I Dish, Therefore I Am: Performing Toothy Tile and Ted Casablanca
by Frank Miller, PhD
On March 10, 2005, gossip columnist Ted Casablanca ran an item online under the heading "One Adorable Blind Vice":
Okay, sugar-muffins, the only reason this one's in the Vice section is because until quite recently, Toothy Tile was dating his superpopular, superannoyingly perfect girlfriend. Not boyfriend. Which, if you ask this old gossip whore, is the classification Tile would prefer his significant others be filed under in the very near future. Mere days ago … Tile was right out in the open holding hands with his man in a West Hollywood restaurant—which shall remain nameless—because I love going there and they probably wouldn't serve me anymore if I start outing their customers, ca-friggin'-peesh? Not that I'd be outing anybody, anyway. Mr. Tile took care of that himself. Covertly, but he did it. It was late in the afternoon; everybody had cleared out. Save Tile and his man-amigo, who extended his hands flat on the marble table (yes, that's a hint) until they were intertwined with Tile's. Massive smiles then appeared on both daring dudes...
And it ain't: Tobey M, Keanu Reeves, Jamie Fox(1)
The story was similar to numerous blind items Casablanca has run since bringing his column, "The Awful Truth," to E! Online in 1996. He relates a potentially scandalous story, usually with the kinds of revelations a major media gossip columnist would avoid, but disguises the object of his gossip behind a fanciful name like Morgan Mayhem, Furrowed Frank or Toothy Tile.
Most of the Blind Vice items lead to a quick burst of speculation then die out. But Toothy Tile has lived on, partly thanks to Casablanca, who has followed up over the last three years with stories suggesting that Tile and his boyfriend, whom Casablanca dubbed the Gray Goose in October 2007, had almost been arrested for "canoodling" in a parked car off the Sunset Strip, that Tile was shopping for the right news magazine in which to come out, that his management had convinced him to stay in and that he and the Goose were planning to either adopt a baby or father one with a surrogate. And as readers' guesses poured in, the items triggered more on-line responses, particularly on gay chat boards, and even led to the creation of ToothyTile.com, a website devoted primarily to speculation about Tile's identity.
The ongoing saga of Toothy Tile says a good deal about Internet gossip, its place within the gay community and its function as a moral compass. It also points to some interesting intersections of gossip and gendered performance.
Hollywood gossip, of course, was around long before the Internet. Usually dated from the start of Louella Parsons' syndicated column in 1925, the field has traditionally been female-dominated, with Parsons and her chief rival, Hedda Hopper, engaged in an often-uneasy power struggle with the movie industry. The film studios used them to promote their films and personalities but also dreaded the effect of a personal attack or untimely revelation. One unwritten rule, however, was that the most damaging items—criminal arrests, long-term affairs and homosexuality—were not for publication in any but the least reputable venues. Parsons, Hopper and most of Hollywood may have known that Ramon Novarro was gay, but they weren't about to publish the fact. And if a writer broke the rules—as Bill Robinson did when he wrote about Spencer Tracy's drinking problems and his relationship with Katharine Hepburn in a 1962 issue of Look—the offender was cut off from industry sources.
Even with the decline of the studio system, some restrictions still hold. Unless a star's drug use is impossible for the media to ignore, it's kept out of the gossip columns. And "outing" is still considered off-limits, at least to columnists working in the major media. That does not, however, mean that homosexuality and the closet are forbidden topics. That's where the blind item comes in. A blind item is a piece of gossip with no names attached. The subject is only hinted at, either with a reference to her or his role in the industry (eg, "Missy Movie/TV Series Actress(2)") or through clues hidden in the item's wording. Columnists use such items for stories they deem too damaging or stories for which they lack sufficient corroboration to withstand legal action. As The Hollywood Kids dubbed their blind items in Movieline Magazine, "Guess Who, Don't Sue (3)."
The performative nature of the blind item lies in its mediation of conflicting social roles. In "A Performance-Centered Approach to Gossip," Roger D. Abrahams analyzes gossip among the inhabitants of Richland Park, St. Vincent, in the British West Indies. He describes conflicting attitudes about gossip, which the Vincentians see as a form of "calling name," a presumption of familiarity that can include both addressing someone informally or, as he puts it, "naming a person when discussing his activities in conversation(4)." The blind item is a way of gossiping without the presumption of "calling name."
For the gay online community, gossip serves a variety of purposes. If nothing else, it provides its readers with a sense of titillation as they vicariously enjoy celebrities' lives, even when the object of interest is masked behind the veil of the blind item. Like many on-line discussion boards, gay gossip sites provide their geographically dispersed users with a sense of community. Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke describe gossip as "the glue that binds individuals together, especially in societies marked by rampant loneliness(5)."
One element unifying gossip communities is a shared sense of morality. In his pioneering study of "Gossip and Scandal," Max Gluckman describes the ways in which often quite vicious gossip has unified the Makah tribe of Washington's Puget Sound area by "mark[ing] it off from other groups(6)." A good deal of the Makah's gossip relates to the behavior of other tribe members, "demonstrating that the other parties are not worthy to be Makah(7)." In the same way, gay gossip unites the gay and lesbian community by establishing behavioral norms for that community, creating insiders aware of those norms and outsiders unaware of or opposed to them.
In the case of Toothy Tile, the nature of those norms depends on whether one is inside or outside the gay community. Within the world of heteronormativity, Toothy Tile is at fault both for being gay and, more important, for wishing to make a public proclamation of that fact. Despite the social changes of the past 50 years, the entertainment industry appears to be dealing with sexual orientation by the same standards in operation when Universal Pictures forced Rock Hudson to take a wife to forestall suspicions of homosexuality. The current attitude is described quite simply in one publicity-shy, or rather gay-publicity shy actor's legal complaint against a porn star who had claimed a relationship with him: "While plaintiff believes in the rights of others to follow their own sexual preference, vast numbers of the public throughout the world do not share his view and, believing that he had a homosexual affair and did so during his marriage, they will be less inclined to patronize [his] films, particularly since he tends to play parts calling for heterosexual romance and action adventure(8)." No doubt, these are the same audiences who would expect the actor to know how to pilot a jet fighter in real life.
The same values would not hold for gay men and lesbians, particularly the increasing numbers living openly. I would suggest that for that audience the norm violated by Toothy Tile is openness. His transgression is staying in the closet. Aaron Ben-Ze'ev suggests, "the immoral behavior of famous people, reported in gossip columns, enhances our self-respect.(9)" The story of Toothy Tile allows gay men and lesbians to feel superior to a public figure who may in many other ways be superior to them. In this sense, gay gossip gives the illusion of a level playing field. As Ferdinand Schoeman suggests, "[Gossip] is a primary means of maintaining and reinforcing social norms and of holding those in high status to the same standards that govern those not so situated.10"
The irony here is that gay and lesbian gossipers, and indeed most subscribers to on-line discussion groups, frequently closet their identities, if not their sexual orientations. Most contributors to these groups are either anonymous or identified by often-fanciful handles. Among the more prominent identifiers on the gay gossip board Datalounge are SusieLee, Ms. Irma Savant and Dame Celestia Crackhead. But even posters who identify themselves more clearly—including composer Marc Shaiman and film critic David Ehrenstein—only present a small portion of themselves on line, closeting what they do not want to share. Shaiman responds sporadically to defend entertainers he feels are being unjustly maligned, while Ehrenstein most often shares his anger over social inequality or frustration with allegations of homosexuality he considers false.
C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby have described this type of performance as the "'partial' presentation of self," something that happens in most human interactions, but is "magnified" on the Internet, "due to the relative absence of traditional identity markers.(11)" In relation to gossip, this poses special problems in evaluating the information posted. Online gossipers need to find a way to perform trustworthiness since, as Harrington and Bielby suggest, "speakers cannot implicitly trust one another on the basis of an intimate relationship.(12)" Posters can do this by citing sources or claiming some form of insider status, but not all claims of insider status are accepted. Obviously, some self-proclaimed insiders are fakes. But even those who clearly are who they say they are can have their assertions questioned. Despite his professional credentials, Ehrenstein has yet to convince many Dataloungers that Lena Horne and George Clooney are straight.
This brings up another characteristic of gossip that applies in the physical world as much as it does on line. As Maryann Ayim has written, "The test for truth in investigative gossip is inherently social. That is, the investigators will use community consensus as a primary indication of their proximity to the truth.(13)" In a world where gay men from Oscar Wilde to actor Robert Reed have had wives and children, there really is very little in the way of concrete evidence for the gender preferences of the famous. Such non-factual elements as the effectiveness of the gossip narrative and the desirability of the person considered to be closeted are often all it takes to support the veracity of gay gossip, creating a Pirandellian world in which it is gay if you think it gay.
Who, then, is thought to be the perpetually closeted Toothy Tile? Consensus gives the honor to Jake Gyllenhaal. In fact, there are several gay discussion boards like JakeWatch and Waiting for Toothy devoted primarily to discussion of the connections between the young actor and Casablanca's blind item, while another site, Oh My Godot, focuses on his friendship with Austin Nichols, the actor most often posited as the Gray Goose. Claims that Gyllenhaal has been romantically linked with Kirsten Dunst in the past and Reese Witherspoon at present are dismissed as bearding, relationships arranged to create the illusion of heterosexuality. Posters on Oh No They Didn't have even uncovered 16 clues within the Toothy Tile stories they say point to Gyllenhaal. For example, the marble table on which Tile and the Goose held hands has been linked to the tables at Basix Café in West Hollywood, where Casablanca's column had reported Gyllenhaal and a male friend lunching five days before the first Toothy Tile story appeared(14). Coincidence or, as Casablanca would put it, "co-inkydinky?" You be the judge.
So, what team is Jake playing for? How many beards do you see in this picture? And…Well, do I really have to say anything.
Whoever Toothy Tile may be, he clearly is performing only a "'partial presentation of self" in his public life. The story rings true because it reflects narratives about the Hollywood closet dating back to the silent era. But though barricading the closet door is business as usual in Hollywood, Casablanca's performance in this is something else entirely.
As surely as everyone else in this story—from gay Internet gossips to the real or invented Toothy Tile—is performing, so is Casablanca, or should I say, Bruce Bibbey (and why do I suddenly feel like Addison de Witt confronting Eve Harrington née Gertrude Slescynski?). Bibbey is a Texas-born entertainment reporter who adopted his pen name in 1987 when he started "The Awful Truth" column in Premiere magazine. He took the name from a character in Jacqueline Susanne's novel Valley of the Dolls, a bi-sexual film director widely believed to be modeled on Vincente Minnelli.
In his columns and media appearances, Casablanca projects the image of an effeminate gay man, breezy, self-assured and effortlessly caustic. A key part of that performance is the style in which he writes, a language he calls "Awful-Speak." His website even includes a glossary where the uninitiated can look up such pop culture neologisms as bod-goon, he-ho and sweatilicious(15).
This special language serves a dual purpose for Casablanca. For one thing, it provides a unifying device, reinforcing the sense of community gossip can create. Those who understand "Awful-Speak" become insiders, a linguistic reflection of the group's unity of interest in celebrity gossip of a lavender hue. The hyperbolic and allusive nature of his writing also gives it a camp quality, clearly establishing the writer and his performance as gay, yet another unifying element.
One important effect of that unity is the creation of trust, which, as I have mentioned, is an important factor in on-line gossip. Casablanca performs trustworthiness in two key ways. His use of "Awful-Speak" becomes a badge of friendship with his readers, creating the sense of intimacy that is a necessary prerequisite to effective gossip. In addition, his column is structured to underline his performance as a Hollywood insider. The first thing a reader sees when surfing to "The Awful Truth" is a page of gossip items—exclusive interviews, industry news and celebrity sightings—that help establish Casablanca's trustworthiness. The most recent column to include a Toothy Tile item leads with a report on actor Christian Bale's recent brush with the law. Casablanca pulls on an earlier interview to provide his own exclusive insights on what might have led to the actor's physical altercation with his mother and sister.
Yet, the performances that establish Casablanca's reliability as a gossip source actually conflict with each other, a problem not uncommon to professional gossips. One basic rule of gossip, as identified by Gluckman, is that "it is bad manners…to tell unpleasant stories about your friends to strangers(16)." The gossip columnist, however, does just that. To present oneself as a show business insider is basically to present oneself as a friend of the subjects of gossip. But the columnist also performs as a friend of the reader, who expects insider information that would violate the trust accorded to an insider. The blind item is a performance that mediates those conflicting roles, allowing the gossip columnist to perform as friend to both inquisitive readers and secretive celebrities.
The implications of Toothy Tile go further. More than simply the performance of Casablanca's conflicting roles, I would suggest that the Toothy Tile items also serve a subversive purpose. I am not, of course, imputing any revolutionary motive to Casablanca. His chief goal is to attract and keep readers, who in turn will read the advertising on his site and tune into the E! Entertainment Network, building its ratings and increasing its ad revenues.
The social implications exist nonetheless. I suggested earlier that the moral interpretation of the Toothy Tile story would be different for different communities. Within the context of "The Awful Truth," however, only one interpretation is possible. In his columns and television appearances, Casablanca is totally out with his own sexuality. He frequently alludes to the desirability of male sex symbols, as when he defines sweatilicious as "anything Christian Bale does with his shirt off(17)" For the past year, Casablanca has made frequent mention of his engagement and May 2008 wedding to partner Jon Powell. This clearly points to openness as the behavioral norm violated by Tile. Like his gay readers, Casablanca can position himself as morally superior to his subject. By doing this in the language of camp he also valorizes one of the most maligned stereotypes associated with male homosexuality, effeminacy, at the expense of an actor afraid to lose his traditionally masculine credibility should he ever come out.
The Tile stories also point to a future in which the Hollywood closet may be no more. One important element of gossip is its dialologic nature. It develops through the interactions of two or more people.
By provoking speculation, the blind item is inherently dialogic, functioning as the first part of an "adjacency pair," which Deborah Kapchan defines as an utterance that "requires a response, whether spoken aloud or silently(18)." The required response to the blind item is speculation about its subject. Even without calling name on Toothy Tile, Casablanca lays the groundwork for greater openness by leaving his audience unsure of the old Hollywood paradigms of masculinity. With Tile's identity in suspense, the reader must view all rising young actors differently, not as paragons of heteronormativity but as potential gay men. Nor do the sites claiming Toothy Tile is Jake Gyllenhaal lessen the uncertainty, as such claims are balanced by more traditional gossip pieces promoting his heterosexual performance as Reese Witherspoon's boyfriend.
In the most recent Toothy Tile item, Casablanca adds one final role to his repertoire, the performance of power that can accrue through gossip, both from the knowledge of what people would keep hidden and from the naming of names. Under the heading "One Fruit-of-the-Doom Blind Vice" he reveals that after a period of circumspect behavior, Tile is once again flirting with openness, this time by:...gleefully telling more than a few gossipy girls—which means boys, natch, in highly exaggerated fagola speak, but then, I'm sure you already know that hon-cakes—that he's quite aware the hunt for his identity is on. And has been for sometime. Says he enjoys it, even. Who wouldn't really? Especially if you're dead certain your identity will never be revealed.
Casablanca then adds that one of the reasons for Tile's new openness among friends is his certainty, "as it's been relayed to this columnist, that the true identity of Mr. Tile will never, ever be disclosed by yours truly. Oh, really? Is that so? Just don't count on it, bud. What with the myriad of lies to the public...you're on thin vice, babe, so watch it.19" As with all Blind Vice items, Casablanca ends with a statement of whom the item isn't about, followed by pictures of Matthew Broderick, Ricky Martin and Wentworth Miller, three celebrities who have been the subject of more than their share of gay gossip, particularly online.
Co-inky-dinky? You be the judge.
1 Ted Casablanca, quoted by imiinew_wave in Oh No They Didn't March 31, 2005 <http://community.livejournal.com/ohnotheydidnt/2890039.html>.
2 The Hollywood Kids, quoted anonymously in "Guess Who/Don't Sue (Vintage May 1992)," online posting, Datalounge July 4, 2008, <http://www.datalounge.com/cgi-bin/iowa/forum/thread/gossip/6675086/page-1.html>.
3 The Hollywood Kids, Datalounge.
4 Robert D. Abrahams, "A Performance-Centered Approach to Gossip," Man New Series Vol. 5, No. 2 (Jun., 1970), 295.
5 Jack Levin and Arnold Arluke, Gossip: The Inside Scoop (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1987), 25.
6 Max Gluckman, "Gossip and Scandal," Current Anthropology, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jun., 1963), 311.
7 Gluckman, 312.
8 Tom Cruise vs. Chad Slater, quoted on The Smoking Gun: Archive, May 2, 2001, <http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/chadslater1.html>.
9 Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, "The Vindication of Gossip," in Robert E. Goodman and Aaron Ben-Ze'ev, eds., Good Gossip (Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas), 1994), 17.
10 Ferdinand Schoeman, "Gossip and Privacy," in Goodman and Ben-Ze'ev, 80.
11 Harrison and Bielby, 626.
12 Harrington and Bielby, 613.
13 Maryann Ayim, "Knowledge Through the Grapevine: Gossip as Inquiry," Goodman and Ben-Ze'ev, 92.
14 See "All of Toothy Tile Articles," Oh No They Didn't, July 28, 2005.
15 Ted Casablanca, "The Awful Decoder," E! Online, <http://www.eonline.com/gossip/awful/decoder/index/jsp>.
16 Gluckman, 313.
17 Casablanca, "Decoder," 3.
18 Deborah A. Kapchan, "Performance," The Journal of American Folklore, Common Ground: Keywords for the Study of Expressive Culture, Vol. 108, No. 430 (Autumn, 1995), 492.
19 Ted Casablanca, "One Fruit-of-the-Doom Blind Vice," "The Awful Truth," E! Online July 24, 2008, <http://www.eonline.com/gossip/awful/blind/index.jsp?uuid=b892f3b7-16a7-41a6-8338-e3b48c6a5e20>.