Belltown Messenger

I saw a clip on TV of the actor Tom Cruise jumping up and down on a couch professing his love of fellow thespian Katie Holmes. Now, everywhere I go I am haunted by this act. People I know have obsessed about this for days; are they for real? Was it a movie marketing gimic? Where did he get those shoes? I started to wonder why should anyone besides the people involved really give a damn? Water cooler talk, you say, something to fill up the uncomfortable silences with our co-workers until we have something really important talk about, like the new Survivor season.

So why is the cult of celebrity is so prevalent in our culture? Now before you think I am going to get all condescending about this, you need to know I don't think it is evil or makes people stupid. I won't pretend to be one of those annoying people who call into NPR and drone on an on about how great it is that they don't own a TV. It is distracting but not harmful. I can be entertained as the next guy by gossip. And yet, I often find it strange that I know so much about famous strangers. It isn't like I actively am trying to find out about the dating lives of movie stars, but no mater what I do to ignore it, I still I know all the rumors and innuendo.

I blame Safeway for this. Normally I am more of a Weekly World News kinda guy. The antics of Bat Boy, Bigfoot, and which political candidate the alien is endorsing is much more interesting. But, you can't escape celebrity culture in America, especially at the grocery store. The rack of tabloids by the register is visual second hand smoke; you can't avoid it. Adding to that, the ceaseless TV promotions for upcoming "Dateline's-Primetime's-20/20's-Today Show" interviews with weepy celebrities' makes me well schooled in the goings on in the world of movie stars, hotel heiresses and run away brides.

The question is why is our culture so interested in the goings on of celebrities? This is just a modern version of neighborhood gossip. People seem to always want to talk about each other. Like our simian cousins, we are social animals and we can't help it. Gossip to us is the same as monkey's grooming each other. I call this the "Talking Shite Theory." People seem to like to talk shite about other people. In the past we used to gossip about the members of our tribe or village. Anyone who grew up in a small town can easily attest to this.

But the funny thing is that as our society has grown bigger and our technology as made us more connected, our connection to our local community is getting smaller and smaller. The commonalties that we used to share with our neighbors are disappearing. We use movies, sports, and the trivial as a conversational lubricant to fill the void of connection. The cult of celebrity is almost the only commonality that we share with vast majority of strangers we encounter in our day to day lives. Now that we live in Marshall McLuhan's "global village" we no longer have a village idiot to make fun of, now we have Britney Spears and Michael Jackson.

Gossiping is a natural thing for us humans, but why do we gossip about Hollywood stars and not scientists or truck drivers? Money, money, money! For a hundred years Hollywood and the publicity industry have conditioned us to be interested in the goings on of starlets and movie actors. All of this is used as gimmicks to get you spend your money in the movie theatre. Publicists, marketers, tabloids, paparazzi and the celebrities themselves all profit from the promotion of the trivial. What is really disturbing is that now everything in popular culture is being overrun by the cult of celebrity. Even an institution like the news business is now just another arm of show business. After all, you are just as likely to see a news anchor on the cover of a tabloid as you are to see a movie star.

This trivial world can be fun and diverting, but when all is said and done it is really rather pointless to care so much about these things. Realizing this, I have resolved that in the future I fill force myself to ignore the cult of celebrity, and will refuse to allow myself to get sucked into the pseudo-community that the cult of celebrity offers.

And yet, Katie don't cha think you could do better, I mean, Tom Cruise is 18 years older than you after all...