Celebrity Hypocrisy

Just a few thoughts on this survey which discovered that people are suffering from celeb fatigue.

I found the fact that the 2 per cent difference between those paying close attention to a Paris Hilton story and those paying close attention to a Lindsay Lohan story is cited as possible evidence that people may be getting sick of celebrity news coverage is itself, in some sort of marriage of form and content, indicative of a a certain ridiculous shallowness of news coverage no matter what the subject.

Which to me is precisely the point. It is not that there is too many celebrities on the news, the problem is the news itself and the fact that any news story covered is covered as a celebrity news story. If news networks suddenly decided to end all celebrity coverage would the news improve? No. Obviously not. The coverage of other stories would just be stretched in more ridiculous directions than it already is. Take the coverage of the US bridge collapse where on numerous channels there was an interview with a woman who had narrowly avoided the collapse. The story was nothing: she had avoided it by 'inches' on her way to collect her 6 week old baby [this from memory], the story seemed to involve her describing what might have been had she been in the collapse, how difficult it would have been for her husband to raise the baby alone. Now, that, to me, isn't in any way news. It hasn't happened, it won't happen. So maybe he has thought about it and to her it may be distressing or whatever, but it isn't news. Is it? Is it more newsworthy than Paris Hilton going in and out of prison?

Another example being the case of missing Madeline where the lack of any police media relations is causing great consternation among the media: no daily briefings, no inspector to focus on, just an awful crime. And an awful crime with (sadly) little to report. So the media snipe about how the portuguese police are rubbish for not playing the game and then they (the media) flail about looking for a suspect to celebritize. And of course, to keep the story in the public eye the parents have no choice put to become celebrities themselves, going on a european tour and appearing in (at least one, cos I saw the advert on the tv, maybe more) celebrity magazines.

And of course built into the news coverage of celebrities is the very idea that we are somehow above this. And this is why I think any critique of celebrity culture which attempts to stay aloof from it, ignore it, or deem it trivial misses the point entirely: this aloofness is already inherent in the reporting of celebrity (as anyone who spends anytime on TMZ or Perez Hilton (but especially Mollygood, which I have had to stop reading, so sanctimonious and hypocritical has it become) knows).

Whether or not my own response,embracing it, is in anyway better, is debatable, but at least it lacks hypocrisy.