“Your review was great, maybe if you had \\ taken your eyes off my boobs you could have \\ watched the movie!”
Three lines, 19 words. Poetry, arguably in its finest form of the 21st century: Instagram DM. Amandla Stenberg could have written Hamlet, but Shakespeare certainly could not have written that. Just one or two short syllables of a haiku, but with a clear intention embedded in the distinct stanzas – the innocent opening; the shocking and abrupt twist of the second line; the feeling of closure that kills me every time. As a film critic, maybe if she had actually “watched the movie” none of this would have happened. The real boost is that she knew exactly how it would turn out – she just didn’t know it would turn out so gloriously.
Said movie critic is Lena Wilson, a writer for the esteemed New York Times, maybe you’ve heard of it? Well, until a month ago you certainly hadn’t heard of her. After a scathing review of A24’s comedic horror film ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’, Wilson took to Twitter in a now-deleted post to post this infamous private message from actress Amandla Stenberg, who stars in the film . Shock! Outrage! An inevitable controversy ensued! But let’s put a little more context. On its own, Stenberg’s confusing message doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, reading as an unexpected and overly offended response to a critic simply trying to do his job — something Wilson obviously capitalized on. If you haven’t read her paid review, you may not be aware of the specific line that Stenberg clearly took issue with and was directly alluding to: the line in which Wilson called the film “a 95-minute commercial for the cleavage and Charli XCX’s latest single. Not a good look, to say the least (and most, Charli XCX’s single “Hot Girl” is a bop and she responded to the drama of the best possible way).
This is where things start to go wrong. Wilson tweeted this screenshot assuming that out of context the internet would blindly sympathize with her. Wilson, who is gay, called the DM a homophobic and petty retaliation from a privileged actress unhappy with a less than stellar review. She acted as if the reason she posted a private message on an extremely public forum was that Stenberg had “more social power” than her, and that it just wasn’t okay for them to do something like that. The flaw in Wilson’s strategy here is that, unlike how online audiences may try to appear, no one is an absolute empath, especially not when it comes to petty celebrity feuds and elite life They may seem easily manipulated and often blindly misled, but Wilson had no substantial credibility nor any established camaraderie with the Twitter masses to inspire them to act on its behalf.
And so the internet quickly condemned Wilson instead. Like any good Twitter drama, the incident has led people to unearth a whole host of unsavory evidence about internet drag, including this rather incriminating ICT Tac which pretty much speaks for itself. In it, Wilson offers viewers advice on what makes her a skilled arts writer, and before you ask, no, that’s not satire, although I sincerely wish it was. . I could justify this being done to recklessly defend the heat she was getting online, but this is from seven months ago and has absolutely nothing to do with the “Bodies Bodies Bodies” drama (which makes it even worse). But he is a telling character portrait of who we are dealing with here. The final nail in the coffin came when Wilson credentialed her position at The New York Times on “I’m Just Talented, I Guess,” conveniently omitting the fact that her father is an editor there. Ah, nepotism, the cardinal artistic sin. So now we’ve gone from a lesbian movie critic receiving an unsolicited homophobic DM from an actress to a nepo-baby who gets undue attention for a celebrity interaction she probably should have laughed at with her friends instead. to post on Twitter.
It sounds like a parable about cybersecurity that anyone under 25 should have received in elementary school. The content you post on the Internet stays there forever. Like forever, forever. A fundamental rule of the web here, folks. There’s no real deletion of anything, and if it has any comic value, people will never let you experience it. The internet simply never forgets. Ask any celebrity who took part in that “Imagine” video – I imagine it still haunts them to this day. I really hope that’s the case.
To complete the whole debacle, let’s listen to it on Stenberg’s TikTok account. To clear the air, Stenberg posted a video explaining that her intentions with the DM were mostly humorous (she could barely recite it without laughing) and assumed that since the two were gay, Wilson would find it funny, too. Misinterpretations of the cryptic speech message aside, it is apparent that Stenberg was not upset with Wilson’s review of the film, but that Wilson chose to reduce both the film and its review to objectification rather superficial of the cast of the film. Whether or not that’s a throwaway line, bashing the film as – let’s hear it again folks – “a 95 minute commercial for cleavage” says more about Wilson’s cursory analysis than “ A24’s over-sexualization and exploitation of his largely young wife the angle she seemed to take.For reference, these are the outfits the characters wear for almost the entirety of the film.Stenberg, pictured left in the green tank top, is the only one wearing anything slightly revealing, which makes Wilson’s comment all the more targeted and Stenberg’s subsequent reaction all the more justified.
I don’t know how much meta this situation could get. Wilson spends much of his review repeatedly chastising the film for its deeply self-centered characters representing a superficial representation of leftist internet culture, only to end up engaging with that same internet culture in a senseless way, selfish and attention seeking. Regardless of sides taken, Wilson has consciously tried to manipulate a tenuous online system that regularly thrives on disputes and erupts in utter chaos over the most minor celebrity mishaps. To plant seeds of discord, all it takes is for the tiniest rumor, the tiniest hint of doubt to turn into utter destruction, with every answer and response acting like an endless phone game in this digital echo chamber void. “Mean Girls” warned us of this long before the power of the internet fully unfolded, as did “Gossip Girl,” the longtime champion of ruining lives one little gossip gossip at a time.
In all honesty, the audience reaction here was never going to be fully nuanced, because it requires critical thinking, something everyone is pretty capable of but the internet likes to ignore in favor of the next new gossip. The celebrity topics of popular discourse online retain their relevance not by giving people all the facts and letting them draw their own rational, well-thought-out conclusions, but by providing them with shocking snippets of information that actively induce and encourage visceral reactions. These answers are based only on our own biases and the ever-changing tide of digital influence. Who was right doesn’t matter when the internet as a whole could very easily have taken sides one way or the other.
What if Wilson’s criticism came from a lesser-known publication or if no one had captured and disseminated his tweet? Or if Stenberg was a little less well-known, or even had the slightest pre-existing stigma online against her (think of the visceral reaction you get hearing the names Jameela Jamil or Camila Cabello)? The details of either party’s criticisms or legitimate concerns become inconsequential as they are muddled by the disproportionate scale and impact of an otherwise hugely specialized internet drama. Maybe people will think twice the next time a private message from a celebrity leaks, or maybe they’ll just laugh at the Wilson-worthy incriminating TikTok from time to time. But when we allow art criticism to be diluted by the prevailing Internet orthodoxy of the subject and try to employ the easily influenced masses to ignore substance in favor of something that aligns with the current relevant position to which everyone hangs on, it loses all meaning outside of the online context.
It’s not exactly groundbreaking for me to say that we, the public, Twitter and TikTok users and the like, constantly want to love or hate a new celebrity. Someone to dethrone on the basis of their most minor offences, aided by the parasocial nature of the internet and the highly-policed documentary environment that has become a hallmark of social media as we know it. Maybe it reminds us that celebrities are human, imperfect like the rest of us, or it just satisfies a long-held desire that there’s some sense of taxation, a price to pay for all those privileges and this power. As the slogan of “Bodies Bodies Bodies” says so well, “this is not a safe space”. It never was, and I doubt it ever will be.
Time and again, however valid or intended, art criticism gets lost in a sea of scandal and rumour, manipulated by agendas far less focused on the artistic merit of a work or the talent of the work. ‘artist than on the potential for ruin. In this case, this internet gossip was hidden under the guise of pseudo-intellectual critiques of the movie, A24, and even the current situation. Maybe this article itself is an example of that, but who am I to say? Unknowingly or not, Wilson tapped into this potential and engaged with an online system that promises no loyalty and knows no bounds just for the chance to receive attention and a brief acclaim on the internet. She’s received notice from the Internet, but probably not the kind we’re hoping for.
So how did it all happen?
Wilson deleted all of her social media, “Bodies Bodies Bodies” briefly garnered attention she probably wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and Charli XCX emerged from the bloodbath unscathed and remains an untroubled queen. Now go stream “Hot Girl”, everyone!
Daily Arts editor Serena Irani can be reached on seirani@umich.edu.
#Unpacking #internet #discourse #bodies #bodies #bodies