Perving into the lives of the rich and famous
Pride swells when I think of the things New Zealand, compared to my native America, does not have: poisonous snakes, a powerful fundamentalist religious movement, ubiquitous and cheap fizzy drinks, that president . . .
Near the top of that list is a culture obsessed with the private lives of political leaders and entertainers. In New Zealand, we generally try to keep our collective nose out of the personal affairs of our best-known people. This is, after all, where famous people from around the world come to be anonymous and – in public at least – ignored.
When I first moved to New Zealand in the late 90s, Georgina Beyer was the mayor of a little town in the North Island. It was incredible to me at the time that she was transgender. Where I was raised, only Christian, usually heterosexual, men were mayors of provincial towns. It was an early sign for me of not only my adopted country’s tolerance to difference, but also the Kiwi tendency to resist conflating personal characteristics and lifestyle choices with measures of integrity, professionalism and character.
These cultural inclinations to respect the privacy of public people lives on – the media has never published an unofficial photo of Baby Neve. Who of us hasn’t caught sight of John Campbell, Anika Moa, a Topp Twin, or Richie McCaw having a coffee or at the supermarket and looked the other way? The shop assistant on Ponsonby Road who served Katy Perry last year said, ‘‘We didn’t say much to her – we pretty much treated her like any other customer.’’
That’s the story, New Zealand. Even very tall poppies get treated like the rest of the garden in our beloved country. And yet, as social media and reality television exert their mighty forces across the world, the private becomes more public every day. Watching strangers meet and go through intimate mental and physical manoeuvres towards couplehood can be witnessed from our couches on mainstream TV. Sadly, our state-owned TV channels are champions of this genre.
We can see Shaanxso, New Zealand’s #1 YouTuber, give a play-by-play of her morning routine, including brushing her teeth and her preference to stay wrapped in her towel after a shower. Five million of us have viewed this.
It’s no surprise all media feel the need to keep up with the creep of an increasingly un-private world.
New Zealand is tempted – aren’t we? – to break our own unwritten codes of respect when it comes to meandering into the intimate lives of our leaders. The Jami-Lee Ross brouhaha of a few months ago came provocatively close to doing an American-style expose, with the publication of verbatim texts from a former lover, bitchy insults between leading politicians, and stabbing analyses of Ross’ condition following his forceful admission to a mental health unit.
The storyline wasn’t too far from that of America’s Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest person thanks to all our online purchases on Amazon.com. This scandal, which broke in January, has it all: adultery after decades of marriage, five-star trysts with another well-known figure, a leading newspaper owned by Bezos’ enemy, a dick pic, and maybe even the involvement of the president of the United States.
It was hard to resist reading what Bezos thought were confidential texts stating his love for his mistress. So I didn’t. With eyes half-shut and face squished in embarrassment for a guy worth more than the other half of the world’s population combined, but who surely doesn’t deserve this, I read them guiltily. I felt for a moment as if I were watching porn, alone, or nursing a bottle of vodka during a PTA meeting.
Then I thought that no matter how selfish or adulterous or untouchable people are, the rest of us shouldn’t be perving on someone’s life like that. Quenching my curiosity to see into Bezos’ personal life without his permission came at his expense.
Media, of which I am a part, teeters on a fine line between unnecessarily prying into the dark corners of people’s lives and dutifully uncovering information on public figures that hold them accountable in a healthy democracy. But decisionmakers in the media sector are influenced by the same forces as any other market, and consumer demands are one of the most powerful. In other words, if Kiwis want juicier, more explicit information about the private lives of our public people, they will probably get it.
One of the few paparazzi photographers who has found some work here claims ‘‘it’s impossible to make a fulltime living as a paparazzo in New Zealand’’ because ‘‘there isn’t the market to sell the stuff’’. For now, that’s a market Kiwis should be proud we don’t have.