Altar Boy curses and snark wars

Welcome to the second edition of Offerings where I round up news relevant to Altar Boys.

Happy Valentine’s Day! To get into the holiday spirit yesterday I watched nearly a dozen videos of Ariana Grande and Mac Miller performing “The Way” and “My Favorite Part.” 

Since the last edition of Offerings we had two tentpole celebrity events, the Grammys and the Super Bowl, but they didn’t yield the sort of Altar Boys fodder I anticipated. But that’s not to say the celebrity machine hasn’t been grinding away and our boys haven’t been shining.

DYLAN O’BRIEN, AMERICAN ASSASSIN: Loved this piece in Vulture exploring the relationship between fandom and movie pirating. At Sundance two films were pulled from digital due to leaks on social media, Selena y Los Dinos and Twinless. Both suffer from fervent love. The former features never before seen home videos of Selena and the later stars Dylan O’Brien. Alison Willmore argues that this kind of fandom has the potential to kill a movie. She writes, “it’s not being discovered that’s the issue, but the potential that people will harvest parts of the film for content and that no one will bother with the rest.” Piracy is the backbone of the fancam economy and while I push back against the idea that all expressions of fandom are content she makes an interesting point. Poor DOB, he’s enough of a heartthrob to kill a movie, but not famous enough to sell out theaters. The curse of a very specific kind of Altar Boy.

I previously wrote about movie pirating and fandom here. 

SNARK ADDICTS ANONYMOUS: A piece in The Cut features five women on why they spend so much time on influencer snark Reddits, online spaces devoted to talking trash about popular influencers. Snark pages are a relatively new phenomenon and no one has come to a consensus about how to think about them. Two camps have emerged, those that see them as hotbeds of misogyny and those that see them as a place to negotiate influencers’ power and hold them accountable. The comments section on the post is up in arms about how these women participate in “online bullying.” But one of the women interviewed in the story explained her anger towards influencers, “I’ve worked really hard to be a productive member of society, and you don’t really get recognition for that. But you can get recognition for finding the dupe of a Bottega bag on Amazon.” I’m interested to see how the snark wars play out.

I previously interviewed Eli Rallo about her haters here.

GET A JOB, STAY AWAY FROM HER: In April, Knopf is publishing Joan Didion’s journal of 46 entries written after sessions with her psychiatrist in a collection, “Notes to John.” She never shared the journal with her agent or publisher and left no instructions to make this writing available to the public. The New York Times justifies her trust’s decision to publish the work: “Since she kept the papers carefully organized and filed in a small cabinet next to her desk, she likely anticipated that they would be gathered in her archives and read by the public and scholars.” So now women are punished for being organized? Knopf’s publisher and editor in chief told the Times, “Didion’s art has always derived part of its electricity from what she reveals and what she withholds…’Notes to John’ is unique in its lack of elision.” Perhaps that’s because it wasn’t intended for public consumption or to be art. “Notes to John” is inherently salacious and therefore engages with her celebrity rather than her artistry. It’s a shame to watch an artist lose control over their art and legacy after their death. 

RELATEDLY: Joy Luck Club author Amy Tan changed her mind and allowed the Bancroft Library at University of California, Berkeley to acquire her archive. Previously she left instructions for everything but photographs to be shredded after her death. She likened the posthumous examination of her person writing to scholars “going through the equivalent of my underwear drawer.” Tan notably held some journals and material back from the archive and unlike Didion made this decision herself.

SAD: Daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke spoke candidly about the relationship between Instagram followers and film funding. She said, “I’m talking about how I’m going to delete my Instagram and [smart directors] say, ‘Just so you know when I’m casting a movie with some producers they hand me a sheet with the amount of collective followers I have to get to [with] the cast.”

IT’S A CONCLAVE: In this unusually fun piece in The New Yorker, Michael Schulman likens all the Oscars race scandals to the plot and scandals of the nominated film Conclave. In some ways, the uproar emerges from the conflict between artistry and celebrity.

I TOLD YOU SO: Timothée Chalamet interviewed Kendrick Lamar ahead of his Super Bowl Halftime show, during which he campaigned for Best Actor for his performance as Bob Dylan. As a wise woman once said, “it’s less fun that his every vanity idea is humored.”

STOP TRYING TO MAKE LEO WOODALL HAPPEN: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is out today, so you have to stay vigilant against Leo Woodall propaganda.“He twists his gold pinky ring absentmindedly.” Give me a break!

INDULGENCES: MY ALTAR BOYS

Former Skins cast members, anyone Irish, British actors whose breakout role was “playing gay,” rappers from Kentucky, and men in Ocean’s Eleven (and their codependent best friends) are all fair game.

JOE ALWYN posted on Instagram. I am a longtime Joe defender and he is responsible for some of the best photo dumps in recorded history. His most recent post includes a gem of him with a blue turtleneck pulled up over his face evocatively bringing out his eyes and he even gives Josh O’Connor a run for his money with an in action ceramics shot. If you remain a Joe skeptic after swiping through, might I recommend Lena Dunham’s criminally underrated film Catherine Called Birdy where he plays a Hot Uncle or the scene of Conversations with of Friends where he holds a cold beer bottle up to Alison Oliver’s face, because I know you all don’t have time for The Brutalist.

LUCAS HEDGES’ name came across my desk reminding me of my favorite urban legend by way of Spotify playlist description: “i made out with lucas hedges at an oscars after party and all i got was this fucking signed manchester by the sea bluray…”

HARRIS DICKINSON shopped the Criterion Closet and in the process he revealed he’s even lovelier than previously thought humanly possible. This is a man that loves the movies!

JACK HARLOW dropped a new song is back to his old tricks.

As always I’m open to your feedback and suggestions of what to include in these posts. I’m still off social media, so if you see an Altar Boy, say something! Thank you for reading.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I leave you with this.