by Jefferson Hansen
(This is a series of posts reflecting on the place of "the show" in contemporary society and culture.)
We can ask whether or not a tree falls in a forest when there is nobody there to hear it. But there is now a more relevant question: Does anything happen, in a meaningful way, if it is not filmed or photographed? Digitalized "film" is slowly being accorded more reality than that which is filmed. Something not filmed is becoming irrelevant and quaint. More and more, we live in the show, as spectators and participants.
Celebrities are the "real" selves of performers in the show. Principle arenas of performance include sports, acting, politics, music, and news and talk show hosts.
I use quotations around the word "real" because the thrill of celebrity hinges on the mystery surrounding the construction of this "real." News and talk shows often claim to unmask a celebrity, to show what he or she is really like. "Next, meet Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin up close and personal. Find out what he is really like."
Mystery is created in the tension between this claimed unmasking and the nagging sense that an interview, confession, or presentation is a) controlled by Public Relations staff and b) just another performance. What attracts us to celebrities is the peekaboo, the here-I-am, there-I-go sense. Indeed, "celebrity" is a dance of masking and unmasking—and the extreme unmasking is to show a celebrity is "really" a deviant or criminal. Even here, the dance does not end. We always must question if this unmasking is the final one, if there is "more to the story."
The construction of celebrities makes them seem to have fuller, more complete lives than the rest of us. We desire what they supposedly have. This is why they so often appear in advertisements: they are desire-creating machines.
We sometimes desire to see the bubble popped, to see exposure.
This dialectic between masking (the performance of the "real") and unmasking (information that complicates or mitigates against this performance) is a celebrity. Part of the PR is to let details come out that run counter to or at least complicate the performance of the real. This keeps the celebrity in the news cycle. When the mystery runs dry, when the desire to "know" them ends, they become yesterday's news, an old celebrity. This very "oldness" can be used to try to resuscitate a celebrity through nostalgia. "Ever wonder what became of Celebrity A whose star shown so bright in the 80s? We have him with us tonight so that you can find out for yourself."
Some disclosures do not come from PR. They come from digging journalists.
Journalists, too, become celebrities. We get to see what they are "really" like when they perform as "themselves" on talk shows, for instance.
With the advent of cheap cameras and personal computers, we can all become celebrities. The simple question, "Who is that person in the viral video?" begins the celebrity dialectic. Such people may appear on talk shows. To appear on such a show is, inevitably, to be involved in the celebrity dialectic.
There are elements of the culture where this dialectic is much less pronounced. Again, these appear at the edge of the show. Scholars may be known in their field, but the obsessive need to get at the constructed "real" self, and to complicate it, usually does not exist. People might be curious about a star scholar and even model themselves after him or her, but rarely does it take the form of wanting to know the mysteries of the construction of their "real" self.
Some artists also live outside celebrity. At a jazz show, for instance, musicians often hang out with audience members between sets. They are usually given space and not treated with the sort of emotional outbursts often exhibited around true celebrities. As with scholars, people may be curious about what they are like. But it rarely takes the form of the peekaboo, back and forth dialectic of the celebrity.
We want to be celebrities. We envy them for having what we want. We want to at least see them squirm a little, and sometimes even hurt.
Up next: a comparison between the function of celebrities in contemporary culture and the Greek gods.
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