Call me an alien from the Planet Logical, but why the hell don’t we tell the people of Holywood where they can go stick their sordid, disgustingly rich and insignificant lives? Why the heck do we let the world revolve around them? I really don’t understand…starting with paying an arm and a leg at the box office.
Please explain this side of human nature, and why do we hear so little about what the richfolk do for humanity and charity? - Jinx
These people have succeeded in our society, and I think part of us thinks it’s a good idea to see what they are up to, to emulate them and possibly learn from their success.
People who learn to copy success tend to succeed more. This tendency probably made more sense back when it was seeing how your cave-neighbor managed to kill more bison, as opposed to how Jennifer Aniston had her hair done, but my guess is that’s the core reason.
It’s not so much just about the success. There are plenty of rich people who don’t get anywhere near the attention Hollywood does.
In the case of actors: the characters they play on the screen, whether they be heroes or villains, represent the qualities we see in ourselves that we only wish we could exert in the way they do. For example, my father had a serious James Bond complex. Same thing with Arnold Schwarzenegger. He pretty much wished he could be like them. And if it’s not a wish to emulate, it’s still a recognition of oneself in the characters.
With musicians, it’s similar in that everyone is attracted to the power of music, but many have difficulty making it themselves. So we give all the more support to those who do make the music we enjoy.
Something like that.
Also, remember something: these people tend to get to be rich and famous BECAUSE the audience (the public) has shown love for them. Further, actors are often better looking than most of the population, and they have a (literal) stage on which they can demonstrate deep talent. And as on the athletic field, it’s a talent that people have been known to admire.
Actors and actresses are presented in the most exaggeratedly attractive light possible. The not-so-logical part of my brain really thinks that going to an Angelina Jolie movie brings me one step closer to having sex with her. (See, all other things being equal, I figure a guy who watches her movies is gonna have a better shot with her than one who doesn’t…)
Here’s an article that supports this theory.
America doesn’t have royalty and the vast majority of Americans only have one god (if that) and that one not particularly interesting. Actors tend to have oversized personalities (like ancient deities) and live glamorously and luxuriously (like royalty) and they’re beautiful and often amoral (like gods) and and when we see them on screen they’re 20 feet tall (deities) and in person it’s like an audience or a theophany. Why pampered celebrities rather than politicians (who have real power and also appear on TV sets [though not in movie temples] is they’re better looking, they LOVE and NEED the limelight (most of them) and far more people can watch and follow along with the lowest rated episode of a moderately successful primetime show or moderate hit movie than will ever be able to name the House Minority Leader (who will be out in a few years anyway) or the head of the CIA (who can also be replaced- Johnny Depp will still be a star in 10 years even if he’s dead but the House of Reps will turn over several times in that same decade, and what’s really interesting about a gray man in a gray suit with a gray wife?)
I think it’s ultimately the dualism and the beauty and the permanence. A beautiful face and or body that everybody knows that you can see in every home in America (providing there’s a TV/DVD) that emanates from a person who actually exists combining to form a celebrity who is at once mythical and real, idealized and thoroughly fallible (because the schadenfreude element can’t be overlooked- if there’s one thing we love more than seeing stars in outfits that cost more than we make in a year presenting awards it’s seeing them in some sort of major scandal). Especially as we become more secular and politically divided it logs into the part of our brain give by the ancestors who for centuries and centuries once placed their foreheads to the grounds before kings and tossed lambs upon the altars of 20 foot statues. That machine that makes the pictures move didn’t just entertain us with silly stories but it created gods- it can turn a dime-a-dozen Italian immigrant hustling as a dollar a lesson tango instructor into an exotic avatar of Eros and the doe eyed schizophrenic tenement born daughter of a deranged prostitute into the high priestess of Ishtar who sets the style]( [URL=http://www.goldensilents.com/stars/claraglamourshot.jpg) for women who would have spit at her in the street a year before. And the public, the worshipers, seeing them on the screens 30 feet tall (no human had ever been that “big” or seen by that many people) made the myth become flesh by idolizing the human as well, screaming in the streets, committing suicide when Valentino died (admittedly only a couple, but still…) and making everything about them as big as their image on screen until the gods were real. In SUNSET BLVD. it was this, not the fortune (which she still had) or the creative challenge (which she couldn’t care less about and wasn’t up to) whose absence had driven Norma mad but the ambrosia and nectar held aloft to her by the public- she had gone from a goddess to a Hollywood nephilim, or worse- from a goddess to just a crazy middle aged divorcee in a run down mansion jonesing for the ambrosia like a smack addict for a needle.
And sometimes they just have really cute butts.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I’d much rather people worship movie stars than politicians. The worst actors can do is waste our free time and pocket change; idolated politicians start wars. In a way, our tendency to admire celebrities is a form of auto-immunization - we worship people who want to sell us popcorn in order to stay cynical about people who want to exterminate “inferior” races. All in all its a good trade.
Plus, there’s the butt factor.m We look at ugly people every day; why not look at something pretty every now and then?
For many people, life sucks.
Young or old.
So when they see a film or television show or hear a song or whatever - and something reaches out and touches them personally, it makes their life suck less. That celebrity becomes a focal point.
For most people, you might say, “I like Tom Hanks. He’s a good actor.”
But some people will think, “Tom Hanks is speaking to me personally. Only he understands me!”
The first group of people are fans.
The second group are potential stalkers, but at the very least, fanatics who will “idolize” the star.
I’ve always thought that celebrities play the same role in modern people’s lives that household gods played in the old Roman empire, and saints in medieval Catholicism.
In a similar vein to what Sampiro and ultrafilter said, I’ve always seen parallels between the functions of a messiah in Judeo-Christian theology and a celebrity in this society.
A messiah comes to earth as a human, and serves as an example of how God expects people to act. It makes sense to me that a culture so obsessed with wealth and beauty would require these traits above all else in a messiah. As comedian Ted Alexandro said, in remarking on Jesus’ “great abs”: “You want that in a Savior, because, have you seen Buddah? Sloppy!”
Also, a messiah is expected to suffer and die so that we can reap the benefits (in the case of the Christian messiah, grace). So when Elvis ODs or John-John crashes his plane, they are fulfilling yet another role of celebrity/messiahdom.
I always thought the Ken Russell film Tommy captured this perfectly when it showed future worshippers at the Temple of Saint Marilyn, where the priests’ garments were made of newspapers.
A great deal of it is just plain sexual.
Many stars are very, very physically attractive. And often dress richly/exotically in the roles they play. And the first real acting toll they develop is frequently the “Come Hither Look”.
Well, Humans are sexual animals, so…
This reminds me of the old Tom Tomorrow comic…
“FAMOUS MOVIE ACTORS! They stand in front of cameras and repeat words that other people wrote for them…and we TREAT THEM LIKE GODS for it!!!”
And on talk shows and in movies and at premieres and the like they’re always shown with make-up and lighting and angles specifically designed to flatter them. One of the most common things heard when people meet a star in person is “he’s so short!” or “he looks a lot older in person!”.
I wonder in the Protestant south, say, or Puritan New England where there was no visual stimulation to church (i.e. no saint statues or stained glass windows and robed priests) what filled this void for exalted mortals. Of course the fact that they named their kids Adoniram and Obadiah and Abinadab shows how closely they studied obscure biblical lessons- perhaps the Bible was their soap opera as well as their book of law and prophecy.
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