Bonnie Park
They are obligated to be together. They are together as they should be. They carry the sales of entertainment magazines around the world, the expectations of movie audiences around the world, the overtime bonuses of tabloid journalists around the world together. They appear in Paris holding hands. They appear in the desert holding hands. Life is too boring. Hollywood is also too boring these days. In the movies, they need to save the world from safety, in reality, they want to save the world from boredom. The moment they appear at the same time, the scene is like the most thrilling blast in Hollywood movies: more than one hundred and twenty cameras are clicked and clicked, different camera positions at different angles are exposed, the whole world is silent, all ears have become silent radio poles, ready to wait for the sound of their traces. Close-ups, chasing light, rumors, rumors, new rounds of rumors and new rounds of rumors …… who called them the coolest man and woman ever.Brad Pitt, sweaty and wild in the movie, he is the most wonderful cowboy, because of guilt and love became the wind general epic; he is the most charming death, with a light smile and eyes flirtation; he is the most innocent vampire, predestined to make him unbearably sad; he is the greatest gangster and boxer, spit on order, full of destruction, nosebleed, smug. From his first movie, “The End of the Line,” in which he played a hoodlum who cheated women out of money, he was the sexual fantasy of all women. For years, but also the fantasy of a prodigal son in Hollywood, he is amorous, he is uninhibited, he returns and walks into a safe marriage. At the same time, he is a totem: a totem of total manhood.Angelina Jolie, who appeared in the limelight at the same time, is already famous. She has a prestigious careless father. She had an unhappily indulgent childhood. She kissed her brother at thirteen. She was living with a man at fourteen. She made love to sexy men, and she made love to sexy women. She has fifteen tattoos on her body and recently added another one for her children. She was never a princess, but an absolute queen. She says she enjoys SM, how dare you imagine that she is the one being abused? She is extremely sexy and she uses this power to attack and conquer. She is extremely beautiful, her appearance is not stunning, it is horrifying. She is extremely strong, she never looks at people with meekness. This woman was seven months pregnant and flew her own plane into the sky, she loved blood, fought, and carried a knife with her. She has chosen two children for herself, both of color. At all times, exuding a powerful maternal nature. She’s not marrying a man, but she’s picking a father for her children, only.We understand without any doubt what kind of fate they are about to cause together, just as Hollywood producers see clearly and unmistakably the huge box office value hidden behind the pairing of characters. Mr. and Mrs. Smith” proves it. Wonderfully hot, vulgar and clichéd. The audience is not going to see an action movie, but to see the sexiest man and woman flirting. They do it well, while realizing they can do it better. They have amplified and introduced the reality of what audiences expect to see on set.
Why do audiences always expect the star-crossed couples who lust for each other on screen to fall in love in real life? First, because they look good. Just look at the photos they were taken, which one is pleasing to the eye, as if they were stills. They are the 24-hour non-stop reality show. Second, they are hilarious. Only they have so much gossip, so much inside information. So many experts jumped out, reading faces, reading horoscopes, reading palm prints, analyzing their fortunes. So many friends jumped out, looking at the past, looking at character, looking at the details, predicting their future. The plot is changing all the time, each step is unbelievable, and the next is even more twisted and bizarre.
Third, because the audience does not want the movie to end there. The film is an illusion, is an illusion at the same time is to hope that the audience thought it was real. The audience walked out of the cinema, still do not want to wake up, do not want to see the movie illusion is broken. Just as the audience does not want to know that the actors actually bear no resemblance to the characters, people walk away with the naive expectation that they do not want to be deceived, hoping that the love on the screen is real, and that it is still real in reality. It is only when the actors and actresses on the screen come together that the audience will feel that all is happy.The passionate level of love between the actors is often exaggerated to the greatness of the plot in the movie. People associate the magic of chemistry between the characters simply to the actors themselves. This expectation itself dooms the “screen couple love affair” to failure: no one can love like the movie. The movie is the essence of the editing. Those trivial details of life are edited out. Hollywood movies are wishful love myths. Reality itself has been deflated. In the movie, you can use knives and guns to blow up your home and then grab each other and make love in the rubble, the reality is that Brad Pitt’s leg was cut by wood chips while shooting this scene. This means he may not be as cool as he sees in the movie.In the event of celebrity couples (especially screen couples) themselves, we see the omnipresence of watching, and of being watched all the time. The viewer is pervasive. The developed media acts as a curious eye. In modern society, those who are watched can never hide. Even if they hide in the poor neighborhoods of Paris or in the deserts of Africa. At the same time, the gesture of being watched has become ambiguous. The watched stars express their bitterness, saying that they are persecuted by the media’s eyes and that they have lost their original lives. But at the same time they are still glamorous together, acting out their happy scenes in the limelight. They keep denying it, and then the evidence shows that what is true is what they are denying. This turns everything into a game of “welcome” and “deny”. The sincerity that love needs most is obliterated. The mindset of the viewers is also very complex. They want them to be together, but at the same time they want them not to be together. They need to see them together to satisfy the desire to peek, and at the same time they need to see them in a lot of trouble and not going well, satisfying the sour grapes mentality of ordinary people. Let’s put it this way: happy to see it, but also gloating.What is it that brings them together? Is it the love itself, or the powerful expectations of the audience? Do they desire to be seen, or not to be seen? Is their high-profile love the need to express from the heart, or the need for self-hype? Is it cool to be loved, or is it cool to be seen? Following this line of thought, we can’t help but think of an old proposition: Is the movie imitating reality, or is reality imitating the movie? Such a discussion is fruitless and endless at the same time.This is the reason why we are still fascinated to follow their news. Or, we can conclude with these two statements:Godard says: “Cinema is the truth in twenty-four frames per second.”Fassbinder says: “Cinema is a lie of twenty-five frames per second.”