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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Celebrities. Do we need them?
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
How fast did this turn from an interesting topic on the psychology of celebrity to the vapid “Well, I’ve never heard of him”?
Yes, I thought that it could become a competition in snobbery. Well, I'm sure I've never heard of the Kardashians, and Kanye West - he's a footballer, isn't he?
The obvious point psychologically is that we use projection in relation to celebs, so that we can look at aspects of ourselves out there, as it were. Talent, beauty, criminality, sexiness, and what have you. We seem to need hooks to hang things on.
[ 29. December 2017, 16:26: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Rossweisse
High Church Valkyrie
# 2349
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Posted
I suppose that my equivalent of celebrities is politicians, at least in terms of name and facial recognition. Oh, dear.
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I'm not dead yet.
Posts: 15117 | From: Valhalla | Registered: Feb 2002
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Rossweisse:
I suppose that my equivalent of celebrities is politicians, at least in terms of name and facial recognition. Oh, dear.
Politics is show business for ugly people.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Soror Magna
Shipmate
# 9881
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
How fast did this turn from an interesting topic on the psychology of celebrity to the vapid “Well, I’ve never heard of him”?
Yes, I thought that it could become a competition in snobbery. Well, I'm sure I've never heard of the Kardashians, and Kanye West - he's a footballer, isn't he?...
LMFGTFY kinda takes the steam out of that sort of snobbery these days. ![[Devil]](graemlins/devil.gif)
One useful thing about celebrity gossip is that it is less harmful than gossiping about friends, family, coworkers, neighbours, etc.
Anyway, it seems it's natural to enjoy watching high-status monkeys. A more interesting question for this forum might be whether Christianity even remembers gossip is a sin. And why nobody complains about it if it is. Even if it's about people we don't personally know.
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"You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, I'll show you America. Terminal, crazy and mean." -- Tony Kushner, "Angels in America"
Posts: 5430 | From: Caprica City | Registered: Jul 2005
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
I’m not sure there is a hard border between gossip and community. So, at what point does it become a “sin”?
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Rossweisse
High Church Valkyrie
# 2349
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
...A more interesting question for this forum might be whether Christianity even remembers gossip is a sin. And why nobody complains about it if it is. Even if it's about people we don't personally know.
Good point. I try to remember it, although there's always a question - even for those of us who don't follow celebrities - of where gossip crosses the line into legitimate news.
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I'm not dead yet.
Posts: 15117 | From: Valhalla | Registered: Feb 2002
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simontoad
Ship's Amphibian
# 18096
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Posted
Gossip is certainly a sin in the Bible, the question is whether gossip as we understand and practice it was the same thing as the gossip Paul condemns in the Letter to the Romans. I personally think we should punish all gossips by dunking them in ponds.
I'll get me togs.
Seriously though, I'm not sure that gossip is a part of community, unless (shit, can't think of a good simile) ... I intend to say 'unless something bad is an intrinsic part of something good.' Why is gossip a necessary part of community, especially when I reckon St Paul reckons that it is a destructive part of community and I reckon he's right.
Sorry, roleplaying Tennant's Dr Who I think.
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Human
Posts: 1571 | From: Romsey, Vic, AU | Registered: May 2014
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
In simple terms, imparting information about members of a community is part of being a community. Think All Saints on SOF. There is no clean line between informing the community and spreading malicious information. Some things are obviously one or the other, but many fall somewhere in-between.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
The obvious point psychologically is that we use projection in relation to celebs, so that we can look at aspects of ourselves out there, as it were. Talent, beauty, criminality, sexiness, and what have you. We seem to need hooks to hang things on.
Precisely the tactics dear Donald used to get himself elected. So the answer to the OP is an overwhelming yes, something his political opponents overlooked.
As for snobbery, it isn't that snobs don't need celebrities. No, far from it, snobs need celebrities who fit that particular pattern of thinking. Hence the enduring popularity of figures like Winston Churchill, or even fake celelebs like King Aurthur. Though I am probably crossing over into Hero worship on this tack.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
How fast did this turn from an interesting topic on the psychology of celebrity to the vapid “Well, I’ve never heard of him”?
Yes, I thought that it could become a competition in snobbery. Well, I'm sure I've never heard of the Kardashians, and Kanye West - he's a footballer, isn't he?
The obvious point psychologically is that we use projection in relation to celebs, so that we can look at aspects of ourselves out there, as it were. Talent, beauty, criminality, sexiness, and what have you. We seem to need hooks to hang things on.
I don’t think it is projection, or at least, since you may be using projection in a technical sense, I don’t think that we identify with celebrities or draw any strength from them. Heroes we do; we can model ourselves on them. Celebrities, though, are distant from us, inhabit a world disconnected from ours, they don’t even look like us or anyone we know. As a result they are disabling. We become consumers of the public image of celebrities, which is different from being inspired by the achievements of people who are basically like us: heroes, role models, prize winners, inventors, artists, etc.
This feature that many celebrities are famous for being famous is significant, because we can’t replicate it. Perhaps we could write a good novel or win the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, unlikely, but we know the route to that. Celebrities are plucked from the privileged also rans by an irrational hand that is associated with a branch of the media, but which no one really controls. Fame is given by shows and magazines inviting the nearly famous on, because they want the fame to rub off on them.
It’s like the UK honours system. A tiny proportion of honours are given to people judged to deserve them because lifelong efforts are often unrewarded and unrecognised, but many are given in order to associate the honours system with the success of the recipients. I’m thinking not so much of the people who get gongs for being rich and powerful, but those, often sports stars, who increasingly get honours for being popular. It’s a tricky one, though, because popularity moves like bitcoin. Bradley Wiggins is, I guess, less popular now than when he was knighted, and not such a good tie-in for the honours system as he seemed.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
This feature that many celebrities are famous for being famous is significant, because we can’t replicate it. Perhaps we could write a good novel or win the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, unlikely, but we know the route to that.
I think you've got that the wrong way round, actually. I can (and did) train as hard as I can to be the best cricketer I can be, but I'll never be a test star because I don't have the innate talent required to get to that level.
The average person can practice football for their whole life, but they'll never be Lionel Messi. They can practice the piano for 12 hours a day, but they'll never be Mozart. They can write stories until the cows come home, but they'll never be Dickens. It's just impossible to be that good at something unless you're born with the right set of talents.
But what talents do the Kardashians have that have put them where they are? None. They were just in the right place at the right time. Dumb luck. And the thing about dumb luck is that it can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Which actually makes it more achievable (albeit not by much, but a tiny chance is infinitely better than no chance at all) than becoming famous for something that requires skill.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
Celebrity can happen to anyone, but you can’t make it happen to you. You must just wait, which is why we are disengaged by celebrity.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
People do identify with celebrity and not necessarily at a distance. There is no functional difference between hero worship and celebrity worship. Famous for being famous and reality stars make becoming a celebrity appear more attainable, but serve the same purpose as “real” celebrity.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I find my thoughts putting together the celebrity wedding of a British royal and an American actress with monkeys copulating from the previous page, President Pervert wanting to hump Diana, Prince Charles talking of being a tampon with Camilla while still married to Diana. I want to tell myself they are merely flawed human beings and perhaps the perversion and psychopathology of every day life is just more public than private today due to electronic communication, but this doesn't seem to capture the depravity. I find myself recalling a line attributed to to Nietzsche from univ days about the inability to sweeten the smell of a manure pile with a bottle of perfume, and wonder if salvation is truly offered to all people of the world. On the other hand perhaps perception is skewed by the info from the internets and celebrity is only a few turds on the top of the pile.
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Celebrity can happen to anyone, but you can’t make it happen to you. You must just wait, which is why we are disengaged by celebrity.
You can't make heroism happen to you either. That's my point. If unattainability makes us disengaged then it makes us disengaged from all of them.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
In this Country I think the two most bizarre celebrity happenings were:
1/ the mass outpouring of hysteria following the death of Diana
2/ the exposure of Sir savile as a career sex offender.
It is mildly incredible that the celebrity culture has continued despite two, (entirely unconnected), crazy/dark anomalies of celebritism.
ISTM that we, the net-curtain twitchers, are never discouraged from peeping no matter how absurd the stage act becomes.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
Celebrity can happen to anyone, but you can’t make it happen to you. You must just wait, which is why we are disengaged by celebrity.
You can't make heroism happen to you either. That's my point. If unattainability makes us disengaged then it makes us disengaged from all of them.
You were engaged in cricket. Only one in a thousand becomes a professional, one in fifty thousand a test cricketer, but you can see your progress and measure yourself against the greats. It’s real. Joe Root averages over 50 which puts him in a very elite group.
People who are famous because the media have seized them and bestowed fame on them undermine all that. It’s like having sportstars who aren’t actually good at any sport.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
People who are famous because the media have seized them and bestowed fame on them undermine all that. It’s like having sportstars who aren’t actually good at any sport.
Paris Hilton, the modern Queen of the Famous for Being Famous, wasn’t seized by the media, she seized them. She used the tiny seed of being related to someone well known and worked that into a career. The Kardashian’s studied at her feet and work to keep themselves relevant.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Ian Climacus
Liturgical Slattern
# 944
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
There is no functional difference between hero worship and celebrity worship.
This struck me as odd. Not saying you're wrong, but I would've thought there was a world of difference. Maybe because I engage in one and not the other! ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
I would've thought my (extreme) admiration of those I know is subtly different, given I know these people and admire a trait or traits that I think is useful and which I do not possess. I suppose celebrity worship could see being famous, or good at football, as an admirable trait too. But I, perhaps mistakenly, see admiring a friend for his intellect or a footballer for their skills as different to being so engrossed in what a celebrity wears or who they have sex with or where they go on holiday or ...
Or have I got the definition wrong?
Posts: 7800 | From: On the border | Registered: Jul 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
A celebrity is someone famous. Doesn’t matter for what. Choosing an attribute to admire is subjective. You admire footballers, someone else might think it rubbish to celebrate adults for playing a child’s game.
Intellect is an inherited trait, just as being beautiful.
I’m not placing anything on a particular scale, but illustrating the commonalities.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Golden Key
Shipmate
# 1468
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
People who are famous because the media have seized them and bestowed fame on them undermine all that. It’s like having sportstars who aren’t actually good at any sport.
Paris Hilton, the modern Queen of the Famous for Being Famous, wasn’t seized by the media, she seized them. She used the tiny seed of being related to someone well known and worked that into a career. The Kardashian’s studied at her feet and work to keep themselves relevant.
I just skimmed her Wikipedia entry. I knew a little about her. I saw an interview with her, her parents, and her sister. IIRC, P said she worked because she didn't want to just take what was handed to her (via Hilton hotel family wealth). From what that Wikipedia entry says, she's worked a *lot*. Films, TV, modeling, a couple of memoirs, entrepreneur many times over, pop music, etc.
From the interview I mentioned and from occasional clips on TV, I had the impression that she just wasn't very smart. But...when Dubya was president, he made some crack at her expense. She replied in a very short video. She was alert, awake, and well-spoken. (She'd often seemed half-asleep, to me.) Whatever is going on with her, she's clearly not of low intelligence. She did have some trouble in/with school, and dropped out. But she did get her GED (an alternative to a standard high school diploma).
Anyway, my perceptions of people can be very wrong, as this shows. Kind of like with Marilyn Monroe--beyond her physical attributes, I couldn't figure out why she was so popular. After she died, there was a news clip of her studio dressing room (?), and her bookshelves. I don't remember any titles; but, at the time, I thought she couldn't be as dumb as her persona if she read *those* books. I heard she was a foster kid, so another puzzle piece. Then there was an outtake film clip, where she was playing with a puppy at a studio. She seemed truly happy and very different, a Marilyn I'd like to know.
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--"Oh bat bladders, do you have to bring common sense into this?" (Dragon, "Jane & the Dragon")
--"Oh, Peace Train, save this country!" (Yusuf/Cat Stevens, "Peace Train")
Posts: 18601 | From: Chilling out in an undisclosed, sincere pumpkin patch. | Registered: Oct 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
Trump is a 'celebrity' and he gets talked about a lot. No admiration, plenty of confusion and horror. But with it, for me, comes a morbid/confused/worried/amused fascination.
Can this person stoop any lower? (answer: yes he can). Will his actions affect my life? (Probably, but hopefully not involving nuclear winter)
But, at the other end of the scale I love Gogglebox. Watching ordinary people watching TV. Pleasant, kind, funny, clever, silly people. It restores your faith in humanity.
Both activities are looking through the bars of a zoo, are they not?
My niece has no TV, no iPhone or computer and indulges in none of this. She does visit the real zoo with her kids 'tho.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
People who are famous because the media have seized them and bestowed fame on them undermine all that. It’s like having sportstars who aren’t actually good at any sport.
Like Eddie the Eagle or the Jamaican Bobsled Team?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
People do identify with celebrity and not necessarily at a distance. There is no functional difference between hero worship and celebrity worship. Famous for being famous and reality stars make becoming a celebrity appear more attainable, but serve the same purpose as “real” celebrity.
Yes, I think identification is an important aspect. Also idealization, which often goes with the opposite. For example, if you take a figure such as Joan of Arc, we get intense idealization by one side, and demonization by the other side.
As to why humans tend to idealize, this is pretty complicated. You can relate it to mana in the ancient world, well, humans seem to need a degree of charisma around them. The most obvious example, is the idealization of parents by children, which leads often to disillusionment, quite healthy of course.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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rolyn
Shipmate
# 16840
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Posted
There is a difference between being good at something then going on to be well known or famous. Hemce we are inclined to say 'She or he is becoming quite the celebrity'. What causes this morph to happen is the grey area.
Some work hard to become celebrities yet are thrown out with the trash, OTOH sometimes them that fake it can make it.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
Posts: 3206 | From: U.K. | Registered: Dec 2011
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hatless
Shipmate
# 3365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by hatless:
People who are famous because the media have seized them and bestowed fame on them undermine all that. It’s like having sportstars who aren’t actually good at any sport.
Like Eddie the Eagle or the Jamaican Bobsled Team?
Ah, the blessed Eddie! But he was no good at a particular sport. He was quantifiably bad (and better than the rest of us).
Imagine a sport star who gets interviewed to talk about her training programme and the emotional upset over her brother’s divorce, who is always in the studio for coverage of the Olympics, who is visited by journalists at her base in Madeira where she talks about the possibility of abandoning her attempt to qualify for the 100m relay team and instead focus on tennis, who came fifth in Sports Personality of the Year, who is greeted with squeals of audience delight and hostly hyperbole for her numerous chat show appearances to talk about the colour changes in her kit for 2018 (available at selected retailers), who interviewers take entirely seriously as she discusses diet, motivation, drugs or her new book about The Ashes (co-written with Mark Ramprakash and Mike Selvey), but who has never competed in any sport at any competitive level since her ‘did not place’ at the Surrey Schools Cross Country event where she fell over just before the tape and an apparently certain fifth place in 2008.
I dare say that the great royal courts a few centuries ago had familiar faces that, if they thought about it, no one could remember how they came to be there; people without high birth, wealth, or real connection. Centres of privilege have to bestow their blessing on someone, and it will often be the bland and unexceptional who are the manikins so dressed; the young and good looking, those who know how to behave in this place of privilege, but not necessarily much more.
As I watch celebrity this or that quiz or panel show over Christmas, with another eight celebrities I have never heard of and doubt I’ll hear of again, I am peering in through the windows of a place of money, privilege and status that appears to recognise and celebrate those things, but also manufactures them, and at its fringes, the C to F list celebrities, gives them away inappropriately.
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My crazy theology in novel form
Posts: 4531 | From: Stinkers | Registered: Sep 2002
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
Inappropriately.
Look, I’m not a fan of the Kardashian’s and their ilk. But is this is going to digress into what one “approves” of, them it will miss the interesting psychology involved.
Kim Kardashian is no less “deserving” of approval than Christianity Ronaldo or Sir John Gielgud. And it was difficult or me to put the last name in the same sentence as the first.
Whilst there are gatekeepers/influencers, the public are the ultimate arbiters of what celebrity is.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
People do identify with celebrity and not necessarily at a distance. There is no functional difference between hero worship and celebrity worship. Famous for being famous and reality stars make becoming a celebrity appear more attainable, but serve the same purpose as “real” celebrity.
Yes, I think identification is an important aspect. Also idealization, which often goes with the opposite. For example, if you take a figure such as Joan of Arc, we get intense idealization by one side, and demonization by the other side.
As to why humans tend to idealize, this is pretty complicated. You can relate it to mana in the ancient world, well, humans seem to need a degree of charisma around them. The most obvious example, is the idealization of parents by children, which leads often to disillusionment, quite healthy of course.
You know your parents and, when you get past the mum is magic and dad can do anything phase, you can plainly see they are just ordinary. Celebs can be perpetually held at a distance and avoid contact with reality.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
It sounds like more snobbery. I like tasteful people like writers and opera singers, but apparently the plebs like trash like the Kardashians and that ghastly Mariah Carey.
By the way, Christianity Ronaldo is now shooting up the charts, not just a good footballer, but nearly a Christian saint.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
People do identify with celebrity and not necessarily at a distance. There is no functional difference between hero worship and celebrity worship. Famous for being famous and reality stars make becoming a celebrity appear more attainable, but serve the same purpose as “real” celebrity.
Yes, I think identification is an important aspect. Also idealization, which often goes with the opposite. For example, if you take a figure such as Joan of Arc, we get intense idealization by one side, and demonization by the other side.
As to why humans tend to idealize, this is pretty complicated. You can relate it to mana in the ancient world, well, humans seem to need a degree of charisma around them. The most obvious example, is the idealization of parents by children, which leads often to disillusionment, quite healthy of course.
You know your parents and, when you get past the mum is magic and dad can do anything phase, you can plainly see they are just ordinary. Celebs can be perpetually held at a distance and avoid contact with reality.
Yes, although there is an interesting flip between idealization and denigration. The same person can be idealized by some and vilified by others - and this can even happen longitudinally. Yesterday I loved Cristiano Ronaldo, but today I hate him. But you could argue that the hate is as unreal as the love, although I'm not sure about this. What is real, blah blah blah.
[ 31. December 2017, 16:37: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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