Celebrities ...

So yesterday I ran across this article entitled "Ronaldo Jr's Mum is a Waitress." I clicked it and read it, apparently the kid was the result of a one night stand with a waitress in LA and he had paid her $10 Million to not reveal details and had taken custody of the kid, in a nutshell. The interesting thing, though, was the comments that came after the article. They were split into three distinct groups. One group was villainizing Ronaldo, how he had bought the baby, the baby needed its mother, if he were any sort of a decent person he would have supported the baby but left it in the custody of its mother, how it was necessarily the case that the kid was going to grow up with serious problems because he didn't know his mother, and how awful he was. The other group was absolutely in total support of Ronaldo, how this story was proof of what an amazing person he was, and how awful the mother was, really, she's just a waitress, after all, she was probably going after money, or something. The third group, which was actually surprisingly (a nice surprise) large, was saying ... "um, we care about this why?"


Now, the first thing I am going to say is, well no, the first thing I am going to say is to agree with that third group up there, "who really cares?." The second thing I am going to say is that no one knows the details anyway, and I may only have read one article, but from that article, it was nowhere near clear to me who was right and who was wrong or if anyone was right or if anyone was a horrible person or a good person or ... yeah. Unless there's a whole body of literature devoted to this subject which I have been fortunate enough to miss, no one who's making these statements of judgement on either party actually has any real evidence to support their claims.

And yet, they want to. This situation is not unique, it's been repeated time and time again, and I have quite a few things to say about it.

I do not believe for a minute in the notion that once you become a celebrity, you give up all rights to privacy. If the police catch you, it's one thing, but for the kind of spying on celebrities that goes on to go on, and maybe not particularly in this case (or maybe, I have no idea), but I'm thinking like, reporters catching Michael Phelps smoking pot by watching through the window as he was at a friend's house, there is no excuse. Publishing Kurt Cobain's diary was another one, no one connected to him wanted it published, and yet they did. Or how about Billy Mays (he did commercials for goodness sakes) and then after he died them going and publishing that an autopsy had revealed certain things about him. Who really cares? And what right do you have to that information, anyway? What right do reporters have to spy on people when they are in private residences? I can safely say as someone who has as little respect for celebrities as anyone I have ever met, that I don't think they have any right at all.

Following up on what I said above, you also don't get the whole story. There are very visible gaps in the Ronaldo story. It is pretty obvious that no one has any evidence of their claims, but even in stories which seem much more obvious, often people have no idea of what they're talking about. The fact is that everyone has moments which can be taken out of context to paint them as either better or worse than they actually are, and usually it's those moments which make the best news stories. Obviously, some things are just unforgiveable, but there is also stuff out there which people treat as unforgiveable (or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the greatest action ever), when they don't know or understand the whole story.

All of that said, there are still large groups of people, the majority of the population, who really take interest in celebrity stories, largely falling into two groups, both of which are irrational.

On the one hand, there are the people who idolize and worship celebrities, and these are the people we think of when we think of the celebrity - obsessed, starstruck. They are the most obviously ridiculous people.  They have so much respect for celebrities that celebrity opinions actually influence their beliefs and actions.  You watch Matt Damon talk about Sarah Palin or George Cloony support Obama or Shaqira (who's not even an American citizen) talk about the US Constitution ... and you just wonder if there's anyone out there who goes "Oh, Shaqira, she's obviously an expert in politics, I am going to listen to what she says!" Actually, I think the starstruck mentality is actually slightly different from that. I've never read or heard anyone else say this, so it's purely my own speculation, though I think it's as good an explanation as any for the starstruck phenomenon as any, but I think the whole starstruck thing is wanting approval at some level. People make no secret of the fact that they are fans of certain celebrities, and it's not really a secret that people hope to meet people they are fans of, and it would be a bizarelly logical follow up to that that they would sort of, alter their behavior or beliefs on the hope that, if they ever were to meet this celebrity, the celebrity would be as impressed by them as they are with the celebrity. People do it with people they know in real life, why not with celebrities they dream of meeting? It's not "Matt Damon is an authority on politics, so I'm going to listen to him," it's "Matt Damon is so hoooooot, Oh if only I could meet him ... he would think I was so cool because I think his speech on Sarah Palin is brilliant." It's not "Ronaldo saved my life, he's a good person" it's "Ronaldo is so talented and cool, I'm siding with him, and if I ever met him, he'd know that, and that girl, ugh, she's just awful, and he'd realize how much better I am." 

Pitiful, but when you think of the role star power played in the last election, it is really sickening. The repeated statements by certain politicians and their wives ... of being ashamed of or not proud of their country, the constant insults towards Americans and American voters, and you realize that that was actually probably the best thing he could have done, politically, because it had people clambering to prove their worthiness in his presence, their superiority over others. Then those people picked up on that very same rhetoric for a while, and it was absolutely nauseating.          

The other type of celebrity craziness is people who want to tear down celebrities no matter what, to the point of revelling in their failures. These two types of reactions to celebrities are by no means mutually exclusive, and in fact I think you'd find that people who do the one for some celebrities are probably more likely to do the other for some celebrities. This is where you are really pleased to learn that Michael Phelps has gotten in trouble for smoking pot, for instance. Here's this celebrity who's so much more successful than you (and heaven forbid, he might be a rival of a celebrity who is actually "perfect" ... ), and, hah, look what he did! Actually, he's pretty horrible. I've never done anything that bad, so learning of this guy's failures just makes my day. Actually, it makes my month. That's a fairly benign instance, well, actually he was gone after disproportionately harshly to what he did, and it involved a horrible breach of privacy, but it wasn't anything life destroying. There are far, far worse instances which are actually really disgusting.

A good example of this (but by no means at all the only one, just the most recent and probably the most extreme. Other examples include the treatment of Bristol Palin, in which half the country teamed up to bully a teenage girl, publishing details of Billy Mays' death, and, going back a lot longer, stuff to do with Howard Hughes which is probably worthy of its own blog post, among countless others) is the recent set of Mel Gibson tapes. I have not listened to all of them, and, quite frankly, I don't think I will. With regard to the tapes, firstly, people have no idea of his and his wife's relationship up to this point. Secondly, people know full well that Mel Gibson has had an alcohol problem. Thirdly, wow, the world has to know just everything, doesn't it? She managed to tape someone in the middle of a very emotional, vulnerable, possibly fueled by some sort of mental illness or alcohol use phone call, when only she knew it was being taped and was clearly only trying to get him to say more and more, and then she took it to the press and made it where everyone in the world heard it? How awful. I don't know about anyone else, but I've always felt that going directly to the press was a really dispicable thing to do. When I have arguments with people, the one thing I can't forgive is when they bring unrelated people into the argument, or take the argument into public (obviously this is always done with the intention of making the other person look bad), and her taping an emotional phone call and sending it to the press is absolutely the large scale equivalent of that.  The press is meant to be an information distribution service, not a weapon.  Everyone has said things they regret saying at the height of emotion, and when people are really angry, they want to evoke an emotional reaction, and the other person's remaining condescending only increases the desire to evoke that reaction, and statements become fueled by the desire to make the other person upset rather than anything else, and she knew she was making things worse when she taped the phone call and made the responses she made. That was just horrible to listen to and really inappropriate to publicize.  I even felt a bit guilty listening to what I did listen to, and yet some people are just loving it. I guess it's the modern day equivalent of attending a public execution. 

Pride and Prejudice ...

Ok, so at the recommendation of many, many people who share my taste in movies and books, I finally watched the BBC version of pride and prejudice (yes, some recommended the book, some the new movie, and some the BBC series, but I tend to like BBC adaptations, so I went with that). 

Firstly, it is clear that Pride and Prejudice had an immense influence on virtually every love story that came after it.     
Secondly, I didn't realize how old it was, written in 1813, and the class structure thing is fascinating.     
Thirdly, reflections. 

Pride and Prejudice was not meant to be a realistic love story, I don't think;  it was meant to be a fantasy.  Maybe that is stating the obvious, because a lot of movies and books are rather escapist in nature, but it's important to make that clear before proceeding.  The thing about it, though, is that it is a much more accurate representation of that fantasy than probably any other.  I don't know if this fantasy originated with Jane Austin, or if, more likely, she was simply more talented at writing a story about it, but the novel manages to create the absolute perfect representation while avoiding the problems of so many other works with the same general idea.                                                   
I will be more specific.  Reading Pride and Prejudice, the single most appealing thing is Mr. Darcy.  The plot in the book is minimal (and that's not actually a criticism, by the way), but what there is of it is essentially there to reveal his character.  At first, he seems cold and distant, aloof, disliked, but it is ultimately revealed that he is essentially the best person in the novel, almost flawless (but not quite!).  He is in many ways the ideal person, and she is the only one good enough for him.  She is the person people want to be, smart, sophisticated, clever, intelligent, pretty, strong.  She is superior to all of the other women in the book.  She has a chance to prove this to everyone, and to him, because at first they are on adversarial terms, and she shows that she is, at the very least, his equal, and he falls deeply in love with her first.  Eventually, she comes to be the only person who truly understands him, and falls in love with him, too.  This is the essence of it, and my synopsis is not as well written as I'd like it to be, but it's actually a fairly broad thing.  Maybe I'll come back later to clarify.  It is not just Pride and Prejudice, it is a fantasy which is so popular that it has made its way into tons of other entertainment in one way or another, I mean just look at Twilight, or virtually any other love story, and you can find at least reflections of it in there.  You can also see its impact in the way people act, going for the bad boy, claiming that they are the only person who truly understands someone.  I mean, this is a very generalized principle, here.  I'd argue that it is to the love story what the Count of Monte Cristo is to the revenge story.                                                                                                                                             

I mean, it really is the core.  The thing about Pride and Prejudice, itself, is that it manages, as I said, to represent this accurately, and without falling into pitfalls that many other works and people have run into.  The first one of these which is common is that Mr. Darcy actually is a very good person, whereas in many such stories, the "Mr. Darcy" character is only misunderstood by the person who "loves" him, eager to justify anything he does and claim that she is the only one who really "understands" him.  Another is in trying to be like Elizabeth.  Elizabeth had a quick wit, but she also had the manners, care for other people, and intelligence to know that she wanted to be saying what she was saying when she said it.  She was strong and had conviction, but she was not obnoxious.  These are only a couple of the ways the stories can go wrong, though they're probably the most common.                                   

I guess what it really boils down to is that ego plays a huge role in "love" stories and "love" fantasies.  People don't only want to fall in love for the sake of love, they partially want to prove their worth, even their superiority, using their partner.  It sounds so cynical, but it is so true for so many people.                                       

I once heard the phrase "People often get pride and love confused." or something like that, and I was perplexed by it, but the more I see and hear, the more I think it's true.