Why Celebrity?

An interesting question, in this day and age. What causes us to valorize, to deify particular people within our culture? Why these people? Particularly - if one considers the Brittany Spears and Lindsay Lohan type - why these people? What is it about them that attracts our attention, draws our collective eye, makes us want to worship not only them, but the proverbial ground they walk on?

I often find myself mostly exempt from this tendency. Mostly. I do have authors whose blogs I read or whose books I check up on. I have musicians whose work I enjoy and listen to with frequency. There are academic speakers I would happily listen to or discuss issues with. But for the most part... I must confess I just don't get it.

I understand the principle. It's one that I deal with on a fairly regular basis, if only in a histo-literary context. But that's how I often relate to the world these days.

In Shakespeare's time, people believed that physical proximity to the monarch somehow let something kingly "rub off" on you. It why "gentleman of the privy chamber" was actually a desired title. You got to be the honored man who got to wipe the kingly ass. How fortunate for you. It's also why we know so much about kingly stools. Not the kind with legs, either. David Starkey - who has several very interesting books on Henry VIII and Elizabeth - wrote an article entitled "Representation Though Intimacy" that details the way in which physical contact and proximity to the king (here, Henry VIII) endowed an individual with an element of the sacred supposedly possessed by the king:
the vehicle [the body] was itself a symbol, with two distinct sets of meanings: one sacred, the other profane... The literalism is transparent: the king’s hands had been annointed at his coronation and hence were holy; they then rubbed off their benediction onto the metal. Thus, though there is no formal contemporary evidence on the point, there can be little doubt that in the intimate physical contact of body service the royal charisma was felt to rub off onto the servant, who thereby became himself endowed with part of the royal virtue. (Starkey 208)

Is that really what celebrity is all about? Do we have the sense (however subconscious) that some of their "greatness," their "sacredness" will rub off on us? Will somehow make us better or more interesting or more something?

I get being impressed by great artists/writers/musicians/actors/etc. I get that. What I don't get is the fanatic desire to touch them. Or to touch something they've touched. (To say nothing about getting body parts signed.)

For centuries, people went to kings because they could cure the "king's evil" (aka Scrofula). People made pilgrimages to holy sites, carried relics or bottles of holy water from a particular church, and visited the graves of saints. All because of this fascination with touching the ding an sich. The thing itself.

Touch is one of those things, those tactile, visceral, human things. Basic human contact. It's vital to not only our emotional health, but - some say - our very survival. Certainly, if you can't tell whether you're about to put your hand in a fire, you've got survival issues, but that's not what I mean. We get starved for touch, for contact. After a long day, we come home to our loved ones and hug them, kiss them, touch them. We use our bodies as a way to reassure ourselves that we're not alone, but also to convince ourselves that we're real.

Is that the importance behind - excuse the expression - touching Victoria Kahn? To determine that genius, that greatness, is, in fact, real?

If I can put my hand on it, then that must mean it's not a figment of my imagination. And if it's real, then I can share it. Even if only some tiny part of it. It can be mine, too. If it's real. If I can touch it.

Our eyes can deceive us, our ears can lie to us, our noses be fooled by oils and perfumes. But our hands... We can't yet convince them that something is real when it's not. So touching celebrity is nothing more or less than that basic human affirmation of reality. It's here. It's real.

I'm real.