The Power of Celebrity
Posted by anthonynorth at 15:04, 28 Apr 2008I’m often scornful of celebrities. We seem to be infatuated by them, and the more our infatuation rises, the more extreme and bizarre their behaviour seems to become. It makes some people wonder if it will ever stop.
Of course, it all seems so pointless. But could it be that celebrities play a vital role in modern culture? I think they do – and it isn’t an enhancing role. Rather, it helps to tie us up in chains of consumerism.
On one level, celebrities are more ‘perfect’ than the average person. Of course, this isn’t true, but their beauty, etc, makes it appear so. And the upshot is, we spend, spend, spend to emulate them, not realizing that perfection is an unreachable goal.
But they also work on a psychological level. They are open with their problems, the abuses they’ve suffered, and in this they appear to be repositories for our angst. Like cultural psychotherapists, our own problems are reflected back to us.
This power over the wallet and psyche fulfils another vital function of super capitalism. Whenever they do something you can guarantee the picture is all over the media. Indeed, there has been an explosion in media alongside the celebrity’s rise.
Big Biz likes this. For the bigger the media gets, the more ads Big Biz places. This is, infact, a control mechanism. For if Big Biz withdrew ads from any one media source, that source would be struggling to survive. Hence, the media doesn’t risk it, and only reports on news friendly to our consumer culture.
We seem to be informed a lot about celebrity, but not much else. This is why.
© Anthony North, April, 2008
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Comments
22 November 2004
22 hours 21 min
For most people, the first celebrities they know are Mom and Dad.
Then you have your royalists, who admire the king and/or queen for no good reason. And you have your good little communists, who admire Stalin, Mao, even Pol Pot.
The list goes on of course, there are many variations. There are sports celebrities in many societies, some of them decidedly non-capitalist. Cuba, the USSR, China in the good old days, Rome, Greece. Add your own examples everyone.
So what anthonynorth is describing is how this phenomenon is used by capitalism. But it is certainly not an invention of capitalism.
Where does it come from? Is is just the mom and dad thing?
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if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)
12 April 2007
3 hours 30 min
That's certainly one of the biggest flaws of our consumer society, the hegemony of the entertainers.
I have wanted to write about that for a while now. For me, part of the reason we pay so much attention to these guys is because we have come to consider what we do during our free hours as the very defining element of our lives. It doesn't matter if you are succesful in your career if it doesn't pay off in the form of expensive pastimes: what is the point of enslaving yourself 12-14 hours a day in an office if you can't have the biggest tv monitor in the market, or the fastest convertible in the catalogue.
The ludocracy is also the reason we as a society spend so many hours at work, unlike our fathers of our grandfathers, my generation cannot endure the idea of NOT having a DVD player, an MP3 player, cable TV with as many premium channels as you can afford, and that's just the NORMAL forms of entertainment, we haven't even begun to talk about holidays to exotic destinations...
So, in that kind of world, is not very surprising that the entertainers are not on top of the pyraimd, whereas in the middle ages the bards and thespians often had to struggle to survive. I wonder what would Shakespeare tink of all this.
There's also the idea of seeing the entertainers as the true realization of the American dream: the idea that a simple person can reach the top with nothing more than talent (or sometimes, just the luck of physical attributes). They are our XXIst century Cinderellas, and everybody loves a good fairy tale, don't they?
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
22 April 2008
3 years 14 weeks
I like the idea of parents as ur-celebrities. Looking back, it's easy to see the adults I had special affinity for as templates for aspects of who I wanted to be.
We do seem to have moved though from celebrating something into celebrating hollow, identikit images. I recently saw a parody cover of the UK's celebrity gossip mag Heat. It featured Eric Hobsbawm, Doris Lessing and Cormack McCarthy. It was entitled Therm and taglined 'gossip about peple who've actually f**cking done something'.
I have a hope (probably in vain) that surely the cult of celebrity must run out of fuel before I grow old, as it seems so diluted already.
Matt
13 April 2007
4 years 48 weeks
Some good points here. I liked Matt bringing that spoof of Heat to our attention. This is important. I don't really have a problem with people who have excelled. They've done something important, or ingenius, or brilliant.
This is the point with most of Earthling's categories. And it is what is lacking in the latest celebrity culture. Red maybe hits it with the idea of people's aspirations - it can be anyone.
This makes it different to other examples, I think. As to where it comes from, the impulse can be traced right back to mythology, the religious icon, the means of providing meaning, direction - in the latest case meaning and direction found in consumerism.
This is why the celebrity image apes the saint, psychologically at least. It offers a view of perfection that cannot be reached, but we're allowed to aspire to it, thus spending more and more to try the impossible, just as the saint inspired the Christian to do good.
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I'm fanatical about moderation
Anthony North
22 November 2004
22 hours 21 min
I think we idolize people who can tell us what to do. Good advisers, or the shining examples or the old time heroes.
And perhaps the "anyone can do it" examples give people hope that they can do it themselves. Being attractive doesn't always figure into it. Did anyone ever find Mick Jagger physically attractive? Or was his voice particularly melodic?
Perhaps this "anyone" factor explains why Bill Clinton's popularity rose when his affair with Lewinsky was discovered. Lewinsky (I apologize if she is reading this) did not look particularly glamorous. My theory at the time was that many other women, who were not so glamorous themselves, got the impression that they were good enough to have an affair with a president too.
With respect to mythology being at the origin of this, I think that is probably backwards. More likely, the human need for meaning and direction is at the basis of mythology.
We look for these kinds of characters to serve our needs. So we make them up, or someone makes them up for us.
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if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)
12 April 2007
3 hours 30 min
With respect to mythology being at the origin of this, I think that is probably backwards. More likely, the human need for meaning and direction is at the basis of mythology.
We look for these kinds of characters to serve our needs. So we make them up, or someone makes them up for us.
So now our consumer society has focused on more shallower role models to erect as our new heroes and saints, our billboard gods that need constant tributes so they can keep on living in their shiny Olimpus.
Ugh... excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom :-(
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It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
13 April 2007
4 years 48 weeks
We can bring more than 'beauty' into this, Earthling. You're forgetting charisma, a much more powerful attraction. Two examples - Hitler and David Tennant (Doctor Who), neither of whom can be classed as beautiful.
Clinton became more popular after not having sex with that woman because of our insatiable need for scandal. Notoriety is appealing - a slightly different thing.
Maybe I worded the bit about mythology wrong. Basically, mythology was its first known expression. Is that better?
Red, get out of the bathroom. There's a queue :-)
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The balanced adult retains an inner child
Anthony North
22 November 2004
22 hours 21 min
Mythology does seem to be very early evidence of celebrity effects, yes.
Whether blowjobs are sex depends on your political persuasion I guess :) That Clinton lied about it is understandable, and forgivable. Hey, his wife forgave him, sort of, apparently, or so she says. But that is another topic.
Back to the main celebrity thing.
You are right, charisma is what counts. Beauty is just one way to do that. Ugliness is another. Being really tall, really fast, really rich work too. Or being really violent, really destructive.
Which brings us to the "contrary" side of this. There is fascination with decidedly negative characters. Modern examples are plenty - Charles Manson, Jack the Ripper, Karla Homolka, you name your favourite offender. Some people like to worship the devil. Probably the same psychology is at work, as with worshiping positive idols.
Then there is the effect of people disliking the positive idols.
Some people adore Cristiano Ronaldo, other people view him as the cheating, arrogant, childish player that he is :) <-----
And some people just don't like celebrities. Some analytical atheists just don't see any evidence of God, or any gods. Other emotional atheists believe that there is a God, or that gods exists, but they are insulted by the supposed moral authority. So they deny the existence of such authority. So this emotional atheism is mythology.
Man this post is rambling. But I let it stand for now.
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if everything is under control, you are not going fast enough (Mario Andretti)