Latest news with #MadLib
Business of Fashion
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business of Fashion
Can Gaming Go Glam?
In a bit of beauty industry news that could read like the result of a very niche Mad Lib: The actress Chloë Grace Moretz and the pop star Rina Sawayama have created a cyberpunk cosmetic line, called Godmode, catered toward female gamers. The label is the first to launch from Closer Brands, the incubator beneath the UK-based Closer Group, The Business of Beauty has learned. Godmode's first collection comprises five products, including a cool-toned highlighter called Genesis Glow that approximates the pallid blue light cast off by screens; it will debut in early June on a direct-to-consumer website. On Tuesday morning, the brand teased an 'unlock' code on its founders' Instagram channels as well as its own, and intends to keep the exact launch date a secret for now. The launch reflects a broader effort on behalf of the beauty and fashion industries to engage female gamers, a growing segment of the population aided by the pandemic. While plenty of beauty brands have collaborated with popular coed games like The Sims or Roblox, Godmode seeks to integrate the two worlds more fully, creating a cast of characters and a universe of lore through marketing and a makeup collection. Godmode, itself, is not an actual video game or affiliated with one. 'Female gamers are everywhere,' said Mark Loy, the founder and executive chairman of Closer Group and the founder of Spring Studios. 'But brands barely speak to them.' Gender parity in the gaming population has narrowed significantly in the past few decades; in the US about 53 percent of gamers identified as male, 46 percent as female and 1 percent as non-binary, according to a 2024 report from the Entertainment Software Association. When it comes to preferences, however, there are some distinctly gendered trends; while about half of men who game play 'live service' titles like Fortnite or Grand Theft Auto, nearly 70 percent of women prefer mobile games, according to a 2024 Deloitte survey. The brand's first drop, Genesis, includes the Genesis Glow Highlighter, which approximates the pallid blue glow of a screen's light. (Godmode) Godmode achieves a more unusual milestone in the beauty industry as the first brand of its era to be fronted by not one but two celebrities, though Loy is reluctant to use the c-word. 'It's important to us that it's not seen as a celebrity brand,' he said. With celebrities or without them, Godmode will need to create something more explorable, more tangible and more playable than gamified product drops paired with hyper-lush marketing imagery to gain and maintain credibility with its gamers. 'Rina and I have the ability to build a new world for beauty that isn't just, 'Oh, you like this product, buy this product,' right?' Moretz said. A Perfect Match The realm of video games, only a handful of decades old, has historically been a place where brands go to meet men: the cult bar arcade game Tapper was a branded effort from Anheiser-Busch, and brands like Mercedes-Benz have more recently sponsored esports leagues and made its S-Class available in Mario Kart. Fashion and beauty companies, by contrast, have only recently entered the category. In 2020, MAC Cosmetics gifted a batch of 12 makeup looks to users of The Sims, which has also offered paid expansion packs sponsored by H&M (in 2007) and Moschino (in 2019). Meanwhile, a number of brands including E.l.f. Cosmetics and Givenchy, and most recently the fragrance and flavors conglomerate Givaudan, have created minigames for Roblox, the online game with 90 million monthly average users. Givaudan's 'The Garden of Memories,' in which players help a cute woodland creature craft perfumes, has logged about 60,000 players since it launched in France in January. Many of these are attempts to hook young consumers, rather than consumers who game, which has required a carefully calibrated approach by Closer. Godmode crystallised in 2023, as the incubator sought out celebrity partners. Moretz and Sawayama were deemed a perfect match for the gaming-inspired brand — the former had expressed interest in working on a beauty label to her agents at CAA, while the latter is an ambassador for Playstation. The two met for the first time in New York when they convened to shoot promo photography. Co-founder Chloë Grace Moretz appears as Chroma, her Godmode alter ego, with makeup by Daniel Sallström. She is partial to the brand's Level Up Lip Liners. The uncommon dual-founder structure was not lost on the greater public when news broke earlier this month that Moretz and Sawayama were collaborating on a beauty line. A representative example, from X: 'I don't think I would have put them together, but hey, good for them!' The co-founders corral audiences from different fields of the entertainment industry, but are also passionate gamers themselves, they told The Business of Beauty. Sawayama is a fan of tycoon-style titles like Two Point Museum, while Moretz enjoys open-world roleplaying games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Final Fantasy XIV. 'Once I realised how much you can customise and go deep into this character lore and create your own story, it's just a whole different form of gameplay,' Moretz said. A promotional still from Godmode's launch film animated by the production company All of Us Here. (Godmode) Loy pointed out that the two are 'emotionally and financially invested' in Godmode, but declined to elaborate on the partnership structure. He also hinted at forthcoming collaborations that could see Godmode entrench itself in the world of gaming beyond a product that is 'rebranded with somebody's IP.' There will also be immersive spaces, similar to the ones Closer has designed for brands like Louis Vuitton and Miu Miu. For the brand's debut, the co-founders will reveal their Godmode alter egos, with the brand's product drops — beginning with 'Genesis' in the summer, and another planned for the fall — released as chapters of an intergalactic series. 'If you're not a gamer, it's hard to understand the fantasy,' Sawayama said. Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your complimentary, must-read source for the day's most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.
Forbes
01-04-2025
- Automotive
- Forbes
The United States Does For Housing What Singapore Had For Cars
There is a great article in the New York Times about Singapore's policy on cars which makes it prohibitively expensive to own and drive a car. I thought it would be a great interesting to take the article and roughly replace the word 'car' in the article with the word 'housing' and 'Singapore' with 'the United States.' Reading the article with the lens of housing falls into the category of Hubert Humphrey's ad deriding the idea of Spiro Agnew as Vice President as 'it would be funny if weren't so serious.' The article, titled, Why Driving in Singapore is 'Like Wearing a Rolex, is replete with opportunities to call out the similarities with how we handle housing in the United States. It starts with the headline itself. Why Housing in the United States is 'Like Wearing a Rolex.' Here's a really good language swap from the article. Here's the original paragraph. 'Singapore, an island city-state that is smaller than New York City, charges drivers thousands of dollars just for the right to buy a vehicle. The price of the permits, which were introduced in 1990 to limit pollution and congestion, rises with a car's value.' Here's my Mad Lib version. 'New York, an island city that is bigger than Singapore, charges people who need housing thousands of dollars just for the right to buy or rent a home. The price of the permits, and zoning which was introduced in 1920s to limit greed and profiteering, rises with a home or apartment's value.' There's even the hard luck story so common in housing stories in the United States. There's the story of Joy Fang who bought an old Hyundai three years ago for $58,000, 'nearly twice the price the pre-permit price of a new model of that sedan.' Shocking. I'm not even going to link to one of the thousands of stories that highlight how much a person or family is spending on renting a home or buying one. Here's the Times about Fang's car. 'Each month the couple pays about $1,400, or more than 10 percent of their household budget, for the car, the permit, and other expenses like road taxes, fuel and parking. To offset the cost, they cut back on eating out and traveling.' Here's my version, doctored up for housing in the United States. 'Each month the couple pays about $4,400, or more than 30 percent of their household budget, for the house, the zoning permits, and other expenses like property taxes, other taxes, and parking. To offset the cost, they cut back on eating out and traveling.' But here's the big difference between the hassle of owning and driving a car in Singapore and housing in the United States: in Singapore there are substitutes. Another subject in the Times story says, 'We're not sitting in traffic for two or three hours just to get to work.' The resident of Singapore articulates that 'having an efficient public transport system also makes it easier for Singaporeans to not use a car, and he takes it himself when he needs to go downtown.' There is no substitute for housing. If a public policy taxes and regulates a commodity to the point that it is far too painful to buy and own it, but offers alternatives, then people will likely give up the commodity. In the case of Singapore, the Times story notes, 'There is little reason for many Singaporeans to own a car. Most residents rely on an expanding and affordable public transportation system that stretches across the island. Even long journeys cost less than 2.50 Singapore dollars, or about $2, and ride-hailing platforms such as Grab are plentiful.' The substitute for owning a home in the United States is renting, but what is the substitute for renting? There isn't one. When poor people are pressed because housing is too expensive, they're faced with the same challenge Fang describes, cutting back on other necessities or trying to effectively manage limited cash flow. To me, it is clear, Singapore decided to constrain the ownership and operating of a car for policy reasons – climate change, infrastructure savings etc. – but it also created an off ramp (pun intended) for people to find alternatives to owning and operating a car. Zoning and other regulations, taxes, fees, and fines for housing in the United States function just like the limits on car ownership in Singapore, except that public policy here has failed to provide any alternatives. Instead, if we follow the analogy, we create limits on owning and renting a home, then we limit the supply of subsidized alternatives with even more regulation making the cost of Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) housing, for example, prohibitive too. Imagine if Singapore did what it has done with cars but limited ridership of public transit, produced very routes, and created waiting lists for a trip. Whatever one thinks of Singapore's policy, applying it to housing through zoning and regulation is misguided at best and at worst, a cruel punishment for people who earn less money.
Washington Post
22-03-2025
- Sport
- Washington Post
Nathaniel Lowe has always known his value. Even when others didn't.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Nathaniel Lowe was embarrassed. The letters he typed up — expressing his interest in playing for college programs — read a bit like a Mad Lib. Dear Coach ____, Hi, my name is Nathaniel Lowe, and I'd love to play college baseball at _____. I currently attend Pope High School in Marietta, Georgia.
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Shocking Reemergence of Candace Owens
MY FIRST CLUE THAT SOMETHING WAS AFOOT was at a dinner party in early February when my left-leaning, normie girlfriend proclaimed—seemingly out of nowhere—that Justin Baldoni had been framed. At a time when most Americans had not yet heard the word DOGE, tens of millions were tuning in daily to debate the minutiae of a high-profile sexual harassment case filed by megastar Blake Lively against Baldoni, her director and costar on It Ends With Us. Not so long ago, the default would have been to empathize with, if not straight up support Lively, who appeared to be the latest in a long line of actresses blowing the whistle on troubling on-set behavior. Instead, my friend whipped out her phone to play reel after reel of TikTok videos of women defending Baldoni and railing against Lively and her über-famous husband, Ryan Reynolds. Three reels in, a familiar name flashed across the screen. 'What's Candace Owens doing narrating this case?' I asked. 'You know Candace Owens?' my friend replied, with the bewilderment of someone who just discovered their mom knows what an NFT is. I did indeed. Owens's career path reads like a right-wing Mad Lib. The one consistency is her continuing commandeering of the spotlight through spectacle and controversy. She first became prominent as a college dropout who won a racial harassment settlement against her high school, then launched a blog where writers opined about Donald Trump's penis size and founded an organization to confront cyberbullying. After being doxxed—allegedly by progressives—she did a political 180, founding #RedPillBlack and the Blexit Foundation to encourage African Americans to abandon the Democratic party. Share 'Discovered' by alt-right luminaries Milo Yiannopoulos and Mike Cernovich during the first Trump administration, Owens skyrocketed through roles at Turning Point USA and the Daily Wire between appearances on InfoWars. She attended Paris Fashion Week, palled around with Kanye West, and even received accolades from President Trump, who called her a 'very smart thinker' for her defense of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. But even the right has limits, and Owens found them. She was fired from the Daily Wire in March 2024 for peddling the blood libel and Holocaust denial, among other antisemitic conspiracy theories. She leapt into the crossfire between Jordan Peterson and neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, with the latter praising her for waging a 'full-fledged war against the Jews.' Banished to the right-wing wilderness, Owens relaunched her solo YouTube show three months later. Early numbers were solid but not impressive; she hit a low point in views and subscribers after the 2024 election as she was casting about for new scandals. Then came the Baldoni case. Democracy, Congress, policy and . . . Blake Lively, The Bulwark has you covered. Become a free or paid subscriber today: After flicking at the controversy for close to a week, Owens posted her first video weighing in on the Baldoni/Lively drama on January 8. By that point, millions of consumers of celebrity gossip had already been voraciously consuming every morsel of information they could find on the case since it debuted in the pages of the New York Times shortly before Christmas. Owens slid right into the zeitgeist, with nothing distinguishing her from the hundreds of other hot-take artists and celeb watchers flooding TikTok and Instagram. Perhaps because of her own opinions, or perhaps sensing the movement of the crowd—or maybe both—Owens established herself as a Lively skeptic. She also proved that she was a savvy social-media star. Splicing funny clips in with scathing commentary, she pounced on new legal filings, broke 'news' from juicy sources, and found 'clues' in clips from Reynolds's new blockbuster movie, Deadpool & Wolverine, in which Lively had a cameo. Other posters breathlessly discussed these coveted 'Easter eggs,' magnifying Owens's visibility to a larger, apolitical audience. To the new viewers flocking to her channel, Owens sounded like a credible, even insightful narrator. She speaks with confidence and self-assurance. She allied herself with an online cadre of Lively loathers dating back to the star's days on Gossip Girl. She declared Lively a 'mean girl' and a 'brat,' repeatedly condemning her 'modern feminism.' She sneered at white, wealthy women who, she argued, needed to manufacture hardships for women because they've never really experienced them. Her story's assumed premise was that real feminists work hard, don't have stuff handed to them, and prioritize truth over sophomoric allegiances. Real feminists, that is, look a little something like Owens herself. As the case wore on, Owens went even further. She portrayed Lively as a backstabber of other women and Reynolds as a controlling husband driven to destroy Baldoni because of jealousy. They became symbols of anti-feminism in this pervasive narrative. Join now After posting a dozen videos on the case, Owens announced she had surpassed 4 million subscribers to her channel for the first time ever. She added nearly 400,000 new subscribers just in the month of February 2025. Standup comedian Whitney Cummings noticed: 'Did not see this coming,' she said to open a TikTok. 'That Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds would be the people that united this country. . . . The most liberal people I know are now obsessively following Candace Owens for her take and journalism on the situation.' Soon, established influencers like 'Steph with da deets' and the mega-popular DeuxMoi—known for hawking lip plumper and dishing on celebrity couplings, not spreading political invective—were citing Owens as a source on the Baldoni story. Her significance grew to such an extent that she was named—alongside Perez Hilton—as one of the content creators Lively sought to bar from case information. This is the celebrity gossip equivalent of making the FBI's Most Wanted list. Share The Bulwark HOW COULD IT COME TO BE that someone too toxic for the Daily Wire had not only reinvented herself as an influential culture commentator in such a short time, but had risen to preeminence in her new role? Owens's appeal rests in her young, hip, and glamorous aesthetic. She bridged what many assumed to be an impassable divide—merging the trad-wife trend with the girl-boss ethos. Viewers saw something both authoritative and aspirational: a successful career, a hot husband, and three adorable kids with a fourth on the way. Removed from politics, she was more acceptable—and, arguably, more influential: She is shaping the viewpoints of millions of people who may just now be engaging in the MeToo debates for the first time. Defenders of what Owens would deride as 'modern feminism' noticed that she and others were doing real damage as public opinion shifted against Lively, which coincided with the start of a new administration hellbent on extinguishing the #MeToo movement. But Owens's narrative has proven durable in spite of pushback. A recent Glamour story offered a look at the 'mommy sleuths' behind the campaign against Lively. The piece only made people angrier. Content creators lashed back, accusing the reporter of using 'mom' as a derogatory term and delegitimizing their experiences in the world of journalism and the entertainment industry. Popular sports podcaster Dave Neal did a segment repudiating the article's attempt to paint all Lively skeptics as right-wing plants. (One of his commenters wrote, 'Omg I'm a Democrat a mom of boys, and I don't appreciate lies to destroy a man's life Blake.') Reddit threads proliferated criticizing the perceived condescension from white feminists in their coverage of the case. Share For Owens, this has undoubtedly been a triumph: Not only has this campaign given oxygen to her career but it has also served to advance a larger ideological project she's been working on since before Justin Baldoni became a household name. Owens was an outspoken early critic of the #MeToo movement. She launched her 2019 PragerU show with an interview about #MeToo with Roseanne Barr during which she claimed that the closest thing to white supremacy she had seen in her lifetime was the 'radical feminist movement.' She and Barr agreed that women, and mothers, would have to be the ones to take down #MeToo. Despite her noxious views, Owens is tuning in to a real shift in public opinion on these matters. Voters—many of them women and moms—have started to worry about a failure to define due process in sexual harassment cases. Democrats failed to address the skepticism head on. Instead, they appeared to retreat from the movement it once championed. That left a wide-open lane for political opportunists like Candace Owens and her more mainstream counterpart, Megyn Kelly, to roll in, get a handle on the debate, and pull it squarely toward the anti-feminism side. This has all been compounded by the fact that a generation of young women who feel politics has failed them and that humanity is doomed are losing themselves in the permanent escape of pop culture and celebrity gossip. The characters are familiar and the storylines offer simplicity in a complicated new world. These younger women are connecting with Candace Owens. One TikTok at a time, she has spoken their language and promised that they can be like her, look like her, have it all—but first, they should think like her. By the time they get to her more radical views, they have already bought in. The only question now is whether we're witnessing a political realignment or just the world's most bizarre passing episode of celebrity courtroom drama. Take a second to share this article on social media or send it to a friend: Share
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
I Can't Stop Talking About The Traitors
Some TV shows catch on because they are great art. Others catch on because they offer soothing distractions from a hectic world. And some catch on because they cause people to text their friends, in a frenzy, 'Please watch this immediately because I NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT WITH YOU!!!' When I get texts like that, I almost always oblige: I will take any opportunity to be a good friend by watching bad TV. That is how I came to The Traitors, the hugely popular reality show that has just streamed its third season on Peacock. It is also why I have begun sending my own 'Please watch this!' texts to friends. When they ask for more detail, though, I find myself stumbling: How can I explain why they should watch the show when I'm not entirely sure what it is? It's a reality competition, I might begin, that brings together a group of reality stars. (In a castle! In Scotland!) And they play a version of the party game Mafia, so everyone is sort of scheming against one another. Some people are 'killers'—those are the 'Traitors'—and they try to 'murder' the 'Faithfuls,' and anyone might be 'banished' … At this point, sensing that I am confusing my audience rather than convincing them, I might switch gears: So the show's host is Alan Cumming, the actor and international treasure. He wears glorious outfits that are basically characters themselves. And he'll casually quote Shakespeare and Tennyson? And he pronounces murder like 'muuuuurder.' And the whole thing is definitely camp. But it's satire too? The Traitors plays like a live-action Mad Lib. And it is not one show, in the end, but many. It was adapted from a BBC version that was itself adapted from a Dutch series. It collects its cast from the far reaches of the reality-TV cinematic universe: Think The Avengers, with the heroes in question joining forces not to save the world but to win a cash prize of 'up to $250,000.' Contestants live together (as on Big Brother) and are divided into tribes (Survivor). They participate in physical 'missions' and vote one another off the show via weekly councils (Survivor again). The Traitors, in that way, might seem to be peak reality TV: all of these people who are famous for being famous making content for the sake of content. But the show has been an ongoing subject of passionate discussion because it is much smarter than that—it's derivative in a winking way. It doesn't merely borrow from its fellow reality shows; it adapts them into something that both celebrates reality TV and offers a sly, kaleidoscopic satire of the genre. It is a messy show that lives for drama. It brings a postmodern twist to an ever-more-influential form of entertainment. It's not just reality TV—it's hyperreality TV. Earlier iterations of the show were slightly more traditional than the current one: They featured noncelebrity contestants. The most recent, though, benefited from the second season's genius pivot: It took an upcycle approach to its casting. And so it unites the infamous (Tom Sandoval of Vanderpump Rules; Boston Rob of Survivor), the semi-famous (several Real Housewives), and those who are tangentially connected to fame (a Britney Spears ex-husband; Prince Harry's distant relative; an influencer known first for his abs and second for being Zac Efron's brother). Some are gamers—players who, having come from competition-based shows, are well schooled in the art of televised manipulation—and others are personalities. Some come to the show having met already, bringing old rivalries into a new context: Danielle and Britney from Big Brother, Sandoval and Chrishell Stause (the Vanderpump and Selling Sunset stars have long-standing crossover beef). For the most part, though, the contestants are 23 strangers, picked to live in a castle and have their lives taped. [Read: The cruel social experiment of reality TV] Three of those players, initially, serve as the show's Traitors: the conspirators who bring murder and mayhem, and who manipulate much of the action. The first three Traitors are determined by Cumming, who serves as master of ceremonies and chief agent of chaos. Cumming is, like the contestants, playing both himself and a character: a Scottish laird with a sadistic streak, part Cheshire cat and part jungle predator, prone to purring lines rather than simply delivering them. When he selects his Traitors—the game's most consequential decision—his rationale is as opaque to viewers as it is to the players. In short order, though, the contestants are treating their game as a morality play. Those who seem 'good' as people are assumed to be Faithfuls. Those who do not (Sandoval, Boston Rob) are assumed to be Traitors. Factions form. Mistakes are made. Faithfuls are banished; Traitors perform innocence so well that they earn other people's trust. People who have played themselves on TV are now playing other people who have played themselves on TV. 'I swear to God—to God!' one competitor says, as he assures his fellow contestants that he is not a Traitor. (He is a Traitor.) Another serves up an Oscar-worthy breakdown after a Traitor's identity is revealed. (The 'shocked' contestant is, yes, a fellow Traitor.) Loyalties, betrayals, manipulations: These are the terms of Mafia as a parlor game. These are also, The Traitors knows, the terms of reality TV. I should note that all of this melodrama is taking place against an aesthetic of 'Castle' and a series of references to … Guy Fawkes? (I think?) The show features literal cloaks and daggers; Cumming repeatedly wears the capotain hat associated with the 16th-century British rebel; Fergus, the castle's silent assistant, at one point carries a barrel labeled GUNPOWDER. This is another feature of the show: It blurs the line between reference and allusion. It explodes Poe's Law as effectively as Fawkes tried to explode the high house of the British Parliament. What, actually, is the show getting at with these Fawkesian hints? Is the connection simply that Fawkes was executed as, yes, a traitor? Is the show making a broader point? Is it making any point? The Traitors raises many such questions. Why, for example, does it do so much to establish its torch-lit, wrought-ironed aesthetic only to adorn its flame-flickered dungeon with sleek camping lanterns that could have come from Bass Pro Shops? Why does one episode feature Epcot-esque re-creations of the moai heads from Easter Island? Why does another feature a wedding? Why does another involve coffins? Why do some of the show's most climactic scenes—the revelations about who has been muuuuurdered—take place over brunch? Reality TV has, at this point, schools: the romantic realism of The Bachelor, the impressionism of the Housewives, the Dada of Love Island, the pop art of The Masked Singer. The Traitors references all of them—their structures, their tropes, their tones—but also the world at large. It teases and provokes without offering further explanation. It merges truth and simulation, until the two are indistinguishable. That is how the show turns reality into hyperreality—and 'reality' into art. Reality TV enjoys some of the same affordances that art does. If The Traitors wants to include cloaks that evoke Eyes Wide Shut and clowns that evoke Stephen King and incredible tartan numbers that may or may not reference the suit that Cher Horowitz wore in the 1995 movie Clueless—if it wants to send new players to the castle in wrought-iron cages, or set a physical challenge within a Viking boat carved to resemble a dragon—the show does not need to justify its decisions. The alchemy that turns 'reality' into entertainment ultimately makes reason itself somewhat beside the point. But then: Where is the line between catching a reference and inventing one? The Traitors is not using only reality-TV shows as its source material. It is also using literature. A physical challenge involves a game of human chess (Through the Looking-Glass). Cumming describes revenge as 'red in tooth and claw' (Tennyson). He teases upcoming muuuuurders by announcing, 'Something wicked this way comes' (Macbeth). He punctuates the revelation of the latest muuuuurder by way of Hamlet: 'Good night, sweet prince.' But the obvious references—obvious in the sense that they can be Googled and otherwise sourced—blend with the references that merely insinuate. One of the show's physical challenges involves bugs. (A reference, maybe, to Survivor? Or Jackass?) Another requires players to dangle from an airborne helicopter (The Apprentice?) and sway on a single tether as they attempt to drop things into a space that has been designated the 'Ring of Fire' (Johnny Cash? Circuses? Plate tectonics?). The Survivor-like councils that determine which contestants will be banished take place around a piece of furniture dubbed the Round Table (Camelot? Pizza?). Cumming introduces an early meeting by saying, 'It is time to sentence one of you to a fate worse than death: democracy' (ummm?). [Read: Reality TV's absurd new extreme] Contestants, too, can carry those ambiguities. Ivar Mountbatten, a real-life lord, is the only contestant who hasn't come from the world of entertainment. You could read his presence as an embedded joke about the British monarchy, that ancient version of reality TV. You could wonder whether he is somehow connected with the Scotland and the Guy Fawkes of it all, since both have sought, in their own ways, to challenge the power of the Crown. Or his presence could be a matter of expedience—whether commercial (Netflix's historical drama The Crown and its documentary series Harry & Meghan have given the name Mountbatten new recognizability, and he recently became a tabloid name in his own right) or logistical (perhaps his agent knows The Traitors' producers?). The hall of mirrors, once entered, is difficult to navigate. And soon enough, the questions can compound. Where do the references end? easily gives way to: Where does the appropriation begin? Although scholars can only speculate about what the moai heads of Easter Island meant to the people who created them, we can pretty safely assume that they were more than mere jokes. Here they are, however, re-created in a vaguely plasticine form, as tools in a challenge that might help lower-firmament reality stars get closer to their full $250,000. In another context, this might look like an insult. On The Traitors, though, it becomes a question—about the permissions and limits of reproduction. Cumming, at one point, wears a shimmering pale-green suit, accessorized with a spiked tiara. It gives 'Statue of Liberty' but also 'Catholic saint.' The tiara-meets-halo might connect to Fawkes, whose Catholicism drove him to fight the Protestant power structure. Or it might connect to debates about iconoclasm, with their questions about religious iconography. Or maybe it's simply a great accessory? Maybe those 'connections' are not connections at all? Camp is its own reference without a source—a term, and a sensibility, claimed and reclaimed so steadily that it has entered the realm of 'you know it when you see it.' But one of camp's features, in most definitions, is performance as a form of resistance: expression and idiosyncrasy serving as a rejection of a stifling status quo. It is queerness, refusing to be constrained. It is authenticity, refusing to apologize. It is absurdity. It is joy. This is The Traitors too. Yet the series performs freedom not just by rejecting the past but also by embracing it—and, possibly, reclaiming some of it. For the aforementioned wedding challenge, Cumming wears a white suit studded with red flowers. The outfit reads like a declaration about the sanctions of marriage and the rites that shape modern society. An outfit he wears in another challenge—a sequined suit in a military style, with neckwear that suggests a Medal of Freedom—does a similar thing. Most reality shows offer escapism: the relief of alternate and insular worlds. But The Traitors is all too aware of the world it is streaming into—one where hard-won rights are threatened, where expression is being curtailed, where a new bit of progress is being banished every day. That awareness serves the show's satirical edge. It also expands the permissions of camp to The Traitors' audience. People on Reddit threads puzzle out the references, trying to discern what the allusions might mean—or whether they are allusions at all. They analyze. They debate. Every reality show has a version of that digital second life; The Traitors, though, inspires conversations that stretch far beyond the show's limits. They bring Hamlet and Tennyson and Alice in Wonderland's human-chess game to new audiences, in new forms. Along the way, they offer embedded reminders that art is itself a wink to be enjoyed and a mystery to be solved. It is always evolving, reclaimed, and reinterpreted. The works that are venerated today as 'high culture'—the stuff of capital-L literature, of exclusivity, of snobbery—began, very often, as works of pop culture. They offered respite, community, wonder. 'To be or not to be,' Hamlet said, his angst both performed and very real. He would come to capture, for many, something true and essential about modernity. Before that, though, Hamet was just a guy on a stage, being messy and dramatic, living out his era's version of a reality show. Article originally published at The Atlantic
