You know celebrity is a really mysterious
thing that I don’t think anyone fully understands.
Why are we so interested in these people who
are just people but somehow have come to embody
some greater idea.
It’s not even that they’re great.
I mean you don’t worship them necessarily
because they’re more virtuous than we are
or lofty or something.
If they’re like gods they’re more like
the Greek gods, you know.
They’re prone to embarrassing drunken incidents.
The say outlandish things but somehow people
just can’t seem to look away from celebrities
and it’s not something new.
Although what is new is the effort to commercialize
that fact to an extent never seen before.
New I mean since the 1970’s or so.
The effort to build entire platforms, magazines
on nothing but celebrity by itself is a development
of the twentieth and twenty-first century.
We’ve gotten to a point it’s sort of unusual
where if you want to get attention to almost
anything you need to start with the celebrity.
If you’re interested in the problems of
Africa you don’t really get people interested.
You have Madonna adopt an orphan.
Now we’re talking, you know.
It just has become the sign for getting attention
as having some kind of celebrity associated
with it.
When I was running for office for instance,
you know, we’d have an important proposal
about corruption or something.
But when we brought out Mark Ruffalo to endorse
our candidacy oh now we’re talking.
Suddenly everybody was there.
And it is strange that this has become the
way we organize this incredible important
part of our lives, the products, whatever
it is.
But it’s kind of the way it is.
I’ve read a lot of the literature on why
people are so interested in celebrities.
I think they don’t really understand.
The most compelling to me are the ideas that
compare it to this sort of instinct that is
also inherent in religion or sort of looking
for transcendence of the normal that we sort
of believe these people operate on a different
plane.
If you somehow end up running into Tom Cruise
or Tom Hanks and you may not even care for
them as actors, may be indifferent.
But somehow I think there’s this effect.
Tom Brady – I’ve now named three Toms.
You’ll be like oh my goodness, there they
are.
And maybe your heart will start to beat, there’s
a biological reaction.
It’s really quite strange even if you hate
the Patriots you might still have a reaction.
And, you know, why that happens no one really
quite understands.
I think the people who compare it to this
religious impulse that there’s these sort
of gods walking on earth, not necessarily
beneficent gods but that they exist in a slightly
different realm than we do.
There’s something to those theories because
I just can’t really understand it otherwise.
