Starshine
2005 01 28
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Someone has talent, we admire them. Someone commits a crime, we observe them. Someone does something outrageous, we gawk at them. Sometimes this admiration goes to extremes: someone's trash is gone through; another's house is staked out; some poor soul is stalked by fans and media. We turn the simple act of adoration or admiration or simple curiosity, into a vulgar sport. Who can get the best picture? Who can get an autograph? Who can get to the media first with their up-to-the-minute exclusive dirt?
What I can't figure out, sometimes, is whether or not it's the person people are after, information about that person, or if they're simply caught up in a fanatic's wet dream of just "being there" - that they're caught up in the wake of the person, not the person themselves, and that, when you get right down to it, the object of affection doesn't matter at all, doesn't figure into it.
Does the public have a right to know? Exactly what is it from someone's trash that the public has a right to know about? Do I need to know what brand of tampons the latest fad diva uses, or what kind of razon blades the hunk o' spunk shaves his face with? No. I don't need to know that. I don't care. If I need either of those things, I go to the store and get them. A celebrity endorsement, however bizarrely got, is not going to change my mind about a product. It's information I don't believe anyone requires, not even when it comes to a criminal. The police have a need to delve into the life of a suspect, they are investigating something illegal after all; but the press doesn't need to harass anyone beyond getting the details of any issue. The press doesn't need to know the dirty details of every case, every issue. The fact that some mass-murdering ass ate a bowl of Cheerios before they hang him, is not a detail required by any person except the person that has to serve them the Cheerios.
I like to know little details about people I admire, and I'm curious about little details regarding people with a name - be that person good, bad, or criminally vulgar. I think we're all the same in that way - we're a curious lot, us humans. But I am constantly amazed at the depth and amount of minutia that the media, and those caught up by the fan-boi craze, will dredge up. The amount of tabloid TV programming is nauseating. The amount of money and energy we devote to things that really don't amount to a hill of beans, however golden those beans are, is frightening.
What drives us to it, I wonder. What drives some people to such a frenetic obsession with the life of someone with a name. I assume that sometimes it stems from sheer boredom; a person with nothing better to do with their time. Sometimes I'm certain the catalyst is self-dissatisfaction; a person who's life is so empty to them, that they vicariously live through the life of another. Then there are those who also feel empty, who live under the illusion that the more detail they cram in - regardless of how inspid it may be - the less empty their own existence becomes. Other times I'm sure it's little more than bloodythirsty noseyness; a person who feels it's their duty or lot in life to poke themselves in where they don't need to be, and they do it simply because they can.
For those who feel empty, I pity them, I empathise with them, I sympathise. I understand, intimately, what it can be like to feel so dissatisfied that one's own life seems to mean very little; to feel outdone by everyone around you. It's sad, tragic, that anyone has to feel that their own life fails to measure up. I know it sounds like a platitude or cliche, and perhaps in some way it is, but there is something to value in everyone's existence. I have found some value in my own, so I know it's possible.
For the rest of the vultures I have nothing more than contempt. Perhaps their lives are empty too; perhaps the dollars are some form of compensation for them. I don't know, and in a lot of ways I don't care. Cognitively most of us know when a line is being crossed, and if you willingly and deliberately cross that line - particularly one you wouldn't want crossed when it's coming towards you - then there isn't much sympathy I can muster up. I fail to see little honour in broadcasting another person's shame, pain, or intruding on their private joys. In most cases, if people want to share a joy, they will: they don't need to be helped along by a two-page, full-colour spread in the local newspaper; and they certainly don't need their shame shared via broadband Internet or trashy print rag.
One of the more telling things I've ever heard said about stardom, was Lauren Bacall speaking specifically about actors. She said that people today weren't interested in learning their craft, they were only interested in being stars. Judging by a lot of what comes out of Hollywood and its brothers these days, I'm convinced she's right. It's not quality so much as it is who's on the A-List, who gets the best dress at the Oscars, who's got the most expensive home in the most exclusive gated community - and none of that is based on talent, it's based on some other illusion that I haven't yet been able to find a name for.
Famous doesn't make you good. Famous is patina, pith is what gives you quality. And if you exist solely on patina alone, you'll one day discover, methinks, that your shell is cracking, cracking because you didn't build anything up underneath it.