Or as I like to call it, the Simulation of Humanity. From Hero to Celebrity.

So a singer has died. I didn't know who she was. I didn't listen to her music. Why is it all over the media? She was not a hero, but a celebrity. I thought this would be a good time to bring up our current societies focus on celebrities vs. the past focus on heros.

"The Hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name"

The real question I see, is why are we so focused on entertainment as a society? I don't just mean music, but the "celebrity" life. Those peoples lives we follow for no good reason other than a corporate sponsor, we can follow their habits of drink, music, relationships, sex, and every other thing they do in life, that is really no different than anyone else. It is nothing but an amplified mirror of ourselves or who we think we want to be.

Very strange indeed.

"Formerly, a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary, to keep him properly in the public eye."

"The celebrity in the distinctive modern sense could not have existed in any earlier age, or in America before the Graphic Revolution. The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-known-ness.
His qualities - or rather his lack of qualities - illustrate our peculair problems. He is neither good nor bad, great nor petty. He is the human pseudo-event. He has been fabricated to satisfy our exaggerated expectations of human greatness. He is morally neutral. The product of no conspriacy, of no group promoting vice or emptiness, he is made by honest insturious men of high professional ethics doing their job, "informing" and educating us. He is made by all of us who willingly read about him, who like to see him on television, who buy recordings of his voice, and talk about him to our friends. His relation to morality and even to reality is highly ambiguous. "

Hope this turns to an interesting and thought provoking thread.

_FS

btt

It was probably all over the media because she was in a few movies people have seen, sold xxxxxx amount of records and she is in the upcomming Matrix 2 and 3 movies.  I'm not sure they have finished shooting those movies, so there might be a few problems.  

Do we care?  I do, someone's daughter, friend etc died.  We can relate a little because we might have seen them in a movie.  

We are focused on entertainment as a society because it is all around us.  Every house, car, work area has some forms of 'entertainment'  TV, radio, computer.  

It's weird when people seem to get so caught up in it that it envelopes their whole life. That is going over the edge.

But on a more supportive note, people go to work every day, day after day after day. They then come home and usually need something to help them escape from their own lives. TV and movies just seem to be a good and easy way to do it. So then you have these actors and actresses in your houses captivating your attention and in a way becoming part of your family. Maybe you could get into a debate about the fact that people should be spending time with their families at this point but that's a whole different arguement.

So the end result is that when one of these people get hurt or die then a lot of people get bummed out about it. It's sort of like it happened to someone that they know.

This girl is a black (at least mostly black in apearence) 22 year old who sang pop and R&B. I'm only familiar with one of her songs but then I listen mostly to classic rock. The main point where I became familiar with who she was back a about a year ago was when I saw her in a main roll opposite Jet Li in Romeo Must Die (yeah a kung fu movie). I was looking forward to seeing her in the Matrix followups but I guess that will be up in the air.

Does her death mean a lot to me? Hmmm, not such a big difference on the whole but it is still a young person who seemingly had so much ahead of her. I haven't really watched the news today so I didn't realize she had died until an earlier post on this site.

I guess the only part of them making such a big deal out of it is the result it has on some, making them think that they need to speak out about how little they care and joking about it.

Hmmmmm,,, a bunch of dudes on an assault weapon site who can joke when a young black R&B singer dies. No big suprise there. What a damn shame. I hope to god that they're not Christians. That would make the rest of us look bad.

That's a good point to bring up that we are spending so much time being "entertained" that we find "normal" life boring or not worth while, or to tired to get off the couch?

Spending time doing real things, other than emptying your mind so you can take in image based media, I would say is important to being a well rounded person who understands communication, and has a good relationship w/ his or her family.

I would argue that those who say ' i work 40 hours a week, and need to relax ' , have actually fallen into a trap set by tv programming, which ultimately is geared around consumerism.

Ultimately, I think that the everyday patterns that people find so boring, are actually perceived that way, because of what TV programming has to offer.

Think about it, TV programs are built entirely around getting people to watch, and once watched, to KEEP watching. To do this, they must continually present NEW things. New camera angles, new plot twists, new ideas, etc etc. Malipulating a base element of human constitution. Curiosity.

How much awareness and curiosity can a person put into their family, when it is being extorted in the name of ultimately selling you something?

_FS