Portrait

today, as i sat with my friends, although i was engrossed in some other work, i was inclined to listen to their very animated conversation. they were talking about Paris Hilton, and what an overall loser she is. what is she famous for? she doesn’t sing, (but then neither does ashlee simpson) she doesnt act, (but then neither does keanu reeves) and she mostly certainly has not proven herself to be a follower of mother teresa or florence nightingale. all she is famous for, is her last name, and the video footage of her having sex with someone or the other, that, once a month or so, gets routinely released on the internet. so why do we bother tracing her footsteps so carefully? why do we bother making it a point to snap photos of her whenever possible? why do we bother dropping everything we’re doing, and everything we COULD be doing, and talk about her?

we care so much about ‘celebrities’, and what they do with their lives. we listen to every word of eminem’s song ‘mockingbird’, and cluck our tongues, saying ‘he must have such a hard life’. well yeah, so did half the Sri Lankan population. we see michael jackson in his fall from grace, stumbling around the supreme courts in his pyjama trousers and a dinner jacket, and whisper, saying ‘it must be hard’. well yeah, it’s probably harder for the kids in ethiopia. we listen to the late aailyah’s song, ‘i miss you’, with all the entertainment industry’s most famous black faces contributing a second of their time on the video, and sigh, shaking our heads, saying, ‘poor her. she died so young’. well yeah, so did all those kids who got swept away by the tsunami. why do we care so much? why do we mourn the death of lisa left eye lopez from TLC? why do we mourn the disbanding of westlife? why do we mourn the separation of brad pitt and jeniffer aniston? hello reality. our concern is no longer a concern. it’s an obsession.

we stalk them. we admire them. we LIVE through them.

sometimes i think but WHY? why them? is it the natural human inclination to be jealous of what you cannot have? some deep rooted psychological desire we have in us, to sub consciously want that kind of life? what is it that we lust after so eagerly? the money, the fame? i dont think so. i somehow believe it’s a lot simpler than that.

they are our escape.

bill clinton had an extra marital affair with monica lewinsky. so? men cheat on their wives everyday. even worse than that, men treat their wives like shit, beat them up, rape them, abandone them, neglect them AND cheat on them. but when bill clinton did it, they put it in all the papers, talked about it on all the news channels, people bill clinton didn’n even know existed had heated debates about it on larry king live and tonight’s show with jay leno, they wrote books about it. all the other millions of women who suffered domestic violence instead of marital bliss, continued to suffer in silence. britney spears got roaringly drunk and behaved like a ’slut’. so? teengers get drunk everyday. even worse than that, they beat each other up, slash eash other’s tires, harrass each other’s significant other’s, ‘misbehave’ freely in public, have meaningless sex too early in their lives, AND come back tomorrow to do it all over again. but when britney spears did it, they talked about it, rick dees gave out hot new details, they got it on tape and put it all over the world wide web. no one ever told those millions of other teenagers to take life a little slow, and they woke up the next morning to live in tainted shoes, in regret and shame of their drunkan mistakes. michael jackson has been accused of child molestation. so? children get sexually abused everyday, and even worse than that, they get used for labour and slavery, are kept from an education which is the fundamental right of any child, have seen their parents been slain right in front of their very eyes, have been forced to walk the streets of colombo, or the beaches of galle trading their young, tender bodies for money. but when michael jackson did it, they transmitted the scenes from outside the court room live on every international new channel, made it their hot new headline for the month to come, made sure to tsk tsk and ridicule him, asked the opinions of many important people and put it up in every magazine. no one penalized the paedophiles not willing to sleep with anyone older than 13, the nightmare of all the little girls in brothels in indonesia, or the brothers, fathers and grandfathers who landed the girls in their families in the teenage mother’s home right here at home in moratuwa.

we are in denial about the state that the real world is in. they are our escape. our justification of all that is impure in our communities. they are our way of saying ’see? that only happens to people like that. we’re good’. they are also our way of saying, ‘what? rape? murder? child abuse? what’s that? look, rob thomas is getting married!’. they are our escape from the real thing, the real tragedies.

admit it. we killed princess di, we inspired spears to release ‘my prerogative’, and we’re all great big hypocrites.

maybe if we spent less time focussing on them, and more time focussing on us, we’d actually get around to making that difference that everyone talks about.