How And Why Celebrity Invites Idolatry

[Silver Springs]

I recently wrote an essay on the damaging effect of celebrity on the wider world and am contemplating using its framework to help with my upcoming dissertation. I would be grateful if people read the following "article" (if you will), and told me what they thought.

The term Idolatry, an act which is considered a major sin in the Abrahamic religions, can be defined as the worship of any figure, image, object or even an idea that detracts or even redirects completely the worship of a Monotheistic God. As written in the book of Isa 44:6-20 : “Then shall it be for a Man to burn: For he will take thereof, and warm himself; Yea, He kindleth it, and baketh Bread; Yea, He maketh a God, and worshippeth it; He maketh it a graven image and falleth down thereto”

In contemporary culture, Celebrity itself has become a great beast of Felony through its accessibility. It is hard to make a move in modern society without coming face to face with the exploits of some Z list Celebrity you had never heard of until they appeared in Hello magazine showing off their new cushions. But like it or not, Celebrity has become a self pollinating Beast that has been fed on a diet of Envy, Lust and Material obsession. Under their exploited influence, our envy and infatuation often bypasses logic, reason and sound judgment, persuading us to listen and follow their lead even though they do not know us and I do not know them beyond the manufactured and well-guarded image I see and hear in the media. This is the mysterious power of celebrity – a seductive and intoxicating force that too many covet and too few fear – a form of inebriation and delusion, and at times, insanity that incites brazen and bizarre behaviour from those who fawn at the feet of fame, making them say and do things they would not otherwise.

A popular tactic among marketers in contemporary culture is the use, or depending who was questioned, misuse of Celebrities to endorse products. Wherever one turns, they are sure to find a familiar face peddling this, endorsing that - posing as experts with a special knowledge or wisdom into whatever the public at large assume they have simply because their face and/ or voice is recognisable and trusted due to some past or present and often irrelevant career, affiliation, endeavour or event that gained them a degree of notoriety. It is human nature to trust the familiar more than the strange; and marketers know this all too well. Consequently, many of us will instinctively treat the advice a celebrity gives us as the counsel of an astute, discerning and well informed friend - especially if they’ve played a memorable role, hosted a top rated show, held an influential office or position, written a best selling book or broken some record in the field of sports that impressed or moved us in some way.

Although I loathe to admit it, I myself have fallen fowl to the great sin of idolatry. Though I have held many in high esteem, Stevie Nicks, of Fleetwood Mac fame, has become somewhat of an Icon to me. I first began to take notice of Stevie when I began listening to her music; her blunt and rigorously delivered lyrics providing somewhat of an insight into my own psyche as well as hers. I felt able to place myself beside her in terms of experiences, and began to use her music as counsel where otherwise in my life it was lacking. I found myself modelling myself on her. Her clothing styles, her charisma, even her attitude towards her own plights being up for the taking. Some may deem this a robbery to assert ones own existence; something that I feel has become a common practice amongst contemporary Idolaters when faced with Celebrities they have placed high upon a pedestal. “People use Celebrities as role models and guides. It seems highly likely that people empathise with certain sorts of Celebrities, perhaps ones who do look a bit like them or whom they aspire to resemble. As these Celebrities change their hairstyle, their mode of dress, their partners, their houses and have their children, they are in a sense acting out a parallel life to which people can relate, aspire and imitate”

Since the days of Marilyn Monroe, Theda Bara and Greta Garbo, people have been expressly concerned with Celebrity. As Author Hamish Pringle claimed in his book ‘Celebrity Sells’ - “Over the last decade we have moved into a new era in which the voracious appetite of the consuming public for all things Celebrity has generated entire segments of the magazine market, transferred the contents of the broadsheet newspapers and given birth to a whole new generation of TV programming” Although some may claim it to be so, those who do indeed enjoy watching Peter Andre Princess Katie of Price are not deceived by them. It may seem somewhat like Bear baiting, but they actually enjoy witnessing them make absolute fools of themselves. There is sometimes an assumption that we have a ‘dumbed-down’ audience. I think some of the fascination does have a nasty side - it is certainly voyeuristic. There's certainly a nasty aspect in seeing Vanessa Feltz break down on Celebrity Big Brother. Where previously the way was paved for the role of a traditional Hero - whom gained notoriety for worthwhile achievements or deeds of a great nature - they have been replaced rather fashionably by the Celebrity who often cannot be characterised by having achieved greatness through worthwhile means. They are often famous merely because of their appearance in the media, be it a television talent show, newspaper article detailing their crimes or even an adulterous affair with another Celebrity.

Another route that appears to have become quite a coveted and sought after status amongst young ladies of a certain age is the page three model. Not content with their status as lowly citizen, young ladies seek to expose themselves within the pages of a somewhat trashy newspaper in order to be recognised for their ‘obvious talent and superior beauty’. Others will call for Heat magazine to be seen as a post-feminist text because its discussion of fashion, consumerism and celebrity's bodies are apparently the same ideas being debated in contemporary feminism. Since the time of the ancient Greeks, beauty has become a synonymous term partnered with the female body. Beauty has become quite a virtue which has often been linked with the female sex, as proposed by such luminaries as Lakoff, Suleiman and Scherr. Beauty of the Feminine, since Plato, has been to some extent become a superlative representing moral and fairly spiritual qualities. Since the Medievil idea of chievlry became such a practiced behaviour , women as a delicate and weaker sex were extolled as a symbol worth fighting or even dying for. Although it is debatable whether this particular idea has begun to erode in contemporary western culture. Even during the Rennaissance, where ideas on morals and accepted truths were ever changing and evolving, the female sex was linked to the divine, as highlighted by the fact that icons such as the Madonna and other graceful female figures were popular within the art of the time. Throughout the 19th Century, Romantic poets, novelists and philosophers sought their inspiration in beauty, adopting a beautiful woman as their muse. In the 21st Century, however, this idea can be questioned greatly by the appearance of females exposing themselves in a less than divine fashion within male oriented newspapers. Some critics consider it to be sexist, demeaning and exploitative, whilst others regard it as softcore pornography . The question when presented with a phenomenon along the same lines as the page three model is merely; What exactly is the distinction between art and flagrant showcasing of assets, and what classifies what is permissible in one yet not the other? Although many have attempted to answer, with varying degrees of success, it is still a question that has critics worldwide divided.

As the media and other sources continue to trade on the Celebrity name, I see an escalation of Celebrity in itself. As suggested in ‘The Celebrity Culture Reader‘, as edited by P. David Sherman; “Perhaps Celebrities represent the vanguard of the surveillance society, where ones anonymity is surrendered to the benefits of the cybernetic consumer culture; Our desires are mapped, recorded and thereby become the material for more precise and directed appeals than the blunt instrument of mass advertising could ever achieve.”. We now have around the clock access to them with the dawn of endless news coverage and the internet, thus there are less places for them to hide. It has become easier and less strenuous to become a notable figure in western culture, reality television having quite a lot to answer for with its offer of slipstream into celebrity for the ordinary society of people with minimal amount of talent. Some could argue that this is destroying the chances of those with real talent, thus crumbling the entertainment industry into something gaudy and unfit for purpose when those worthy enough to be within its folds flounder easily within the money making machine. I personally believe this to be true, having witnessed by varying means the difficulty my own personal “favourites” , eg. Fleetwood Mac, have been faced with in recent years since the entertainment industry has become far more greedy in terms of money than it had ever been before, unwilling to offer help to those who have proved themselves worthy of it and thus made it many times harder for them to continue to do what they have become so notable for.

There are three reasons that can be discerned for the idea of a growing “Cult of Celebrity”, First of all, there is the reason of identity. This is where an ordinary individual, such as myself, feels so strongly about a certain Celebrity that they can identify with them when it pertains to their life struggles, or even something as their image on a purely aestetich level. For example, Stevie Nicks. As I mentioned before when briefly brushing over my idolisation of this “character”, Stevie is an icon for me in the sense that I model myself upon her; Be it her eloquent and beautiful language within her music as a whole or, aestetically speaking, her clothing and appearance in general. Even the compliant and subjugated can dream of being somebody of a higher calibre than they are themselves, be it Bruce Willis or Sylvester Stallone defeating the “baddies” in high style.

Another reason is diversion. Having performed many studies on the depressed individual, Psychologists can now suppose that an individual in a depressed state will become less so when an outer experience can be allowed to detract attention from their own misfortune, any experience of another that is neutral or pleasing that can break the narcissistic obsession with self. Despite the fact that most celebrity seekers cannot claim to be depressed, this plays well into a Celebrity centred life. People get immense joy when they see images of Celebrities who are above themselves; who are attractive and have a great degree of notoriety and it provides a distraction from the regular slog of day to day life.

Finally, the building up of self esteem. I know it is wrong for us to do so, although we may have all done it. I gain great pleasure when I can read about the messy and very public life of a Celebrity, especially when they are of extremely great notoriety and can claim to have many adoring fans. Public humiliations make us feel better about our own lives because I deem those above us to have a greater degree of control over their own, and apparently have the money and the power to pay themselves out of any unwilling situation. I feel as though our lives are more successful than we often give ourselves credit for. Despite our much smaller houses and bank accounts, our relatively anonymous lives, I at least have not engaged in a drunken brawl, entered luxury re-hab for the fourth time or driven a car with a baby on my lap. “Public fascination has a long history, however the increased opportunities to glimpse into their private lives via intrusive media, means that people can get ever closer to their idols and spend considerable sums of money doing so. If celebrity were not so important to millions of people in human society then it would be absolutely impossible for stars to enlist the legions of fans who follow them and thus to command the fees they do. No doubt the film studios, the talent scouts, the agents and journalists who make, break and feed off of Celebrities have a part to play, but in the end there is a deep need in human society to generate these iconic figures, worship them and then very often pull them back to Earth”

Despite how self indulgent it appears to be, Celebrity interest has become an obsession and somewhat of a cult in its own right, as defined by the damaging nature of it. Celebrity interest becomes troublesome when people give too much of their attention to music, sports and other forms of popular entertainment. I lose sight of some of the biggest struggles and some of the most pressing issues of the moment and that becomes immature, irresponsible, and ultimately, for oppressed people, it can become deadly. By deadly, I mean either promoting a false reality, which drives people to do, say or buy things outside of their means to get what celebrity idols have. Or it can divert oppressed people's attention away from forces impacting their lives on a daily basis that produce the same pressures they are trying to escape. I myself have become a great victim of Celebrity infatuation, even going as far as to not believe in myself in my own skin. Despite my infatuation with Stevie Nicks, instead of following her lead in the sense of my existence as a whole, I have constructed an entirely separate life for myself within my sleeping hours. I created a character who contains some of my flaws, yes is vivacious, beautiful and ultimately successful in the fact that she has become hugely successful in the music industry, a dream of mine which I learned at a very young age was unattainable to me. Because of my obsession with this dream of success and being somebody I obviously I am not, I have begun to dismiss myself completely in my own skin. I no longer feel like the young Woman who hides in her room listening to her records and creating art in order to hide form the real world. I’m no longer the young Woman who accepted the worst of friends merely because there was nobody there who was willing to accept me for who I was rather than how I could make them feel better. Ultimately, because of my dreams, I have become a happier and more comfortable person. Because I know that when the world becomes too much for me to cope with, I always have somewhere and someone better to be.

Despite their regular protests about the invasion of privacy, Celebrities are complicit in being surveyed and monitored: It is part of their job. The camera thus becomes the mirror and the Celebrities cultural reflection via the camera is intensified into Celebrity itself. It is a form of narcissism, an obsession with image and the body, and concern over presentation and representation that pervades a city such as Los Angeles. The ripples of this reflecting pool widen outwards to the audiences themselves into a much more expansive internationalisation of the look and the desire to be looked at. In the era of new media, where blogs and webcams spar for our affections with film and television, the reflections of the private self sometimes become the material for the individuals desire to be recognised in the public world - to be famous.