On celebrities and sensibilities

On celebrities and sensibilities

JAKARTA (JP): A coworker complained that her daughter has
decided not to go to college after high school. She wants to join
a modeling school instead.

"What does she think she'll become?" he asked fretfully.

My eight-year-old niece, holding her "prom" Barbie doll,
enviously told me of her classmate, who has become a sweetheart
of TV commercials: "Because she's now a star, she acts really
genit (coquettish) like grown-ups."

It is the same Cinderella story all over again. Girl wishes to
reinvent herself and transform into a famous and a more beautiful
version of herself.

The daily newspaper Kompas published an intriguing article
early this year on a beauty pageant -- all hype and promises of
fame and grandeur -- that revolved around the marketing of a
particular soap brand.

View this: the four pageant contestants are on stage with
pearly and meticulously fixed smiles (that looked rather pained,
if you ask me).

"What is your aspiration?" asked the pageant host.

"I want to contribute something beneficial to society."
(Smiling satisfactorily for having recited the line smoothly.)

The MC, instead of exploring what "beneficial contribution"
that may be, continues to read from the list of questions.

"What is your priority in life?"

"God, family, study and career." (Actually, all four
contestants say this, or something that sounds similarly cliche.)

At the end, the winner was crowned with a glittering tiara.
Glassy-eyed and with the same fixed smile she waved ever so
gracefully, and for the next week her name was splashed in
tabloids' headlines. A dream comes true.

These days, wherever you turn, especially at traffic lights,
you are bound to see TV starlet Desy Ratnasari gracing the cover
of entertainment tabloids and women's magazines.

The 26-year-old actress cum singer cum TV show host, who is
probably one of the most memorable faces in the country, filed
for divorce recently from her husband of 13 months. Since then,
she has created the same kind of media frenzy that she did
exactly 13 months ago, when she swiftly married that obscure man.

Suddenly, every media with an entertainment section wants to
publish her story. They boast of cover stories with confessions
by both parties (Desy and husband Trenadi Pramudya). Desy, the
young and fair starlet, is soon to be available again.

Am I wrong to think that this, despite an outcry over the
media exploits of Desy's personal life, works to her benefit as
well? What could possibly be a more effective way to regain one's
fading popularity than by having gone through a personal, highly
publicized tragedy? After all, she did get more gigs after the
announcement of the divorce.

Celebrities feed on people's dreams. It is the adult version
of the happily ever after prince and princess in fairy tales
(though this version doesn't always end happily), and, to a
certain degree, the modern and secular version of ancient Greek
gods.

In the film Notting Hill, a man who gets his heart broken
repeatedly by the woman he falls in love with, who happens to be
one of the world's most famous film stars, is consoled with this
bit of wisdom: "She's a goddess, and we're mere mortals."

But are the stars justly celebrated? Numerous young beautiful
Indonesians are generally acknowledged as celebrities, but most
of us never know why they are being celebrated.

Several names, for example, have become household names due to
their media exposure, but their achievements or arts escape us.
Unlike Christine Hakim (Cut Nyak Dien), or Anthony Hopkins
(Silence of the Lambs), or even dangdut music star Rhoma Irama, I
would go blank if someone asked me to name one teleserial Cut
Keke starred in.

The media is partly to blame for nurturing our curiosity on
the details of the celebs' lives. It doesn't take the death of a
press-hunted princess to know that our insatiable appetite for
the celebrated people can lead to a harmful end.

One sign is when kiddies television shows begin to resemble
celebrity programs like Kiss, Kisah Seputar Selebritis (Tales of
Celebrities). Only these ones are hosted by smaller and younger
TV personalities, who prematurely dress and behave like their
older counterparts.

Princess Di died in a most banal way, a car crash, but the
tragedy ironically reverberated the same message of the cost of
the irrational degree of fame she had attained.

The car chase, the trails of European paparazis on motorcycles
added to the glam. But in the end, she, like other celebrated
personalities, was just one of us: a mere mortal.

-- Devi M. Asmarani