Fame: Attracted To The Light.
Why do we idolize the famous and why do we strive for something that may kill us?
As a low-maintenance semi-Swiftie I’ve been recently inundated with Taylor Swift content. Particularly on Instagram, my Explore page is littered with Taylor in concert, Taylor in the rain, Taylor being interviewed, Taylor art and fan-made Taylor-Joe montages. I’m trying to remember if I ever specifically looked her up.
Her latest concerts caused major traffic across the Canadian – US border. They also caused quasi-think pieces on why Vancouver was ignored from her nearly yearlong tour. A few weeks ago someone who doesn’t even listen to her music — or know as many songs as would be expected1, someone totally uninvested in the romantic or musical life of Miss Swift — came to me with the goss that she was recently spotted with her ex.
It made me intrigued and then it made me sad for the couple that had been hailed as the golden, ‘couple goals’, power-pair. Then for the individuals. For the lack of privacy. For that poor, talented, incredible, genius woman2. I have no right to be invested in that couple’s coupledom period. Most of us don’t personally know the two, and none of us are privy to the inside of their relationship. I’m the problem, it’s me.
I’m fascinated by the multifaceted concept of fame — its effect, why people aspire to it, and the relationship between spectator (potential fan, non-famous person, pleb) and celebrity. It’s almost like fame is a shiny film that exists between spectator and celebrity, warping the latter’s image in the eyes of the viewer. The film gets thicker the more famous, the shine gets more dazzling. Maybe the spectator and celebrity just operate on opposite sides, living isolated (and isolating), normalized existences. The more blinding the film, the less you can see the other side. The less you can understand it. Maybe when someone operates too close to the film itself, it wraps around their very skin. They become consumed by the thing. They are one with it. An identity submerged.
I believe that this can happen on both sides.
Somewhere along the way, the desire to become known for your skill or talent was supplanted by just being known. Kids these days aspire to fame and social media has given them a taste. Meanwhile the vigour of fandom seems to have kicked into a new gear.
It makes sense to idolize an artist. When respect for an artist’s creative output transcends beyond the art, where can it go? Art can be a deeply connective vessel, which beyond taste and creative conventions, can bond us through shared human experiences and emotions. More than that, we project our own narratives onto the art, and layer it with our personal context. It’s only natural to expect an overflow of admiration to filter back to the artist — to at the least be curious about how someone can move you, or to assume a connection based on relatedness to the creative ideas.
Because creativity requires so much personal input and vulnerability, it breaks down established social constructs and speaks to the inner world of the artist. Hence the parasocial relationship, wherein people feel like they know the artist, or expect that a deeper respect for the art means an inherent respect for the artist. Talent too is like catnip.
With social media, a parallel type of celebrity has emerged — the internet celebrity or influencer or content creator — in a sense like the Nouveau Riche of the celebrity world. People who largely make money from their online presence, and reality stars like Kim K who fortify a brand around ‘transparency’, help to normalize the expectation that all famous people owe this same level of visibility to the public. Social media then allows a pile-on effect. The community froths itself up in the comment section, bonding and feuding over their supposed love of a shiny thing.
In this environment, the public increasingly believe they are owed details and explanations, and a public comment or slide into the DM’s bolsters the illusion of personal proximity. This illusion of accessibility both stirs up a Standom while also exacerbating the notion that anyone is authorized to intrude. For the artist, it’s perilous to know the thoughts and speculations of everyone around you, and harder still to withstand the overzealous love and oft vitriolic bullshit thrown at you. It’s enough to make anyone go crazy. And I mean, actually mentally unwell.
I was going to make a piece on this specifically, but it feels insensitive to probe and speculate about specific individuals who have struggled with fame. To reinforce my suggestion that fame is a major contributor to declined mental health I will simply list some people whose experiences have been extreme: Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Britney Spears, Amanda Bynes, Amy Winehouse, Caroline Flack and Lewis Capaldi. (Just a few.)
I think fame can be a combination of powerful factors that all have the potential for harm. No human is without pre-existing anxieties, insecurities, or traumas. It’s been suggested that highly artistic people struggle more with mental health issues.3
Extreme fame often comes with wealth, work pressure, adoration (or hatred), public opinion and scrutiny, misconception, exposure, reduced privacy, increased competition, and elevated status. Alone each of these factors can be derailing and destabilising. I could write a piece on the effects of each. Now, imagine them together. It’s a marvel any of them can stay human and sane.
What I want to know is this: Is there a way around fame? Another way to do this? In jobs that allow public figures, could we ever move forward without an aspect of fame? Could public figures be kept off a pedestal? Or is it fame itself that needs to be taken off a pedestal? Is a world possible without the notion of fame?
Historically, society has always been dictated by social stratification. Pharaohs, Monarchy, government, tribes, general class divisions and spirituality. Celebrity emerges as one of the more glamorous strata that speaks of a high class glamour, yet reaches across all levels of society. It’s at once reachable and unreachable. It’s unknowable, yet recognisable. We are attracted to glitter and gossip, and we are attracted to attention and love. Plus we live in a Capitalist world.
Fame (and social media) exploits two of our core driving motivations as humans — to be seen and to be loved. As pack animals evolved from tribes, we require a sense of community in order to survive. According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, “love and belonging’ and ‘esteem’ are essential components of human existence. Esteem includes esteem for self (dignity, achievement, mastery, independence) and the desire for reputation or respect from others.4 Linking this second desire to the elevated status afforded by fame, it’s easy to see how this ambition can become warped, especially when you are being largely seen rather than known.
The crux is the need to be loved feels somewhat fulfilled by fame — it’s adoration and attention on a large scale. But gaining followers and fame is only an approximation of these fundamental needs. And craving something as deep as love and profound as approval means that fame offers a hollow illusion that can only be temporarily, superficially satisfying. Perhaps those most desperate to solidify a sense of self-worth through social elevation may be those worst deformed by fame.
Our modern world, now untethered from religion, realigns itself around celebrity and capitalism. As a search for meaning, it’s led us to a spiritual wasteland, a place of continual craving. We’ve been conditioned by social media to seek external validation and replace love with ‘likes’ — in this dopamine minefield the ingrained lesson is that followers and social media engagement are a fast realization of the ‘love’, ‘belonging’ and ‘esteem’. While we’ve been subconsciously fed the idea that fame equates to love and esteem, it’s really only attention.
Doja Cat explores this theme in her new song Attention, in which she pushes back against the fan-artist relationship. Rapping “you follow me but you don’t really care about the music” emphasises the complicated way that fame can suppress art by turning her into the product, rather than her music. She highlights the inhumane, vacuous projections we aim at celebrities and the bizarre snowball of fame. Mocking the impossibility of what the market wants, the chorus paints a being who doesn’t ‘bite’ or speak up, someone who doesn’t feel (‘doesn’t get depressive’) and who doesn’t need love, only attention: “Hold it like it’s precious. It don’t need your lovin’, it just needs attention…” She sings like a siren, sweetly crooning, as if an industry exec drawing an audience towards a caged creature.5
Doja touches too on the expectation of self-deprecation once success is reached. Across the board, women are rarely allowed to own their achievements and even a humble attitude may tempt a public primed to push someone off their pedestal.
On a recent episode of I Weigh, London Hughes speaks about how black women, in particular, are not permitted to be vocally proud of their achievements. When famous people are envied, and sexism and racism still underpin our world, it’s almost impossible to own your success. The only acceptable course of action is to be humble to the point of self-deprecation, and to be dismissive while not being ungrateful. To speak enough of the hard work, but not too much (because then you’re taking too much credit, omg you are so arrogant!!!). When navigating this hazardous territory it begs the question: How can one even enjoy the perks of fame?
Doja too highlights this, exclaiming “I’ve been humble, I’m tired of all the deprecation… Let me flex”.
When so many aspects of fame are de-humanizing and tinged with sacrifice, why are the poor creatures not able to celebrate their spoils? This is their life now! May as well live it unapologetically. Of course, there are modest reasons people seek fame, including the potential for financial stability or perhaps furthering outreach for advocacy or social justice work. Often jobs like acting and music are tied to fame as representing a symptom, or a pinnacle of success.
The more I analyse it, the more complicated it seems — fame is a force that morphs. It can shift seamlessly from something symbiotic to something destructive, or from something to be leveraged into something that is uncontrollable. It can overcome both the person and the art. Fame is a moving, breathing beast and it can move you forward, throw you off, or fuck you up. Having a platform when you have a voice is powerful. Having a platform when you don’t know your voice is traumatic.6 Having a platform that’s held aloft is tenuous. The power can go both ways.
Being creatively boxed in or becoming so ‘big’ that your art is forgotten is a justifiable concern (the way Doja Cat presumedly feels, although her ability to then spin it into more musical dynamite is applaudable). The oversized expectation can be crushing. Poet Maggie Smith spoke of the anxiety that came with sudden fame: “I was able to write my first three books without having a sense of reader expectations,” she said. “But how do I go on doing this and pretend no one’s watching?” Within a fickle and competitive environment this pressure only encourages individuals to be artistically stuck —changing may confuse people! It may disappoint them! Or God forbid, a pivot or readjustment may leave room for someone younger and fresher.
To that end, fame can be creatively stifling: Jennifer Lawrence has talked about how actors are required to observe people in order to play characters, but her fame became so intense that she wasn’t able to observe anyone, because “everybody was observing me.” More than that, the volatile nature of public favour fell so hard upon her head that she retreated for years. This came after a long period of being hailed as the coolest in Hollywood, unfailingly relatable, and all-round beloved. Suddenly Lawrence became subject of public hate, seemingly for no reason other than being successful. Besides the sexist implications this may have, the actress is just one example of how fame can potentially open doors and shut them.
Taylor Swift’s remarkable resilient and creative shapeshifting has seen her barrel through relentless temperature changes and continuously smash whatever new box she’s been placed in. She talks about this in her documentary Miss Americana documentary:
“The female artists have reinvented themselves 20 times more than the male artists. They have to or else you’re out of a job. Constantly having to reinvent, constantly finding new facets of yourself that people find to be shiny. ‘Be new to us, be young to us, but only in a new way and only in the way we want. And reinvent yourself, but only in a way that we find to be equally comforting but also a challenge for you. Live out a narrative that we find to be interesting enough to entertain us, but not so crazy that it makes us uncomfortable.”
We’re, at all times, mouths-open voraciously hungry for more content, and celebrity culture is just one morsel on the way to our next bite. Celebrities more than ever feel relevant in a commodified way. With social media, the collapsed space between celebrity and fan has only enhanced the fervour of fandom, or more so, imbued it with an entitlement that didn’t once exist. I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve DM’d a couple of tick-approved celebs from time to time. The worst part is how casually I did it, forgetting until a few days later when I spotted an unexpected name in my DM’s.7
During the Marilyn Monroe era, part of the fabric of fame was the exclusionary glamour. The air of mystique began with the business and extended to the ‘stars’, whose glittery personas were propped up by some hidden, inscrutable humanity. Marilyn Monroe wouldn’t be seen in the wrong light. Today, celebrities appear on someone else’s social media account, captured surreptitiously in grainy resolution, zoomed in from across a dimly lit bar.
To be human is certainly no crime. In fact, it may benefit a celebrity to be humanized. Except that fame, unfortunately, doesn’t work like that. The famous are now trapped between God-like status and fallible human, hung up by strings and pulled in both directions. What to do then, when both the public and media have their own understanding of your personhood? When, at times, they have your narrative in their hands? Surely then, social media can be a tool to project your own voice — the real voice.
The issue then is that social media cannot embody our authentic selves. By reaching for personal autonomy there’s a chance of increasing followers, which again could serve a career, or further establish a dynamic of surveillance and public ownership. Like Doja Cat who’s talent continues to perpetuate her fame even though she actively raps her disgust of it.
Olivia Rodrigo mentioned that when she became famous, she remained the same person, complete with the same insecurities. It’s up to the individual whether their changed circumstances influence their ideas and attitudes, or reconfigures their friendship. What is harder to shift are the insecurities, the habits and human frailties that already exist. Underneath it all, you are still the child you once were.
Other feelings are ushered in with things like money and fame – guilt perhaps, distraction, uncertainty (how to best spend it, how to enjoy it), imposter syndrome, anxiety (how to maintain, how to invest). Some people, like Dax Shepard have talked extensively about how he still suffers from money anxiety – it will never be enough – because of his less affluent upbringing and childhood. Money trauma as a child will translate into adulthood, and the mentality proves difficult to shift.
Amelia Dimoldenberg, creator of Chicken Shop Dates has talked about fame in a way of feeling like a Town Mayor. People constantly greeting her on the street with a one-sided familiarity that she finds best to feign back. Treating approaching strangers as friends and imagining the interactions as normal have been ways to avoid spiralling about the actual absurdity. Despite having millions of online followers, being a successful content creator (writer, producer, businesswoman, editor, interviewer/quasi-comedian), she gets nervous being around other celebrities at a ’higher level’.
Where it slides from well-known celebrity to downright famous is unclear, although there are certainly different scales of fame. At a certain point, for people like Taylor Swift, simply existing outside as a human seems impossible. Swift has spoken about the normalcy of life when she’s in her house, and that when she’s outside she needs to become a persona. Fodder for the bored spectator, it makes sense that a nascent celebrity relationship would be ushered indoors, in private or elite spaces.
How unimaginable a task to then go on and date someone else. A natural bypass would be seeking out others who are from that ‘world’ – someone who understands, someone who’s protected somewhat from the public’s ruthless claws. Someone who’s eyes have already lost that wide, innocent gaze. How that could possibly be worse.
Meanwhile, celebrities merely act as a conversation buffer for regular folk. If you are struggling to connect or relate to a co-worker or person at a party, at least you can assume they will know T.Swift.
The damaging aspects of fame, and the gravitational pull towards it, are at its core why I’m interested in a world without fame. The idea of an alternate model — if one could exist. Whether it’s our responsibility as a society to respectfully dethrone those in ‘glamorous’ positions. Maybe it all comes back to capitalism. With that said, I don’t think it’s possible to exist in a world without fame because I think people will always idolize celebrities, and I think people will always seek fame.
Ultimately, it’s the lifestyle we’re most captivated by – our fantasies about what their lives are and how it transforms them into a magical being. Maybe we will never stop being obsessed with the Joneses. Everything in our Western World suggests to us that they are living the dream. And while we know it can’t be real, we’re quick to delude ourselves into thinking it can be. Deep down we want something to aspire to. We want success, we want validation. We all want to shoot for the stars. We are drunk on our own imagination, enamoured by that glittering film between us and them — overlaying our own reflection upon their shimmering, otherworldly silhouette.
Taylor Swift is a hit QUEEN. No wonder her concerts go for hours. It’s easier than choosing between her years long award-winning repertoire.
Yes, I do consider Taylor Swift a musical genius of almost savant proportions.
And I don’t just mean the suffering, starving artist, which I think can be romanticised, problematic bullshit. I’m talking about the more scientific, biological or psychiatric reasoning behind this.
Demons (from her new 2023 album Scarlet) is another angry, punchy anti-fan song and one of my favourites.
And often even with a platform, artists are muzzled by their management, publicists, yadda, yadda.
To clarify, they had NOT responded, I just saw that I had begun a potential thread with them. (Unseen, thank you very much.)