You can keep your 15-minutes of fame
JUST when you think celebrity culture is on the wane, back it comes like one of those hard-to-kill villains in a tacky thriller.
The death of Celebrity Big Brother was one such false ending, with the ratings of this year's series apparently convincing the producers to keep the beast alive.
I remember in the wake of 9/11 commentators suggesting that celebrity culture would now die off because life had got serious again.
Well, it had and it hadn't. The events of 9/11 prompted Stephen Baldwin to become a Born Again Christian, for instance, but didn't stop him appearing in this year's CBB.
But is it all a load of harmless fun?
No, says the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), which reported celebrities set bad examples by perverting the aspirations of the young.
Why bother working hard at school when you can achieve fame and fortune simply by being 'yourself' on Big Brother?
The Guardian journalist Marina Hyde, whose satirical column Lost in Showbiz simmers with moral outrage at celebrity culture (while, it has to be said, simultaneously revelling in it too).
Asked to define celebrity in the modern world, she said that if Jimmy Hendrix were around today there would be a picture of him on stage in Heat magazine with his armpit stains circled in white and a caption like: "Eeeww! He may be experienced, but Jimmy should really deodorize more."
The point being that we've become obsessed not only by the famous, but the most trivial aspects of their lives.
If nothing else, it's a scandalous waste of time.
As I write, the question on everyone's lips seems to be whether an allegedly adulterous footballer should be allowed to lead the England squad in the World Cup.
Why not? Because he's a 'role model'?
It's time we dispensed with this notion that famous people should be role models for the rest of us, apart from in the matter of what they are famous for.
There are celebrities whose personal conduct is deplorable, but who enrich our culture.
A teenage girl reading about Amy Winehouse's drug addiction in a magazine, for instance, will be having a far less nourishing experience than one poring over the lyrics to Back to Black, or getting blissed out on that amazing voice.
I like to think there will always be talent, and a demand for it.
But I'm aware of how old-fashioned that sounds. Every generation is prone to despair at the values of the next one.
There may come a day when we look back on the days of Big Brother and the likes of Closer magazine as a golden age of virtue.
So what? you might say. A teenager with a head full of celebrity gossip is a teenager not exploring anorexia websites or gorging on terrorist propaganda.
But I suspect eating disorders are exacerbated by the body-image obsession of celebrity magazines.
And I've often thought that home-grown terrorism has a psychological link to celebrity culture, being motivated in part by disgust at Western decadence, and a yearning to play a decisive role in history, or at least to get one's name in the papers.
So celebrity culture demotivates the young, wastes our time and is psychologically damaging.
Something to give up for Lent, perhaps.
awolstenholme@ywng.co.uk
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Sunday 05 February 2012
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