Tom Cruise: Family Man!
Monday, 24 April 2006 22:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
apollaThere's been something not quite right about this whole TomKat TomKitten thing, aside from the ludicrous name. This whole contracting names thing bugs me, and I suspect it's half fandom-fault (Bangel? Spuffy?) and the likes of Ted Casablanca.
I'm already getting off the subject and I'm only on the third sentence. Anyway, it's been bugging me. It's not the delightful coincidence that led to Tommy Boy's new relationship-engagement-baby in the days around The Thoroughly Mediocre War Of The Worlds and Batman Begins and the nativity of Suri just before Mission Impossible Without Dougray Scott. It's not the way Katie Holmes has been silenced and has on more than one occasion since becoming Tom's own personal Incubator From The Creek been described as 'vacant'.
It's something else. Their names are Isabella and Connor, I believe. They themselves are, I would like to think, thoroughly adorable little human beings, but I don't know. You know why? Their parents have done a decent job of shielding them from all the nastiness and cunning of the paparazzi and the like. Anyone who pays even scant attention to the world of Hollywood knows that Tom Cruise and his ex-wife Nicole Collarbones O'Doom have two adopted children that are called Isabella and Connor. Those of us who pay a little more attention have seen the occasional picture that indicates that Tom and his eldest children are not of the same ethnicity. Only those who actively seek out information about Cruise and his family know much more about them, and even then, it's probably not much. Isabella and Connor have been well-shielded.
Except for that time their dad paraded his new bird at a school soccer-football game.
Now, this woule be OK. Except that we know everything about Suri it seems. We know the meaning(s) of her name, we have a decent idea of when she was conceived (if she's real and not alien, of course.) Her daddy, in the course of his Mission Impossible, Are You Kidding? publicity has been going on and on about her and, if certain LJ communities have accurately duplicated articles, has already talked about changing diapers and about the darling adorable new child of heaven. No doubt we'll have pictures soon, if only to prove the girl exists and isn't actually from Neptune or Saturn or something.
I'm being flippant and I really don't mean to be. The thing that has really boiled my piss about this is the way Suri Cruise is getting all this attention and adoration from Daddy in the press, when in previous cases he was scrupulous about guarding his children's privacy. Perhaps it's the thing I hope it isn't: Suri Cruise is his child, if he's telling the truth (and honestly, if it turns out this is all one big fake stunt, I won't be surprised, although I hope it's not)... and Isabella and Connor are 'only adopted'. It's how they're almost always described: "Tom's adopted children, Isabella and Connor." Not just children, adopted children.
If this is only the media's issue, then it doesn't matter at all. If Mummy Nicole and Daddy Tom know that these children are their children and act and think and feel like it, then it doesn't matter...
but we already know more about Suri Cruise than many grandparents know about their grandchildren in the time elapsed since her birth. We know a little about Isabella and Connor, but mostly through people talking about how "totally normal they are, like."
Although I know the media likes to indicate the difference, as they still do for Paul and Linda McCartney's eldest daughter Heather, and for Maddox and Zahara Jolie-Pitt and the others dotted around Hollywood, it seems to me that Tom himself makes the difference now that he has the fruit of his very own loins. Or at least, he's willing to use Suri's conception, gestation and birth where he was not willing to use Isabella and Connor: as a publicity stunt device.
From this I can only surmise one thing: either he loves Isabella and Connor more than he loves Suri... or he loves them less. Personally, I'm hoping for once that 'using his child as a publicity device' is actually true- it seems rather less harsh than the other two options.
I hope, for the sake of three children, that I'm being overly cynical, that I don't know what's going on. I hope so much that I'm being cynical and harsh towards someone who might be being misrepresented throughout the world media. God I hope so.
And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is what has really been bothering me about Tom Cruise lately. That and the fact M:I3 looks shit.
*
I also forgot: today marks the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin. Today marks, in my romantic Irish soul, the day that the successful overthrow of the oppressors began, when the people finally joined with the rebels to disregard the status quo. I'm not entirely so biased to think it was a great crusade or to see the whole thing as an unmitigated success... but it did succeed in driving the oppressors out of the Castle and back across the Irish Sea where they-we belonged.
I would recommend to any of you the exhibit at the National Museum of Ireland, in Dublin, called The Road To Independence. It says everything I would like to say but says it with class, historical evidence and other good stuff.
God Save Ireland, says I. God Save The Queen, says I. The further away we get from the repressive stuff, the closer we get to true understanding, respect and one day even peace. Heaven and Hell are full enough of the supposedly blessed martyrs of so many different sides. God save all of us, says I.
I'm already getting off the subject and I'm only on the third sentence. Anyway, it's been bugging me. It's not the delightful coincidence that led to Tommy Boy's new relationship-engagement-baby in the days around The Thoroughly Mediocre War Of The Worlds and Batman Begins and the nativity of Suri just before Mission Impossible Without Dougray Scott. It's not the way Katie Holmes has been silenced and has on more than one occasion since becoming Tom's own personal Incubator From The Creek been described as 'vacant'.
It's something else. Their names are Isabella and Connor, I believe. They themselves are, I would like to think, thoroughly adorable little human beings, but I don't know. You know why? Their parents have done a decent job of shielding them from all the nastiness and cunning of the paparazzi and the like. Anyone who pays even scant attention to the world of Hollywood knows that Tom Cruise and his ex-wife Nicole Collarbones O'Doom have two adopted children that are called Isabella and Connor. Those of us who pay a little more attention have seen the occasional picture that indicates that Tom and his eldest children are not of the same ethnicity. Only those who actively seek out information about Cruise and his family know much more about them, and even then, it's probably not much. Isabella and Connor have been well-shielded.
Except for that time their dad paraded his new bird at a school soccer-football game.
Now, this woule be OK. Except that we know everything about Suri it seems. We know the meaning(s) of her name, we have a decent idea of when she was conceived (if she's real and not alien, of course.) Her daddy, in the course of his Mission Impossible, Are You Kidding? publicity has been going on and on about her and, if certain LJ communities have accurately duplicated articles, has already talked about changing diapers and about the darling adorable new child of heaven. No doubt we'll have pictures soon, if only to prove the girl exists and isn't actually from Neptune or Saturn or something.
I'm being flippant and I really don't mean to be. The thing that has really boiled my piss about this is the way Suri Cruise is getting all this attention and adoration from Daddy in the press, when in previous cases he was scrupulous about guarding his children's privacy. Perhaps it's the thing I hope it isn't: Suri Cruise is his child, if he's telling the truth (and honestly, if it turns out this is all one big fake stunt, I won't be surprised, although I hope it's not)... and Isabella and Connor are 'only adopted'. It's how they're almost always described: "Tom's adopted children, Isabella and Connor." Not just children, adopted children.
If this is only the media's issue, then it doesn't matter at all. If Mummy Nicole and Daddy Tom know that these children are their children and act and think and feel like it, then it doesn't matter...
but we already know more about Suri Cruise than many grandparents know about their grandchildren in the time elapsed since her birth. We know a little about Isabella and Connor, but mostly through people talking about how "totally normal they are, like."
Although I know the media likes to indicate the difference, as they still do for Paul and Linda McCartney's eldest daughter Heather, and for Maddox and Zahara Jolie-Pitt and the others dotted around Hollywood, it seems to me that Tom himself makes the difference now that he has the fruit of his very own loins. Or at least, he's willing to use Suri's conception, gestation and birth where he was not willing to use Isabella and Connor: as a publicity stunt device.
From this I can only surmise one thing: either he loves Isabella and Connor more than he loves Suri... or he loves them less. Personally, I'm hoping for once that 'using his child as a publicity device' is actually true- it seems rather less harsh than the other two options.
I hope, for the sake of three children, that I'm being overly cynical, that I don't know what's going on. I hope so much that I'm being cynical and harsh towards someone who might be being misrepresented throughout the world media. God I hope so.
And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is what has really been bothering me about Tom Cruise lately. That and the fact M:I3 looks shit.
*
I also forgot: today marks the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising in Dublin. Today marks, in my romantic Irish soul, the day that the successful overthrow of the oppressors began, when the people finally joined with the rebels to disregard the status quo. I'm not entirely so biased to think it was a great crusade or to see the whole thing as an unmitigated success... but it did succeed in driving the oppressors out of the Castle and back across the Irish Sea where they-we belonged.
I would recommend to any of you the exhibit at the National Museum of Ireland, in Dublin, called The Road To Independence. It says everything I would like to say but says it with class, historical evidence and other good stuff.
God Save Ireland, says I. God Save The Queen, says I. The further away we get from the repressive stuff, the closer we get to true understanding, respect and one day even peace. Heaven and Hell are full enough of the supposedly blessed martyrs of so many different sides. God save all of us, says I.
