Page 48 - Shahrvand BC No. 1215

‹‹English Section
The Hegemony of Celebrity: Iron Fist in a Diamante Glove 48
By Colin Todhunter
Global Research,
November 16, 2012
Theme: Culture, Society & History
Today, we live in a world that turns
people into almost instant global
brand identities for mass marketing
and lavishes them with untold fame
and riches. Celebrities lead lives that that ordinary folk would be banged
most ordinary folk could not even
begin to imagine. The outcome,
however, has sinister implications
not only for those coping with fame
and playing out the illusion, but also
for those who buy into celebrity
worship and the aspirant mindset that
surrounds the phenomenon.
Craving fame and wealth has
become the blind faith of the age. TV
programs like ‘X Factor’ and ‘Indian
Idol’ are based on the falsehood
that this is what the masses should
aspire to become, as they drool over
a fast food smorgasbord of here-
today-gone-tomorrow commodity
forms (of which ‘celebrity’ is but
one) to be glorified then spat out
when considered obsolete. It’s
an obsession built on crazes that
have little resilience in a world of
media-induced, corporate-backed
fabrications and fickle idolization.
While acquiring celebrity status may
be a somewhat liberating experience
for those who emerge into the
limelight from lives of poverty and
hardship, the crass fetishisation of
wealth and wannabe celebritydom
coupled with a pervasive cult of
excessive individualism is socially
divisive.
Such a culture eats away at a sense
of communality, solidarity and
camaraderie by encouraging folk
to seek unlimited material wealth
and self-gratification and to set
themselves apart from everyone else
around them. It also fuels a certain
arrogance, which can lead people
to regard themselves as being above
and beyond society’s standards of
accountability – a gateway into the
world of corruption and deceit that
wealth and unaccountable power
afford in general.
You didn’t have to read about some
movie star in India a few years back
who was involved in a vehicle that
ran into people sleeping on a Mumbai
pavement and who then walked away
free, in order to have an inkling of
the type of sickening conceit that
fame can bestow and the corrosive
influence it has. Nor do you have to
watch that person bounce in and out
of court, lodge numerous appeals and
serve mere days in prison for crimes
up years for.
But fame begets privilege, and its
influence is everywhere in today’s
world of multi-channel 24- hour TV,
powerful public relations agencies,
gossip columns and instantly
accessible social media.
The whole issue of aspiring to
be different, to be famous, to be
unimaginably wealthy is part of a
power play. It was Michael Foucault
(1) who suggested that our taken
for granted knowledge about the
world in general and how we regard
ourselves may seem benign and
neutral, but must be viewed within
the context of power. Today, fame
and individualism have increasingly
become an accepted form of ‘truth’,
of reality, and of how people view
themselves and evaluate those around
them. Endless glossy commercials
and TV shows that wallow in the
filthy veneration of money, celebrity
and narcissism convey the message
that greed is good, fame is the
epitome of success and the individual
is king.
This is, of course, based on a false
assumption, on a lingering lie of
consumerism. And part of that lie
is the joining of fame and failure
at the hip. Notions of failure are
implicit in the messages surrounding
individualism, money and fame.
If you are not famous or do not
stand out from the crowd, you are
somehow a failure. If you don’t buy
this product, wear that item or apply
some whitening skin cream (in India,
this is a big fad), you somehow don’t
cut it.
It’s a culture that preys on insecurities,
which the media, ad agencies and
product makers manipulate at will.
In true Foucauldian style, it’s part
of a discourse that is concerned
with redefining who people are
or what they should be. Fame and
a notion of ‘the self’ in terms of
individualism, not the collective,
dovetail neatly with ‘free’ market
ideology and an easily manageable
population divided from each other
with a weakened compulsion to act
collectively against the increasingly turbulent stratosphere, where lives
not so hidden oppressive hand of the
forces of ‘liberal democracy’.
In a world where elected governments
have abdicated their financially
redistributive roles concerning their of countless celebrities. If the core
respective populations, it’s become
a case of each one for his/herself,
whereby the carrot of celebrity
status or the hope of ‘making it big’ While some crave fame, others do
provide the perfect antidote for a
lifetime of ever decreasing benefits, to have said that all she wanted
diminishing rights, low pay and
poverty and of generally being
surplus to requirements. A craving
for (not the actual acquirement of)
fame and fortune is the promised-
land, the American Dream exported,
the ultimate opiate for modern man
and woman. The message is that you
too can be a winner: from David
Beckham in the UK to Kareena
Kapoor in India, the product-
endorsing who gets wheeled on to
TV and splashed across the tabloids
to try to fool the downtrodden into
believing just how wonderful the
system is.
But before we get too carried away,
by themselves wealth and fame are
very narrow measurements of success
anyhow. As a concept, ‘success’ is
much more encompassing. Humans
are social animals and a sense of
personal well-being derives from
our relations with one another and
with the general social environment
around us, as Emile Durkheim (2)
once indicated and as ‘happiness’
and well-being surveys tell us this
time and again.
It may bring material riches, but, by 1391 ‫ رذآ‬10 ‫ جمعه‬- 1215 ‫ شماره‬/ ‫سال متسیب‬
its very nature, fame, particularly
the near instant variety, can be anti- In touch with Iranian diversity
social and ultimately ‘anti-happy’.
It can catapult a person into a Vol. 20 / No. 1215 - Friday, Nov. 30, 2012
and relationships can be thrown into
turmoil. From Hendrix to Cobain,
personal isolation, alienation or self-
destruction has blighted the lives
value of society becomes ‘the self’,
what future society? Indeed, what
future the individual?
not. Amy Winehouse is once reported
to be was a singer. Perhaps some
never set out to acquire fame. But,
unfortunately for such types, it comes
knocking, regardless. Although a lot
cave in to the pressures, a few have
the good sense to shun fame or get
out early in the knowledge that it
isn’t for them. Fame and happiness
can be uneasy bedfellows. For many
who died early, they were perfect
strangers.
While there may be little wrong with
the notion of fame in itself, especially
when set within the context of a fair
and just society, is there any benefit
to be derived by society from today’s
acute obsession with celebrity and
individualism? Not much. The media
overly focuses on the lives and deaths
of privileged, well-known individuals
(whose often lack of unique talent
proved to be no barrier to acquiring
fame), while scant regard is paid
to hundreds of millions who are
left to live and die in poverty. And,
ultimately, that’s the role the worship
of celebrity increasingly plays. It acts
as a device to legitimize inequality,
to bind the masses to the system, to
divide people from one another based
on the clamour to be ‘individual’ and
to divert attention away from the
functioning of illegitimate systems
of governance.
Notes 48
1) Foucault, M. 1998, The Will to
Knowledge, The History of Sexuality
Volume 1, Hurley, R., trans., Penguin
Books,Great Britain.
2) Durkheim, Emile (1997) [1951].
Suicide : a study in sociology. The
Free Press.