Hey Internet, stop hating Anne Hathaway

This blog is a late one to the party. The Atlantic has already written a piece about how fashionable it is to hate Anne Hathaway. This article cites numerous other articles that have been written about hating Anne Hathaway. The majority of these posts have focused on why people might dislike Hathaway, pretty much settling on the fact that she's a geeky theater kid who is trying to be cool, and, in doing so, is kind of obnoxious by virtue of not being an authentic self, but someone acting like an authentic self, which we find distrustful.

I haven't read an article about why young women find Jennifer Lawrence so appealing, despite the fact that I've demanded it, however, I've speculated that it has to do with the fact that she's exactly the opposite of Hathaway. She doesn't seem to care about the limelight and the way she's perceived, which I think has something to do with her youth and a certain kind of blase attitude that is, yes, a bit charming.

Interestingly, what I haven't yet read, and what I read over and over again in the late great David Foster Wallace's fiction, "Good Old Neon," immediately comes to mind, is how most of us are a hell of a lot more like Hathaway than we'd like to admit. Yes it's annoying when someone is cold, calculated, seemingly changing their personality based on whoever they're interacting with. Perhaps this means they look a true and "authentic self." Or maybe it just means they've learned how to function in society.

Good Old Neon:
There was a basic logical paradox that I called the "fraudulence paradox" that I had discovered more or less on my own while taking a mathematical logic course in school. . . . The fraudulence paradox was that the more time and effort you put into trying to appear impressive or attractive to other people, the less impressive or attractive you felt inside–you were a fraud. And the more of a fraud you felt like, the harder you tried to convey an impressive or likable image of yourself so that other people wouldn't find out what a hollow, fraudulent person you really were. Logically, you would think that the moment a supposedly intelligent nineteen-year old became aware of this paradox, he'd stop being a fraud and just settle for being himself (whatever that was) because he'd figured out that being a fraud was a vicious infinite regress that ultimately resulted in being frightened, lonely, alienated, etc. But here was the other, higher-order paradox, which didn't eve have a form or name–I didn't, I couldn't. Discovering that first paradox at age nineteen just brought home to me in spades what an empty, fraudulent person I'd basically been ever since at least the time I was four and lied to my stepdad . .

And you think it makes you a fraud, the tiny fraction anyone else ever sees? Of course you're a fraud, of course what people see is never you. And of course you know this, ad of course you try to manage what part they see if you now its only a part. Who wouldn't? It's called free will, Sherlock.

Have you ever been at a party or a gathering where someone can't help but be their authentic self? It's charming, and exhausting. You kind of just want them to learn the social mores and stop being themself for two seconds. It can be exhausting to be around people who don't adjust their personalities like chameleons. I think what people resent so much in Hathway is precisely what we're, or at least I am often guilty of. I'm a very contingent creature. I do tend to be a bit bawdier when the circumstances call for it and reserved when they don't. I'm ashamed to admit that I actually like it when people enjoy my company and find my conversation interesting. In fact, I enjoy that more, particularly initially, than just being my "authentic self," which, really what does that mean anyway? Is it the person you are when you're alone? When you're at church? At a bar? At a prayer retreat? At your job? At your house? With your cousins? Your best friend(s)? With your parents? Someone else's parents? Your spouse/girlfriend boyfriend? It's a variable thing, the self. Borges has a nice essay about it and Sartre has his nice little spiel about the waiter and his bad faith existentialism. Is a self, or who you are comprised of what you do, what you'd like to do, what you think?

Maybe the rest of the world is a lot better at this than I am. Maybe everybody else isn't as contingent. I admire them. However, I'm going to go ahead and call bs on the internet and society in general for hating Miss Hathaway. She's like the rest of us only slightly more annoying because she wins Oscars and is a theater kid who is overly dramatic and you know, bleh, which I don't mean in a derogatory manner, except that I kind of do, but I blame the Atlantic piece for poisoning the well or whatever that saying is and theater people are all wonderful. (See, I don't want to upset anyone).

Anyhow, I'm not blaming anyone for loving Jennifer Lawrence and being on some sort of vision quest to discover their authentic self who doesn't give a crap about what anyone thinks of them. However, human beings are social creatures, designed to function together in groups, a part of which is sublimating certain desires or feelings at times to keep the group dynamic functional. There is something both charming and childish about the way that Jennifer Lawrence handles herself. It's certainly appealing to think of ourselves as that type of person, but I know that type of person, they are called children and there's a pretty good reason we don't remain that way for our entire adult lives. And that reason is Communism. I jest. Anyhow, It all seems kind of unavoidable, and I think the real take away is that she didn't deserve to win for emoting with dirt on her face, not because she's Anne Hathway, but because she was barely in the movie.

This is your basic, "let he who is without sin cast the first stone" kind of a situation. You don't have to love Fantine, Internet, but let's not hate her either. She sings pretty.