Subject:  The Brangen Triangle. |
Author:
Gina
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Date Posted: 15:16:31 07/05/09 Sun
The Brangjen triangle.
The Ange-Brad-Jen love triangle is a global obsession. Who will he end up with, the good girl or the vamp?
It’s never entirely clear what’s happening in the most Googled and gossiped-over love triangle in living memory. News changes hour by hour, and you have to keep up or risk losing the plot. I’m referring, of course, to the three-way relationship in flux that is Brad and Angelina and Jennifer. Are Brad and Angelina on a trial break, or is it more like a permanent one? Are Brad and Jen planning a reconciliation, or has Jen told Brad to back off? Are Angelina and Brad stronger than ever? It doesn’t really matter either way, because so many of us are hooked the moment we see these three names in any combination.
This story is monster huge. It’s the saga to rival Charles, Diana and Camilla, only with better bodies, a shocking second instalment and a lot more relevance to our own lives. We cannot get enough of it, via television, the newsstands, the internet (Brangelina alone gets more than 10m Google hits), and we won’t tire of it until we’re too old to care about love. Because it’s about a girl like us (who got the fairy tale), the bad-girl man-eater (who took the fairy tale away) and the guy in the middle who doesn’t know what he wants — and we all have a vested interest in finding out how it ends.
The reason people invest so much in this particular story, says Julian Linley, the editor of Heat magazine, is that “Jennifer Aniston is every girl. Because Friends is still on TV constantly, and people think she’s Rachel. She’s the girl all women want to be”. Jennifer/Rachel is accessible enough — not too pretty, not too skinny and not too sorted — for us to believe she’s no different from us, and we have grown up with her over the 15 years since Friends first went on air. (She was on the cover of Heat nine years ago, and now she’s on Grazia's cover every other week.) We’ve seen her adapt her look to make the most of herself (as opposed to arriving on our screens in a goddess package, like you-know-who). We’ve followed her quest for the right guy, watched her find true love and get married. (“And womankind punched the air when Jen pulled Brad,” says Linley. “It was, like, yes, every girl can get him, the sexiest man on the planet has picked one of us.”)
When the dream ended in divorce, it was a blow to the hopes of every regular girl who believed that a fairy-tale ending was possible (if only you had a nice haircut and a willing smile). The fact that the woman who got between Jennifer and Brad was a computer-generated male fantasy just made it more of a betrayal. You don’t have to have been dumped for a better model to identify with Jen’s pain — you just have to be a female who isn’t a goddess and wants to live happily ever after, which is why her fate has become a global concern. “Celebrity mags are, on the surface, about celebs,” says Linley, “but they’re actually about real life, human emotions and people we can identify with. Every woman who reads them is putting herself into the story.”
This story runs and runs because it’s become about the war between two kinds of femininity — the girl’s girl and the man’s woman — and which one comes out on top in the end. Jennifer isn’t exactly a girl, but neither is she a superwoman, like Angelina. Even when Jen’s posing naked on the cover of GQ, she’s cute, alluring, more saucy cheerleader than Hollywood siren. You just know she wants to be liked, by both sexes equally, which is why she was the heart of Friends, and why she is the automatic first choice for soppy feelgood films. In the four years since her divorce from Brad, she has been idling in a sad sort of place, making movies in which she plays lovable, often unlucky-in-love characters, while off set she’s been dating unsuitable boys who keep dumping her. Her demeanour screams, “Love me, I’m fun, I’m not scary, I’m a girl. I’m vulnerable.” And that’s why all the girl’s girls adore her.
We’ve heard the rumours about her scaring Brad away with her faddiness and neuroses and not wanting children. We’ve watched her bounce from one disastrous loser boyfriend to another, but somehow that only adds to our affection for her and our desire for this to come right in the end. It is perfectly possible that Jen is, in reality, horribly insecure and high maintenance, but we choose not to go there. Jennifer is good, and sometimes hopeless and sometimes unlucky, just like us. She’s Bridget Jones, but more aspirational. What she definitely isn’t is a bi-curious born beauty with an unapologetic appetite for sex and men and new experiences. Nobody wants Angelina as a girlfriend, that’s for sure.
But the trajectory of Angelina’s star is what makes this saga extra, extra fascinating. She started out at the beginning of this (just after the film Mr & Mrs Smith, in which she starred with Brad) as the husband-stealer who no female had a good word to say about. Now, four years on, she is the alpha woman’s ultimate role model. She appears to work all the time, is a self-styled eco-warrior, a UN ambassador and runs a sprawling family. Meanwhile, she has single-handedly managed to turn around the conventional stereotype of the sex-averse busy mother (now, to be really hot, you have to have at least four children), in the process making single, childless Jennifer look just a tiny bit feeble. Angelina is unapologetically dark, complicated, ungirlie and demanding. You can’t begin to imagine her starring in Friends, or even having girlfriends, for that matter, let alone meeting the gang for cocktails or helping you to choose a party dress. And you can’t help but notice that, next to Jen, Brad looked like the protector, whereas next to Angelina he looks like her escort — the guy she has chosen to be with, until further notice. Jen and Angelina are like two halves of the sexual sandwich — one is a people-pleaser, the other one pleases herself. The only question now is which one Brad will end up with.
The noticeable thing about this love saga is that it has never been about the man in the middle — until now. The rumour that Brad hankers after the easy intimacy he had with Jen (we knew it!) has given this story an adrenaline boost, and now it’s become about what men really want, in the end, when the smoke clears. Suddenly this has the potential to become a story of love and friendship triumphing over loins. Of 40 being a turning point. Of divorcées recovering their mojo and taking their revenge. If Brad goes back to Jennifer, it means all the Jennifers in the world can sleep easier in their beds, and it’s a victory for good girls everywhere. Then again, if Brad stays with Angelina— well, there’ll be another instalment soon enough.
There is something else keeping us Twittering. In the years since Brad met Angelina, she has become a mother of six, and Brad is a father with knobs on. By comparison, his old, steady life with Jennifer probably seems like one long carefree party. So maybe this story will turn out to be about how domesticity turns everyone into neurotic Jennifers, so you might as well stick with the Jennifer you know. See? It’s the story of all our lives, only bigger, faster and more picturesque. Bring on the next twist, please, Brangjen. We’re ready.
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/celebrity/article6609795.ece
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Man oh man, chatter is working in overtime that Brad and JA are getting back together.I have such a difficult time believing any of that chatter. There are two people on Female First who claim to be insiders that are saying Brangelina is OVER and Brad is making his move back to Jen. He is even willing to give up his kids because JA isn't sure she wants to be a part of their life. She still wants children of her own with Brad. I am saying,... Say what??
I wonder how Brad feels about being stuck in this silly triangle. How did he land here and allow it to completely over shadow his craft? I will tell you how, he was too quick to get in so deep with these skanky Hollywood woman who will stop at nothing for press to advance their careers.
There is also lots of speculation on whether any of the bio children are really brad's. The insider says they aren't his and Jolie was never pregnant with the twins. She had her assitant carry those children for her.They are also saying he never adopted the 3 others, he only gave them his name.
It all sounds extremely screwed up to me. Can you even imagine Brad going back to JA? Can you even imagine her taking him back? Can you imagine Jolie allowing it? What a laugh, honestly, I think she dictates what Brad will and won't do. If he had the strength to walk away from her, I believe he would of had the strength not to get involved with her in the first place. He didn't, he jumped in head first and moved so quickly that he didn't appear to have any sense at all.
Mystie, do you have any thoughts on it?
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