Gossip Rag Bitch-Slap -- Part Three

"Let's do something other than read!"

Both Us Weekly and Photoplay feature full-page ads for various and sundry post-literate media. Us tends to focus on TV shows and videogames.

Nothing impressive or particularly risible here. Modern marketing at its most mundane.

Photoplay's got it going on, though, with movie ads like this one. I've never seen "Vendetta," but it certainly seems to be an attention-grabber.

Who needs that HBO black-and-white minimalist crap when you can have a four-color Faith Domergue, star of "This Island Earth" and "The House of Seven Corpses," clutching a knife with her dress half torn off? Plus, grown men smacking each other with riding crops or blackjacks or both!




You don't even need color photography when you've got copy as vivid as that promoting "Storm Warning" (or "I Frenched a Bigot"):

"The kiss of a Klansman...! This is the story of a pretty girl who spends a night in "friendly" little town...Suddenly out of the dark she is faced with the fear only a girl can know. Here is a picture more tense than words can describe -- as fresh as the ink of tomorrow headlines!"

Yow! All that, and Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan and Doris Day!

I never knew that the Klan spent all their energy menacing perky blondes. Guess that's why there are no African Americans in the supporting cast.

Photoplay is way ahead in this category, but I'm not finished yet. More hyperventilating movie ads have an appointment with the scanner.

Gossip Rag Bitch-Slap -- Part Two

"They think they're people!"


Magazines such as Us and Photoplay operate with a set of conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they like to pretend that celebrities are some higher order of being, that being photogenic and marginally talented invests upon them a sort of ineffable miraculousness. On the other, you don't want your movie stars to get too uppity, so these magazines print lots of unflattering shots of them under the pretext of "See, they're really nothing special!"



The caption about train-wreck-in-the-making chanteuse Amy Winehouse alleges that she does her own laundry, but I suspect that what she's really doing is destroying her own evidence.


Photoplay can't really match the tawdry banality of Us. The best it can do is provide this completely natural and action-packed shot of household accountacy by Lena Lamont from "Singing in the Rain" and her condescending hubby.

This round goes to Us. At least they don't make us look at shots of Brad and Angelina firing up TurboTax together.

Gossip Rag Bitch-Slap: Part One

For the past couple of months, I've been receiving Us Weekly against my will. I foolishly pre-paid a two-year subscription to Premiere, just before they stopped publishing the newsstand version. Crap! So now I'm a reluctant subscriber to a periodical that makes People look like Cahiers du Cinema.

A few weeks ago, I attended a local garage sale and snagged a copy of Photoplay from February 1951. Neither was it targeted toward pointy-headed intellectuals, but at least it has some vitality. Not to mention some really crazy-ass advertisements.

I've decided that it would be instructive to analyze the differences between two generations of celebrity "fan" magazines. For the next few weeks, or until we all succumb to ennui, I plan to critique both Us and Photoplay in a new feature entitled Gossip Rag Bitch-Slap!

Let's start with The Covers:

Oof. Busy. Garish. Featuring scary, Botoxed people with dead, soulless eyes. Heather Locklear I know, and it's hard to be unaware of Mrs. Brad Pitt. But who the hell is Vanessa, and why should I care that the young star of "Herbie Fully Loaded" is holding a knife to her throat?

But check this out! It's Jane Powell, star of "A Date with Judy," and she looks quite lovely. Her hair appears a little stiff, but her blue eyes sparkle with something recognizable as human consciousness. There's no drunken horseplay with edged weapons. And Photoplay cost only 15 cents, compared to Us's $3.49 cover price.

On to the back covers. Here's a fairly inoffensive ad for a reality cooking show on Bravo. I'll never watch it (nor put in my mouth anything any of these people prepare), but it doesn't actively annoy me.

But, man, do I want one of those Chesterfields! I don't smoke, but I'm a sucker for a pack of coffin nails offered by the female lead of "Captain Horatio Hornblower."

Great copywriting: It's the Easiest Test in the Book... Open 'em. Smell 'em. Smoke 'em.

A philosophy with so many applications to everyday life!

The first round of Gossip Rag Bitch-Slap goes to -- Photoplay!