Q: What turns Paris Hilton and Stephen Hawking on? A: They both love fame
When one of the world’s greatest intellects happily admits to being seduced by fame, perhaps the rest of us should stop being so sniffy about it
OUR celebrity culture rarely goes long unbemoaned. Earlier this year, Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring prompted another round of hand-wringing. According to the disgruntled, it was absurd that the likes of Paris Hilton should be famous. It was even more absurd that people should steal celebrities’ underwear and in doing so achieve notoriety of their own. Making a film about the ninnies involved was still more lamentable, and going to see it almost as bad.
All the same, even those most aghast seemed unsurprised: no one can deny that obsession with stardom is rampant. Research has suggested that about 40% of adults expect to enjoy their 15 minutes of fame in some guise or other. Many more are enthralled by those who achieve this goal, often immoderately.
Psychologists at the UK’s University of Leicester found that 36% of a sample of 600 adults were afflicted to some degree by what was termed “celebrityworship syndrome”. The most extreme sufferers believed that the object of their ardour knew them and declared themselves ready to die for their hero.
Thus, celebrity culture has been branded the defining dis- ease of our age, ravaging what remains of our civilisation. New media are seen as rendering the plague terminal as we spend ever more of our lives reading Stephen Fry’s tweets and perusing cellulite on the Mail Online’s “sidebar of shame”.
If only people could attend instead to something that really mattered, they would soon forget their foolish fondness for fame. Something, perhaps, like the workings of the universe?
Stephen Hawking has actually spent most of his life addressing the conundrums of the cosmos. A new documentary, Hawking, enables the British theoretical physicist and cosmologist to tell his story in his own words. It reveals that the great man has indeed relished probing the limits of knowledge, but what really seems to excite him is the applause he has elicited from the rabble.
Neither the film nor its protagonist seem anxious to waste much time on explaining the hero’s discoveries. Instead, as Hawking turns his life into an imposingly epic narrative, we see him drinking in the adulation in thronged lecture halls and pursuing bizarre opportu- nities to bathe in the limelight. We watch him playing along with imbecile chat-show hosts and inflicting on their audiences grotesque attempts at banter. The impression left is that it is fun to prove that nothing existed before the big bang — but making the Guinness Book of Records for authoring the world’s longest-enduring best- seller is yet more gratifying.
Hawking even suggests that his embrace of fame caused the break-up of his first marriage. In the film, his first wife, Jane Hawking, says he became “the public wunderkind”. The couple “were engulfed and then swept away by a wave of fame and fortune. It got rather too much for me to cope with.”
The professor deserves points for owning up to his foible, but his scope for denial was perhaps limited. After all, Hawking has played himself in Star Trek. He has rescued Lisa Simpson from peril in Springfield and threat- ened to steal Homer’s theory that the universe is doughnutshaped.
Cinema’s stars sometimes affect disdain for their own lofty status. Press intrusion, they imply, is awful. Nonetheless, most of them eagerly grasp the trappings of fame, from money to power, sex and the best restaurant tables. There may be the occasional reclusive Greta Garbo, but there seem to be many more like Katharine Hepburn, who once remarked: “I didn’t have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.”
Just what is supposed to be wrong with the pursuit of fame is not always made clear.
Plato disapproved of competition for praise on the grounds that it would tempt the great to bend to the will of the crowd.
Those who actually achieve fame are supposedly vulnerable to conditions such as “acquired situational narcissism”.
And fandom is held to be hardly less perilous. A Chinese study found that subjects who idolised celebrities performed less well at work or university.
In view of all this, you might wonder why either stars or fans bother, yet there is an answer. The human condition presents everyone, even intellectual giants such as Hawking, with some harrowing realities. For both the famous and their followers, the celebrity culture can make bearable what otherwise would not be.
Perhaps, as some suggest, celebrity is becoming our religion. It has its rituals, such as red carpet appearances, its relics, such as David Beckham T-shirts, and its festivals, such as fan conventions.
In this communion, the likes of Hilton are not the only kind of pastor. “Nelson Mandela is a celebrity,” said Chris Rojek, a professor of sociology at London’s City University, “and his influence is pretty positive.” Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, a British thinktank, had her doubts about the celebrity culture. But, she said: “It’s certainly reasonable that someone like Hawking should become a celebrity because of his important contribution to society.”
We have learned much from Hawking about our universe. Now, perhaps, we can learn from him something important about ourselves. — © The Guardian