My Life and Thoughts

I am a great admirer of My Life on the D-List, the reality TV show featuring stand-up comedian Kathy Griffin. The show dramatizes Griffin’s major source of comic material: her own marginal interactions with “A-list” celebrities, who always remain, like Godot, just outside the picture. One episode opens with a monologue about how Griffin was supposed to present an award to Renée Zellweger, whose assistant then called the network and asked for a different presenter (“and I said, ‘Whatever that sweaty, puffy coke whore wants, she should get’”). The episode proceeds to document Griffin’s receipt of a truly enormous crate of long-stem roses, signed: “Warmest wishes, Renée Zellweger.” Griffin ponders the significance of these roses (silencer, peace offering, anthrax delivery vehicle), first at home with her mom, and then in Chevy’s Fresh Mex with her gay friends (who describe Zellweger’s gift as “a modern day Rubik’s cube”); Griffin calls the florist to ask how much the roses cost ($520); Griffin and her assistant brainstorm possible thank-you notes.

Griffin’s treatment of Renée Zellweger reminded me, in certain ways, of Tolstoy’s treatment of Napoleon in War and Peace.

In War and Peace, Napoleon, the Stendhalian heroic ideal, becomes a marginal and almost comical figure. You almost never see him, and when you do, it’s as a tiny figure in the distance; his utterances are invariably meaningless, inscrutable, or inaudible (”‘What? What did he say?’ was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans…”). Likewise, Zellweger—the heroine whose scrappy perseverance has been tested on the big screen by the Civil War, the roaring twenties, and the Great Depression—becomes a tiny figure in the wings, making mysterious phone calls, declaring: “Warmest Wishes,” and—disappearing.

So that’s the first interesting thing about My Life on the D-List: the “novelistic” treatment of the A-list. I will mention also the “quixotic” episode in which Griffin, “assuming the form of the red-headed Oprah”—as Don Quijote assumes the form of a middle-aged Amadís—tries to hand out $10,000 to women in inner-city L.A. The women are like: “Go away, I’m on the phone.”

The second interesting thing is the concept of the “D-list” itself, which turns out to be a richer and more diverse world than the A-list, as peripheries are sometimes richer than the center. E.g., Griffin goes on “dates” with this amazing variety of minor talents: a porn director, a Back Street Boy, a professional poker champion. (My personal favorite is actually available as a clip on Youtube and should be watched by everyone: Griffin’s date with Andrew W.K.)

A running joke on the show is that Griffin, as a D-lister, has to appear in various venues where “you would never see Nicole Kidman”: she sells a steam cleaner on the Home Shopping Network, hosts the Gay Porn Movie awards, performs at a prison facility, and promotes an under-booked show in rural Michigan by visiting some fans at their house (the fans are really drunk). Watching these comic situations unfold, one realizes that Nicole Kidman not only doesn’t have to perform at a prison or visit her fans at home; she probably couldn’t do these things, even if she wanted to. And, neither could an ordinary, non-D-list person—which makes the D-list a unique and exhilarating vantage point onto the “human condition.”

Tags: d-list, Don Quijote, Russian literature, Tolstoy

This entry was posted on Friday, November 23rd, 2007 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.