I don't know about "celebrity-identification," so haven't talked about it. A few years ago I had the one surprising (to me) experience I described of feeling real personal sadness when a "celebrity," a female comedian, died of cancer, and that led me thinking about how this sort of "friendship-feeling" can arise, and I wrote about that.
I think "friendship-feeling" is not identical to "celebrity-identification," though if one wanted to ridicule the first one might well want to call it the second. I don't know if you want to do that or not, and don't take it amiss if you do. I gave my feelings toward Gauguin as an example of "friendship-feeling" for someone I really don't have a "relationship" with, and described it as best I could; and I have similar feelings toward other SI individuals. I like them a lot, and want good things for them, and would feel terrible if something bad happened to them; and there is no "celebrity-identification" there. And I believe that feeling I described is the same as the one I discovered I had when the female comedian died of cancer. (It was Gilda Radner.)
I was very careful to make clear that the feelings, the friendship-feelings, I think people develop about individuals they don't know may well not be "true," or, as you put it, maybe "practically everything is untrue;" but I think lots of people get married, or form friendships, illuded about the "true" qualities of their mate or friend. The feelings, though, are intense and real enough, and that is what I talked about.
I said that a part, not all, but a part, and not so contemptible a one, of what happens when people mourn the deaths of individuals they've never met is the fault of those friendship-feelings, which come to them through some of the same mechanisms and intuitions as do feeling for real life friends.
Your tendency to "assume the worst" really doesn't have much to do with what I was trying to convey. I am a deep cynic, in general, too; and of course I think you're right, that people often idolize celebrities in a silly way. But I was trying to convey this other thing. The way people develop "friendship-feelings" and how it can apply to those they haven't met or interacted with, at least not in a two-way exchange.
I think the concept of "celebrity-identification" is an interesting, and overlapping, if different, one. I will talk about it another time, if it's still an interesting subject to anybody. It would sound right to me, your proposal that maybe women are more prone to it than men, if it weren't for sports, maybe. And speaking of sports, don't you think team-identification, which has always seemed quite odd to me, is a form of "celebrity-identification"? I do. I wonder if you have ever rooted for any team. Have you? I haven't. I figure the one wins who has the money to hire the best players. I do admire extraordinary individual performance, of course. |
