Sure, the biggest most important news right now is the economic recession and the tough times the markets are going through at the moment.
But until this recession happened, and still going on in other, smaller headlines are all kinds of information on celebrities such as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, etc.
What is it about celebrities that people care enough to know about there personal lives?
I find such information useless and pointless but I never can quite understand why some people find these topics interesting…
I guess it’s something to keep your mind off your own troubles or just something to fantasize about. The paparazzi keep taking those pictures because they know People, US, etc. will pay big bucks for them since they sell a lot of mags due to those shots. If nobody buys those magazines then a lot of the celeb news will go away.
Because celebrities are rich, beautiful, and - with surprising frequency - insane.
Of course the information is pointless - it’s just fun, goofy stuff to fantasize and gossip about.
Bailing out the Detroit automakers may effect me a lot more than what Britney Spears was up to last Thursday, but reading about the latter is way more fun.
Unless it has something to do with what movie or TV show they are working on, I personally do not care what a spoiled millionare with a high school education does and try to avoid the stuff as much as possible.
People watch their favorite stars in movies or television shows and develop some sort of pseudo-connection with them. You sometimes see these crazed stalkers that honest-to-goodness think they are in love with a celebrity that they have never met before.
Fans care about their stars’ personal lives, often to a frighteningly high degree. There have been times, though, where a celebrity will die and we feel remorse. I know I did when Paul Newman died. Not that I want to follow him around when he’s grocery shopping, but people care about others they never met just because they are so used to seeing them (on TV, in movies, in the papers, magazines, etc).
People “know” who celebrities are, so when news of them breaks, it means something.
I’m reminded of the Challenger Disaster. At about the same time, a plane of soldiers crashed in Newfoundland and someone complained that the Challenger was getting all the airplay. But people already had a connection with the Challenger because of all the publicity about Christa McAuliffe – the “Teacher in Space.” We knew who she was, and you’re always more interested in news about people you know.
For celebrities, that’s the main factor. A friend of mine might have a life with as many dating and personal ups and downs as a celebrity, but no one cares if no one knows who he is.
People like to gossip about other people’s lives. And generally, they like the gossip better if they have some baseline of familiarity with those other people - it’s more fun to talk about your idiot brother-in-law quitting his job for a stupid reason than some random guy you’ve never heard of doing the same thing.
On the other hand, your idiot brother-in-law is (probably) not going to be written up in the free commuter paper you read on the way to work. But with celebrities, you’re likely (if you follow these things) to have some kind of baseline familiarity with them. And so you get a slightly attenuated version of the same pleasure you get gossiping about your b-in-law when you read about Britney or Tom Cruise or whoever. AND you can get it in pre-packaged, mass-produced form.
Not all celebs are dumb or only went to high school. One example is Tim Robbins graduated from UCLA with honors. Will Ferrell has a USC degree. Adam Sandler has a NYU degree.
I think at least one reason is people live vicariously through celebrities. The average person isn’t a millionaire, and just isn’t that important (“important” being a relative term – in this case, I mean the average person isn’t important enough to command millions of dollars in salary, or to get thousands/millions of fans).
So we look at celebrities and live a rich life through them. Look at someone like Cary Grant…men wanted to be him, women wanted to be with him.
There’s also the superiority factor when they fall. We see a celebrity who had it all, and we laugh (and sometimes feel sorry) when someone like Mike Tyson blows through $300 million.
I have what I call the NASCAR theory of celebrities. Just like we love to see the crashes in a race, we love to see the crashes in celebrities personal lives.
Most of us aren’t millionaires, don’t have our pictures on magazine covers, we don’t get invited to the best parites, get to wear beautiful clothes and jewlery designed for us by the top fahion people. We don’t get pampered and babied, we don’t drive Bentleys or Ferrarris. We have only one house. And if we get arrested, we get harsher penalties. We generally have pretty mundane lives. We work normal schedules and sometimes have to pull a double. We get by paycheck to paycheck and sometimes keeping the one and only roof over our head is the toughest thing we do.
So, when we hear about Plaxico carrying a gun illegally, we can laugh and feel better about ourselves. When Brittany went nuts, shaved her head, and lost her kids; we thought she she was an idiot becuase our kids are more important than going to parties. We may feel terrible when a rock star crashes his car and kills somebody, but not to deep down, we think “You fucking moron. I least I’ve never killed anyone.”
Don’t forget, “the ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class.” People care about celebrities because the media tells them too. Keeps 'um stupid.
Americans never had royalty so they have celebrities. Rita Hayworth was an absolute goldmine of news in the 40s. A biography of her called 'If This Was Happiness" is a fascinating read.
Even celebrities love it. George Burns said everyday his wife Gracie Allen (the number one female comedy star on radio) wouldn’t do nothing till she read all the Hollywood gossip in the paper.
Walter Winchell, Heda Hopper, Louella Parsons were powerful people as gossip columinsts
My opinion: in the absence of a mythology that is actually believed in (true, movies and books are mythologies, but we know they’re not true, plus they’re static) and in the absence of royalty and aristocracy, celebrities filled the void that both of these things had once supplied. Like royalty they’re fantastically wealthy, they transcend “commoners” and have access to a world most of us don’t and probably never will YET at the same time they’re human and thus subject to spectacular failures and tragedies. Like gods/goddesses/mythic heroes they’re 30 feet tall (just look at them on the screen), they’re common touchstones- (Brad Pitt in L.A. is Brad Pitt in Cleveland is Brad Pitt in Duckwater, Florida), they’re beautiful, they’re seemingly amoral (some of them- the interesting ones anyway- nobody really speculates much about Kirk Cameron and Stephen Baldwin’s private lives) and they’re immortal (Elvis got fat and died at 42, but he’s also 24 and gorgeous forever and you can see him/hear him/and probably eventually you’ll be able to interact with him virtually- so he’s also immortal, like a Heracles that ascended, while Katharine Hepburn is all ages [in one day she can entertain you as a handsome 30 year old with Cary Grant, as a middle aged woman with Humphrey Bogart, as an aging beauty with Peter O’Toole and as an old woman with Henry Fonda, another form of immortality and divinity.) Plus there’s the chance at an actual bonafide theophany: unlike Apollo, you could conceivably one day meet Brad Pitt, or at least one of his siblings or someone who knows him well, so he is real.
Anyway, it has to do with the void left by royalty and religion is my opinion. And of course sexual fantasy. And morality tales. And a near fanatical loyalty to the Pope.
I’ve started this three different times and I think I finally figured out what I wanted to say.
I’m sort of interested in learning more about certain celebrities if I’ve enjoyed their portrayals of characters; sometimes if I find out they turn out to be real douches in real life, I might not like their acting quite so much.
Hey, after three tries, this is the best I could do.