Stuff I love: La Toya Jackson creates a milkshake

I’m fascinated by celebrity performance that happens at press conferences, on red carpets, media interviews, etc. In my own way, I’ve been inside similiar experiences so I like to see how other people handle it.

I think the above video is brilliant on so many aesthetic levels. I love it. A few reasons why…

1. The pop-kitsch pink and purple colour scheme as well as the consistency of the flash bulbs unifies this piece visually from start to finish.
2. The obligatory charity referencing to make sure everyone knows this is a worthwhile project. It’s dead Michael’s favourite charity, too, which makes a great pull quote for print media picking up the story. It could also stir up more press.
3. La Toya’s performance seems totally contrived and yet she is so charming in her artificiality that I adore her mischievous girlish antics!
4. This gets a press conference? Work.
5. I think alot of the press turned up because Latoya would be more “media-worthy” so soon after her brother’s death.
6. The Hollywood.tv logo never comes off its prominent place on the screen, yet the colour scheme of the branding is in sync with the rest of the video.
7. La Toya’s surgical face and wig seem to be commenting on the “fakeness”, the constructed-ness of the entire event. Yet, to me, she is as lovable as a doll. Sometimes I see a calculating intelligence her eyes. FYI, I’m not judging that.
7. The inclusion of children in the press op is very provocative to me. I don’t know how I feel about asking children to navigate that many levels of performativity. As much as I adore her, it also seems pretty shady to me how La Toya is generating so much ‘authentic’ love and affection for the commodity, milkshakes. It’s a little unnerving for me when she’s positioning the children, too.
8. The two men who join La Toya at the end to invite you down for milkshakes seem out of place. The one guy is giving me a kind of used car salesman performativity adding a new kind of masculine artificiality. Also, the beige suit jacket and red t-shirt definately seem out of place in this pink and purple candy world.
9. La Toya’s posing for photographs is so audaciously contrived I salute her bravery. Her posing reaches its greatest moment in the freeze at 2:52 IMO.
10. Sales ads for Hollywood.tv pop up asking if you want to post their videos, adding a meta-layer of commerciality.
11. I do not think the “Hollywood as it Happens” subtitle at the beginning is supposed to be ironic, but how can that not feel like a satire? Does that nuance just slip by most people?
12. La Toya’s eye shadow and lip colour seem somewhat carefully coordinated with the general aesthetic of the Millions of Milkshakes’ decor and logo branding which is a great nuance.
13. Even though La Toya’s in her forties she is wearing an off the shoulder sweater which is fabulous. It makes her seem younger but also challenges notions of age appropriate-ness.
14. At 1:16 she turns putting on plastic gloves into an event worthy of its own photo moment. Work every moment.
15. At 1:33 the pouring of the vanilla milkshake almost takes on a sexual energy in her posing but she catches herself.
16. At 1:51 one of the paparazzi laughs and it sounds like a mocking laughter which makes me feel for La Toya who, again, seems so childlike.
17. I actually believe La Toya is about five or six years old at 2:14 when she says “little piece of chocolate” and unwraps the candy bar. Then she puts the chocolate bar in the goo-ey milkshake and raises it with a slight air of triumphant.
18. In general, La Toya is giving me a kind of child beauty pagaent effect with some of her posing which makes everything seem simultaneously performed yet charming.