Media’s influence subverts quest to discover meaning

Thursday, February 4, 1999

Media’s influence subverts quest to discover meaning

OBSESSION: Americans deify celebrities to avoid confronting

real political, social dilemmas

The true size of Tom Cruise’s unit, just who in Hollywood has
been nipped, snipped and cut, Gwyneth dumping Brad and moving on –
yes, these are the subjects Americans are interested in. Indeed,
the end of the millennium approaches and we turn our attention to
the big issues in the world.

Inquiring minds want to know more and more about less and less.
As a nation we are foregoing any meaningful public discussion in
favor of a salacious and ingratiating reverence for the banalities
of celebrity.

There’s a democracy-threatening impeachment going on, yet last
Sunday when I arose early to catch some substantive media coverage
(read: oxymoron), I was greeted by a plug for In Style Magazine’s
Celebrity Wedding, an hour long special, as the lead story on the
local news!

We suffer from a cultural obsession with celebrity. Nietzsche
was right in saying God is dead! Apparently his public relations
team was outfoxed by Leonardo DiCaprio’s. What’s Leonardo’s next
movie going to be? How often did he squeeze Kate Winslet’s
butt-cheeks during the making of that oh-so-hot bedroom scene? I
refused to see Titanic and I still know this drivel!

But, I do not want to know.

The modern Protestant theologian Paul Tillich defined God as
that for which we have the most or ultimate concern. If you accept
that definition, I would have to say that the leading candidates
for gods in our common culture are celebrities.

With what else are we – as a nation – fascinated? Growing
disparities between rich and poor? The decline of education, from
which we are all suffering? The morality of our policy towards
Iraq?

No, there is not even a public recognition of these daunting
problems, much less any media coverage on issues of substance. The
media spoon-feeds us celebrity brain candy, and we lap it up like
Pavlovian dogs. Salivating at the vaguest hint of celebrity
genitalia or scandal, we seem completely out of control. Since we
neither demand nor receive serious information on important issues,
how can we ever achieve real dialogue on how to resolve them? Why
do we have to know and care so much about Robert Downey Jr.’s
dependency issues at the cost of ignoring our own?

How many pounds does Oprah weigh today? How is George Michael
facing his father issues in therapy? Our sick dependence on stars
can be tolerated no more. It is time to face the root causes of
this depravity with rigorously honest collective and individual
reflection so that we all can escape the futility of our obsession
with all things famous.

It is appropriate to describe our fascination with fame as an
obsession in the clinical sense. Clinically, an obsession is
something which we are compelled to do and which we have little or
no control over doing. We need to be brutally honest here. Popular
culture is out of control with regard to the famous and our
compulsion to know, understand and identify with our modern-day
pantheon of demi-gods. We all must decide to be enablers in our
cultural malaise no longer.

Why are we obsessed with Cher’s real feelings about Sonny? What
drives such an inane inquiry? We must not be careful to be stuck on
superficialities here. The particular item of obsession is not
really the issue here; rather, it is trying to understand what
drives or motivates the obsession itself. To move beyond the
surface we must address what’s going on underneath.

At the heart of all obsession are control issues gone bad. We
live in an uncertain world over which – in the final analysis – we
have minimal control.

We can certainly try to control other people and events, but
such an attempt is an illusion at best. We can certainly influence
others, but if we think we are controlling them, we are either: a)
involved in an unhealthy, exploitative relationship, or b) fooling
ourselves.

Americans in particular have a problem understanding the real
limits of our sphere of influence. Regardless of your political
stripe and ethnic or cultural background we all have been shaped by
our narcissistic credo of radical individualism.

In the face of an incredibly huge, complicated and increasingly
impersonal worldwide culture, our deep-seated beliefs about
controlling our lives and others become deeply problematic. The
natural result of a strong desire to control, confronted with a
reality in which we have little apparent means or access to power
and control, is fear and anxiety. These unsettling, though subtle,
emotions fuel our celebrity obsession, which threatens to engulf
any sense of self or purpose that we can truly call our own, either
collectively or individually.

Ironically, a meaningful sense of self and purpose is exactly
what we need, though we repeatedly avoid addressing the issue.
Celebrity has become our culture’s sick and twisted fetish. A
fetish is the use of an object to fulfill an emotional need that is
typically not meant through that particular object. Usually fetish
is meant in a sexual-needs context, but here I mean it in a broader
sense.

Specifically, I think our culture uses celebrity as an object to
try to fulfill its need for meaning, a need that is noticeably
absent in our culture today. If you think that this is untrue, ask
yourself what, as a collective culture, we are centered around or
what gives meaning to our lives. I think the most reasonable answer
to that is capitalism.

Everywhere, but especially in the realm of celebrity, this
nation is most centered on issues of money, security and economic
prestige.

The ultimate irony, of course, is that with respect to meaning,
capitalism is the most corrosive force on the planet. Forget about
love, human rights, ecology, ideology, liberty or any other higher
values. When it comes right down to it, what matters with
capitalism is what sells.

This is especially true with celebrity. Does anybody of my age
know what’s going on in Leif Garret’s life these days? Heck no, he
stopped being profitable decades ago.

Victor Frankel, along with many others, has written eloquently
about humanity’s need for meaning. What we need is meaning that is
substantive and works for our collective betterment – not something
which is trivial, superficial and harmful to humanity. Celebrity is
trivial, superficial and allows us to avoid facing our big
concerns. We need something that will build us up rather than tear
us down.

We need a transformation of the way we think about celebrity and
a refusal to participate in a system that alienates us from our
birthright as human beings to create meaningful lives for
ourselves.

For the masses, we need to see the ways in which we have not
taken control of our own lives. We must act to control that which
we can control and bravely forge a meaningful existence for our
world. For those of us in the media (My God! I’m one of them now!)
we must realize our incredible power and in our coverage of events
and issues, we must honor the intelligence of which all people are
capable, while endeavoring responsibly to promote the greater good
for all.

Christopher Andrew Morrissey

In truth, Morrissey is a raging celebrity gossip addict. Please
address any tantalizing tidbits to [email protected]. An
intervention is planned soon.

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