Celebrities, generally speaking, are fairly irresponsible or selfish—out for themselves. They have less reason than us not to be. They have rare opportunities to do whatever they want whenever they want. And not having been raised (as aristocrats once were) for their privileged lives, they are usually woefully unprepared to live them well.. Tiger Woods’ escapades are legendary only in number. His was an exaggeration of the typical celebrity propensity to think of oneself in the moment and then buy oneself out of the consequences later. Tiger, of course, was known as that rare celebrity who gave equal, intense time to both his game and his family. And his admirable personal focus, we thought, was reinforced by his Buddhism. But it turns out his life is just another example of celebrity freedom, one magnified by being an actual billionaire..
The only reason al all men, promiscuous by nature, don’t live like Tiger, some of our scientists tell us, is that they’re constrained by the repressive conformity of bourgeois life. That repression makes sense for most of us, of course, because we lack what it takes to live without it. Tiger, of course, was cashing in not only on his golfing greatness but on his “role model” reputation, and it’s almost sad to think that all his (surely fake) rehabbing and confessing might not work in getting him most of the latter back. At this point, Tiger remains a celebrity insofar as he remains a great golfer, and that will require more self-discipline than ever.
The criticism of celebrities as negative “role models” is a staple of social conservatives. A generation ago (I use this example because I’m old) Vice President Dan Quayle criticized writers of the hit show Murphy Brown for allowing the lead character to have a baby out of wedlock. The character Murphy Brown, a celebrity TV journalist on the show, was, in fact, a role model for many ambitious American women. As socially conservative criticism, Quayle’s comments were flawed by the fact the Murphy Brown made a pro-life choice; she to some extent put her baby before her career and certainly before her personal freedom. The real issue is that it’s no big deal for a rich celebrity woman to have a baby on her own, but that’s not the case for most women. The mom Murphy really can buy her way out of what would for most women be the tough and lonely consequences of her irresponsibility. A conservative would say that TV shouldn’t celebrate the celebrity separation of parenting from marriage for the sake of the overwhelming majority of our children. A pro-choice critic might actually complain that it was too easy for Murphy to keep her productive and fulfilling way of life while not having an abortion. For ordinary aspiring career women, the choice is at least somewhat more stark.
Either way, the problem is that if we look up to celebrities as role models we might be tempted to destroy our own lives by attempting to live as freely or irresponsibly as they do. And “the culture of celebrity” creates the impression that the only reason we must be more responsible is that we lack the freedom from necessity that celebrities enjoy. It also creates the impression that we’re not allowed to rank celebrities according to their moral fiber or admirable exercise of personal responsibility. That may be why, of course, that in general we allow celebrities to be trashier than ever, and why they bother less than ever to hide their trashiness from us. (To be fair, the endlessly intrusive and shameless media makes it just about impossible for any celebrity to have the space required to seem to be a moral exemplar.) The shamelessness shared by the celebrities and the media is one reason why very young people who are lost enough to be stuck with video searches for role models way too often look, talk, and act trashier than ever.
Every judgmental observation of that kind admits of many edifying exceptions and nuanced qualifications, such as the relatively innocuous (so far) Taylor Swift among the mainstream teen-oriented performing celebrities and the pop Christian counterculture that attracts a significant segment of the young (especially but not only in my southern part of our country). It’s true that even Taylor doesn’t claim to be all about chastity, and too much of pop Christianity is more about emotion than habituation
I can honestly say that I can’t think of a young person I know who is obviously “going somewhere” who is more than amused or diverted by celebrities. Certainly the newly-minted professors who in their postmodern way are developing “celebrity theory” don’t actually orient their personal lives around the persons they study. As far as I can tell, the intelligently artistic young used to take musical celebrities—such as Dylan or the Beatles or the Grateful Dead—more seriously than they do now. That may be —although there are throwback exceptions such as Bono and Springsteen (neither young and each well past his musical prime)—because musical celebrities don’t take themselves as seriously as role models as they used to do.
