Some psychologists, such as Oliver James, believe celebrities who constantly push themselves into the public eye have a mental disorder due to a need for validation. Personal1y I couldn’t agree more, but I would go much further than this.
The philosopher Michel Foucault pointed out that society has always been a marriage between knowledge and power. What we take to be fact is really an intellectual control on who we think we are.
NORMAL AND ABNORMAL
Essential to this process is a requirement for the prevalent power structure to define what is normal and what is abnormal. And from the beginning of history his argument holds true.
For instance, in the Medieval world to be normal was to be a God-fearing Christian, and to excel in society was to become saintly. Any other form of living was demonic, or abnormal.
In Victorian Britain to be normal was to be moral, stiff-upper-¬lipped and hard working, and to excel in society was to become married to duty and exhibit supreme courage. Any other form of living was immoral, criminal or deviant.
In both these cases we can see a relativistic fiction, with normality based on an overall powerful ethic. And the problem with such societal fictions is that it imposes upon the person a requirement to be what he isn’t.
REPRESSION
Such a process requires the person to repress who he really is in order, not only to succeed, but to be seen as normal.
A classis example is today’s regime of political correctness, where everyone openly admits to be non-racist, non-sexist and non-homophobic. Yet if this was really the case there couldn’t possibly be the degree of racism, sexism and homophobia which continues to exist. A lot of people are lying, thus suppressing the true nature of who they are in order to cowardly save themselves from the tag of abnormality.
IT’S AN IMAGE THING
We can thus see that the principle form of normality in today’s world is based fundamentally on image; which again is how it has always been. But with the all-pervasive media we live with today, the process of image has become more omnipotent.
Hence, to be normal in the modern world is to reflect a politically correct image of a totally free society, and to be abnormal is to disagree, in any way, with a fictitious view of what society is.
Whereas to excel in such a world is to become an icon who waffles on about this or that without actually saying anything of value in case it offends.
PSYCHO PROBLEMS
Because our society imposes a requirement upon us to be who we are not, the repression of who we really are MUST leave us with inner frustrations. And because we cannot air these frustrations, the psychological turmoil which lies behind the image simply has to be a form of mental disorder. And if this is what it is like to be normal, consider what it must be like today to excel.
In a world where everything is image, then those who excel – i.e. the celebrity – must be those who perfect and thrust their image upon us through the media, and it is these people who James suggests may be mentally ill.
We can now, perhaps, begin to understand why. For in becoming a celebrity icon, they have to leave their true selves behind to a greater degree than others. They become, in effect, hollow reflections of the people they are thrust in front of, with their real personalities nowhere to be seen.
FLAWED CELEBRITY
Here we have an answer as to why celebrities continually thrust this image before us. Because it is not personality as such, they require validation for this fictitious persona they have created.
So in a deeply flawed way, they attempt to grasp a form of self-esteem which cannot possibly be gained. And it cannot he gained because esteem requires a self – something that a mere projection cannot be.
Thus we live in a psychologically induced cauldron of image with no substance, with celebrities soaking up their fame and reflecting back an equally inane image of ourselves. Yet if the image could be broken – if their real selves could be allowed through, replete with their ideosyncracies, then the psychological mess could be eased, with true personalities to study and to guide.
Of course, the truth of such personalities could well bring out the existence of the politically incorrect in us all, just as in Medieval and Victorian times we were not all saintly or stiff-upper-lipped. But would this be a bad thing?
Or rather, would it allow us to get to grips with our problems in a real way, instead of constructing false images which hide it?
© Anthony North, May 2007
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