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It could be worse for Justin Timberlake. Now that footage from his drunk-driving arrest from two years ago, footage that he fought to block from being released, has come to light, the silver lining is that other celebrities have behaved much more appallingly than Timberlake did in similar circumstances—recall Mel Gibson’s infamous antisemitic rant in 2006, or Shia LaBeouf’s antics during multiple arrests. In the video of Timberlake’s confrontation with the police, he is comparatively harmless, polite even. So why does it still feel so pathetic?
Timberlake’s intoxication in the footage is obvious to anyone watching, just as it must have been to the police officers who stopped him on that fateful Hamptons night. More than anything else, that’s what Timberlake ought to feel ashamed for. But it’s also true that he said a few things that don’t exactly burnish his reputation. When news of the arrest first broke, the thing people really lost their minds over was the detail, included in some of the reporting at the time, that Timberlake lamented to police that being booked might “ruin the tour.” The arresting officer, who apparently didn’t recognize Timberlake, reportedly asked in response, “What tour?” “The world tour,” Timberlake was said to have answered, arrogantly. But that’s not exactly how it went in real life, we now know: Instead, Timberlake mentioned he was on tour, and when one of the cops asked what kind of tour, he seemed to struggle to find the words to convey that he was a pop musician, and actually a quite famous one. “It’s hard to explain … I’m Justin Timberlake,” he said, because he is probably used to speaking to people to whom that means something. Unfortunately, the cop who stopped him that night was born about 10 years too late to be one of them.
It’s cringe to watch Timberlake struggle to walk in a straight line and not be able to comprehend that his fame and status aren’t going to protect him from having to go down to the station and indeed spend the whole night there, until the judge can arraign him in the morning. At one point, a friend of his shows up, and she too seems to find it hard to believe that the cops aren’t recognizing Timberlake and treating him like the VIP he is—“Stop it!” she says, more than once, not so much as a directive but more in the sense of “This can’t be reality.” When actress Reese Witherspoon was arrested in 2013, she was captured on camera sassily saying to the police officer, “Do you know my name? You’re about to find out,” that classic of the celebrity throwing around their weight genre. Timberlake and his friend who attempted to step in on his behalf never exactly reach for the full “Don’t you know who I am?” tact, and that, too, is striking, partly because clearly the police actually don’t know who he is, and partly because it seems like they might actually believe themselves to be above even that—of course you know who he is; of course you, a twentysomething cop in the Hamptons, are an avowed fan of “Bye Bye Bye” and “SexyBack.”
Witherspoon’s arrest footage was way more fun, in my opinion. (It helps that she apologized profusely for it at the time.) Yes, I can admit that there are a few amusing elements to the Timberlake footage: It’s funny that he was joking around at the police station, pretending to be surprised that the officers listed his race as “white”—especially considering all the accusations he’s gotten for appropriating Black music styles over the years. It’s amusing that he called the tests the cops gave him “hard” and that he called the officers “wild” for arresting him, too. And yet. If I sound like the only person who’s less than enthused by Timberlake’s downfall, it’s probably because I just find him a little sad these days, and this started way before he got arrested. Millennials who grew up with Justin Timberlake remember a time when this man was the coolest person on earth, the hottest, the most gifted, everything. (We were young, OK!) If he’s old and lame now, what does that make us? He deserves to be mocked, and worse, for driving drunk, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sad to remember that this slurring mess of a guy ever so briefly represented the very pinnacle of human existence. It’s hard to explain. He’s Justin Timberlake.
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