Chrissy Teigen, the Snyder Cut, and the Terror of Toxic Fans

Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. [View in Browser]( [Subscribe]( [Image] with Kevin Fallon Everything we can’t stop loving, hating, and thinking about this week in pop culture. This Week: - Chrissy Teigen leaving Twitter is suddenly something I care about. - Tina Turner’s documentary is obviously something I care about. - My favorite Jessica Walter Arrested Development moment. - The Nanny is coming to save us all. - The most absolute trash thing I’ve ever seen. Why Do the Toxic People Always Win? In the last 24 hours on Twitter, I’ve laughed at everyone’s jokes about the boat [stuck in the Suez Canal](, each trying to encapsulate how it seems *just right* that, at this complicated moment in our global existence, of course a freaking boat would halt international trade for weeks because of a gust of wind. I saw Hugh Grant’s name [turned into a silly meme](. I’ve watched Teresa Giudice’s masterclass [appearance on Watch What Happens Live]( celebrated, Jane Fonda’s [ferocious photo shoot for Harper’s Bazaar]( celebrated, and [Bo Burnham’s casting as Larry Bird]( in HBO series about the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers celebrated. (They are both so tall!) People made jokes about donuts and vaccines, vented in solidarity with the infuriatingly laid-off staffs of The Huffington Post and MEL magazine, spoke in support of the Asian-American community, railed for gun control, and took an ex-senator’s daughter to task for the [horseshit-of-the-day she spewed on The View](. These were all nice, good things. It’s easy to list the nice, good things about social media apps to justify why you’re still on them. It’s not so much a daily ritual as it is one you have to invoke minute-by-minute when you use these things. How else then can you reckon with the toxicity, which is not just inescapable, but escalating? [Alternate text] I’m not a technology reporter or a fringe politics reporter, so I will assume people reading this are familiar with the QAnon phenomenon, their harmful and dangerous rhetoric and ideas, and the violent [harassment they coordinate on social media](. But I do cover pop culture, and have watched as this world—one that is supposed to be of fun, distraction, and silliness—has become painfully knotted with that one. Chrissy Teigen, who was once thought of as the “unofficial mayor” of Twitter because of how popular her self-effacing tweets and occasional snark were, announced [she was leaving the app]( because of the toll that aforementioned toxicity was taking on her mental health. “For over 10 years, you guys have been my world,” she wrote. “I honestly owe so much to this world we have created here. I truly consider so many of you my actual friends. But it’s time for me to say goodbye. This no longer serves me as positively as it serves me negatively, and I think that’s the right time to call something.” In follow-up tweets, she continued, “My life goal is to make people happy. The pain I feel when I don’t is just too much for me. I’ve always been portrayed as the strong clap back girl but I’m just not. My desire to be liked and fear of pissing people off has made me somebody you didn’t sign up for, and a different human than I started out here as! Live well, tweeters. Please know all I ever cared about was you!” Over time, a public social media presence has bred the assumption that the person behind it is a fair target for cruelty and vitriol, and Teigen became target practice for the worst of it. Criticisms ran the gamut from mocking her for thinking she’s relatable to vicious, baseless attacks and threats on even the most innocuous of tweets. That’s discounting fair criticism for tone-deaf posts; the tidal wave of hostility and maliciousness superseded any of those justifiable reactions. QAnon supporters believe her and her husband John Legend to be a part of a conspiracy theory (the grotesque details to which I won’t give space here) and banded together for an unprecedented harassment campaign against her on social media that threatened her and her family’s safety. It’s all been absolutely heinous, and, in a way, it all worked. Teigen is now offline. This is not to argue that the world is somehow a worse place because Chrissy Teigen is no longer on Twitter. She will live a fine, arguably better life without it. Wouldn’t we all? But the timing of her decision in light of other recent pop culture events alarms me about the unsafe direction in which entertainment’s relationship with social media is heading. Last weekend, [Zack Snyder’s Justice League debuted]( on HBO Max, the culmination of a years-long campaign by DC Comics fans to release what has become known as “The Snyder Cut,” a four-hour version of the superhero movie as Snyder had envisioned it. Is there something to [cheer about fan gratification]( of this magnitude? Sure. Is it an interesting exercise in criticism to compare this version to the original film release? OK. Is it a good thing that it exists? Absolutely not. That the Snyder Cut gained so much momentum has its roots in the efforts of some DC Comics fans directing death threats to critics and film reporters who said anything disparaging about the director or his previous DC films. Warner Brothers employees were harassed and bullied. Violent memes circulated featuring members of the rival superhero film studio, Marvel. And in the end, all of this was validated. What began as a conspiracy theory—the Snyder Cut never actually existed—was brought to life. A film that was originally a commercial and critical flop was given $70 million to be made two hours longer because of the attention these fans, propagating those messages, brought to the idea. It’s all so disheartening. It’s not as if people on these apps shouldn’t or can’t handle criticism or appropriate backlash. It’s just that the extreme tone of it has become so normalized. Disagree with my review of something, but why must I “die, stupid faggot” because I thought the last season of Westworld was just really dumb? It’s even worse by multitudes I can’t fairly explain for women and people of color, and reporters who cover politics. That “fan armies” will rally to attack any critic who posts anything remotely negative about their favorite artist’s new project has just become an accepted fact—only it’s gotten worse. Beyond just tweeting death threats, they have started “doxxing” these writers: publishing and spreading their and their families’ addresses and contact information. Fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race, a show that devotes roughly 70 percent of its running time to messages of love and acceptance, regularly drive the series’ stars off social media with hateful rhetoric. The same thing happened in the recent season of The Great British Baking Show. To reiterate, there were death threats in response to an episode of The Great British Baking Show!!! It worries me that we’ve just accepted all of this as an inevitability. (My friend Amil Niazi recently [joked on the Pop Chat podcast]( we do together that the “Mank Hive” will come for her after she criticized the snoozy black-and-white Netflix film. But it was only partly a joke.) I feel like most people who will read this are familiar with this “toxicity” phenomenon and will shrug, so what? Maybe there are people who are learning about it for the first time. To them: Does this not sound absolutely insane? Yet it’s all “normal.” How horrifying. Obviously You Should Watch the Tina Turner Documentary There is footage of Tina Turner in the new documentary, Tina, in which the music legend appears to be un-human, like she’s transcending the abilities of our form. [Alternate text] The jackhammer-like speed with which she ponies to the microphone. The physics-defying gyrations while she dances. Her ability to execute athletic choreography with the stamina of an Olympian, only to then belt the next verse as if she’s not even winded. Then when that sound comes out, it is summoned from the depths of her soul—the pure, guttural vocals of a person in touch with her spirit in ways that are almost mystical. Of course, maybe it’s not that Turner is un-human at all, but an entertainer more tapped into humanity and want it means to live than the rest of us are. Tina, which premieres Saturday on HBO, is a documentary that traces the entirety of Turner’s life and career, a story that has become a sort of iconography of outlasting and overcoming trauma: the abuse she suffered at the hand of her [husband and music partner Ike Turner](, her decision to break from him, and the tenacity with which she clawed her way back to the top on her own accord. The big revelation of Tina is how troubling it is for Turner to be defined by that story, and for it to haunt almost every conversation about her. She shared it in her memoir, which became the movie What’s Love Got to Do With It, to end that fascination by speaking the truth. Her regret is that it instead prolonged the interest forever. In Tina, she discusses how she’s handled that. It’s a portrait of the singer that makes the point that resilience and survival aren’t as interchangeable as we think. Listen, I’m a gay pop-culture fan obsessed with Tina Turner. Real Original. Of course, this documentary was going to light up my heart like a fireworks show over the Washington Monument while Katy Perry belts the hit song also called “Firework.” It is that on-the-nose for me to rave about this. (These days, aren’t we all just plastic bags drifting through the wind, waiting for Tina Turner to help us start again?) But it’s such a considered and, with the concert footage shown, exhilarating capsule of a brilliant entertainer’s life, the kind that anyone and everyone should watch. There Is No One Like Jessica Walter Acting legend Jessica Walter, maybe most famous over her decades-long career for Arrested Development, [died in her sleep]( this week at the age of 80, one of those “wow, this one really stings” celebrity deaths. It’s as solid a reminder as any to live every day like you’re Walter as Lucille Bluth and [you’ve just seen Gene Parmesan](. (If we’re ever at dinner together and you want to make me cackle with laughter, pick up the parmesan cheese and shriek with glee like Lucille.) Will anyone ever again be as good at delivering the delicious comedy zinger? I don’t understand the question, and I won’t respond to it. Fran Drescher Is Coming to Rescue Us From the Darkness Just as I had finished slowly, painfully tunneling myself out from my burrow of doom and despair, drained of the desire to ever partake in any pop culture again—I made the foolish decision to actually watch the four-hour Snyder Cut last week—I heard the siren call of beauty, hope, happiness, and humanity in the distance: Fran Drescher’s laugh. [Alternate text] While [I hated Zack Snyder’s Justice League](, and everything about the toxic journey it took to its HBO Max existence, the streaming service announced this week that it is finally offering a return to the world of style, flair, and such joie de vivre: All [six seasons of The Nanny]( will be available for streaming on the service starting April 1. Society Has Reached Its Rock Bottom I woke up Thursday morning to violence/this headline: “Pepsi and Peeps Have Joined Forces to Create Marshmallow Soda.” Any and everyone [involved in this venture]( should immediately be sent to jail. [Alternate text] [Alternate text] - The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers: Gordon Bombay is back, baby! (Friday on Disney+) - Made For Love: A story of the perils of technology, surviving trauma, and Ray Romano in love with a sex doll. (Thursday on HBO Max) - Top Chef: Still the classiest, best-produced reality TV competition. (Thursday on Bravo) [Alternate text] - Godzilla vs. Kong:You could actually watch all the Oscar nominees available on streaming. Or, you know, freaking Godzilla vs. Kong. (Wednesday on HBO Max) Advertisement [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( © Copyright 2021 The Daily Beast Company LLC 555 W. 18th Street, New York NY 10011 [Privacy Policy]( If you are on a mobile device or cannot view the images in this message, [click here]( to view this email in your browser. To ensure delivery of these emails, please add emails@thedailybeast.com to your address book. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, or think you have received this message in error, you can [safely unsubscribe](.