I pop in and out of discussions on the internet. I used to be completely immersed and tuned in, but now when I can't sleep I sneak in and see just a little bit of what everyone is talking about before I get confused and run away. Because of this, the topic of the day, water coolers, often seems puzzling to me.
Lately, for example, I've been perplexed by the wave of chatter and backlash surrounding actress Sydney Sweeney. Sweeney is a 26-year-old star who rose to fame on the HBO teen drama Euphoria (2019-present). In this drama, she follows a group of teenagers as they embark on an adventure that resembles the controversial 2000s series Skins to CBeebies. Since then, she has become one of Hollywood's biggest young stars.
This is just filler. Beautiful young blonde woman becomes famous. Sweeney has had little personal controversy, but as I write this the headline about her is “I don't really like coffee,” but she draws heated criticism every day. There is. For example, Slate magazine reports that the popularity of her large breasts is said by armchair culture theorists to be a sign of the end of the “woke era.” Her pleasant demeanor, on the other hand, has been interpreted by smug conservatives as a return to the submissive female archetype. Sweeney's old-fashioned celebrity deadpanness seems to drive her people crazy, forcing her to become whatever object she desires.
Philippa Snow, a brilliant young British essayist, wrote a short story called Trophy Lives about our relationship to this new celebrity and how their lives have become works of art in themselves. However, he wrote a wonderful book. It's a subject that evokes a visceral, pre-emptive fear in me, a sense that I won't have anything new to contribute, or that consideration will result in some sort of aphoristic conclusion. That's what it feels like. Or plastic surgery, etc.
But the genius of writers like Snow is that they can not only depict these issues, but make them exciting to read. Her previous work, Violence as You Know It Means (2022), about cultural figures who harm themselves for our own gratification, was similarly illuminating. Consistently publishing some of the best essays in the Los Angeles Review of Books and Frieze, her work seems to simply name a work of art or phenomenon and spit out the most general content. It's soul-deadly located outside the vortex of most cultural criticism. I tweeted a reply to that.
