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ABE WON’T BE SILENT - Once upon a time, there were biographies, memoirs, autobiographies, Roman à clefs, and fairytales. Now with the unfortunate advent of Reality Stars and Cable News Blovators or, as I like to call them, In Reality, Never-Wases, comes a new genre of printed crap. I don’t have the heart to call them books. How about Disposable Irrelevant Reality Literature (D.I.R.T.), which is being generous since I use the word literature? D.I.R.T. is yet another slice of the rapidly growing celebrity cross-over marketing pie. And when I say pie, I mean less rhubarb or apple and more like that piece of Minny’s Shit Pie that Octavia Spencer served to her racist boss in the film, The Help. Notice how I didn’t use the word humble? The ever-growing heinous collective of C-D-E-F and Z List celebrities have begun to exploit and besmirch retail bookshelves and online booksellers. (GoodReads.com, beware because they are not, in most cases, good reads.) The official term for this category of Pop Lit Shit is often referred to as the Celebrity Tell-All.
The Celebrity Tell-All is specific to those characters that have become best known (I hate to bastardize the word famously) for their reality show shenanigans. I reckon these Cable T.V. phenoms have become a force to be reckoned with. That they exist is beyond comprehension, and now, sadly, the last respectable genre within the media category—books— has all but lost its value. If any books should be banned or burned, these are them! Leave the Holocaust, Slavery, LGBTQ+, and Indigenous people to be discovered by students for their own good.
Talk about T.M.I.; now we have ‘way more than too much information W.M.T.T.M.I.
Two questions:
1) Do the celebrities who are the subjects of the celebrity tell-alls even read? Maybe only those tabloids that their publicist tells them they are featured in.
2) Will those couch potatoes read that the D.I.R.T. publishers are banking on purchasing these books?
I mean, who else is going to buy these books?
Unfortunately, many more of this “brand” of celebrity and bloviator will jump into the fray of the overcrowded Celebrity Tell-All genre. So soon, W.H. Smith and Hudson Booksellers will be forced to create a special table for all the Celebrity Tell-All books.
Meanwhile, the word “brand” has been bastardized and coopted by these so-called stars of cable television, who are, in essence, nothing but a bunch of social media climbers. It’s time to set the record straight. Kellogg’s is a brand, Coca-Cola is a brand, Tide is a brand, and Mickey Mouse is a brand, not to mention Brand X.
As seen in Dictionary.com
BRAND noun
1. Kind, grade, or make, as indicated by a stamp, trademark, or the like:
The best brand of coffee.
2. A mark made by burning or otherwise to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership, etc.
Also, a verb in the case of branding with a hot iron, such as humans (see banned history books) or animals.
3. Any mark of disgrace; stigma.
Also, a verb, see Bette Davis’ film, “Marked Woman, or Al Pacino's “Scarface.”
4. A kind or variety of something distinguished by some distinctive characteristic:
The movie was filled with slapstick— a brand of humor he did not find funny.
5. A burning or partly burned piece of wood.
Only recently did they add:
6. A particular identity or image is regarded as an asset. "You can still invent your career, be your own brand." See also, Kardashian.
Peace…
(ABE GURKO is the executive producer of a documentary “Won’t Be Silent,” about the extraordinary Women of Protest Music. He's an Opinionator who hosts a podcast, "Conversations From the Edge of Democracy," that discusses the current state of our fragile political landscape. Abe is a contributor to CityWatchLA.com. [email protected]. Abe’s opinions are his own and not necessarily those of CityWatchLA.com)
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