The Everyday Celebrity

Can anyone truly define “celebrity” today? A dictionary definition would explain it as “the state of being celebrated” or “a famous or celebrated person.” How about fame? Fame is “public estimation” or “popular acclaim.” The words fame and celebrity 50 years ago were associated with untouchable people. Movies stars, broadcasters, political figures that no one of lesser status could ever associate themselves with. Fame and celebrity today roll off the tongue like a dirty word, almost as if being associated with either is a bad thing. Whether we like to admit it or not, it’s a result of our own doing. These days, social status is everything but social status itself is losing its own worth.
It wouldn’t surprise me if you looked up those same words again and things like YouTube, MySpace, and reality television were listed. There is no trick, no recipe, and even no talent needed to call yourself famous. This decline in the worth of fame could be attributed to the internet, to the music industry, or maybe even to the human need to be entertained 24 hours of the day, seven days a week.
“Celebrity status” is no longer determined by your work ethic, your profession, or the talent you possess. It has become solely a popularity contest based on your ability to put your face anywhere in the public eye. We all see it happening, we all see people on red carpets, at Hollywood premiers and wonder how on God’s green Earth these people got here. It’s no surprise because the most ironic part about it is that we’re the people who put them there. No one will admit it, but we perpetuate the cycle. We make what we hate, and what we hate to see.
You can relate it to something we refer to as a “guilty pleasure.” You love to watch it, hear it, be entertained by it, but you’re too embarrassed to admit it. Those television shows that are too cliché to watch, the songs so manufactured and catchy you only sing in the shower; those are the kinds of things we don’t discuss. The attention given to all these forms of media is what propels these guilty pleasures into stardom.
There is always someone in Hollywood we love to hate. I don’t know that anyone can explain it, but it’s true. Usually that person earns a ridiculous sum of money from something so simple, anyone could do it. But the attention they get from us, from the public, and from the media is what causes them to be a household name. One of the biggest and most widely-known examples of this is Perez Hilton. The guy runs a celebrity gossip blog site, which in itself is the beginning of this problem. Why do we care so much who Is dating who and who went out to the club last night? We don’t know, but we care. Anyone can sit at home and blog about the “buzz” and the latest scoop, but Perez Hilton is now a superstar. He’s at premiers, he’s on the red carpet, and he’s judging beauty pageants for crying out loud. The guy’s flamboyancy and attitude beg for attention, and we give it all to him. The majority of people I have met can’t stand him, but I know they’ve all visited his page. He earns a celebrity status by doing what? Gossiping about celebrities. Now that’s ironic.
What about all the music superstars we have today? The pop queens, the R&B crooners, the latest dance crazes in the clubs started by the rappers and the manufactured beats; do any of these have real talent, something to last beyond the stages of a “trend?” Some do, and some do not. I think you all know what music I’m talking about. Artists Ke$ha and Soulja Boy. Ke$ha can’t hit a high C on a bar staff, and Soulja Boy comes up with the most moronic “dance” moves while talking his way through some beats a producer fed him. But we all love it! You can’t wait for their songs to come on the radio or hit the dance floor when the DJ turns them on. Then you turn around and wonder, how does someone like Soulja Boy make millions upon millions of dollars? What does he do? He doesn’t create music with lasting power for one thing, and the other is that the seizure-ridden dances based on sexual innuendos he creates are eaten up by the public. He makes money and blows up in the record industry with less talent than those of the people with pipes that are rejected time after time by the industry. We envy his money and fame for what he does, yet we are the ones who put him there.
Things like blogs, and YouTube, and any other medium that allows us to express ourselves has propelled the average Joe into “the next big thing.” People in home videos are used in music videos, millions of views on YouTube causes the next social uproar, and a few kids hitting the Jersey Shore for the summer cause an obsession with New York-Italian “guido” culture. They burst onto the scene, and make more money in a year than we can gross in a lifetime. We love it all; the reality television and the catchy music, while we sit back and scoff at their fame. There’s no one to blame but ourselves.