Writer's Block: The Right to Privacy
Aug. 16th, 2009 07:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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this is actually something I've thought about quite a lot (because I am a huge dork and tend to get philosophical about everything, you see), and I have to say that the scrutiny we place on the personal lives of celebrities really bothers me. you do have to give up your privacy to some extent, and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing—for example, I imagine it's hard to be (hugely) hypocritical when you're constantly in the public eye. on the other hand, I have absolutely no doubt that the pressure to be exactly who you say you are all the time is why so many celebrities are messed up; everyone needs an escape sometimes, right?
personally, I don't care who any celebrity is dating/fucking/cheating with/married to/skipping in the rain wearing muppet fur and chanting the word "hullaballoo" for three hours straight with/etc., and I don't think anyone else should. if a person I like and admire starts making choices I don't agree with, then I feel empathy and don't want them to do that, but in the end, I don't know them and I don't know why they do what they do; and frankly, that's none of my business anyway.
what really disgusts me about celebrity culture are the lengths the paparazzi will go to to get that one shot of a celebrity without makeup/drinking coffee/walking their dog/skipping in the rain wearing muppet fur and chanting the word "hullaballoo" for three hours straight/etc. while I can't say that I wholeheartedly support the celebrities who get pissed and end up throwing something at a paparazzo or hitting them with their car or something—it is, after all, their job to take pictures—I can't say I blame them. there has to be a point when it just gets to you and you go a little crazy. if I had people following me all the time, I'd probably pull a Chapelle too and go off to some remote place where no one could find me without telling anyone.
since coming into the kpop fandom, I've been legitimately freaked out by some stuff, but one of the things that absolutely makes me uncomfortable is the amount of secret cameras that they do. sometimes this ends up being hilarious—sup SuJu's Intimate Note—but a lot of the time it seems to end up making people confused and angry and sad because they don't know what's going on and why everyone is treating them so oddly. I don't think it's right to toy with people's emotions that way; Punk'd bothered me for a really long time, but I couldn't figure out why until I came into this fandom. (for a much more eloquent version of this, I recommend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
meiface's Behind Closed Doors, which is, yes, fanfic, but it addresses these issues from the perspective of someone actually participating in them, and it seems like fairly accurate portrayal to me.)
so basically, I think that, yeah, there's a necessary loss of privacy that comes with being famous, but it's entirely too extreme. or at least it is here; I don't know enough about Europe's treatment of celebrities to comment properly, but I read an article with Daniel Radcliffe once where he said that he's glad they did the HP movies in Britain, with British actors, because the senior actors wouldn't let him get full of himself. I wish I still had the issue of PARADE it was in so I could quote it properly, but the gist was that they would be like "okay, you're doing really well, this is great, but don't think that you've got it made because if you drop the ball for a second they'll throw you to the wolves." he said that they kept him humble instead of letting him get a swelled head and end up throwing it all away on drugs and partying the way so many young American actors do. I think that's the sort of attitude we should have in general, that you could be hot shit now, but that isn't going to last forever instead of the OH I'M FAMOUS I CAN DO WHAT I WANT viewpoint.
...I feel like that should have been some sort of formal essay :| one of these days I will learn to express myself in two sentences or less.
in other news, Kyu's new hair isn't as bad as it looked on my phone, but I still wish he'd left it long :( also band camp starts tomorrow FML and I feel like a loser whenever I say band camp. there needs to be a less dorky name for it.
PS this girl is amazing
this is actually something I've thought about quite a lot (because I am a huge dork and tend to get philosophical about everything, you see), and I have to say that the scrutiny we place on the personal lives of celebrities really bothers me. you do have to give up your privacy to some extent, and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing—for example, I imagine it's hard to be (hugely) hypocritical when you're constantly in the public eye. on the other hand, I have absolutely no doubt that the pressure to be exactly who you say you are all the time is why so many celebrities are messed up; everyone needs an escape sometimes, right?
personally, I don't care who any celebrity is dating/fucking/cheating with/married to/skipping in the rain wearing muppet fur and chanting the word "hullaballoo" for three hours straight with/etc., and I don't think anyone else should. if a person I like and admire starts making choices I don't agree with, then I feel empathy and don't want them to do that, but in the end, I don't know them and I don't know why they do what they do; and frankly, that's none of my business anyway.
what really disgusts me about celebrity culture are the lengths the paparazzi will go to to get that one shot of a celebrity without makeup/drinking coffee/walking their dog/skipping in the rain wearing muppet fur and chanting the word "hullaballoo" for three hours straight/etc. while I can't say that I wholeheartedly support the celebrities who get pissed and end up throwing something at a paparazzo or hitting them with their car or something—it is, after all, their job to take pictures—I can't say I blame them. there has to be a point when it just gets to you and you go a little crazy. if I had people following me all the time, I'd probably pull a Chapelle too and go off to some remote place where no one could find me without telling anyone.
since coming into the kpop fandom, I've been legitimately freaked out by some stuff, but one of the things that absolutely makes me uncomfortable is the amount of secret cameras that they do. sometimes this ends up being hilarious—sup SuJu's Intimate Note—but a lot of the time it seems to end up making people confused and angry and sad because they don't know what's going on and why everyone is treating them so oddly. I don't think it's right to toy with people's emotions that way; Punk'd bothered me for a really long time, but I couldn't figure out why until I came into this fandom. (for a much more eloquent version of this, I recommend
meiface's Behind Closed Doors, which is, yes, fanfic, but it addresses these issues from the perspective of someone actually participating in them, and it seems like fairly accurate portrayal to me.)so basically, I think that, yeah, there's a necessary loss of privacy that comes with being famous, but it's entirely too extreme. or at least it is here; I don't know enough about Europe's treatment of celebrities to comment properly, but I read an article with Daniel Radcliffe once where he said that he's glad they did the HP movies in Britain, with British actors, because the senior actors wouldn't let him get full of himself. I wish I still had the issue of PARADE it was in so I could quote it properly, but the gist was that they would be like "okay, you're doing really well, this is great, but don't think that you've got it made because if you drop the ball for a second they'll throw you to the wolves." he said that they kept him humble instead of letting him get a swelled head and end up throwing it all away on drugs and partying the way so many young American actors do. I think that's the sort of attitude we should have in general, that you could be hot shit now, but that isn't going to last forever instead of the OH I'M FAMOUS I CAN DO WHAT I WANT viewpoint.
...I feel like that should have been some sort of formal essay :| one of these days I will learn to express myself in two sentences or less.
in other news, Kyu's new hair isn't as bad as it looked on my phone, but I still wish he'd left it long :( also band camp starts tomorrow FML and I feel like a loser whenever I say band camp. there needs to be a less dorky name for it.
PS this girl is amazing
