Every good story needs its antagonist and protagonist, just like every yin needs its yang. Without white, black does not exist. Without evil there can be no true concept of good. We as human beings require things to contrast, be opposites, in order to understand their values, or meanings. Just in the way that polar opposites are used to form one anothers' meanings, so are signs used to reflect back upon each other. They are capable of mirroring back an image of the sign that perhaps would be exist without its counterpart. As Saussure states, "The two elements are intimately united, and each recalls the other"(61).
Jennifer Aniston is America's good. She is our signifier for ideas of faithfulness, wholesomeness, and wrongly harmed. When Brad Pitt, the man of men, left Jennifer Aniston to begin his steamy affair with Angelina Jolie the world was aghast, and quickly sides were taken. The image of Jennifer Aniston as America's sweetheart was solidified in the eyes of the people, because she was no longer a woman who had everything we women wanted, but now she was a woman who had had it all and lost it -- and worst of all to that bitch, Angelina Jolie.
And thus Angelina Jolie's image was shaped. Stunningly gorgeous and seductive; these things had already been associated with her before the Brad hit the fan, but afterwards she became a signifier for the concept of a home-wrecker. We contrasted her dramatically with Jennifer Aniston, because she was not just another woman, she was her opposite. And this was not just a breakup, it was a battle between good and evil. And evil was winning, how could that happen? How did we craft Angelina Jolie into a representation of evil. and Jennifer Aniston the poster-girl for good, for the sanctity of marriage?
Not only was this a real life story, but these signs were adapted by the media. These women were perverted into a form of culture in itself -- now we could buy our "team Aniston" and "team Jolie" t-shirts, not to mention the near hundred of magazine covers that featured the face-off between these two ladies.
Angelina Jolie's image was corrupted to that of a homewrecker, because many of the public, especially women that had been jilted of cheated on by men, made her the signifier for all their worst enemies -- the women that their husbands or boyfriends had cheated on them with. Had Jennifer Aniston never been in the picture, would we have still rejected the relationship that Angelina Jolie has formed with Brad Pitt, or would we condone it whole-heartedly?