Celebrity love is a battlefield
The implosion of Brangelina was but one of many tales of romance gone wrong in 2016
“What is love?”
Many poets and philosophers — Hesiod, Plato, St. Augustine, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Howard Jones — have plunged into this quarry and staggered back with nuggets that, years later, twinkle with the clarity of 24-carat sludge. What is love? Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination. Thank you, Voltaire. That is very helpful.
Next time my wife asks if I’m paying attention, I will say, “Woman, can’t you see I’m holding an invisible chenille needle and putting lazy daisy stitches into our future happiness?” What is love? Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. That’s great, Aristotle. This should help settle disputes when those two souls bicker over one remote control or jostle for habitable mattress space.
Love is a balm for the soul. Love is a many-splendoured thing. Love is all you need.
Until you don’t. And then, to quote the military historian Pat Benatar, love is a battlefield. Heartache-to-heartache we stand.
It was a tremendous year for celebrity heartache, which is to say, a terrible year for love.
Month after month, one blearyeyed couple after the next, the oneway express from Hollywood to Splitsville choo-choo ’d along the tracks of romantic despair.
Celebrity love didn’t quite die in 2016. But it started wheezing. It developed a nagging cough. It wore pyjamas in the daytime. It recoiled to its fainting chair to hum Bon Iver downers and contemplate pre-nups and last rites.
Dennis Quaid and Kimberly Buffington announced plans to divorce in June after a dozen years of marriage that notably included two previous plans to divorce. This one stuck. Around the same time, Taylor Swift broke up with Calvin Harris and then, three months later, she hit No. 1 on the breakup charts again by ditching morose automaton Tom Hiddleston.
Zac Efron and Sami Miro parted ways with less fanfare. So did Idris Elba and Naiyana Garth, Nicolas Cage and Alice Kim, Bella Hadid and The Weeknd.
Looking back, the sheer volume of breakups in 2016 was enough to give Cupid a panic attack: Joshua Jackson and Diane Kruger, Tobey Maguire and Jennifer Meyer, Casey Affleck and Summer Phoenix, Liev Schreiber and Naomi Watts, James McAvoy and Anne-Marie Duff, Kat Dennings and Josh Groban . . . . . . on and on went the off and over. While most breakups were relatively “amicable” — a tabloid code word that translates into, “Yeah, we can’t be bothered digging up cheating scandals on these two snoozers” — there were several quarts of bad blood.
The galaxy-altering implosion of Brangelina started as a supernova of dark allegations when sources close to Angelina Jolie claimed Brad Pitt was abusive to the couple’s brood. His camp dismissed the charges, as did investigators.
But overnight, the damage was done: Hollywood’s most powerful couple became a memory in a year in which the promise of everlasting love was under constant threat from random blasts of sudden revulsion.
The breakup of Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was downright fast and ugly. She alleged abuse and filed for divorce. They eventually settled out of court.
She now speaks out against domestic violence while he is probably chugging Jack Daniels out of a bottle while having gonzo spats with his own broken heart.
More warped than broken, the aborted engagement between Mariah Carey and James Packer remains a low-grade mystery, closer to the Caramilk Secret than Stonehenge. One TMZ story claimed Carey’s relationship sank on a yacht in Greece after her Australian billionaire did “something really bad.”
What did he do? Hit on her assistant? Offer an honest assessment of her new reality show? Buy her a sensible pantsuit? We may never know.
But in this Year of the Breakup, what’s clear is age played no role. Both the young (Brooklyn Beckham and Chloë Grace Moretz) and the not-so-young (Christie Brinkley and John Mellencamp) challenged another Aristotle epigram and concluded the whole was not greater than the sum of its celebrity parts.
And with that, intensely personal matters unspooled in public.
“Unfortunately although I love Nick and have tried and tried to rebuild my trust in him, it’s become apparent in the last few weeks I am unable to,” wrote Iggy Azalea on Instagram, after her fiancé and NBA player Nick Young was caught cheating.
Her shattered trust mirrored the emotional collapse of Khloe Kardashian and James Harden. And it echoed with a sentiment declared by Jennifer Lopez, when she tagged a cryptic Instagram post with “#protectyourheart” two days after choreographing her exit from dancer Casper Smart, better known as what’s-his-face.
In an emotional interview with CBS Sunday Morning in November, Lady Gaga used gender borders to frame her breakup with Taylor Kinney.
“I think women love very hard,” she said. “We love men. We just love with everything we have. And sometimes I don’t know that that love is met with the type of dignity that we wish it would be met with.”
Ms. Gaga imparted her message via a traditional network.
But the ongoing rise of social media allowed many to break their own breakup news on their terms and channels. This led to a drastic reduction in the “joint statement,” the once preferred passport stamp for those headed to Splitsville via the high road.
“This was an incredibly difficult decision for both of us, but we have realized more than anything that we are better as best friends,” said Demi Lovato and Wilmer Valderrama, in what was to become a popular theme this year.
“Sadly, our family is separating legally, although we do not feel this takes away from us being a family,” said amateur logicians Drew Barrymore and Will Kopelman, who then likely dined out by ordering delivery.
Or as Sia and Erik Lang observed about their divorce: “After much soul searching and consideration we have made the decision to separate as a couple. We are, however, dedicated to remaining friends.”
Such dedication starred in the short-lived separation of Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne after 30-plus years of mumbling dysfunction: Should we call it quits or renew our vows?
But it was not a factor in the shotgun divorce of Rose McGowan and Davey Detail, which was bookended by a head shaving and sex-tape scandal, the trifecta of celebrity turmoil.
And at this point in her vicious divorce from Martin Isaacs, Mary J. Blige is mostly dedicated to getting back her stuff, including a Mercedes and Grammy trophy.
That’s the kind of year it was: love got no award.
Celebrity couples kept biting the amorous dust. And we kept waving our arms to keep from choking on the miserable fumes. This is the cost of turning human relationships into an unseemly spectator sport: when the players run in opposite directions, the crowd gets whiplash.
And we get desensitized to matters of the heart.
What is love? Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. You are correct, Anaïs Nin. Those errors and betrayals were epic in 2016.
What is love? Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell. Right you are, Joan Crawford. The smell of smoke started in January. The alarms have wailed ever since.
So I leave you with a heartfelt Merry Christmas. May your hearth stay warm and may your love never burn out as it recently did for Vanilla Ice and Laura Van Winkle. For nearly two decades, the couple endured scandals, mockery and the uncertainty that follows ephemeral fame.
But in the end, as with so many couples this year, they could not endure one another. vmenon@thestar.ca