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It’s been nearly a year since Hilaria Baldwin, the yoga influencer and wife of Alec Baldwin, was caught in the slightest of scandals. Many months before the tragedy that befell her husband’s movie set, she was revealed to have been born in Boston, despite using a Spanish accent for much of her career, one largely lived on social media. The story spawned endless coverage from outlets including the New York Times. Business Insider applied Zapruder-film scrutiny to her Instagram account under the headline “A complete timeline of Hilaria Baldwin’s contradictory and misleading public life, and how it all blew up.”
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News of the wrongful-use-of-accent, unearthed in December around Christmas last year, somehow broke through that month’s despair: a COVID-19 surge that would take the lives of more than 65,000 Americans in December alone; holidays separated from family; an election result absurdly contested by President Donald Trump; even a suicide bomber in Nashville. Soon, on January 6, insurrectionists stormed the Capitol. A year’s contentious narrative was set.
I have written before about the psychological role stories of no consequence play as respite from larger issues sometimes too upsetting or complex to process. For many, Histaria Hilaria was a mental vacation. There were no sides to take; the “crime”—a performer caught in her own performance in the artifice of social media. Hahaha.
But it also was allegory, as are so many popular stories that reached fever pitch this year. With high profile stakes, there was Theranos, of course, and Britney Spears’ conservatorship, but also Ozy Media’s collapse, the dismantling of the fable of the man who claimed to invent Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, and, more recently, Aaron Rodgers’ vaccine lie. But all these viral tales—some far more serious than others—were media flotsam reflecting the deeper currents shaping the year.
You see, today ours is increasingly an age of multiple, allowable and increasingly…
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Source : time
