Celebrity Culture

Well, the absolute freedom of having my own blog means I can write about anything I want. I don't have the ENORMOUS pressure that Lainey and Michael K and the rest do to entertain through observation. I'm hoping that, when future blind items come up, I can muse and puzzle them out with everyone, sherlock-holmes style. But in the meanwhile, it's a slow season, right?

I was reading an poorly written text on celebrity culture a few years ago. I keep thinking about the nature of tabloid journalism. What are the sociological forces driving this phenomenon? My grandfather recalls newspapers and magazines in the 40s; you could buy "real news" for half the price of the hollywood gossip sheets. And what did they discuss? I'm actually very interested in Hedda Hopper, and the evolution through Cindy Adams to our dear internet bloggers. Evening TV news has never been highbrow, but more often now, the news resembles a gossip rag.

At first, I'm sure the Hollywood studios had to create press for their charges in order to sell movie tickets. I have heard of people hired to scream as a new celeb arrived somewhere, then some clued-in photographers caught the scene, and -viola!- a star was born. I heard a rumor that some of the Beatles screamers were planted; am I right? I am really curious about what things were like for Hepburn, Vivien Leigh, Liz Taylor, and all the rest. The standards were similar to Disney standards, in terms of rigid sexual purity.

Why does our culture embrace celebrity so strongly? Why are so many shows dedicated to a tiny roster of A and B list people? Lainey's assertion that Jen Aniston and Angelina Jolie's likeness and false stories about them may decide a magainze's profitability really chills me. We've come full circle. The celebs themselves are keeping tabloid journalism afloat! It used to be a sideline column in the regular news.

These poor actors entertain us, but there's something about the mentality of wanting fame for its own sake that doesn't attract balanced people. The paparazzi culture is full of such vicious vultures now, scrapping for whatever embarrassing picture they can wrangle out of these entertainers. Wouldn't it be frightening to go outside, go to dinner, go to the movies? Ugh.

In Chaucer's book "House of Fame," there is an enormous house made out of ice in the middle of the desert. Names of famous people are in danger of melting, or are half-melted already. Every so often, Aeolus's horn blows to announce a new person made famous (beautiful sound, smells like roses) or infamous (nasty sound, smells like farts) . In a fickle world, in a youth culture, with all the impossible standards in place, every single celeb runs out of time and faces a melting ice house in a desert. Liz Taylor, the most beautiful woman in the world, now faces her mortality. It's rough, this memento mori, but it helps me get past the brutal, shallow, grasping nature of the bite of fame.