Picture this: Obama is the victim of a kiss and tell sensation. A prostitute goes public, saying: “He told me he wanted to contact my skin, he held me tight, he took my breath away.  I took him inside me, he suffocated me with kisses.” The American public is dismayed and embarrassed… but a substantial percentage still supports the Pres. They take their hats off to him! Having sex with a woman half his age? Right on.

A kiss and tell like this could only occur in an alternate universe, where a counter-Obama has the exact, opposite character of this-world Obama… and where the American public wouldn’t react with overwhelming indignation.

Not so in Italy. Last week, the 73-year-old media magnate and prime minister was outed in Rome as a lover by prostitute, Patrizia d’Addario. “I am much younger than him, and quite an expert,” blushed Patrizia, “but there were moments when I feared I could not stand up to his assaults. Does he take something? I have asked myself many times.”  Publicly embarrassed yet again, Berlusconi’s estranged wife Veronica Lario is seeing a divorce settlement of over $70 million.

The interesting point at issue is not the allegation or its ramifications. It is the apparent resignation of the Italian public that successful men do this sort of thing. In the Piazza Navona and Piazza di Spagna, the word from the man and woman in the street seems to be that, while it is regrettable, and hardly to be condoned, it is part of the male power trip in Italy, it is a perk of political fame.

The double standards prevalent in American life are very different. Obama would be destroyed by a case like this, just as Clinton was almost impeached over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. In America the objection is not a puritanical insistence that political celebrity and adultery do not go hand in hand. After all, the golden Kennedy postwar political trio, John, Bobby and Ted, were mired by sexual scandals. Doubtless people talked on Pennsylvania Avenue, but in their lifetimes, John and Bobby’s extra-marital sex lives were not addressed by the media. In fact, the disclosures that emerged after their deaths damaged Ted.  It was not just poor drowned Mary Jo Kopechne, Chappaquiddick and a lifelong weakness for drink that tarnished Ted’s Presidential ambitions in 1980: it was the known sex lives of his brothers and the inference that male Kennedy blood was insanely promiscuous.

Glamour and star appeal are now basic requirements of Presidential candidates. If you doubt this, consider the lamentable performance of John McCain in the last campaign and Sarah Palin’s surprise emergence as Republican MILF. In 2008 Hustler Video released  “Who’s Naillin’ Paylin,” an American porn flick starring Palin look-alike Lisa Ann as the Vice Presidential hopeful. Yet if candidates step outside the aura of sexual power and engage in the extra-martial opportunities that their celebrity affords, they are, as Karl Rove might say, “dead meat.” In American political life sexual magnetism is an asset.  But look, don’t touch, buddy.

Yeah Apple. I use one myself: cool, panther-sleek, leopard-brave and consistently, more imaginative than PC suppliers.

Is it just an accident that this is how I see myself  in relation to everybody else?

Don’t answer (on pain of death).

Speaking of Apple, Steve Jobs has just appeared at his first product launch since October 2008.  Jobs is the charismatic Chief Executive of Apple. In 1997 he returned to the helm after a 12 year absence. Under his watch the company has introduced the iMac, the AirBook, the iPod and the iPhone. For stock exchange bean counters, the Jobs era has seen Apple go from strength to strength.  In 1996 its stock was trading at $4 per share. This year the same shares have been trading at the $140 mark.

The economic transformation is largely attributed to Jobs’s wizardry. Mac addicts have become cheerfully accustomed to his much anticipated delivery of  the keynote at the annual MacTrade fair. Dressed in his hall-mark black jeans, designer spectacles and black T shirt, year in and year out he has parleyed a seemingly inexhaustible parade of exciting product innovations and marketing coups that have made the jaws of other Chief Executives in silicone valley drop,  and the mouths of the Apple  faithful and would-be customers drool. Jobs is an obsessive Mac nut, with a legendary temper that brow-beats Apple suppliers and retailers to do his bidding. In the eyes of the Mac faithful, he is a corporate hero, batting relentlessly for the brand.

Corporate executives have swapped the three piece Saville Row suit, Florsheim Imperials and bluff business manner, for a wardrobe and lifestyle more in keeping with those of their clients. Jobs is widely regarded as the very model of the new cool CEO: informal, wry, environmentally concerned, pro-consumer rights, immensely rich and thin.  Pencil-thin, some might say.

By October 2008 he was meaningfully thin, as if something other than worries about the annual company financial report was gnawing away at his innards. People began asking for explanations to account for his gaunt features, dust-mote pallor and skeletal frame.

Jobs announced a suspicious six month sabbatical, with widely regarded less charistmatic figure of Tim Cook covering for him. The Apple press office was uncharacteristically evasive about the whys and wherefores. Typically, their spin doctors gush with celebratory copy about the expanding product line and portentous hints about the earth shaking technical breakthroughs that they are about to reveal. In contrast, the news about the CEO’s health was scant. Rumors of serious illness were met with disclaimers and blase innuendo. The results were  dire. Apple’s shares plunged to $78.20.

The correlation between the economic well being of the company and the health of its Chief Executive are displayed in other areas.  In December 2008, in the midst of his mysterious sabbatical, Apple shares revived after he was allegedly spotted the very model of health in a Palto Alto frozen yoghurt outlet. Similarly, earlier unfounded rumors that he had suffered a heart attack sent the stock plummeting.

We now know that Jobs was seriously ill. In Easter 2009 he received a liver transplant. His return to Apple has been greeted with massive approval by the Stock Exchange and the Mac faithful. But concerns about his long term health have hardly dissipated.

The Jobs story demonstrates the extraordinary close link in the public mind between the celebrity business leader and the cool corporation. The publicity-seeking Richard Branson is the face of Virgin; Oprah Winfrey is the only chief executive to have an academic course created for her (”Oprah: The Tycoon,  History 298″ at the University of Illinois); and the late Anita Roddick was the face, and in death, remains the face of Body Shop.

In the modern cool capitalist corporation the brand is everything. The celebrity CEO defines the brand and does the psychological work of building brand loyalty by choosing the right designer T shirt and delivering pre-selected bon mots. Barely two months after his return, Apple shares have now hit a historic high of $280. In Jobs, Apple has found its Saint George.

The Achilles hell in this business strategy does not take much spelling out. How to manage the succession? The Body Shop has dealt with the question by using the Human Rights and Enviornmental defence  record of Anita Roddick, to turn her into a secular saint of the modern business world. May Jobs live long and prosper. But the challenge of finding a charismatic business leader to redefine the face of Apple after this acerbic, buoyant celebrity CEO departs the scene will be formidable. In modern business it is not just the product that sells, it is also the leader’s face. It instantly confirms the brand in the mind of the public.  What else would you expect in the age of celebrity culture?

The world of celebrity is closer than you think. Over the years I have asked students and members of the audience in public lectures to tell me if they have met any celebrities by chance.

Their encounters range from jumping in a cab Hugh Grant just left, to sharing a park bench with Clint Eastwood, to making tea for Mick Jagger at a house party (seriously). There are other stories, too many really, to recount in a column of this length. Suffice to say that ordinary people meet celebrities as part of the hum drum of daily life in much greater numbers than you might expect.

My familiarity with the contact world of celebroplasm has been largely second hand. I refrain from attending the film previews and the book launches, or, if you prefer, I am never invited to attend these events. Even so, I have seen Jesse Jackson at Atlanta airport, Paul and Linda McCartney in mid-town Manhattan (thanks for the thumbs-up, Paul), Michael Palin in Seven Dials, London and Liam Gallagher in a liquor store in Hampstead.

When this happens it is like meeting old friends. Celebrity culture gives a whole new spin to the idea of six degrees of separation. Celebrities are not one step away for each person we know. They are ubiquitous. Knowledge about their private lives forms part of the white noise of daily existence. You know all about them, without meeting them.

Unlike ordinary everyday life, celebrity life is a series of episodes, mostly in spotlight, with disclosures and exposures. There is no modesty or holding back in celebrity world. It is all in your face. You don’t need to tell me about Jesse’s pique at being piped by Barack, Paul’s row with John (but mercifully they made it up before John was killed, you know) and Liam’s spats with Patsy and Noel. Just like you, I am conversant with more about the sex lives, grudges, vendettas, hopes and fears of these people, than I know about the private life of my grand-parents.

This produces a peculiar double take when chance throws you into the path of a celebrity. Recently, I was staying at the Quadrant Hotel in Auckland, New Zealand on a business trip. So was Pamela Anderson. She was in town doing promotional work for New Zealand fashion week. Idly, I jotted down all of the things I might ask her if she got into the same elevator as me. Did she miss Ladysmith, BC, where she was born? At 42, how was she dealing with those troublesome wrinkles? What gives with Tommy Lee and Kid Rock? What does she feel about those sex tapes on the Internet? Why does she get married so much?

I am not really a Pam Anderson fan. But like you, I pick things up from the papers, the radio, the Internet and Howard Stern without meaning to and without really thinking about it. My head is full of celebrity mulch. It’s where celebrity rot occurs. By celebrity rot I mean the news that is dust within days. Such is the speed of celebrity news that it is already turning to mulch, already rotting by the time that you’ve clocked it.

For the record, Pam never got into my elevator. But I was in the same building and breathed the same oxygen. For some of her fans, that is enough.

One of the biggest myths about fame is that stardom is the reward for talent. When Byron woke up after the publication of the first cantos of “Chile Harold”, he said that he found himself to be the most famous man in England. This was hyperbole. In a population where only 20% were literate, the publication of  ”Childe Harold” was neither here nor there. What Byron meant is that he achieved rapid fame among the cognoscenti  of London society… and this was probably the only “public” that mattered to him.

The mechanics and velcoty of fame are very different today. We have moved froma culture that is primarily organized around print, to an audio-visual motorway, in which images and sounds occupy the fast lane. Consider reality TV talent shows: When Susan Boyle debuted on “Britain’s Got Talent” this year, her performance was immediately downloaded to YouTube. It was NEWS. Withing 72 hours it received 2.5 million hits. After a week it was streamed no less than 66 million times. After 9 days, 103 million views on 20 different web sites were logged.

So who in the world is the mastermind behind all of this? Well, “Britain’s Got Talent”  is produced by the media company Syco. This is the same company responsible for “The X Factor,” “America’s Got Talent” and “Pop idol.” Their business model is beautiful:  Syco  recruits unknown talent and pays them nothing to audition and perform on TV.  It road tests the acts, often over an extended period of weeks, in front of a TV audience who pay premium phone rates to register their votes.  The winners are then contracted to Syco’s recording division which has a global distribution deal with Sony.

Who owns Syco?  Simon Cowell, of course, who is rumoured to earn anything between $50-100 million per year. His personal wealth is estimated to be about $200 million, and in 2009 he bought a $22 million mansion in Beverley Hills.

Seldom has the public been turned into a more formidable money-making engine.  In the name of giiving the ordinary Joe a lucky break, the public provides free market research by selecting winners, and a captive market that eventually buys the songs released by Syco recording artists.  It is part of a virtuous circle which takes money from the hands of the people, persuades them that they are doing good, and banks the money in ther Syco vaults.

It was recently announced that Syco will enter into coalition with the British buccaneer capitalist, Sir Philip Green, to create a new multi-media corporation, Greenwell Entertainment.  Susan Boyle’s of the world, your time has come.

This is the story of a boy named Ted, the third policeman. Brother John and brother Bobby pre-deceased him, each exiting by violent despatch. Ted lived to be 77 and died in his bed of natural causes. After 1963, the fear of horizontal, violent public death bugged Ted. Just when it was receding in the mid 60s, it came back – with a bullet – in 1968. It was like a curse, a haggard glimpse of another death foretold. The first brother shot in Dallas, as President. The second murdered in Los Angeles as would-be President.

Little wonder that Ted prevaricated until 1980 before announcing his candidature. Even less surprising, it was a fiasco. Tongue-tied, sweaty palmed and perspiring, Ted faced the media, and the world, without a coherent idea of why the hell he merited to be President. Doggedly, he followed in the footsteps of his brothers. Unlike them, he had no idea of where he was going. Perhaps at the back of his mind was the mortal dread that walking into the Presidential ring was as good as stepping into the sights of another lone nut with a long-range rifle or side arm. Quelle horreur!

So he became a backwoodsman. He dimmed the glamour, hunkered down and devoted himself to Senate committee work and the complex political game of pulling strings. His accomplishments in this were notable and rewarded with garlands, and not just by Massachusetts, the state that he represented. Yes, the worldwide obituaries, could not abstain from listing the travails in Ted’s career (the promiscuous sexual appetite that he shared with his brothers, the struggle with the bottle, the furtive history of the fatality at Chappaquiddick). But, the dominant conclusion was: the boy done good. Ted genuinely tried to benefit the poor and the disadvantaged. Even on his death bed, he lent his considerable reputation to Obama’s Health Reform.

Yet in this life there is also a lesson about celebrity culture. In 1776 America produced a revolutionary overthrow of ascribed celebrities (people like Kings and Queens who are born into power). But the road to progress could not help but create new achieved celebrities who came to exercise influence and claim prestige by virtue of their accomplishments. Naturally, they erected bulwarks of defence to protect and advance their position. For, ironically, democracy is unable to survive without elevating people to look up to. The Kennedys were not a new monarchy. But they wielded crypto-dynastic economic wealth, achieved partly through bootlegging and investment in the film industry, to acquire extraordinary political power, cultural glamour and social influence.

American Aristocracy: Ted, Bobby, and John

Ted’s fumbled attempt to become President mobilized the assumption that the Kennedy’s possessed a seigniorial right to this post. After all, Joe Kennedy, his father, taught his sons to excel, not as common or garden Americans, but as American supermen. Yet the revolutionary origins of American political culture mean that Americans show automatic disdain for the claims of bloodline. His brothers died too young to be seriously tarnished by the charge that they were part of a dynasty. Not so for Ted. Paradoxically, their achievements exposed the privilege of background that made it impossible for Ted to appear as anything other than the runt in a somewhat gilded litter.

America has destroyed ascribed celebrity, only to create new types of distinction and privilege by the back door. So in American political life today, the whiff of dynastic power is enough to raise questions about the fitness of a candidate for office. It’s a reason why Obama’s candidature captured the American imagination. It’s also why Edward Kennedy never made President.

The labradoodle is a breed of dog founded upon heroic ambition. It combines the characteristics of the most biddable dog (the labrador) with those of the most intelligent dog (the poodle). The breeders aimed to create an alpha class dog: you can discuss Zizek in the morning, tuck into a cordon bleu all afternoon, and in the evening Precious will happily fetch that rubber ball you sling his way, without fail.

And then there’s Bella.

Bella, a labradoodle owned by super-model Elle MacPherson, has just landed the role of being the star in an advertising campaign for the designer accessory dog brand, Dogside.com. Spokesmen have been discrete about Bella’s fee, but it is rumoured to run into five figures.

We do know that Bella’s photo-shoot with Simon Songhurst, amounted to some $20,000. Given that the average national earnings of US males is $45,000 and women $35,000, this means that Bellaís photo-shoot cost nearly half of the average annual male wage, and getting on for one third of the average female wage. Bella has generated this money for being, er, a dog. Admittedly cute, this is a stunning career breakthrough for Bella, and good business for Elle.

The news is noteworthy for students of celebrity. For it illustrates the growing phenomenon of celebrity-by-association. There has always been a big market for the possessions of the stars. It encompasses locks of hair, autographs, clothes, furniture, automobiles, guitars, books and even nail clippings and the blades of grass on celebrity lawns. People collect momentos and relics of stars as an ersatz way of being in touch with them. There is something spine-tingling about owning a hair-brush that belonged to Farrah Fawcett Majors or a pair of glasses worn by John Lennon. This is what celebrity-by-association means.

Now the phenomenon extends to the animal kingdom. To be a celebrity animal you don’t have to do anything more challenging than be owned by a famous person. That is enough to get you a salary that is ten or twenty times the average national wage and 365 day renewable medi-care package. It gets you a TV contract, a poster campaign and repeat newspaper coverage. It is a passport to hang out with other celebrity animals and have your photo taken by world-class portraitists. In short, if the world of celebrity is about making it, it doesn’t get any better for an animal to be the possession of a major star.

But what do advertisers pay for when they co-opt an animal owned by a famous person for an advertising campaign?

Fame is so magnetic that it attracts public interest not simply to individual celebrities, but to the network of friendships, objects and possessions that surround them. Fame is like ectoplasm. We search for its mysterious presence in a golf ball used by Sean Connery or a powder puff once used by Michelle Pfeiffer. The parallels with the relics of the saints and organized religion are pronounced and hardly need to be stressed. In a world where presence and presentation is all, a dog owned by a celebrity is a shoe-in to the sacred realm of fame, with all of the ready intimacies and automatic power that it brings. That is why Dogside.com paid thousands of dollars to use Bella in their advertising campaign. It is also why we will notice the campaign as interesting and significant.

How can so many  poor people be against Obama’s Health Care reform? Every serious study shows that theirs is the section of the population that is most likely to suffer from medically treatable conditions. They have high-risk diets, suffer from greater stress, and consequently die younger. On average, wealthy Americans live 9 years longer.

Think about it. It’s been only 8 years since 9/11. Add one more year, and you have a sense of the time and quality of life that’s lost, simply because of an economic disadvantage. Yet many of the poorest, object vehemently to Obama’s proposed health care changes.

A famous definition of a lie is “being economical with the truth.” John McCain, a failed Presidential candidate, says Obama’s health care reform is “socialism.” Are the health reform proposals any more “socialist” than the measures taken, in 2008, to save and effectively nationalize large sections of the US financial system? And while we are on the subject, would McCain – whose wife is the chair of one of the largest beer distributors in the US – acknowledge the well-established link between alcohol consumption and ill health?

Nope, probably not. And so Republicans resort to terms like “socialism” and names like “Stalin” and “Hitler” to make their point. Celebrities play a huge role in acting as figureheads condensing a complex set of issues into a single transparent message. Say socialism, and think: Stalin. Or if Stalin won’t do, think, Lavrenty Beria, Mao Zedong, Vladimir Lenin, Pol Pot, North Korea’s Kim Jong-il or a long list of socialist monsters and communist dictators.

But can a celebrity truly distill an entire socio-economic and moral system so that a judgment about the figurehead is a safe bet about the system? And are we too biased in our accounting processes? If socialism gives you Stalin, does capitalism give you Bernie Madoff?

Stalin was head of the Soviet communist party and so might justifiably be said to embody and represent the blights and horrors of that system of rule. But Madoff was the former chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange and was found guilty of committing the biggest investor fraud committed by an individual in history. In what sense can one maintain that Madoff is separate from the system of rule in which he conducted his business and made his fortune?

For zealots like McCain, there is an iron link between socialism and Stalin, whereas the connection between capitalism and Madoff is merely circumstantial and vague. To explain Madoff, you point to the individual, not the system. Madoff was a celebrity financier and stockbroker who simply turned out to be a rotten apple in a system that is essentially responsible, self-correcting and in the long run, resistant to corruption. That’s the view in McCain-World.

Celebrities provide convenient short cuts for modern demagogues. They are like the monolith in the “2001” – shiny, imponderable, and magnificent. They can be used to explain everything and nothing. So in order to understand how they are used we need to take a step back, and ask what ends are they being used for. In our world of instant global mass-communication, celebrities are not statements – they are vehicles. And political bruisers and gin-soaked columnists use them to advance a deeper, hidden purpose.

Socialism does not lead to Stalin, and capitalism does not lead to Bernie Madoff. It’s more complex than signs and first impressions.

The celetoid is the staple fare of reality TV: the house-mate who you would never wish to actually have in your house, but who, nonetheless,  is daily, in your living room on “Big Brother;” the talent contestant who Simon Cowell turns into prime time chuck-steak on “Pop Idol;” or someone like the late Lance Loud , who emerged from the fly on the wall reality TV show “An American Family,” in the 1970s, and whose primary claim to fame was that he was the first man to come out as gay on tv.

Rachael Finch

What does a person of unremarkable talent, with no special skill or accomplishment, think that they are fit to do in the media?   Rachel Finch, the unsuccessful Australian beauty queen, who lost out to Stefania Fernandez in the recent Miss Universe contest, offers a clue.  Time was, when beauty queen contestants wanted to save children and feed the world.  Miss Finch would love to be a TV host. Why not?

As banks collapse and are rescued by governments who deny that they are taking private assets into public ownership and insist that the market works; as a college degree equips you to work in a call centre; or when a face lift is as cheap and easy to buy as acquiring an automobile,  people are right to have the feeling that there is no such thing as normality any more.  In a world like this, why should a Miss Universe has-been not float the idea of being a TV host as the next legitimate career move?

Celetoids have been pumped up by the reward culture of family,  education and community to think of themselves as “special,” “remarkable,” and “unique.”  Their mothers and school teachers have taught them to regard themselves as radiating  talent and personality, despite the fact that nearly all of them  are ordinary, unremarkable kids with scarcely a different idea, capacity to hold a tune,  tell a joke or make heads turn,  to rub together.  What could be more natural than wanting to front a TV chat slot on the morning news show or interview  kids on live-time before the weather bulletin?

This topsy turvy world substitutes fiction for reality, rewards mundanity and grossly inflates egos who appreciate public recognition.  Yet dumb as they are and obsessed with making it at any cost, celetoids know that their fame is a distortion.

Ryan Jenkins

In the same week that Rachel Finch told us that she hoped to go on to become a tv presenter, the reality TV star, Ryan Jenkins, hanged himself in a motel room in the, appropriately named, town of Hope, British Columbia.  Jenkins, 32, was a fugitive from justice having been accused of murdering and partly dismembering his wife and swimsuit model, Jasmine Fiore, 28.  Jenkins was a celetoid who flipped.  Given the multiple distortions involved in reality TV, there will be more cases like this: three minute wonders who go out of control and do damage.

So… do you really wanna be on TV?

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/fameculture/2009/09/03/no-talent-reality-tv/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/fameculture/2009/09/01/the-celebrity-as-big-citizen/ http://thefastertimes.com/fameculture/2009/09/01/the-celebrity-as-big-citizen/#comments Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:25:04 +0000 Chris Rojek http://thefastertimes.com/fameculture/?p=9

Town hall stooges tell us to desert Obama’s health care plan; the death count in Afghanistan ascends; California cuts pay for public workers… what used to be the occasion for union agitation, organization and action is now the pretext for celebrity intervention. Bono and Al Gore save the world from pollution while Bob Geldof tackles hunger in the developing world and Jackson Browne condemns political repression in Latin America. Celebrities have become ‘big citizens,’ our unelected, unaccountable representatives.  They voice the concerns of the man in the street through their connections with the Senate, international leaders and global organizations from UNICEF to Operation Smile. They use their fame for fundraising and publicity. What’s my beef with this?

The question turns upon the very unelected, unaccountable character of celebrity prestige. Why should Tom Cruise’s disgust with “quack” psychiatry, his belief that postpartum depression needn’t be treated with drugs, or his assertion that Ritalin is an amphetamine be given the time of day? So what if Clint Eastwood is fervent about “fiscal responsibility” and “less government?” Who gives a damn if Brooke Shields likes Hillary Clinton’s “versatility?” On the relatively benign end of the spectrum, Gwyneth Paltrow advocates weird diets and organic living. On the other end, Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy rally against vaccines. It’s a cacophony of celebrity concern.

Cicero railed against the cunning of public men and the powers of seduction that follows fame. Achieved celebrities — those who acquire fame by dint of their accomplishments or skills — occupy an exalted status.  Their words about politics, diet, and morals really do matter to people who admire their glamour.

It is too easy to portray celebrities as basic role models. Their direct influence over the way we dress or the way we do our hair is simply understood. But when they influence the way we live our lives, something more complicated is afoot. The celebrity as “Big Citizen” life coach is typically depicted as harmless and meaningless. It is not.

Our awe at their superficial glitter opens a backdoor to our subconscious. Over time, they evolved from being the people we wanted to look like, to the people we wanted to be, both inside and out. Celebrities inundate the media, and the media is practically the only way we get our news. As they give their guest-opinions on positive discrimination, parental responsibilities, or the Taliban, the potential for manipulation is plain to see.

Yes, this is awfully sinister. Hitler in the Wiemar was as much a celebrity as a political leader of fascism. John Wayne endorsed the war in Vietnam and, in the ’80s, Frank Sinatra publicly supported Ronald Reagan. But the effect of celebrity power is a question of ends, not just means. And at the end of the day, after a failed project or a disproved notion, celebrities walk away scot-free. After all, guess who spoke up in favor of the beneficial uses of LSD?

Cary Grant.

Photo by John Griffiths