The Contradiction of Celebrity
It’s no mystery why a world that rejects the nameless virtue would reject heroes. At first glance, its no mystery why that same world would embrace celebrities.
There is a hero-shaped hole in the human heart. That hole can’t be filled with actual heroes, because acknowledging someone as a hero requires acknowledging a standard that they have excelled at, which we personally haven’t. The hole gets partly filled with victims, who aren’t any different from the rest of us except something bad happened to them. But celebrities fill most of it. The platonic ideal of a celebrity is someone who is famous for being famous. They don’t conflict with the cult of authenticity or with self-esteem because their basis for fame is how they make us feel. They are “part of our lives.” That’s why the arc of the celebrity universe bends towards the first name basis. Brad and Angelina. If I say I’m a big fan of George, do you think I meant Clooney or Washington? I rest my case. Being “part of our lives” is also why celebrity gossip is such a thing. A stint in drug rehab is no career killer. It’s gossip fodder, its relatable, it humanizes. It paves the way for the Exclusive Candid Interview where the star Bares All and Shares His or Her Struggles. Non-celebrities get sucked into the celebrity mode too, which is why we now ask presidential candidates what kind of underwear they favor.
But here’s the puzzle. Celebrity is all pretense. Actors and musicians are consciously putting on a show. They are performing. That’s true off-stage, where the real person and the real talent is deeply concealed under layers of strategized publicity. “Being part of our lives” is an illusion. But it is necessarily, inherently, by definition true of the actual performance. In other words, celebrity is deeply inauthentic. That’s the puzzle. It’s the cult of authenticity that requires dethroning heroes. Why then would the cult of authenticity throw up big fakes as substitutes?
The same is true of athletes, who are the other major category of celebrity. Even when they aren’t consciously performing for the crowd, they are playing by a completely artificial set of rules. They are playing games. It is mock combat, or a formalized ritual of competition. There is nothing “authentic” about sports at all. But sports is where are heroes come from in this age of authenticity.
Even more puzzling, celebrity has moved more and more in the direction of greater faking. Acting is less mannered than it used to be. Method acting is probably the metaphysical summit of pretense; it’s a pretense where nothing is held back from the pretending. Musicians have to pretend to be primal and gritty. Media go to great length to act objective. The florid rhetoric and prose of yesteryear has gone. In its place is a highly-produced and focus group simple, folksy patter that layers the pretense that we are not pretending on top of the basic pretense.
Here’s another inauthenticity. What celebrities excel at is money, fame, good looks, and good muscles. Precisely the things that our society today considers to be superficial. Those things are trappings. “I feel like you appreciate me for who I really am—a rich guy who is totes good looking” is a line from no romance novel ever. Fame, wealth, and looks aren’t part of the “real me,” and are therefore inauthentic.
The cult of authenticity requires that we not celebrate any meaningful public standards that we don’t ourselves adhere to. So, instead, we all end up celebrating inauthentic standards like wealth and cosmetic appearance. The cult of authenticity exalts our feelings—so it ends up exalting performances, though they are inauthentic by definition, because performances are what makes us feel. The cult of authenticity insists on realism and the primacy of our personal life—so as a society we expend enormous amounts of effort sustaining the illusion that celebrities are part of our lives and their performances are real. The authentic world is littered with fakes.
I hear the Savior saying “He who insists on authenticity shall lose it. And he who abandons authenticity shall find it.”
Filed under: Deseret Review | Tags: Cathedral, clerisy, cult of authenticity, gossip, hypocrisy, LDS, media, Mormon, nameless virtue, That Hideous Strength
Ivan W.
October 14, 2014
“If I say I’m a big fan of George, do you think I meant Clooney or Washington? I rest my case.”
Well, honestly, my first though would be Washington (or maybe Washington Carver). But that’s just me, I guess.
Bartleby
October 14, 2014
I prefer you not be honest.
Bruce Charlton
October 15, 2014
I started to comment here, and it ended up as a blog post:
http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/understanding-culture-of-celebrity.html
As I become more detached from the mass media (although still deep ito it) I notice this more and more.
John Mansfield
October 15, 2014
Now I’m feeling so shallow for the minutes I spent reading the piece in the Style section of this morning’s Washington Post about the Mormon baseball player from Nevada who’s taking his girl to the temple in January. Want to know what color his tuxedo and shoes are going to be?
G.
October 15, 2014
Bruce C.’s essay is really interesting, especially on the democratization of celebrity culture through social media:
“The process resembles ‘taking in each-others washing’ – but the end result is that almost everybody who wants it (which is apparently almost everybody) has a personal stake in celebrity culture, feel a part of it.”
JM,
life needs to be shallow, just not *only* shallow. Celebrity culture relies on the healthy instincts we all have for sociality and interest in one of our own. Whether your particular Style section piece and your reading it is healthy or not is a question that is too hard for me. Since clothes are a shallow interest of mine, I probably would have read it.
MC
October 17, 2014
“If I say I’m a big fan of George, do you think I meant Clooney or Washington?”
Costanza, unfortunately.
MC
October 17, 2014
Could it be simpler than this, that inauthentic people are the most likely to defiantly insist they are authentic, because they know their own deficiency? And that people who are authentic have no reason to even think twice about it?
Example of first group: Hipsters
Example of second group: People who grow up on a farm
MC
October 17, 2014
“Want to know what color his tuxedo and shoes are going to be?”
That’s a clown question, bro.
[Ed.–thou art the thread winner, yea verily]
MC
October 17, 2014
Not to spam with mini-comments, but I should clarify my point above. Our vapid elites MUST elevate celebrity worship as the most authentic thing of all, because otherwise they would have to admit that they’re missing out on something real, and there might actually be something to the silly traditions and superstitions of the serfs/kulaks.
So GW = dead white slave owner, while
Beyoncé = some sort of minor deity
G.
October 17, 2014
Good and thought-provoking comments, MC.
One problem with the cult of authenticity is that our desires are in conflict. We have basic desires for pleasure and gratification and status. But we also desire excellence and self-mastery. When an hombre simply acts on his basic desires, to be ‘authentic,’ he finds that his other desires for real eminence and virtue go unslaked. That can lead to quite a bit of pretence to resolve the cognitive dissonance. We pretend that popularity is eminence and outrage is virtue.
The gospel allows for real authenticity by recognizing that our authenticity is dynamic. We aren’t giving full play to all our desires here and now. Our desires aren’t finished. We are working towards something where all those desires and instincts have an expression, but are balanced, and we have internalized the balance. In other words, repentance and grace are what reconcile the nameless virtue and the virtue of sincerity/integrity.
But there are interesting corrollaries of this view. The first corollary is that every instinct or impulse does have something in it. That may not mean we can safely embrace it in any form in this life, but there is nothing to be left behind. Asceticism and otherworldliness are potentially means, but never ends. The second corollary is that self-control, taboos, and social controls are in fact inauthentic and deficient without some vision of the afterlife that they are preparing us for.