A friend of mine who lived in the dorms with me freshman year recently had a baby with his wife. The child is healthy, and they are doing fine. Also, there were no photographers, news reporters, media representatives, or other such people at the birth. This is most likely because babies are born every day, and while they have a special significance to their parents and to the people emotionally attached to them (reasonably so, that is), they are hardly "news."
This is why I can't figure out, for the life of me, why people virtually stalk celebrity babies and babies-to-be. Britney Spears? Check. Everything from mere photographs to false stories claiming that her baby has severe brain damage (seriously... check out the magazine rack at your local grocery store checkout lane). And now (and once again) Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. I read a story today, sent to me by a friend who knows of my distaste for the current obsession with celebrity news, that goes something like this:
"Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie want privacy for their baby. Those bad paparazzi are causing them trouble. Incidentally, here is a picture of the couple, and a list of their recent shopping stops, and some quotes from their bodyguards." (E! Online)
You know the rhetoric by now, but it bears restating: they are people, just like everyone else. The fact that they have a lot of money or have appeared as characters with which you may or may not have empathized on television does not mean that they are any more or less "normal" people. I don't know which alarms me more: the fact that people stalk them for photographs, or the fact that many more people are an anticipatory market for those photographs.
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That's hilarious!
I guess E! didn't think that was a contradiction at all.
Me personally, I could care less if Angela wants to have her baby in Africa, If Britney is pregnant again, or what sex Ben and Jen's baby was! But they put it out there, and you hear it and go oh ok, whatever. It's those "stalker" types that really are the ones who make it "important", and as long as the fanatical fans see things like that, the paparazzi will make money.
haha tats so funny
E! Online is being ironic and contradictory
I have to admit that I both deplore celebrity gossip being cast as "news," and the stalker-ish mentality that enjoys peering into the lives of others, while reading "The Superficial" (probably one of the sleaziest online gossip pages) almost daily. Why? I think it's the quality of human drama.
Are there other, more positive ways to read about others' lives, and be inspired by the extraordinary things ordinary people do? Of course! And it's so much more satisfying.
Yea very true, the paparrazzi are crazy (shakes head) However, celebrities wouldn't be stalked so much if society didn't put them so high on a pedestal and we were going out watching their films. We glamorize fame too much... just be happy with where you are and make the most of it.
My god. I thought they were being ironic... but they're not doing it on purpose.
That's vaguely amusing.
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in this society they are not people, they are the greatest thing since Jelly Beans! I agree I think Bump Watch 2006 is ridiculous but as long as people continue to read the mags and indulge in the insanity it wont go away.
I've always wondered why they do it. But you know, personally, I don't care about the lives of the celebrities. It's really the price they pay for being celebrities though. I guess the public feels they need a model to look to? Or a sampling of what "real" lives are like? Just because I don't subscribe to it doesn't mean that others don't. I think the whole thing comes from people who don't have perfect lives but that want to live in a fantasy world.