Paris Hilton in Jail: a Look at Celebrity Worship

Paris Hilton is now in jail, it has been reported. Phew! Perhaps we might now hope for a period of calm and silence around that young woman. Might the enforced incarceration even teach her some humility and a more caring, and responsible attitude?

All the fuss around her has got me wondering whether this generation is any more celebrity mad now than we were in our youth? My conclusion is that I don't think we were any less of being celebrity worshippers, but something has changed dramatically during that time to affect the cult of celebrity, as illustrated by this little tale.

She was dressed in a habit, the only thing visible being her face, the sign of having taken vows to serve God exclusively as a nun. At that time, 45 years ago, nuns were unduly cloistered and had to behave in the most genteel way in public. I was a boarder at the convent school where we were looked after by nuns during the school term. But this particular lady stood out for me because she was the first nun I ever saw dancing energetically and unashamedly to Elvis Presley songs. Elvis unknowingly reached across the world, to little Jamaica and to a nun in our convent, who spread her infectious love of Elvis to many of her charges. They bought his records, talked about him non-stop, swooned when they saw his picture, and screamed when they heard him sing. There was nothing like it. Elvis was the extreme end of celebrity worship for us, but we thought there was nothing better than Gina Lollobrigida, Brigette Bardot, Cary Grant, Clarke Gable, and the only Black star at the time, the cool and handsome Sidney Poitier. Not to mention singers and bands like the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Ben E King.

We were hungry for news of our stars, always going to their latest films and keeping up with the gossip mainly through magazines and newspapers. However, it was more difficult to buy our favourite singer's records because we weren't as affluent as today's youngsters so a portable radio was a must for every young fan. We would exchange priceless scraps of gossip which had been passed down through many mouths, changing every time, ever so slightly in the telling. By the time it had made the full rounds, each bit of gossip had been elaborated out of all proportion. But hero-worship was great and something that every cool kid did, especially as it was done from afar. We could never get near our heroes, so they always remained mysteriously unattainable and even more appealing because of that distance. We weren't interested in pulling them down from their pedestal, but with keeping them there as much as we could. Of course, there was no chance of ever meeting our celebrities in person, unless they did a tour.

Carefully controlled lives
The agencies and studios controlled the lives of their stars with an iron hand. Nothing got out about them which was not approved and you heard only the positive bits. Stars remained publicly glossy throughout their careers and when they fell from grace, they fell with a bang to become has beens. You never heard of anyone being an alcoholic, no matter how boozy they were, or going to anything called rehab. Everything was kept under wraps to preserve the halo effect around them. For example, only years later were we aware that Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey were having an affair (he was married). So all those films they did together with such a remarkable on-screen chemistry were not being faked. Again, it was revealed only 12 years ago that Rock Hudson was gay. That great hunk all women used to swoon over, feeling jealous of every woman he kissed on screen, preferred men. That bit of news would have killed his career dead if it had got out in the 50s and 60s.

And that's the biggest change for today's hero-worshippers: access to the celebrities. It seems that celebrity followers are no more intense than we were in our time. The only difference is that we did not have the access to the stars that they now have and so everything was more detached and controlled. Today's celebrities are available at the touch of a blog, on TV, on radio, on line, on MySpace, even in person. Thanks to the development of amazing technology, celebrity watching has evolved on a vast profitable scale which keeps them incessantly in the public eye, almost ad nauseam, and intrude into their lives in unacceptable ways. The never ending stream of gossip, photographs, videos and salacious news has reduced the currency of the celebrity to an all time low so that people are now famous just for appearing on TV...Not for any great film, song or good works, but simply for being famous for that important 10 minutes.