Celebrity Gossip or Communal Storytelling?
You should check out @honeydue's impassioned post on celebrity gossip. It's got more tits than a Florida whorehouse.
I get tired mind-dribble celebrity tripe, too. But in many ways it fulfills the same need for communal storytelling that we've had for thousands of years.
Celebrities have become the "Greek Gods" of our times.
Think of the way the legends of Zeus and Hera and Apollo and the rest developed as Athenians went about their business gossiping and making up outrageous stories about them. People would hear a story about this larger-than-life character, embellish it, and then pass it on.
In the fictional realm today, we have super-heroes to satisfy this need. But they're static. Once they're printed (or released as a movie) we're not allowed to change them, to play around with the stories and set them to our liking. Thanks to Disney, a corporation's copyright will lock down our stories for over a century (which is the subject for another post).
As a result, we have more freedom to trash-talk our celebrities than we do our stories. We can warp public figures into creatures of our imagination. They're fair game.
And since they're committing the sins we'd like to commit, we relate to them.
Recently it was revealed that Bob Kraft, the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots football team, was busted whoring in a strip-mall massage parlor. Since I work in a cigar shop, I get to hear a lot more celebrity news than I would otherwise. It's actually the only reason I know about this story.
The consensus on Kraft seems to be this:
- He's widowed and he's old. Good for him that he can still get it up.
- Yeah, but it's kind of embarrassing for him and his family.
- So why the hell wouldn't someone with his kind of money pay $300 - $1000 to have a call-girl come discretely to his mansion and take care of him properly? Or two? Why, you could probably even get someone who would...
They're relating to his predicament and imagining what they would do if they had his kind of wealth, influence, and power. (It's also been interesting to learn just how much customers would be willing to "theoretically" pay for sex. $1000 seems to be the ceiling.)
Now, imagine what this story of Kraft would become if we weren't getting information about him from a 24 hour news cycle. What if the only way we heard about the shenanigans of the magnificently wealthy owner of a team of gladiators came through public proclamations and town square gossip?
If the story was compelling enough, it wouldn't be long before he became completely fictionalized and took his place in the pantheon.
"Yeah, can you believe that shit about Zeus? Still whoring it up amongst the mortals, he is. Yeah, but at least he turned himself into a swan first. That slut Leda will never be able to prove it was him!"
Anyway, I'm not so bothered by celebrity gossip, ironically for the same reason @honeydue is. I don't have to pay attention to it. And sometimes it's interesting to see who we, as a culture, project our hopes and dreams on. The Hiltons and the Kardashians and the Krafts may be deeply flawed, even despicable creatures.
But the pantheons of our ancestors weren't so neat and tidy, either.
A good story finds its way, you can't lock it up. Maybe you won't be able to sell it in forms of action movies, or you'd have to pay to Mickey Mouse, who's becoming the godfather of stories. But if it fulfills the need, people will continue sharing it. On the other hand, it's much more exciting to be gossiping about real people, removed as they may be from real life, due to their exceptional status (money), and having been subject of countless stories. Which raises the question, whether there could have been any real basis of the Olympic gods. Sure, by the time they gained supernatural abilities, they must have been through a number of stories, but originally... Could Zeus have been just another Kraft? Who knows...
I'm happily unplugged from all the 'celebtrity' business, as you well know and happily only people my life with others who would't know a celebrity if you invited them over for cocktails and then wondered, 'what are they on about?"
The Gods were definitely tabloid ready; Zeus, (he loved animal form) was a randy sod, that's for sure. :) Of course his couplings sometimes lead to others who then set about creating more of our world.
While I agree with your last remark, I cringe at the comparison of Zeus to Kim Kardashian. I have a feeling Zeus is cringing too :P
I'm not as bothered as I let on, by the way, just had some thoughts on the subject and figured they'd do as a post. ;) I like observing people.
You're very right, we love to imagine ourselves in that posture, both in that of Zeus all those years ago (and even maybe today, who knows what fetishes some people have), and that of the Kardashians or this rich perv you mention. We like to imagine we live different lives, mainly because our whole value system is deeply flawed.
PS: I think I read the opening three times before I realized you were saying Florisa whorehouse and not warehouse...I must say, I was very confused...
What an interesting correlation between the Pantheon Gods and the current celebrity superstars. I suppose it's true that they serve the same purpose, never consider it that way since to me the gods are exciting and great inspiration for drawing and the current celebrity not so much, but I assume a lot of other artists like to draw celebrities, so they serve a similar function ^_^.