To understand Ellen is to understand that Ellen DeGeneres is not Ellen. Ellen is a brand.
“Ellen” is an ABC sitcom that aired from 1994 to 1998. Ellen is the voice of Dory in the hit film “Finding Nemo.” Ellen is a stand-up comic, cracking jokes about her cancellation to a sold-out audience. “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” is a daytime talk show that aired from 2003 to 2022. Ellen is a one-time judge on the ninth season of “American Idol.” ED by Ellen is a line of apparel, home, baby and pet products on QVC.
None of these programs, characters and yet-to-be-regifted products are DeGeneres, but they are certainly Ellen. Yet, the Ellen brand is inextricably tied to DeGeneres, such that the two have become inseparable in the public eye.
Ellen is your aunt’s gay best friend and the only channel on at every dentist’s office across the country. She is a unisex premium sweatshirt available for purchase on ellenshop.com. Shewhy your grandpa can talk to his estranged sister, who “mysteriously left the family and moved in with her best friend.” She is a pantsuit and cool dance moves and, yes, profiting from children with unique or comical talents.
Ellen is important to many people, yet she is not a person. She is merely a persona— a brand with a life. DeGeneres is a person, who has complexities that a cotton crew neck or even a minimally scripted interview can’t capture. However, the blurred lines between Ellen, the brand, and DeGeneres, the person, make it nearly impossible to separate one from the other.
Look no further than DeGeneres’ sitcom, Ellen, where she played the role of Ellen Morgan, a character based on DeGeneres. Morgan was a reflection of DeGeneres— her thoughts, feelings, failures but most famously, her queerness. Morgan’s coming out as lesbian on the show was, in essence, DeGeneres coming out as lesbian in real life.
DeGeneres paid for the cost of Ellen’s queerness. Following the episode, many sponsors pulled their advertisements, and the network canceled the show shortly afterward. In the ensuing years, DeGeneres did not see the same commercial success she had before coming out. By sharing a name with her character, Ellen functioned as the spokesperson for DeGeneres—a character that was true to herself with regard to her sexuality, but a character that may have not been true to DeGeneres. Ellen is purely an image of DeGeneres, yet any critiques of Ellen applies to DeGeneres. She learned this lesson, and took note of what it meant for her career— an artistic risk was, in turn, a personal risk.
As such, the parasocial relationship between Ellen and her audience is unusually perilous— it relies on the smooth interaction of person, persona and the public. If the person falters, so does the persona, and vice versa.
Perhaps the greatest example of misalignment between persona and person came in 2020, when several former employees of The Ellen DeGeneres Show came forward detailing the toxic work environment on set. Several former staff members alleged that senior managers fired them after taking medical leave or days off to attend family funerals. One former employee left after facing racist comments and microaggressions from higher-level employees.
It is reprehensible to permit such a poor workplace culture. DeGeneres should have ensured that the people who worked to keep her career afloat did so in a safe, inclusive environment.
Many noted DeGeneres’ hypocrisy in forming a brand centered around a “be kind” slogan while simultaneously allowing her executive producers to mistreat junior employees of the show. Ellen, the persona, would have stood up for her employees and cheered them up with a mediocre punchline and a $200 VISA gift card hidden under their chairs. DeGeneres, the person, turned a blind eye to any misconduct by her senior staff. As soon as Ellen did not perfectly project onto DeGeneres, her empire came crumbling down.
This is not to say that DeGeneres did not earn her cancellation— she did make a living off of making celebrities uncomfortable on daytime television for guffaws from older ladies and a small nasal exhale from everyone else— simply that it is impossible to ignore the role of her public image.
Most recently, DeGeneres appeared in her final Netflix comedy special “Ellen DeGeneres: For Your Approval,” in which she primarily reflects on the controversy surrounding her show, her persona and herself. She concludes the hour by saying that she is happy not to be a brand,boss or billboard. Nevertheless, the title of the special ties her name to her need for Hollywood and an audience to admire her. Ellen is an icon, but no matter how hard DeGeneres tries to dismantle the wall between the image of herself and her persona, they will never be the same.
She cannot take the glory of persona without also bearing the consequences of personhood. It is easier to be a slogan or the titular character on a sitcom than to accept the breadth of humanity— its pain, its wonders, but most of all, its persistence. Life goes on even as the image deteriorates— if DeGeneres learned that, maybe she would be better able to cope with the death of the Ellen brand.