Looking through pictures of theatre and movie stars of long ago I was struck by our need of 'celebrity.' Today we have lots of mediocre 'stars' filling the TV screen entertaining, they say, the masses. The Chinese ambassador has complained about the house next door where some stars of one TV programme (The X Factor?) are besieged by teenagers looking for their 'heroes.' I use that word loosely! Their 'fan adoration' has left the place a mess, and caused a noise nuisance, as you can imagine! The 'Daily Mail' specialises in gossip concerning famous women and their dress sense, while the 'red tops' specialise in what these women do while undressed. The private lives of the famous, footballers, TV stars, politicians and any rich and famous person, appears to be what the masses wish to know. It has always been thus I suspect.
Magazines abounded in the twenties and thirties full of tales of the movie stars. Such was the desire for Rudolf Valentino that women committed suicide when he died. I cruelly think neither were much of a loss but this does reveal the emotional emptiness of some. Reading Josephus 'Jewish War' we note the amount of time given over to the intrigues of Herod's palace. The bitchiness and backstabbing between the women, the conspiracy from the men seeking the throne, and the constant infighting that helped destroy Herod's mental balance. Roman writers realised that sexual adventures, political infighting, avarice and the lives of the great and good were food and drink to the Roman populace. Something within us needs to know what the famous are up to, especially if it is sexual or just bad! Why?
There is indeed an interest in others lives, especially someone you admire, or detest, who is a celebrity of one sort or another. However do we need to know all the corruption? Is it just cheap titillation or living out our mundane fantasies through their, apparent, lives. In the end we find they are all just broken people like ourselves. We tend to discover they are no happier than we are, often very much the opposite, and riches do not satisfy their ambitions. There is of course no shortage of those who wish to be famous, don't we all at one time or another, and as Clive James claimed recently, being famous comes at a cost, and he did not like the cost! Once famous you are not your own. You belong to others and they will use you to fulfil their lives through you.
Pop singers and movie stars are never far from a photographer. Some are pleased by this and all eventually have had enough of it. Footballers are abused and cheered equally during their careers. They are subject to abuse from friend and foe and find the media demand them at all times, then deliberately twist what they may say! yet we still want to be like them at some time, for we need to be appreciated and indeed loved for what we are. I suspect that lies at the heart of those who wish to be celebrities, the need to be accepted, and loved for being them! For those on the outside the need are the same, the opportunities less so we use them to satisfy our need to be loved.
