Joansing for the Red Carpet

In case you haven't heard, or have yet to read the actual articles in this section: Columbia has a lot of people involved with these awards. It's awesome and all that, especially since (a) a couple are also Spectator alums, and (b) one of them happens to be the ridiculously pretty Jake Gyllenhaal, a CC drop-out.

But, as great as Tony Kushner, CC '78 and Dan Futterman, CC '89 are, I'm personally a little more excited about a Barnard alum involved in the whole thing: Joan Rivers, BC '54. OK, obviously the woman's been involved in more Oscars than I think she wants anyone to count, lest the number belies her actual age, but this year, I've finally realized that I've been wrong about her for a long time.

Truth is, I've despised her most of my life. Or, to put it more accurately, I've been absolutely terrified of her (that face, that laugh: it's the stuff of nightmares). But following some freak television-viewing accidents-I didn't mean to be watching that much E! Golden Globes coverage, really-I've suddenly realized just how bad the rest of the field is and how much Rivers has really done for the world of red carpet bitchiness.

Rivers is really the only woman who has been able to find the right combination of personal quirkiness, gossip-minded instincts, and faux-fashion sense to make the whole red carpet experience work.

These are subtle skills, only made more evident when you watch someone like Kathy Griffin or Star Jones give it a try. The former has the right amount of energy, but totally the wrong amount of awkwardness. Watching someone who has tried to make it in Hollywood and is now reduced to hunting the cool kids down on the red carpet is just painful. Her constant need to pretend to act like their best friend during interviews is even worse, and the fact that she always manages to look like an attempt to revive late-1990s style gone terribly wrong doesn't help either. Anyone who gets a kick out of her pre-awards show is just cruel.

But Griffin always paled next to Star Jones. Whoever decided to let her get on the red carpet should be condemned to that special place in hell reserved for the people who hired Ryan Seacrest and Ty Pennington-there are some things that should just never be inflicted upon the world.

Star Jones can best be wrapped up by a quick summary of her red carpet shows that followed her wedding: every interview took about .05 seconds to turn into Jones again mentioning her wedding, her wedding dress, or her husband. Her poor, helpless victims seemed so bewildered by her lack of concern about, well, them, that they would just stand there, not able to free themselves, feebly attempting to direct the conversation back to their own nominations. Once again, painful.

So the obvious question in all this is, does it even matter? Aren't all red carpet shows inherently over-the-top due to their voyeuristic, all-Hollywood subjects?

In one way, yes. But, in another sense, as ridiculous as they are, red carpets are the only ways in which awards show are really ever interesting or involve the viewer.

Caring about who wins the Oscars or the Grammys usually isn't very fun. With the Oscars, the winner is pretty easy to predict months in advance; with the Grammys, if they would quit figuring out a way to give U2 more awards each year, maybe somebody would care about the actual ceremony.

The red carpet, however, was made for the viewers. Not only is it the chance to critique the stars, it's also as close to real glimpses of the Hollywood It Girls and Boys as you'll ever get. Tabloids always take things out of context, and in-depth features on stars are always so filtered through various editorial slants that they tend to communicate more the essence of a star-they're just plain unrealistic.

But, caught unaware by the right red carpet personality, celebrities reveal a real person for a second, a nervous newcomer, an excited nominee, a disinterested outsider. It's one of those times public persona slips away, and I can't think of anyone who doesn't, in a small way, want to see what's behind fame.

When you get a character like Kathy Griffin or Star Jones on the carpet, you don't get that. All you have is that person projecting his or her own desires for fame on the A-listers.

It takes someone like Joan Rivers to produce those moments. Whether it's planned or not, Joan does have that ability to crack facades. In a weird way, it's a talent, a different form of journalism. And in a weirder way, it's hard to not watch.

Futterman and Kushner may have the writing skills to be nominated, but maybe it's this alum who really deserves notice.

Ciel Hunter is a Columbia College senior majoring in English and comparative literature.