Quit Idolizing Celebrities

People are very wrapped up in pop culture these days. One of the things that has always baffled me is the obsession with celebrities. Some folks take this bizarre obsession to unhealthy levels and I’m quite bothered by it.

What is a celebrity? Google defines it as “A famous person”. Simple enough. There are many types of folks that become famous. To list a few there are actors, writers, athletes, news anchors, talk show hosts, producers, musicians, designers, etc. What do all of these folks have in common? Their jobs are high profile. What they do for a living is seen by many. No one watches me while I keep a call center up and running so I’m not a celebrity. People aren’t watching my mother at her job or my father at his so they aren’t celebrities. Most of us work harder and have more education than most celebrities. In a lot of cases we probably are more talented at what we do than celebrities. We just don’t have high profile jobs. To me, that is most significant difference between celebrities and everyone else. It isn’t like they do things that are very difficult or important, they just have millions of eyes tuned in while they work.

Still, society has elevated celebrities to ridiculous heights. People will see a movie just because a certain celebrity in it. Folks stay glued to the TV for shows like Entertainment Tonight or TMZ which talk about nothing but celebrity gossip. There are even parents that name their children after celebs or they give their child the same name that a celeb has given theirs. It is idolatry. Now we have “reality” shows that follow celebs around. Why do you care what a certain celebrity buys or where they buy it? Who cares what these people do in their free time or how their relationships work? What is even worse, why do these types of shows sometimes follow people that aren’t really even famous but they become hugely famous afterwards? The Kardashians are an example of this. They are just a bunch of shallow, soulless women with money that haven’t really done anything of any significance their entire lives. They are famous for being famous. How stupid is that? There are millions of folks that latch on to every word these people say. If you really what to know what is wrong with this country shift your attention from the corruption in DC for a while and think about how millions of folks idolize the celebs. For crying out loud, some folks even voted based on who their favorite celeb supported. Way to be a bunch of mindless puppets!

Celebrities are just people like you and me. “Yeah, but they are better looking.” Ok, well if your job required you to look good and you had tons of free time and money then spending 5 hours a day at a gym and having a dietitian plan your meals would not only make a lot of sense, but would be a lot easier to pull off. Not everyone could look as good with the same amount of diet and exercise, but a lot of folks could. “Well a lot of celebrities make large charitable donations.” Ok, well pay me 10 million dollars to spend 9 months shooting a film. I’d have no problem taking 1 million right off the top and giving it to Children’s Miracle Network since I’m a childhood cancer survivor. Plus, I’d get to use that large donation as a tax right off. I’m not trying to say that I don’t appreciate the fact that many celebs are involved with charities, I’m just saying that it is easier for them to do than it is for the average Joe. “But they always have to deal with the paparazzi!” First of all, there are plenty of celebs that live relatively low profile lifestyles and don’t have to deal with it as much. Second of all, I think it is a widely known fact that fame comes with this kind of baggage and people choose to go that route anyway so I’m not going to feel bad for them for a second. Celebs have health concerns, love lives, struggles with their weight, mental and psychological battles, etc. just like all of us. They are just people that have been seen by the right person to become famous. Someone had to give Johnny Depp his first role before he was anybody. Some record company had to sign the band U2 and pump millions into building their fame. They were regular folks before they were discovered.

Let’s consider the jobs of celebs vs the pay. Actors basically read a script and act like a certain character while in front of a camera. Athletes play games. Musicians make recordings and perform live. They don’t have to possess higher intelligence to do these things in most cases. They aren’t making contributions to science. Their jobs don’t require back-breaking labor in most cases. These people have it pretty easy. Now I will say that athletes have to maintain their strength and fitness to perform and that can be a challenge. There is a certain amount of talent involved in sports as well. Is that talent worth $20 million a year? HELL NO! There are a few musicians left with actual talent and an education in music. Most have less talent then the bands you will find playing at your local bars for $300 a night. A lot of “musicians” have their material written for them, play at a rather elementary level on their instruments, and use auto-tune to make their vocals sound perfect. These people just have the right look or wrote a song with the right hook or even just agreed to play whatever garbage the record company supplied. Still, even in the case of the actual talented and educated musicians, is playing music really worth making millions a year? Nope. Sounds more like fun that work to me and I’ve been in a band that busted our asses trying to make it big for years so I know what can be involved. Artists deserve payment for their art regardless of whether it is music, acting, painting, etc. but the amounts they receive these days far surpass their actual value because of their celebrity status. These people are entertainers. That is their only contribution to society. When you consider being entertained vs everything else in life then you might realize that what they actually do is less important in the grand scheme of things than what you do for a living. The only argument that makes any sense to me is that if the studios/record companies/team owners/etc are going to make millions off of something you had a part in then you should get your share of the pie as well. That is the only justification for the ridiculous sums of money these people make for the things they do.

Bottom line…quit idolizing celebs. They are no better than you and me. They are just people that got lucky in some way or another and now their lives are largely visible through multiple forms of media. Quit getting wrapped up in their drama and focus on your own for a change. Quit basing decisions of who to vote for, what car to buy, what to wear, and what to name your kids off of what your favorite celeb does. In the end they aren’t any better than the rest of us so quit elevating them to god-like status.

~ by jgdigitaljedi on January 14, 2013.