September
18, 2002, 9:00 a.m. Minor-Celebrity
Chic
The world of
“reality TV.”
By James Bowman
nvestment advice: It's a good time to buy futures in second-tier celebrities.
Naturally the spread of celebrity culture must be especially good for
anyone with a small capital sum in minor, local, or accidental fame. But
there are also things lesser celebrities are willing to do that major
stars are not, and there are signs of growth in this niche market. In
America we have already had Celebrity Boxing on Fox, which enjoyed
a moderate success. I myself could not resist watching Paula Jones and
Tonya Harding put on the gloves last spring, though Paula fought like
a girl and ran away on account (she said) of her new nose job. Now in
Britain there's a new show ("the stupidest programme ever to be shown
on British television" — The Times) called I'm a Celebrity
— Get me out of Here!
Of the group of celebrities
deposited for a Survivor-like camp-out in the Australian jungle
on this example of "reality-TV" (I never get tired of repeating
that delightful oxymoron), almost the only one I had heard of was Uri
Geller, the one-time spoon bender who has more recently been peddling
self-help advice ("You can now discover through ancient eastern knowledge
about how your particular personality type can best deal with all kinds
of circumstances and situations, including: self development, coping with
stress, self confidence, enhanced performance, relationships and much
more"). But as Will Smith of London Weekend Television told
Jill Lawless of the Associated Press: "Let's be honest: you're not
going to get A-list celebrities to spend two weeks in the middle of the
Australian jungle." Anyway, the names are well-enough known to followers
of pop culture in Britain, and "the success of the format doesn't
depend on whether people are A-list, B-list or whatever," as Smith
said, "but that you have a group of characters that people recognize
and have an opinion about." Like American Idol (Pop Idol
in Britain) the show is sure to cross the Atlantic in due course.
The winner, by the
way, a 59 year-old disc jockey called Tony Blackburn, is said to be the
sort of guy who has "a bit of a rant about lack of respect, crumbling
standards, society in a rut, etc." In short, he's a right-wing nut.
To confirm it, Jan Moir of the Daily Telegraph reports that "what
Tony hated most in the jungle was not the frizz-making damp but the swearing.
Tony does not believe in swearing in front of ladies and he was particularly
distressed when the younger ones cursed in front of his new best friend,
Christine" — another of the celebrity castaways whose claim
to fame seems to be that she is the wife of a disgraced member of parliament.
Thus, "a vote for Tony meant that you believed in the same old-fashioned
virtues of courtesy and respect that he did. At least, that's the way
he looks at it."
This confirms the
verdict of the Sunday Telegraph that "Tony Blackburn went
into the jungle as a has-been and came out of it as the most popular man
in Britain" and that "Blackburn's victory represented the crushing
of cool by the forces of geezerdom." Still, it would be rash to hope
that the victory might be permanent, I feel, and there are likely to be
plenty more opportunities for even the coolest of the minor celebs (if
that's not a contradiction in terms) to cash in on their own celebrity,
here as in Britain.
According to an editorial
in The Times of London, for instance, the latest celebrity fad
is to buy a house and then sell it again at a large premium — to
those who are willing to pay to live in a house formerly owned by a celebrity.
America is beginning to catch on. An Associated Press report last week
report that Ed and Jennifer McKee of Oregon City, Oregon, were trying
to sell Kurt Cobain's childhood home in Washington State, which they bought
last month for $42,500 in a foreclosure sale. At the time they didn't
know of the celebrity connection, but when they put the house up for sale
on eBay they got bids in excess of $40 million. Unfortunately, they were
from people who hadn't got $40 million, but the top serious bid was $210,000
— still a tidy profit.
Politicians, as a
sort of élite among minor celebrities, may find their stock going
up along with the others. In Argentina, for example, which has had five
presidents and six finance ministers in the last year, they are soon going
to be watching the ultimate in "Reality TV" — something
called The People's Candidatein which the grand prize is the nomination
of a new party (the TV party, I suppose) as its presidential candidate
in the elections coming up in 2003. If it works, we should import the
idea into the U.S., since the chief, perhaps the only, qualification for
office these days is the ability to be personable while making (and taking)
a few jokes on a late-night talk show, just like any other celebrity.
The vanishing distinction
between our leaders and the likes of Uri Geller (though, alas, too seldom
Tony Blackburn) is pointed up by the continuing negotiations to put Bill
Clinton on TV as a talk-show host. The rumor is that he could be paid
as much as $50 million to host his own show. But think how much more he
would be able to make if he were actually running for office at the same
time! Here is the real answer to the problems of campaign-finance reform.
Give each candidate in the 2004 elections his own show and the political
process would become self-financing. And think what it would do to increase
supply to meet the increased worldwide demand for minor celebrities.
—
James Bowman
is movie critic of The American Spectator and American editor of
London's Times Literary Supplement.
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nvestment advice: It's a good time to buy futures in second-tier celebrities.
Naturally the spread of celebrity culture must be especially good for
anyone with a small capital sum in minor, local, or accidental fame. But
there are also things lesser celebrities are willing to do that major
stars are not, and there are signs of growth in this niche market. In
America we have already had Celebrity Boxing on Fox, which enjoyed
a moderate success. I myself could not resist watching Paula Jones and
Tonya Harding put on the gloves last spring, though Paula fought like
a girl and ran away on account (she said) of her new nose job. Now in
Britain there's a new show ("the stupidest programme ever to be shown
on British television" — The Times) called I'm a Celebrity
— Get me out of Here!
