Our Generation's Guilty Pleasure

I wrote this a while ago, but figured I'd post it. Editorial for a media writing class.


It seems that these days more and more of us are baffled by the lives of celebrities. We are a society that watches reality television. We are a society that reads tabloid magazines. And did you know that a few of us are actually buying celebrities hair off of e-Bay?

The shock does not lie in how crazy celebrity’s lives can be; it lies in the fact that we are starting to rely on their lives like we rely on the air we breathe.

We have magazines dedicated to the chaotic, (or not so chaotic) lives of celebrities. You could go to the corner store right now and know what was new with Britney Spears just by looking at the cover of a magazine. She will most likely be making a horrendous face, sporting a very brave ensemble, with a headline in vibrant yellow saying something along the lines of, “Britney Caught Partying Again! Mom Tells All!” We would all be lying if we said we didn’t, at the very least, glance at those headlines while waiting in line to cash out.

Why do we care about celebrities? It is the same reason we go out and see a movie; it is an escape from our own hectic world. Breakdowns, sex scandals, children’s eclectic names, and the passing away of the rich and famous have us hypnotized. It’s not wrong to want to know about them, take no shame.

However, this information is no longer only told in our weekly guilty-pleasure magazines. It’s headlining the news.

This past weeks headlining news was not about the upcoming election, it was not about the war in Iraq, and hell, it wasn’t even about a scandal from our local politicians. It was about actor Heath Ledger’s death. His death was covered not just for one day, but for at least three more (yes, I counted.) Sure, we are grateful to be informed of the tragedy. After all, he was in movies that we will always remember, movies that have become a part of our young-adult lives.
But let’s talk about this… is it necessary to know the details of his death? Do we need to know what his maid was doing at the moment he died, or who was called when he was found dead? By the way, his maid changed his light bulb while he was “sleeping,” and Mary-Kate Olsen was called. (But I bet you knew that.)

The media knows we’ll read every page of a juicy detailed story of a celebrity on our morning commutes. They know we’ll turn up the television when we hear a celebrity’s name being put to shame. And even though it’s not the most important news, they know we’ll treat it that way. It’s our jobs, our deadlines, and our weekly to-do lists that steer us to something else; anything else that helps us forget our own world.

It is for those reasons that we don’t always want to hear news that affects us, and why sometimes we’d rather avoid the real. And it is those same reasons why we want to know that Heath Ledger’s maid was changing his light bulb, and why we need to know that Mary-Kate was called.

The more detail we know about them and their lives, the less attached we are to our own. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?