TMC
12-17-2022, 09:18 PM
https://slate.com/culture/2022/12/aubrey-plaza-white-lotus-emily-criminal.html
When you think of the face of a generation, your mind goes first to the biggest names, which for millennial actresses might be someone like Jennifer Lawrence or Kristen Stewart. But while Plaza has never anchored a blockbuster franchise or even a major movie hit—unless you count her vocal cameo in Monsters University, her biggest domestic grosser is Judd Apatow’s Funny People, in which she played a supporting part—the 38-year-old has had a knack for choosing roles that seem to connect with something larger about the evolution of her generation, roles that are, to use a word that age cohort has pounded almost into oblivion, iconic. (I acknowledge that if you were to apply this word to Aubrey Plaza in her presence, you would likely be rewarded with an April Ludgate–style eye roll to end all eye rolls.)
It would be reductive to say that Plaza’s playing the same character in everything she does, but her best performances feel as if they spring from the same source. (Think of her as the millennial John Cusack.) Parks and Recreation’s Ludgate and The White Lotus’ Harper aren’t the same person, but you can see how one might have become the other if their life had taken a different turn. Plaza initially became famous for her withering deadpan, the kind that could reduce the hopes of an idealist less determined than Leslie Knope to a smoldering ruin. But as Parks and Rec moved away from The Office’s cringe comedy, we started to see that there was more to April, and to Plaza, than her death-at-a-thousand-paces glare. Her reflexive cynicism was a defense mechanism, and sometimes an offensive weapon, as when her budding standup in Funny People mowed down the skepticism of older male comics with a quip about her “skinny vagina.” But not too far underneath it, and closer to the surface the older both she and her characters got, was an idealistic yearning for a better world, or at least a better life.
Sometimes that idealism tips into delusion, as in Ingrid Goes West, in which Plaza’s character becomes obsessed with Taylor Sloane, a social media influencer played by Elizabeth Olsen. Ingrid is like April turned inside-out, as vulnerable as the latter is guarded, and though she’s a fluid liar, ingratiating her way into Taylor’s life through a series of ruses, she’s not calculating or self-possessed enough to plan for the long term. All she wants is to feel as if someone important knows that she exists, although her definition of important has been entirely thrown out of whack by the skin-deep nature of online validation. The character is never formally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, but plenty of viewers have picked up on the signs, and at the very least it’s clear she has serious mental health issues, as well as a complete lack of anyone in her life to tell her she needs help.
When you think of the face of a generation, your mind goes first to the biggest names, which for millennial actresses might be someone like Jennifer Lawrence or Kristen Stewart. But while Plaza has never anchored a blockbuster franchise or even a major movie hit—unless you count her vocal cameo in Monsters University, her biggest domestic grosser is Judd Apatow’s Funny People, in which she played a supporting part—the 38-year-old has had a knack for choosing roles that seem to connect with something larger about the evolution of her generation, roles that are, to use a word that age cohort has pounded almost into oblivion, iconic. (I acknowledge that if you were to apply this word to Aubrey Plaza in her presence, you would likely be rewarded with an April Ludgate–style eye roll to end all eye rolls.)
It would be reductive to say that Plaza’s playing the same character in everything she does, but her best performances feel as if they spring from the same source. (Think of her as the millennial John Cusack.) Parks and Recreation’s Ludgate and The White Lotus’ Harper aren’t the same person, but you can see how one might have become the other if their life had taken a different turn. Plaza initially became famous for her withering deadpan, the kind that could reduce the hopes of an idealist less determined than Leslie Knope to a smoldering ruin. But as Parks and Rec moved away from The Office’s cringe comedy, we started to see that there was more to April, and to Plaza, than her death-at-a-thousand-paces glare. Her reflexive cynicism was a defense mechanism, and sometimes an offensive weapon, as when her budding standup in Funny People mowed down the skepticism of older male comics with a quip about her “skinny vagina.” But not too far underneath it, and closer to the surface the older both she and her characters got, was an idealistic yearning for a better world, or at least a better life.
Sometimes that idealism tips into delusion, as in Ingrid Goes West, in which Plaza’s character becomes obsessed with Taylor Sloane, a social media influencer played by Elizabeth Olsen. Ingrid is like April turned inside-out, as vulnerable as the latter is guarded, and though she’s a fluid liar, ingratiating her way into Taylor’s life through a series of ruses, she’s not calculating or self-possessed enough to plan for the long term. All she wants is to feel as if someone important knows that she exists, although her definition of important has been entirely thrown out of whack by the skin-deep nature of online validation. The character is never formally diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, but plenty of viewers have picked up on the signs, and at the very least it’s clear she has serious mental health issues, as well as a complete lack of anyone in her life to tell her she needs help.