Today, I overheard a conversation between a footballer who apparently played for Cheltenham (not sure if he meant the main team or a juniors team or something; I'm hopeless at guessing people's ages) and his friend. He was complaining about (amongst many other things) how he was always being stopped for his autograph.
This really bemused me, given that I'm sure no-one in the café we were in had recognised his face, and he was hardly on the guest list for the Oprah show. Why would anyone want the autograph of such a Z-list celebrity?
But then, I though, why do people want autographs at all? Why do we care so much about the famous? The case above is important, as it shows how desperate some people must be if they've resorted to hardly-famous-at-all people to presumably make up for their lack of experience of actually-famous people.
In a sense, the only reason celebrities are set apart as a separate group of people at all is that we need people to look up to; for any reason we can find.
In a world where we didn't need idols/role models, musicians would publish music and perform in concerts, we would buy said music and attend said concerts, and if we enjoyed it, we might remember the artist's name so as to pursue more of their work. But we would have no interest at all in their personal life, or in band backstories, or interviews on Oprah or GMTV, or any of that.
Our attitude towards the talented goes far beyond their dramatical/musical talents, yet somehow manages to completely avoid, in my opinion, the real person. We absorb the facts and figures of their lives like a history geek memorises the important dates of World War Two, but we have no desire to get to know these people like we do when we meet "real life people". Often, we forget that they are even multi-dimensional human beings, and expect them to act entirely based on an image we create from their work, and the side of themselves they use to promote that work. Few of us would ever expect to see Lady Gaga in normal clothes, but do you think she would go to a relatives funeral dressed in meat or bubbles or telephone hats?
I think we really need to explore where this weird obsession comes from. Is it simply something to aspire to? Is it a form of escapism? Is it something to pour our hopes and dreams onto when we can't cope with handling them ourselves? Is it some kind of Freudian sublimation?
Maybe we'll never know the answer. But it's important to try; because the culture of paparazzi, tabloid journalism and celebrity scandals we've built up is unhealthy and degenerating (as I've raved about before), and we won't be able to do a lot about it until we find the root cause of our idolisation.
This really bemused me, given that I'm sure no-one in the café we were in had recognised his face, and he was hardly on the guest list for the Oprah show. Why would anyone want the autograph of such a Z-list celebrity?
But then, I though, why do people want autographs at all? Why do we care so much about the famous? The case above is important, as it shows how desperate some people must be if they've resorted to hardly-famous-at-all people to presumably make up for their lack of experience of actually-famous people.
In a sense, the only reason celebrities are set apart as a separate group of people at all is that we need people to look up to; for any reason we can find.
In a world where we didn't need idols/role models, musicians would publish music and perform in concerts, we would buy said music and attend said concerts, and if we enjoyed it, we might remember the artist's name so as to pursue more of their work. But we would have no interest at all in their personal life, or in band backstories, or interviews on Oprah or GMTV, or any of that.
Our attitude towards the talented goes far beyond their dramatical/musical talents, yet somehow manages to completely avoid, in my opinion, the real person. We absorb the facts and figures of their lives like a history geek memorises the important dates of World War Two, but we have no desire to get to know these people like we do when we meet "real life people". Often, we forget that they are even multi-dimensional human beings, and expect them to act entirely based on an image we create from their work, and the side of themselves they use to promote that work. Few of us would ever expect to see Lady Gaga in normal clothes, but do you think she would go to a relatives funeral dressed in meat or bubbles or telephone hats?
I think we really need to explore where this weird obsession comes from. Is it simply something to aspire to? Is it a form of escapism? Is it something to pour our hopes and dreams onto when we can't cope with handling them ourselves? Is it some kind of Freudian sublimation?
Maybe we'll never know the answer. But it's important to try; because the culture of paparazzi, tabloid journalism and celebrity scandals we've built up is unhealthy and degenerating (as I've raved about before), and we won't be able to do a lot about it until we find the root cause of our idolisation.
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