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.
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Hi Peter,
I agree so much with what you say. Today one has to learn to differentiate between ‘media personality’ and ‘personality’. All that one knows of a media-persona is articulated, artificial, constructed. One has no actual experience with the person personified to base any conclusions on. All one can do is what you did, to pull out the facts and to ignore the rest as artifice.
On the other hand, don’t we all do this to some extent at least within our local relations – even to ourselves? Have you ever noticed that the person telling the ‘story’ is also the hero of the story, except in comical events. I don’t tell unflattering stories that reveal me to be a heel or sometimes stupid and dense. I omit certain things in telling my autobiographical details to others. Sometimes, I even lie to myself…
Mass media does the same thing on a “mass scale”. It selects what it presents based on it’s motivations. News has become no different.
Your last point about the transcendental aspect of ‘celebrity’ is a good one. Media creates false categories that have no existential basis, they are motivated fictions.
Thanks for a good post, Peter.
Hi Scott,
You are quite right when you observe that the mechanics of celebrity are echoed in a way even among us everyday folks, who also construct “media images” in our dealings with others. This is a very interesting point, and to me one of the most interesting things about it is that many historians would argue that these sorts of machinations are unique to forms of person that arose around the same time as mass entertainment. If you think about it, we live in a situation in which it is both possible and accepted to produce elaborate semi-fictions as “who we are.” There are social arrangements in which there are severe limits on this kind of thing, in which it is thought dishonorable (and may be punishable) to pretend to be something other than what society says you are (like a serf, for example).
Great comment, thanks for participating.