Back to July 2007
Greek to Me July 2007
The Celebs Must Be Crazy (or not)
©2007 by Michael Raysses
It's been observed that man created the gods to better understand his own life. By learning about them, he would learn about himself. And so, cultures created very elaborate deities who exemplified what it meant to be alive, warts and all. However, because these divine beings were not of this world they were exempt from the rules and conventions to which mere mortals were subjected. The difference between then and now is that our gods and goddesses live within our midst and their every move is documented with unprecedented volume and precision. Today they aren't referred to as gods and goddessesthey are called celebrities.
In large part, our relationship with celebrity is based on how we define the term. Before celebrity-obsession was the norm and the celebrity-to-non-celebrity ratio seemed relatively balanced, there was an implied requirement present. To become a cultural icon, you actually had to do something or be something that qualified you as such. You had to have some skill, talent, or aspect that set you apart from us earth-bound clods who wouldn't dare to be thought of as divinities, if only because we had a grasp of who we were³regular folk.² That is clearly not the case anymore. More than at any point in the past, we suffer the ravages of an epidemic of people whose claim to fame is tenuous, at best. The designated class of the celebrated now includes the talent-free, the criminally inclined, and the most virulent strain of the celebrity virus-those who are famous merely because of their fame. I'd like to think that this is because the process of deciding who becomes a celebrity has become a lot more democratic. I would also like to wake up tomorrow to discover that Abraham Lincoln has risen from the grave and has taken up residence in the White House. Hey, a fella can dream, can't he?
Many factors contribute to the inferno that torches genuine accomplishment, real talent, and remarkable personas in favor of vacuous flash. Capitalism, for one. Check out the circulation rates for publications like People and Us and you can appreciate the economic forces at play. But since killing the messenger in this instance poses no solution, where else is there to look for relief? What about the celebrities themselves? Surely, the idea of a little self-restraint has more than a little relevance here. But blaming the terminally overexposed for the current state of affairs is like blaming a tree for bursting into flame during a forest fire-once set in motion, certain forces become forces of nature. No, the real culprit hides with much greater stealth, rarely stepping forward to accept responsibility for the status quo.
And that culprit is you and me. And anyone who wastes one minute of their life reading those rags or watching TV shows that do nothing but supply endless streams of minutiae so trivial they practically redefine the term. It's one thing to thumb through a copy of Star while sitting in your dentist's office because you've forgotten to bring something else to read. It's another to indiscriminately ingest on a daily basis meaningless factoids about people you don't really know, can't ever be like, and probably don't even find all that interesting in the first place. This smacks of pungent opposition. By the very act of trying to touch the stars, we stoop to do so because that is exactly what consuming tabloid fodder is-a voluntary descent. What's the benefit of that gesture? There is none. Unlike our ancestors who studied the gods to gain some deeper meaning into their own existence, the net effect of what we glean from our fixation with our cultural gods only serves to estrange us from our own lives, and thus from each other.
There was a time when I was acting that I actively pondered fame and its rigors. When the reality of Hollywood's algebra hit me, though, I understood that I was never going to be famous in the way that acting can bring. But that's all come full circle now. My theory is this: part of what makes famous people famous is the presence of the anonymous, the un-famous. We are the black velvet that lends the diamond of their notoriety its brilliance. Without us, their fame has no context. (If you have ever seen a group of famous people of varying degrees of recognition standing around with no plebes within close proximity, you know exactly what I mean.)
With more future celebrities being born every day, eventually everyone will be famous, and then we'll really be through the looking glass. By then, the most renowned person of all will be the last guy who hasn't achieved fame. That's who I want to bethe last god in.
And if that's Greek to you, have your people call my people. By the time everybody's famous, I am sure I will have somebody to handle these affairs.
©2007 Michael Raysses. Michael is a writer/actor/National Public Radio commentator who lives in Los Angeles. His email address is Greek2me@ca.rr.com.