fame monster

Since as far back as high school, I’ve been loyal to a fault and overly emotionally invested in the entertainers I admire. A fangirl, if you will. It’s less cute as a grown ass adult, but one of the deals I made with myself is that – if I wanted to post fan content and participate in the online discorse, I have to make a very concerted effort to understand the experience of celebrity. My worst nightmare is to contribute to the pain that comes with fame.

My friends always tease me that I can’t explain anything without a metaphore….and they may be right. But these are a few that have helped give me some perspective.

I get the image of being a giant, with a swarm of tiny people around your feet, all so excited to see you. You have a birds eye view of all these different people with so many different lives – some are up front eager for your attention, some hang back. You really want to be careful not to smush them – interactinging with them would have a massively outsized impact on them. But in aggregate they are also exhausting for you, there is nowhere to hide or blend in, the chatter is incessant – and if you piss them off they will gulliver’s travels your ass.

Its not a perfect analogy, because in a real stalking situation the danger is not in any way little. But outside of the extreme that’s what i imagine.

I also loved Lady Gaga’s “perfect celebrity”, particularly the viceral metaphore of the clone on the ceiling. I can’t say if what I feel from that is what it’s really like, but it conjures such a clear image for me. I see myself at a restaurant with an acquaintance, or friend of a friend, and this dormant version of me hovering on the ceiling just in my periphery. Its not doing anything, and everyone either doesn’t notice or is too polite to say, but I can feel it looming there – an elephant in the room.

I like the metaphore of a clone, rather than a mask, though I’m sure both convey something true. But the idea of a clone helped me sort out my own difficult feelings about parasocial attachments. No matter how identical the clone is to the source, it is a seperate entity completely. It has never lived a real human life – its never made a fairy fort out of fall leaves, or hated the macaroni salad at the college cafeteria. It may have copied the features and behaviours exactly, but its still a photocopy – the substance is not there behind it. And so when Bo Burnham says “you dont love me, you love the idea of me”, it doesnt matter how perfectly the clone mimicks the superficial qualities of the real person – the real person is fundimentally inaccessible. You only know the clone.