Mert NEWS-Why do we want celebrities to be ‘authentic’?
This may seem strange to say, but the quintessentially modern phenomenon of ‘celebrity’ expresses a very old philosophical problem — one of the oldest, in fact: the tension between the way things appear and the way they actually are. ‘Celebrity’ is, after all, all about the careful cultivation of appearance. But, much like in the history of philosophy, the ‘flat’, superficial world of celebrity generates its own fascination with what lies beneath the surface — who the celebrity ‘really is’ away from the glare of the cameras and the lights of the stage.
This already raises plenty of questions about why it is that we want to know the ‘truth’ about celebrities in the first place. But what happens when the very promise of transparency, of authenticity — of intimacy, even — becomes part of the carefully cultivated appearance of celebrity itself? That seems to be precisely what has happened with two glimpses recently afforded into the private lives of two of the biggest global celebrities of the past decade: Justin Bieber, through his YouTube series “Seasons”; and Taylor Swift, in a documentary directed by Lana Wilson, Miss Americana. Both promise access to the inner lives, the personal struggles, the excruciating vulnerabilities and private pain of their subjects; and yet both seem to be part of a larger, more calculated branding exercise designed to overcome reputational damage both performers have suffered.
What’s behind this almost ‘confessional’ tone adopted by Bieber and Swift? Is this something new, or is it celebrity culture’s latest adaptation to a social media saturated age — in which all our online interactions exhibit both a carefully cultivated appearance and a plaintive appeal to our own authenticity? What about those older Confessions — of Augustine, of Rousseau? Can their structure tell us anything about what it means both to know ourselves and to be known? And what about the example of artists like Bob Dylan, who assiduously refused commodification, and insisted on a kind of non-transparency, an unavailability to his fans?
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