Sep 25 2008
FOLLOW UP ON ESCAPISM
ANYONE WHO DOESN’T BELIEVE MY CLAIM ABOUT ESCAPISM IN YESTERDAYS BLOG SHOULD LOOK UP THE CUSTODY CASE FOR GLORIA VANDERBILT DURING THE DEPRESSION.
The idea that a trial over what would happen to a little girl being such big news is interesting. Had it not been the Vanderbilt family fighting, nobody would have cared. Add on top of that, the fact that this trail happened during the Great Depression and still managed to grab headlines, really says something about the American idolization of the famous.
Americans thrive on celebrity scandal. We live for it. Even people who claim not to care about celebrity gossip usually do secretly pay attention to it. If this weren’t true it there wouldn’t be a gossip industry because it wouldn’t be profitable.
I single out the American idolization of celebrity because our country is the most celebrity obsessed. Other countries have celebrities, but there are far less. While there may be just as many gossip columns and reportedly more abundant paparazzi, they are focused for the most part on royals.[1]
“Celebrity worship,” the psychoanalyst Ernest van der Haag says, “is directly traceable to the basic and continuing need for authority figures.”[2]
It is my opinion, because of these two factors, that Americans are so enthralled in the lives of celebrities. We don’t have royalty here so we look up to the people who are recognizable and those with more money and possessions than the average person will ever conceivably have as people we want to be like.
Another theory of why people idolize the famous and why, therefore, they cared so much about little Gloria Vanderbilt is that, in fact, we ourselves want to be “somebodies.” That was Wyatt Cooper’s theory. He said that most people struggle, from the time they are born until their death, to twist themselves into becoming a person other people will want to be like. People want, he stated, to be unique and distinct in some way. We all have a right to cherish our specialness, Cooper explains, but it isn’t enough for us to cherish it, we want others to as well.
Some people are allowed momentary glory, the star football player in high school or the girl who is mistaken for a famous starlet at an airport. Cooper calls this, “a trick of the light, a moment of illusion…and the terrible reality that follows is a blank white, sheet on which northing is written.” It makes the idolization even worse.[3]
There is a common misconception that since celebrities are rich, they are obviously happy, however, this is not always the case. You constantly hear stories about the rich and famous, the ones who are thought to have it all, having killed themselves and we can’t understand it. Cooper, however, did understand it. “The celebrity who gets up in the morning and looks in the mirror to brush his teeth, doesn’t see a celebrity staring back at him,” he explained. “He sees a face with a new broken capillary, a loose filling that needs fixing and skin that is drying and dying.”[4] There are dozens of tabloids that just love to display an un-flattering picture and story of such imperfections. The primary reason for this is because people buy them mainly because it makes the consumer feel better about him or herself and his or her life. People of the Depression who had nothing, financially speaking, could look at Gloria Vanderbilt, a 10 year old who had more money than most people could even dream about, and see that money really doesn’t buy happiness.
The Trial also acted as a form of escapism for the people of the time.
[1] John Connolly, John Cook, “Shooting Stars: Hollywood vs. The Paparazzi It’s War!,” Radar Summer 2007
[2] Barbara Goldsmith, “The Meaning of Celebrity,” New York Times 5 Dec. 1983
[3] Wyatt Cooper, “Does Everybody Want to be Somebody,” Harper’s Bazaar May 1971
