Celebrities and Celebrity Culture

Interest in celebrities or "celebrity culture" easily becomes a preoccupation, even an addiction, for many people; indeed, it is easily understood as a pathology. How many people have learned to escape the pain, stress, boredom, and alienation of their own lives through immersion in the lives of other people, especially a tiny subgroup of individuals publicly noted or celebrated for something, oftentimes expertise in a given area, or a special ability.

Indeed, the preoccupation with celebrity in America and elsewhere speaks in large measure to the poverty-- psychological, emotional, spiritual, and certainly financial--of our own lives.

In contrast, were we to build a society that was engineered from the ground up to facilitate our full and all-around development as human beings, we would find our own lives interesting and fulfilling. We would then naturally and organically find ourselves focused on--and simply living--our own lives, and our interest in the lives of others, celebrity or otherwise, would be eliminated or would certainly decrease.

In fact, one questions the legitimacy of the very concept of "celebrity." Indeed, there are public persons who excel in some area such as entertainment or politics, whose work we enjoy (and who have probably amassed great wealth because of their talent). But to add the conceptual overlay of "celebrity"  is superfluous.

Celebrities Revealed

It might be helpful in deconstructing and better understanding these so-called "celebrities" if we learn more about them, especially their often fantastic wealth and privilege, and contrast it with the lives of economic difficulty and hardship most of us face every day. This is not to imply that these individuals do not face some or perhaps many of the same challenges the rest of us do, because of course in many cases they do, especially in regard to basic existential issues such as life and death. Nor is it to imply that these public figures do not sometimes use their wealth and status to assist others in need, because some of them do. Nor do we even imply that some of these people are not actively conscious of their great wealth and privilege, because indeed, there is a small contingent that are aware of the incongruity between what they earn and consequently how they live, and what the rest of the planet earns and how it lives.

But this exercise does seek to describe the basic contours of celebrity wealth and lifestyle, and that of the overwhelming majority on this planet. The goals here are to curtail our modern-day celebrity worship, which, as asserted above, ultimately often serves as a mechanism or springboard for even further alienation, and is, itself, a commentary on the emotional and financial poverty of our owns lives, as much as a representation of any sort of genuine and healthy interest in the life and career of a given public person.

We might begin by reviewing the net worth of each of the Forbes magazine list of the twenty wealthiest women in Entertainment:

1. Oprah Winfrey- $1.5 Billion

2. J.K. Rowling - $1 Billion

3. Martha Stewart -

4. Jennifer Aniston:

   "Jen's been a busy woman lately - within the past year alone, she's filmed four movies! It's no wonder she keeps getting invited back - audiences love her, and Forbes has done the math to prove that she is one of Hollywood's most bankable stars. The Philadelphia Daily News reports that Jen is #8 on the "bang for the buck" list, bringing in $10.48 of box office revenue for every dollar she is paid. With those four films set for release in coming months, it seems that she's poised to continue that hot streak...." (Source pending.)

   Jennifer Aniston's multi-million dollar salary seems and is gargantuan from our standpoint, yet as you can see, for every $10.48 she earns for her film production company, they pay her just a single dollar ($1.00). The fact is, capitalism is an economic system built on the exploitation of the labor of workers, and Ms. Aniston, on a large scale, is just as exploited a worker as you and me.

   Resist the temptation to sardonically assert that you'd love to find yourself a victim of such grandiose exploitation, and focus instead on the larger, more powerful, and ultimately more relevant fact that regardless of job type and level of success, every worker is exploited, squeezed dry until no more dollars can be forthcoming, and then discarded (often unceremoniously and with great disrespect). In this case, for example, how long do think Ms. Aniston will continue to earn millions of dollars when her films stop earning such fabulous sums for her production company?

   Answer: not long.

5. Janet Jackson -

6. Celine Dion -

7. Jennifer Lopez -

8. Marykate and Ashley Olsen -

9. Jennifer Lopez -

10. -

11. -

12. -

13. -

14. -

15. -

16. -

17. -

18. -

19. -

20. -

Since these are merely numbers, let's also review what the lives of these people are like--especially compared to your, and my, life.

While you're home in your too-small home or apartment, that you're still trying to pay off, trying to resist your latest impulse to break open yet another bag of potato chips, while the kids scream in the background, eating yet another sugary junk dessert, themselves, these women and their families are enjoying the finest in spas, mansions, servants, drivers, and health and fitness, including every manner of personal trainer and nutritionist.

Are these people inherently any better than you? Than me? Then why would we stand for this?

The Point

This page is not intended to proffer unwarranted personal attacks on financially successful celebrities, but meant as a further pointed and powerful illustration about how capitalism operates; such illustrations are critical because it is the normal operation of capitalism, in conjunction its attendant egotistic culture, that is the direct and indirect source of every problem of humankind. The fabulous and existentially and morally undeserved salaries earned by celebrities lends an effective and necessary illumination to this study of capitalism.