Reading Journal [October 22, 2010]

A story I’ve been following for the past few days concerns the controversy behind the photoshoot including three cast members of the popular television show Glee posing in “racy” manner. What I find interesting is that not only has this been covered in the usual celebrity tabloids and blogs, the news story has also been debated upon (in video form) on more legitimate sites like CNN, the Washington Post, and had many bloggers, such as Scott Mendelson of The Huffington Post and Anastasia Harrell for Psychology Today, dedicating whole entries to the controversy as well. The story originally seemed to me no different than any other celebrity photoshoot debate, similar to Miley Cyrus’ artistically nude photographs or the like, but seeing the debates defending the legal aged stars of Glee seem to take the story to a higher level than simple tabloid junk.

Since we were discussing interviews in class, I thought watching some interviews in addition to reading articles on the issue would be helpful. In the Washington Post news debate, they bring in psychologist Dr. Jennifer Hartstein to discuss the photoshoot and why it’s completely different for actors in their 20s to pose for a men’s magazine as opposed to actors in their teens; in general though, the news anchor’s questions seemed to allow a sense of balance for the debate and allowed both sides to be heard (personal responsibility to the actor’s own image vs. responsibility for the audience who watches Glee). This brought a sense of legitimacy to the debate for me because, honestly, before watching this clip I was wondering why on Earth this was even considered news. After watching the Washington Post clip, I looked up a few more news outlets covering the controversy. I preferred CNN’s news clip much more because I found that their sources were much closer to the heart of the issue than the previous clip’s sources. This clip had an interview with Melissa Henson of the Parents Television Council, who is directly opposing the photoshoot and has called the photoshoot “borderline pedophilia,” and Robert Thompson of the Bleier Center for Television and Pop Culture, who seemed familiar with Glee and was able to cite references within the show to support his argument that Glee as a TV program is racy to begin with. Additionally, the news anchor brings in a statement from actress Dianna Agronn, who participated in the shoot, bringing in another primary source and also allowing Henson to respond to it right there. While the Washington Post clip served to bring me into the debate and present the story in a newsworthy way, the CNN clip, with its choice in sources, got me closer to the reasons as to why there’s a debate in the first place.

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Onto the Lois Weisberg piece, I really enjoyed reading and I especially liked the juxtaposition of Weisberg as a microcosm in a macrocosm-like phenomenon. Malcolm Gladwell writes her in a likable and relatable manner in the hopes that the reader will recall someone in our own lives that plays a similar role of acting as the connection hub. While Weisberg is a remarkable woman, I felt that the writer used her story as a gateway into the larger discussion and did so seamlessly. She’s used as an example in the analysis of what makes that one kind of person a “people person.” One particular transition I enjoyed was this one:

Burgess Meredith was the kind of actor who was connected to everyone because he managed to move up and down and back and forth among all the different worlds and subcultures that the acting profession has to offer. When we say, then, that Lois Weisberg is the kind of person who "knows everyone," we mean it in precisely this way. It is not merely that she knows lots of people. It is that she belongs to lots of different worlds.

Prior to that excerpt, Gladwell was going on about the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and its analysis and study. This was still applicable to the overall story about people persons and allowed the reader to see how it was humanly possible to be connected to so many people, using the example of movie actors. When it seems that the article is just going to continue on about film stars, he brings it back to Weisberg in a relevant manner, comparing her to Burgess Meridith. Overall, I was very impressed with the amount of research that went into this profile and found myself enjoying it more than the ICP or Nails one; the reason being is that, not only did this introduce me to the interesting life of Lois Weisberg, I was also well informed about the larger idea of human connections.