And so to a psychologically complex week for relations between the alpha males and the animals. In the wilds of the American internet, rumours fly that Leonardo DiCaprio is raped by a bear in his forthcoming movie, an eye-catching misconception to which we shall come shortly. Meanwhile, in Africa – country of contradictions – Prince Harry posts a picture of himself lying on top of a sedated female elephant, along with a ponderous self-penned caption that includes the words: “I decided to take a moment”.
Thanking you, Prince U-OK-Hun.
The official explanation for this is that Harry’s post-army gap year has taken him to Kruger national park, where he has been de-horning endangered rhinos and whatnot. Think of these activities as the methadone to the heroin of being an Apache pilot. It’s not quite the same high as bearing down on a wedding party, but you’re more likely to be socially functional on it.
Anyway, never mind the official explanation, because Lost in Showbiz has alternative theories. The first is that Harry is compiling a personalised medieval bestiary as a charity book to be sold next to tills next Christmas, wherein each photo of HRH with an animal is accompanied by some sort of questionable allegorical tale. This one is called Elephants Are So Muche More Than Fourthe In Line to the King of Beastes.
The second theory is that Harry is now unwittingly assisting in the work of certain sections of the press, which have slowly but surely been starting to shoehorn him into the role of the royal family’s Sad Jen, after the hugely successful, always cheery-looking – and, indeed, now married – Jennifer Aniston. Consider a typical headline from the Daily Mail last year: “Loneliness of Prince Harry: Dumped by BOTH of his great loves, jealous of William’s happy family – and about to turn 30”. You see? He’s only one Angelina short of a pity-party in his storied Highgrove cellars drinking den, Club H.
Against this backdrop, you do have to question the wisdom of Harry having to “take a moment” atop a slumbering elephant. The post might as well be soundtracked with Celine Dion’s All By Myself. No one who mainlines Windsor fairytales should be rooting for anything other than Harry to find a glass slipper sharpish – or at least an elephant-foot umbrella stand that could be slotted over the hoof of a comely, if heavily tranquilised, pachyderm.
Even so, it’s still not the most troubling man-and-beast moment of the week. That honour must belong to Leonardo DiCaprio, star of The Revenant. The film has yet to be released, but having had a look at the synopsis, I can confirm that it is one of those movies in which A Man is marooned Outdoors. Somewhere Outdoors, it is rumoured, there is a buried Oscar, and to find it you will need to go at least one hour of movie time without a word of dialogue, bar talking desperately to yourself. There’s literally no sushi unless you knock it up yourself after fishing an ice hole, and if you want an entourage, you’ll have to tame it yourself.
Imagine the internet’s delight, then, when on Tuesday the Drudge Report alleged that Leonardo was raped not once but twice in this movie – and by a bear.
Well. I know what you’re thinking: can’t we just get back to the time when Hollywood men could make their big solo frontier picture without being subject to cross-species acts of sexual violence? But as so often with these instances of nostalgia, Lost in Showbiz has to gently remind you that you are harking back to a halcyon past that never really existed. Go and rewatch Dances With Wolves and you’ll see all kinds of sexual microaggressions toward Kevin Costner by Two Socks. That’s what The Outdoors is like. That’s what happens, doesn’t it?
Yet not according to Fox, which, after two days of raging speculation about this ursine sex crime, felt moved to issue a formal statement denying it had taken place. “As anyone who has seen the movie can attest,” the studio insisted, “the bear in the film is a female who attacks Hugh Glass because she feels he might be threatening her cubs ... there is clearly no rape scene with a bear.”
So there you have it. All that was missing was an interjection from my favourite movie critic, Fox overlord Rupert Murdoch, who can always be relied upon to deliver a striking defence of his product. Who can forget his brilliant review of last year’s entirely whitewashed Exodus: Gods and Kings? “Moses film attacked on Twitter for all-white cast,” he summarised. “Since when are Egyptians not white? All I know are.”
Obviously, Rupert enjoys most of today’s news on a tape delay, so it’s not too late for him to cut in with a critique. I think it’s safe to say there’s virtually nothing he could write that wouldn’t grip me if it opened with the scene-setter: “DiCaprio film attacked on Twitter for scenes of bear rape ...”
Liz Taylor: we salute you and your illegal Aids medication service
Has anyone ever written a pharmaceutical biography of Los Angeles? I should very much like to read one some day. Hopheads, drug wars, bent doctors, the rarefied chemical underground of Beverly Hills, and so much more – one route into understanding the city would certainly be via its synapses.
Worthy of a chapter all of her own would be the late, great Liz Taylor, a Proper Celebrity who is this week revealed as having operated an illicit Aids medication service out of her Bel Air mansion in the 80s. Unbeknown to the authorities, it is now claimed, she procured and distributed what were often hugely expensive or unregulated drugs to which patients were then denied access.
“It was a safe house,” her friend Kathy Ireland tells Entertainment Tonight. “A lot of the work that she did, it was illegal, but she was saving lives. She said her business associates pleaded with her to ‘leave this thing alone’. She received death threats. Friends hung up on her when she asked for help. But something that I love about Elizabeth is her courage.”
As for further details, Ireland states: “She would sell jewellery, there were transfers of money, there would be a paper bag, and there would be money. She thought she might get (caught) but she wasn’t afraid. She’d go to jail for it.”
Diamonds for antivirals – obviously Dame Liz is already a Lost in Showbiz untouchable, but she shines on all the more crazily for this.
Gwyneth’s Goop: the gift that keeps giving
To Goop, Gwyneth Paltrow’s brilliant satire on late-capitalist acquisition, which at this time of year is always a gift in itself.
Not two weeks after her Christmas present guide genuinely included $956 loo paper, Gwyneth is back playing cavaliers and roundheads again, this time dividing the world according to how they “do” gifting.
“There are the people with gift-wrapping stations,” we learn, “and there are the people who end up snagging a hopefully vaguely-artisanal six-pack to avoid showing up empty-handed.”
Quite so. Alternatively, there are the people who are enticed by the idea of a $46,000 Hermes mah-jong set, and there are the people who are beginning to identify as non-binary as far as Goop is concerned.
