Angelina Jolie’s Perfect Game

Wednesday, June 25th, 2014

Hello Magazine Cover of Angelina Jolie and FamilyLooking back, the Brangelina publicity strategy is deceptively simple, Anne Helen Petersen explains:

In fact, it’s a model of the strategy that has subconsciously guided star production for the last hundred years. More specifically, that the star should be at once ordinary and extraordinary, “just like us” and absolutely nothing like us. Gloria Swanson is the most glamorous star in the world — who loves to make dinner for her children. Paul Newman is the most handsome man in Hollywood — whose favorite pastime is making breakfast in his socks and loafers.

Jolie’s post-2005 image took the ordinary — she was a working mom trying to make her relationship work — and not only amplified it, but infused it with the rhetoric and imagery of globalism and liberalism. She’s not just a mom, but a mom of six. Instead of teaching her kids tolerance, she creates a family unit that engenders it; instead of reading books on kindness and generosity, she models it all over the globe. As for her partner, he isn’t just handsome — he’s the Sexiest Man Alive. And she doesn’t just have a job; instead, her job is being the most important — and influential — actress in the world.

Her image was built on the infrastructure of the status quo — a straight, white, doting mother engaged in a long-term monogamous relationship — but made just extraordinary enough to truly entice but never offend. The line between the tantalizing and the scandalizing is notoriously difficult to tread (just ask Kanye), but Jolie was able to negotiate it via two tactics: First, and most obviously, she accumulated (or, more generously, adopted and gave birth to) a dynamic group of children who were beautiful to observe; second, she figured out how to talk about her personal life in a way that seemed confessional while, in truth, revealing very little; and third, she exploited the desire for inside access into control of that access.

Comments

  1. Robb Seaton says:

    I wonder how much this is the result of good strategy, and how much of it is a necessity. In a world where people become celebrities more or less at random, if you consider only the #1 star, in retrospect their strategy will look prescient.

    But that’s how it has to be. If the strategy hadn’t been, we’d be talking about someone else.

  2. T. Greer says:

    And then there is Lady Gaga.

  3. Isegoria says:

    I agree; these successful strategies don’t need to be consciously and strategically planned, just stumbled upon.

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