We’ve gone too easy on celebrities. For long enough our media has been content only to watch their every move, photographing them unaware as they live out their private lives and reporting endlessly on their relationships. Getting more from these mysterious creatures can be difficult, but, as everyone knows, offering them publicity in exchange for tiny little bits of their souls is a trade-off that works time and time again.
Jennifer Lawrence, who seems already to be into turning herself into an open book, has helped usher in a new stage of the Faustian pact, showing in a Vanity Fair video that, yes, you can even get stars to voluntarily take a lie detector test if you set up a camera first.
Visibly nervous, sitting in a nondescript room as a disembodied voice asks a series of questions, Lawrence gamely reveals details of her inner life to an audience made up of millions of strangers. To the sound of an ominous background hum, we learn that she’s had her heart broken, would tell a friend if she didn’t like their outfit, doesn’t belong to the Illuminati (sure), would date a non-celebrity, watches reality TV, and regrets some of her “red carpet looks.”
The entire video feels a bit like a very shiny version of a Cold War interrogation, only with state secrets replaced by really frivolous trivia regarding someone we’ve seen in lots of movies. The faintly creepy intimacy of the entire thing forces the question of what’s next. Perhaps Saoirse Ronan installing a dash cam for a press junket game of high-speed chicken? Timothée Chalamet playing Russian roulette live on Kimmel?
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