The label of the celebrity is belying, and a primitive part of us cannot help but find something stimulating about the screw-ups of the rich and the famous
by Martina Booth,
Opinion Editor
The ‘unhinged celebrity’ has always had a soft spot in Britain’s heart: they are the ones who give us a distinct pleasure when we watch them splash about in that goldfish bowl called fame. Take this year’s Celebrity Big Brother: at opposite ends of the spectrum, we had Caprice – blonde, blandly beautiful and boring, and Jackie Stallone (‘yeah that’s right, Jackie’).
Infinitely more interesting than the pin-up, she read bums for a living; a subject area which if I remember correctly, Caprice drearily shied away from when the topic of anal sex came up as a point of discussion. She was odd, deluded (claiming that the Big Brother bosses had promised her that she would be in a mansion alongside famous types such as Bill Gates) but refreshing. Jackie rocked!
The initial Celebrity Big Brother may be all but a murky recollection, but aside from remembering Anthea Turner mentoring Claire Sweeney on the most effective way to put a cover on a duvet (which I only recall because she taught me something new as well), our single collective memory must lie with Vanessa Feltz – dear old Feltz, forever etched in our memories adorned in a leopard print dressing gown, scribbling quite tragic statements (‘set me free…I am in pain’) onto an otherwise perfectly pleasant table, before breaking down in tears. Unaware whether we were watching melodrama at its finest or a genuine mental collapse, the viewer didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Although more serious than the Feltz episode, the pleasure with which we watch celebrities becoming unhinged is further highlighted through the way that the press and the public are devouring each new chronicle of Pete Doherty’s life. Doherty has a genuine talent; able to create visionary music, his heroin addiction nonetheless leads him to be constantly having his finger on the self-destruct button. Especially within the music and tabloid press, something of an obsession has formed over his increasingly volatile behaviour.
There appears to be two camps of Doherty fans: those who bum his music, but frankly, think he’s a knob who needs help, and those who love the fact that he is a bona-fide rock n’ roll star; one who has (quite literally) injected some excitement back into the music scene. Having seen the Libertines live with and without Pete, they seemed to lack a certain something sans Doherty, and it is telling how his unpredictable behaviour aided their unique placing in the music scene.
Of course, Doherty has his predecessors: indeed, when we consider the ‘enduring celebrity’ it is often the consummate ‘unhinged’ flamboyant that is still around. David Bowie (a.k.a. the Thin White Duke/Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane, who has had enough alter-egos to feed a healthy multiple personality disorder in real life), must have been a bit ‘de loop’ when he ploughed his creative energies into those concept albums and movies (as anyone who has seen the relentlessly perturbing The Man Who Fell To Earth and everyone’s childhood favourite, Labyrinth, will testify), but don’t we love him for it?
He is one of those rare imaginative artists who can offer us mere mortal souls an entry into a parallel world of fantasy away from our occasionally mundane existence; yet, like Doherty, how much drugs played in his transcending creative ability will never be known. Bowie is still around, and relatively healthy, but if Doherty gets out of this decade alive, it will fuel the notion that drugs serve primarily to enhance creativity. Contrarily, if he dies young, he will be granted a legendary status alongside those such as Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix, who have also died prematurely. Either way, drugs win.
Death is often romanticised when it is affiliated with such ‘unhinged’ artists. The poet Sylvia Plath has had her life carved onto celluloid by Hollywood stalwart Gwyneth Paltrow, but in life, was always in the shadow of her husband, Ted Hughes. Like other artists, her untimely death has further mystified her work. Would Ariel have been the success it is now (and the backbone to many A-Level English Literature courses) if she had not have killed herself?
Similarly, the apparent suicide of musician Elliott Smith in 2003 has, in a twisted way, perfectly framed his music. Inversely, the added poignancy due to his death manifests more life into his songs; authenticity has been stamped onto them - we listen now, and know it stems from a genuine, raw melancholy. In retrospect, Smith’s suicide seems inevitable, yet like Cobain before him, his documented grapple with life perversely strengthens the pleasure which the listener receives from his music. It is art imitating life, something which is rare in the manufactured state of the ‘celebrity’ of today.
It is easy to forget that ‘celebrities’ are not caricatures, but real people: that is why those who look a little bit ‘out of it’ are so captivating. The label of the celebrity is belying, and a primitive part of us cannot help but find something stimulating about the screw-ups of rich and the famous. The need to fill certain niches (which in Doherty’s case is not his intention, but it is what some perhaps welcome) can be dangerous, and we should remember that for how diverse their lives may be to ours, they are not purely entertainment vehicles, and deserve our compassion, rather than our objectification.
Note: Martina Booth, Opinion Editor
opinion@student-direct.co.uk
issue 17/ 7 March 2005
