In the early 1970s, renowned anthropologist Clifford Geertz published his most influential book, The Interpretation of Cultures. The book was widely read throughout the social sciences and humanities, and influenced intellectual agendas in these realms for decades. One of the powerful arguments for which the book is known is Geertz’ attack on the idea of human nature. Geertz points out that human beings have evolved to be dependent upon culture to help them adapt to different environments. This flexibility allows human beings to exist on almost every corner of the planet, but it also implies that humans have had to give up instinctual, “wired-in” behavior patterns. We are able to learn many different ways of obtaining food because we don’t have any food obtaining instincts of the sort that guide other species. Therefore, says Geertz, there really are no basic, “natural,” human behaviors. There is no human nature.

One implication of this line of thought is a strong version of cultural relativism, the idea that knowledge and morals are not absolute, but only relative to particular cultural contexts. Geertz intended his argument as a strong defense of the traditional anthropological tenet that all cultures are equally worthy of respect, but many of his readers took this a step further. It became widely accepted that because there is no universal human nature, there can be no universal standards for truth or morality. These notions can only exist locally, and not globally. In some versions, for example, it was asserted that we can no longer say “X is true.” Rather we must say “X is true in this particular culture (but maybe not in another culture).”

I’m not a cultural relativist in this latter sense. There are plenty of facts that are true world-wide. But I also agree with Clifford Geertz that culture is a very strong determinant of human action. In fact, I think he and the strong cultural relativists who followed him got off track in part because they underestimate the power of culture in determining what people do. Contemporary neuroscientific research has shown that significant aspects of human behavior are in fact wired into our make-up. We do have instincts, plenty of them. But human communities also have powerful ways of promoting preferred behaviors, of making people behave in certain sorts of ways. These technologies of cultural learning are in fact so powerful that they can overwhelm humans’ natural tendencies.

One such technology, one that I have written about in Caught in Play, is forms of ritual and play that infuse certain ideas and practices with very strong emotions. Human beings are quite capable of ecstatic emotional states, emotions that are so powerful that they provoke the sense of a presence that comes from beyond the everyday world. This is what happens when people become possessed by spirits, or are overwhelmed by the powerful currents in a crowd. Or, to return to the example I have focused on, it happens when the powerful and stimulating feelings of entertainment come to be associated with particular persons or products or ideas.

Thus, for example, we develop the faith that the people in entertainment—celebrities—are special sorts of beings, fascinating creatures whose every action is worthy of our attention. It’s our culture of entertainment that creates this feeling, not some universal part of human nature. But it’s our universal human nature that makes it so easy for our cultures to shape us in ways over which we have little control.

Last year at this time I wrote a post about Christmas that asserted—if I can compress it just a bit—that Christmas is at once a holiday in the Christian calendar and in the consumerist system that defines many of our most important values (like the value of material wealth). Discussions about “the true meaning of Christmas” miss the point. The fact is that in our society the true meaning of Christmas is two somewhat contradictory things at the same time: Christmas is the central ritual of consumerism and the celebration of a religious figure who, according to the inherited sacred texts, was rather skeptical about the value of wealth.

In fact, lots of ideas in our society do two somewhat opposite things at the same time. Take, for example, Sarah Palin. Palin is loved by many conservatives in part because she advocates strong conservative values: she thinks abortion should be illegal, that taxes should be low and government limited in its powers, she abhors gun control, and so on. However, many people endorse these values without getting much attention. Palin also happens to be very good looking, charismatic, and media-savvy. In short, Palin is both very conservative and very entertaining. These may not be her only virtues, but surely both her supporters and her detractors would agree that these are an important part of her appeal.

If you think about it, strong conservatism does not necessarily fit too well with contemporary entertainment culture, because many of the values endorsed through entertainment aren’t very conservative. Just to take an example or two, entertainment often pushes the boundaries of sexual license and presents the notion that fulfillment is linked to riches and consumption. In short, it isn’t necessarily easy to put conservatism and entertainment together in one package.

That’s what makes Sarah Palin special, she’s that package. And to return to my yuletide theme, it’s pretty much the same deal with Christmas. Christmas manages to be both an endorsement of Christian values and some values that are specifically warned against in the New Testament. It’s usually kind of difficult to put Christianity together with an orgy of over-consumption focused on material goods, but Christmas pulls it off.

Christmas and Sarah Palin are hybrids, they are like successfully crossing a grapefruit with a cow. Their very existence proves to us that aspects of our lives that might seem contradictory do not have to be contradictory at all. Isn’t that nice?

Image by Fabio Metitieri.

The rules of the most basic celebrity game are simple. We watch the celebrity, so the celebrity is a special being. But the celebrity is in our world, so…we too are special! Thus you might want to watch a TV program with lots of pictures and video of the glamorous celebrity but with plenty of stories about how the celebrity messes up his or her life. The celebrity is at once elevated and brought down to earth.

Let’s face it. We human primates are just awed by high status individuals in our presence. We are wired to be excited by harmonious interaction with our fellows—think of the bliss that a successful sexual interaction or even a lively conversation brings. And when the interaction occurs with one we idealize—as in a romantic crush or even a tangential encounter with a celebrity—the level of our excitement is nearly overwhelming.

If you think about it, our games are often set up situations for stimulating our basic drives–competition, close cooperation, physical dominance, etc.—and we enjoy games because they can provide a significant emotional rush. The celebrity game stimulates the basic social pleasure of harmony with an admired person. But why is this game so popular in our society?

One of the basic problems in a society where fabulous accomplishments are revered and celebrated is that what most people do can’t be considered a fabulous accomplishment. Sure, it’s pretty meaningful to work hard at a challenging job or raise a child, but by definition fabulous things only get done by a few. And if fabulous things are what matter, most of us don’t. So our society provides a way for us to commune with the fabulous in the celebrity game, to briefly feel the excitement of interaction with the celebrity idol.

In every human society, such experiences of ecstasy are a way of cementing important commitments. And such is the case here: through our dealings with celebrities we learn that we should strive for something extraordinary, and we are given a small taste of the ecstasy that extraordinary accomplishments are said to provide. That helps us keep going, long after it has become obvious that we are not destined for greatness. But it also may leave us with a nagging feeling that our lives never really measured up.

Photo by Richard Yaussi

A reader writes to one of those people who answer questions about celebrities: “I find it ironic that Angelina Jolie works so hard to help the world but can’t seem to reconcile with her father, Jon Voight. Are they still estranged?” Immediately, my bad self emerges. I myself find it ironic that the reader imagines herself qualified to judge the behavior of people she doesn’t know. I find it ironic that the reader spends time pondering the ironies of Angelina Jolie’s activities and writing to the newspaper about her when the reader could go help out at the homeless shelter or visit veterans at the old folk’s home.

But then I begin to contemplate my own arrogance, to notice that if the problem is judging people you don’t know, then I’ve just lost my ability to criticize. So let’s quiet the bad self and try to get some insight into what’s going on here.

The reader begins with a fairly standard criticism of do-gooder liberals: “Straighten out your own life before you try to go out and straighten things out in the wider world.” But then she also wants to know the latest on the relationship between Angelina Jolie and her father. Hold on, just a minute ago AJ was a hypocrite; why should the reader care about whether AJ is talking to her dad? I’ll tell you why. Because writing to the magazine is a way of establishing contact with the celebrity. Ideally, the reader contacts the celebrity expert who contacts the celebrity publicist who contacts the celebrity. Thus the reader has initiated a chain of events that actually includes the celebrity herself.

One might wonder whether this is like contacting God through a prayer to Jesus. But I don’t think it really is, I think it’s more like trying to be seen talking to one of the popular kids in the hall in Middle School. The reader is trying to establish that she and Angelina Jolie travel in the same circles, the question is a version of, “hey, tell her I said hi.”

But of course the only reason that the reader wants to assert her connection to Angelina Jolie is that they really don’t travel in the same circles. The reader admires AJ, she feels that the actress dwells on a higher plane than herself. In the end, the whole thing is just a little game, a version of the same game that is played by millions daily. The game consists of elevating the celebrity and while at the same time claiming equivalence (or even superiority) to the celebrity. So, now the question is, why is this game so much fun for so many people? I will reveal the secret in my next post.

Photo by David Muir.

Photo by Andrew Griffith

Neal Gabler’s recent Newsweek article on celebrities is the latest installment in the “are celebrities good or bad?” debate. Gabler says they are good because (among other things) “they provide us with life lessons,” and “stimulate the imagination.”

As a social scientist, I’d prefer to stay out of the “Celebrities: Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?” discussion, and focus instead on the matter of why our society is so rabidly focused on these people. For example, Gabler names 11 different celebrities in the first three paragraphs of his article. Part of the reason for this is that he is no dummy and he knows that readers will be excited just by seeing the names of the most current celebrities. When it comes to celebrities, we including me, by the way) are a lot like chimps hooting our approval at a pleasing stimulus.

Gabler does eventually get around to the question of why we are so fascinated with celebrities. His theory is that celebrity is a form of art that “doesn’t have to create the pretense of reality; it is real.” Stories about celebrities are on the one hand entertaining and compelling—like TV dramas, say—and on the other hand they are really happening! Can’t beat that.

That’s a great theory, except for the fact that it’s wrong. Or, to be more positive, it’s exactly half right. In fact, celebrities are fascinating because they are real and aren’t real at the same time.

Take the now-somewhat-embarrassing Tiger Woods. I agree that there really is a gifted golfer named Tiger Woods who recently crashed his car and evidently had several extra-marital affairs. But I have never met Mr. Woods, and therefore my knowledge of him has been acquired entirely through the mass media. Mr. Woods has a publicity team, he gets interviewed by journalists who want to write something interesting, photos of him are carefully chosen and may be retouched, etc. So there are very important differences between “real-guy Tiger” and “mass media Tiger.”

These differences are so important because mass media Tiger is idealized and simplified and made into a coherent story in a way that no normal human ever is. A single example will have to do. Recently, the Associated Press named Mr. Woods the top athlete of the decade. What does that even mean?  How could “top athlete in all sports during ten years” be measured? If you were to hear someone claim that some real person you know is a better athlete than anyone else in the world, wouldn’t you immediately recognize that statement as something that could never be shown using actual evidence? The “Top Athlete” thing is just a media creation, a story. And the Tiger who is the Top Athlete of the Decade is a media image, not a person.

Now, what Neal Gabler and millions of other celebrity worshippers do is conclude that “real guy Tiger” and “mass media Tiger” are the same, and therefore “mass media Tiger” is a real person. Once you make that move, you have entered the realm of religion. You have accepted that certain human beings are fundamentally different from the rest of us, they are transcendent, they can have qualities the rest of us cannot have (“Top Athlete of the Decade.”). Christians believe that Jesus Christ was at once a real man and a transcendent being. Celebrity worshippers believe the same thing about Tiger Woods and Lady Gaga. I agree that’s fascinating, but not because they’ve got it right.

Photo by Lewis Minor

In a previous post I explained the basic principles of celebrity atheism: Sure, there are actual people who correspond in some sense to well-known celebrities such as Beyonce or Scarlett Johansson. However, what we encounter out here in the everyday world is usually not those actual people, rather we encounter highly scripted, airbrushed, and staged images that the actual people help to produce. The images are not the people; the images are, like the fictional characters in a film, symbols rather than physical beings.

Why does this matter? It matters in several ways, here’s one of them: Many Americans, whether or not they are explicit about the matter, consider celebrities to be role-models. They want to be like celebrities, or they want to actually be celebrities. Consider an article on Angelina Jolie that appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in earlier this summer. Based on polling data, the article asserts “women want to be with her and be her at the same time”

As we all know, this is hardly unusual: kids wear the jerseys of NBA players and practice their signature moves, fans adopt the clothing styles and favorite foods of the singers they idolize or choose their career paths based on their identification with celebrities. Sometimes critics suggest that certain celebrities are inappropriate role models because they take drugs, get arrested for battery, or whatever. But I’d like to suggest a more basic reason that celebrities aren’t good role models: they aren’t people.

Take the Angelina article I mentioned, written by Naomi Wolf. I’ve got nothing against Wolf (although some others do), she’s a smart writer with more readers than I can even dream of. But she’s a celebrity believer, or at least pretends to be one in order to get her writing published in Harper’s Weekly. She tells her readers that Jolie “for the first time in modern culture, brings together almost every aspect of female empowerment and liberation.”

Cool, way to go Angelina. Wolf goes on to tell us that Angelina has it all, she has Brad Pitt, first of all, but also she cares for “half a football team of children”, does good deeds, all the while looking like…Angelina Jolie. And in so doing she shows all women that they too can have it all.

I demur. Images can be made to look like they have it all, but people don’t. The person Angelina Jolie undoubtedly has disappointments, messes up, and doesn’t look like “Angelina Jolie” much of the time. But even more important than the fact that people don’t have it all is that people don’t need to have it all, and setting that up as a goal is a recipe for constant dissatisfaction. Be a celebrity atheist, give up on the conviction that celebrities prove there’s a perfect life out there, and focus instead on doing your best in an imperfect but also kind of remarkable world.

Photo by BDunnette

I do not believe in celebrities. Since I’ve used Brad Pitt as an example before, we might as well stick with him. I don’t believe in Brad Pitt; I don’t believe he exists. As I understand it, most people believe something like the following: there is an actor named Brad Pitt who has played a number of fictional characters in films. That’s not all they believe, they also may think that he is a very attractive man, has had relationships with several famous actresses, etc.

Here’s what I think: There’s a guy originally named (evidently) William Pitt, born not far from where I live in Oklahoma, who not only plays fictional characters in films, he also plays a fictional character named Brad Pitt, who is a movie actor, is very attractive, etc. “Brad Pitt” is just as fictional as Achilles or Benjamin Button. The belief that “Brad Pitt” is real is a confusion not much different from thinking that the characters on a soap opera are real people.

Here’s an example: Various publications have, at various times, named Brad Pitt something like “the sexiest man alive.” This is based, in part, on surveys in which people have said that they believe that BP is the sexiest man alive. Now, the vast majority of these people have never met the man, much less had a sexual interaction with him. So how do they know he’s sexy? Primarily, I would guess, on the basis of how he looks in movies and publicity photos, although it could also be based on how he moves, things he has said, etc.

Now, all of this information is highly edited, retouched, scripted, etc. In other words, when you see a picture or video of Brad Pitt, it’s very likely not an accurate image of William Pitt. Same goes for his movements, his speech. William has agents, make-up artists, publicists who help him to play Brad Pitt. So when people judge BP to be sexy, they are talking about an image, not a person. No one has ever had sex with Brad Pitt. (Feel free to weigh in Angelina, if you disagree—my guess is you sleep with a man, not an image).

People who believe in celebrities believe that the image is the same thing as the person. Thus they believe that there are people on this earth who stand above the rest of us, they are at once people and something beyond the level of a person. These celebrities have a kind of perfection the rest of us can’t match.

Does this confusion do any harm? Why bother to be a celebrity atheist? I’m going to talk about that in my next post, but meanwhile just think about how many people you know who want to be celebrities or want to meet celebrities, or spend hours and hours reading and thinking about celebrities. The objects of all that activity are imaginary, they are just fictions. So essentially all these folks are spending a significant proportion of their time in a fantasy that they think is real. Don’t psychologists regard that as a rather serious symptom in some contexts?

Several weeks after Michael Jackson’s death, we still seem to be trying to sort it out. Personally, I remain stunned by the response to his death. The volume of news coverage and spontaneous public concern has been similar to what I might have expected from, say, an alien invasion of our planet. Of course, I shouldn’t be surprised at all, because I have seen this happen many times before, when celebrities such as Princess Diana have died unexpectedly.

Nevertheless, I am always astonished anew by the number of people who seem to be genuinely shaken by the death of a person they have never met and with whom they have no actual relationship. Even more challenging is to attempt to grasp the hours and hours of commentary in the major news media. The same people who analyze health care policy and the rulings of the supreme court attempt to provide serious insights into the cultural significance of the “Thriller” video.

Michael Jackson was a talented singer and dancer who had a string of hit records, mostly over twenty years ago. He also seems to have had some severe psychological difficulties, and was repeatedly accused of child molestation. I have asked myself again and again” “Why in the world should his death send shockwaves around the world?”

And then the answer occurred to me: The talk about Michael Jackson’s death isn’t about him, it’s about us. Most of what is said about Jackson’s significance isn’t about him as an actual person, rather it is about an era of our history, or the trajectory of race relations in the United States, or the evolution of MTV, or people’s memories of the eighties. In this context “Michael Jackson”
is not a person but rather a symbol representing aspects of our culture. When people reflect about “him,” whether on the streets or in the media, the net effect is like the telling of myths and stories in non-literate cultures: through such reflection key ideas and events in our culture are defined and remembered.

In a broad sense, such talk happens all the time, not only when celebrities die, but on all those occasions that people gather to reflect on the history and values and possible futures of the groups in which they live. Such talk occurs whenever families father to renew their ties, congregations come together to worship, or local communities assemble to do their business or celebrate holidays. When a celebrity of Michael Jackson’s stature dies, the community that reacts is broader even than our nation, it is a culturally based group that embraces much of the world. Such an occasion is an opportunity to build and strengthen the culture that ties us together. The celebrity dies so that we might live.

Photo Credit: Kouk

INF Photo

One of the things I want to say about entertainment is that it endorses a set of shadow values, ideas and things we value, but claim that we don’t. An example:

My home page is msn.com, because that is my wife’s home page and I am too unimaginative to do anything but copy what is around me. And on msn.com, the human interest stories are right there front and center, and include things like excerpts from the latest interview with Miley Cyrus. A recent headline points you to an interview where she discusses her boyfriend and her “figure.” (and, by the way, this “figure” thing is a very small part of what she says)

My question is this: who wants to read what a 16 year-old girl has to say about her “figure” (which is code for breasts)? I don’t know for sure of course, but surely it’s a diverse group, including pre-teen fans, and also including persons of various ages whose interest in Miley Cyrus is in part sexual. Is that just fine, or is that a little creepy?

Probably you think I’m raising a completely trivial issue here, but think about it for a moment. In our society, having sex with minors is considered a very serious crime. It is also a serious crime to use images of minors in a sexual way. This suggests that in our society we are very clear about the fact that sexual fantasies about minors are not acceptable. But you don’t have to look very hard to find highly sexualized images of minors in the mainstream media. In fact, pulling people in by referring to Miley Cyrus discussing her figure is pretty innocent when you look at the broader context. But any case, the point is that some of the people who are observing these images are integrating them into sexual thoughts and fantasies.

So, according to our society, up to a certain point sexualized images and language about children are just fine, put ‘em on msn, but past that point they are disgusting and grounds for going to prison. (Oh, by the way, in case I’m confusing anyone, I think that people who possess child pornography should in fact be convicted of a crime).

Thus the sexuality of underage persons is a shadow value: the sexuality of men and women under 18 is highly celebrated, and people are encouraged to observe and enjoy it. But we deny this. Entertainment is convenient because it’s often a place where we can enjoy and celebrate what we claim to abhor. So, why should that be? I’ll address that question in my next post.

This post originally appeared on my blog “Sex, Drugs and Boredom” at Psychology Today.

Waxy photo by DanieDVM

I know some things about your life, because I know some things about people in our society (including myself). I know that you (probably, there are always exceptions to generalizations) have a fantasy that things will be better for you when (1) you graduate (2) you get married (3) you get the promotion, or a better job (4) you pay off your student loans (4) you get a new laptop (5) Tom, the hunky guy, asks you out (6) etc.

Celebrities–the ones who have made it

If you are fortunate, as I am, you are healthy and have a family you love and an interesting job. But still things aren’t quite what they could be, are they? Real fulfillment is out there, but it’s just out of reach. You’re close, but not quite there. Things will be perfect when…

You know you are not quite there because you’ve seen real fulfillment. You see it in many places, but most strikingly in the lives of celebrities. Those are the folks who have finally made it, aren’t they? They can have whatever they want, they are surrounded by admirers, they can bask in the certainty that they are cool. But of course, sometimes they have addictions or relationship problems or sometimes they make fools of themselves, so it’s obvious that their lives are far from perfect.

Somehow, that doesn’t really matter, does it? It doesn’t matter because they did it, they made it to real fulfillment. Most of us aren’t quite sure of who we are or where we are going. But a celebrity knows where she is going because she’s there.

How do you ever know if you are all that you could be?

Of course, that’s not actually true, I’m sure that celebrities are miserable in at least the same proportion as the rest of the population. But at the same time I, and you (probably) can’t really shake the genuine conviction that celebrities have it made. Back to doublethink  again.

A simple test: If your fairy godmother appeared and offered to make you famous. can you honestly maintain you’d say “no thanks?” The reason you’d take her up on it is that you know that if you were famous you would have achieved what you, and all of us in this society, believe to be the very purpose of life: you would have fulfilled your destiny. Finally, that nagging feeling about being one step away from happiness would go away, because you would have taken that last step.

We’re supposed to be all that we can be, and famous people are the only ones who can be sure they did. And that’s why in all probability you can’t really put aside your feelings about celebrities, your secret fascination with Brad and Angelina. In your heart you know—not believe—that they have done what it is the bedrock purpose of our lives to do, they have attained our version of perfection. Celebrities offer us the most awe-inspiring of possibilities: to actually behold perfection here in this flawed world.

This post first appeared on my blog “Sex, Drugs, and Boredom” at Psychology Today.