Celebrities in the United States have always bewildered me. Everyone in the world wants to be famous, but it seems like nowhere in the world is that desire more passionate than here. People flock to the supposed “land of opportunity” in order to fulfill a destiny of being famous, rich, adored and successful. Many fall at the wayside of the American dream, but those that make it truly make it.
It’s strange how being famous makes people forget that they were once human, that they still are human. All of a sudden they become someone who is god-like.
Celebrities here have managed to achieve an immortality bestowed upon them by the public, and it is always strange for me to watch how people behave towards celebrities, especially since I come from an African culture that doesn’t really pay any attention to them. Acquiring celebrity status means many things here. For one it means that your whole life now belongs to the public. Every moment in your life, (no matter how personal): the birth of your baby, your marriage, buying your first house; it all becomes an extension of your role as celebrity. Another form of entertainment in the lives of the public, nothing is personal, nothing is sacred. Yet if you were an ordinary Joe, no one would be interested in the comings-and-goings of your general existence, nor would they take some sadistic, superficial joy over the tragedies in your life. In this way, I believe celebrities are cursed by their fame; they can have no sacred moments to call their own and can receive no genuine empathy.
It’s as though by achieving this status, they have sold their souls to the public, to live their lives forever under the public microscope. No wonder they have so many psychological problems.
I know I would if I went through that sort of scrutiny every day.
I think it speaks poignantly about the emptiness of our own lives that we feel the need to be a part of every moment of someone else’s life, instead of making moments in ours. Not only that, but through becoming celebrities they are now held by some higher moral standard that even the public knows they themselves would not be able to achieve.
Whenever a celebrity steps a toe out of the line of morality the public has drawn for them, they are devoured by the disappointment and criticism of the public.
When did we forget that they are mere mortals like us, who have the ability to do wrong and make bad judgments?
How is it possible to adore somebody, but have no compassion for them?
Money and fame doesn’t make you higher than anyone else, in fact I believe it makes you even more fragile than anyone else because you have farther to fall in the face of your wrongdoings. It has been said that in order to live that sort of life, you have to be ready for the backlash and the hatred that comes with it; and I am sure to some extent celebrities are. But that doesn’t stop me pitying them, for no human soul (no matter how rich, famous and supposedly “physically perfect”) was engineered to thrive from sorrow and speculation. Must be difficult to be expected to express the pain you’re going through to the world when all you want to do is bar yourself in a corner somewhere and weep.
We wouldn’t expect anyone else to do it in their moments of suffering, yet we do not respect celebrities enough to grant them their space and dignity. Challenging indeed to watch other people destroy their bodies in order to look like you and suffer the repercussions, to be expected to be back to your pre-pregnancy figure 3 weeks after you give birth or to have people want so badly to replicate and participate in your life that they end up stalking and hurting you.
It must be overwhelming to lose weight after a hard personal loss, and then be blamed for the rise in anorexic young girls all over the country. Honestly, we should be ashamed to blame such an individual problem on a person we’ve never met. Parents should be willing to take responsibility for the actions of their children, and young adults here (like ourselves) should have been raised well enough to know better.
Why must you foolishly replicate every aspect of someone’s life — even the terrible parts? Have we as a society got nothing better to do? It must be hard to watch everyone else around you forget that you’re just a normal person, when deep down inside you recognize your own mortality. They are just people, normal people like us … they live, they die, they s–t and sleep. I say to you my fellow students, treat no being as though they were higher than yourself.
Philippa Hatendi can be reached at phatendi@spartans.ut.edu.