THE OPIUM IS CELEBRITY

The Big Question: Keith Blackmore argues that nowadays it's the travails of the famous that divert us from real life

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, November/December 2013

If Karl Marx were alive today, he would have lived long enough to see the people cook up a pure new opiate. Who needs religion when you have the cult of celebrity? And with that hair, that beard, that name! He could have been bigger than Bieber.

Of course his idea of celebrity might have differed from ours. He might have hoped it would help alleviate the dismal life of the oppressed while we would be looking for something a bit more, well, entertaining.

In his day, celebrity was earned the hard way—by endeavour, brilliance, self-sacrifice, exceptional courage or skill—and it might endure. Our version is synthetic and short-lived, relies on personality and appearance, and lasts just as long as it takes us to find another garish bloom. And there is no moral dimension to it. Celebrities can do what they like. Behaving badly is good (although we draw the line at paedophilia).

Karl would have seen the attraction of our kind of celebrity. He might not have been prepared to swing semi-naked on a wrecking ball, like Miley Cyrus, but 175m hits on YouTube would certainly have impressed him. That’s reaching the masses all right.

And if it is hard to see him shining on "The Apprentice", say—never mind "Big Brother", "I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here", "American Idol", "The X Factor", "The Voice", "Survivor", or even, alas, "Strictly Come Dancing"—he would surely have recognised the power of real life, or a version of it, becoming popular entertainment.

Marx was not above writing for the popular press of his day, but our media would be unrecognisable to him. Fact and fiction have become indistinguishable: the lives of soap stars are conflated with the roles they play. Footballers’ wives or girlfriends become celebrities for being just that, wives or girlfriends.

Does all this divert us from the travails of our own real lives? You bet. Our highs come from the foolishness and vanity of our fellow men and women. Even our food comes from celebrity chefs. No wonder our children, asked what they want to be when they grow up, now tend to answer with an adjective: famous.