Brangelina is kaput! Or should I say – since the uber-celebrity couple is apparently splitting back into plain (and at least temporarily single) Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie – Brangelina are kaput?
Either way, it’s news that rocks the world of aficionados of supermarket tabloids and celebrity magazines, who are legion, at least among Americans who shop for food. It has been estimated that the average food shopper in this country spends approximately one year of his or her entire life waiting in supermarket check-out lines. At least it seems that way. And as we wait, we read.
Yes, yes, yes, I know! The world is going to hell in a handbasket, whatever a handbasket is. Climate change as well as incessant war and economic upheaval are creating millions of desperate refugees and generally wreaking havoc across the globe. In this country we are additionally burdened with the strain of the unending presidential campaign from hell.
But for heaven’s sake, we need a break while we’re unloading packages of broccoli and pork chops and cans of chicken soup from our carts!
And so we have the sad (or happy?) diversion of Brangelina’s dissolution. Which, it’s worth noting, the tabs have been warning us of – well, ever since Pitt and Jolie became Brangelina. (The tabloids, for the three or so people who might not have noticed, are a teensy bit partial to alarmist and often completely bogus stories and headlines. “World coming to an end! Aliens suspected!”)
Before Brangelina, Brad – the world calls him “Brad,” so why shouldn’t I? – had been more prosaically part of the famed “Brad and Jen,” an idyllically married Hollywood couple. At least until Jolie was paired with Pitt in a forgettable (except for the steamy scenes) film. Fireworks! Bye-bye, Jen! Hello, Angie!
The superstars’ coupling was a real gift to the tabloids and celebrity gossip mags. It gave them a new and wonderful nickname – Brangelina! – for the new and wonderful couple, who proceeded, until this unhappy week, to dominate grocery checkout line reading material for the next 12 years.
Pre-Brangelina, the tabs had been a little bereft. The hot couple of Bennifer – among the first of the contemporary supercouples to be honored with a portmanteau name – had ceased to be. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez had briefly blazed a memorable (and as I recall memorably tasteless) path before flaming out about at about the time they celebrated their romance by making Gigli, a famously terrible movie.
(The shrewd Affleck realized “Bennifer” was too good a portmanteau name to lose. His next liaison was with actress Jennifer Garner, giving rise to Bennifer 2.0. Tabloid headline readers the nation over rejoiced, at least until Bennifer 2.0 itself short-circuited its marriage earlier this year.)
And while TomKat – Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes – was diverting, Cruise was just too creepily weird to make watching their tortured relationship really fun, y’know? And we tabloid fans really want fun.
Brangelina, though, had glamour – and diversity! Look at the rainbow of natural and adopted children they presented to the world.
And the glamour truly was awesome, all feverishly covered by the tabloids. They had fabulous homes in fabulous places, including a $60 million 35-room chateau, Miravel, complete with vineyard, olive groves and moat, in southern France. (In just the past week it was reportedly put on the market, should any of you have a hankering for a second home with a moat.)
The couple traveled the world in style, once dropping $35,000 on a three-day trip to Hong Kong.
They eschewed trips to the zoo for their kids, instead treating them to real life safaris with lions and tigers in the wild. The natural predators also helped keep predatory paparazzi at bay.
Plus, Pitt and Jolie weren’t just Beautiful People – although God knows they are very beautiful people. They had higher aspirations.
They combined family building with good works, notably by charging $14 million for the first pictures of their newborn twins in 2008, a sum they then donated to their personal charity to help children around the globe.
And they had Causes. Brad, for example, pals around with George Clooney, perhaps the godfather of all Cause-concerned actors. Brad was among a retinue of stars who descended on New Orleans after Katrina, and he brought with him a stable of hot shot architects – including Frank Gehry, and even we tabloid readers know who Frank Gehry is – to design affordable homes for the flooded-out hurricane victims.
Alas, it turned out that Gehry et al. didn’t really know how to build affordable homes, but it was the noble thought that counted and the wood rot was eventually fixed.
Jolie was perhaps even more devoted to her Causes, which included traveling the world as a United Nations special envoy. She poured so much time and energy into her U.N. service and a campaign to end war zone sexual violence that in 2014 she was presented with the Insignia of an Honorary Dame Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George by none other than Queen Elizabeth II herself.
Brangelina – along with their six children – actually went to Buckingham Palace and met the Queen!
Topping it all off, Pitt and Jolie continued acting, often to critical acclaim, and Jolie became a fairly respected director as well. Brangelina represented perhaps the ultimate in tabloid and gossip sheet royalty, and we humble supermarket habitués enjoyed their adventures.
Alas, those days are now gone. Last week, even Madame Tussaud’s in London – the ultimate arbiter of social standing? – bowed to reality and separated the images of Pitt and Jolie. Just as a little more than a decade ago they had torn waxen Aniston from waxen Pitt’s side and banished her to the less prestigious Tussaud’s in New York.
Ah well, life goes on. Not much they could do would top that Queen thing anyway. And Angelina and Brad are, when you think about it, getting a little long in the tooth.
Maybe it’s time for another and younger inspired matchup, one lending itself to a portmanteau nickname. Maybe Ryan Gosling and Anna Kendrick could get together and become Ryanna? Or Channing Tatum and Rooney Mara could transform themselves into Channooney?
Whatever! I am confident our tabloid geniuses will rise to the challenge.
(“Monitor” columnist Katy Burns lives in Bow.)