Trapped in Fantasy

Whitney Houston has died, sympathy floods in. When Michael Jackson died, strangers shouted out of their cars, stopped me while I was on Broadway Avenue in Chicago, I received multiple texts. Clearly something momentous had happened. Top twenty people or I am not sure what they are that are followed on Twitter: Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Shakira, Rihanna, Kim Kardashian, Britney Spears, Barack Obama, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez, Ashton Kutcher, Ellen Degeneres, Nicki Minaj, Youtube Twitter stats, Oprah Winfrey, Marshall Mathers, Kaka, Justin Timberlake, Twitter en Espanol Twitter Stats, Chris Brown Twitter Stats.

Celebrity culture rules. I find it peculiar how much people who pretend for a living are valued. That is fundamentally what an actor and what singer is, isn't it, well they interpret stories and embody them for us, sort of projections of our imaginations and desires or something like that? If we value the story, then scriptwriters and songwriters should have the largest followings. But they are not, it is the blank canvas who is valued, empty until the story emerges through them. And if they do it well enough, we will assert that their interior life (and physical of course, I mean how will we know what the latest hairstyle is) is one worth following and watching and caring about. We consume what they consume, hoping that our acne scars and existential angsts will not be noticed if we wear a yellow jumpsuit like Peony Superstar. Yea, so its not always the story cos no-one is dressing like J.K. Rowling and having Rowling parties.

Instead it is mostly the fantasy figure we obsess about, feel for and try to emulate. So what is it we are doing when the reality of daily life loses its value and the most important people are unattainable parodies of themselves? And lets not forget celebrities are invariably larger than their own realities, so they are unattainable even to themselves. To clarify: they have been airbrushed and photoshopped and plucked and dressed out of their own schizophrenic existence. Julia Roberts cannot be Julia Roberts the star to herself, I am sure.

These people become spokespeople and examples for causes (like Houston for drug addiction and also an example of the black woman who becomes a crack momma cos of her violent black baby daddy)  and provide expert soundbites that often they are not equipped to discuss (like valuable nutrition advice such as the cayenne pepper diet). Don't get me wrong, there are worthy causes brought to light because of celebrities, after all it was through the interventions of musicians and singers that apartheid became anathema globally. Though Band-Aid should also be thanked for the idea of a perpetually starving, ignorant Africa as a village. Because celebrities (or the teams that manage and corporations or causes that use them) own the affect of the people and thus are influential.

What does it say about society though that we consistently value the fantasy over the real? And lets not be mistaken, daily life and reality does not have much value. If it did we would spend less money consuming the latest dress worn by Superstar Victoria pretending to be Posh whilst looking hungry and grumpy because of her low blood sugar and teetering on painful uncomfortable shoes to great acclaim and spend more time on wondering how the hell we care for the actual people around us.

Is it that reality is untenable? That reality is incomprehensible? I mean hell even the City Press asks you to send an entertaining article and most of the serious political news I got in the US was from Comedy Central. Is it that no-one has the attention span to engage with the world unless they are stroked in some way, made to laugh, made to love, manipulated into caring? I don't know.

I also know we love to hate them, love to see them fall, love to see them in pain. In some ways it is about our collective self-hate, our nihilistic, defeatist beliefs that no matter how powerful, beautiful or wealthy, life can still be crappy and one can only be on top for so long before failing. And we watch those falls, the humiliations, disgraces over and over again, no wonder we believe we can't change the life of the person around the corner. Cos, after all even if someone has everything, they will be a mess.  Except I always wonder why we are surprised that the people who pretend for a living fall apart when they have no privacy and everyone can see them, watch them. Its a contradiction, yes, of actors who strive for fame.

I wonder what would happen for instance if we were to tell people that there will be no more news about Richard Gere cos he touts for the Dalai Lama after the Secrecy Bill is passed, if there will be more outrage. I wonder if we were to say, you know, killing people in Iraq is bad because Superstar with Anglicised name would never have been born if they were bombing there x years ago or some such. We know that in the US, a really good way to get into politics is to be an actor first, cowboys and terminators are welcome.

Isn't it awful that people need movies and novels to entertain them into caring. Its as if collectively there is no imagination, no suffering until someone writes it for someone to pretend it. And then the most marvellous thing happens, we eventually after its fifteeen minutes forget the message pretended and focus on the pretender until the next pretense of celebrating a celebrity cause.

Well, you can tell I'm muddled. But hey, put it down to the grief of Houston's death.