Under the Microscope: Celebrity as the New Aristocracy

Don't get me wrong, I am the number one celebrity slut. Who isn't? When people say, why did you move to New York, should I say I just wanted to be in a city, or that I moved here so I meet Jodie Foster because I figure she needed a date, after the whole I'm going to shoot the President bit. Not to mention I know people who are even greater sluts than me, that make me look like a celebrity puritan. However, there are many among us who have untoward expectations towards celebrities.
I work occasionally in the entertainment field. Or should I say celebrity publicity media. After every event with a celebrity, everyone compares their experience with the celebrity - were they nice, were they well dressed, why didn't they answer that question better- with their expectations. I must say these expectations are very high. Graciousness, wit, humor, -- indeed may I dare say some Platonic perfection, as if celebrity was that elusive form of the chair. Minutia of behavior, legs crossed and uncrossed, a sneeze, or a look away: these banal human acts are blow up, inflated with the significance of the burning flag, the crushed chalice, the sudden sun-break. LSD significance, the symbolic significance that, thankfully, I when 25 reserved exclusively for myself, for the acts of my life, as if touched by an angel, as if the entire world was for me and my decoding (apparently the experience on LSD but for once I can't say I know).



Now, celebrities are not just normal people. First, you're in the role, so you change. Second, typically you had some charisma to begin with or you wouldn't be there. Third, successful people are either exceptionally sensitive or insensitive. Like, Hugo Weaving - one look from him and you realize he is supersensitive. Ditto Winona Ryder. Tom Cruise, now he sort of seems to be a bit insensitive. Yet, people are just people. Concentration, being up, being on, performing, well, that is only possible for so long, to a certain extent. Live everyday life has many more facets than a controlled performance environment. Take this warning then. Do not place people under the microscope of importuned symbolic significance. Do not feel it is a celebrities responsibility to act like British gentry: unfailingly polite, always gracious and humoring, and of course, inherently superior. To respond with enthusiasm, from either perspective is wonderful, but to expect enthusiasm, well that is where the line in the desert sand under the sun gets crossed.