The Celebral Cortex

Side Prediction: In the future, we are not going to
understand the fashion sense of our children.

Continuing from where I left off in my last blog, in a world where TV is a more personal medium and where there is greater accessibility to creative equipment, and the means to distribute those personal creations, I have to wonder what will become of those wonderful glittering stars and starlets that we are so used to obsessing about. This leads me to my next point in our little theoretical journey through the future...

PREDICTION 4. THE DEMISE OF CELEBRITY

I am going to start off this blog by saying that I hate celebrity. Now I am not saying I hate all celebrities, in fact there are some pretty cool ones out there. What I really hate is this obsession that our culture has developed with an elite set of individuals, which we allow to dominate the news. "Oh we lost how many troops in Afghanistan today, it doesn't matter because Paris Hilton bought a new dog." (I will not even go into my disgust at the talentless celebrities who are celebrities for no other reason than the fact that they know how to drink and work a video camera while in the bedroom.) In fairness, I am sure this is not a new thing, but I have to wonder if Rock Hudson and Cary Grant found themselves hounded by cameras and reporters with every step they took. There is no doubt in my mind that it has gotten worse.

However, in a future world where anyone can pick up a camera and make themselves a movie star or a sound recorder and make themselves a hit singer, can celebrity survive? I do not (hope)think so, mostly due to the fact that celebrity culture is built upon business and corporations. As much as many of Hollywood's elite would hate to admit that their own status rests in the hands of production companies, that is the way the industry tends to work. After all, if you cannot get hired to start in the big movies or be on the label to make that hit single, no one is going to call you a celebrity. Yet if the entertainment industry becomes more decentralized among independent artists and filmmakers producing and distributing their own art this removes the power more and more from the hands of big business. It is logical to then believe that the status of celebrity will start to decentralize as well. I mean in a future where movies, music, and TV have become so easy to produce and distribute I have to wonder how important the status of celebrity will be. If everyone in the world is suddenly truly capable of being famous does that make anyone famous anymore? Will the Oscars and Emmies become more like those participation trophies you receive at the end of the Little League season when you were a kid?...

Probably not. After all there is the element of fantasy that goes along with the obsession of celebrity. The idea that offers people a sort of release from life. People obsess about celebrities because they want to be them and they want to forget about their own humdrum lives. This is a truism of human nature. We envy and fantasize about the things we cannot have and the people we cannot be. Yet, even this argument brings us back to the bigger picture. In a world where there is social media, cheap and quick access to production technology, and humanity's driving artistic nature, why can't we all become celebrities if we want to be?

Speaking solely as a writer, with technologies from spell check to blogging to eBooks and everything in between, we have already begun to see the world of publishing explode. There are now a whole slew of ways to self publish and promote yourself as a writer. The days of Thoreau sitting in a log cabin by candle light are long gone. (Heck, if Snookie can write a book how hard can it really be, right?) We also need to take into account that technology and our access to it grows exponentially every year. Not only does it become better, but cheaper. So in fifty, twenty, or even ten years I can foresee a time when anyone who wants to make a song album can use equipment found in their room that will match the quality of anything we hear today on the radio, or use a green screen and editing software to make a movie at match for any Hollywood blockbuster today.

Side Prediction: Coming for the Fall 2086 Season:
The World According to Paris Hilton's Brain

This new wave of Post-Indie (Because Indie is not even "Indie" anymore, just ask George Clooney,) material will also serve to cut drastically in the profits of production companies, which means a huge drop in profits for the artists, actors, writers, directors, etc. Currently, production companies pay celebrities millions of dollars because in turn they expect to make billions of dollars from the consumer. If the consuming stops, (or at least lessens to a trickle) not only will celebrity salaries begin to drop as well but the celebrity life-style. If companies can no longer afforded to pay actors and singers their unreasonable and outrageous salaries for two months of work than that actor will no longer be able to afford those fancy cars, huge homes, or throwing those parties that would put Andrew Jackson to shame, (and if you don't get the reference read a history book.) As we all know (and as Paris Hilton certainly knows) money is one of the key aspects to the celebrity fantasy, but if singers, actors, and all the rest are no longer making the big bucks will the fantasy be able to hold? More to the point I think we will find out very quickly how many people are in it for the money and how many are in it for the love of the craft.

Now I am not saying that there will be no more famous people. There will always be people who amaze us or who we wish to emulate. There will always be people who are extremely talented, but with a more decentralized entertainment system I think we will see the demise of celebrity as a cultural phenomena. After all, when I think of the people I truly admire and truly enjoy meeting, they are not the untouchable upper-strata of the silver screen. No, they are the lower levels of the entertainment industry who continue to trudge along because they truly love what they are doing, most of which are local artists and writers who have not forgotten how lucky they are to be doing what they love.

As a sort of disclaimer, I do not believe sports stars would be really affected by any of this. Mostly, because in order to be a professional sports player you have to have a highly developed skill set and compete in an already rigorous vetting process to attain the professional level... and to be honest I really do not believe that that there is any professional player that I would consider a celebrity (despite some of their outrageous behavior).

Similarly, in the future I see that skill and creativity will be what really counts in entertainment, and by leveling the playing field, the truly talented, (and I do not include myself among this rank) will receive the recognition for their work based upon their ability and not upon their status. Those who are famous in the future will be admired in the same way we admired people like JRR Rowling, John Glen, or Colin Powell. They will be people who deserve the respect and adulation not because they are highly paid, but because they accomplish great things. Nor will these people have every aspect of their private lives scrutinized and photographed. They will not have to adhere to some kind of quasi fantasy/reality TV-like life style in order to keep the media interested in them, and I think we all can agree that is a much needed change, for all our sakes.

I do realize that more than any of my other prediction this may just be wistful thinking on my part, but I really hope not. The truth is that even if we progress to a future where entertainment becomes truly decentralized we may never be rid of the idea of celebrity as long as we are still creatures of material desires. This, of course, brings me to my next installment: THE ENLIGHTENED ECONOMY... See you in the FUTURE... future... future.... future...

The Pepsi Amendment

For those of you who haven't heard Mayor Bloomberg of New York City is working hard to pass a law that would forbid the sale of soda products over 16 oz within the limits of the city. The law would apply to restaurants, bodegas, movie theaters, even food carts on the street, and stadium concessions. Now I understand what mayor Bloomberg is trying to do with this law, but I find that I cannot agree with it. I loathe throwing around words like "unconstitutional," "nanny-state," and "Big Brother," but sometimes when certain phrases apply you have to use them even if they are cliche, hackneyed, over-used... forget it. I'm not using them.

I was going to write this blog as a witty proposition to create a new amendment to the Bill of Rights that gave Americans the right to drink as much soda as they would like, but I realized that there is already an amendment that does just that. I am talking about the Second Amendment. (But, hey, isn't that about owning guns?) Stay with me on this one... Yes, the Second Amendment is about the American right to own guns, (and quite frankly I am waiting for amendment 2a that guarantees me the right to own a sword,) but in actuality it is about more than just allowing Charlton Heston to arm himself against the impending Ape Revolution of 2086.

The amendment states, A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. This means that the amendment itself is really more about the guarantee to the security of a free state with the right to bear arms as a by-product of that. The point being that in a free state, where gun ownership is not only allowed but protected how can the ownership of 32 oz. of soda be any less protected. Its an absurd dichtomy.

Now I am not in anyway diminishing the obvious health care risks of soda. In fact, scientists are now saying that drinking a single 330 ml can of soda each day translates to more than 1lb of weight gain every month, and that studies prove that Americans with type 2 diabetes has tripled from 6.6 million in 1980 to 20.8 million today, with soda as the leading culprit. Even dentists agree that drinking soda eats away at the tooth enamel faster than candy or any other sugary substance. There is no denying that the stuff is not good for you, but that does not mean we should be denied the right to drink it.

Our forefathers put down the Bill of Rights as a charter that not only gave Americans certain "inalienable rights," (I have the right to not be abducted and probed,) but also as a blueprint of American society. Washington and his fellow patriots saw America as a country where we had the choice to do as we like and to take responsibility for those actions not through the enforcement of laws, but through the lessons of freedom. For example the right to gun ownership is not so much about owning guns as it is about the right to choose our actions. If we choose to own a gun we need to choose to be responsible in that ownership. It is the same way that if we choose to purchase fatty foods. We need to have the rights to be responsible, not have responsility forced upon us. Now I am not going to sit here and make an argument for gun ownership, because obviously the comparison between buying a hand gun and purchasing a Big Gulp is not really a one to one comparison.

We restrict gun ownership because we can't have people walking around the streets of New York with AK47's in the same way we restrict cigarette smoking. Both have the potential to harm other people beside the ones who own and operate the items in question, thus to restrict them is to guarantee the rights, life, and freedoms of those who did not make the decision to purchase the weapon or dangerous substance. However, soda has no dangerous by-product. There is no way for others to get second-hand carbonation, or get caught in the middle of a drive-by-sodaing, and I believe that is part of the litmus test for just and unjust laws. After all, a ban on large sodas would only be for the sole purpose of restricting the harm we do to our own bodies, where as limits on cigarettes and guns are meant to protect the rights of those around us. Even Bloomberg's own trans-fat ban used in restaurants protected the life and rights of those who ate at those restaurants. He did not ban the food, just the way they were prepared as there were viable alternatives available to restaurant owners. The difference is between personal restrictions and public protections.

There is also more to this ban that just the mere outrage of the transparent big-government social agenda behind it. They are not banning soda all together, just certain sizes, nor are they restricting the amount of other sugary or unhealthy drinks such as apple juice, milkshakes, or even beer. They are not even banning how many sodas you can buy. Instead, this seems to be an attempt to use the law more as a political statement than as a responsible tool of protection and enforcement. Ironically, I am not even saying that the principals behind the ban are wrong, but anything that restricts freedom on flimsy and misguided abuses of power are wrong. We need to drink less soda, in the same way that we need to eat more fruits and vegetable, so why not make it mandatory for us to do so, or ban cookies or chocolate cake? Why not have all New Yorkers submit to biannual physicals and be required by law to work out for thirty minutes a day? The simple answer is that this is America, and as sad as it sometimes is, we have the right to be fat and lazy if we so choose. Remember that if you make obesity illegal, only the criminals will be obese... I guess, then, they would at least be easier to catch.