Breaking news on the StarLit. page– Thanks to celebritiesindisgrace blog star Linda Sienkiewicz, we receieved permission from the great poet Thomas Lux to post his ‘star-inspired’ poem FRANKLY, I DON’T CARE. It’s on our StarLit. page. Thomas Lux is the author of over 10 books of poetry, a Guggenheim and NEA fellow and a brilliant writer. His poem (READ IT ALL on our StarLit. page) ends with these haunting lines, quoted by Linda in her own StarLit. piece:
“We the people, the day-laboring citizens, need to love
those of you larger than us, those whose teeth
are like floodlights against loneliness,
whose great gifts of song, or for joke telling,
or thespianly sublime transformations,
take us, for whole moments at a time, away
from ourselves…”
Lux brings up burning questions, if you’re hooked on celeb. gossip. To quote Nancy Kerrigan: Why, why, why? Share your thoughts/poems/writings/rants. Are you an unwilling celeb. addict? Is it ‘just fun’ or have you ever reached ‘stalker’ or ‘gawker.com‘ level? Do you hide any celeb. obsessions? I’m interested in the shame/fame connection. Is there ‘shame’ on both sides of obsessions with ‘disgraced celebs’? Do celeb.s help you ‘forget yourself’? Or the opposite?
A friend believes you can have a ‘celebrity self’– hers is Madonna. You follow your Celebrity Self through the years and relate to them as a warped reflection of you. Do any of you have celebrity selves? (Feel free to post under any name, folks). WDYT?
PS: I love what we’ve gotten about First Celeb. crushes. Keep ‘em coming– & read all about Harrison Ford fantasies, Ann Margaret epiphanies, Cinnamon on Mission Impossible & more– in comments on the FIRST TIME ‘Post’ below & on StarLit…
Elizabeth, I think you’re on to something with that shame/fame thing. Let’s take it for a spin.
(1) Celeb notices inner secret shame and flaunts it overtly (Elvis: I like gospel music, Bruce Springsteen: what’s so bad about being a redneck, etc)
(2) Audience resonates with secret shame artistically expressed, demands more of the same
(3) Celeb eventually runs out of artistic ideas, is reduced to living overtly shameful life.
(4) Audience resonates still more, because they don’t have to go to the extra trouble of parsing celeb behavior as art. Much easier: just keep watching the crawl for the next meltdown.
(5) Lather, rinse, repeat.
But the next Q about the shame cycle, of course, is where will it all end? How overtly shameful dare the celebs become? When do they just start looking like normal boring degenerates and lose their audience?
The Tootsie quote comes to mind. “Yeah, there’s a morals clause to get you out of your contract, but I can’t think of anything sick and disgusting you haven’t already done.”
Hi Litotes–
Yeah, we are on the same Fame/Shame page here, the same Lather Rinse Repeat cycle. Plus: love TOOTSIE too. I like your ‘next Q’: ‘How overtly shameful dare the celebs become’? Someone should write some wild Sci Fi to answer that one…
THANXX Litotes for deliniating the 5-step celeb.-addict Path– as you say, ‘where will it all end?’ XX– Elizabeth
When I go to a brilliant movie, say, something with Kate Winslet, I find myself becoming intensely Kate. And it only gets worse, the further I get into the story. When I leave the theatre and head for the bathroom, and look in the bank of mirrors, sometimes I’m surprised that I no longer look like Kate. We have some pretty wonderful female actors, so I have a large repertoire.
copyright Lise Haines
Lise, yes– I know exactly what you mean, definitely in that dazed interlude in movie theater bathroom mirrors– you pinpoint the moment. though it is not so much Kate W. for me; lately Anne Hathaway gets me going; after seeing Rachel Getting Married I felt like a glam. recovering drug addict for days– but in a ‘good way’…XX to this True Confession– Elizabeth
PS: And this just in on the StarLit. page; many Thanks to Tanya Eby; FROM TANYA:
Hey Blunder Woman » Blog Archive » My Confessions of Star Love Affairs
[...] I wrote a piece as a guest blogger for one of the instructors in my MFA program: the multi-talented Elizabeth Searle. Check out her blog here: http://celebritiesindisgrace.wordpress.com/starlit-your-star-inspired-writings/ [...]
PPS: Just wanted to add this from my 10-year-old son;
from WILL H., when I described Lise H’s comment above:
“ME TOO, ME TOO!”
(only for him, it’s after Star Wars…)
re: reply from LISE–
Lise Haines
I so relate, Will. May I be Natalie Portman?
from me:
me too, me too–
Natalie Portman rules!
thanks to Lise and Will for sharing/pinpointing that weird
post-movie syndrome– seems to happen, as Lise notes, mostly with the best movies… Elizabeth
I so relate, Will. May I be Natalie Portman?
Is that Lise Haines, author of the forthcoming Girl In The Arena?
I pilfered an advance copy – your book is hot, dark, and stark, sure to make a mark!
Thanks, Litotes!! Yes, the author of Girl in the Arena. My narrator, Lyn, has her own paparazzi concerns! I wonder if we will someday call this the Celebrity Age, like the Ice Age…
More like the Dark Ages II: Revenge of the Brainless
But yes, definitely an “age”, an eon in fact. All the more excruciating since it proceeds in 15 minute increments…