The Canadian star seen in ‘Drive’, ‘The Gray Man’ and waiting to be seen in ‘Barbie’ has throughout his career reflected – and perhaps even predicted – cultural, social and digital trends.
Think the clean cut look of Crazy, Stupid, Love or now, Barbiecore.
In the summer of 2011, a video of a fight on the streets of New York goes viral. Two guys pull each other in the middle of an East Village crosswalk while cars try to avoid them. Bystanders try to stop them. Suddenly, a man in a striped vest and blue hat appears. In less than two seconds, he manages to separate the men. “That’s the guy from that movie,” a girl is heard saying. The girl holding the camera phone is confused. “Which movie;”.
“The notebook”, is the answer.
It’s certainly not the only time his presence has elicited hysterical squeals of excitement from a crowd of girls. But this scene seems to encapsulate what Ryan Gosling has managed to do: hold a special place in the audience’s heart because he makes everything look so easy.
Year after year and film after film, Gosling has shown us that he’s kind and calm, but also, undeniably, a little weird. He can do Muay Thai and he can do the Dirty Dancing lift. He is the lover in the body of a fighter. Look at him. He exudes the energy of someone who will carry you out of a burning building on his shoulders and then run back in to save your pet. So of course it would stop a fight in the street.
Recently, our favorite actor once again set the internet on fire with a series of pictures of him in the role of Ken in the upcoming much talked about Barbie movie. If you haven’t already seen Gosling’s abs, Ken underwear and Margot Robbie rollerblading on Venice Beach – then you’re probably living off the internet.
When Ryan Gosling arrived here from Canada born in the early 90s and he did it in the most manufactured pop way: as a singer in Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club and the funniest of the bunch. Co-starring Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. Then in the 2000s pop culture lost its innocence. Aguilera did “Dirrty”, Britney did “Toxic” and Gosling played a Jewish neo-Nazi in The Believer (2001).
In 2004, when MySpace and Facebook were ushering in a new era of social media and digital entertainment, The Notebook sent Gosling into the stratosphere. Noah Calhoun, the reclusive outsider role became a bona fide heartthrob.
With Maroon 5’s “She Will Be Loved” blaring over the speakers at the 2005 MTV Movie Awards and Lindsay Lohan and Hilary Duff watching in awe from the front row, Gosling lifts McAdams into the air and kisses her, securing them a seat in history with the best movie kisses.
With the taciturn stuntman-escapist Drive, Gosling entered a new arena of roles in 2008. He’s no longer Mr. Nice Guy. In Drive, Gangster Squad, The Place Beyond the Pines and Only God Forgives, the sensitive men Gosling was known for can be hidden beneath the character’s distinctly cold and violent surface.
In 2011 Ryan was Crazy, Stupid, Love’s Jacob with the suits and perfect abs. Then in 2016 it was Holland March and Sebastian from La La Land. It was the moment when we all believed that the story of The notebook would repeat itself, this time with Emma Stone, but Ryan is now the partner of Eva Mendes and the father of two daughters.
And then Gosling becomes, along with everything else, the boy who represents style. Men’s magazines suggest ideas inspired by Ryan. Drive’s satin jacket, decorated with a scorpion. The heavy coat of Blade Runner 2049. “Gosling became the pin-up boy for the bomber jacket,” said Simon Chilvers in 2017.
But times are changing. We are now in what everyone seems to agree is an “unprecedented” moment. After the pandemic, do we want warm-blooded robots anymore? Do we want tension, apathy and violence? Or are we looking for something a little more extravagant, lively and fun like Barbie and Ken’s style? We probably want something like that and Ryan already knows it.
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