The moment has arrived when an ex boy band member now actor (Harry Styles) and Tom Hardy (much more deserving of the label) descend upon Weymouth and Swanage to make another remake of another film that will only remotely focus upon the facts of an historical event that happened over 70 years ago. Just what have these two Dorset towns got to do with the Dunkirk evacuations anyway? Hollywood licence? Just more drivel to entertain the masses and lead them to believe they are now experts? More like it.
Of course celebrity culture is now much more important in our illusory looking glass than facts. The EU referendum finally conclusively proved that. A fit famous person or knowledge? No contest. Wet dreams all the way mate. Towns will have a makeover; people who can recite scripts whilst being directed will be surrounded by saliva and camera clicks and ‘normal’ people will rush to social media to converse on something that is more important to them than understanding anything. Too many girls (and some boys) will be adjusting their underwear so that the wet patches are less noticeable and too many boys (and some girls) will be dreaming of the gym and their widening biceps. Why? Because a few people who can recite scripts whilst being directed are in town.
Is this crazy? No more crazy than reading tabloid lies every day. No more crazy than believing multi millionaires when they try and persuade you to do something that they benefit from much, much more than you. No more crazy than ‘My 11 year old can kick a ball in a straight line’. How many likes can I get by sharing it on Facebook?
This me, me, me society is no more obvious than in a celebrity culture enmeshed in individualism. There is now even a classified medical condition: Celebrity Worship Syndrome’. The term “celebrity worship syndrome” first appeared in an article ‘Do you worship the celebs?’ by James Chapman in the Daily Mail in 2003 (Chapman, 2003). James Chapman was basing his article on the journal paper Maltby et al. (2003). James Chapman refers to CWS, but in fact this is a misunderstanding of a term used in the academic article to which he refers (Maltby et al. 2003), CWS which stood for Celebrity Worship Scale. Nonetheless Chapman may be generally correct. A syndrome refers to a set of abnormal or unusual set of symptoms indicating the existence of an undesirable condition or quality. Indeed, many attitudes and behaviours covered in this research indicate such states.
Psychologists in the United States and United Kingdom created a celebrity worship scale to rate the problems. In 2002, United States psychologists Lynn McCutcheon, Rense Lange, and James Houran introduced the Celebrity Attitude Scale, a 34 item scale administered to 262 persons living in central Florida. McCutcheon et al. suggested that celebrity worship comprised one dimension in which lower scores on the scale involved individualistic behavior such as watching, listening to, reading and learning about celebrities whilst the higher levels of worship are characterized by empathy, over-identification, and obsession with the celebrity.
However, later research among larger UK samples have suggested there are 3 different aspects to celebrity worship; John Maltby (University of Leicester), and the aforementioned psychologists examined the Celebrity Attitude Scale among 1732 United Kingdom respondents (781 males, 942 females) who were aged between 14 and 62 years and found the following 3 dimensions to celebrity worship: entertainment-social, intense-personal, and borderline-pathological. A follow-up study showed no gender difference in any of the three dimensions.
For those inclined to reading and acquiring knowledge and not adjusting your knickers when in the presence of ‘famous people’ you may like to read further – perhaps this for starters: The Psychological Effects Of Idolatry: How Celebrity Crushes Impact Children’s Health
Just remember though whoever you are – you can always be doing something much more fulfilling instead.
Douglas James
