Categories: uncategorized
Date: 22 December 2006 11:05:48
I found out what it was to be famous.
I've been thinking about this for a few days as there was another survey that revealed that what teenagers want more than anything else these days is to be famous. What bemused me was that in this latest survey they put "being famous" as more desirable than "being rich". The thing is I'm pretty sure that they say they want to be famous as a short-hand for saying they want to be like the Beckhams or whatever other celebrity nonentity was on the front page yesterday. And the quality of life the Beckhams and their ilk have is determined by their wealth, not by their fame. I guess for most people that distinction isn't very clear, whereas for me it is, because I've experienced fame and not tasted that level of wealth.
For me, the quintessence of "fame" is this: being known by people you don't know. Being stopped in the street by someone who says Hello Mr Lanark and knows a fair bit about you, without you having a clue even as to who they are. I have had this happen to me many times. For reasons not worth going into I've been in a situation of regularly meeting with a group of 150-200 people, with me being the focus of attention. As such, those 200 people know me, but I can only get to recognize 20-30 faces and the rest are invisible to me. So the remainder know me, and will greet me if they see me, but I don't have any idea where they know me from. It's really not a pleasant experience. Okay, maybe that's just my personality - I value my privacy a bit (obviously not too much otherwise I wouldn't be writing this, but I do value it a bit). But do you really want the next random stranger you see on the street to know a lot about you and talk to you in a knowledgeable, but not necessarily friendly, way? Because that's what being famous amounts to.
No, I really don't understand the desire to be famous. I don't really understand the cult of celebrity that we have, although it seems to be borne of a desire to have real-life soap operas acted out in front of us - Coronation street no longer works for us because we know the people aren't real - we want real people to go through similar things and for us to be able to watch. Why do people allow themselves to be subjected to that? Apparently because they want to be famous - that's what the media tell us. But I wonder if that's really true. After all, it's the media who are, effectively, providing this peep show. And just like the people who watch peep shows or pornography want the girls on show to enjoy what they're doing, forcing them to pretend if necessary, so I think celebrities know that we want them to say that they enjoy being famous, so either they say it, or if they don't then the media (their pimps, effectively) put those words into their mouthes. A nasty business, and very 1984.