Red Carpet Rundown

Last night was the SAG Awards, the award where actors pat other actors on the back directly, instead of trusting 72-year-old assistant cinematographers to vote on whoever the people at the La Brea Starbucks seem to be enthusiastic about like the Academy does. And though voting for the SAGs closed before the Oscar fracas began, which means that last night’s results can’t be read as a direct rebuttal of the lily-white Oscar slate this year, it’s still a fairly pointed list of winners. It helps that the SAGs encompass TV (which has the benefit of more overall diversity than movies), but it’s hard not to notice that several Oscar snubs got on the SAG ballot. Idris Elba had a banner night, winning twice – the first man to do so! The SAG red carpet is interesting; it’s obviously still being cheated out to the public rather than being presented as a purely industry affair (I cover this carpet in a way I don’t cover, say, the Independent Spirit Awards), but it’s definitely an actor lovefest… Read more »

Welcome back to awards season! It’s all happening. It’s alllll happening. Luckily, we know the drill by now: the show is too long and either grindingly awkward or screechingly awful, and the awards handed out are an exercise in the surreal. This time around, the Golden Globes managed to be even more impressively head-scratchy and off-putting than usual, and I hope nobody here watched them. Instead, let’s just get right to the important part: the red carpet that demands its own set of acting skills, where you have to manage the press pit without looking like you’re actually worried about impressing anybody, and then somehow deliver perfect pictures and ironclad sound bites in the middle of it. Don’t believe me? Here’s Emmy Rossum, who is somehow unspeakably good at performative effortlessness, looking like a screencap from “Seducing The Press Pit: The Emmy Rossum Story”: And here’s Kate Bosworth, looking like a doll you’ve taken out of the big box but still have to separate from the cardboard backing: Whoever taught Kate Bosworth her poses for… Read more »

Okay, so normally we’d make jokes about showing up at the Emmys to watch Modern Family win things, but thankfully that didn’t happen last night! Instead we’ll talk jokes about the red carpet. (Here, Regina King, looking lovely, and at least 11 members of staff and crew in a single photo, at the far end of the carpet before things really get going.) It is absolutely nonsense women tend to get asked who they’re wearing and not much else; while nobody actually wants Ryan Seacrest asking deep questions on the red carpet (imagine his face: “Tatiana, such great acting this year! Tell me, what inherent loneliness informs your work, and has your loneliness only grown since the show started filming?”), if men get real questions, so should women. On the other hand, the red carpet is an image ecosystem; sure, it’s a swamp, but it’s equally self-sustaining, and when so much is riding on it, people will get asked who they’re wearing, because that’s how anybody’s wearing anything. That necessity sucks. Those who can get… Read more »

Few things make me feel older than watching a VMAs red carpet. That’s less because the carpet is full of young people than because I have minimal sense of what the young pop star world wants from this spotlight. “Attention” is an honest but flippant answer; every red carpet exists for attention, and dinging everybody for it doesn’t get us anywhere. Given the sheer number of women who showed up on the carpet with one leg aggressively propped outside the confines of her dress, there are trends at play here that escape my understanding. (And you can’t even say it’s to flaunt youth, because Angelina Jolie’s leg dress blew all of these out of the water. Goddammit, young people, what’s going on with you??) It’s especially hard when one contingent of the awards is actively trying to make cogent social points about systemic inequality and the other half is trying to make fun of it, but that is the reason not to watch awards shows except for Nicki Minaj Vines. There’s a lot going on,… Read more »

The Met Gala was last night – the place where fashionistas and stars gather to decide who among this group of staggeringly rich adults is capable of dressing to theme. Of course, it’s one thing to dress to theme when that theme is, say, punk, or Charles James. But this year’s exhibit is titled “China: Through the Looking Glass,” and is – depending on who’s talking – a history of Chinese fashion and its influence on design in the West, or an exploration of the effects of the Western gaze on perceptions of China and Chinese fashion. It’s a crucial difference, one that I look forward to determining when I see the exhibit for myself – as much as a white person can determine what is and isn’t sufficient self-awareness when it comes to potential appropriation. Spoiler: Not much. (Something to keep in mind throughout this rundown, actually; I’m providing outsider commentary on an issue that involves outsiders helping themselves, so that’s as much a part of this mess as anything else. What fun the… Read more »