Why Do We Have Parasocial Relationships with Celebrities? John Mulaney Edition
I don’t know John Mulaney. I don’t know his ex-wife, Anna Marie Tendler, and I don’t know his new girlfriend, Olivia Munn. What I do know is that the news of Olivia’s pregnancy is taking up way too much of my mental energy.
I am not the only person upset about this news. Shortly after paparazzi pictures of Olivia in a sweatshirt badly concealing her baby bump leaked, and John went on Seth Meyers’ show to announce the “good news”, fans took to Twitter to analyze the timeline John gave. He said that he went to rehab in September, moved out of the house from his now-ex wife in October, relapsed after the Halloween SNL episode, went back to rehab in December, moved to LA in the spring which is when he met and started dating Olivia Munn. So, basically, he knocked up another woman within nine months of leaving his wife. Suffice it to say, fans who had previously seen John Mulaney as a nice, funny guy deeply in love with his wife were upset. Really upset. I know because every other TikTok on my For You Page is about the situation.
Why are so many fans, especially teenage girls, feeling anger and heartbreak over a marriage we aren’t a part of? Of course, the heart-wrenching photo series “Rooms in the First House”, Anna Marie Tendler has been posting on her instagram, specifically “Dinner in March”, hasn’t helped things. One can’t help but see the photographs and feel empathy for Anna. However, empathy for someone going through a difficult time and feeling their heartbreak as your own are two entirely different things. That feeling of emotional attachment towards a celebrity or fictional character is called a parasocial relationship.
According to Oxford Reference, parasocial relationships “psychologically resemble those of face-to-face interaction but they are of course mediated and one-sided.” The key word here is “one-sided”. While it’s great to care about others, and to support them if you like what they do, parasocial relationships can become unhealthy if expectations become blurred. In the end, these celebrities don’t owe us anything, but when you form a parasocial relationship with them, you start to feel as though they really are your friend - therefore, you’re affected by their actions the way you would someone you know in real life.
If you aren’t already familiar with the term parasocial relationship, you’re definitely familiar with the effects - how do you think Harry Styles is so unbelievably successful? Yes, he’s talented, but if you really think about it, he’s no more special than any other white male celebrity. What has sky-rocketed him to legend status is his intensely loyal fanbase, pretty much all of whom have had a parasocial relationship with him since his One Direction days. BTS and Justin Bieber are other attractive male singers who have millions of girls desperately in love with them despite never meeting. This trend can be traced back to The Beatles, five super average looking white guys who hit the music scene just as TV took off, meaning they were some of the first faces young girls saw on their screens. Because of this timing, the Beatles had millions of girls going nuts for them– in a way no fan base had been for a celebrity before. Social media has created the next wave of people teenage girls can fixate on, since now we have them right in our pockets. This started with O2L and has become Vinnie Hacker. These boys are on screens we use everyday, making it even easier to feel connected to them.
Other examples include Taylor Swift, whose breakup songs make girls feel like they have an ally and friend when it comes to their own relationships, and Harry Potter, whose fictional world inspired a legion of people on TikTok to “shift” in their sleep to become a Hogwarts student… which is obviously bullshit. I’m not sure if the people making TikToks about these experiences want to believe it so badly they actually think they shift or if they just want to get famous on the internet, but either way, it’s just not healthy.
In my personal experience, I formed a far less intense parasocial relationship with John Mulaney because I love what he talks about in his stand-up and his personality off-stage. He has segments about how much he loved his then-wife, including a funny bit about her crush on Timothee Chalamet, and how he made his past addiction issues hilarious (a little less funny now that we know they weren’t really in the past). I think it’s so cool he worked alongside and is even besties with some of my favorite white men of SNL, like Bill Hader, Seth Meyers, Jason Sudeikis, and Andy Samberg. I had an idea in my head that he was one of the “good guys”, and “not like other white cis straight celebrities”. To be honest, I haven’t had a lot of positive male influences in my life besides my dad, since my cousins and uncles live far away and I’m an only child. Because of that, I made John Mulaney an influence. I put him on a pedestal, and he has no idea who I am.
I was able to get some insight on the matter from Dr. Ilyssa Salomon, a professor here at Elon. “I think it’s important to make a distinction between parasocial relationships and participating in celebrity culture and gossip. Not everyone posting about the situation or talking about it might feel the level of intimacy that defines a parasocial relationship,” she said. “Gossip serves a unique social purpose and can help people reinforce cultural values and expectations. To me, someone talking about the situation is different than feeling deeply emotionally affected by it.”
Dr. Solomon is absolutely right - a lot of the backlash against John Mulaney is from bored people who just want to criticize someone. For those of us who did feel emotionally affected by his, in my opinion, shady behavior, we need to take a step back and remember he is a human and humans aren’t perfect. We can still enjoy his comedy and his writing without approving of everything he does. And we can even still care about him from our removed place as content consumers. But we need to stop vilifying celebrities for not living up to our perfect standards.