John Mulaney fans should stop being offended by his divorce...

[TMC]

...and new relationship with Olivia Munn: They know his comedy, but they don't know him

https://slate.com/culture/2021/09/jo...ationship.html

Mulaney fans have expressed disappointment -- not over his drug relapse and rehab stint, but for leaving his wife Annamarie Tendler and, later, dating (and having a baby with) Olivia Munn. But as Madison Malone Kircher points out, Mulaney -- like all standup comedians -- has always been putting on an act. "As a stand-up, John Mulaney’s job, or at least part of it, is to make you feel like you do know him," says Kircher. "You’re supposed to feel like you could borrow a cup of sugar from him, intimately chat him up at the dog park, or plan a long weekend getaway at an Airbnb in some wooded hamlet for you and your partner and Mulaney and his (now ex-)wife, Annamarie Tendler. Think of all the chickens you could roast! The thing is, if you actually tried to do any of those things, the first words that come to my mind when thinking of the immediate result are 'restraining order.' Because, again, you don’t know John Mulaney. You know his comedy. His persona. The version of Mulaney he selectively offers you at the mic. This applies to the parts of Mulaney you don’t like, too." Kircher adds: "For those Mulaney fans, the last nine months have felt like an emotional whirlwind: Mulaney’s rehab stint. His divorce announcement. The recently confirmed rumors that he and Olivia Munn, who once credited getting basically a new face to eating special potatoes, are dating and expecting a baby. Mulaney’s fans had, and continue to have, strong feelings about all of it—like these were actions and decisions that impacted them, as though John Mulaney was a fixture in their social lives and not just a celebrity stranger...The thing about parasocial relationships is calling them entirely one sided is to lightly gaslight the person on that one side. (Sorry to deploy yet another psychology term so overused by the internet it has effectively lost all its original meaning. Still works here, though.) Parasocial relationships are precisely how and why some people get famous. These people compel us. These people employ PR operations to help compel us. They want you to get to know 'them.' It’s good for their art; it’s even better for their business. Taylor Swift could write a book on cultivating parasocial relationships with fans, what with her secret listening parties in her home for megafans sourced from the depths of the internet, custom care packages mailed to Tumblr stans, showing up at the occasional wedding with an acoustic guitar in hand. None of this makes her fake; it makes her brilliant. (In case it’s not very clear: You also don’t actually know Taylor Swift. Leave her alone, too.)"

[Chocolate Moose]

i guess.

[TMC]

John Mulaney's nice-guy schtick was probably always doomed to lead to disappointment

The past year has been jarring for fans of Mulaney, who a year ago was "sober, happily married, happily childless." Mulaney, says Aja Romano, "is arguably one of a crop of celebrities and pop culture figures who gained popularity during a period of Obama-era liberal optimism — think Leslie Knope and Lin-Manuel Miranda. After getting his start in standup during the mid-aughts, Mulaney joined the writing team of Saturday Night Live, becoming a formidable comedy name whose relatable, down-to-earth jokes soon proliferated across social media. Gags like the one where he played Tom Jones 21 times on a diner jukebox won over audiences for their essential banality as much as for their hilarity. As barbed as Mulaney’s humor could often be, it was generally introspective rather than aimed outward — self-deprecating rather than toxic. Even his weirder material, such as his repertoire of absurdist comedy, was a normal, benign kind of nerdery, palatable whether it was being memed by quirky geeks on Tumblr or touted by the edgelords of Reddit. He was the quintessential well-meaning, mild-mannered, liberal comedian (one veiled anti-Trump joke about the death of Julius Caesar got him investigated by the Secret Service in 2020). Onstage and off, Mulaney spoke openly about his personal life — particularly how much he loved his now-estranged wife (Anna Marie) Tendler...The couple (and their beloved dog Petunia) were touted for their normal-people vibes; one notable example appeared in an episode of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, in which Tendler eviscerated Mulaney’s terrible rug-buying choices. They were cute, funny, domestic, and, again, relatable — and that relatability allowed Mulaney to cultivate and benefit from an assumed intimacy with his fandom, even as he held people in reserve. Ultimately, all of that former intimacy and openness has rebounded upon Mulaney this year — perhaps because little feels more relatable than the grief Tendler expressed when Mulaney, apparently after leaving her for (Olivia) Munn, filed for divorce. 'I am heartbroken that John has decided to end our marriage,' she told Page Six in May...Meanwhile, Mulaney, while dealing with drug addiction issues during an isolating pandemic, has also struggled to overcome the public’s emerging narrative of him as a wolf in sheep’s clothing...Granted, the newly established narrative of Mulaney as a hypocrite relies on a regressive, heteronormative version of domestic bliss — happily married, monogamous, with a dog — and that doesn’t always align with reality either, as many have been quick to point out...The problem, however, is that Mulaney himself cultivated this idealism and used it to promote his brand: He was a likable, happily married everyman, and that made him approachable and unlike the 'average' Hollywood celebrity. He performed this role so well, in fact, that it didn’t feel to the audience like a performance — and so they forgot that it was, and had been all along."