This Celebrity thing

I have never understood this thing about celebrity. ("It would only be a wonder if you understood anything", you say? If you spent less time making snide remarks and more time explaining things then, maybe, I'd understand more). I mean, yeah, these are people who are popular for some reason or the other but...

I mean, there is this fable about a queen looking for a bride for her son, but adamant on getting a 'true princess'. A princess lands up at her palace. The prince is all for marrying her on the spot (no doubt desperate because of how his mom was rejecting every possible woman) but the queen insists on a test to identify her 'princessliness', so to speak. So, that night, the queen arranges for her to sleep on a stack of twenty mattresses, beneath which there is a single solitary pea. The next day the queen asks the princess about whether her sleep was comfortable and the princess moans, "I could not sleep a wink. There was something hard which was poking me all night." THAT convinces the queen that this is a true princess and the prince, at last, gets a bride.

I always wondered about whether this test was one of whether the princess could feel the pea or whether the rudeness to complain to the host is what decides on the fact that she was royal. Whatever it be, the idea seems to be that princesses are made of a different clay and inconveniences, which you and I would not even know of, would bother them indescribably.

Which, sort of, seems to be our attitude to celebrities. Their problems, their acumen, their views on anything and everything (totally unrelated to what they ARE celebrities for) have an exaggerated importance, much as though they descend on earth from some different, much superior planet.

If you are at all on Social media, your timeline too should have been flooded by reams of prose about that celebrity interview, like mine, so you know what set this post off.

I mean, yeah, so they had another wedding...or not, so? I mean, really, if my neighbor told me that, about three years back, they had a private wedding before their public one, all I'd probably say is, "Ah!" and follow it with,"What are the onion prices today?", which is more important to me. I really cannot see why it is of such earth-shaking importance that I should be bombarded with all sorts of views on it. They could have married each other every day of the week and twice on Sundays from the time they met and it would make no iota of difference to me or the world. (Except, perhaps, the Guinness Book of World Records may show interest if they did that. THAT shows how important most of those world records are.)

And as for who made who cry about how the bridesmaids were dressed, three years back? Really? Even the most avid watcher of mega-serials would not be that keen on a rehash, years down the line, in any 'Kyunki jettaani bhi kabhi nayi bahu thi'. Yet, apparently, the world wants to know! Goes to show that the rules ARE different for celebrities.

I can really sympathize with the fact that the heartless father cut his son off without a penny, leaving him to lead a poverty-stricken life off the measly few million dollars that his mother had left him. Not, though, to the extent of getting upset about it for days on end. Why, even the billionaire chat show host did not feel too much sympathy. Else she would have been moved to help out the poor abandoned couple by giving them a fee for an interview which should net her a hefty sum.

Nor, indeed, am I able to understand why she should want her little child to be trapped into being a prince when she had, with great difficulty, just extricated her husband from that same web. Maybe it is just to give a purpose for her old age, to pass her idle moments extricating her son. I'll never understand celebrities, I tell you, or the way we see them.

Now, that racism thing IS serious. I mean, whether in small ways or large ways, if an act is committed based on a thought process of racism, it is to be denounced. But what makes me wonder is not her anguish, which is quite understandable given that it happened, but the persistent outrage about it. As in, the outrage about an act of racism, which takes lives in your own country, and is committed NOW by duly appointed officers of your government draws a couple of days of outrage from a few. And this one remark, purportedly made by one member of the figurehead royalty of another country, a couple of years ago, is worth a month or more of outrage by so many people?

I mean if, in your friends circle, a woman of color, in a mixed marriage, were to say, "You know, two years back, when I was pregnant with my son, one member of my husband's family made this one remark to my husband, 'What color do you think your son will be?'", do you really think all of you can sustain the outrage for even the length of the meeting? Sexist, Racist, Communalist remarks are ALWAYS reprehensible but, unfortunately, all too common in daily life. In the best of families, the best of communities, the best of offices, there is always someone who is either insensitive or racist/sexist/communalist or both. To the person to whom it happens, it can rankle and hurt for long. The rest of us, and even the affected party most of the time, have had to learn to brush them aside (some have more need than others, obviously and unfortunately), else we would be outraging 24x7. Much worse happens because of racism/sexism/communalism, lives are damaged or lost because of them, so there are bigger battles to fight. So, this issue of racist remarks does not seem worthy of prolonged outrage to the audience. Comes to celebrities, though...

(Given that I am on this subject why am I not talking of the tabloids? There you go, thinking that the whole issue is about the whys and wherefores of the concerned celebrities. My point, here, is about how we view what happens to celebrities with an exaggerated importance compared to how we would react if the same thing happened to everyday people. AND, comes to tabloid journalism, you really do not expect ordinary people to be the subject matter of that, do you? So, that's not germane to this post, except to underscore the fact that this exaggerated view of celebrities can work to their detriment as much as it can work in their favor.)

While on this same subject, there was this furor some time back about Rihanna and Greta tweeting support to farmers' protest in India. Now, from what I understand, the one is a singer and the second a teenage climate activist. I do not suppose that Rihanna has any knowledge of the agricultural economics in USA, leave alone India; nor do I think Greta is a well-known Swedish agriculturist. AND, comes to farmers' protest in INDIA, I cannot see why so much importance should have been given to their support. I mean, the affected parties here are the farmers themselves and THEY are protesting, so how does Rihanna's or Greta's support strengthen their point of view? The only people whose view ought to strengthen the protest, other than the affected parties themselves, are the views of subject matter experts. Which I do not suppose either of them claim to be.

Par for the course for we do seek opinions on such from our own stars and starlets and use those opinions as though THAT conclusively proves the validity of the point of view which they support. Really? Unless they ARE also subject matter experts OR they have some specific point to say, why should it? Any more than the support of any person who has access to Twitter?

Of course they can have an opinion and, of course, they have the right to voice them. I repeat, THIS post is not about THEM. It is about US. Why do we give exaggerated credence to their views as compared to the views of the man on the street? On some issues, the man on the street actually may have MORE credence. I mean, it is unlikely that a Shahrukh Khan's pocket is seriously pinched because of a petrol price hike. (AND why do we also deny celebrities the right to say that they have NO opinion because they do not have knowledge of the issue? A celebrity cannot even remain silent on an issue without being damned for it.)

There was a time when royalty was considered 'divine right'. So, kings and queens were considered divine, in a way. Which, of course, meant that they were to be treated as something apart from the general run of humanity. As in being able to be disturbed by a pea buried under twenty mattresses.

Now that we have, largely, done away with royalty, we seem to have substituted celebrities in their place. To misquote the immortal Bard, "Some are born divine, some achieve divinity and some have divinity thrust upon them."

And once we thrust divinity upon you, beware! For the very next thing we do is scrutinize your feet for the presence of clay. For as long as we fail to find your feet of clay, your every word will be gospel. Thereafter, it will be mud.