gotta post this. Oh shit. Gotta post this to my Facebook. Holy shit. OK. OK. What were you saying . . . ? Sorry, you know, when will I ever get the chance, you know? They’re sitting right the fuck THERE!”
So, I was thinking about this, how it’s not even a real thing. Fame. Just this thing that society wants to have. For what? I wanted to cut it open and spread it out, grab a fork and get in it. Get the wisdom. Understand society’s need, the public’s need. So, I started. No big deal. Started writing. Really good academic stuff. But, I had a shipping container full of FEELINGS about it all. Fuck Fuck. FUCK. This was just supposed to be an exploration of the Phenomenon of Fame. Easy. Work, but easy. Not emotional, not some exploration of my own fucking feelings about me, about my Fame, about my current lack of it, relatively speaking. Fuck. But, no going back. Couldn’t pull out. Process them. Press those feelings through the colander. So, OK. My experiences, yeah. I’ll tell you what that was like: The Lifecycle of Fame. The Beginning, the Love, the Hate, the Equilibrium, the Slide, the Descent, the Without.
Fame. This thing that came upon me. I didn’t have it and then it was on me. I was without it, nowhere near it, not cultivating it, not looking for it, knew no one who had it, just unfamiliar with it, and then it was on me, enveloping me, encasing me in a sheath that I could look out of and see the world as I knew it before the Fame happened, but a sheath that now obscured anyone’s vision of me. Can you see me? You see the Fame. Can you ever not see that? Can you ever go back to seeing me without the sheath?
You know I’m not just talking about me, right? I mean any famous person. Can you see them? Like you can see the guy in front of you in line at the drugstore?
“Yeah, he’s cute. I wonder if he has a girlfriend. Where is he from? His shoes are nice, probably has money, a career. Is he from here? Maybe he’s just passing through. He’s not on his phone, poking at it like everyone else in line. That’s weird.” And on and on and on. You’re curious; you wonder. You think about that person, what kind of life that person has, based on the few clues you have in front of you. You make some assumptions. Now, cut to you having seen that person in a movie. He’s famous. Now what’s going on? Does your heart start pumping faster? Yeah. Why? It’s like when you see a guy in school you have a crush on.
“Oh my God, he’s walking this way, he must have changed his class order, ’cause I never see him walking down this hall before lunch. Oh God, he is IT . . .” Heart rate elevated. Pupils dilated.
You fight it, maybe even with this guy, this famous guy in front of you at the drugstore. “He’s just a person. Just a guy. Calm down. You are not going to ask for a picture. No. No. No. Be cool.” But, you are freaking out inside. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?
OK. OK. Your heart rate escalates in the hall of your school because you like that guy, you want to be with him, you like how you feel around him; it feels good. But, the actor in front of you at the drugstore? Perhaps it’s similar, that you want to be with him, even though you know nothing about him beyond the characters he’s played. Still, maybe. But what about when you feel that same way when it’s an actress? Or an older actor, or anyone famous? Anyone at all. Now our comparison with your crush in the hall at school falls flat. You don’t want romantic relationships with these famous people. But you suddenly do not entirely feel yourself in line at the drugstore because someone encased in a sheath of Fame is standing in front of you. You are reacting to the Fame. I don’t know what that is, that way it makes people freak out, or the way it makes their heart beat faster, or makes them divest themselves of their own personality when they’re in front of Fame. Maybe by the end of this book we’ll have a robust way to explain it, but for now, let’s just say it’s magic.
2000
I noticed around 2000, there was this seismic shift in the focus on Fame. There were, by then, many more print outlets, TV outlets, cable outlets that needed entertainment-based material. They’d painted themselves into a corner even, maybe, with the volume of material they needed. Pages and pages and hours and hours of material. The paparazzi population exploded. They were everywhere and they were anyone. Anyone could be in on it.
Actor and “forever brother” Michael J. Fox aptly puts it this way: “It’s like your neighbor down the street runs a media empire now.” Everybody is generating “content,” and much of it is focused on celebrities. They have their “media channels”: their Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat accounts with the “potential to reach outside your sphere.” That used to be almost nonexistent. There used to be just a few media outlets and just a few paparazzi. Ron Galella once asked, on the slopes of Aspen, years ago, if he could take my picture. I said no and he didn’t. Respect. And Roger (how do I not know your last name?), who was at every publicity event in his large, square glasses, low on his nose, with his multitude of cameras slung around his neck, over his shoulder, across his chest. Always there, early at those fake birthday parties Teen Beat and Tiger Beat magazines used to put together with all the teen stars at the time. Later, at premieres, at openings. Roger, so sweet, who used to bring me slides. No Internet, no WireImage.com to later look up the photos, to feverishly look up photos of yourself a few hours after the event. Roger used to bring slides to events, photos he took of me at the previous event. Roger, who I last saw in a booth at the Silver Spoon coffee shop on Santa Monica Boulevard, hunkered down in a semicircle with a gaggle of other old-school paparazzi. Roger. So sweet.
Pages and pages and hours and hours need to be filled. Many more paparazzi needed. Not just event photos now, but photos of celebrities everywhere, doing anything. And more celebrities. The reality show contestants. Sure, call them “celebrities.” Andy Warhol moments. We need them for the pages and the hours. Mike Fox told me that “the biggest prima donnas, the biggest pricks” he’d encountered at any red carpet event were always the reality show contestants. The conclusion being that when you have no discernable skills, you will have cultivated none of the tools you need to handle a public position. That there will have been no means by which you have paid your dues and worked your way—with your artistic craft—up through the ranks to a particular level in your profession, where perhaps Fame is bestowed upon you. If you are absent the work it takes to peck your way out of the eggshell, you will be absent the strength it takes to live outside of that eggshell.
So, yeah. Those who have had Fame placed on them because of skills and talents have a dismissive disdain for those who chased Fame through sensationalism and/or reality-show-contestant debauchery. It’s true. Honestly, reality shows are the cancer of America. Look at the current presidency. Oh fuck, I don’t want to argue over politics right now. We can get on Twitter for that. Find me at @JustineBateman and we’ll take it on. But truly, reality show mentality has diseased this country. Being paid for breathing, bringing nothing to the table, exerting minimum effort at hard work or skill development. Yeah, that’s what reality programming gave to our country. Living shit. We had that perfect storm around 2000. Reality shows were gaining traction around the same time that all these entertainment outlets needed more material. Match made in heaven. You also had society wanting to increase the odds of becoming famous, to make new opportunities. Hence, the increased popularity of reality shows. More “celebrities” means more material for the outlets. So, Heidi Montag, The Situation, and so on. I’m sure they’re fine people, but who are they?
* * *
An 18th-century satirist named Hugh Henry Brackenridge had a great take on why people without discernable skills and talents are raised up in society and given Fame. In Modern Chivalry, he talked about politicians and why some of the unqualified ones are lifted up by the voters. He mentioned this “power of creation” feeling that courses through people. That they can feel like God, even, if they lift someone up and make them famous. Look, what kind of “creating power” do we have if we merely notice that someone talented should have attention, should attain Fame? All we’re doing is noticing that. We are not then rewarded for having a general observation of the obvious. But if we lift someone up to the heights
