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Monthly arts and media columnWho wants to be a celebrity?When I was last teaching, I saw celebrities all the time: Elton John, Will Smith and Beyonce to name but a few. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because the rich and famous had enrolled their children at my school. It was because with the revamping of the BBC in Langham Place, Radio 1 was moved to a location directly opposite the building that I was teaching in. The main entrance was now in full view of all of the windows of the school, allowing both students and staff unprecedented visual access to the morning show’s guests. Get a peek of a starWhen students were late to lessons, one only had to pull out one’s binoculars (essential for the celebrity spotter) and search amongst the throng of paparazzi and blue uniforms before sighting the tardy miscreant. Then it was a matter of a quick phone call via a friend’s mobile to summon the star-struck individual back to class. I must confess that although this led to an inevitable increase in detentions, I could fully understand the attraction. When I was 14, my friends and I travelled to Bayswater at 6.00 am one Saturday morning and sat for four hours in the freezing cold on the doorstep of a house that purported to be that of Morten Harket, lead singer of the boy band Aha. We did indeed get a peek of the star and that was enough to satisfy us, even if it was as he was running down the road as fast as he could to get away from us. What is it that gets us going about famous people? Most commentators recognise the desire that we have to connect ourselves in some way to a glamorous lifestyle. There is a thrill in making contact, maybe even being a part of a world that is normally only seen from afar. It is a world that young people in particular long to be a part of. On Channel 4’s Rock Schoolâ the narrator told us that one in six of the pupils interviewed thought that being a celebrity was a viable career path for them. The X factor auditions are also testimony to the genuine expectation held by the contestants that, if they ‘wanted it enough’, they too could be famous. The ultimate fairy story of an ordinary person gaining celebrity status has to be Chantelle on Celebrity Big Brother. The 23-year-old secretary from Essex was planted in the house as a joke and then ended up winning. The message is clear; you too can be famous with very little effort and when that happens, everyone will praise you and shower you with the wealth and glory that you deserve. Exploiting vanity?The cult of celebrity couldn’t be further away from the mindset that Christians are encouraged to adopt. Jesus, the only human ever to deserve praise and glory from everyone everywhere, sensationally chose to make it his goal to be a servant to all. Paul urges us in the book of Philippians to have this same attitude. ‘Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others better than yourselves’ (Philippians 2.3). Without this attitude, famous human beings will only succeed in displaying their selfishness to the nation. It is easy to make a selfish person look a fool and it is even easier to get people to watch them doing it. In getting famous people to fall flat on the ice, to pretend to be a cat or to throw up after eating caterpillars, our media have got themselves a format that exploits vanity and conceit. Millions of viewers love to watch because they consider that if they were in the same position, they would come across much better. However, the Bible tells us that our lives are in fact being watched very closely to see who we give praise and glory to. Is it ourselves? Other people? Or is it Christ Jesus, the celebrity who knows everything about our vanity and yet still invites us to know him eternally? Eleanor Margesson© Evangelicals Now - March 2006 |