Tracy Quan: Kristen Stewart, Katie Holmes, and the Summer of Break-Up Porn

Tracy Quan

Here's the link for the entire article. At last some really good journalism. How did that happen?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/13/kristen-stewart-katie-holmes-and-the-summer-of-break-up-porn.html 

Some quotes:

What can we learn from Kristen Stewart and Katie Holmes? Tracy Quan examines what celebrity relationship archetypes we should emulate and which ones we should avoid. 

Break-up porn follows its own rules, according to which Ross—still married to the man Stewart misbehaved with—becomes a player in her own right. But every move Ross makes, especially if she ever were to serve Rupert Sanders with papers, will also shine a light on Stewart. The two women are now linked: 

 On the Road, opening in November, which got a lukewarm review hereduring the Cannes Film Festival, now seems more interesting to me, thanks to the break-up porn generated by Stewart’s “momentary indiscretion.” Her romantic misstep makes future projects—such as Lie Down in Darkness, based on the William Styron novel—sound all the more intriguing.

The takeaway, for non-celebs in similar situations: Never let a confused man turn you into a propaganda vehicle that bolsters another woman

Which is all to say: like other porn, break-up porn is addictive.

 Break-ups hurt and sometimes horrify, but the barrage of break-up porn helps us to manage those feelings by turning divorce and separation into a spectacle.

Those tabloid images of Stewart 

misbehaving were taken without her 

knowledge, which implies a Garden of 

Eden type of innocence. In this redo of 

Adam and Eve, Sanders gets cast as the 

serpent, thrust into bold print because of 

his connection to the primordial couple. 

Stewart is Eve, taking the blame. 

Pattinson is Adam, garnering an 

outrageous degree of sympathy from 

young women who don’t recognize Eve’s 

plight as their own. (Girls, get a clue!)

Conventional wisdom says Rob—who will appear on The Daily Show Monday to promote his new movie, Cosmopolis—is the wronged half of Robsten. But actually it’s more painful to be, as with Stewart, both the engine and victim of your break-up.

When People ran with her mea culpa (“I love him, I love him, I’m so sorry”), Stewart’s bluntness took my breath away. Public apologies are generally issued by men.

When roles get reversed, we’re all on shakier ground. Stewart apologized anyway, forcing us to examine our assumptions about why women, stereotypically, don’t.

Some break-ups require Stewart’s frank self-expression, but Holmes has raised the standard for what we expect from a married celebrity getting formally unhitched.

Saying you’re sorry often creates the temptation to drown in your own guilt, while a wronged boyfriend can become an emotional vampire, assisting in that process. (Indeed, I find Pattinson’s alleged brooding a little ominous, given his CV.) If you fear this apologetic abyss more than you fear breaking up, it’s possible you’re a coward. It’s also possible you have good intuition about the person you betrayed. So, if you lack the courage (or the press contacts) to go the Stewart route, don’t be too hard on yourself.

But women who are brave enough to cheat should perhaps be brave enough to apologize. Time will tell us whether Pattinson can embrace Stewart’s emotional courage.

As break-up porn, Robsten is tantalizing, but unlikely to deliver an obvious money shot.For that, you must follow two world-class control freaks, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes,TomKat’s mouth-watering dissolution caused a notable spike in magazine sales last month. It was also blamed for distracting us from the LIBOR scandal, which has been called “one of the largest banking scandals in history.”

ME: And this is where the media unknowlingly complicit, 

complicitly unknowing, acts as DETERRENCE to mask 

the reality of the LIBOR banking scandal, which will affect 

our lives far more than the spectacle of a celebrity break-

up, in which we have invested fantasies only

Break-up porn contributes to the economy bigtime, even if it stops us from thinking about the economy. Still, I could not wait to score my copy of Elle magazine, showing Katie Holmes at the top of her game. The pictures shot while she was secretly planning her divorce do not disappoint. We sense, or imagine we do, the adrenalin pumping through her system and a sly wit informing her thoughts. Clad in sleek leather ruffles from her Holmes and Yang clothing line, she is so clearly the architect of her divorce. Could there be a better outfit in which to quietly plan her next move?

I've left out a lot and it's all great!