jackie onassis, the porno, the photog, the flip and k.stew

in the episode of jackie onassis, the swedish porno and the photog, i posited the notion that this was a tale wherein jackie, a character who so rarely seems in control of her narrative, is cast as a dominatrix and she is, undoubtedly, in charge. but is that true? can one ever control narrative?

in the immediate aftermath of the i am curious (yellow) incident, the tabloids sallied forth to wrest any victory away from her with an especially shrill, NO! she didn’t do it! she couldn’t have! jackie was framed, ya’ll!

tv radio mirror‘s report is particularly rich, as they pursue the establishment of jackie’s innocence with pulitzeresque rigor and “Prove She Couldn’t Have Floored That Photographer” as she left “the controversial Swedish sex epic that brims with nudes and erotic fantasies”:

Perhaps you’ll ask the same question: “How could a slender lightweight like the former First Lady upend a 5-foot-10, 168 pounder so readily- with a right hand that is shown in the picture holding a pair of dark glasses and with her handbag dangling over her right shoulder?”

Curious? Indeed. But not yellow. It’s all there in black and white.

touché.

as i mentioned, readers could surmise so much from this story if one is thinking about it critically. as i’ve also mentioned, people seldom engage in critical thinking about what they read.

i don’t know how i feel about either of those statements. and i don’t think i believe the latter. but i don’t know that for sure.

fyi- when you freely admit you love and study and analyze celebrity gossip, you wind up having a lot of très très serious conversations with people about celebrity gossip.

take the kristen stewart/robert “sparkles” pattison cheating scandal thing. omg, so many gut-wrenching, soul-searching conversations that have vastly complicated everything i believe about how we consume celebrity. (though twilight‘s always been weird, so i hold out hope that the same standards do not apply.)

what strikes me in this situation is the cynicism.

within hours of the photographs being released, the twi-hards quickly sullied the waters by vociferously claiming that the photos of stewart making out with her SWATH director were a hoax.

they weren’t photoshopped. they were real.

but even non-twihards have asked me whether the scandal if real or if it’s a publicity stunt. furthermore, are stewart and pattinson really even in a relationship or is that a publicity stunt too? multiple people have asked me: is everything we have read about these two people for the last three years an elaborate ruse engineered by summit to make us go see those ridiculous films?

much as i love oliver stone, i also appreciate how incredibly ridiculous it is that these are legitimate questions. and i assume the answer lies somewhere in the middle.

because this is narrative and narrative cannot be controlled.