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Be kind, rewind: Why the tables have turned on Ellen DeGeneres

Be kind, rewind: Why the tables have turned on Ellen DeGeneres

Be kind, rewind: Why the tables have turned on Ellen DeGeneres
Aug 07, 2020 2 mins, 12 secs

It came from actor Dakota Johnson, who was being interviewed by Ellen DeGeneres in November 2019 and had found herself the butt of one of DeGeneres’s jokes.

If you’ve never seen clips of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, this is part and parcel of the hosts’ interview schtick: in her singsong patter, she throws out some awkward comments that make celebrities sweat a tiny bit, all in the spirit of the show.

Much of the recent outrage around Ellen stems from the fact that people don’t like to feel as though they’re being sold a lie.

On the same thread, journalist Carrie Poppy said: “My friend who worked at Real Food Daily says Ellen came in and dined, and when she saw her server had a chipped nail, Ellen called management and tried to get her fired.” This sort of hearsay wouldn’t constitute a crisis for just any star – after all, Hollywood is full of stories of celebrities being rude and treating their perceived subordinates badly.

Fans (me included) began a reckoning, not only with DeGeneres as a person but with Ellen as a format, too.

The cruelty of The Ellen DeGeneres Show, however, was far subtler.

DeGeneres makes Aniston look silly – “that’s a really pretty bike… pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty,” Aniston says, as DeGeneres delivers instructions into her earpiece.

The show has other uncomfortable segments of a similar ilk, like “Ellen’s got your Facebook photos!”, where she unearths your (usually revealing) online pictures, and “Caught on the Ellen shop’s hidden camera!”, where audience members are given the opportunity to steal from the gift shop and then the incriminating footage is played on the big screen.

Last year, around the time of Dakota-Johnson’s-birthday-party-gate, DeGeneres came under fire after pictures emerged of her hanging out with George Bush, a former president who actively stood against same-sex marriage.

It seems absurd that behind the scenes, the makers of Ellen don’t seem to understand that “kindness” also means taking account of things like racism, sexism and working conditions.

But it looks like the problem isn’t just about DeGeneres as an individual, and is instead a systemic one that plagues the whole Ellen business from the top down.

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