Note # 1 to people who deal with me in real life: After much cajoling I have finally put together a Facebook page. Or at least I’ve started one, it will take me a little time to flesh out the profile and the multimedia components. Oh, and get friends. I should probably work on that. Right now it shows that I have one friend. Kind of sad, really (but thanks Ann). Anyway, let me know if you’re on and we’ll become friends or allies or people who sit at the same lunch table in an attempt to look like people tolerate our company.
Note # 2 to people who deal with me in real life: Fair warning, I am in complete organization mode right now. This happens every six months or so when I decide that all that is keeping me from complete satisfaction is sufficient numbers of manila folders. This is always dangerous as I end up creating excel spreadsheets scheduling my life in fifteen minute increments. Also, I design to do lists so intricately detailed that “have dinner” is its own line item. So if I seem even more calculating than usual, or if you hear me discussing that I spent the evening filing my old credit card statements by month, you know why.
(The fact that I do this doesn’t frighten me. It’s the realization that if I wasn’t creative and if I wasn’t a writer I would be so far off the scale that standard deviations would no longer apply. Imagine if all I cared about really were numbers. Actually, don’t imagine that. It’s not a very pleasant thought.)
On to a topic that has been bothering me the past week or so. I was thinking about the Brittney Spears situation trying to figure out where the story will end. It dawned on me that we have reached the point where people will only be happy when it ends tragically. I’m completely serious here; I truly feel that our culture not only expects this to end badly but is actively hoping that it does. I can only compare it to a description I heard once about Altamont where someone said that the only way the night was going to end was with blood.
American culture loves nothing more than to build up an icon only to tear it down. That way we can marvel in the splendor while relishing in the schadenfreude. Typically though once they have had their tragic downfall we forget about them. It’s not as if anyone cares about Pee Wee Herman or Mike Tyson or any of the other fallen celebrities. They are an old punch line, reserved for appearances on decade retrospectives or The Surreal Life. The cameras disappear once they have hit bottom. This hasn’t been the case with Brittney. In fact, the attention has only gotten worse.
What are we watching for right now? We’ve already seen her marriage collapse and her kids taken away. We’ve seen her mentally breakdown to the point that she shaved her head. We’ve seen her set off to rehab and collapse in her comeback effort. Hell, I could tell you what she was wearing when she went out to get coffee last week. What are we hoping to see? Why are the cameras still there?
The only conclusion that I can make is that this is where we see the truly dark nature of our voyeuristic society. Because the only reason to watch is to hope that she falls even further and I don’t know where else she can take this other than tragedy. All the while we sit idly by, discussing the latest updates as if it was our favorite television series. There’s no acknowledgement that there is a human being on the other end of the lens. They’re not human, they’re celebrities.
This bothers me, especially given how much I write about celebrity gossip. When the story ends we’ll talk about how it was such a tragic waste of talent. It will be one of those Hollywood legends retold again and again. No one will bother to mention that we were too busy watching Access Hollywood to do anything about it.
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