Changing My Mind 2

I think Chapters 10 and 13 of Zadie Smith’s Changing My Mind compliment each other very nicely. In 10 we get 2 portraits of actresses from “the Golden Age of Hollywood”, and in 13 we get a portrait of the dismal present Hollywood. I want to focus on Chapter 13 and what critical argument Smith is making and how she makes it. I wanted to mention chapter 10 though because in some ways it sets up the argument being made in “Ten Notes On Oscar Weekend”.

The subject of ch13 could be Oscars weekend, but I think it more accurate to say that Oscars weekend is the vehicle Smith is using to talk about Hollywood. She breaks the weekend up into 10 sections and it seems each section contains a nugget that advances her argument.

The first hint of what Smith sees as the problem appears in the section 1 when she says “over Oscars weekend, an automatic journalism rehashes these eternal ideas, the accounts in newspapers precisely matching the tall tales of the cab driver who brings you in from the airport” (212).  Also in this section is the description of the dress that was picked out for her by a shopkeeper who knew she’d be going to the Oscars in it. I can’t help but feel this dress is a metaphor for Smith’s argument. The shopkeeper, like us (Hollywood outsiders), has a distorted view of Hollywood not really based in reality, and so she picks out this over-the-top dress. Then, when Ms Smith is getting ready for the Oscars she shares her makeup artists opinion: “Here is his assessment of my dress: “If you were collecting the all-time queen of Hollywood lifetime achievement award, you would be overdressed.” A cocktail dress is substituted” (219).  This cocktail dress is the more realistic version of Hollywood.

So who is creating this false reality of Hollywood? I think Smith’s opinion is that it’s a joint effort. From the actors, to the writers, to the audience, to journalist, to the studios – we’re all building Hollywood into something it’s not. It is now that I think of chapter 10, and how Hepburn was so sure of who she was, and so steadfast in making sure she believed in her characters, that there was never room for fantasizing about her – making her into something she wasn’t. The author put it this way: “It was never a question of Hepburn changing to suit Hollywood; Hollywood had to change to suit Hepburn”(152). Garbo handled the limelight in a way that created mystique, but not sensationalist accounts of who she was. Both of these personas seemed to be more in touch with the actors, whereas in the present day that Smith is talking about the actors seem to not be able to control their personas.

This brings me to another influence of the fantastical version of Hollywood: studios. In chapter 10 Smith shares this anecdote from Hepburn’s life:

“They had been spun a red-haired, east-coast, high-society goddess by the studios and so were somewhat surprised to find a makeup-free woman striding around between takes in a pair of dungarees. The RKO publicity department asked her to stop wearing them. She refused. The next day, when she found them vanished from her dressing-room she walked around set in her knickers until they were returned to her“ (155).

 In Chapter 13 it seems that the studios and PR departments are “winning”; that actors are letting their personas be created by someone other themselves, and this is definitely part of the problem.

The creation of an actor’s persona is important because this persona gets confused with the actor in the audience’s mind. Smith gives us the evidence of this is in section 5 when she says: “The actors, caught midway through conversations about their families, their dogs, a book they’ve read, a good restaurant in New York, now have to put their game face back on and become whoever it is the waiter thinks they are” (215). Here she is describing waiters who have confused the actor for the personas they portray on screen or stage.

This confusion isn’t helped by media who doesn’t just encourage the idea of the actor’s personas as real, but does this with the persona of Hollywood itself too. Smith describes media’s coverage of Hollywood as “detailed and alienating” (217). I think the Mandarin hotel serves as a physical manifestation of medias portrayal of Hollywood. A portrayal, Smith point out, that is false. Even actors think it’s over the top “Actors screw up their faces in displeasure at the mention of the Mondrian: “It’s a little bit too… much somehow””(214). Smith gets clever when she contrasts this image of Hollywood with the image of the party she goes to:

“plain white stone…simple stone vases…everyone is cold…people gather under heat lamps and squeeze four to a bench, keeping close for warmth. It is an effort to be continually amazed; these are humans, after all, and in a celebrity party without any press, the celebrity aspect fades, having nothing to contrast with” (215).

At the Mandarin we get the image of Hollywood we are spun, and at the party we see that Hollywood is just made up of regular-ol-people.

I thought it very witty to share her demystifying strategy of not naming any actors/actresses in this article. When I was doing my close read I noticed she didn’t save this strategy for actors alone. Everyone in this essay is put on an even playing field by being introduced to us by description alone. Smith offers a hopeful scene on page 217, at Canter’s Diner, where famous actors and teenage girls coexisted without a fuss. This is Smith’s endgame; this scenario where fantasy is stripped away. In the last line of the article she calls on all of us to make this happen: “But the fantasies of fame cannot be dislodged by anyone’s pen. It’ll have to be a collective effort; we’ll have to wake from this dream together. It’ll be darling”(221).

Using wit, comparing and contrasting the reality of Hollywood versus the persona of Hollywood, evening the playing field with detailed descriptions, and pointing directly to the problems she sees with this fantasy Hollywood Zadie Smith makes a compelling argument for waking up from this obsession with a false world. This chapter is actually extremely clever. There are many layers to her argument, and this blog is really just a beginning in the discussion of the responsibility everyone has in creating personas, and the result of that.