The Paradox of Reality Television Fame

From THE VN/VO:

"After the break, how to get on a reality television show! Learn the ins and outs of..."

I turned off the news program right there. I understand why this would interest a subset of people—they want to be famous. Reality television, supposedly, holds that golden promise that our culture has yearned for eternally: a system where any common person can become famous for doing nothing extraordinary. (Previously, the only way to achieve this brand of fame was to jump wildly behind a television reporter as he or she was reporting from the street.)

The promise, however, is flawed.

"Fame" may be the single most enigmatic entity in modern culture. It may very well be the most important entity—a scale in which we judge the worth of most everything. At the same time, it is an entity that is completely impossible to define or predict—from a cause-and-effect standpoint—by any mathematical means. (Note: I use the vague term "entity" not only as a device to spice up this article and make myself seem smart, but really because it would be inaccurate to approach it as anything more specific—its both a living, physical mechanism and a description of a condition.)

Think of it this way. We are a culture obsessed with rankings and statistics. We know the past worth of sports players based on simple mathematics, as well we can predict their future worth with only slightly more complex mathematics. Same, really, for accountants, grocery store clerks, and everything in between. We certainly debate the subtleties of the calculations and mathematical processes used, but we all generally agree that there exists some formula for defining worth and value of pretty much anything. Anything except fame, that is.

Okay, an important caveat: there has always been a camp of observers and critics who obsess over the coloration between an individual's fame and their talent - the presumption being that the two should somehow match. We argue that certain individuals "really should not be famous" because they have little talent. Or the other side retorts that indeed all famous people are talented, it's just not a talent respected by critics, and that the market defines talent, thus fame and talent are truly synchronized.

This whole angle of attempting to compare talent and fame, however, misses the real point. The two have nothing to do with each other. Talent is measurable, fame is not. This is because its not the single individual that is actually "famous." Rather, our culture has fame archetypes which single individuals merely fill. For example, who is Madonna? She's an Italian-American girl from Detroit who happens to enjoy singing and dancing. Everything about her famed persona, however, has nothing to do with her. If Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone had never been born, "Madonna," as a concept, would still exist. Arguably, whatever "Madonna" is to popular culture has existed well before this individual was born and will exist well after she has faded away—merely filled by different individuals.

Article Author: Christopher J Falvey

Christopher J Falvey is the author of THE VN/VO at http://www.vnvo.com

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