I would normally not bring up this particular topic again - one does not wish to add to a young woman's suffering - but I came across this by Krista Tippett, host of Speaking of Faith on NPR, and I thought it worth noting.
I don't worry overly about our cultural interest in celebrities per se. I understand and participate in it and suspect it is as old as time. But as I've watched Britney Spears unravel before our eyes, in real time, with no end in sight, I have begun to think it's time for a pause, a moment of cultural soul-searching. I've been disturbed by the numerous reports I've heard - not in People or Us but in major news outlets - gleefully tallying all the money she continues to make for paparazzi and other people around her, noting with amusement that the profits only rise as she sinks to ever-lower depths.
--snip--
Britney Spears, as much as any other current celebrity, is our creation. She achieved stardom at an age when her sense of self, of what is good and right and meaningful in life, was completely determined by the adults and the culture around her. But the same machine that made her is exquisitely calibrated to destroy and discard her.
So though it might seem a stretch to add Britney's plight to our public list of "moral values" issues, I'm proposing that she might belong there. I'd like to hear religious and spiritual leaders bold enough to call for compassion and introspection. I wonder who or what could effect a stop to the paparazzi hounding of an already ruined person? Where are the voices genuinely concerned about the plight of her children, whose own personal devastation is also on display in real time, a matter of public spectacle through no fault of their own? What is it doing to our own children when we fail to think and speak about our collective complicity in the creation and downfall of a human being like Britney Spears?
I suppose that I should add that I am as guilty as the next person, gleefully checking out the tabloids for the latest gossip. I shake my head ruefully at each photo that shows, pretty clearly, she is in need of serious attention. I told someone at work, commenting on the pregnancy of her younger sister, Jamie Lynne, "What a fucked-up family," without ever once thinking that it is, in fact, no more messed up than most American families, only more exposed to scrutiny and judgment.
In November, Crooks and Liars highlighted Brave New Films short clip called Fox Porn, in which all the examples of sexual exploitation by a channel supposedly concerned with moral values was exposed. We have become so inured to this kind of thing, when it is presented to us for what it actually is, we react with surprise. Yet, how different are we who decry this kind of thing, yet quite freely discuss Bill Clinton's sexual exploits, without considering the damage reminders of his cuckoldry might do to his family? How many times can lefty blogs deny the attraction of the sexual component in Eliot Spitzer's recent complete public flame-out? Indeed, I wish I could remember where I read it, but some liberal blogger kept insisting Spitzer's downfall was not related to sex at all.
Yeah.
All this is to say that we are no different; we only hide our prurience behind a tut-tutting at the prurience of others. Whether it's Blow-job Bill, Dick Morris' toe-sucking, or now Eliot Spitzer's decisions to pay more in a night on a prostitute than most people make in a month, we focus on the sex lives and titillating details of the lives of public figures, while others focus on those same details of non-public figures. Early in her piece, Tippett writes that she isn't too concerned with the public's fascination with Spears and other celebrities, and I have to agree. Too many liberals and lefties seem to think it is a zero-sum game, in which crap drives out substantive information, fodder for mindless drones spoon-fed trivia on non-persons unworthy of our attention. It's this same elitist attitude that comes to the fore whenever we read a study that says that some percentage of our public doesn't know who the Chief Justice of the United States is. My reply is the same - twas ever thus, whether concerning our desire to read up on celebrities or our general public ignorance on the minutiae and trivia of our public figures.
I think, however, that rather than be left-wing moral scolds telling people what they shouldn't read because it's bad for them (how different, in kind, is this from right-wing moral scolds telling people they shouldn't read The Diary of Anne Frank because there are things in there that are morally objectionable?), we might take Ms. Tippett's advice and use this moment to ask ourselves about the human cost of our fascination with celebrity. Not just Ms. Spears, but Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie, Lindsay Lohan, the deluge of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie stories, Heath Ledger's death - there is no lack of sources for our fascination with celebrity. Yet, we are dealing here not with creatures of the imagination, but human beings, many times human beings whose lives bear little or no resemblance to the narrative constructed by the tabloids. Some of them are fragile individuals, with serious problems. Rather than gaze pornographically at the details of their foibles, it might behoove us to consider them as unique individuals, worthy of love, respect, and our prayers and support as they deal with their lives. Very often, while they might have the material resources to cope - they can certainly afford expensive rehab centers - the emotional and psychological resources they have as individuals seem to be lacking. Rather than stare like motorists at a wreck, why not actively engage in support and help for these individuals?
