An interesting video showing how Meghan Markle uses trivia and meaningless promotional language to build and maintain her celebrity persona. Familiar enough, but the video also conveys a sinister aspect to promotional culture generally.
In a wider sense, the video is a reminder of the same promotional culture saturating the public domain. Manipulative language used in the pursuit of power, money and undeserved esteem. Or perhaps a promotional version of esteem. Even that isn't real.
6 comments:
He's the perfect presenter for this sort of material. He seems a bit autistic and lacking in emotion, so the contrast with Meghan - who frowns, wrinkles her nose, rolls her eyes and works the camera really hard - is very telling. He has a lot of substance, but virtually no style. Whereas she....
However, I think he overstates the analysis of the content of her interviews and speeches. She's not that self-conscious, and she just fits together cliches that create the impression she wants. Overall, she seems to have picked her audience, and it's the liberal black rising middle-class who aspire to creativity and engaged authenticity. They'll lap up anything that makes them think their current streak of luck will continue.
Sam - it's as if the cliches are just part of a script in a show, part of an act that certain audiences enjoy so why shouldn't she cater for that enjoyment. Harry may be much the same, having a good time being one of the stars of a show instead of a comparatively minor royal. That may always have been the deal between them.
The Spouse has been idly experimenting with asking chatGPT to write a speech in the style of Meghan Markle for various hypothetical occasions, both plausible and surreal.
The resulting pseudo-significant drivel is uncannily indistinguishable from the real (?) thing - so much so that we ended up wondering whether she simply punches the details of her next engagement or podcast into an AI (MegBot?) programme and recites verbatim whatever comes out, garnishing it with that intolerable air of smug complacency.
Sam has hit the nail in the head, I think; she’s preaching to the choir, so whatever she says will be lapped up with enthusiasm, further reinforcing her belief in her own oratorical skills.
(I salute you both if you managed to watch the whole thing; while what he has to say is is very interesting, I felt like I was coming out in hives after barely half a dozen clips of the woman.)
Macheath - she seems to recycle much of her material a number of times with minor variations so she may not have needed AI assistance in the past. It would surprising if she didn't make some use of it now though, even if it has to be edited.
I watched the whole thing. It's quite sinister in the way it opens up a world where nothing is genuine apart from the money.
"a world where nothing is genuine apart from the money": awfully good, AKH.
dearieme - thanks, I find it's a world which isn't easy to grasp without seeming too cynical.
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