Let’s ALL be Famous!

It’s a tragic statement of our modern world: almost everyone wants to become famous, to shine like a star, to give up everything in their life to grab a handful of stardust before falling back into the darkness of normality. It’s been going on for quite a while, probably since the first steps of cinema and television. Except that until now to become a celebrity you had to “do” something, have some kind of talent, practice some kind of art.  So many would try, so many would fail. Today becoming famous is not a consequence of a talent anymore. Being famous is the talent itself. People don’t aspire to be a good actor or a revolutionary sculptor. They just aspire to be known, acknowledged by others, if possible for no specific reasons.  And thanks to all these new technologies and gadgets accessible to all of us, these dreams seem to be within the reach of a computer’s mouse, so that everyone can finally have the 15 minutes of fame Andy Warhol already promised to the world in 1968. Reality TV, videos on internet, social network: the magical screen can endlessly reflect your own self, whoever you are and whatever you do (or don’t do, in a matter of fact).

Desperately seeking notoriety

On planet Blog, this new path to stardom accessible from your living-room or even your work place, everyone seems to have something to say or something to do. Of course many “bloggers” show a real artistic or creative purpose, but  to be honest most of them seem to only show themselves in a sort of  epicenter of our hungry society where we end up consuming our own selves.  The titles of the websites say it all: “My Blog”, “As I Am, As I Want”, “Me, by Myself and I”, “My Little World”, “My Life, my blog and I”…  The goal is narcissistic and the hope is simple: to be found, chosen, to create some kind of buzzing wave around you.  But what  do these candidates expect from a micro-celebrity that will lead them absolutely nowhere ? Love, recognition, a boosted ego… It is the need to be watched and approved that motivates this incontrollable desire. The numerous social networks, the army of blogs, or even reality TV have in common to fish for quantity: the more reactions you get, the more you exist and the more you reassure your weakened ego.

This phenomenon is more frequent with the under 25 who are in a bigger need of attention than their elders: according to a recent survey one teenager out of six would leave everything behind to become a star, and one out of ten would be ready to leave school to…be on TV! Today’s children are filmed from the day they are born and they see themselves grow up on screen so they are not scared by their own image. It’s not surprising they want to stay in the box once they grow up. However in this superficial world, celebrity means approbation even if it has to be experienced through mockery and ridicule. Every year sees more XFactor / Pop Idol contestants trying their best to be at least in the “Unforgettable” list, a record of the worst performances ever.  The quest tends then to turn rather sour than sweet. 

Don’t blame TV

This is the darker side of this new kind of celebrity: people take the risk of being judged and attacked about who they are and not about what they do. Fed from a young age with Reality TV where you can be sent to the highest step of fame or be brutally eliminated on the sole base of your personality, younger people can take this perverted system like a game or an initiation ritual, but some of them actually hardly recover from flying too close to the big ball of glitter.

Once again, TV is not the one to blame in the lack of ambition from which a whole generation is actually suffering. TV is just a media. You wouldn’t blame the coffee table for your child’s bump if he was to fall over it. No, once again we are the ones responsible for it. By not educating younger ones to distance themselves from what they see on TV or in the “people” magazines we let them being swallowed by the entertainment monster that tells so many obvious lies.  Furthermore we are responsible for indulging in these dreams like everybody else. More money, a bigger house, the latest fancy car, Madonna’s new hairdo, Halle Berry flawless smile, Gwyneth Paltrow micro-biotic diet … As responsible adults we should know better than that but we can’t help thinking that this reflects the truth of a fantastic elitist world from which we are forever excluded.  

New technologies are a blessing in a way they allow people to communicate better and faster, and help us to express ourselves in the eventuality of some talent we might have in us. But it brings forward the idea that everyone has something clever to say or to show outside your intimate circle of friends and family. Reaching out for a world they feel  estranged to, a whole generation tries nowadays to fill up a void created by the own medias in which they try to find a solution to their existential problems.