The Fabulous Desperation of Our Celebrities

The latest avalanche of content from Jennifer Lopez has me thinking about Richard Wagner, the German composer who argued in 1849 that the “consummate artwork of the future” would be Gesamtkunstwerk—“total artwork,” combining elements of many forms into one. This lofty notion, once associated primarily with opera and architecture, is now commonplace. Visual albums, installation art, video games, and TikToks routinely blend the auditory, the visual, the narrative, and the poetic—sometimes spectacularly, quite often unsatisfyingly.

Human beings can be Gesamtkunstwerktoo. Or at least, that’s the best way of thinking about what Lopez is up to at age 54.