I’m not sure if this is just me but most of the time I can’t help thinking that almost everything that we read about them is fake. I guess it’s because years of growing up in our culture has made me cynical that whenever I read the usual cliched stuff about a celebrity–a celeb falling in love, being cheated on, being addicted to some illegal substance–I can’t take it seriously. They just seem like such giant PR machines that the idea of them actually having real emotions or doing something spontaneous seems incomprehensible.
I know that they’re people like us but I can’t help imagine them all sitting in a room where they’re perfectly dull and they construct little stories for the masses to digest. Maybe it’s my way of going the opposite route from the types of people who take them very seriously and identify with their lives. In my little fantasy, they’re almost automaton-like and everything is a construct.
It’s a weird way to think of them, I suppose. Am I the only one whose mind operates thusly?
I’m so annoyed by the whole celebrity phenomena that I’m thinking about becoming one just to start a campaign of leaking false information and doctored pictures to the media and suing them… or hiring body doubles to do weird stuff disguised as me while I’m somewhere else. Or just giving interviews that are complete bullshit…“I’ve given up on fossil fuels, my car is modified to run on kittens”
Let the “I don’t know who any celebrities are!!” parade commence!
As an actual response to the OP, I think a lot of celebrity relationships are constructed as publicity stunts, deals between PR companies, or to cover up a closeted gay or lesbian celebrity. There are celebrities who seem to live their entire life as a constructed lie to extend their fame - Heidi Montag & Spencer Pratt, for example, but I think that the lives of stars who are also artists, like musicians and actors, are mostly (but not completely) close to what we as the public see.
I agree with the OP. When there was a thread about Angelina Jolie’s kids being tomboys, I just assumed some PR agent thought that would be appealing and created that fiction. Every glimpse of them is scripted until the big time melt down, but man what a great corn harvest we will have.
Celebrities tend to disappear from the teevee or whatnot during the summer and there’s lots of manufactured gossip floating around to keep their names in the public’s mind. (down side: they aren’t out in public behaving badly, they’re all hidden away on vacation). I used to fantasize all celebrities went vacationing together in one great big resort on a tropical island, LOL. Sit around, get high, discuss their pet peeves…
I have always had a rule for celebs. I judge them as ‘stars’. I can hate them for dumb reasons, love them for silly reasons, judge them for crazy shit, doesn’t matter. They chose showbiz, and all the perks it offers, so they don’t get to act like regular people when getting dished on or whatever.
That said, like the OP, I tend to not believe anything I hear about them. They manufactor so much of their image and that part which isn’t manufactored by them is manufactored by agents and managers and paparazzi. It’s all fake fake fake, Hollywood fake.
That’s pretty much what happens in my mind. And even the ones who are “feuding” are hanging out. Stuff like, “Hey, Brooke, how’s the Latisse promotion going?” “Good, Tom, do you want to have another Scientology/psychiatry showdown next spring?” “If Suri doesn’t manage to make any serious headlines, sure.”
I dunno. I look at, say, my High School class, and amongst them there are a lot that went on to fairly well adjusted lives, but a few had crazy dramatic love triangles, a few suicides or otherwise tragic early deaths, some are into fairly fringe religious groups, one OD’d on heroin, a few are in jail, etc.
In other words, I’m not sure celebrities crazy personal lives are really that much more crazy then the general population, except that maybe celebrities have a harder time keeping bad behavior on the down low, and can sustain bad lifestyle choices for a little longer then normal people due to having more resources.
“Oprah! Damn, you look good, girl! What time did you check in?.. Wanna go check out the buffet in the Red Room tonight?”
“You know it, Ellen - let’s see if Whoopie and Babs are in - oh shit, don’t look - here comes David Letterman, OMG, he’s wearing a Speedo!..I hope he doesn’t run up and down the hall at 3 a.m. like he did last year!”
No ‘real’ people are allowed! My celebrity resort is on a heavily guarded island. All the workers and servants are losing contestants from reality shows and are forced, unfortunately, to sign confidentiality agreements :(.
I have no doubt that much of the gossip is manufactured. But what is fake probably mostly comes from publicists etc. I doubt the conversations you imagine actually happen. Maybe a celeb is savvy enough to do a sex tape or something, but the sort of ideas and (especially coordination) you’re imagining seems unlikely.
I agree with this. The “crazy lives of celebrities” just aren’t that crazy to make me believe its all fiction. Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch? Probably a calculated PR move. Tom Cruise marrying Katie Holmes and having a kid with her? Probably did it because he loves her. Crazy I know.
And about the celebrity resort where they can be “real” people. It’s probably more true than we think. The latest Rolling Stone had an article about Katy Perry and she talked about a vacation she and her fiancee, the annoying Russell Brand, took. They went to some very private and very posh resort and were constantly running into other famous people. But there’s no conspiracy. That’s what famous people do, they go to very private and very posh resorts.
I really don’t much care about the private lives of celebs, although I will read People when I’m waiting in the dentist’s office. What I do hate is when the leading story on the nightly news is more gossip-worthy than news-worthy. And I truly hate when it dominates the news all day long - e.g. Michael Jackson’s death.
I remember once upon a time on the evening news, the celeb items were fluff pieces in the last few minutes of the broadcast on a slow news night - perhaps a light dessert after a heavy meal. The rest of the time they were consigned to magazines. Now, thanks to cable TV, we get to move into their lives. Thanks, no.