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| Look at that vacant stare... |
{SPOILERS BELOW}
I need to be honest here; I admire Lauren Conrad. She survived a turbulent half-decade of starring on reality TV alongside some truly unappealing human beings, but she pulled herself up out of the reality TV stigma and now runs two websites, two fashion lines and has penned an impressive number of books. From a professional and entrepreneurial point of view, she is a great idol. But lets be honest; Lauren Conrad is as dumb as dish-water. Yes, on "The Hills" she represented an ideal "bestie" for a lot of us girls (I freely admit to my girl-crush on her). She was non-threatening, kind, stylish, beautiful... everyone watching that TV show just wanted to be her friend. But some of the decisions she has made in life are truly baffling. Recently, she pulled a video from her own YouTube account which showed her destroying books to use the spines for decoration. Obviously, the video was met with outrage from book-lovers and does not generally bode well for someone who aspires to be a respected author. She recently admitted she spends up to 7 hours on her hair in one sitting. Not her appearance, just her hair. Conrad names Chelsea Handler's and Tina Fey's biographies as some of her favourite 'books.' She has admitted one of the few books she has ever read (when she wasn't reading the Spark Notes version so as not to fail English class) that wasn't a biography was The Great Gatsby which she was forced to read in high school. Conrad called The Great Gatsby "a fun story" which makes me think she never finished it, or she just didn't understand it. The Great Gatsby is a tale of shallow, awful rich people who end up sad or dead by the end of the book. I can see how she missed the point of the book's criticism of spoiled, materialistic people because that would mean she would have to take a good long hard look at her own lifestyle. Her blog is collections of slim tips, decorating ideas and style reports. Hard-hitting stuff.
Conrad's most recent foray into literature is filled with basic stylistic mistakes. One problem many less-talented authors have, and Conrad is no exception, is of telling instead of showing. Conrad tells us that Madison and Ryan made peace after a rocky start and started being friends instead of showing us. Conrad tells us that Carmen's mother is a spotlight-hog which annoys Carmen instead of showing us evidence that this is true. Conrad tells us that Kate needs a large prescription of drugs for her sleeping problems, instead of showing us that she has sleeping problems. Conrad also enjoys using a lot of exclamation points excessively in her writing. Punctuation needs to be used subtly by people with a reputation like Conrad, otherwise she might (let's face it, she does) sound like this; "She, like, totally walked into the room and it was, like, soooo hot! OMG!" That's another problem; Conrad seems to be physical incapable of spelling 'so' without at least four O's.
Conrad identifies herself best with the characters of Kate and Carmen. I know this because of the resemblance between their lives and her own, and that Conrad tries to paint their choices and actions as ideal and relatable to more average girls. Sadly, these characters just come off as superficial and mean. Consider the following scene; Kate comes home to her mother...
Gaby, on the other hand, is almost comically stupid. Gaby is barely able to grasp the concept of speech. She doesn't complete her sentences and cannot grasp simple idioms ("The apple doesn't fall far from the pie"). It's like watching an episode of The Hills on steroids. No real person is this stupid unless they live under 24 hour care in a nursing facility. However, for comedic affect, Conrad writes Gaby's sub-human intelligence as manifesting in her addiction to prescription drugs, poor choice of sexual partners, and over-reliance on plastic surgery. My theory is that Conrad wants to elevate people of low to average intelligence (like herself) by contrasting her 'normal' characters (Kate and Carmen) with more stupider people (Gaby), making them and herself appear more intelligent by comparison. Unfortunately, when you are already scraping the bottom of the barrel of intellect, it is very difficult to write this contrast realistically. Gaby is more of a caricature than a character. The only purpose I see in Gaby is to make people like Conrad and the characters she presents as ideal humans seem more intelligent than their intellectually sub-par reality. Gaby is the sick puppy Conrad repeatedly kicks; within the first paragraph of chapter 22, the four main characters are getting ready for an awards event and Gaby asks her 'friends' to say something funny for her digital recorder "but everyone was pretty much ignoring her." This is but one of many, many instances of Gaby's ill-treatment (and probably not the worst). Yeah, these girls are really admirable human beings.
The only interesting character is Madison, the reformed bad-girl. Madison played the villain in Conrad's preceding L.A. Candy series. Madison comes into the newest series as a person who still highly prizes fame and fortune to the point that she is constantly spewing vitriol about the people around her and whom she believes do not measure up to her. As such, Conrad at first hopes to depict her as a reprehensible person in the first book of the series. In Starstruck, Madison must complete 300 hours of community service for theft. Through her hard labour, Madison discovers that there are more important things than the current season labels she wears or what restaurant she gets seen at (though it is not clearly explained why, its just like someone threw a switch and suddenly Madison changes). At the very least, Madison is honest and is experiencing a transition between what she once held to be highly important, and a new set of ideals. Madison is the only interesting character because she is the closest thing approaching a normal literary character.
"Oh, I've missed you!"
"I've missed you, too." And God, what was with those mom jeans? The waist of them had to be six inches above her belly button. Didn't she understand she was going to be on TV?Or this one, where Carmen asks her mother what she is reading...
"It's about what they called learned optimism."
"What's that?" Carmen said. She didn't really care, but she didn't want to be impolite. (My emphasis)Wouldn't want to be seen to take an interest in something a family member is doing, much better to appear polite instead of being genuinely polite. Perhaps the most unpleasant of the four, Carmen is a spoiled rich girl who is either sniping at Madison, or making poor professional decisions at the expense of her friendships. One prominent example was when Carmen breaks up her for-the-paparazzi relationship with another young actor, Luke. The break-up is understandable (Luke is the definition of annoying and incapable of pronouncing the word "lover" without at least four O's), however, the reason Conrad gives us illogical. Carmen breaks off the fake relationship over the phone while at a party. She has just spent the last half hour flirting with a forgettable guy and decides she would like to hook up with him. The problem is her public (though fake) relationship with Luke. The relationship is profitable for both of them professionally; it promotes both the film the two are working on, and their own public image. Despite this, the fake relationship is broken off so Carmen can explore a real relationship. In the following days, Carmen see's her hook-up splashed across the pages of a tabloid. Only, the following happens to my surprise;
[S]he didn't really want to talk about the awful [tabloid] pictures. Or the fact that D-Lish suggested she'd hooked up with Reeve Wilson at that party, "only moments after being dumped by Luke Kelly." Ugh! (My emphasis)So... you didn't hook up with this new guy, Reeve? So why did you break off a lucrative arrangement with Luke for him? Potentially risking Luke's image, his publicity, his career? It doesn't make any sense! Conrad is surprising tight-lipped about her character's sexual lives. The reality of such a situation would be that Carmen had sex with Reeve but, rightly, needed to explain this to Luke beforehand to protect their professional relationship. However, Conrad tells us they did not have sex, though a tabloid assumed and "suggested" so, and the annulment of the agreement between Luke and Carmen was for nothing. Is Conrad so Mormon in her beliefs about the sexuality of women? Would it be so bad to just say "Carmen and Reeve had sex"?
Gaby, on the other hand, is almost comically stupid. Gaby is barely able to grasp the concept of speech. She doesn't complete her sentences and cannot grasp simple idioms ("The apple doesn't fall far from the pie"). It's like watching an episode of The Hills on steroids. No real person is this stupid unless they live under 24 hour care in a nursing facility. However, for comedic affect, Conrad writes Gaby's sub-human intelligence as manifesting in her addiction to prescription drugs, poor choice of sexual partners, and over-reliance on plastic surgery. My theory is that Conrad wants to elevate people of low to average intelligence (like herself) by contrasting her 'normal' characters (Kate and Carmen) with more stupider people (Gaby), making them and herself appear more intelligent by comparison. Unfortunately, when you are already scraping the bottom of the barrel of intellect, it is very difficult to write this contrast realistically. Gaby is more of a caricature than a character. The only purpose I see in Gaby is to make people like Conrad and the characters she presents as ideal humans seem more intelligent than their intellectually sub-par reality. Gaby is the sick puppy Conrad repeatedly kicks; within the first paragraph of chapter 22, the four main characters are getting ready for an awards event and Gaby asks her 'friends' to say something funny for her digital recorder "but everyone was pretty much ignoring her." This is but one of many, many instances of Gaby's ill-treatment (and probably not the worst). Yeah, these girls are really admirable human beings.
The only interesting character is Madison, the reformed bad-girl. Madison played the villain in Conrad's preceding L.A. Candy series. Madison comes into the newest series as a person who still highly prizes fame and fortune to the point that she is constantly spewing vitriol about the people around her and whom she believes do not measure up to her. As such, Conrad at first hopes to depict her as a reprehensible person in the first book of the series. In Starstruck, Madison must complete 300 hours of community service for theft. Through her hard labour, Madison discovers that there are more important things than the current season labels she wears or what restaurant she gets seen at (though it is not clearly explained why, its just like someone threw a switch and suddenly Madison changes). At the very least, Madison is honest and is experiencing a transition between what she once held to be highly important, and a new set of ideals. Madison is the only interesting character because she is the closest thing approaching a normal literary character.
Conrad hopes she will endear her vapid, asinine, narcissistic characters to her reading audience because though all of them are unintelligent, mean and superficial, to her these are minor imperfections that make them appear more human, flawed, and relatable. Did anyone ever see that movie 'Reality Bites' (1994)? The main characters in Reality Bites and vain, selfish and generally awful people but the director hopes this will endear the characters to us. Obviously, the movie fails because the director fails to understand the characters have no redeeming characteristics and there are no consequences for their poor behaviour. Compare this to a film like 'Trainspotting' (1996) where the characters are reprehensible, commit crimes and take drugs, but they successfully endear themselves to the audience because there are consequences (dead babies, for example) and they try to improve themselves once they recognize their own faults (quitting drugs cold turkey).
Conrad's characters are awful. Unlike Trainspotting and The Great Gatsby, they learn nothing and by the time the story is over (and you are ripping your own hair out in frustration), there are no consequences to any of their behaviour. At the end of the book, Gaby ends up in hospital after an overdose on drugs. This is not a direct result of the other three girls' bullying (indirect, at best) but rather a direct result of an attempt to impress her asshole boyfriend, Jay, who provides her with the illegal prescription. There is no lesson for the girls to learn. Conrad is more concerned with creating a cliff-hanger ending (Will Gaby survive?) than teaching her horrible characters any lessons, and ensuring her mindless followers purchase her next novel to find out what happens. Conrad's Starstruck falls more into the category of Reality Bites; unwittingly depicting terrible characters without any redeemable personality traits despite the author/director's best efforts.
A lot of Conrad's books read like The Hills episodes; vapid, and ultimately uninteresting. Scenes are short snippets that look in on characters, but (surprisingly) a lot of action happens off-screen. Madison adopts a dog and starts hanging out with Ryan 'off-screen' despite both of these plot points being important for her character development. Starstruck is too bad to be too heavily ghost written by my estimate, however, I do not doubt the presence of such assistance. Starstruck, indeed all of her books, are Conrad's shrine to an utterly vapid and superficial lifestyle. Conrad tries to tell us this lifestyle is acceptable, but it only paints herself as the awful person she is.
Conrad is a personified affront to literature. She has destroyed literature, in every possible way that literature can be destroyed (seriously, check out that book destruction video). Lacking the appropriate respect, she cares not for the careful traditions and conventions of book writing; her idea of authorship is a pandering, artless string of events which lead nowhere, inspire noone, and ultimately seeks to validate her own superficial, narrow-mined existence. So what is she trying to achieve here? What exactly has made Conrad a best-selling author with this tripe? It is the hoards of Conrad minions that follow her every move. This book is for them. It keeps them spellbound and docile, it keeps them coming back to her asinine website, it keeps them watching her craft videos on YouTube, it keeps them thinking that Conrad's lifestyle is the ideal lifestyle. This is a girl who failed her high school English classes and has no college education. And this, THIS, is what we tell our daughters is okay to idolize. That it is okay to be mean, materialistic, and devoid of anything resembling a brain. That it okay to cruise through life without working hard to become an well-rounded articulate human being. This is okay.
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