By Sara Bright
There is a certain kind of celebrity who functions not just as an actor, but as a cultural mirror. Their lives, played out in the harsh and often unforgiving glare of the public eye, become a kind of public text, a story that we, as a culture, tell ourselves about fame, about beauty, about the beautiful, and often brutal, business of growing up in public. Lindsay Lohan is such a celebrity. And in her quiet, and surprisingly graceful, return to the spotlight, we are not just witnessing the comeback of a beloved actress. We are, in a sense, being asked to confront our own, often complicated, relationship with her past.
The upcoming release of Freakier Friday, the sequel to her iconic 2003 film, is not just a movie. It is an event. It is a moment of cultural reckoning. And in the image of the now thirty-nine-year-old Lohan, standing next to her co-star, Jamie Lee Curtis, we are not just seeing a promotional photograph. We are seeing a ghost. We are seeing the ghost of a girl who was, for a time, the brightest star in the Hollywood firmament, and who then, in a spectacular, and often tragic, blaze of glory, fell to earth.
The Unravelling of a Star
To understand the power of Lohan’s return, you have to understand the story that we, as a culture, wrote for her. In the early 2000s, she was the perfect, and perfectly packaged, teen queen. She was beautiful, she was talented, she had a kind of raw, and deeply endearing, charisma that seemed to leap off the screen. In films like The Parent Trap, Mean Girls, and the original Freaky Friday, she was the avatar of a certain kind of smart, and slightly rebellious, and deeply, and wonderfully, and aspirationally, cool, American girl.
And then, the story turned. The tabloids, with their insatiable, and often deeply cruel, appetite for a good story, began to write a different kind of narrative for her. It was a story of addiction, of arrests, of a young woman who was, in the cold, and often deeply misogynistic, language of the media, “out of control.” We watched, with a kind of horrified, and often deeply hypocritical, fascination, as the bright, and beautiful, star began to dim.
This is the difficult, and often deeply uncomfortable, truth of the matter. We were not just passive observers of Lohan’s downfall. We were, in a sense, collaborators. We were the audience for a tragedy that was, in its very essence, a public performance. And in our consumption of the endless, and often deeply intrusive, stories of her struggles, we were, in a small, and often deeply unsettling, way, complicit.
The Art of the Disappearing Act
And then, she did the most radical, and most necessary, thing she could have done. She disappeared. She moved to Dubai, a place that is, in its very essence, a world away from the relentless, and often soul-crushing, glare of the Hollywood spotlight. And in that quiet, and largely unseen, space, she did the difficult, and often deeply unglamorous, work of putting her life back together.
She got married. She had a child. She found, it seems, a kind of peace, a kind of stability, a kind of quiet, and deeply human, happiness, that had, for so long, eluded her. And in this, in this quiet, and deeply radical, act of self-preservation, she was, in a sense, rewriting the very story that we had written for her. She was refusing to be the tragic, and ultimately disposable, figure of our collective, and often deeply prurient, imagination. She was, in a word, choosing to live.
The Return of the Queen
And now, she is back. And her return is not a triumphant, and often deeply hollow, “comeback” in the traditional Hollywood sense. It is something quieter, more subtle, more interesting. It is the return of an artist who has, in a sense, made peace with her own, often difficult, past.
Her recent work, in a series of gentle, and often surprisingly, charming, romantic comedies, is not the work of an actress who is trying to reclaim her former glory. It is the work of a woman who is, in a quiet, and deeply confident, way, simply happy to be working. There is a new kind of lightness to her, a sense of an artist who is no longer burdened by the weight of her own, often overwhelming, fame.
And in this, there is a kind of grace. It is the grace of a survivor. It is the grace of a woman who has been to hell and back, and who has emerged on the other side, not broken, but stronger, more self-aware, and with a quiet, and deeply endearing, sense of humour about the whole, strange, and often beautiful, journey.
The release of Freakier Friday is, in this context, a deeply symbolic act. It is a return to the scene of the crime, to the very film that was, in a sense, the beginning of the end of her first, and often deeply troubled, chapter in the public eye. But it is a return that is not about regret. It is about a kind of quiet, and deeply powerful, reclamation.
She is not just reprising a role. She is rewriting a story. And in the image of the woman, now a mother, who is playing a mother, who is, in the strange, and beautiful, and deeply, and wonderfully, and surreally, and often hilariously, and always, and forever, and ever
