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therecordconnection · 2 months ago

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The Comeback Kid, the Midwest Princess, and the Shared Horrors of Online Parasocial Interaction

On September 28th, the long-running NBC sketch comedy institution Saturday Night Live will be starting its fiftieth season. In anticipation, NBC recently revealed the first five guest hosts and musical guests that will kick off the anniversary season. There are some neat combos: Jean Smart and Jelly Roll, Michael Keaton and Billie Eilish, Ariana Grande and Stevie Nicks. I haven’t followed SNL for years, but I’m sure people will enjoy those episodes.

However, the one that really grabbed my attention was John Mulaney and Chappell Roan, which is scheduled for Saturday, November 5th. On the surface, those two have absolutely nothing in common with each other, but upon thinking about it a little, I can’t think of a more apt celebrity of the current moment to pair up with Roan. Why? Because both of those two have experienced being utterly adored and obsessed over by the internet. Both of them also had to endure what happened when the internet decided to turn on them, eat them alive, and spit them back out when people were forced to stop imagining the idealized version they made up and remove them from the pedestal they were placed upon. When the internet was forced to reconcile with the fact that Mulaney and Roan are flawed, flesh-and-blood humans as opposed to the perfect and imaginary versions they invented for those people, the love and adoration for both of them stopped. I found that connection utterly fascinating.

We’ll start with Mulaney, since he’s had it bad, but nowhere near as bad as Roan has. Back in the early-to-mid 2010s, I hadn’t watched either of the major stand-up specials (New In Town and The Comeback Kid) that made him omnipresent in the culture, but I can absolutely tell you that I’ve seen every single frame from them in picture form, due to how often screenshots from those specials were posted online. Whether they were just shared as its own post or used as a response to another post, I became incredibly aware of Mulaney and the major bits from those specials. I’ve still never seen those specials, but I can quote major parts of them through pop culture osmosis alone. I remember being present for all of that.

I also remember being present for when the internet, Tumblr especially, did a complete X-Games caliber Frontside 180 on that guy in 2021. It was weird and it only made me think of the same question Thugnificent once asked on The Boondocks: Man, what did he do to make them that mad?

The answer ended up being both simple and complicated. The simple answer is that a big part of Mulaney’s stand-up persona was built on being what is known as a “Wife Guy”. His marriage to artist Anna Marie Tendler factored into the bulk of his comedy and that’s what people latched onto. This guy was super happy to tell you how great his marriage is and relay all the crazy adventures that happen in marriage. That wasn’t the only thing he based material around, but a lot of the dude’s most beloved bits had something or everything to do with his wife, their relationship, and their marital bliss. A “Wife Guy” normally uses his wife and milks that relationship in order to gain fans and get fame (there are dudes on Instagram doing this play as we speak), and that would certainly be true of Mulaney... if he wasn’t already notable for having been a writer on SNL from 2008 to 2013. He contributed to a lot of the best known sketches from that time. He was in The Lonely Island’s video for “Like a Boss.” He co-created the Stefon character with Bill Hader. He was doing stand-up long before he married Tendler, so it’s not like his entire career and source of fame is tied to her. He just got married and started writing observational comedy about married life, a thing you do when that major life event happens and you’re a comedian looking for anecdotes. Also, Tendler, it’s worth noting, was and still is an artist in her own right, both before and after her marriage to him. But since Mulaney didn’t achieve superstar status until after the specials started happening, the internet came to know him as “the guy who really loves telling you about wife and how marriage is going.”

Now, wouldn’t it be crazy if, oh I don’t know, dude ended the marriage with the woman that he wrote all of that material about at some point? That would be crazy right? Probably wouldn’t happen, right? I mean, he sounds so happy talking about her during those comedy sets! Once you’re married that’s it! That's the endgame! The Mulaney/Tendler marriage is gonna be the next Johnny and June!

I say all of that because the marriage didn’t last. Mulaney and Tendler divorced in 2021. Based on reports at the time, it didn’t sound like it was amicable...

Fans online were shocked when this happened. For a number of reasons. This is where the complicated part of the answer comes in. In 2020, Mulaney had checked himself into a rehab facility to address alcohol addiction and cocaine abuse. The public didn’t know that until he left rehab in February 2021. A few months after that, news broke that Mulaney and Tendler’s marriage would be ending after six years. Again, it didn’t sound like it was amicable, mostly due to Tendler flat out being quoted in Vanity Fair as saying, “I am heartbroken that John has decided to end our marriage. … I wish him support and success as he continues recovery.” I heard that news and had a perfectly normal reaction to it: “Damn. That sucks, but breakups happen. I’m sure they’ll be alright.” I promptly moved on after that, but some people online felt personally betrayed and thought he was a piece of shit for immediately leaving her after she had supported him through relapse and eventual recovery. I don’t know either of these people and also don’t care how two adults I don’t know choose to conduct themselves and their relationship/divorce. I just want to hear Mulaney do the bit about the guy playing Tom Jones’ “What’s New Pussycat?” on a diner jukebox some fifty-something times (with one “It’s Not Unusual” peppered in there at some point).

But the thing that really seemed to piss off fans and internet denizens came with the secret third surprise: Mulaney started dating actress Olivia Munn shortly after that divorce announcement... Oh! And also that she’s pregnant with his kid. That’s a wicked fast turnaround! There were rumors of infidelity on Mulaney’s part, but most of those rumors only really ended up being hearsay and never had much (or any) confirmation attached. But, for a moment, it looked like Mulaney was living a real life version of Usher’s “Confessions Part 2.” He and Munn got married earlier this year. Good for them.

I remember the Comeback Kid being yeeted off that pedestal at dizzying speeds as soon as all of this happened. He’s still a popular comedian, mind you, that’s one big reason why he’s gonna be a guest host on SNL (for the sixth time) in a little over a month. But I remember reading posts from people who were being Absolutely Normal About It(tm) online and voicing how betrayed they felt and how shitty he is and how he “definitely cheated on his ex-wife.” The biggest and most common genre of post I saw were from people who now thought his career was built on one giant lie, that he basically used his wife to get famous and then betrayed and dumped her when the time was right. I don’t think that’s what happened at all. A good number of comedians make anecdotes and build sets and bits around married life, Mulaney was just the white hot star of the moment getting really popular from doing that kind of thing. Plus, marriages end all the time, for any number of reasons. I don’t doubt all the anecdotes and happiness Mulaney displayed was a giant lie. He was happy, then he wasn’t, then he chose to end their marriage for whatever reason. Your neighbors and coworkers could do the exact same thing and the internet isn’t going to go insane over it. But that’s what happened! People saw “the ultimate Wife Guy” got divorced, started dating somebody new, moved on with his life, and felt like this was now just a Hollywood playboy leaving his old wife for a new model. He’s been continuing his stand-up comedy career up to the present moment and is still doing fine for himself, but I remember all of this really starting the conversation surrounding celebrity worship and how we don’t actually know these people. I know John Mulaney (Comedian), but I don’t know John Mulaney (Just a Guy in the World), you know? I also distinctly remember the word “parasocial” becoming much more present in the lexicon when all of this happened, and we’re all worse for it, because it’s now been overused to hell and it doesn’t have any of the original meaning left intact (the internet does this for every single new buzzword it learns). Watching somebody and enjoying their personality and following their career isn’t “parasocial,” but it does become that when you suddenly think said person is your friend and you think you know them better than they do. That’s when it gets weird.

Last thing on Mulaney. Apparently, all of this stuff I’ve been talking about is topical again because Anna Marie Tendler just recently released her memoir, Men Have Called Her Crazy (not the most incredible celebrity memoir title, but still a pretty good one), last month. In it, she details her mental health journey and her experiences in a psychiatric hospital after her divorce... but I’m willing to bet a good chunk of change that people will only really want to read it so they can learn about the end of her marriage to Mulaney and hope it talks about how much he sucks and how he definitely betrayed her and left her scorned. I haven’t read the book, and in all honesty I don’t have much interest in celebrity memoirs, so I think I’ll be skipping that one. I can tell you that the internet is still definitely not normal about either Mulaney, Tendler, or Munn in the slightest. The Slate article “Uh-Oh, People Are Being Weird About John Mulaney and Olivia Munn Again” did a good job at filling me in on some things regarding that strange triangle(?) and it’s worth the read if you want a more in-depth version of that whole story. The wildest part of all this is that back in Spring of last year, Munn had made the announcement that she had been diagnosed with an aggressive variation of breast cancer. She got a bunch of surgeries to combat it and as far as I’m aware, she’s doing fine! Which is good and I’m happy to hear that! The bad part is that Munn apparently announced this right around the time Tendler announced Men Have Caller Her Crazy was coming out... to quote Slate: “Most, of course, were sending Munn and Mulaney well wishes. But some distasteful posters instead saw Munn’s illness as karmic payback for Mulaney’s supposed maltreatment of Tendler. Others even found the timing of Munn’s statement to be shady, accusing her of attempting to steal the shine from Tendler’s memoir announcement.”

Positively normal one right there, guys. I highly doubt Munn waited until the perfect time to drop that bombshell on us. I doubt Munn even really cared or was even aware that Men Have Called Her Crazy was coming out. Why would she give a shit about a book written by her now-husband’s ex-wife? Does she even know who Tendler is beyond “my husband’s ex wife”?

The whole thing just reeks of reaching super hard for reasons to hate somebody that you don’t know. But hey! Speaking of hate, don’t you just hate it when your fans are really weird and don’t understand respecting boundaries and privacy? Don’t you just hate it when your fans think they’re putting pieces together and figuring things out? Don’t you just hate it when your fans make up completely preposterous things about you and act really weird about the choices you make in your life when they have absolutely zero say in how you conduct your business and relationships? You know who might be able to relate to John Mulaney in those ways? Chappell Roan. I’m sure they’d have a lot to talk about at SNL when it comes to people online being weird about them.

Let’s talk Chappell Roan, Your Favorite Artist’s Favorite Artist. The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is the name of the debut album that shot Roan to fame back at the start of this past summer... but you could just as easily use it to describe the way her entire summer played out. It feels like I watched an entire three act stage play unfold in real time. Act I was the early days of summer, when I was first introduced to Roan via my sister playing me “Good Luck, Babe” and “Red Wine Supernova” for the first time. Act II began with the absolute breakneck speed at which she attained popularity in the mainstream consciousness. Every time a music festival happened this summer, news sites were quick to tell you all about what Chappell Roan did for her performance and how it went. It helped that she dressed up in wildly elaborate and different costumes every time. Some highlights include: Paying homage to drag queen icon Divine at Kentuckiana Pride, dressing as a wrestler at Lollapalooza (I lovingly called this one, “Gay Bane from Batman”), and my personal favorite, the Statue of Liberty at the Governors Ball. In a short amount of time, that woman captured the imagination of everybody. My brother and his wife are not pop music listeners in the slightest and even they were under the spell of Miss. Roan. Act II was fun and immediately set up Act III when Roan made two TikTok videos going into detail about how weird fans were becoming towards her and how she was feeling increasingly unsafe and uncomfortable with everything. She detailed a lot of upsetting and invasive behavior from fans and started a conversation about current celebrity culture, respecting boundaries, and recognizing that fans are not entitled to anything from the person they’re a fan of and shouldn’t be upset when a fan doesn’t immediately grovel and give them what they want. If for some reason you haven’t seen these two videos, you can view those here and here. The main message can be summed up like this: Leave me alone and stop being so fucking weird. (Spoiler: People are still being really weird. When the internet is told not to do something, people just do it even more.)

We’ve now reached the point in Act III where if she even says anything regarding how she’s been treated in recent months and how she feels about it, pretty much everybody will tell her some variation of, “Oh, God, just shut up and quit whining already.” Part of this stems from media outlets sensationalizing the entire thing and really only interested in the bad parts. Interviewers and reporters aren’t really interested in her music much, like they were a few months prior. Did you know that she had a great performance at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards? You might have! She came out in a suit of armor, she had a whole castle setup on stage and even made it look like it was being lit on fire! It was cool. But I’m willing to bet you heard more about her being harassed by a photographer on the red carpet and telling him to shut the fuck up after he yelled at her. Fun stuff.

We’ve also reached the point in Act III where the internet has decided to turn from overwhelming adoration and obsession to looking for any reason to despise her. You know that thing internet users like to do when they want to turn heel on a famous person? You know, that thing users do where they look for any moral reason to justify why they now hate said famous person? Even if they have to stretch more than Mr. Fantastic in order to do it? Yeah! Well, don’t worry, the internet has done that classic play with Roan as well. Take your pick! Would you like to go the route of “Is Chappell Roan actually queer or is she just appropriating drag?” RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16 contestant Plane Jane went that route. Bold move! That was a take that landed her the coveted “Main Character on Twitter For the Day” award! If you don’t like that option, you could always go the political route with “Chappell Roan is a ‘both sides are evil’ kind of person and is actually Republican”, despite the fact that she never said that and there’s no evidence that she’s fully blue or red. Instead, she opted to advocate for the importance of voting, using your brain, and being critical of both parties; to not fall into the trappings of blind loyalty. If people actually read full articles (and if said articles were accessible to people and without fucking paywalls!) maybe people might know what Roan actually said in the Rolling Stone cover story where she talked about the upcoming election and how she isn’t publicly endorsing any candidate:

“Right now, it’s more important than ever to use your vote, and I will do whatever it takes to protect people’s civil rights, especially the LGBTQ+ community,” she tells me in August. “My ethics and values will always align with that, and that hasn’t changed with a different nominee. I feel lucky to be alive during an incredibly historical time period when a woman of color is a presidential nominee.”

She was also very adamant in a Guardian interview about paying attention to smaller places, your own city, and using your critical thinking skills when casting your vote:

“I have so many issues with our government in every way,” she says. “There are so many things that I would want to change. So I don’t feel pressured to endorse someone. There’s problems on both sides. I encourage people to use your critical thinking skills, use your vote – vote small, vote for what’s going on in your city.” The change she wants to see in the US in this election year, she says instantly, is “trans rights. They cannot have cis people making decisions for trans people, period.”

For the record, I absolutely think Roan is correct. Anybody advocating for “use your brains, people!” is a winner in my book. Neo-Liberals with terminal brain rot really don’t like when you’re critical of Democrats in any way. If you're critical of Harris or disagree with her on some things, that's healthy and perfectly. That's how you're supposed to view politicians, even the ones you may really like and may have respect for. They need to be criticized and called out when they're being foolish, which is a big reason why Roan declined the invite to the White House’s Pride event back in June. From Rolling Stone:

"Roan opted to turn down the invite, though there were some who misread what she felt was a pretty clear message. 'I saw a couple of TikToks where they were like, So she's pro Trump?' Roan's face contorts into disgust. 'It is not so black and white that you hate one and you like the other. No matter how you say it, people are still going to be pissed for fucking some reason. I'm not going to the White House because I am not going to be a monkey for Pride. And thank God I didn't go because they just made a huge statement about trans kids a couple weeks ago,' she says, referring to the Biden administration stating its opposition to gender-affirming surgery for transgender minors in June (The administration would walk back those comments a month later.)"

I can tell you this with confidence because I’ve lived long enough to see this play again and again and again. Whenever the internet turns on someone, they always make them seem like a giant flaming ball of shit, because it’s apparently not enough to just say, “I think they’re annoying” or “I really don’t care about what’s going on with them.” Going the “they have shitty politics but I don’t have credible sources for that” route is a surefire winner. And also, because I won’t get another chance to say this, for twenty years we continue to circle back around to that classic Dave Chappelle bit about caring too much about what celebrities think, citing when TRL asked Ja Rule what his thoughts, feelings, and reactions to 9/11 were in late 2001. Dave summed it up perfectly: “Who gives a fuck what Ja Rule thinks at a time like this!?” Roan herself thinks that the responsibility of voting and learning who is worthy of your vote isn't in her hands but the hands of people and fans. People twisted her words from interviews so much that she had to go to TikTok (again) and make videos clarifying that she's not publicly endorsing anybody and relying on a pop star to tell you who to vote for is a dumb move. You can watch those two videos here and here. It fucking sucks that she had to do that because, and this is just me, I thought she made herself pretty damn clear. But in the wake of the Harris campaign co-opting Charli XCX's whole "Brat Summer" meme and Taylor Swift publicly endorsing her via Instagram, I imagine Roan felt she had to make things even more clear regarding where she stands politically. I hate to break it to you, but there’s a non-zero chance that many young voters will cast their ballots for Kamala Harris specifically because Taylor Swift told them to. Anything that gets people to vote is a positive, but the blind loyalty stan culture on display from doing what a pop star fave tells you to do is not. Roan rejected that and is now getting burned for not being the made-up version of Chappell Roan that people invented. It sucks. I feel bad for her.

The online opinion and complete turn around on Chappell Roan happened almost as quickly as her rise to stardom happened. At least Mulaney had close to a decade before people online got weird and turned on him for no reason. She was completely and utterly adored and obsessed over by the masses. She was placed on a pink pedestal fit for a Midwest Princess... until she asked that people stop being so weird and to stop harassing her and making her uncomfortable. After that, the masses were forced to look at her not as Chappell Roan, the hot lesbian drag queen dressing up in elaborate costumes and doing cheers and dances to some of the best pop music of this year, but as Kayleigh Rose Amstutz, a regular human woman in her mid-twenties who has had her life completely turned upside down and is just trying to keep up with the giant wave she’s riding; a woman who is now being called “entitled” and “ungrateful” all because she demanded there be boundaries between musician and fan, which is a normal thing for people to ask for and have respected.

Time is a flat circle, history repeats, and part of me can’t help but wonder if Mulaney and Roan are being paired together as host and guest on SNL on purpose specifically because somebody noticed their experiences with weird fans that don’t understand boundaries or speculate and make shit up about them is exactly the same in some regards. All of it sucks and it shouldn’t happen, famous or not, but there’s at least some positive aspects to find here. John Mulaney is doing fine. People are still weird about him online sometimes, but his career isn’t hurting and he seems happy and content with Olivia Munn and their toddler son. Good for him. Chappell Roan has had many other pop star women reach out to her to voice their support, check in on her, and express that she isn’t in the wrong at all for asking for boundaries and asking that people stop their weird behavior. She’s apparently bonded with Sabrina Carpenter in recent days, that other pop star that shot into the stratosphere this past summer and is trying to handle the massive amounts of fame that came with it. I think that’s nice. From what I’ve seen, Carpenter seems like a nice gal. I’m happy those two have each other to confide in and relate to. I hope it helps both of them, but especially Roan, considering that it just got announced that she’s been diagnosed with severe depression, which isn’t shocking to me in the slightest and shouldn’t be shocking to you, given what she’s been through as of late.

As for where the Chappell Roan story is headed, she is up for the Album of the Year Grammy this coming year, but has expressed that she doesn’t want to win it: “I’m kind of hoping I don’t win, because then everyone will get off my ass: ‘See guys, we did it and we didn’t win, bye!’ I won’t have to do this again!” I totally get that. If she wins, I kinda hope she pulls a Bo Burnham and doesn’t even go to the show. What I want is for her to disappear for five years and come back with the weirdest, most off putting Kate Bush/Bjork/Mitski-ass album ever conceived and just use it as a test to see who the real fans are. If not that, my hope is that her happy ending is in the Carly Rae Jepsen route, where the world at large only remembers her for her own “Call Me Maybe” (I don’t know what the Chappell Roan equivalent would be) but a dedicated cult of online pop music nerds prop her up, keep her working and, more importantly, keep her as happy and as (moderately) famous as she’d like to be, if at all. That’s my hope for her. Fame is a real bitch and I hope once the wave finally dies, she ends up being okay. Pop music has enough dark and twisted stories to tell until the final embers go out. Roan doesn’t need to be one of those dark stories and I hope she isn't. I hope she has a good time on SNL. Maybe she’ll get to meet John Mulaney. Maybe they can chat about how weird people on the internet are towards them. Maybe she’ll find another famous person who has been there and understands and cares. That would be nice.

Good luck, babe.

#original post #essay #john mulaney #chappell roan

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