“IT'S CALLED GOSSIP AND OF COURSE IT'S AN OBSESSION OF MINE -ANDY WARHOL

In our digital age, just about everything that can be recorded is recorded. This goes double for celebrities. And so, like the voyeurs we are, we study under an unforgiving microscope the most trivial movements of our celebrities. We watch a sour-looking Jake Gyllenhaal trying to get into his car, noticing that the footage is over-exposed, washed out from all the flashbulbs going off while he tries to find his keys. It's surreal, and almost arty in its way, as it recalls the prescient and banal genius of Andy Warhol's films.

Video images such as these are the stock and trade of TMZ, and each show features such footage, and their bullying acquisition. On a recent episode, we got a story on Hulk Hogan and his family, who were visiting their incarcerated son on his 18th birthday. The TMZ narrator has no sympathy, and in a mocking tone that sounds like the playground taunts of a bully, rejoices in saying that for his birthday, "He's going to big-boy jail!" This snarling and acidic gloss is complemented by wacky special effects, all used in the service of making the celebrities look just as vain, entitled and idiotic as some people desperately need them to be.

-The Gazette
August 9 2008