Image Field: 

Privacy. Celebrity. Community. Social media. Youth culture. Charlie Sheen. John Galliano. These things seem to be the buzz of the moment, and there are connections between them that are being overlooked. This is unsurprising, for the more buzz there is, the less sense can be made of it, and we have a full-blown swarm on our hands. Sheen's descent into madness, Galliano's scandals and possible dethroning, and ongoing debates about privacy and social media have a peculiar nexus: the power of celebrity in our time. I propose that much of the mayhem is but a variation on a most primitive theme, but it isn't necessarily business as usual, for there are consequences to practicing old habits in a modern context. In fact, a lack of context is really at the core of most of these problems, at least on our side of the issue.

The world is getting smaller all the time, and as it does most everything becomes more accessible, especially our personal lives. One hears frequent laments that privacy is now a great commodity, but they often seem disingenuous. My generation and those younger have come up in a culture of openness that has not earnestly questioned why we find it natural or even necessary to publish our opinions and intimate parts of our lives for a largely unregulated audience. In truth, privacy has always been a rare thing. Whether in tribal communities or in cramped urban quarters, most of the world’s population does without much privacy and always has. Where the survival and safety of individuals is recognized as essential for the survival of the group, particularly in minority and immigrant communities, one finds an oral network to keep the members informed. Though much that is communicated may be petty gossip, this keeps the machine oiled so that news can travel effectively when something of importance does occur. Thus, either wired into our genes or our culture, we have a natural propensity to remain…well, wired, even about trivia. But how relevant is all of this to the way we gossip and share information today?

The cases above are clearly defined communities with sparse media and news outlets. This is quite contrary to the environments of most urbanites and suburbanites, where communities are large and protean and the majority of social bonds are formed on superficial compatibilities. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of news and media; rather than disseminating to each other the latest news, people curate and filter for each other through social media. And yet the point of curating this information to many people is not just to share what one finds important, but to make a statement about oneself. That is, what one chooses to share from the infinite pool of media and information is often less about the content—an expectation that people will analyze, discuss, and integrate the knowledge in earnest—and more about how attention to a particular thing “brands” the individual who shares it. Look on any comment board or Facebook wall and this becomes quite evident; to challenge the material or question its validity is too often perceived as a personal attack—may even be presented as one—rather than an actual desire to elaborate on the issue. The news, subjective as it already may be, is not there to inform but to confirm a pre-existing identity.

This is not purely narcissistic. A lack of a unique, recognizable identity is at the heart of the modern dilemma, and the advent of social media has given people—especially young people—new ways of coping with it. Furthermore, the old problems of gossip are addressed through a sort of personal image control through sharing. If people will find out eventually anyways, so why not give it to them first and therefore control the message and your image? Well, because most of the time we shouldn’t care. Here we strike at the heart of the post-consumer dilemma, which is a natural evolution of a lack of identity: We are a culture that seeks to be defined not by what we produce but by what we consume.

For adolescents, there seems to be little choice but to carve an identity this way. After all, their careers are years away, whatever they may produce in their spare time will be seen as uninformed and unpolished, and there is in many ways a social imperative to stay young, to enjoy a carefree youth for as long as possible, and not because it’s good for them, but because it’s what others want for themselves and what is used to market things to those for whom such frivolity is no longer possible. In a vacuum of actual productivity and self-discovery, instead of being valued for what one actually accomplishes, the value is placed on what one expects or hopes to accomplish. Unfortunately, this disposition persists into adulthood, and I see these things in my own generation, even as I and my peers approach 30.

The reasons are once again biological; studies have shown that announcing to others what one wants or expects to do activates reward centers in the human brain, and one feels in some measure that one has already accomplished it. There is no longer such a need to actually do the work and achieve. These effects are no doubt compounded by social media, where people are actively seeking and giving affirmation. Is this not, in fact, why social media is so popular in the first place?

Absorbed into this world of “warm-fuzzies” without direct contact, all of which is built upon personal tastes rather than personal accomplishments, the narcissistic impulse in all of us finds limitless nourishment. The whole world might be watching, and perhaps this encourages people to even avoid the attempt to accomplish more when failure might destroy their credibility. What can one call such a creature, whose persona is more brand than product, more shadow than substance?

A “celebrity,” of course.

The modern celebrity is quite a novel thing in human history. Most of them—actors and performers—were not long ago the dregs of society, most particularly actors, whose whole trade was based on portraying what one was not—in essence, a lie. Luminaries of the past were warriors, royals, and religious figures, real and mythic. But modern distrust of authority has undermined fascination with the ruling classes and their militaries and the religious scholars who, wise or not, were also a part of an oppressive power structure. The gods have fallen, and in this vacuum of greatness we are quick to seek figures that might fill it. However dubious their qualifications, however gauche and artless these figures might be, their visibility, their fame suffices because it allows us to connect with each other in a world where most people can be nomadic yet nationalistic, partisan yet apolitical, uninformed yet opinionated.

Whether we like it or not, then, the celebrity is a necessary part of culture, the ability of others to interact with each other. Would we be better off if we were able to bond over more substantial things? I daresay we would, but I once again assert that there was no golden age wherein the majority of people were unified in a pursuit of truth and wisdom. We have always been vapid, and I suspect that we always shall be.

But what must happen to someone in that position? What thoughts and emotions must course through a mind that has bought its own hype, that recognizes that it sits at the center of a culture and all—or at least most—eyes are watching? Alexander the Great kept servants whose purpose was to stay close and remind him that he was as mortal as any other man who bowed before him. He and his tutor, Aristotle, developed quite an enmity because of the elder’s disapproval of the emperor’s pretense to divinity. Though the elder was only trying to be ethical—and a smarty-pants—the emperor had reason to be upset, for his life was very much under constant threat and this pretense was a matter of self-defense. Celebrities have publicists, but most of them aren’t performing the job of Alexander’s servants, keeping their clients humble while projecting an invulnerable image to the rest of the world. They are doing the exact opposite, I imagine. Meanwhile, the naysayers are by no means Aristotelian ethicists, but witless hecklers whose livelihoods are based on satisfying the envy and unrest of others by drawing blood from any visible target. The smarmy harpies of TMZ, for example, have proved that unmitigated meanness and cynicism are quite profitable. A whole fleet of cackling copycats have been happy to jump on their gravy train, and even respectable news sources show signs of tossing aside all journalistic integrity to cater to these same sanguine appetites. Unlike our prideful, pitiful modern celebrities, Alexander knew that it is far too easy to assume that one is invulnerable. In his day, the threat was of death and destruction. At least in our day, it is but ridicule and the death of one’s career.

In the media right now are two career meltdowns brought on by such carelessness: those of Charlie Sheen and John Galliano. Though in France Galliano’s offenses have been deemed criminal and seem more grave, Sheen’s implosion has been more quoteworthy and visible, and therefore more potent an illustration of this problem. For all the insanity that Sheen has been spewing, his most telling quote was the most lucid. In a text interview, Sheen wrote, "BTW, two wars are in an endless state of sorrow. Egypt about burned to the ground, and all you people care about is my bulls**t ... pathetic ... Shame shame shame." That the fellow who gave us such a gem as:

“You borrow my brain for five seconds, and just be like, ‘Dude, can’t handle it, unplug this bastard.’ Because it fires in a way that’s you know, maybe not from this particular terrestrial realm.”

can also question the public fascination with his bullshit reveals quite a disconnect. Sheen seems to be singlehandedly huffing enough nosecandy to support a drug cartel that is keeping affected populations in an endless state of sorrow. Furthermore, the popularity of his show hinges upon a demand for mindless escapism and an endemic complacency about the state of the world and our involvement in it…or lack thereof. Indeed, the public response to his ravings has been that of a group enjoying a grotesque spectacle, not the least bit introspective or reflective on our culture, but that is not for him to say unless he has something to offer besides a reprimand to those whom he clearly finds inferior. To question now the public’s fascination with him is disingenuous at best, monstrously hypocritical at worst.

Humans regularly destroy that which has reached its peak and is in decline; it goes for people as well as ideas and structures. In the first half of the 20th century, Sir James George Frazer published his magisterial work The Golden Bough, which among other things illuminated this tendency to elevate beings, human and animal, as gods and luminaries and warrior kings only to destroy them for the greater good of the community. In the case of the lattermost, there was a practical reason for it; might equaled right, and so the chief of a tribe had to physically defend himself as the vital center, the living vessel of the tribe’s god or totem. If he could be defeated by one of his own—an inevitability as age took its toll—then the victor became that new vital center. We have no vital center, but we have clearly not come so far out of the forest and the plains that we no longer feel some need for one, or even a whole pantheon. To some degree this tradition persists in the Hollywood machine, which regularly allows for the destruction of its stars and starlets to make way for new blood.

I feel compelled to specify that I am referring to celebrities who have attained at least some respect for a craft or talent, not the just-add-water variety of reality television, which hinges upon the characters showing as little character as possible, being easily unhinged and disturbed by whatever triviality they may face. Their predecessors were not the warrior kings, but the sacrificial animals and slaves of the coliseum, held more in contempt than in honor and lacking even in sportsmanship. If but once perhaps we saw real blood, we might be sated. Or perhaps not, for the ugliness of “two wars in an endless state of sorrow,” is what drives audiences to these pale surrogates. The reality of heroism and strength is too grim. It would seem that weakness and mediocrity are requisites of fame. Not everyone can be great, and those who achieve greatness are destined for disreputable decline, the logic goes. How egalitarian, how humane we have become.

I started this article by mentioning how the world is becoming smaller, and I would like to return to that point now that we have glimpsed the underlying cynicism and bloodlust of celebrity culture and media. This shrinking is brought about by the increase of superficial connections, but even moreso by the speed in which information travels. In their haste to scoop others, consumerists and journalists alike shoot first, ask questions never, and provide a reactive commentary rather than a context. In the process, they promote a single-mindedness, a hive-mindedness informed to label things instantly as good or bad, ally or threat. It's a fight-or-flight impulse on a massive scale. The information age is meant to grant access to limitless knowledge and computing power, an almost transcendent experience of the world, but in this form it has the very opposite effect, promoting the formation of mobs and indulging our basest impluses and ignorance.

This is not the only troubling development: As people increasingly define themselves by their consumption habits and witness that real accomplishment and genius may make one more vulnerable to attack, it seems that an anti-achievement sentiment could become ever stronger without anyone actually recognizing it for what it is. I do not wish to suggest that the sky is falling and that civilization as we know it will be toppled by social media and celebrity cults, but I will say that there is little joy in allowing oneself to be swept up in a mob, especially an angry or frightened one. The ultimate irony may be that, in becoming more accessible to the rest of the world, one becomes more distant and more estranged from oneself, caught up in a misguided sense of celebrity—lost in the buzz.