If members of the general public applaud the antics of an animal being paraded on its hind legs, any indulgence on their part is an acknowledgment of effort rather than quality, and is also tinged with sympathy for the poor brute who has been reduced to such circumstances. In the 18th Century, Dr.Samuel Johnson misogynistically likened such a circus act to female preaching, expressing surprise not that either could do it well but that they could do it at all.
Consider, then, Rufus Wainwright, songsmith royalty of the Wainwright-McGarrigle bloodline, commissioned by the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra to write and perform settings of Five Shakespeare Sonnets. Mr. Wainwright is a popular musician with substantial sexual magnetism but of little orchestral savvy; his celebrity alone is the hindquarters upon which he is expected to balance.
Happily the San Francisco Chronicle reviewer did not mistake Mr. Wainwright’s staggerings for Art. His natural gift for melody and the pianism of the singer-songwriter do not of necessity translate to the orchestral medium. The makings of a good sandwich are different from the ingredients of a great souffle; a novel doesn’t always make a great movie, and although the material was of a certain quality, the orchestra’s presence was wasted.
But with California’s vacuous love of celebrity, perhaps the greater San Francisco public might not have been so discerning. In Arnold Schwarzenegger California mistook a body-builder for a Governor.In Ronald Reagan they and indeed the nation as a whole mistook an actor for a President. Yesterday, Bristol Palin’s celebrity allowed her to be mistaken for a dancer in Dancing with the Stars, and so the preposterous celebritocracy is in its full ascendant.
Hearteningly, the recent mid-term elections proved that inexperience can be a handicap in CA politics, if not in Art.The virgin billionairess Meg Whitman failed in her bid for the Governorship, and the similarly outrageously under-qualified Carly Fiorina was unsuccessful in her attempt to unseat Senator Barbara Boxer. Had these two lamentable pretenders had higher-octane glamor star-power behind them and not mere chutzpah and the contemptible likes of John McCain, the outcome might have been very different.
Celebrity has become the new Education. A degree in political science is trumped by an appearance on the Today show. Being qualified to talk about your subject because you have studied it for nigh on a decade matters less than the hastily-formed opinion of someone more photogenic than you. The hiring team at San Diego opera told one of the candidates at a recent round of auditions, “We love your voice, but we won’t hire you until you are more of a star.” Clearly, it’s not about Quality.
Humpty Dumpty famously described a world in which the meanings of words were not fixed by dictionary definition. ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ He would be comfortable with someone who makes up words like ‘refudiate’, or who fires someone for using the word ‘niggardly’ correctly. We are in a time when semantic territories need to be defended; daughters of political pundits are not professional dancers, billionairesses are not governors, actors are not presidents, architects are not set designers, singer-songwriters are not the next Mahler. They are entitled to try, but their celebrity alone does not entitle them to succeed.
Celebrity has become the dominant word of the American landscape, consuming all other words in its path. It makes a mockery of education and tramples on the knowledge-establishment with its empty but trump card braggadocio. In 21st Century America fear of the Pinheads has morphed into adulation of the Airheads; we have handed over the microphone to the people least able to speak in complete sentences, which is the one thing that a spokesperson is expected to be able to do. It is scandalous in an enlightened democracy that celebrity should be encouraged to wield such power.
Before you know it, Sarah Palin will be running for office and the sun will be orbiting the earth again.
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’
The answer is they can, if YOU let them.