The Celebrity Mask

As disinterested as I am in the lives of celebrities, the concept of celebrity itself had always fascinated me. It couldn't be farther from what I want for myself, but as a concept, it does intrigue me. And what I find interesting is the current fall of the celebrity that is in progress.

The Duke

The awe is disappearing. I saw a kid having a conversation with a major league pitcher during this year's All-Star game. He might have been talking to his cousin, Lou. The player was signing the ball and the kid was talking to him with little evident interest.

I couldn't help thinking back to old TV shows in which kids met celebrities: Bobby Brady calling the great quarterback Joe Namath "Mr. Namath" -- that kind of thing. It seems that is gone.

My dad has referred to his childhood -- to how the football players (American football) were (circa 1950) like knights -- their helmets covering them as they went to battle. He says the mystery was what made them awesome, to him. Now we watch them in the news and on commercials, cheating on their wives and sweating orange Gatorade, respectively.

Not good for the awe factor.

Another contributor to this is that we are all able to don our own celebrity masks, now. The technological gate has opened and exposed us all to the masses. We all get the airtime that was once reserved for the media elite.

When cell phones came out and they weighed sevent-five pounds, a guy talking on the phone in his car was an important dude -- no question. Well, we still are imprinted with that archetype. Did you ever see people strut and posture while they talk on their phones? They, too, are important and are able to display that importance to the world audience.

A kid sitting on the edge of his bed can play Dave Matthews covers for the world just by uploading a video. He might stink and maybe no one but his grandmom and his girlfried watch, but consider the celebrity mask donned. Or, he might get hits from around the world and come up with a big recording contract. You never know.

Look at me, writing for more than a hundred readers per day. Go figure. Whether I stink or whether I am a genius, technology has granted me an audience that Steinbeck, writing in his Californian loft, in his teens, was never guaranteed.

The Dope

People post on Facebook: "At the beach with my sweeeetieeeees." Who cares? Why, the adoring throngs, that's who. The thousand-plus friends that some teenagers have might care -- instant audience. The mask is donned.

It is no longer a matter of interest how Grace Kelly spent her vacation. We can now watch Suzie Shlemeil from Shamong, New Jersey, prancing about in the waves. Then people post compliments: "Soooo preeeeteyyy;" "Dayum, girl . . ." She is adored.

Good or bad? I don't know. Something in me hates the red-carpet prance of Oscar night. But another part of me laments the fact that we went from John Wayne and Sinatra to The Situation and Eminem.

The Wond'rous Fall of Dirk Goodteeth

There are few things as mystifying as the joy that children take from building with blocks and then knocking them down. They clap joyfully as their hard work crumbles loudly down around them. Then they get building again and do it all over. The clops and clacks of plummeting pinewood and gleeful chuckles in concert are, well, kind of scary, if you think about it.

We like to build and we like to destroy, instinctually. We can agree on that. What is unsettling is that we seem to like to do this with people as we mature. So it goes from pine to flesh -- but not just any flesh. Movie screen flesh. Athletic field flesh. Reality TV flesh.  (Fortunately, most of us are slightly less sadistic than to do this to people we actually know.  We are not as savage as the warrior with the ax, all covered in gore -- we are the far more civilized sniper deftly picking off his target from a thousand yards out.)  Stars. Celebrities. We build them up. We put them up on a flatboard Olympus by purchasing the tickets, snacks and merchandise that pay their astronomical salaries and then we watch those celebrities try to "fill 'er up" with adulation and material baubles, which of course just doesn't work. Then we sit back, rip open the chips and enjoy a good tragic fall.

So far, so good. Leading man, Dirk Goodteeth, gets caught testing the shocks of his Land Rover with a highly-skilled girl named Snowy in central park. (Nice!) The Vicar of the Church of Happy Angels lifts his mitre and child pornography tumbles out around the feet of his flock. (Even better!) The beloved host of "Family Rocks!" turns up on video, in bed with seventeen naked women (that his wife doesn't even know) at a motel in Akron. (Sublime!) The media is abuzz with chattering energy . . .

Then, things settle. The crickets chirp.

Now what? You Tube hits drop. The last news magazine report has been aired. No one cares any more. So we do what we must: We let our fallen heroes say they are sorry and we restore them to their former glory.

"But the guy is a sex addict, Myrtle -- try to understand . . ."

"He has taken responsibility for his actions . . . that's noble . . ."

"She admitted she lied under oath. That took courage . . ."

I’m not saying we shouldn’t forgive. Philosophically speaking, forgiveness is good stuff. (A whole handful of guys in robes and sandals have said so for millenia, if you need verification.)  I’m just a little afraid of why we do it so easily. Could it be that if we take a moral stand and tell our icons we won't support them anymore that we face the risk of eventually running out of block towers to push over?

CRASH. Hee-hee-hee . . .