If you look down on the genuine misery of those you consider beneath you, you’re not just being an arsehole, but a snooty one to boot. The very fact that you’re willing to get so annoyed by an irritating celebrity that you’ll gleefully jettison any notion of sympathy is surely a bright scarlet warning light indicating just how empty your spiritual gas tank has become.
Charlie Brooker on Kerry Katona’s meltdown
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It’s very hard to sympathise with someone for whom crisis, tragedy, and heartbreak have been scheduled, branded, and structured in a marketing strategy for most of her adult life. How many “exclusive secrets” can one person possibly “reveal” every week, for at least five years? Witness the fact that one of her contracted magazines was upset that she “revealed” the “truth” about her TV meltdown to Heatworld and not to them. A happy, contented, spiritually fulfilled Kerry would not sell magazines.
The moniker of the “British Britney” is actually quite appropriate. She probably can’t remember what it’s like to have an independent thought.
But are the Katonas, Goodys etc any worse than newspaper columnists who dissect their family life for a weekly fee, or the misery memoirists who have an entire section in the bookshops – probably with subsections: “Bummed by priests”, “Daddy didn’t pay enough attention” etc? Is there a difference?
There was an interview with Goody in OK the other week, and – other than it being brutal (“I know I’m going to survive cancer” said Goody; you probably won’t, said the interviewer. Nice!) I ended up warming to her. They asked her why she was doing the interview, and she answered: I need the money. Fair enough. Part of me thinks it’s the magazines’ – and even more, the readers’ – fault for elevating these people in the first place.
At the risk of throwing a half-baked idea into the pot, the celeb magazines aren’t that different from pornography. It’s the emotional equivalent of starting off by refusing to take your pants off, and seven years later you’re being gangbanged by midgets just to pay the bills. Or something :)
I dunno. I think there’s a big difference between thinking somebody’s an idiot and getting enjoyment from seeing them spiral out of control. But then, I can’t read about Amy Winehouse because it feels like the worst kind of voyeurism.
Sorry, missed a bit:
“How many “exclusive secrets†can one person possibly “reveal†every week, for at least five years? ”
A lot of that is the magazines, though. OK and Now are particularly bad for misleading coverlines. It’s not quite “I know you’re straight, but if you were forced at gunpoint to sleep with a woman, who would it be?” becoming “MY LESBIAN HELL WITH ANGELINA JOLIE!” on the front cover – but it’s not far off sometimes.