“A
celebrity status based upon being ordinary is a contradiction in itself and
will inevitably destroy anyone who attempts it” Discuss this statement.
The above statement could be interpreted from a variety of
aspects as it calls into question what exactly “being ordinary” is. Henry
Winkler (star of ‘Happy Days’) states that “fame is not a normal state of
affairs for the human being. It takes a lot of strength and a lot of patience
and a tremendous amount of reality checks to live through something like being
The Fonz (his character on Happy Days). But if you get caught up in it, it will
eventually cut you in half” (2009, cited in Rojek, C. 2012, Page 6). This
statement not only outlines the incompatibility of the pressure of celebrity
with human beings, but it also calls into question the sustainability of said
celebrity status by those who posses it. Due to the public’s willing
consumption of the products of various media outlets including print and
internet based sources, “normal” details of celebrities’ personal lives become
trivialised and sensationalised, with everything from their sex lives to their
eating habits being a potential headline (Cashmore, E. 2006. Page 1).
The concept of a celebrity, who is a performer of some kind
trying to maintain the impression of normality whilst also continuing to
perform, is paradoxical. In the case of Britney Spears, a lapse in her ability
to perform (most notably her 2007 VMA performance of ‘Gimme More’ where she
appeared lethargic on stage) calls into question her capability of functioning
in other areas of her life outside of her profession, most notably her ability
to parent. The link between professionalism and private life was made by
various media outlets, most notably gossip magazines, that teased the idea that
Spears was not only failing to perform adequately on stage, but also as a
parent (Holmes, S. 2011. Page 58). With the way in which the media reported
these stories about Spears, it allowed audiences to gaze into the personal life
of a former teen idol and begin to pick it apart, establishing a moral high
ground on which they look down up on her. The scopophilia of the audience,
intently watching Spears’ every move as the story progressively unfolds, is a
goldmine for the gossip magazine outlets who will relentlessly continue
publishing updates on the story and sensationalize any information they can
find in order to sell more copies of their magazines. With media outlets such
as perezhilton.com posting unrelenting onslaughts about Spears’ VMA performance
(Perez Hilton, 2007) the media spotlight was unavoidable. With perezhilton.com
readily being available for anyone with an internet connection to see, the
VMA’s incident was not only seen by millions (even those who didn’t watch the
awards when they aired, due to Hilton also hosting video footage of the event)
the blog posts that Hilton made are permanent, and will exist on the internet
forever. When such heavy criticism of herself still exists on the internet
almost 6 years later, Spears’ attempts to return to normalcy seem futile, as
the memory of her pitfalls will always remain for everyone to see, immortalised
on the internet.
This creates a vicious cycle for the celebrity in question
and is especially true in the case of Spears. A considerable portion of her
meltdown was based around her arguing with paparazzi and candid footage of her
being followed by the press. This vicious cycle reached a crescendo for “OK”
magazine when they published a series of stories about Spears. “OK! Magazine
carried the story on its cover with headline reading “Goodbye Mommy”. According
to its representatives, the magazine expected another best-selling issue after
a summer cover announcing “Britney’s Meltdown” sold 1.2 million copies
(compared to average sales of around 930, 000)” (Holmes, S. 2011. Page 58). A
celebrity mother had not been so under scrutiny by the press since Courtney
Love post the death of Kurt Cobain during the 1990’s, when her ability to be a
mother was called into question due to her erratic behaviour, both on stage and
off. When every minute detail of their personal life is a potential opportunity
for financial gain and that their downfalls only mean further gain, this
trivialisation of their personal lives would appear to make any attempt at
“being ordinary” highly contradictory.
Holmes questions whether or not there “is any distinction
between our private and public selves? Do we have any unique, essential ‘inner
self’, or are we simply a site of self-performance and public presentation?”
(Holmes, S. 2006. Page 9). Can the personal life of a celebrity and their
professional life exist as two separate entities? Or will they simply congeal
into a single entity? Of course, this is less applicable to reality television
stars and those who are famous for being famous (i.e. Kim Kardashian and Paris
Hilton) as their personal life is their professional life, and the endorsement
of their products and business ventures is entirely dependent on the exposure
of their personal life. With their celebrity was a bi-product of their sex
tapes, nothing from their lives is private, with their intimate sex lives
available for anybody to see. People such as Kardashian, Hilton and Big Brother
contestant Jade Goody have widened the spectrum of celebrity and what it
constitutes. With their personal lives accounting for 100% of their celebrity
status, this places an enormous pressure on what they say and do in their
“private” lives, thus creating another potential opportunity for their attempts
to remain ordinary to inevitably destroy them.
Although, while Kardashian, Hilton and Goody do share the
fact that they are simply famous for being famous in common, they are not
entirely alike in the way they compose themselves in the public eye. In contrast to Goody, Kim Kardashian and
Paris Hilton were both somewhat famous before their infamous sex tape debuts.
The Kardashian family has been linked repeatedly to a variety of celebrities in
the past; the most relevant of these is perhaps the link that the family had
with O.J Simpson. As a result of these links (including Kim’s friendship with
socialite Paris Hilton) the family became famous by association. So before her
sex tape leaked in 2007, Kim Kardashian had already had a significant amount of
exposure and was perhaps more adjusted to it than someone like Jade Goody. The
same can be said of Hilton, heiress to the Hilton Hotel family fortune, had
also received some considerable media exposure before the attention that was
garnered from her sex tape. Goody on the other hand, a product of television
programme “Big Brother”, was not so adjusted. While Hilton and Kardashian know
how to use their fame in order to shift product (eg. perfume, clothing, music
etc.)
Goody was simply magazine fodder. Only able to sustain fame
by returning to Big Brother again in 2007, the pinnacle of her fame came from
the negative exposure she received after racially abusing fellow housemate,
Shilpa Shetty. This sent Goody’s “career” into a downward spiral, only ending
with her death from cancer in 2009, in which time the public’s anger towards
her racist comments subsided. It was
clearly evident that unlike people such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian, she
did not know how to censor herself somewhat in the public eye and compose herself
in order to maintain an image that was still appealing to her audience and
maintain the formula of success. She was incapable of wielding the celebrity
status that had been handed to her by appearing on ‘Big Brother’, which
ultimately lead to her downfall and could certainly be seen as her celebrity
status destroying her. In contrast to Jade Goody, someone like Madonna has been
far more successful at maintaining this formula, perhaps because she does not
as to rely on her personal life as her sole output as being a musician among
other things, she has tangible talent. Rojek states that “In contrast to Jade
Goody, Madonna is a bona fide contemporary idol” and that “She is a classic
example of the fame formula at work” (Rojek, C. 2012, Page 30). The longevity
of her career is thanks to the established rift between her personal life and
her professional career, a rift that is unobtainable to reality television
stars who’s personal lives are their primary product outlet.
But this is not true of all celebrities who have more of an
output than just their personal lives alone. If this dividing line between fame
and the personal life of the celebrity in question becomes blurred. In the case
of Britney Spears, such a blur between these lines occurred when she posed
naked whilst pregnant for Harpers Bazaar in 2006. The meeting of her
professional life (using the magazine as a promotional tool for product) and
her private life (discussing her pregnancy) was essentially a green light for
the press as an invitation into her personal life (Smit, R. 2011. Page 103) If
these two aspects of Spears life can never meet without resulting in a media
firestorm that hyper-analyses her, the notion that she could possibly maintain
a “normal” persona is indeed contradictory.
A star such as Drew Barrymore has managed her celebrity in a
way significantly different to most. Although the Drew Barrymore we see on
screen and the candid Drew Barrymore we see in paparazzi seem almost strikingly
similar, she has been very careful to maintain a persona, and she is very much
in charge of that persona. “Despite her frequent entwining of herself with her
roles and her apparently frank discussion of her ‘real-life’ she is never truly
revealing of her ‘self’: as one Hollywood producer noted ‘She’s an actress. She
knows how much to give so that you feel that way”(2007, cited in Redmond, S.
2007, Page 64). It is also worth noting that Barrymore has successfully been
able to shed any scandalous press about her and has managed to erase it from
public memory by re-structuring her public persona. Barrymore has managed to
eradicate the image of herself from her rebellious era during the early 90’s
that caused sufficient scandal at the time with her going to rehab at the age
of 14, and reinvented herself. The rebellious era is now merely a grey area in
her timeline. To the pubic now, she is either the little girl from E.T or the
woman from Charlie’s Angels, and any memory of her troubled teen years have
been successfully buried under the sands of time. It could certainly be seen
that Drew Barrymore has done an excellent job at “being normal” in the
spotlight, but it could also be argued that she is an exception to the rule.
The way in which Barrymore has successfully constructed this image to herself may
not be applicable to someone such as Britney Spears. During Barrymore’s
rebellious era, the world wide web was still very much in its infancy, and few
people had it in their homes at the time. Internet journalism was scarce and
most of which is untraceable today as the very primitive websites that these
articles were posted on have since been deleted due to technological
upgrading.. This is in stark contrast to the case of Spears, who’s ‘rebellion’
was in 2006/2007, where internet journalism was very much in its stride.
In conclusion, despite the notion of a celebrity
establishing a “normal” persona is somewhat contradictory, it is in fact
possible for some individuals to achieve this without being “destroyed” by
their efforts. Although, this is entirely dependent on the strategy of the
individual themselves and also the basis of their fame in the first place. With
the spectrum of what constitutes “celebrity” now being so vast, it would be
unsubjective to make such a broad comment on whether or not a celebrity will be
destroyed by their fame.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Rojek, C, 2012. Fame Attack: The Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences. 1st ed. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Cashmore, E, 2006. Celebrity Culture. 1st ed. Oxon: Routledge.
Holmes, S, 2011. In the Limelight and Under
the Microscope: Forms and Functions of Female Celebrity. 1st ed. London: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
Homles, S, 2006. Framing Celebrity: New
directions in celebrity culture. 1st ed. Oxon: Routledge.
Smit,
R, 2011. The
Exile of Britney Spears: A Tale of 21st Century Consumption. 1st ed. Bristol: Intellect .
Redmond,
S, 2007. Stardom
and Celebrity: A Reader. 1st ed. London: SAGE
Publications.
WEBOGRAPHY
Perez
Hilton. 2007. Perez
Hilton . [ONLINE] Available at: http://perezhilton.com/?p=5263. [Accessed 23 April 13].
ALL QUOTES USED –
“fame is not a normal
state of affairs for the human being. It takes a lot of strength and a lot of
patience and a tremendous amount of reality checks to live through something
like being The Fonz (his character on Happy Days). But if you get caught up in
it, it will eventually cut you in half”
“In contrast to Jade
Goody, Madonna is a bona fide contemporary idol”
“She is a classic example of the fame formula
at work”
Holmes, S, 2011. In the Limelight and Under
the Microscope: Forms and Functions of Female Celebrity. 1st ed. London: The Continuum International Publishing Group.
“OK! Magazine carried
the story on its cover with headline reading “Goodbye Mommy”. According to its
representatives, the magazine expected another best-selling issue after a
summer cover announcing “Britney’s Meltdown” sold 1.2 million copies (compared
to average sales of around 930, 000)”
Homles, S, 2006. Framing Celebrity: New
directions in celebrity culture. 1st ed. Oxon: Routledge.
“is any distinction
between our private and public selves? Do we have any unique, essential ‘inner
self’, or are we simply a site of self-performance and public presentation?”
Redmond,
S, 2007. Stardom
and Celebrity: A Reader. 1st ed. London: SAGE Publications.
“Despite her frequent
entwining of herself with her roles and her apparently frank discussion of her
‘real-life’ she is never truly revealing of her ‘self’: as one Hollywood
producer noted ‘She’s an actress. She knows how much to give so that you feel
that way”
Horror storyboard (2010)
Synopsis
The basic outline for my story is a serial
killer clown on the run from the police. I used a clown for my story as without
having to establish them, they are assumed as being ‘scary’, but I thought I
would make them the victim for once, creating a twist in the typical
conventions of horror. Presumably, they have just murdered someone as we see a
blood smothered knife on the ground next to her. Previous to the scene the
clown has murdered somebody in the street for reasons unknown, and they have
run from the scene of their own crime right into their own deathtrap. They
enter the woods and then the clown is
first seen sat near a fire in a secluded wooded area. It then becomes apparent
that she is not the only one there. From an unknown persons point of view, she
is being watched. The unknown figure (Who is dressed in everyday clothing like
a normal civilian, suggesting that they witnessed the clown killing their
victim out in public and has come to seek revenge) continues to watch them from
a closer distance, progressively getting closer. The clown then gets up and
walks away from the fire, and starts to walk away; walking behind her is a
cloaked figure. Upon hearing the noise from under the cloaked figures feet the
clown turns around, but nothing is there, only the fire she left burning
before. Believing that it was her mind playing tricks on her, the clown walks
on further into the woods. As the clown
walks further into the distance the cloaked figure stands on some leaves, the
clown quickly turns around but cannot see anything. The killer smiles sinisterly,
as the clown retraces her steps towards the fire to burn her bloodied gloves.
From the perspective of the masked stalker, the clown leans down in front of
the fire. Leaves crunch under the feet of the stalker again, causing the clown
to quickly turn around again to see nothing there. The clown drops her glove
and leans over to pick it up, as she leans back up the stalker is standing
menacingly above her. The knife from before is seen in the stalkers hand as she
watches the clown from behind without her knowledge. The masked stalker slowly approaches the
clown from behind, slowly holding the knife up above her. The knife is seen pointing down with the
stalkers fist clenched around it, before an earpeircing scream echoes through
the wood, as a flock of birds fly up into the sky, out of the woods. The knife
is thrown on the floor of the woods again, as the stalker is heard running away
into the distance. A newspaper title reading “Killer fiend – loose again”
appears, before a “police line do not cross” tape is shown. After this the
chase for the clowns killer begins, as the police were originally following the
clown after they murdered an innocent civilian, which incidentally led them to
find the clowns body and the knife from the previous murder, further adding to
the mystery and making the audience question “why did the clown kill?” and
“what made the masked killer kill the clown?”. The pursuit continues until the
masked killer is caught, although resolving one murder, the clowns murder of an
innocent civilian is still left a mystery at the end of the film.
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