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 Fame used to be a result of some sort of human achievement. Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar were famous for conquering more of the known world than anyone before them. Jesus and Mohammed were famous for the philosophies they preached and the religions their teachings spawned. Francis Drake was famous for circumnavigating the globe, Charles Lindberg for flying across the Atlantic and Marilyn Monroe for being the first sexual icon of pop culture. Then there’s Tommy Lee, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton—they are famous for, well, for being famous.
In the postmodern world—for this article only I’ll define that as a world in which most art is product and conscious of the fact that it is product—celebrity status no longer relies on acts of accomplishment, achievement or creation. It is in fact possible to become famous without doing anything at all, even such insignificant (in the grand scheme of things) accomplishments as hitting a game winning shot, winning an Academy Award or even appearing in a movie—not to mention contributing something momentous to the progress of human existence. All one needs to do to be famous is to be (famous). The contradiction to this is that it is as difficult as ever to achieve celebrity status and yet anybody can become famous. The difference is that fame and celebrity are no longer interchangeable. Although all celebrities are famous, not all famous people receive true celebrity status. In order to become a celebrity one must draw deep human interest beyond the individual’s accomplishments or what they do for a living, but through how they are perceived by the public and how they behave as a famous person.
Take Tommy Lee for instance. Everybody knows who he is, but what has he accomplished? He’s a rock star, right? Nope. The last album he played on that was popular was Dr. Feelgood over twenty years ago and nobody listens to it anymore. He is famous because the media has constantly spotlighted his personal life, most famously through his marriage to mega-celeb Pamela Anderson and their subsequent homemade sex tape. You might think that his fame as a rock star endured throughout the years and remains still. This is not true. The only thing being a rock star ever earned Tommy Lee was, perhaps, a marriage to Pamela Anderson, which led to his re-emergence as a celebrity. But let’s face it; he is more famous as a celebrity than he ever was as a “rock star.”
How about Lindsay Lohan? Lindsay Lohan is repeatedly voted one of the most beautiful women in the world (by tabloids, websites and magazines) even though there is nothing uniquely appealing about her physically. She has repeatedly been considered one of the biggest “stars” in the world even though she has never made a great movie or given an astounding performance, her musical ability is zero and she has contributed nothing, artistic or otherwise, to the betterment of society. Granted she has been in a number of movies that have put her in the public eye, but she is more famous for the ways in which she distracts from the entertainment industry than for how she contributes to it. She was never so famous until she began having drug problems, disputes with movie studios and drunken binges on the sunset strip.
Paris Hilton is perhaps the most obvious example of how a person can be made famous out of absolutely nothing—aside from being born into wealth and perhaps being in the right place at the right time. She is a true mega-celebrity, bigger than most movie stars, musicians and professional athletes because her fame does not spawn from her accomplishments but from the fame itself, fueled by her exploits as a dysfunctional human being or rather as a dysfunctional famous person. She was simply heir to a famous name that a good publicist was able to spin into celebrity status not because of her philanthropy or contribution to the art or entertainment spheres but because of the lifestyle she chooses to live and because she allows it to be exploited. This has led to roles in bad films and even a record deal, but these meager accomplishments have only, if anything, detracted from her celebrity status because they don’t represent the kind of life style that Paris Hilton and other mega-celebrities have made fashionable: hedonistic and frivolous living with an ultra care-free attitude. Her failures as an actress, pop star and model have revealed the phoniness of her celebrity status. And yet, I fear, these failed accomplishments ultimately contribute to her role as a celebrity. Is this what people have come to strive for—failure, mediocrity, dysfunction? If so, is she the ultimate postmodern icon or even a role model?
If the above hypothesis holds truth, what causes people of postmodern America to anoint such a high status to such unaccomplished people? Is it the car wreck phenomenon: slowing down to see another’s misfortune, enhanced by the fact that we truly enjoy seeing the rich and successful suffer? Perhaps. This would explain why shows like Hollywood Insider and magazines like The National Enquirer are so successful; they exploit the weaknesses and failures of the people we aspire to be, and pretend to look up to, but in reality despise. Because do any of us actually look up to these people? They fascinate us, sure, but who in their right mind wants to be Paris Hilton or even Britney Spears? (Perhaps, I am preaching to the choir here, but in reality there are millions of people, and not only thirteen year-old girls, who seek fame as the ultimate measure of success) Is it the fame and attention we want or just the lifestyle and wealth? Doesn’t this senseless coverage of these individual’s failures illustrate how worthless a life of fame really is? Maybe, but the problems with human psychology and particularly the American mentality is that we never believe that that can happen to us. We use the repeated failures of celebrities like Lindsay Lohan to rise above her typecast role as a failed actress/pop star turned drug addict to reassure ourselves that we are better than we really are. Because absolutely no one knows how they would succeed under similar circumstances until they have experienced them first hand.
 I blame the entire new celebrity phenomenon on reality television and the postmodern mentality. The inherent problem with postmodernism is that we think we know everything, think we have all the information we need at all times and think that this is enough—an ample substitute for real life experience. This ultimately bleeds into our perceptions of success, art and fame. Reality programming is the perfect example of postmodern art because it is keenly aware—it is in its nature to be so—of what it is and why it is and even what it will become. Reality Television has bled into the way we lead our lives and see our selves. We move through life like characters in The Real World, Big Brother, Project Runway or whatever show suits you best, looking at ourselves from without—as if through the lens of a camera—instead of from within. Thinking we can create who we are on the inside because we can manipulate how we are perceived on the outside is our biggest mistake in the Reality TV era.
Meanwhile, the youngest members of our society, our poor, impressionable children are being indoctrinated by the idea that fame is the most important ambition you can strive for and that individuals like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton are the best kind of celebrity because they get the most media exposure and are therefore considered the most popular. Popularity doesn’t equal fame. This may seem like an obvious statement, but this is the notion that is taught and absorbed by our youth and what’s more, the subversive behavior that enhance these celebrities' fame are attributed as qualities, not flaws, by the complex naivety of our society (not just our youth). If fame is so noble and important to human existence (I for one think it may be inherently evil), then we should take care to and make the effort to endorse and expose people of accomplishment, people who have great human values and people who contribute positively to the human condition. I would say we should work to eliminate fame altogether, but it has always been here, and it seems it always will.
This isn’t to say that many celebrities don’t use their fame for good, because more and more this is becoming a trend. Look at Leonardo Dicaprio's work with the environment or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s work in Africa. But these positive aspects of modern celebrity are glazed over and lost in the divorces, drug rehabs, DUIs and amateur pornography films. It’s hard to find meaningful coverage in the media of the positive ways celebrities use their fame and influence. Look at Sean Penn’s work in the aftermath of Katrina. The man was physically pulling people from the floods, but the miniscule attention this received from the media was spun into a story more about Sean Penn the celebrity than about the victims of the disaster. This exemplifies the failure of mass media to use its power and influence to positively exploit truly meaningful human accomplishment or even to simply profile individuals who actually strive to make the lives of others better.
If fame is to ever become a human virtue, something worth teaching our children to aspire to, we must find a way to separate it from the simplistic idea that being famous is important for no other reason than to be famous. Virtues, values and accomplishments must be attached to the people we cover in our media. This includes: books, television, movies, magazine, newspapers and most importantly, the Internet.
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Content & Media 
