High on Hollywood, to our own detriment

Famous people (famous by virtue of a multi-million-dollar entertainment machine) who appear in court, for any reason, naturally magnetise human interest, catapulting people out of their own realities and into a manufactured one.

Sometimes, as is the case with starlets Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, there is a modicum of public interest driving the narrative — the topic of domestic abuse, for example, or gender-based violence — but ultimately, people are watching because they love drama.

It reminds me of the death of American comic book writer Stan Lee, when all hell broke loose on social media.

His passing signalled the end of an era, it’s true, but his work lives on.

It’s also true that many of the millions of people who likely mourned him hadn’t given him much thought while he was alive.

They enjoyed his comic books, which was his point, I think.

Watching the drama unfold as people paid their online respects reminded me of fandom, and how it’s changed, thanks to Facebook, Twitter and everything virtual in-between.

When I was eight years old, I fell in love with Sylvester Stallone. My ‘Sly’, as I called him, was the boxer chappie in the Rocky film series and he was the ultimate, heroic Eye of the Tiger.

So, as little people do, I wrote to him, fully believing that he would write back.

The cult of celebrity — or schlebrity — has probably been around since Neanderthal Bob took a stone to a stone and turned it into a hairbrush, immortalising himself in the memories of cave girls everywhere.

But that was then; and now, it seems that schlebdom has pushed too far — and we’re high on Hollywood, much to the detriment of credit cards and balanced emotions.

When songstress Amy Winehouse died, there was genuine grief over her untimely passing — but just too much personalised angst among strangers who knew only her music.

The issue, as I see it, is that we’re all completely overinformed.

At a click, I can find out what LA-based so-and-so ate for breakfast last Tuesday, the length of her last labour and how she manages the school run.

All this would be a bit of harmless fun, really, if it didn’t take over our lives. But it does.

It might also be useful to start recognising heroes in your own community.

I know several: botany expert and conservationist Caryl Logie, together with her author husband Bartle, who has steadily educated thousands of people about ecology, history and myriad other things that matter.

Then there are Kate and her dad Bob Meikle, small business owners, charitable towards both people and animals, and always available — no matter the time, and not for the money — in a crisis.

Thanks to the technological might of the 21st century, I cannot escape complete strangers appearing on my screen, and appearing to matter in my life.

How to stop? You can, says my friend Podge. Everybody suddenly becomes fabulously equal when you imagine them sitting on the loo.