok is currently splicing itself into three subgenres - BookTok (maddening, fascinating, unbearably cringe); PianoTok (I’m trying to learn, and it’s quite helpful); and a third thing that just includes whoever’s hot and whatever’s trending. But reflecting on the creators I’m drawn to, I’m realising maybe there is a not-so-secret weapon: plain ol’ charisma. I really like Lexi Larson, who makes these quite chaotic videos about being a slave under capitalism that poke fun at the “get ready with me” format, and the editing and comedic timing of every video is note-perfect. Ayame, too, whose reactions to ASMR videos are irresistible. Maybe the magnetism has stayed the same, it’s just found in different places now?
To flip the question, who, to you, are some movie/pop stars that you think are really carrying the torch for the days of old?
S - I wish you luck with Gadot! My favourite old-school movie star is Sharon Stone, as no matter how many twunks I find on my Instagram’s explore page, she has always beat me to the follow. In terms of new blood, Keke Palmer, and Rachel Sennott seem like they could be carrying the torch; they have a presence all her own, and maintain their dignity even in questionable projects. But can they open a film? We’ll see for Sennott with Bottoms. I’m interested in the idea of charisma that you raise - if we think about the Sabrina Briers, the Bobby Althoffs and the Amelia Dimoldenbergs of the social media world, they’re often riffing on this kind of inward anti-charisma to create tension on screen. Could it be that stardom has changed, but also the idea of what is charismatic?
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G - I think so, and my guess would maybe be - reflecting on the names you just mentioned - that ‘self-awareness’ seems to be a newly-agreed essential component, perhaps in reaction to the fact that we’re all starting to find terminal-onlinehood a bit insufferable. Sabrina Brier’s characters can be so un-self-aware that, if we follow the logic, Brier is then herself presumably hyper-aware of every possible embarrassing millennial-white-woman “ick”, thus implying she rises above them? To that end, I wonder if something in her popularity exemplifies the way women are under more pressure than men to be self-aware of these “icks” - that for a woman to be famous and “relatable” in our oversaturated era, she must not only be charismatic and hot, but also foreseeing every possible judgement coming her way and using them for our entertainment. Eg: After Mae Muller bombed at Eurovision, she made a viral TikTok about it. It’s sweet and funny, but should she have to?
Maybe this is the key to what I miss: a brazen, overconfident lack of self-awareness. Remember known homophobe Faye Dunaway ruining the Oscars, letting Warren Beatty take the fall, and then snacking on cashews backstage without a care in the world? Now that’s a star.
S - Absolutely, and Reader, when it comes to brazen overconfidence, we here at We Have to Talk promise to never let you down. Thanks for another fun one George, and hope you feel better soon!
From The Notes App:
“Addison Rae” surely wins most American name of the century (G)
Her Rae of Light, her Velvet Raeope, her Love Raengel Music Baby, her Born this Raey, her Raenaissance, her Craesh (S)
Am I the only one still listening to Padam Padam every day? With a follow-up single nowhere in sight, it’s starting to feel like the lights have come on at the club, but I’m still rolling (G)
Imagine if “pirates” was pronounced like “pilates” (G)
Is the Sabrina Brier/Delaney Rowe industrial complex just a race to the bottom of the human race at this point? What happens when the numbers run out? (G)
The Week That Was:
George is watching: Talk to Me, then Lie With Me. In that order, please. The former: a terrifying portrayal of existential loneliness and the highs we chase to escape it; the latter, French boys fucking and falling in love. Both great.
Sam is reading: This Harpers hype-house essay about how we’re all just grist in the mill of personal branding and human capital. And Oppenheimer finally made me get round to reading John Hersey’s New Journalism classic, Hiroshima. Wouldn’t recommend reading enroute to a date.
George is listening to: I love when a middling pop album bears one or two major tracks: this month, I think it’s Give it Up For Love by Georgia and I Hate Boston by Renee Rapp (a nu-celeb if I ever saw one - a pop star by way of the Mean Girls musical and The Sex Lives of College Girls).
Sam went and saw: Louis Garrell doing the worm onstage at the BFI’s NFT1 to promote his rollicking new film L’Innocent. Also, Matthew Bourne’s Romeo & Juliet at Sadler’s Wells. I strongly admire such commitment to a middlebrow good time.