Celebrities

Amy Winehouse's death has gotten me thinking a great deal about our celebrity culture.

Go to any grocery store, and the checkout line screams at you to buy some candy, batteries, breath-freshening mints and gum, and magazines with movie stars' faces plastered all over them.But whether glamorized,
or full of gossip-rumors both happy and disastrous,They're full of lies.

Even if something contained actually pertains to the truth, I posit that they are lies. It is a lie for people to be so caught up in lives that are neither their own, nor belonging to anyone they will ever meet. Friend, Angelina Jolie and you will never meet.

So why this obsession with tabloid lives?

Take that as an open, rhetorical question, because it's not what I want to talk about. What I have been thinking about has more to do with how things are connected to one another. I don't mean in quite a universalist sort of sense, but more in a chain reaction, everything can affect everything sense.

My question starts with this. If you met your favourite movie star, or musician, how would you react? Let's say you're fully expecting it, and it's not like one of those running into him/her in the hall and being super surprised sorts of moments. You were listening to the radio, called in, and won lunch with this person, or these people. Would you flip out, and start dancing up and down, and making weird screamy noises, maybe want to faint, start fanning yourself, or only be able to think about making sure to get their autograph and a picture, without any further thoughts? If so, then shame on you. Now, if I met the Avett Brothers, I would probably spend a couple of seconds looking like a deer in the headlights, and having my own starstruck moment...I love their music a lot, and am pretty sure I would be initially overwhelmed by the circumstances. So I'm not trying to critique honest excitement at meeting someone you admire or look up to. But I would make an effort to settle myself and talk like a normal person to normal people. Why? Because famous people are just people!

I've always thought this, but it was confirmed at the Wild Goose Festival, where one of the goals was to break down hierarchies between performers/presenters and the attenders. I had the opportunity to spend time with a couple of pretty famous people, and guess what? They were just people! And I enjoyed my experiences much more than if I had worried about autographs instead of conversations.

So I wonder how much the pressure from non-celebrity, normal folks must weigh on famous folks. Certainly Amy Winehouse's decision to abuse substances was a personal one. But I wonder how much celebrity idolization culture and pressure may factor in to catalyzing already spiraling situations.

Our celebrity culture is both obsessive and heartless; we want to be inundated by the beautiful, airbrushed gods and godesses, and are quick to condemn them when they fall. I would hate to have people using zoom lenses to take pictures of how much cellulite I have this swimsuit season, what sorts of drinks I order at my favourite coffee shop, how my kids are looking, how my love life is going, or a night-out-gone-wrong. Why do we think it's fair or civilized to do this?

If people have spent time in this spotlight, why should it surprise us if they turn to substances to try and find some relief? And if their relationships are rocky, and marriages difficult to maintain, and parenthood difficult to master? If they get plastic surgery on their knees because they were told they look wrinkly and old? Or lose too much weight in order to compensate for what the camera adds?

And why do we think it's OK to judge these far-off people and not look at our own lives, and the lives of those around us? Stop talking about how celebrities should do this or that! Tell your sister she's anorexic and needs help! Tell your father he's an alcoholic and needs AA! Tell your daughter her clothes make her look slutty instead of beautiful! Tell your friend he's a drug addict and needs rehab! Tell your parents to get marriage counseling!

Not so easy, is it? Real conversations are difficult. They require a lot of things, one of them being compassion. If you don't care about some one, they have very little incentive to receive criticism. It's a lot easier to talk about how Lindsay Lohan needs to get her life together than to tell someone with whom you are actually acquainted the same things. Or, for that matter, to admit that growing up a celebrity and trying to make it as an actor, finding a place as a woman in an oversexed society, while just simply growing up, would probably be pretty freaking hard.

Please, please stop buying tabloids and silly magazines. You don't need to know the stuff that's in them. Or limit yourself; start getting them less often. It really won't kill you to miss a month of gossip, and you may find that spending time reading books or being outside, when you used to read tabloids, as well as the brain power to process and then talk about these things, more useful things, will be invigorating.

And if you ever meet a celebrity, please introduce yourself like a normal person. Don't go on to them about how much you loved such and such a movie, don't ask right off the bat for their autograph. Start a normal conversation.

And if you find that they are too drug-addled, or aloof, or busy to have a normal conversation, give them a break. Remember that we are the sorts of people who created the culture that allows them to be so.