Is there anything new to say about fame?

I always feel a twinge of cynicism when I hear that someone is lecturing or writing about fame and celebrity. As a subject it is self referential to the point of dullness, despite the best efforts of the likes of Marina Hyde in the Guardian. There are only so many times you can hear about the someone’s latest narcissistic exploits, even in the form of an amusing critique, especially if they are famous for not doing very much at all.

Yesterday I went to the Lionel Monteith Memorial Lecture at St Thomas’s Hospital, which was given by psychotherapist and media figure Bret Kahr. He has had a long career in psychotherapy, both of individuals and couples. He has also carried out research into sexual fantasy, and written books his best known being Sex and the Psyche and a biography of the analyst and paediatrician DW Winnicott, who pioneered the idea of ‘good enough parenting’ and was himself a radio broadcaster when it was still seen by the psychoanalytic community as being a bit déclassé.

Kahr pointed out that 25% of people masturbate over celebrities, (18-25 year olds are, apparently, three times more likely to do this), including a scientist who could only come while thinking about receiving the Nobel prize. He then listed the terrifying number of television programmes about being famous, or trying to be.

One of his main points in this very thorough lecture was that none of this is new. Humans have had an obsession with fame throughout history, from the ancient Greeks, with their dreams of kleos aphthiton (undying fame), and Alexander the Great putting his image on coins, through the Romans, Shakespeare and the French revolution, with the special condemned cells for famous people, who got to be guillotined in private. Even Guardianistas of the past, such as Mary Shelley, were actually very keen on being well known.

But let’s remember that there was no television or internet until the last century so, up until then, the genuinely famous must have seemed like gods and goddesses. To be spoken about by people you have never met must have been an intoxicating concept and a far cry from Twitter. That said, aside from the creative or heroic, the celebs that past people had to put up with were either religious types, or god help us, European aristocracy.

Kahr then looked at the psychoanalytic background to celebrity obsession. One suggestion was that since our mother is the first celebrity in our lives, we are always trying to see her again, and the urge to celeb-spot in a restaurant is simply an attempt to see our ‘pre-oedipal’ mother naked. The promotion of, and fascination with, young women stars, with their clear eyes and perfect skin, is another view of the mother from the baby’s point of view, as traditionally most women become mothers in their early 20s. (That, of course, is changing.)

One of the most fascinating details was the account of the ostracon of ancient Greece. Athenian citizens would write the name of a prominent citizen on bits of broken pottery, which would be added up, and the one with the most votes would be run out of town, for up to 10 years. Hence ‘ostracism’. He likens this to phoning to get someone evicted from the Big Brother house.

I’d been hoping for more discussion of the mental illnesses that obsession with fame and the famous could throw up. Of course, he did talk about stalking, giving John Lennon’s murderer, Mark Chapman, as an example, who said that by killing Lennon, he would get some of his fame. But I’m thinking about more subtle conditions, where a person starts to believe they know the star because they have such easy access to their image and life, and most importantly in the privacy of home, which was one of Kahr’s final points. This could lead to paranoia and delusions, even forms of schizophrenia, but we won’t know the real effects of all this for a few decades yet.

And let’s not forget that the groundwork has to be there first. When the national lottery was first set up in 1994, it was soon blamed for the rise in scratchcard addiction, with heartbreaking stories of people with little enough to start with, spending their last pennies in shops, over and over again, with the papers full of vicars saying how evil it was. Sadly, though, if someone becomes addicted to scratchcards, the tendency was already there.

Educators, and parents, are now very familiar with children saying they want to be famous when they grow up. They must sometimes despair. However out of reach an ambition (when I was young, I wanted to be an astronaut), at least the traditional ones, like nurse and train driver, had something concrete about them, with training, qualifications and a career path. But I can’t sit in judgement. Children have thousands of images pumped at them each day, each one saying that the only things worth having are money and lots of people looking at you. Why shouldn’t they want a piece of that?

It won’t be long before universities start offering modules on ‘Handling Fame.’ It might be time to throw yourself out of a window when they do, but I’m showing my age there.

Postscript
I just googled ‘can you study fame at university’ and discovered that high flying institution Bristol has a ‘top 100 most influential people on campus.’ Christ. Although it is totally logical, given the time and place, you can have no conception of how depressing I find this.