hi all, years ago I used to tune out pop culture, thinking that it was somewhat mindless. this is even the pre-paris hilton era. I watched about a max of 3 movies a year, maybe. I was a renunciant, a faster.

nowadays I have a netflix subscription and watch close to 2 movies per week, so that works out to over 100 per year. I read web sites like huffpost and daily beast that have some celebrity coverage. so yeah, Im somewhat marinating in it like others.

celebrity, fame, and pop culture is a weird mix. its a sort of modern nitroglycerin. I enjoy approaching it from an intellectual angle. something that has the rapt attention of such a large audience cannot be inherently meaningless. I mean it is, and is not, at the same time. it has this sort of zen feel to it. its a kind of ongoing riddle, or koan. a mystery...

a new term has been coined for our age, generally dating to the dotcom era. the "attention economy". we are completely inundated by media. media is ubiquitous. media is abundant but attention is scarce. outlets fight over "eyeballs". now in the age of blogs, this has reached feverish pace. there is almost no longer a "news cycle" which used to be daily. the cycle has been shortened to less than a day-- hours, even minutes at times.

I think pop culture reveals various things. first, US is top in creating and exporting pop culture. spectacle. fantasy. its one of our few strong exports other than military invasions. its sad, its hollow, it seems a commentary on our fall. someone recently called it, "weapons of mass distraction". one seems built to distract us from the other. it seems like it ought to be harmless, but is not.

its a sort of dickensian paradox/juxtaposition. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. in the media, events of the greatest significance are mixed in with events of the most ephemeral, shallow meaninglessness.

its hard to say when exactly there seemed to be a turning point, a tipping point, an inflection. but I would tend to date it maybe to britney spears mental meltdown a few years ago. she really literally did seem to be losing her mind in front of the cameras and papparazi. it seemed to be fame-induced. she lost her moorings, as the expression goes. the celebrity culture seemed to trigger it.

it would seem at that point, fame took on a new sinister aspect. a new mutation, a more virulent form. hence "viral videos". that have the power to turn even innocent, unsuspecting, unwitting victims into inadvertent celebrities.

trivia/factoid: guess how tila tequila became famous-- do you remember? get this. by her record myspace friends.

another sad story is lindsay lohan. she seemed to have a promising career in front of her as a talented actress and singer. now shes been to rehab several times.

fame can chew you up and spit you out.

maybe the most famous case of this would have been jennifer lopez and ben affleck. they were very high profile at the beginning of the decade, and had a massive wedding ceremony planned. affleck bailed at the last minute, a no-show and amidst rumors of his hanging out at a strip joint. it would seem that his fiance had different, more grandiose ideas.

the apex seemed to be at their massive bomb movie gigli where they starred together. I remember huge posters for this movie in the mall & thinking, could there possibly be more hype? their situation seemed to mirror somewhat the jolie-pitt marriage where they hooked up during their movie mr and ms smith, breaking up pitts marriage to aniston.

affleck is still somewhat famous, but not on the shrill levels he was while dating lopez. it seemed that maybe her formidable, raging fame machine sucked him up into the vortex. he narrowly escaped. lopez also turned down the volume on her fame machine after being domesticated by her 3rd husband whats-his-name, I mean marc anthony.

* * *

fame has various ingredients. fame is somewhat like quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. roughly stated, you alter something by measuring it. with fame, you alter it by looking at someone. fame is both a property of intrinsic and extrinsic aspects. someone might become famous for talent, or not. talent is now optional.

when I was young, sometimes I thought I wanted to be "rich and famous". but fame had a different meaning then. now I am a bit dubious. fame can be like an uncontrollable monster that eats people alive. there are many stories about this.

tiger woods is probably the latest. yes, he seems to be the source of his own downfall. but notice how his fall is tied up with his fame. if he was anonymous, nobody would have paid much attention to his womanizing. I like this story to some degree because it shows the incongruity, the "cognitive dissonance" at its peak. some are saying he lived a life of deception for close to the last decade, and largely succeeded. fame can be deceiving. tiger woods perpetrated a great deception on his family, the public, and ultimately himself!

fame has gotten to the point that it blurs truth and fiction. look at a joke/parody in the onion, eg [2], and compare it with a time magazine story [1] about how disney manufactures child stars. very eerie man. almost like the same story.

yes, fame manufacturing in the US is almost down to a science. its amazing how many current stars started out as child stars. britney spears, justin timberlake, miley cyrus, lindsay lohan. rihanna also started very young-- almost less than 18.

but, in the long term, fame is fleeting. even with mega stars. its an increasingly darwinian competition for attention, and only the most "healthy" survive. its like the shark-- it has to keep swimming, or it dies. it seems the "stars" fade in and out of vision as much/easily as the real ones in space.

"healthy" is defined in terms of ecological niches and may have a subtle, not-so-benign meaning. for example a very effective predator shark may be the most "healthy" organism in its niche. tiger woods now for example seems a bit sharklike. note that camouflage is another evolutionary survival mechanism....

meditations & complex analyses like [5] take it all very seriously. pop culture is now a serious subject of academic study. what does it mean?

I think we are witnessing the jungian unconscious becoming conscious. viscerally.

we now have the Archetypes not far removed from us like greek or roman gods/myths. the Archetypes are playing out right in front of us in magazines and blog sites.

its not easy to psychoanalyze the human race as a whole, but if you had to attempt it, just look at who it makes famous, and their qualities/characteristics.

even the internet itself seems to be wired into the dynamics/mechanics of Fame. [7] its called the "rich get richer" aspect of network topology and is now being very seriously studied by academics for more than half a decade. it might also as well be called the "famous get famouser" property....

fame has more surprises for us in store.

* * *

pop culture is like the water we swim in, as fish. all around us, we cant imagine what it would be like outside the water. if we flopped out of the water, it seems we would die.

[6] suggests that pop culture papparazi shots peaked almost at the same time that the recession started, and now are in decline, and gives some statistics. that is an interesting idea that fame might follow the same cycle as economic cycles. however, I dont think thats the case entirely.

we are maybe slightly weary of hearing about celebrities at the moment as houses are being foreclosed from under us, wars continue to rage, and health care seems like a remote fantasy, a cruel, taunting, now-you-see-it, now-you-dont trick.

but, somehow I dont think its peaked, in the long run. its too potent, too intense, too addictive, like a sort of cultural crack. the fame cycle will probably renew itself soon I suspect, and come back raging "stronger than ever".

in the wizard of oz, the guy behind the curtain deceives dorothy and her friends from the Truth with a great spectacle, invisibly pulling the levers. maybe his name is Fame.

fame has that strongly "devil buys your soul" quality. a faustian bargain. it seems to lead to broken lives. people who put their marriages on reality shows seem to end up divorcing each other. katie price/peter andre. jessica simpson/nick lachley. brad pitt/jennifer aniston. for the last couple, they werent on a reality show on tv, but they sure were in the tabloids a lot, with similar end results/consequences.

another woman who has very much been a part of modern fame, even largely defining and structuring it. madonna. I can remember many stories over the years about her meteoric, legendary rise to fame.

I read a biography of her. shes worth more than half a billion dollars. but incredibly driven to advance her career and businesses almost to the point of obsession. she almost literally has no time on her schedule for marriage. that's what her husband complained about.

something about fame can be very positive, and wholesome with a great scientist celebrity like Einstein who was also a lobbyist for pacifism. it has positive qualities. but they seem to be getting overwhelmed lately by faux-celebrity. its getting harder to think of celebrities that truly inspire us, that make the world a better place.

maybe john mccain was right, maybe obama is just an empty celebrity. winning the peace prize while sending an extra 30K troops to afghanistan. fame is all about, increasingly, cognitive dissonance.

what is a presidential contest any more but a massive, ultimate war of dueling Fame Machines? its called organizing and campaigning, but how much different is that from marketing anyway? almost not at all.

* * *

the shadow side of fame is narcissism [8]. which is destructive. narcissism is roughly characterized as "believing your own hype"...

if you are famous, increasingly, I feel sorry for you. fame can very literally be a "living nightmare". there is something very corrosive about it. it seems to age people unnaturally, to burn them out. maybe not physically, but spiritually. many times, fame and spirituality seem diametrically opposed. incompatible. rarely even mentioned in the same sentence.

spirituality? huh? yeah, in the ultimate humanist age, we seem to worship celebrities. celebrity worship has largely replaced religion. celebrity worship is the new religion. or maybe we worship the idea of Fame itself.

there is some interesting new thinking on fame relative to evolutionary psychology. this field proposes picking up a tabloid magazine and looking at the contents. beautiful women, rich men, couples getting married, having babies, divorcing, dating, breaking up.

its definitely the sort of thing that a so-called "human tribe" would be interested in. ie, a sort of social barometer. celebrities tie in with our strongly social side wired deeply into our brains, that makes us human. interest and empathy for others.

but somehow, it seems like the mechanism can be fooled [similar to visual pornography for men]. we mentally picture celebrities somewhat as our neighbors. psychologically, they are close, nearby. it seems in worst case, celebrity, fame, pop culture, sometimes takes on the qualities of a sort of social pornography.

fame is like a kind of out-of-control Beast at times.

fame. playing with fire. live by the sword, die by the sword.

the romans had bread and circuses to pacify the unwashed masses. especially during their long slide and downfall. our modern, state-of-the-art, neverending circular circus is Fame.

[1]
Making New Mileys: Disney's Teen-Star Factory
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1930657,00.html

[2]
Disney Geneticists Debut New Child Stars
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZgXg_7kVI8

[3]
Fame Is Like Sugar -- A Little Is Great, Too Much Is Deadly
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/fame-is-like-sugar---a-li_b_339409.html

[4]
Fame – From the Bronze Age to Britney
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fame-Tom-Payne/dp/009951639X

[5]
The Greatest Show on Earth
In defense of our Brangelina-loving, Jon and Kate–hating, Tiger-taunting, tawdry tabloid culture.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/226457/page/3

[6]
And you thought your stock portfolio was hurting. The price for paparazzi photos has plummeted 31 percent, according to an exclusive Daily Beast survey. Is this the end of the celebrity economy? Plus, view our gallery of the best tabloid photos ever—and what they’re worth now.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-16/the-crash-of-the-britney-economy/?cid=sexybeast:mainpromo1

[7]
Blogs to Riches
The Haves and Have-Nots of the Blogging Boom.
http://newyorkmetro.com/news/media/15967/

[8]
NARCISSISM--disease of bloggers, executives, and sarah palin
http://open.salon.com/blog/vzn/2009/11/19/narcissism--disease_of_bloggers_executives_and_sarah_palin