In another recent example of celebrity tone deafness (see also: “Get your fuckin’ ass up and work”), Jennifer Aniston—formerly “America’s sweetheart” material—has come under fire for some comments made to Sebastian Stan during their Actors on Actors interview for Variety. Prompted to bring up the cultural shift that the Pamela Anderson sex tape caused in the mid-90s thanks to Stan starring as Tommy Lee in Pam and Tommy, Aniston echoes the sentiment that it was the major catalyst for shifting how people absorbed media altogether as a result of the internet. How, up until that moment, no one fully understood what its “powers” could be used for.
As she proceeded to mourn the loss of “real fame” as opposed to “scandal fame,” Aniston remarked, “It really sort of shaped so much of a new culture about the thing of people becoming famous for basically doing nothing. But yet having these incredible careers. And then women’s sort of reputation. I mean, Pam, Paris Hilton…” Some outlets have reported she also mentioned Monica Lewinsky, but that doesn’t appear in the current version of the interview. So one has to wonder where these news outlets saw or heard Lewinsky mentioned… Aniston added of the zeitgeist caused by the advent of the internet, “I always say I feel so lucky that we got a little taste of the industry before it became whatever it is today, which is just different—more streaming services, more people, you’re famous from TikTok, you’re famous from YouTube, you’re famous from Instagram… it’s almost like it’s diluting the actor’s job.” This is where she gets into trouble for sounding “preachy” and “self-superior” when, in fact, she’s just being honest about how busted the industry is. For it was never intended to be “democratized.” It was meant as an escape from the banality and glamorlessness of everyday existence. Not any longer, as we can see. Unless one counts filters and fillers as glamor.
But this isn’t the first time Aniston has openly conveyed being averse to the social media/let’s go viral offshoot of technology that has arisen at an alarming rate since her own 90s heyday. An aversion she poked fun at in a 2011 commercial for Smartwater called “Jennifer Aniston Goes Viral.” In the almost three-minute “campaign” (directed by Truth or Dare’s own Alek Keshishian), she and her team of “internet guys” run through all the things she could do to get the ad to go viral before landing on her sensually tossing her hair around in slow motion and the trio suggesting they call it “Jennifer Aniston sex tape” to get searches skyrocketing. How Pam Lee-inspired. At the outset, though, she stares directly into the camera as she says, “I’m here to talk to you about Smartwater. But, in this day and age, apparently I can’t just do that. Can I? Can’t just tell you… I have to make a video.” To further make fun of her out-of-touchness with the present fixation on virality, Aniston adds, “I have to make a video that turns into a virus.” Foreshadowing.
In the same Actors on Actors interview, in which Stan agrees with everything she’s saying, yet isn’t called out for being “exclusionary” or “elitist” (because he’s not a “nepo baby”), Aniston later notes of her time on Friends, “It was before social media, so we still had some sanity… I can’t imagine now how young kids today are, you know, becoming famous because there’s no respite. There’s no place to escape.” Least of all when you dare to call the entertainment biz what it currently is: trash. And it has nothing to do with “gatekeeping” no longer being as relevant or shrouded in mystery as it once was, but the very thing Aniston is talking about when she says the internet opened the floodgates for mediocrity as much as it did for talent that might previously have never been discovered. But we all know that talent doesn’t play that much into social media success either, what with all the followers a person can buy to seem more legitimate… and even “influencers” can be just that solely because they have famous parents. So no, it isn’t that pre-internet gatekeeping was exclusionary toward race (as those outraged said things like, “People are so angry that the industry is more diverse, more inclusive of people from all backgrounds who had nothing but a phone to prop up to showcase their dream when their communities were probably underfunded and overlooked. Let’s keep making ’em mad”), it was also exclusionary toward, well, total drivel.
And let’s be real, for all the denigrations of the actress being nothing more than a one-note (like Sarah Jessica Parker) nepo baby as a response to her casual critique, it’s not like Aniston’s parents had Coppola-level clout (no one was ever fawning over John Aniston and Nancy Dow). Not all nepo babies are created equal, in other words. And if they were, she wouldn’t have had to get her start in a Bob’s Big Boy commercial. Or Leprechaun, for that matter.
Like the tall poppy syndrome using the metaphor that all poppies that rise too high above the others must be cut down, modern fame, too, is meant to be “democratized”—which makes it inherently less special, and less related to actual skill. No, now it’s all about the most arbitrary of things that manage to tap into a so-called “moment.” But back to the “tall poppy” analogy, it’s somewhat ironic for a country that has for so long prided itself on hating socialism (and the principles thereof) to be so social media-happy. While some would argue that the existence of social media is one of the ultimate tools of late capitalism, at its core, all it serves to do is homogenize. Make everyone convince themselves they can have their fifteen minutes of fame, as Andy previously prophesied.
There’s nothing wrong with Aniston mentioning that she misses the way it used to be, when there was a greater sense of having “earned” fame (yeah, yeah it sounds rich coming from someone with parents who had made it already) as opposed to doing some stolen choreo and then clicking a button. And yes, even if that antiquated form of grandeur came with men like Harvey Weinstein reigning unchecked, there is no denying that lifting back the curtain on Oz (a.k.a. Hollywood) has made it far less appealing in the present. Not to mention filled with far more schlock to sift through.
