Charlie Sheen garnered 1 million Twitter followers in 24 hours. WTF? Then again, I watch The Bachelor. WTF? I'm fully aware there is some dark undertow to reality TV and yet, I can't stop myself from watching. I guess it's a bit like the collective "us" and Charlie Sheen. Dude is having a very public meltdown of epic proportions and we're watching, amused, creating merchandise, cashing in on someone else's crazy.
Why are we so attracted to the repugnant, low brow antics of celebrities? Think Britney Spears flashing her cooch to photogs, shaving her head, and being mercilessly pursued by the paparazzi as she was being loaded onto an ambulance after a, what's that?, oh, a meltdown. Hmm...
Why do we not celebrate the constructive, positive actions taken by celebrities? The works of charity and volunteerism? The lending of their name recognition to draw attention to worthy causes? Is it because we're so envious of their lifestyle that when something goes wrong for them we want to lap it up, we want to roll in it, we want to snort every last morsel of their dysfunction to fill the gaps in our own self-esteem?
If aliens were to descend on our planet today and judge us on the values held by our predominant cultural icons, they would deem us an unevolved civilization of idiots.
I'm not claiming to be above all this - I'm certainly guilty of pangs of joy when celebrities get hit with "real life" shit like divorce and arrests. It reminds me that they're not immune to life, they weren't given a free pass; on some level, they're like the rest of us. They're just as f*cked up, if not more so, than we are.
Living under the spotlight would be like living under a microscope, with someone watching your every move and deducing some theory from your every action. No wonder celebrities have a warped sense of reality. We don't let them live like real people. We are, in large part, to blame for overinflated egos and a faulty belief in one's own supremacy.
On the one hand, I agree. On the other, I keep thinking of all the celebrities who use the paparazzi secretly while admonishing them publicly. The same celebrities who anonymously call the media themselves to let them know they'll be at a night club, or purposely do some idiotic shit (sex tape anyone?) to get themselves in the spotlight. And it begs the question, How do you tell the difference between their movies and their lives? Or, perhaps that is the problem. That THEY can't tell the difference between their movies and their lives.
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