It happened last night. A video from Wonder Woman‘s Gal Gadot and a host of her celebrity chums, all singing John Lennon’s “Imagine.” The end result is so useless and cringeworthy, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to describe it as weaponized thoughts and prayers.
Welcome to the nightmare:
The montage has everything! Sarah Silverman trying to be sincere! Zoë Kravitz fresh from a nap and wondering what she’s doing here! Sia missing the point entirely and just screaming at everyone! (It’s not a competition, Sia!) James Marsden and Amy Adams feeling really pleased they finally have a reason to sing in public! Mark Ruffalo singing for the first time ever! (In his whole life, apparently!) And, of course, Gal Gadot bookending the entire thing with her most rehearsed smug face!
The video was swiftly destroyed on Twitter and no wonder. If anything is going to make the world feel infinitely worse right now, it’s Will Ferrell, Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph not being funny. (Not to mention the fact that it’s becoming abundantly clear that famous people have more access to coronavirus testing and treatment than the rest of us plebeians.)
Sadly, “Imagine” is not the only time this week that celebrities trying to be useful in the age of coronavirus has made us want to smash something. Inside our homes. Where we do everything now.
Vanessa Hudgens got things off to a raging start when she hit Instagram live to say that quarantine was “a bunch of bullshit,” and “It’s a virus, I get it, like, I respect it, but at the same time I’m like, even if everybody gets it, like yeah, people are going to die, which is terrible but like, inevitable?” (She apologized the next day, but like, whatever.)
On top of that massive blunder, we’ve had Britney telling us it’s important to “stay with people”(!) and offering up a yoga pose a day “for inspiration for men and children and women around the world.”
We’ve had Jared Leto pretending to be too cool to notice a global crisis. (Go back to your cult, Leto!)
We’ve had Naomi Campbell scaring the crap out of everyone in this airport, with an outfit she “bought on Amazon 6 six weeks ago.”
We’ve had Arnold Schwarzenegger reminding us that, while you were fighting over that last jar of pasta sauce in Safeway a couple of days ago, he was hanging out in his jacuzzi and feeding his miniature ponies all the fresh food you can’t find.
We’ve had Judi Dench doing (for the love of God!) Cats stuff with her mate Gyles Brandreth, while washing their hands as creepily as possible.
We’ve had Gwyneth Paltrow trying to act like she knows how to deal with all this because she died in a movie about a pandemic once.
And we’ve had Bono force close-ups of his wispy facial hair on us, like he forced that album onto our iTunes accounts back in ’14.
If celebrities truly want to be a source of comfort in this time of woe, they could use their mountains of wealth to assist the many thousands of people in this country who just lost their only sources of income.
If they want to stick to entertainment, screw “Imagine.” The greatest contribution to lockdown entertainment this week came on Tuesday night after Seth Rogen decided to get stoned and live-tweet Cats. If you haven’t already seen the resulting thread, just know that it’s the most joy you’ll find online this week. If celebs want to help us without spending any money, it would behoove them to all take a leaf out of Rogen’s book.
We’ll leave you with some highlights…
