Human Celebrities

So I made the mistake of clicking on the "Home" button at the top of LiveJournal here-- no, THAT wasn't the mistake, that was a genuine check-in-case-I-missed-any-comments-on-old-posts-recently. The MISTAKE was scrolling down and READING the rest of the stuff on the Home page-- okay, skimming it, but that's all I can stomach-- the Top Posts on LJ right now. By far the most active account on LiveJournal these days is ohnotheydidnt, which is basically a celebrity gossip page. I've read some of their posts before and even (stupid me) the comments. What bugs me about this page is not that it's celebrity gossip (because I like to hear what my favorite stars are UP to, too, even though most of my favorite stars aren't exactly celebrity gossip page fodder-- which may be the point but I'm getting to it), but it's the ATTITUDE of the gossip, and the attitude of most other celebrity gossip magazines, etc: the NEGATIVITY. The EAGERNESS to poke holes all through these people just because they're famous. Like we must make them PAY for their fame! It's not "Look, famous people have problems, too," it's "OMG these famous people SO DON'T DESERVE TO BE FAMOUS. They have FAULTS!" Or, obviously just "Oh no they didn't."

These sort of things always turn my stomach a bit, but I'm only commenting on it today because I was JUST THINKING about J.K. Rowling and how she was recently outed for publishing under a pseudonym (link if you actually haven't heard about this). Yesterday somebody pointed me toward the FAQs on this official page, and I love them. I love her ATTITUDE about them. How you can tell that for her it IS all about the writing, but she's resigned to the fact that for the rest of the world it will always be about her NAME, her fame and fortune. And she's just trying to be a writer while the world goes crazy around her.

And I felt, while I was thinking about this, like a fellow writer instead of a fan. One with absolutely NO fame and fortune, sure, but one who's tried to write while worrying about what other people would think. IT'S HARD. It's no way to write a book, or anything. And she's got to write while KNOWING that the world is FULL of people who will just go "But why isn't it Harry?" or will read it and STILL say, "Eh, it's not Harry, I don't like it" or who will scrutinize its flaws merely to counteract THE HYPE. And then there's the people who act like, "Well, now that she's rich and famous, what's she doing trying to make us buy more books anyway? Why can't she just RETIRE? Does she seriously need MORE mediocre bestsellers?"

And I just pictured her, with all those voices screaming out in the world and, even more troublesome, all the voices saying "They're RIGHT you know. You're a fraud. Harry was just luck" INSIDE HER HEAD-- she's a WRITER, of COURSE she has those voices!-- and I just wanted to hug her, as a friend, and say, "Oh, Jo, honey, are the hater voices getting you down again? Let's have some tea and talk out some plot issues."

And I wondered, does she even have any critique partners, any working writer friends to talk through the nitty-gritty writing things with? Or are people just like, "Well, J.K. Rowling, NOBODY'S on that level, we couldn't possibly have anything in common, besides, I bet she can just BUY people to WRITE her books for her." How lonely IS it to be J.K. Rowling? I laughed at one point during her long special interview with Oprah, when the two started talking about what it's like to go from poverty to realizing you have more money than you will ever know what to do with in several lifetimes, and I said to my mom, "THEY are the ONLY TWO PEOPLE ON EARTH who could be having this conversation right now." But seriously, it was true, and you could see it-- how the two of them almost seemed to forget about the cameras, that this was supposed to be an interview, because for them it was like, "FINALLY! Somebody who UNDERSTANDS!"

I think it was Paul McCartney who said in the Anthology interviews that he felt bad for Elvis, because the Beatles had each other to help them through the insanity of Beatlemania, but Elvis had to face superstardom alone. In a more meta interview from the Anthology days, when asked what he liked best about working with Paul and George again, Ringo replied, "They're the only people in the world who don't treat me like a Beatle." And that said it.

I guess it's easy to dehumanize celebrities for the same reason it's easy to dehumanize people on the other side of the Internet-- distance, and a narrow understanding of who the other person IS, in their full nothing-to-do-with-you life. And I think it definitely DOES say much more about YOU than it does about The Other-- reveals YOUR insecurity and envy and frustrations as you so desperately try to take somebody else DOWN. And we KNOW that-- most of the time-- about people we actually encounter in real life. We're starting to know that about people on the Internet. But it's still okay to treat celebrities like they somehow OWE you something, because they've already got fame, what do they WANT? And no. Nobody deserves to be judged more than anyone else.

So I'm sorry, Jo. I really care about you and hope the haters aren't getting you down, and that the writing's going well, and that you really can have no worries.