A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined As a Grotesque, Crippling Disease and Other Cultural Revelations. Cintra WilsonЧитать онлайн книгу.
wailing for untimely death in an Irish family could send more Freon up the spine than a Backstage Mother howling darkly at her toddler in showgirl makeup, “Pretty FEET! Make PRETTY FEET for the agents, Missy!”
The recent rash of female pop singers have already figured out that crawling around in their panties on MTV is the best thing they can do for record sales. As singers proceed to get younger and more naked, child versions of lingerie bands like Vanity 6 are sure to ensue: undulating eleven-year-old boys and girls wearing Cuban-heeled fetish nylons and tiny athletic-support cups will be filling an arena near you, running microphones suggestively over their undeveloped chests, grabbing their unfinished nether parts, flipping their hair, pouting, feigning sadomasochism with the mike stand. Oversexed R&B tykes like Immature and Tevin Campbell have already been down this catwalk – they were boys who were not old enough to drive, who frothed crowds of grown women into surging jungles of wrongful lust. Somehow, to the wanton fan of any age, a charismatic stage presence means that the performer is possessed of a mature, diabolically super-charged mega-sexuality, and the fan responds to the performer as such, even if he is barely over four feet tall.
New Kids on the Block had a frighteningly sexual, Jesus-like sway over the female species. At the peak of their success, I remember, I read an actual newspaper column about how a three-and-a-half-year-old girl who had been displaying nothing but autistic-like behavior for her entire life was watching a New Kids concert with her older siblings, then suddenly snapped into lucidity, grabbed her mother by the arm, and drawled out her first words, her maiden voyage into the English language, a fiery demand: “I want Joe!” --Joe, of course, being Joe McIntyre, the youngest and shortest of the New Kids. In the early nineties, he was probably singlehandedly responsible for more kundalini-firehammers of sexual explosion in the twelve-and-unders than Elvis and David Cassidy and Mickey Dolenz combined. All of the New Kids, at one time, had to suffer being regarded as Emissaries of the Divine or worse.
I was once given a box of actual fan letters, left behind by a vacating fan-mail-distributing service, that were written to New Kids on the Block. These things were gut-freezingly weird and evil: they weren’t just stacks upon stacks of love pleas from little girls, but bold propositions from forty- year-old women who had been sucked into the most terrifying brand of slavering fanhood by their preteen daughters. You could just see these desolate single mothers with posters of Donnie Wahlberg’s shiny naked chest on their walls over the breakfast table, arguing viciously with their fifth-grade daughters over which of the New Kids was “more fine.” Receiving countless amounts of these letters is the type of thing would screw up nearly any boy under the age of twenty that I’ve ever known, forever—and just to prove it, I've supplied some prime examples from the collection that provide a fairly good overview of the bulk of fan mail in general.
EXAMPLE #1: The Pink-Faced Teenybopper Letter
This letter, written to Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block, typifies a “normal,” “healthy” fan letter. There were at least two hundred more of these, with minor variations, in the box.
All spelling and grammar in this and the following examples were left exactly as I found them. All small i's in this letter were dotted with a circle.
Donnie,
hello!
My name is______and I am 17 years old! With this letter I have written 1,450 times “I Love You”!!
Because I really do baby!! Not because you are rich and famous, but because you are Donnie Wahlberg!! You could be pour and not famous and I would still want you!! I got over 600 posters of only you and I love them all! I think you are so cool! I love the way you walk, talk, sing, dance, well i might as well say I love everything about you!! The other guys are alright too, but you are number one in my heart and soul!! I got everything there is on you!!
[Etc.]
I just want to say that you are the best and don't forget it!!
Well bye!!
Love ya lots
Your #1 Fan
EXAMPLE #2: The Bored-Slutty-Young-Mom Letter
This next letter, also to Donnie Wahlberg, represents another cross section of fans whom I still consider “healthy,” if somewhat squalid and pitiable:
Hey
This will be the first of many letters. I am 26. + I also have two sons, one 8 ½ and the other 4. My 8 ½ bought a NKOTB tape. I admit I have heard your music before, I liked it but honestly did not think much of it. I saw you on that Disney special. I must admit, I really thought you were really tough looking. I have seen your tattoo it's a killer. I have two, one one my left breast a rose on a vine. A butterfly on my back. I like to dance and stay in shape. Really only flaw I can tell is that I am short 5'2”. But dynamite comes in small packages they say.
My music tastes tend to run wild. I like Patsy Cline, Tchaikovsky, but I also like Warrant, Great White, Bobby Brown + especially Def Leppard. I am not a blockhead, but I wouldn't mind having a block's head. Get me. I know I am five years older. But you know the song older women. Baby lets just say, I'm clean + don't believe in screwing around, I'm to safe. One thing I hate is condoms. But I use them until I am definitely sure. I like the real thing. I wrote to you on kind of a dare, I just wanted to see if you would write back. I have a bet with a friend, its between me+her+now you, I will have you, just one night if you can take it. I'm giving myself a year. If you do write the letter it will stay between you and I. It's stupid putting things in the paper. I am no teenager, but I know what goes where and believe me I can show you.
X
EXAMPLE #3: The Drowning Teen
Stop reading, all ye faint of heart. Herein begins the real squirminess. If you are a would-be teen idol, I hope you regard this letter with the same trembling and apprehension that Ebenezer Scrooge does when shown the tombstone of Tiny Tim.
Jonathan,
Hi, my name is______. I know you don't know me, but I really want you to pay attention to this letter. I really really need for you to know how I feel. Right now, I'll bet I can say that I'm your number one fan, and mean it. I'll also bet that I can talk to any New Kids fan out there, and none of them love you half as much as I do. Well anyway, about three or four years ago I was a very happy person. Until I saw your cute little face on the cover of a tape that one of my friends had. Well ever since then, my life has been turned upside down. I mean, all I do anymore is think of you. I'm always miserable. I'm never happy. My grades have slipped rapidly, and every night I lie in my bed and cry. I asked my mom why the Lord made people so miserable. She told me he didn't, but he would only give you what he thought would make you happy in the end. She told me that I'd never get to meet you, because you won't make me happy. But I know that's not true. I know you'd make me happy. Very happy. I mean, you wouldn't even have to try. It would make me happy to wait on you hand and foot. I don't care if I never get anything else in my life, but I really really need you. Just to be a friend to you would bring lots and lots of joy to me. I mean since I've known of you, I can't picture myself with anyone else. I have no social life anymore. I can't seem to get you out of my mind long enough to even consider liking anyone else. My mom takes me to a shrink but he's no help. He can't help me get to meet you. I really wish I could express just how badly I feel. But I've never been good with words. Or even writing them for that matter, I just want to take you into my arms and hold you and protect you from life's heartache and pain. I know you're probably never unhappy. I guess that's just just what I want you to do for me. Sometimes I sit and think “Why am I hear.” I feel as if my only purpose in life is to sit around and be miserable. I told my mom that I really want you to know my pain. She said he wouldn't care. But I don't think that's true. I think you'd care. Wouldn't you? I wish I could spend just one day with you. I know that's a lot to ask, but I've waited so long. When is it my turn? When do I getta be happy? When do I get to meet you. Sometimes I think that if I don't get my turn soon, that I'm just gonna give up. I'm gonna kill myself. The only reason I haven't already done it is because of my love for you. People always tell me to hold on to my dreams, and that they'll come true. Well to tell you the truth, I'm sick of hearing that. Of course I'm