My Thoughts On Fame And The Celebrity Culture
Today’s WordSmith Deck prompt (see this article for what this is all about) was:
“What are your views on fame and celebrity culture?”
Well, where do I start?
Firstly, I think the two are similar but different concepts.
Fame to me should be earned – you should have done something that makes a difference, which I know is a pretty broad definition.
And in most cases, I would suggest it should not be the goal but rather icing on the cake.
For example, I think there are some musicians, say, who start creating music because it’s what they want to do.
If their music becomes well-known and enough people like it, they may end up being famous – but that might not have been their original intention.
On the other hand, there are clearly musicians, and I’m thinking of those “manufactured” groups here, where the only goals are fame and the money that goes with that.
Is one better than the other?
I think accidental fame is more laudable, but maybe that’s only me.
Celebrities, on the other hand, are, to me, people who are largely famous for being famous.
I have never watched their show, and wouldn’t recognize any of them if I ran into them, but the Kardashians are the epitome of celebrities.
I’m not aware that they have made a positive difference to the world, other than managing to make other people think that what they say or do is important.
Of course, some people who achieve fame also end up as celebrities too, but the differentiator to me is whether that was what they wanted or not.
I’m sure there are celebrities who are as bemused as me that people would hang on their every word and want to know the most intimate details of their private lives.
And then there are those who are happy to expose all, both metaphorically and, in some cases, literally.
As for the celebrity culture, I don’t get it, and never have.
Even as a child, I was wondering why an actor promoting coffee or washing powder would have any credibility.
After all, it’s rare for any famous person to be used in any commercial because they actually use that product by choice.
As they say, follow the money. You can get most people to say (or do) almost anything if you give them a large-enough reward.
But why would an actor know more about instant coffee than somebody else, like an actual expert?
And even if that actor did actually drink a specific brand and like it, so what?
Coffee, to continue this example, is a highly subjective product – what one person likes, another will dislike.
There may be technical criteria by which you can judge the quality of coffee, but our tastes are different, and that’s what usually determines whether we keep buying a particular brand or not.
And I certainly don’t get why people become so obsessed by celebrities.
I was at a private dinner party back in the 1980s and I was asking if anybody knew why people used to go so crazy at pop concerts.
And the hostess answered that she had been “one of those girls” at a Beatles concert in her younger days.
But could she provide a reason why she, amongst the hundreds and thousands of others, were screaming and, in some cases (not hers, or at least so she said) throwing their underwear on stage?
No, she couldn’t – as I expected.
Today, it’s become worse than ever.
You can’t turn anywhere without being confronted by people who don’t really appear to have achieved anything – other than ill-deserved fame in many cases.
I saw a post on Facebook recently where somebody “famous” had been seen wearing some glittery shoes, as best as I can recall, and the caption that went with the photo read something like “the Internet is fascinated by this person’s glittery shoes – and rightly so.”
And it was the phrase “and rightly so” that got me.
Why “rightly”?
Why should somebody’s fashion choices be of any real concern to anybody?
Have people’s lives become so empty and meaningless that they have to live them via others, vicariously?
It would certainly appear so.
For myself, I have plenty of interests and never enough time to indulge them all, and I find it difficult to imagine ever being even remotely interested in what actors or sports players or musicians do.
Yes, I might enjoy watching a movie that happens to feature a certain actor, but I almost never watch one simply because it stars a specific person.
In fact, I often find I dislike movies that were clearly made with particular actors in mind, because it becomes more about them than the story.
I am a big fan of Tom Sharpe’s books, and one of the first ones I ever read was Wilt, which was later made into a movie starring one of the most popular comedy duos in the United Kingdom at the time – Mel Smith and Griff Rhys-Jones.
For me, they simply didn’t embody the characters I’d imagined after reading the book. (And it’s not because I didn’t find their comedy shows funny – it’s just they were not the right actors for the two roles they played, in my opinion of course.)
The same goes for music – I like a lot of different music, but I have rarely followed specific artistes or groups.
I have bought albums because of one song that I knew I liked, and discovered it was the one song on the album (or even double album in at least one case) that worked for me.
If you look at the music in my regular daily playlist (which contains over 600 songs and pieces of music), you’ll see there are, with few exceptions, no more than one or two tracks from each singer or group, and they span pretty much every decade from the 1950s until the current one.
But these people are treated like gods, and I simply don’t get it – and probably never will.
It goes deeper than that though.
I think it’s a sign of a society that is deeply sick.
It’s already becoming clear that more and more people are developing chronic health issues and are popping increasing numbers of prescription meds, IQ appears to be dropping overall (maybe in part because of water fluoridation and general environmental toxicity), and, of course, marriages (and partnerships in general) are failing at what is probably an all-time high.
And I know I’ve talked about this before, but a lot of this comes down, I think, to not knowing who you are, and what you stand for (i.e. your values, morals, principles).
When you don’t know who you are and don’t have self-confidence, you will be more likely to seek approval from others, including those you know (e.g. your family and friends, and maybe co-workers) and those you don’t know but whose opinions you value (e.g. celebrities). And in the latter case, you may not know their opinion per se, and they certainly won’t have given you their direct and express opinion, but if you do and wear and talk the same as them, you are implicitly gaining their approval.
Too many people get their entire worldview from their television, not realizing that the news is controlled by a tiny handful of organizations (or the people behind those).
It’s called programming for a reason – almost every show has an ulterior motive when you look at what’s really going on.
And I know I’ve said this before in at least one other article too, but news should be nothing more than a statement of fact – i.e. something happened. It should not be about opinions. And that was largely the case when I was young, but these days, you’re not even sure that the events you are being told to think about in a certain way even happened at all.
As an aside, it appears that trust in the government is at a historic low, so taking everything they tell you at face value seems to me to be unwise.
Speaking of which, politics, particularly in the USA but probably elsewhere too, is more like a three-ring circus. Instead of being elected and quietly getting on with their job, serving their true masters (i.e. the people), they seem to vie with each to be the most outrageous, the most outspoken, the most memorable – just like celebrities.
The same goes for religion, with the tele-evangelists who are constantly in the news. Call me cynical in my old age, but a pastor should not be making tens of millions of dollars per year while members of his (or her) flock are struggling.
And because people simply sit down and stare at what used to be called the gogglebox in my youth, not engaging their brain, they are losing the ability to think for themselves and to entertain themselves.
I am really glad I grew up in the time I did – television was around, but I certainly remember the domestic introduction of colour television, and there were only two channels when I first remember watching it. (Even by the time I was first married, in 1981, there were still only four channels available – and two of those were free from advertisements completely.)
So, in general, I am not a fan of the celebrity culture at all, although I do not deny some people’s justified right to be called famous (but I would still exclude entertainers, including sports players, in this).
Additional Resources
These are suggestions for those who wish to delve deeper into any of the above:
