Who are all these people

TJournal editor-in-chief on a world in which brands have become new stars

Against the background of news about the film adaptation of Tetris and fantasies that the poor iPhone 6, it seems, is about to not withstand the pressure of the press, will shave his head and start drinking, the chief editor of TJournal discusses how brands, memes and smartphones came to replacement for Hollywood actors and pop stars.

The stars have gone out

For several years now, the media specializing in film have from time to time raised the topic of the final death of the so-called “institution of stars”: a form of relationship between content creators and its consumers that existed successfully for decades and then simply stopped working.

It’s not entirely clear what killed this model, but most likely it was the increase in the variety of content (from this viewers have become more demanding) and the media coverage of the stars themselves (few people go to “see” them anymore, because they don’t disappear from the field anyway vision: they blog, shoot videos, post themselves on Instagram).

All the action heroes of our childhood are now sold for free in one promotional package called “The Expendables” (and, judging by the box office of the third part, no one needs them even in this form). Toothless comedies, the posters of which depict a cute couple of smiling actors who starred in them just for the money, are now completely unnoticed by anyone. And even in the series “True Detective”, what is more important is the fact that it was created by the HBO channel, and not the fact that Matthew McConaughey, who later received an Oscar, played the main role in it (after all, there will be no McConaughey in the second season).

A striking sign for fans of this theory was the miserably failed film “The Tourist” in 2011: the win-win tandem of Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp, which, it seemed, could pull off even an mediocre film, suddenly turned out to be of no use to anyone. Expensive actors stopped selling tickets.

In this case, the story with the fourth part of “Transformers” is especially indicative, in which the entire cast was replaced at once, but this did not in the least affect the box office. Viewers could be bothered by a reboot, as they recently did with Spider-Man, but who needs that? What difference does it make who shouts “Optimus!” at the most dramatic moment?

Starring brands

When we are surprised almost once a week with news about the filming of films based on Tetris, Monopoly, LEGO, Grumpy Cat or Angry Birds, it becomes obvious that it is brands that have replaced the stars.

What is the motive behind the desire to make a film based on a game about falling blocks made of squares? It has no plot, no context, no stars, and even no fans who could be upset by the non-canonical plot development. There is only a brand.

Realizing the power of branding, Hollywood studios began promoting their films differently. If you look at the standard advertising campaigns of the second “Hunger Games” and the still fresh “Gone Girl” by David Fincher, you can see how PR people no longer pay attention to names and faces, but to the product itself, putting maximum effort into the packaging (from posters to the soundtrack) . Not to say that this model is new, but now it is becoming dominant.

Similar parallels can be found in any field. will.i.am is not only about catchy songs, but about the strange technological products that he releases one after another. Miley Cyrus is not the girl from the series “Hannah Montana”, but the singer from that same video about the ball. George Martin is not so much an interesting book as a walking Internet meme about a bloodthirsty writer.

Intimate photos (from) iPhone

As a result, this new course, together with the growing popularity of the IT sphere as such, led to results unimaginable just a few years ago: even smartphones could become stars in the usual sense. The instruments took on a personality.

If you look at it, the entire one-year life cycle of the next iPhone is the life of a Hollywood star in miniature, which will definitely be replaced by new blood. Like Jennifer Lawrence, he also suffers from leaks of unsightly photos that he did not want to show to anyone and which could damage his reputation.

And, most importantly, everyone is just waiting for the iPhone to slip up so that they can begin to savor and replicate the dirty details. Scandals related to the imperfections of popular smartphones have become such a popular thing that they even received a standard name with the ending -gate (bendgate, scuffgate - from the legendary Watergate, which ended with the resignation of US President Richard Nixon).

As soon as a new popular device goes on sale, they immediately begin to bend, burn, crush and beat it in order to find the next “gate” in it. In 2014, when there were especially many videos of such crash tests, the situation reached the point of absurdity: eminent media wrote that the iPhone 6 was tearing hairs out of the beards of its users.

And this behavior exactly corresponds to the behavior of the yellow press, which writes that some Michael Fassbender went out into the backyard to throw out the trash and forgot to pull up his shorts.

What's next

Now it is especially noticeable that both the tabloids, which are still bad at writing about Internet memes, and IT publications, which still do not see the “yellowness” in news about hairs, were not ready for such “new stars” never encountered it before.

They should have started working on this yesterday, but it will take time to adapt, and when they get used to it, mass culture will come up with new entertainment for itself. If Barack Obama calls for coding to be a required part of the US school curriculum, will we ever read the dirty details from Mark Zuckerberg's code? Quite possible.

Screenshot this signature,
Vadim Elistratov,
TJournal

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