Celebrities and world economic policy
Saturday, March 28th, 2009Marina Hyde is curious about the new era of celebrity, in which entertainers attempt to negotiate peace agreements in the Israeli – Palestinian conflict (as Richard Gere did). I appreciated this bit about Angelina Jolie’s tatoos:
Yet it seems she will at least endeavour to fill up Brad Pitt’s defaceable torso first. The first Brad unveiled was a forearm tattoo of Otzi the iceman. The second was a mysterious series of parallel lines that were diversely interpreted as a tribute to the great Nintendo platform games of the 80s, and a diagram of the New Orleans levee system. As it turned out, the speculation was way off target: Angelina herself had created the cryptic hieroglyph. “We went to Davos,” she said. “One night we didn’t have anything to do, so I was drawing on his back. It’s meaningful in that it’s us making angles and shapes out of each other’s body, that kind of a thing.” No. That is not why it is meaningful. It is meaningful because the kind of people who get so bored that they doodle on each other and turn the doodles into permanent tattoos are now attending the World Economic Forum.
I disagree, the meaningful bit, in the sense of “What is changing?” is that we are now hearing these stories. Go back 20 years and people who went to Davos probably also had moments alone with their lovers. But back then, such information wasn’t shared publicly. I don’t see anything wrong with this, but this is one of those anecdotes that makes clear how society’s (international society, in this case) mores are changing.
