Fame In a Box and the Culture of Entitlement; Where the Hell Did THEY Come From?

I

Echo and Narcissus 1903 - John William Waterhouse
Courtesy of Walker Art Gallery at Liverpool

I haven't had a rant for awhile, so here goes...

It was while walking down Queen St. and staring at yet another Tyra Banks poster in the streetcar stop, screaming about America's Next Top Model, that my brain finally snapped.

ENOUGH OF THE I WANNA BE AN INSTANTLY FAMOUS NON-TALENTED GIT ALREADY!!!

Its not as if American Idol (instant fame in a box, anyone?) or that throwback to eighties kitch, STARSEARCH wasn't bad enough, but what really gets me is the whole idea that hard work, perseverance and actually busting your ass for your art apparently isn't the point anymore. Maybe it never was. Maybe I'm just naive, and just got the point now. But somehow, I don't think so. My friend James, who is a real artist, doesn't do it for fame, (although if some came his way, I'm sure he wouldn't say no) he does it because he's an artist and he loves it. Some days I'm sure he hates it, but you can't work that hard at a creative endeavour the way he does and do it that well, and not love it. You can't. I don't believe its possible. So if art still exists, then how the hell has this mindless aberration of instant-fame become so prolific?

The point here again, is, FAME. No matter how you get it, everybody's desperate for it. "Gimme my ten minutes Andy promised me!"

Now nobody said success and fame are bad things. Ambition makes the world go round. Ask anybody. But this mindless sense of entitlement that goes on with these talentless would-be wanna-be G-list celebrities of the Jessica/Ashlee Simpson, Paris Hilton types, is just so incredibly obvious that it turns the stomach. They want adulation and plenty of it, and at any expense. Forget E, or Meth or any other drug. Fame is the one that has all the others beat. Bette Davis once sniffed at the expanse of actors she saw with little or no experience who got a "starring" notice placed on the credits. "In MY day," she growled, "You had to EARN that right."


Mother Goddam had a point.


Now we know that there have always been publicity-mad performers. Barnum and Bailey invented it. Jayne Mansfield was a genius at it. Joan Crawford LIVED for it. But you always knew there was always something a little endearingly pathetic and cracked about them. The Great Depression was FULL of nutbars for it, but that was spurred on by a national tragedy and breadlines. People were desperate to survive. But this current trend, (being so obviously fed by the rash of reality TV shows) is a little more avaricious and downright nasty. Its feeding on success for fame's sake alone, and its quite wantonly disturbing. Where is it coming from?

We have a generation or two of spoiled brats who got brought up on instant gratification, they were babysat by television, and had attention spans of the average housefly. They possessed grandiose senses of entitlement and had parents who just generally never said "no" to them at all. As a result of this, they grew up wanting and expecting everything NOW. This isn't just rich kids, or white kids, or black kids or poor kids I'm talking about. Its a persistent trend of impatience and selfishness I've seen in quite a lot of young people a bit younger than myself, (and I'm not exactly old) across all social lines who didn't have parents who laid down the law, and said "NO." Those kids grew up with a misplaced idea of their own entitlement, of selfishness, of "I deserve that, no matter if I did nothing to earn it. I deserve it because of WHO I am."

Which begs the question; "WHO exactly are you, or THINK you are, that you deserve special treatment?" Ask their parents. They'll tell you.

Oh, you've seen those parents out there, you know who they are. They're the parents who have been terrified of their children from the moment the little beasties first screamed. They will bend over backwards to ensure that their little darlings get EVERYTHING they want in life and will take on anybody who dares open their mouths to say, "Excuse me? But your child is a spoiled, sociopathic little brat." And then, they will wonder why their children have no respect for them as teenagers and thus grow up into socially inept, narcissistic assholes who end up blaming all of their failures and fuckups on their parents.

These are the parents who are thoughtless enough to bring six foot wide strollers onto streetcars and buses at rush-hour, and then expect everyone to get out of the way and give up seats for them. (A friend of mine brutally said to one young woman one day when she chastised him for not giving up his seat to her and her stroller, "Why should I? I wasn't the one stupid enough to get myself knocked up, now was I?") Those are the parents who have their babies sleeping in their beds with them until they're six, and think there's nothing wrong with it (co-dependency, separation anxiety, any of these ring a bell?) and then panic and wonder why they can't get little Tyler or Dakota to sleep on their own.

These kids then grow up with a psychic insecurity hole a mile wide, and suck their parents dry of money, resources and adulation for the first twenty years of their life, and then have the nerve to blame them for it. At the same time, the thought occurs to them that the next logical step is, "Hey I should be a star! That way I'll be like worshipped around the world, because, like, I'm fabulous and who WOULDN'T want to worship me?!? But I don't want to have to actually DO that much for it. Like go to school, or work or apprentice or anything lame like that, because that would like, take too long, and I'm 21 already, and like, that's like, SOOOO old in the fame game!"

Ergo; enter the Reality TV Show. Fame in a Box. The perfect tool to capture the unwitting attention of the classic narcissistic personality disorder. They will do anything for that dose of fame. Whether it be getting abused by a caustic, bitter, middle-aged Brit who never had the talent to play the big room himself, or variously, eat bugs, lie in a vat of snakes, live in a houseful of other sociopathic personalities for a month, bungee jump over craters of sheep dung, it doesn't matter, these sad sacks will do ANYTHING, as long as there is fame, a camera and a potential payoff at the end.

Now its America's Top Model. Now you don't even have to have talent or be daring anymore (or maybe you never did) you just have to stand there, look beautifully vacant, wear the clothes well, and we'll make you famous.

To digress momentarily, (like I've not done that before) I've never understood the whole supermodel thing. There are some admittedly whom I've heard of, who've got degrees in engineering (Cindy Crawford) and there is one (I can't remember her name) who has about five or six degrees and has written several books, and I believe has a PHD. She was quite blatant when she said it helped pay her way through school. Those people I have no problem with. Modelling was a means to get somewhere, or to pay for an education. A means to an end. But what about this mindless fixation just to BE one, and that's it? Who in their right mind fantasizes about becoming a mannequin?

Now I understand, that when you're starting out, you do what work you can get in order to get ahead. But all the time, you should be learning. Vivien Leigh, Audrey Hepburn and Lucille Ball all started out as fashion models, because they were starting out and they had to eat. But they became great artists, because they never stopped striving, or trying to better themselves. They worked at it and worked at it. It took them years, and in those three cases, they had to play down their beauty in order to be taken seriously at all, because the world was a lot more sexist then than it is now. The point is, they never rested on their laurels and said, "There. Now I'm a star. I don't have to work at it anymore." They did indeed become stars, but they were smart enough to keep working at their crafts. Which is why they lasted as long as they did.

Nowadays? I'd be mighty surprised if anybody from American Idol is known or even remembered in twenty years time.

This would be a good note to end on, for the fatuously self-involved who take up acting or anything creative as a road to instant fame; the minute you start pulling that entitled I'm-a-star shit, the fates will land on your ass hard. If you don't believe me, just remember that you too could be on Saturday Night Live one day, fucking up your lip synched CD, THAT YOU RECORDED YOURSELF, YOU MENTALLY DEFECTIVE SLUG FART!!!

See ya in the movies....