I want my MTV
I just finished reading a great post on Pannonica’s site called A World Without Celebrities? and I had a few things still to say (I posted in the comments – but I can’t write a five-hundred word reply in there; it’d be rude).
Pannonica questions whether we, as a society, are capable of going without celebrities and all the attendant coverage and media madness that surrounds them.
Ultimately, she believes the answer is no – and I agree.
I understand why we’re obsessed: they’re beautiful, rich, they get to hang out with other beautiful and rich people. They wear designer clothes, drive expensive cars, live in palatial mansions and receive favours and gifts from people simply by virtue of being in the public eye.
I think we figure it like this: Some celebrities start out just like us – living a normal life, doing normal stuff, wearing clothes from Walmart or Target and then Something Magical happens and they are suddenly living like gods – the world at their feet, everyone wanting to know them, see them, and if at all possible, to BE them. They have everything.
We want some of the Magic too – we want to know how to get there and failing that, watching them do stupid things like get arrested for drunk driving, shaving their heads in a fit of madness and depression, or seeing a photo of them looking frumpy, tired and badly dressed is fair compensation. If we can’t have what they have, we want to see them lose it. Watching famous people mess up or look bad makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes them more human and brings them back down to our level.
What if we simply stopped being interested? What if, as Pan envisioned, we turned on the news and saw coverage of actual news instead of the latest shenanigans on Big Brother or American Idol?
What if we went one step further and deep-sixed our cable TV and picked up a book, or decided to spend more time with the kids instead of the idiot box? What if, at the grocery store we didn’t buy entertainment magazines because we simply didn’t care all that much about Brad and Angelina’s new babies? What if we stopped squeeing over their love lives and screw-ups?
What happens if we stop watching – and thus, supporting - crap like Big Brother, Blind Date, American Idol, America’s Top Model and all the other tripe that passes as “quality programming”?
It won’t happen of course. It’s far easier to be entertained than to entertain yourself. Simpler to veg out in front of YouTube or the TV and just let the voices and pretty colours wash over you.
Joe and I got rid of our cable over a year ago and it was weird at first. We had so much more time in the evenings. I spend more of it reading now, writing, playing video games and going out with friends, talking to Joe and generally being engaged with the world. We do buy a couple of shows on DVD (House M.D. and Heroes) but if I didn’t get to watch them anymore, I’d be OK with it.
After all, no one on their death-bed says, “I wish I’d watched more TV when I had the chance.” or “Please, God, just one more YouTube video of dancing hamsters and I’ll come quietly.”
A world without celebrities? I want that world, but I think I’m in the minority.
3 comments
Thanks for running with my ball; you’ve provided further insight and written much more eloquently than I. (Wish I’d edited mine a bit more, or at least swum to the rim of my cups).
I found most interesting your paragraph ending with the sentence, “Watching famous people mess up or look bad makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes them more human and brings them back down to our level.”
Celebrities act as surrogates for our exaggerated desires, the gamut from nobility and humanity to inanity and depravity. They provide us with the means to voyeurism and schadenfreude, and we plebes risk little or nothing at all personally in following their exploits. Celebrity is often lamented (by celebrities) as a curse or burden, and despite the common protestations that “I would trade places with so-and-so in a heartbeat,” there is much truth in that complaint.
The biological concept of symbiosis can be invoked to characterize our interaction with celebrity. It isn’t, as some may crudely assert, a parasitic relationship (one party benefits while the other is harmed), nor is it even a commensal one (in which one member benefits and the other is neither significantly helped nor harmed). Instead, I’d say it’s mutualism, in which both parties are rewarded.*
I’m somewhat reminded of the coda in Robert Graves’ Greek Gods and Heroes, a retelling of the myths geared toward younger readers (I no longer have my copy but wish I did). It’s called “The Death of the Gods” or “The End of the Gods” or something to that effect. Graves poetically and elegiacally describes the retreat of Zeus, Hera, and the rest into the woods, the natural world, as they are no longer needed by humanity. (Of course, they were also being superseded by the monotheistic religions, so in truth we wee humans didn’t shed that elemental crutch.)
My point, I guess, is that our present-day celebrities are essentially demigods, akin to those ancient Greek deities: a fractious and bickering lot, with faults, flaws, and weaknesses. They have the power to sway us and influence society and they aren’t above walking among us, usually in disguise.
*The (more) cynical half of me would suggest that the relationship is in fact parasitic, but with the twist that it is the celebrities who are the parasites, unable to exist without (and detrimental to) greater society.
Thank you for giving me something to run with! Also – I’d say your original post and your response are extremely eloquent. I agree that celebrities are surrogates for our exaggerated desires – living vicariously is easy!
I’m not sure I love the idea of people like Brad and Angelina being the new Zeus and Hera, but I can see it. I think we create them for our amusement and that the relationship is mutually parasitic. They don’t exist unless we buy into it and create a role for them (so they need us for that) and we need someone to fulfill and live out our fantasies about money, sex, material goods, fame and weird behaviour (which we always tolerate in our celebrity creations).
We’re a fickle audience too. We can bring them down just as quickly – get tired of the antics we put them up to and forced them to and simply stop caring.
Like Oscar Wilde said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.” That is the culture of celebrity boiled down to its essence I think.
Sorry to be a bit of a stickler, but in keeping with the analogy of symbiosis, a “mutually parasitic” relationship cannot be sustained, as it would eventually result in the demise of one of the parties, which would in turn lead ultimately to the demise of the other one. I guess that takes us back to the assessment of the dynamic being mutualism. Even if the interaction is partly detrimental to each member, the net result is beneficial to each. Seems as if our conclusions are the same!
And to further distill Wilde’s epigram, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
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