Celebrity Culture: Getting Our Knickers in a Twist
For many members of
the self-righteous bourgeoisie,
celebrity culture has become public enemy No. 1
The pre-eminent symbol of the trivialisation
of public life and the dumbing down
of the nation's cultural values
It was Susan Sontag who said that being a dandy
was a way of being an individual
in an age of mass culture
The problem today is how to be
an individual in an age of mass individualism,
when the usual means of status
- clothes, cars, consumer goods -
are within the grasp of a majority
of the population, at least in the west.
The answer is: celebrity
You want celebrity culture to die?
Kill capitalism first and then we'll talk
The claim by Gordon Brown, in Saturday's interview with this newspaper, that we in Britain have "fallen out of love with celebrity" shows that the prime minister-in-waiting is way out of touch with the popular culture of his times.
If Brown were right, he should have had someone from his office get in touch with Prince William and his former girlfriend Kate Middleton and tell them the good news - hey guys, you don't have to split up. The public are no longer interested in celebrity!
But Gordon Brown shouldn't feel too bad about getting it hopelessly wrong. For he belongs to a group of illustrious pundits, pop stars and professional zeitgeist watchers who have, since the 1990s, all predicted the end of celebrity culture - and they've all been wrong.
I should know, I was one of the first to make this mistake in 1995 when I wrote about the rise of "celebrity fatigue". But then so did public-relations supremo Matthew Freud, when he said: "I think the media cycle is such that now, with very few exceptions, the famous are no longer interesting."
Celebrity culture survived and got even bigger with the success of Big Brother and the rise of reality TV. And then along came the terrorist attack of 9/11 and American journalists were once again convinced that celebrity was over.
Trivia was set to give way to a "new seriousness". Again, they were wrong.
So why, despite failed prediction after failed prediction, do public figures still pop up and claim the end is nigh for celebrity culture?
The simple answer is that we want to believe it's true. For many people celebrity culture has, since 2000, become public enemy No 1: the pre-eminent symbol of the trivialisation of public life and the dumbing down of the nation's cultural values.
Critics of celebrity culture like to claim that they see a new seriousness on the horizon.
They take comfort in the large numbers attending literary festivals and public debates. That may be true, but their rise doesn't mean celebrity's fall. It means that there's a growing audience for festivals and debates.
Now here's the bad news. The end of celebrity culture isn't going to happen for reasons that have to do with the nature of modern life and aspirations.
The first one is very hard for these critics to grasp: people actually like this stuff! They enjoy reading about Kylie, Liz, Robbie and Jordan.
There are many sane and decent people who think that the life of former Atomic Kitten singer Kerry Katona is not only enviable and glamorous, but fascinating. She is the Virginia Woolf of the Heat generation.
When critics of celebrity culture shake their heads and complain that these dreadful people have "no talent" they're missing the point; they are liked because they don't have talent!
They offer human forms of entertainment. People don't care about their singing - they want the life, their story of triumph and sorrow.
Those who, like Gordon Brown, claim that these people are "only famous for being famous", are simply uttering a cliched tautology.
In fact, they're famous because they represent things that are at the very heart of modern consumer capitalism: social mobility, fashion, the body, sex, and the need for affirmation.
It was Susan Sontag who said that being a dandy was a way of being an individual in an age of mass culture.
The problem today is how to be an individual in an age of mass individualism, when the usual means of status - clothes, cars, consumer goods - are within the grasp of a majority of the population, at least in the west.
The answer is: celebrity. You want celebrity culture to die? Kill capitalism first and then we'll talk. Cosmo Landesman @ CIF