Writing Personality Profiles

An anonomous commentary from fametracker.com about the recent issue of Vanity Fair. I've just excerpted the remarks about the writing of personality articles (in this case profiling the actress in Alias)

The article, on the other hand, is, like all the profiles in this issue (George Hamilton, Michael Caine, David Arquette, DMX) written in a sort of gibberish. Yes, it's English, but it's a subset of the language you could call "Profilese." It involves writing sentences that sound good or, failing that, remind you of sentences you've read elsewhere that sounded good. It involves stringing the sentences together with a pleasing rhythm that's just distracting enough to fill the three hours or so that it takes to fly from Chicago to Phoenix, but that will leave you with no impression whatsoever. Because these sentences are meaningless, by many different definitions.

One of the tactics of Profilese on display in the Garner profile is the one by which you cram your articles with references, both high and low, to prove to the reader that you are not just a profile-churning-out hack, but rather you are well-versed in kitsch and the classics alike. You are Übermensch!

To this end, the profile makes reference to all of the following, all on the very first page, and all in service of describing just what kind of show Alias is: Bettie Page, Kafka, La Femme Nikita, Freud, Nabokov, Charlie's Angels, Michael Crichton, and Dostoyevsky. Phew! Thank goodness all those things existed, or we wouldn't have Alias today!

Another tenet of Profilese is that you must write overly literate-sounding sentences; again, to convince the reader that (a) you are really a much better writer than all this; and (b) this subject actually merits their interest, let alone their attention.

So we have sentences such as: "So those are the hands that pick the pockets that hold the keys that lock the doors that guard the secrets that threaten our sleepy world." Which sounds pretty, but makes about as much sense as the teacher's speeches to the class in a Charlie Brown cartoon.

Or this: "She is the daughter of a chemical engineer who left Texas for points east when Dow and Carbide, lured by the twin sirens of cheap land and lax pollution regulation, flooded the area with money." She's not just Jennifer Garner, she's the heroine in a Richard Ford short story!

Or this: "Like Sydney, like Elektra, Jennifer lives in two worlds." This is the I've Figured Her Out sentence. It is a requisite in every celebrity profile. Note the use of the first name, which drives home just how precisely the writer has nailed the very essence of Garner -- nay, of Jennifer.

Anyway, the whole article is made up of these meaningful-sounding but meaningless sentences. We could go on about this, but we'll just say: celebrity profiles suck. They all suck. And trying to dress them up in flouncy language and fake-resonant observations makes them suck more.

We know people have to write them and make a living and we don't begrudge those people, but understand this: the profiles suck. Sorry, but they do. You might consider yourself a chef, but you are working at McDonald's and you are making Big Macs.