Video: Some Rap Video

Song: Die Zauberflöte, K. 620: “Ach, ich fühl’s”; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

When you wake up in the morning, most of you take a shower, and then stand in your closet and choose what to wear while you imagine in your head “who do I want to be today?”  “Do I want to looked at like I’m conservative, sexy, progressive” and a whole slew of other images we make of ourselves.  But we choose our costume and go into the world emulating what we all mindlessly watch and idolize with our actions… celebrity.  Once again s5 is about to burst your bubble and reveal the absolute irrelevance of your Emmy party…

Twenty Five Million, Seven Hundred Thousand.

25,700,000.

I am not referring to a new stimulus package.  This is actually the number of results on google when I entered a particular search item.  (Interestingly, it is 6 million hits higher then when you google “Government Stimulus Package”).

3,000,000 unique hits per day on the top site brought up for the search term.

Over $1,500,000 in income for the person who runs that top site.  Although, I have read somewhere else that the site may make up to $100,000 per week just in ad revenue.

The magazines of this same topic come out four times a month.  The top four have an average distribution of 2,000,000 per issue.  That is 32 million magazines per month, if not more, that are released.

I wonder if anyone has yet accurately guessed what I might be referring to?

I am speaking of celebrity gossip.  Whether it be the latest out and about photos, wondering if they are “just like us”, what they really look like without make-up, or if a swx tape was stolen and released (which just happened to coincide with a movie opening)… apparently, we humans cannot get enough.  Like everything else we consume, it is no different with our celebrity fixation, we want more, faster and better!

President Obama addressed students on their first day back at school.  I read it online; I did not watch it.  Something stood out to me.  It was something that I don’t think our ancestors would have ever guessed we would have to struggle against when raising our kids:

I know that sometimes, you get the sense from TV that you can be rich and successful without any hard work — that your ticket to success is through rapping or basketball or being a reality TV star, when chances are, you’re not going to be any of those things.

In a previous article on this site, it was mentioned about what happened to the desire to accomplish things like going out into space.  Well, sadly, I think our obsession with celebrity is the answer to that.

It really has become a disease on this society.

I live in Los Angeles, in a part of town where there are a lot of celebrities.  By default this means, there are a lot of paparazzi.  About a year or two back, I was working one day and we were all distracted by the amount of helicopters overhead.  I walked outside, looked to where they might be and counted ten.  It was close by and we were all concerned a bit about what emergency was happening; hoping everyone was alright, if it had been the result of an accident; worried for our own safety, if it were the result of something more serious, for example, criminal activity.

Well, I hate to inform you that Britney Spears was having lunch.

There was another time, again at work, when I looked out the window to see a swarm of men running from one end to the other of the complex’s central area.  Twenty to thirty men were running in every direction.  One or two even came up to my window, peering in, violating my privacy with no regard.  Needless to say, my initial reaction, once again, was to be scared that something serious were going on; did I need to protect myself because these were unfamiliar men running amok in a business community.

Again, I was enraged when I found out the men were paparazzi, acting like vultures, because a young actor, that I still have no clue why he was such fodder to the masses, was nearby.

I can list many more accounts.  And, I am sure many of you who live in a celebrity filled cities may have your own experiences.

The tracking of celebrity, their lifestyles, their ups and their downs has become at least a billion dollar industry.  People, en masse, want to know what happened to Britney after she shaved her head, or if Lindsey Lohan goes to rehab again, or is Michael Jackson really dead and if so, was he murdered and who did it.

You often hear the excuse that the celebrities knew what they were getting into when they chose their career and that they have put their lives on a public platter for us to consume and critique.  Many people think that celebrities are mentally unstable and got into their profession as a way to deal with their psychosis of an over-inflated ego.  (In the essence of full disclosure, I feel it is important to let you know that for the briefest of time, I also wanted to be an actress.  I encountered many people and for every one person who wanted to act with the best of intentions, there were four who just wanted the fame and glory and thought acting would be an easy route.)  For 75% of the people out there that are famous, I disagree that they knew what they were getting into when they chose this as a career.  In all honesty, I don’t know if we “choose” our careers, as much as they choose us.

But really my point to all of this is that I believe that the reason this industry exists is because of us.  Like any industry, it succeeds because people purchase into it.  We have an insatiable desire to read about the Lindsey’s, Paris’, Nicole’s and Justin’s.  And because of that desire, photographers go out and stalk these people, night and day, to get “the” shot that will help their magazine’s circulation over another.

The real question becomes what is it about our psychology that makes us care and value a celebrity’s life more than our own?

I would argue that it is for two reasons.  The first, comes from the wisdom of the late Kurt Vonnegut.  He once explained to a group of people his theory for why people need drama.  Simply, from almost the moment we are born, we are told fantastical tales.  All of these stories have extreme ups and downs.  Whether it is the story of Cinderella or a simple tale of a city that recovers after an foreseen tragedy.  We are told time and time again that our lives must have highs and lows, loves and hates, joys and sorrows; dramaturgy.  But, in reality, most people live a very static existence, so we seek out drama and high arcs in life.  This is why we create fights, watch sports, and seek out celebrity gossip.

The second reason, as I see it, is because of what has become of the culture of America.  The last generation of great men and women have often been described as those who fought in World War II and created the American ideal.  This generation included my grandparents.  I believe that this is also the last generation that were not victims.  Our country has created an atmosphere and psychology where everyone seems wronged by life.  They didn’t get the job they wanted for x, y and z reason, none of which has the person taking accountability.  They are overweight because McDonald’s slowly increased the size of a small coke without telling them or because they were teased in school by their peers.  We have become sue happy because everything that has happened to us is everyone else’s fault.

As a result, we have generations of individuals that feel marginalized looking for ways to feel significant.  How best to do that then make sure that those we are supposed to admire fall to a slow death off of their pedestals.  That is why after we spend millions of our dollars ensuring that someone gets to fame, we just as quickly pay millions of dollars for the picture of their fall from grace.

All of this is to say that it is not the editors or the photographers or the celebrities themselves that are to blame for this phenomena of the X17’s or the Perez Hilton’s or the TMZ’s.  It is our psychology that has created this.  Just like we have created a food industry that feeds us to sickness and a financial industry that leaches money away from us in the form of ARM loans and credit cards.  We have created a society where we have industries that feed our desires for the highs and lows, to feel empowered and to feel victimized.

We have no one… NO ONE… but ourselves to blame.

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