Posted by
T. Thomas on Saturday, April 05, 2008 12:12:18 PM
The Romans at least had the foresight to place a slave on the chariots of returning conquerors to whisper in their ears that all fame is fleeing.
Hollywood has no such sense of irony.
Hollywood celebrity is a mercurial achievement that bears little relation to demonstrable talent. Notwithstanding the pretensions of fawning sycophants like James Lipton, there's nothing all that tricky about acting. It is a skill set wildly over-rewarded given its commonness and hardly the equivalent of mastering the violin. Success in the field is too often a matter not of hard work and sacrifice,but of pure dumb luck or nepotism.
Can we blame people then whose footsteps are cushioned on carpets of red, and whose appearance causes total strangers to rise to their feet, cheering and weeping in frenzied adoration, for believing to some degree in their own magical powers? As pampered nobles whose every word and gesture is fawned upon, and who perhaps occasionally are dogged by a disquieting sense of undeservedness, there often evolves in movie stars a desire to do something "meaningful" beyond mere acting with their celebrity. What more logical way to pacify this urge than to take up a popular issue and to focus their involvement with it as they would devour a new script, by finding the best way to be the center of attention? As spokespersons for any number of causes, Hollywood celebrities can stand self-righteously behind feel-good liberal prescriptions, ensuring themselves plenty of notice, all the while championing their causes with little inconvenience to either their busy schedules or majestic lifestyles. It has become for most an irresistible vanity.
Thus Barbra Streisand advises her devotees to hang their laundry out to dry instead of using the electric machine in order to save the planet, though no fly-by of her magnificent Malibu palace has ever revealed a single white panty fluttering in the bracing ocean breeze. Thus George Clooney scowls and preaches angrily to mankind about its lack of commitment to Darfur, only to interrupt his tirade to go film another brainless movie while out on the plains of the Sudan a thousand more Africans die. And thus Leonardo di Caprio spends tens of millions of dollars on a "green" condo on Riverside Drive and fancies himself a beacon of eco-righteousness, though the real trick would be showing his girlish fans how to live greenly on a doublewide budget.
Surrounded only by their sycophants, and hidden behind thick estate walls guarded by burly men in black, the vapid celebrities of Hollywood preach, preen and prattle. Though their dilettantism is obvious to all outside the treasured enclave, their hangers-on and colleagues will never speak to them of the emptiness of most of their gestures or of the rampant hypocrisy that frequently accompanies their impassioned moments of political involvement.
Pity somebody can't find a slave for movie stars to ride alongside them in their limos and whisper in their ears that not only is fame fleeting, but Hollywood political activism is hooey.