fifteen minutes: the cultural significance of fame

Fifteen Minutes: The Cultural

Significance of Fame

Com 325/625Ron Bishop, Ph.D.

Was Warhol Right?

“ In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes.”

- Andy Warhol, 1988

The Octo-Mom

The Duggars

Lindsay Lohan

The Situation and Snooki

The Kardashians

And of course, Honey Boo-Boo…

I want to live forever… Some say we spend too much time on our computers – we

don’t get to know our neighbors. We keep to ourselves – to the point that sometimes we

actually create our own, sometimes media-driven, worlds. We’re a bit more INSULAR, yet PRESENTATION and being

public means more to us than interacting. Fewer “common spaces” or “public spaces” where we all

hang out, as opposed to our media “niches.” We have smaller circles of close confidantes – 3 or 4,

down from 5 or 6.

Would you do this?

Or this…?

I want to live forever…

We just don’t hang out anymore, drop in on neighbors, play pick-up games – no “schmoozing” of the non-gaining an advantage in business kind.

Maybe we’re just hopeless hams… Maybe we truly live in a “confessional

culture”… Maybe it’s just a defense mechanism…

A soundtrack to your life?

Saturday Night Fever, maybe?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okpCx87orOA

What we do know…

Possible to achieve fame for doing nothing – or doing something strange, or badly, or oddly.

Fame may be more fleeting than ever. Can become famous just for being famous. …or for flashing your knowledge of the famous. …or for flashing your access to the famous. …or for flashing your knowledge of how to become

famous or teach the rest of us to get close to the famous.

Some key plotlines… Their whims must be indulged. They make strange requests for ocelot milk and octagonal jelly beans

when they go on tour. They overwork their obsequious underlings. They do charity work, but only at gunpoint, and only for the publicity. They’re petty, crabby, petulant, and often disregard social

conventions. If they slip up (drugs, booze, sex), they inevitably find God – and get

their story on “Behind the Music.” They absolutely hate doing publicity for their work – but there’s

Madonna and her fake English accent again, on the “Today Show” hawking a CD.

I give you…Grover Whalen!

Some questions to consider…

Why does everyone seem to want fame so badly?

Why does our society place such a high value on it?

Why do the media keep telling us that society places such a high value on it?

Some definitions to consider…

Fame: the state or quality of being widely honored or acclaimed. A favorable public reputation.

Notoriety: The condition of being notorious. Being known for an unfavorable act or quality.

Renown: Widely known or esteemed. Celebrity: A well known person. From the

Middle English, celebrite; or the French and Latin, celebritas.

Has to be agreed upon…

And now, some more questions…

How precisely do we use these words today?

Do we overuse them? Are they interchangeable?

Back to that preliminary list…

It’s a vicarious thrill. We’re a quick fix society. We love achievement – in any form. Our time on the planet is limited. We’re really into “whatever it takes.”

That preliminary list… We’re nosy. We do more things in public than ever before. We feel more entitled than ever before – part of the

“Guitar Hero” culture, as Bill Maher claims. We want the fame – we don’t want to learn the chords.

Good enough and having enough isn’t enough, or so we’ve been taught.

It’s an escape. We like zoning out (but we all do it together).

It’s in your face. We’re good at that.

Maplewood, NJ

My Hometown

The Spheres of Fame

Family/Peers Community Professional Local/Regional National International

Other Strands to Consider…

Legacies NOW! Are we self-absorbed? Does Donna Karan wear her own designs? The “Barber Theory.” We had to be taught accomplishment is cool, but what does

that do to the rest of us? This always being connected and available has its downside. Life “by checklist.” Whatever happened to leaving a “soft footprint?”

Consider, Continued…

Preoccupied with images, observation, dissection, deconstruction.

We watch monitors; we are monitored, become our own monitors.

Whither the unscripted moment – the “chance to do something totally unique?” (Garden State)

All this surveillance causes distinction between the observer and the observed to go away.

We may have forgotten how to entertain ourselves.

So there’s tension between…

Our public and private lives. Our interior and exterior selves. Egalitarian and aristocratic

impulses/interests.

Tricks and Gestures

Fame requires detachment from reality. What happens if you don’t have a “style?” Used to reach each other with ideas – now

we do it with fame. We’re hopeless copiers. Who are the sources for your “personality

collage?”

Tricks and Gestures

Tricks and Gestures

Long ago, the camera was thought to be an intrusion.

Are there “people who refuse to be collected?”

Is it a good thing that we tell each other you can be anything?

It’s not a club anymore.

Tricks and Gestures

A gap developed between what a person is to society and is to him or herself.

But it’s only the appearance of individuality. A contract of sorts between public and the

fame seeker. Fame not only is desired, it impacts our

values. Can’t just say “famous for being famous.”

Some Painless History

During the Industrial Revolution… Urban populations grow. More folks become literate. Printing and publishing become cheaper. More folks vote. The idea of monarchy is challenged/rejected. And then there’s the GLUT theory…

The Frenzy of Renown

By the 18th Century, acting and self-promotion abounded.

We found it easier to “author ourselves.” The master? Ben Franklin.


Preoccupation with self-definition. The famous are always reinterpreted. They’re vehicles of cultural memory. You have to be famous in terms the rest of

us can understand.


Charles Lindbergh: A hero without tarnish. Turned flying into a symbolic aspiration. Social mobility turned into social

transcendence. It was the purity of his action! Let us know our aspirations had substance! Why do we get so pissed when celebs talk

politics?


Then there’s Hemingway… Why are we so damned needy? “I love to have people see us, but I don’t

want to see anybody” – Ernest Hemingway. “To acknowledge the audience erodes the

purity of the heroic gesture and turns it into mere theater” – Leo Braudy.

By now, fame was a type of “sainthood.”

Guy Debord Weighs In…

Society presents itself to us “as an immense accumulation of spectacle.”

All “human life, which is to say all social life” is “mere appearance.”

Reality “suffers the material assaults of the spectacle’s mechanisms of contemplation.”

Debord Weighs In…

Debord Weighs In…

Images become a kind of currency – they mediate our relationships.

A celebration of our participation in a world of consumerism.

We celebrate everything – there is no scale in our activity.

Spectacle is our “chief product” – and we’re supposed to spend our down time thinking how to make more.

Can you remember what life was like on the outside?


From the ending of The Truman Show (1998):

http://movieclips.com/g38hm-the-truman-show-movie-truman-talks-to-the-creator/

http://movieclips.com/g38hm-the-truman-show-movie-truman-talks-to-the-creator/

Fame Gets a Jump-Start

The steam-powered press (early 1800s). The telegraph (1840s). The rotary press (1840s). The Penny Press (1830s). Founding of wire services (AP – 1848). Birth of reporting as a profession. Rising popularity of photography.


Time and space had been conquered! Information could be moved around – and

context-free! Information became a commodity. Knowing about people we didn’t know

became important to us – not to mention a lucrative business.

Names began to make news.


“Form is henceforth divorced from matter,” said Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1859.

It was now easier to disseminate someone’s face than someone’s ideas.


P. T. Barnum brings publicist and publicity into the dialogue.

Source of the adage, “Any publicity is good publicity.”

Not just promoting the performers; he was performing the promotion.

Famous for HOW he created fame.


Great delight in observing the process, examining truth as a kind of intellectual exercise.

We end up talking more about HOW than WHY.

Pretty scattered effort until birth of PR and the film industry in early 20th Century.

The “public” as a concept is recognized; had been ignored by business.


Consumer culture comes into being. We’re incredibly productive, our work week

has shrunk, and we’re spending more money on stuff.

Urban areas give us ready-made centralized markets.

Celebrity is becoming systematized. We’re leisure-ing more.


Movies cost a lot to produce; required a larger promotional effort.

They needed product differentiation…and the Star System is born!

We wanted to know about them – we judged movies by who was in them.

Knowledge about actors became a tool of promotion.

The Pseudo-Event

Boorstin claims we believed there were only so many interesting events in the world.

Eventually came to demand more of the world than it could give.

Everything, we think, is relevant.

The Pseudo-Event

Is not spontaneous. Is created for the purpose of being covered. Is only ambiguously related to the

underlying reality of the situation. Is intended to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The “Stuffed Chairs” Shot

The Oscar Mayer Wienermobile

MLB’s Home Run Derby

“Football 101” Courses

20th Anniversary of “Witness”

Wasn’t Truth Stranger Than Fiction?

It’s a writer’s job to explain reality. Culture offers up some pretty interesting folks… So we shouldn’t be troubled when media products

are so often “ripped from the headlines?” BUT…the fabricated and theatrical may be driving

out the natural and spontaneous. We’ve made our illlusions so vivid, so valid, that

we can actually live in them.


Like Truman, we are performers in and audiences for our own show.

And we tell ourselves it’s better than the fictional stuff the media can dish out..

Not imitating art – but becoming art. Every aspect of life turned into theater –

even death.


Constantly entertaining = constantly distracted.

Escaped from life into “life.” The catalyst? Celebrity. It’s a function of

perception, not accomplishment. Evaluate folks more often on the basis of

their ability to gain notoriety. And water down the good stuff…


The birth of “billing.” A combination of empathy and control. Personality overtakes performer. Publicity is our gift to the performer. Media are in servitude to celebrity.

The Presentation of Self

Goffman’s was a dramaturgical approach.

Interaction is a performance, shaped by environment and audience.

You want to seem competent, so you create impressions that help you realize your goals.

Your goal as an “actor” is to at least shape the actions of others so they’ll act the way you want them to.


Sometimes it’s calculated, sometimes you don’t realize it’s calculated, sometimes your role dictates how you act.

Most folks know you’re working to be viewed favorably, so they check your validity…

Turns into a game of concealment, discovery, false revelations, rediscovery…

Not really after consensus.


Hate to have those impressions pierced. Do we always believe our performances? What happens if you stop performing – is that even

possible? Front stage: the “appropriate place” for a performance. Back stage: where the impression is constructed – a place

apart. We dig us some coherence in settings, appearances,

manners. Have we lost out ability to suspend our disbelief?

To Quote “The Boss…”

“Message just keeps getting clearer/radio’s on and I’m moving around my place…

“I check my look in the mirror/wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face…”

“Man I’m getting nowhere/I’m just livin’ in a dump like this…”

“There’s something happening somewhere/baby I just know that there is.”


What happens when the audience intrudes? Is it deflating to see characters behaving

out of character? Might make it harder to truly evaluate a

performance. Important, Goffman argued, to have control

of the back stage. Might not be recoverable.

Do You BIRG?

Associate publicly with success – with successful people, successful teams, products.

Even if you have no role whatsoever in the success.

You BIRG with a purpose. It’s about self-image AND social image.

Parasocial Interaction

Maintain the illusion of a face-to-face relationship with performers – like they’re peers.

We observe, then “participate” in the performance.

These are, despite new technology, controlled by the performer.

We get to know them the same way we do our friends and acquaintances.

It’s a continuing relationship; a regular event.

Parasocial Interaction

We accumulate experiences with the performer.

We know and understand them better than the casual fan.

We like the predictability.

Don’t fall prey to the “Julianna Margulies Effect…”

How Do They Do It?

Adopt a conversational style. Blur the line between performer and

performance. Step out of the format and mingle with the

audience. And do it all on Twitter…

How Do We Do It?

We retain control over the content. But we adapt to the performer’s

perspective. We take our appropriate “answering role.” Our attitudes are coached. We’re schooled in the correct responses to

the persona.

What’s In It For Us?

Satisfies a demand for status. Provides an idealized version of everyday

performance. Provides a learning tool. Gives us the chance to play a role we feel

we deserve, but we never are allowed to play in our social environment.

But does PSI celebrate the “ordinary person?”

Let’s Profile…

Psychology of the Fame-Seeker

Argued that the more famous someone was, the more likely it was that his relatives would be famous.

Sits firmly on the “nature” side. Purely biological explanations

for behavior are hot again today.

Didn’t compare inheritance of greatness with inheritance of other traits.

And then there was that whole eugenics thing.

Psychology of the Fame-Seeker

Didn’t write specifically about game, but hinted that artists were motivated by the desire for fame, wealth, and love.

Introduces the notion of sublimation.

We invented culture to keep our minds off of sex.

Is culture or personality the cause of fame-seeking?

Thematic Apperception Test

Key Personality Characteristics…

Drive to succeed Willingness to take risks Ability to improvise (Braudy) Early mental stimulation Social class Having faced adversity


Birth order Alienation/estrangement Marginalization Mental illness Generativity Sex Transcendence


Or is just that young folks today are narcissistic?

Everyone gets a trophy! Institutionalization of teaching self-esteem. Outsourcing intimate parts of our lives. Death of the amateur. Is it our destiny?!!! (cue the orchestra…)

fifteen minutes: the cultural significance of fame

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