Before the perpetual flat line that is the 21st Century, it was often the case that mega stars had their moments, burned out, and eventually faded away. In the information overload culture of now, however, stars aren’t even allowed to burn out with dignity. Instead, their public images shift in meaning, their faces age and weather, the felonies on their records stack up, and the camera never stops pointing at them. I, for one, truly believed that Justin Timberlake had retired from public life. He’s been married to Jessica Biel for 12 years now, and has two kids. If anyone from the noughties earned enough money to fuck off, be happy and live in privacy, it should be Timberlake. He’s sold 117 MILLION records. He has over a dozen number one singles. He’s starred in major Hollywood movies. He’s the only former boyband member to successfully give himself the Timbaland, R&B-styled solo makeover that evaded both his bandmates and all his rivals, Backstreet Boys and otherwise. He’s fucked so many high profile female stars that the press once referred to him as “the trouser snake” due to his large penis which, as nicknames go, isn’t so bad.Despite all of that, I feel like I haven’t heard from the man in 10 years, until this week, that is.
Timberlake has also been remarkably adept at evading the few controversies that crept his way, letting the Janet Jackson Super Bowl tittle incident and Britney’s accusations of his emotional abuse slide off his shoulders. He embodies fame as a closed door: we really have no clue who he is. Despite his transition from the boy band assembly line to artistic integrity, even that transition was manufactured by others around him (Timbaland, the Neptunes, and otherwise). What can’t be denied is that Timberlake was a powerful vessel for fame, one who seemingly enjoyed its heights without becoming a victim of its lows. But fame is a hungry beast – eventually, it will swallow you whole.
Timberlake was arrested on Tuesday night in the Hamptons for getting shitfaced and driving. Most humiliating is Timberlake didn’t even have some high profile drug induced breakdown to coincide with the embarrassing event; still vanilla as fuck, Timberlake told the police officer: “this is going to ruin the tour.” The cop didn’t even know who he was, probably too young to have remembered “Cry me a River” or NSYNC going double platinum in a week.
At least when Jon Jones gets arrested for DUI, he can be counted on to sob, beg and try and murder all of the cops. Timberlake, on the other hand, is still only concerned with the shadow of his career, his upcoming tour, and the squeaky clean image that his fame, the ever looming monster, is built upon. Even his mugshot, with his bloodshot but effervescently blue eyes pinned, looks manufactured and tailored to adhere to an algorithmic concept of a self. We don’t know who Timberlake is, nor does his wife (Jessica Biel told the press that she was “extremely upset” about her husband’s “selfish decision,” as if we decide when to joyride, in a statement that was also clearly crafted by the couple’s PR firm.) Most of all, Timberlake probably doesn’t even know who he is, and how could he? The media wrote his story for him. But despite the monotony of the arrest, a DUI is a tarnishing thing. Not even Colin Farrell has one.
But had Timberlake gotten famous in the seventies and was now riding out the ‘90s, his celebrity would have diminished to the point that no one would have even heard about his DUI. Because he’s in the fame loop of hyperreality, he’s a down and out meme some two decades after the peak of his success. Aldous Huxley feared losing his obscurity: “Genuineness only thrives in the dark,” he said. But someone like Timberlake never had the option to be obscure or genuine. The spotlight was pinned upon him at a tender age at the dawn of the new millennium and an entirely new information era. There was no way to worm his way out of that unscathed.
Andy Warhol’s “five minutes of fame” were a gift; an experience that anyone could have. But fame in the 21st Century is not just longer than five minutes, it is infinite. A penitentiary. A purgatory. It can’t be escaped or even eased out of. It just goes on, even if if leads you behind. I personally crave fame, but I also know that the little micro-fame I’ve attained will be my undoing. This is a vicious way to live.
You can have a PR team so solid that you might as well be guarded behind the Great Wall of China, but the wall will always have its vulnerabilities. Solange will get caught attacking Jay-Z, while her legendarily critically infallible sister Beyoncé watches. We watch to, we love watching fame eat up the individual. Britney will shave her head, and we will watch awestruck, as entertained by her madness as we are her top 40 hits. Even the impenetrable force that P Diddy seemed to be is finally cracking, as mounting evidence finally confirms the reality of the monstrosity of his behavior. Now Timberlake, even, the most boring of fame monsters you could come up with, is humiliated on a global scale. Fame is its own organism, you see, it is immortal. It prospers even as its vessel flails, fails, and dies.
”You’re looking exceptionally ugly tonight,” says Pa Ubu to his wife in Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Rex, “Is it because we have company?”
Once the individual attains fame, they’ve attached themselves to a suicide bomb. We wait for the moment that we can see this individual at their worst, and explode. The detonation is the climax of the show, but the show goes on well after the dust clears.
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