We’re supposed to enjoy Saoirse Ronan’s feminist triumph, but I find it all a bit nauseating – The Irish Times

I bet the celebrity chat show is the worst product of contemporary popular culture. Amid all the sloppiness and dreariness we know how to produce – the instant Netflix movies, the soulless remakes of classic TV shows, the two true crime podcasts – there’s nothing more miserable than the late-night couch and the stars that are forced into it. .

Considering all this, I think we should be very impressed Graham Nortonthe show on Friday evening. Wow! Substance is finally emerging from the forced anecdotes and PR gambits. This is what happened: Saoirse Ronan (promoting Blitz) sits between Paul Mescal (promoting Gladiator II) and Eddie Redmayne (promoting Jackal) with Denzel Washington (also Gladiator II) on the other side of Paul. Some bonhomie and banter leads Redmayne to explain that he’s learned to use his phone as a self-defense weapon, which leads Mescal to ask, “Who’s even going to do that?”

It’s boring on paper, and it’s boring on screen. But here’s the brilliant moment: Saoirse Ronan walks into the men, amused by the concept of self-defense, and says, “That’s what girls have to think about all the time.” There’s a moment of awkward silence before Ronan breaks the tension with a kind of faux-cheeky “Amirite, ladies?” gesture to the audience. Applause and instant internet virality. This is great news for Ronan and her film, and pretty good news for all the boys too: more eyes on the stars means more movie tickets sold.

We’re supposed to bask in the feminist triumph of it all. Classic men! Joking about something that women should take very seriously. And how wonderful of Saoirse not to tolerate it. She’s right when she says this is something women think about. I especially sympathize with the fact that she struggled to get a word between her words; the men flanking her had no qualms about talking over her as if she weren’t there. Marina Hyde is full of praise: “Oooooof. The look on the other actors’ faces after Saoirse detonates this chat-icide bomb is hilariously fascinating. (Real?)

But seeing this clip as it circulated on the Internet (accompanied by similar “yass kween” style hymns) forced me to question what I really thought about it. And it is this: the light banter between the men is fine, it’s a chat show. The landing zone consists of polite banalities, not what observers might call “truth bombs” or “mic-drop moments.”

The entire format is in service of the celebrities on the bench. Ronan takes advantage of her great moment. That includes the men she supposedly showed up to. The entire chat show industrial complex is harmful and sickening: fake conversations, ridiculous attempts at authenticity, celebrities using their personalities to sell us something. The participants are just as guilty of it as the organizers.

And it led me to one of my favorite soap boxes. These people are actors – very good ones too. Their whole job is to keep someone else’s mind and body occupied, not to be interesting themselves. In fact, I’d wager that actors become “less interesting” than almost anyone else precisely because of their jobs. But somehow we are all caught in a strange mutual lie, where for some reason we pretend that these people are beacons of insight; that they are more interesting than the roles they play. Having watched a lot of Graham Norton and the like over the years, it is very clear that this is not the case.

This is the Faustian pact they chose. To be impossibly beautiful and to remain forever young, to be rich and famous and to be adored and admired, involves a trade-off. By making a career out of being someone else, they necessarily give up their “voice” and sublimate themselves on the altar of hollow stardom.

As Hyde rightly pointed out, we can only assume that there are PR teams carefully crafting statements for the men at the bank, so if they are asked to talk about Ronan and not take women’s concerns seriously, they will be ready ​​with a completely sensitive answer. And the empty demoralizing feedback loop continues – the charade that this is all about more than just selling movies.

( Marina Hyde: Saoirse Ronan tells a stone-cold truth about women’s safety that stuns Paul Mescal and fellow actorsOpens in a new window )

If it were up to me, I’d cancel it all. Not out of some intellectual pride; that I would rather watch Martin Amis tell stories on that stupid couch. Believe me, I wouldn’t do that. But because we can’t keep lying to ourselves that there is value to be had here. Hollywood is one of humanity’s greatest inventions; the value that these actors add to the artistic domain cannot be overstated, their talent cannot be praised enough.

But the whole conceit of the chat show – the vanity, the superficiality, the false niceties, the bad acting, the false authenticity – is intolerable. Ronan was right, but that doesn’t matter: none of it is real, and we don’t have to humiliate ourselves by pretending that a viral moment resulting from the artifice is some kind of grand victory. Amirite, ladies?