‘Johnny come lately’ on celebrity

Growing up in the early eighties, it was almost criminal not to know the ‘moonwalk’. It was a case of which kid did it better as opposed to who could and who couldn’t do it. What today’s youth refer to as ‘swagger’ was the monopoly of one man back then, his highness the king of pop. We all wore the tight –up to-the- ankle jeans with matching white socks. We danced to thriller, bill jean, beat it, bad and smooth criminal. Before we knew it, it was 1993! The god of the 80s was beginning to fall apart before our very own eyes! There were accusations of child molestation against the king! He of ‘we are the world’ and ‘heal the world’? Something must have gone awfully wrong!Such is the nature of celebrity; at its peak, it is omnipotent but the allure remains in its transient nature.By 2003, Michael Jackson remained a major celebrity but it was clear his star was in descent. The child molestation charges accrued and financial troubles set in. The shine had worn off.The lights of celebrity were now brightly shining on a different kind of star. An heiress who was more famous for hanging out with the famous than her day job, Paris Hilton was the new darling of the media. A model by training, she shot to prominence on the reality TV show ‘A simple life’. The show depicted two rich girls trying to get to grips with living an ordinary life away from the razzmatazz of movie premieres, paparazzi and nights out in chauffeured limousines.In the age of reality TV, the world is increasingly enamoured by the social exploits of ordinary people who have access to the rich and famous. It is the belief that any of us could be that person that makes the culture of ‘instant celebrity’ extremely appealing. It seems that today, just about anyone that can spell their name can be the next big thing. Scratch that, you don’t need to do anything; being in the right place at the right time will suffice.A documentary series on BBC Knowledge featuring ‘Extraordinary People’ brings to light the lives of individuals across the world whose lives are made different because of the bodies they inhabit.One such individual is Edward Nino Hernandez, a 26 year old Colombian who was officially the world’s shortest man between September 4 and October 14, 2010. At a height of 700cm and weighing 10kg, Edward was a bundle of energy at least during the time of filming the documentary.He relished his title of ‘world’s shortest man’ and endorsed plans to support needy children in his country Colombia. He staged a music and dance concert, he appeared in a stadium on a big Matchday as all stars do.Life looked on the up and the little man even shared his dreams of buying a jeep truck, finding a wife and settling on a farm in the countryside. Less than a month in his newly found celebrity status as the ‘world’s shortest man’, Edward hit a snag.A shorter man had been found in Nepal by the ‘Guinness world records’ team.Never have I seen dreams crashed so graphically than when Edward Hernandez received the news. His sullen facial expression betrayed the sense of loss he was experiencing. It was like a rag had been pulled from under his feet. His dreams were not to be!Andy Warhol, an influential American artist from the sixties was always an apt observer of celebrity. He famously predicted in 1968 that ‘in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes’It seems the future is already upon us. All you need to do is post a video on YouTube and hooray! The whole world instantly becomes your oyster. If you are lucky, you may even get more than Andy Warhol’s proverbial 15 minutes. Justin Bieber the 18 year old Canadian pop music sensation has made a career for himself out of a couple of videos he posted on YouTube that caught the attention of Scooter Braun, a talent manager. Scooter was so impressed with what he saw that he arranged for Bieber to audition for L.A. Reid of Island Records who put pen to paper and Justin Bieber the recording artist was introduced to the wide world. It’s not always happy endings though. With the pursuit of celebrity comes infamy in equal measure. The saying goes, “if you can’t be known for your good deeds, try evil” Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian living in the US did just that. In pursuit of his 15 minutes of fame, he ended up annoying a quarter of the world’s population who subscribe to the Islamic faith. His film ‘the innocence of Muslims’ posted on YouTube last month has been the cause of violent demonstrations across the Muslim world leading to the death of up to 50 people.We live in perilous times indeed. How do you teach the fundamentals of hard work to impressionable youth when all they see on TV is BigBrother Africa, a show that explicitly promises riches to the winners for doing absolutely nothing? And don’t pity the losers; they end up as celebrities as well!The currency of celebrity has depreciated incongruously with human advancement that perhaps it’s time to consider revaluation. Is it not only right to celebrate the really extraordinary? Time was when you had to conquer a third of the known world for people to recognise you as ‘the great’.I am talking about Alexander III of Macedon aka ‘Alexander the great’, now that was a celebrity if ever there was one!

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‘Johnny come lately’ on celebrity