Remember who was in the celebrity news way back in 1999?
The Spice Girls were still strutting their British girl-power stuff. Angelina Jolie was the twentysomething “it” girl. Tom Cruise was getting “sexiest star” and “beautiful people” of the year awards, still a long way from his Scientology/Oprah show meltdown. Madonna had made it through her Blond Ambition Tour and coffee table sex books, and was on to Kabbalah and her third or forth physical transformation. And Mike Myers was still considered funny.
Each of these famous folks were all a bit windy and tiresome in their own ways. (Nothing much has changed there.) But the celebrity crop of that year had one thing going for it: the whole gang had some degree of skill or measurable talent in their chosen fields. (For that matter, they all had chosen fields.)
Skip ahead a decade, though, and things have changed radically. Today’s celebs don’t need skills. They don’t need to do funny imitations, deliver a punch line or even be able to string multisyllabic words together for fame. They just have to let a camera follow them around and allow the masses to watch as they air their dirty laundry (sometimes quite literally).
1999’s EDtv, a comic flick about a guy who lets a camera crew film his every flirt and flush, has come to reality—reality television, that is. And the ’00s have transformed any number of reality show participants—from an endless stream of Kardashians to a bunch of dancing nobodies to the Real Housewives of inane-ia—into the latest water-cooler fodder.
Jon and Kate Gosselin’s marriage unravels as the barbs fly. (Join us next season as Kate looks for a new love.) Hugh Hefner’s ex-live-in girlfriend Kendra marries an NFL player and gets her own time slot. And Heidi Montag leans on all her MTV reality show experience and … pouts while continuing to breathe!
How has this happened? Why is anybody watching this stuff? Who’s to blame? How do we go back to what once was? You know, back to when celebrities at least had some kind of a real job.
I can’t even believe I’m asking for that. Maybe it’s like a frog in the gradually heating water kind of thing. Will we soon all be wishing for the good old Paris Hilton days?
—shudder—
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