Well, kinda.
I'm gonna just say it.
I love Paris Hilton.
Dammit! I know that many of my friends who hate her will be disappointed, and I've held my tongue many a time when people have bagged on her for basically becoming this big figure based on "nothing." But, for me, that's the beauty of it her, and the basis of her appeal.
Basically, I think that given where she's come from -- which isn't as the heiress to the Hilton fortune or anything, by the way, as her branch of the family has been squarely out of good graces of the other "better" Hiltons -- she's a master of PR and quite an American success story.
Yeah. She got her start in an amateur porn video. But what's a more American story than that?
Well, it's almost European, except for the fact that we actually considered such things scandalous or embarrassing. Hence, American. Remember, we weren't as cynical as we are now about the celebrity sex video, because now they're not such a big deal. Partially (largely?) due to Paris Hilton.
And she turned what would have been a humiliating firestorm into a brilliant opportunity to actually do something with her (actually, mostly meaningless) name and blonde ambition. Somehow, she became famous for -- going to parties? Getting drunk at them? Being seen in social circles? Making appearances?
Yet, it always struck me how she seems...*CHOKING*...ahem...kinda...royal.
I'm being serious. She comes off as kinda...classy.
OK -- please don't roll your eyes and surf off in disgust now. Please!
I think that Paris just kind of has a certain air about her that's hard to explain. It's what the French call a "certain thing that I do not know." Hehe. But seriously -- even from that first sex video (come on, now, ya'll know you seen it), I was expecting some embarrassing romp on videotape where I would be wincing all the way, fast-forwarding to all the "good parts." Yet, even in low-quality video made worse by file-transfer-size compression, she seemed somehow fabulous. She actually looked GOOD on the screen, and seemed genuine and funny.
It was like you were a fly on the wall of someone semi-famous whom you actually wanted to know, instead of a videotape that was giving you the inside track as to why you actually WOULDN'T want to know someone whom you thought you liked.
Knowhuddamean?
But people point to her embarrassing escapades and shake their heads in disgust. Yet, I wonder how good I would have come across had every mistake I made in my early 20's been broadcast across the world. Getting drunk at a party. Hanging with a questionable crowd. Or even drunk driving and getting arrested.
Not that I've done the latter, nor do I think it's OK -- but in the litany of celebrity escapades, that's not so bad. I mean, Mark "Marky Mark" Wahlberg was once an inch from being a real thug, was sent to juvie more times than most of us have been to summer camp, and once beat up an Asian kid for being...Asian. Hate crime! But as non-PC as that is, the guy was just a kid.
Put in similar terms, how many of us guys who went to high school before the gay-rights-aware recent years aren't anything more than reformed homophobes? I mean, I doubt I'd want some of my words or actions from when I was 16 brought up and played at my Senate confirmation hearings. Nor would that video me and my dorm buddies made in high school, full of immature and asinine sex, poop, and semen jokes, be impressive to watch 20 years later. Which reminds me -- I have a VHS videotape in a box in my parents' attic I need to go home and incinerate when I get the chance.
Point is, I think that yeah, Paris in her early 20's was no paragon of ladylike virtue. Yet, she still came off as ladylike, especially after the jail thing, which I thought she handled with remarkable aplomb.
And she leveraged it, all those who either hated her or loved her hung on her every move, and we bought it hook, line, and sinker. And from the overzealous judge who put her in the clink to make a point, the people who high-fived each other and really enjoyed seeing a kind of poetic justice be served, to those who thought it unfair -- we were all just adding to her bottom line, which is purely social capital.
But OK. To that point, I hadn't really become a Paris Hilton fan. Really. I wasn't. I'd never watched one of those inane movies she was in, nor did I really keep track of her in the news. Let me tell you how she got me.
It was on the Dave Letterman show.
I mean, I LOOOOOVE Dave. But that day, in one of her first appearances after coming out of the big house, Dave just lit into her. I mean he tried to rip her a new one, as in real public humiliation on national television. Basically, Dave was just plain MEAN, as those who watch a lot of him know he can sometimes get. But in this interview, you can smell his disdain for her, and he was just a dick. Interestingly, in the official CBS version of this interview on YouTube, they edit his dickery OUT completely. I mean, it was still kinda funny, but he WAS a dick. Watch the whole thing.
And I know what he was trying to get her to do -- cry. And after the barrage, you could see that's exactly what she ALMOST did -- but she didn't. You saw it RIGHT THERE on her face. She kept her composure, smiled graciously, and finished that fucking interview, because that's what she had come to do. And one of the things she promoted was her fragrance, which Dave TASTED and DRANK as he tried to belittle her and never let up with the jail jokes. But she kept on, and also mentioned her upcoming film, "Repo: The Genetic Opera", which is a science-fiction musical, which also drew some laughs. But I'll get to that later.
Since then, she's been on a roll. The Harvard Lampoon named her Woman of the Year, and she actually showed up to ACCEPT it. Some of the less charitable fantasized that she was too stupid to understand that it was tongue-in-cheek -- but her speech makes it obvious that she's having fun and ADDING to her bottom line. She took the Harvard boys out to party, and she got more props.
Who would pass up a PR opportunity like that? That would be the difference between some blonde bimbo starlet and a blonde bimbo worldwide superstar -- And I only use the word "bimbo" twice to keep the comparison going.
I said to a few friends, when she was getting bagged on in conversation as she came up around that time, that we'd be seeing a LOT of Paris Hilton in her 30's, when she had grown up, fully leveraged her momentum, and found her stride. Everyone thought I was crazy, and doubly surprised to "hear that from me." But I never thought so -- and now that "Repo: The Genetic Opera" is almost upon us, I think that Paris is already headed in that direction. Just like many of us start to do in our latter 20's.
Early reviews say it's gonna rock out with its cock out. Another set of them continues the consensus that more than just being decent, Paris is actually REALLY good. I just saw the trailer -- I don't know whether it'll be a classic or not, but it definitely looks crazy creative and has piqued my interest. A horror, sci-fi musical? With Paris Hilton and Paulie?!
No matter how the film performs, people are already saying that Paris did a great job. Perhaps it's because a role that actually pushes her to be a lot further away than who she actually is -- Paris Hilton? Hmm. That's usually how it works with acting, as with life. We get older, higher expectations are placed upon us, and we rise to meet them.
I suspect that people will be talking about, and paying more serious attention to Paris Hilton for a long, long time. Dang -- she even looks good in a hanbok. What IS is about that woman? Again, even the French do not know. But give her 10 years, and we'll all have forgotten about her actually not-all-too-unusual youthful bumps in the road, as she gives a new definition to the empire of Hilton and does more than simply lay claim to her name. I think she's gonna totally earn it.
Isn't that the very definition of an American kind of royalty?
I never thought I'd say this, but...
I love you, Paris!
