Fame Is Like Sugar -- A Little Is Great, Too Much Is Deadly

The great cliché of our age is that we are sinking into a lobotomized celebrity culture where we worship the worthless. We jabber on about Balloon Boy while carbon emissions soar; we yammer about American Idol while Afghanistan burns. The a new headline-snatching documentary Starsuckers, released today, expresses this view at great length: the West has been drugged by fame into a brain-coma, where our eyes can only follow the neon lights of Hollywood and the Big Brother house.

But is it true? The two-hour film – with all its haughty polemic – helped me to figure out why I am so queasy about this argument, even though I agree with some of its specific points. Yes, I worry that my young nephews' first question about anyone I mention is: "Are they famous?" Yes, I fret that one of my friends is obsessed with Justin Timberlake, and seems to have a stronger imaginary relationship with him than with anyone she actually knows. Yes, I find the creeping of celebrity gossip into serious news broadcasts disturbing.

But the sweeping, simplistic dismissal of celebrity culture misses some more deeper, tougher truths. Running through Starsuckers – and this wider debate – are two incompatible arguments about celebrity. The first is that this revering of celebrities is a new phenomenon, born with television, and intensified by the internet. With these new technologies, we have fallen under a form of electronic hypnosis. We stare numbly at our screens and imagine we are seeing something real, rather than a photo-shopped fiction.

The second argument is more interesting. It suggests that we are hard-wired to seek out Big Men (or Women) and copy them. Think about the hunter-gatherer tribes that we lived in a few minutes ago (in evolutionary terms). Those ancestors of ours who identified the most powerful or abundant people in their group, worked their way into their entourage, and imitated their ways were obviously more likely to survive. Seeking out celebs had an evolutionary advantage – so they passed this instinct on to us. The people who thought it was dumb to act this way dropped off the human family tree.

This seems more persuasive, because some form of celebrity-worship has always existed. In his terrific new book Fame – From the Bronze Age to Britney, the classicist Tom Payne shows how humans have always told lascivious stories about people they don't know.

The ancient Romans made celebrities out of their gladiators, cheering when they killed and weeping when they died. Later, they made celebrities out of the Christian martyrs who were gored by them. The ancient Greeks gossiped about their gods' love affairs – and far from being wholly mythical, the gods appeared among them all the time. As Payne says: "You could invite gods to dinner. The god Serapis [or rather, somebody posing as him] would hold parties at which he was once 'host and guest'.... You could even have sex with a goddess." The tyrant Pisistratus typically found a gorgeous woman, put her in a chariot, and announced she was the goddess Athene. The crowd howled and whooped like anyone at Madison Square Gardens.

And just as there has always been fame, there have always been people complaining that these days people get famous for nothing. In St Paul's letters to the Corinthians, he moans that people only become Christian martyrs nowadays "to obtain a corruptible crown" of celebrity. Here's Chaucer, writing in the 14th-century, giving voice to a crowd: "We have done neither that nor this/but spend our lives in idle play./Nonetheless we come to pray/That we should have as good a fame,/and great renown, and well-known name/as those who have done noble deeds." The Queen snaps: "What! Why should I serve/you the good fame you don't deserve/ because you've not achieved a thing?"

If celebrity has always existed, the debate changes. When people jeered at the Japanese game-shows Clive James put on air, where men ate maggots and crawled through shit, he counseled us to remember: a generation before, these young men would have been using the same drive for danger to fly kamikaze planes into Allied warships. He wrote: "Civilisation doesn't eliminate human impulses: it tames them, through changing their means of expression."

Our innate celebrity-instinct used to be directed in really dangerous ways – towards finding revering warriors like Achilles, who killed so many people that Homer ran out of names; or towards fanatics like the Catholic saints who believed God was talking to her. What were the the Jewish prophets, the Muslim martyrs or the Hindu gods but the celebrities of their day? They took this impulse and channeled it towards primitive superstitions, with all their cruelty, and all their backwardness. Compared to them, directing this impulse towards Zac Efron or Beyoncé or Robbie Williams – because they are hot, or sweet, or make pretty sounds – seems positively benign.

Modern celebrity isn't a deterioration from a pristine past; it's a taming of an impulse that was once met in far more harmful ways. Better Madonna than the Madonna. Better the Heat of celebs telling you to buy perfume than the heat of martyrs telling you you'll burn in hell.

It's only once you admit that celebrity has a place that you can keep it in its place. To a culture, celebrity is like sugar: fun in moderation, deadly if it's all you consume. We are letting one impulse – to vicariously enter the Big Man's entourage – over-ride the others, like the desire to enrich our minds. I have seen some of the best minds of my generation focus on nothing but discussing fame in ever more ironic ways, and they are left with a kind of intellectual diabetes. Whenever I see celebrity news bursting beyond its proper boundary, I remember Pauline Kael, the great film critic for the New Yorker and one of the first intellectuals to take trashy films seriously. When she was dying, she gave a final interview, and said sadly: "All that time I was promoting trash culture, I never imagined it would become the only culture we have."

We need an unwritten Celeb Code of Hygiene about what they should do, and how we should respond to them. Celebrities can provide us with pleasure and titillation – within limits. There needs to be privacy rules to stop us stalking celebs to despair or death. Remember – Greta Garbo didn't actually say "I want to be alone." She said "I want to be let alone" – and there's a world of difference.

And we should drop the mad idea that they should provide us with political guidance. The most effective part of Starsuckers is the exposé of how Bob Geldof and Bono hijacked the Make Poverty History campaign, defying the advice of the main aid groups to applaud political charades that later came to nothing. There's a more terrifying vision still in the film: in Lithuania, a "Celebrities' Party" ran for office, and became the second biggest party in government. The host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire became speaker of the parliament.

We will always have celebrities, and we will – if we are honest – always want them. If we rage against them Starsuckers-style, with an annihilating, snobbish superiority, we will lose the argument. The real struggle instead is to temper our instinct for fame – and stop it sucking up all the cultural oxygen.

 

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here. You can email him at johann -at- johannhari.com

 

 

Follow Johann Hari on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johannhari101

Comments

[JR Jake]

That is one thing I am thankful everyday, is I am just an average run of the mill red/white/blue American male. No fanfare, don't need, desire or want it any way. People that place themselves in the spotlight because of necessity is one thing, others who seek the fame and adulations of others will rarely go through life unscathed. Their every move will be scrutinized, photographed, blogged and defamed. Whether the stories are true or false, fact or fiction matters not because once the flame has been fanned by the masses; it is nearly impossible to tell the true story without it creating a circus atmosphere. No, love my privacy and glad to contribute in the wings because I like peace and serenity over pictures and prosperity. Sign me: Simple minded and glad I am. Have a great weekend. Johann great article.

[TheEmptinessOfTruthiness]

I disagree that the two arguments are incompatible.

The ancient desire to emulate a Big Person, is what keeps some percentage of the population lobotomized by the flashing lights.

Furthermore I believe the architects of celebrity culture are perfectly aware of what they're tapping in to.

[django707]

agreed

[AmbivalentGuy]

There is nothing more common than the desire to be remarkable.

[The Meek]

Good one.

[TheMediaRanger]

Boy, you can really go off on some tangents, Johann. Great article!

I have distinct memories of "The Godfather of Soul," James Brown (this was before your time). He was no saint, but he rescued my childhood because my own godfather was a drunk who lived in the apartment upstairs. I very nearly shot him with my BB gun when he stumbled into our place at 3:00 A.M. one time.

[rughead23]

Having completed ones studies and immersing into modern culture can be positive, what about the Renaissance?

[averygard]

The problem is that I think all we do have, for the most part, is trash culture. Because people have gotten so used to the laziness of the trash culture, of not having to think, most of us prefer to watch it to the difficulty of having to think, gee, maybe women aren't that stupid and falling out of their clothes all the time; maybe men aren't that simple; maybe not everyone from the Middle East is a villain; maybe endless violence, no matter how "funny" it is (the idea of which scares the hell out of me), is just not that good for society. I think if there was more quality out there that made money--which will only happen when people vote with their pocketbooks and choose it, and choose not to buy the issue of the magazine where so-and-so is "TOPLESS!" or whatever--the people who put out the tv shows, magazines, movies, etc., would make more high-quality stuff, and those who choose crappy reality TV shows would have that option--but people who choose quality would have more of that option, too.

[iScan]

I don't know what to say, I really dislike our celebrity culture, with so many youths abandoning their studies with hopes of becoming a youtube hit or getting that big break by playing at open mic night. Its all very naieve. It is not just the celebrities, but corporatism and the advertisements, that also dominate our culture. If there wasn't a sign or commercial everywhere you look from the first time you can read telling you what to do and what is a good life and what you should buy, things may be different and people wouldn't all be obsessed with getting famous, because they wouldn't have the need for all that 'stuff' that they can afford. The current western culture is all about pushing you outside of your means. But why should the perpetrators of these cultural offenses care? THey are only in it for the money and your demise means nothing to them. Once again Johann, I truly enjoy your superb writing. Happy Halloween.

[malodorousgit]

That's a very interesting theory about it being evolutionarily adaptive to emulate the alpha types (and I wonder if mirror neurons fit in there somewhere). But back then, we would have been emulating people who had extra intelligence, inventiveness, competence and social skills. Now we're emulating people who either look good on TV or whose drive to be on TV compensates for all their other failings. I think that might be a wrong turning on the evolutionary road.

[The Meek]

Our biology hasn't been able to keep up with our technology. It's kinda like we "deer in the headlights" syndrome.

[alsm9]

I haven't seen it, but I will make the effort to, it looks interesting. However, a greater point seems to be missing, that they could have explored (and maybe they do...). The whole "pacifying" of the public with light entertainment, sports and fluff is very reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World". The book is set in a world where people are consumed with sex, drugs and entertainment and are not at all concerned with educating themselves about the world around them. Which in turn, provides a perfect environment for a government to keep control over it's people. Could make for an interesting documentary.

[Alterion]

I don't like when people constantly say, "we" as if they speak for all of american culture. I know a lot of people who are disgusted by the vapid media but still want to be informed. The media is complicit in this perception, you may turn on the news to be informed and they may jump from a serious story to something inane like baloon boy.

The worst I ever saw was on NBC, the reporter was interviewing some General about the IRAQ war. Suddenly there was hooting and hollaring from the control room. I was like, "what the heck? Is the NBC studio being invaded? Did oreilly's rhetoric finally stir up someone?"

No, it was the producers and cameramen shouting that paris hilton was coming out of court.

Yeah, seriously, they cut off a general talking about the war to show paris hilton come out of a building and get in a car. So I changed the channel, Fox and CNN had the same thing.

Don't blame me for this bulls**t.

[The Meek]

The media is infatuated with the media. Sorting through the self love to find real useful information is very difficult if not impossible.

[winningticket]

Don't kid yourself.

[LatteLiberals]

Johann is so wonderfully reasonable. Love reading his articles.

[phlashba]

I'd say it's a toss-up.

[seawolf77]

I saw a fugure on Jeapardy and the answer was "all of this tea is worth 1.56 billion dollars" and the question was "What is China". I have another questin. How much life has been wasted watching other people live or whatever on a screen? It was a true turnin point for me when I realized my heroes chase little balls around and pretend to be someone they're not in front of a camera. Roman heroes, if you believe history, killed each other in front of huge crowds. I kind of doubt it and history suggests that deaths in the colusieum was exaggerated. If you killed off your Jordans and Woods, not much fun watching Kurt Rambis and John Daly. When I see these people now all I can think of is what a bunch of freakin ghouls.

[brettrobbins]

The cult of celebrity is a two-edged sword: we both love and hate those whose outlandish lifestyles we subsidize by buying their products. We love them because we love their works, we hate them because we envy them, which is why we invest as much energy into mocking them when they commit gaffes and the like as we do enthusiasm about their creations.

In the 80's Tom Cruise could do no wrong. Today he can do no right. What has changed? Back then he made a few hundred thousand a film, now he makes upwards of seventy million a film (when he produces it as well as acts in it). It's a very unhealthful process, this hot-and-cold game we play with our imaginary celebrity friends.

Better to realize they're merely people, with all the fallibility and imperfection that implies, and stop worshiping them, envying them, investing so much time thinking about them, especially since they themselves, alas, are completely indifferent to us. And yet without us--indirectly through the advertising revenue our viewing habits support, directly through our purchase of DVD's, etc.--they would have to settle for the sorts of jobs we slave away at to be able to afford tickets to see their movies.

[josephXY]

There are good points in that article. What should however not be forgotten is that this kind
of celeb culture became what it seems to be like now because some media had the idea that
this was the way to make lots of money. And they became missionaries with that while the
actual market for that was always limited. Readership / circulation in the range of 1 million
are not exactly mass market magazines, for instance. It is just because lots of that stuff gets
quoted and mentioned in other media, the media circus, that it is elevated to something more
than it actually is.
And then the other, the financial reality, comes into play. Quite a bit what of makes a lot of noise
at present does not have the brightest future commercially. Advertising spending was pretty
excessive anyhow in the past couple of years. Now businesses have to cut on ad spending,
they are forced to take expenses, inlcuding useless ad expenses seriously.
Quite a bit of the market segement is actually overdue for a "reset", just like so many other
media and newspapers. It is just a matter of fact. One should not believe suppositions,
impressions, noise, preposterous self-presentation, etc., too much today.
It is not impossible that the bankruptcy courts / judges have the last word in one or the other
case in the not so distant future.