The True Price of Fame

Dylan Schnepf ’14

Staff Writer

The role of the media in creating fame and in turn, celebrities is probably its second most important task, coming right behind “reporting the news”. Why are people considered famous? The media deems them important enough for a feature. If these persons of interest are lucky enough, they may get more than just fifteen minutes of fame and become more than “that guy that had his local news interview auto-tuned on YouTube”. Whether or not these “celebrities” would like to be famous is another story. These “fifteen minute” stars usually love the limelight for the time being, and try to drink the fame dry. However, most people fade off into obscurity faster than a straight-to-DVD movie.

For those personalities that do become household names, they have a love-hate relationship with the media. In order to stay in business, they must keep doing their job, which involves promoting their work. This means that they need the media to get the word out about their new project. Although it is not as prevalent today in this new age of social media, celebrities are indentured to the media, and in turn the media gets the “right” to have an intensive interest in the life of the star. This can lead to high-pressure situations and alleged privacy invasion. All in all, for the time being, the media is reliant on celebrities (plural), and the individual celebrity is more so reliant on the media monster.

I don’t believe there is a place for tabloid journalism in society. However, I also believe that it will not disappear. Some people may say that they don’t really care about celebrity gossip, and they may be telling the truth, but there are a large majority of people who do care. Why does is this massive group of people invest so heavily in the lives of the famous? Well, the simple answer is that their “lowly” lives are not interesting enough to constitute small talk and therefore they substitute the happenings of the people framed on those glossy magazine covers.

What does this do to society? It glamourizes stupid, petty gossip, and proves the theory that high school never ends. There is always going to be some group of people that is concerned with the lives of others, rather than their own life. I sympathize with these people, because they do not realize what they are doing until it’s too late. By then, J-Lo’s red carpet dress has gone out of style been revitalized and become passé once again, while this whole time their children were growing up and living reality without their parent. They were too enthralled while reading about Bennifer’s European vacation to look into the innocent eyes of their child, nursing from its bottle. Wake up people, our forefathers have warned us, do not lose yourself in the limbo that is fantasy, or you will be damned for an eternity, without true satisfaction.