Borkowski Weekly Media Trends: 01-04-22
Oscars Special | Julia Fox | Government's Conversion Therapy U-turn | Gift Bags
Julia Fox’s Masterclass in Self-Promotion & The Cult of Personality
A masterclass in fame-building comes from Julia Fox, the once D-list actress who has engineered a spectacular rise to notoriety over the past few months.
A laughable PR-relationship with faux-boyfriend Kanye West in January, combined with questionable sartorial choices and bizarre interview soundbites (i.e. her proclamation that she was the ‘muse’ behind Uncut Gems – the cult classic that made Fox’s debut, and that she also has trouble pronouncing) immediately made Fox fodder for internet ridicule, and a torrent of memes.
This week the strange public appearances continued, with a visit to the Oscars in a gothic plastic dress held up by the neck with a fake wolf claw, complete with bloodshot eyes and now-signature black eyeshadow. In her red carpet interviews she proclaimed that her first book is set to be a ‘masterpiece’, and gave vapid and unconvincing details about her outfit.
The internet laughed again, yet something had shifted. Rather than the butt of the joke, Julia Fox somehow now feels like the master comedian. One look at her Instagram and you’ll see her absent-mindedly hacking away at her clothes in outfit ‘tutorials’, chatting away to her followers in a way that seem both unselfconscious and tongue in cheek, while her TikTok includes perhaps the worst ever audition for a career in music. The sustained level of ridiculousness at which she operates and her refusal to conform to the haters has created an incredibly successful effect. Rather than be considered a try-hard or a wannabee, she has managed to cast herself as an altogether more favoured category of celeb: an eccentric.
Downing Street: The U turn on the U turn which is still ends in a U turn.
This week has been an eventful one in Downing Street. After four years of promising to ban conversion therapy they gave into the social conservative lobby and U-turned claiming they were too busy to enact the ban. Within hours this position fell apart under sheer weight of public outrage, and the government suddenly found time out of thin air to ban conversion therapy, but not for trans people.
Even if we try to see beyond the political and human rights implications of this move it’s a staggering communications misstep. In one move the government has entrenched itself further into one of the ugliest fronts of the culture wars, failed to appease the social conservative groups in the party who were pushing to quash the ban, and enraged liberal conservatives.
The Conservative Party has struggled for years to pitch to LGBT+ voters. Since the legalisation of same-sex marriage (thanks to Lib Dem and Labour support for the bill) they have stalled on progressive policy ideas in general. Promises made to streamline the Gender Recognition Act, ban conversion therapy and fund services for LGBT+ people have all been scrapped or delayed time and again.
A further troubling juxtaposition is that this week, history was made when the first openly trans MP came out. To some it was a surprise that this brave soul was a Conservative MP called Jamie Wallis. His heartfelt, plain-spoken post coming out as trans rightly elicited support from across the political spectrum. Ironically – or perhaps symbolically of the attitude of his party- just the night before Wallis was at dinner with the Prime Minister who opened his address to attending MPs by telling a trans joke.
As Downing Street plunges into a new episode of its self-inflicted crisis, liberal voters will be looking in horror once again.
Oscars Gift Bag should have included a trip to Planet Earth…
In our observations earlier in the week about the winners and losers from the Oscars debacle, we pointed out that the reaction to Will Smith-gate from other Oscars attendees demonstrated just how out-of-touch with ordinary people the Hollywood elite had become.
Later that day perhaps the perfect illustration of this point surfaced when Ricky Gervais launched a scathing attack on the Oscars’ $140k-valued gift bags.
The bags were ludicrous, with the internet picking up in particular on the offer of a minor title in Scotland, at least two gift certificates for cosmetic procedures, a series of eye-wateringly opulent holidays, life-coaching and some extremely faddy food and drink products.
Twitter united in mocking laughter at the glimpse into the Stepford-Alien lives of the Hollywood elite, occasionally spilling over into anger that celebrities are being lavished with this level of opulence as a reward for attending a nice party while Ukrainians flee Russian bombs and even people in the relative comfort of the UK are having to decide between eating and heating their homes. For once the cesspit of tribalism seemed broadly to agree on something.
Lash Fary, Founder of Distinctive Assets, who provided the bags, made a spirited attempt to turn the beef into a case of ‘any publicity is good publicity’ by calling Gervais a ‘hypocrite’ – a game gambit that might just score his company a couple of inbound enquiries about their services amid the scorn- but otherwise opposition to the derision the gift bags received was limited.
How hard would it have been for a big brand to fund a gift bag that was empty except for a small card with a Ukrainian flag on it saying that a sizeable donation had been made in the name of that attendee to a humanitarian charity and encouraging them to match it?
The whole incident begs the question of whether the exposure and slim chance of celebrity endorsement was worth the presumably hundreds of thousands of dollars it will have cost these brands to be involved in the gifting. It seems at the moment that to be associated with the Hollywood Glitterati is almost to be tainted with their lack of connection to everyday reality.