One of the few good things about doing so much travel for business, and hanging out in the club lounges and such is that you get to see a lot of celebrities of all types waiting for their flights.
The thing that always strikes me about these people is how incredibly normal they are.
Television (and worse, the movie screen) has a tendency to portray people as larger than life – which I’m sure is quite deliberate. But in real life, these celebrities are just ordinary people, usually quiet, and quite unassuming. Naturally there are some types of people who (deliberately or not) attract a mass of attention, from the media and the public – and many of these people foster the interest in the name of publicity.
But for the rest, just trying to be relatively inconspicuous as they fly home or to their next business destination, they are just normal.
Too many people I know suffer from becoming “star struck” around celebrities, completely failing to grasp the simple concept that these people are exactly like you or I, except for their ability to attract (or manipulate !) the media limelight. The only real differences with many of these people are how they have worked to gain the attention and publicity that comes with celebrity – which is actually all just a means to an end.
People are not (usually) born celebrities, it is their time in the spotlight which makes them seem to some people to be more than just human. The myth of celebrity is perpetuated purely for it’s own benefit. Fed by the adoration of the masses, the celebrity machine churns on.
Then again, I guess that’s what the movies are mostly all about – escapism, fantasy, pretend. So holding the celebrities up as somehow mystical and magical beings, serves the myth and helps people maintain that dream of unreality.
I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but people tend to not see the possibilities in themselves – they don’t see how people can (and do) invent celebrity – they don’t see how they can create their own dreams, they resign themselves to only ever living in someone elses dream.
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