Thoughts on Celebrities and Outrage

One reason there is so much outrage when celebrities, or famous people in general, are caught engaging in corrupt acts is due to the fact that people project their own sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness onto them. The regular, every day, media consumer thinks of themselves as a good person and so they look at celebrities and assume that the reason they are able to amass such wealth, attention, and power must be because celebrities are also good people.

"I'm good and I like this actor, so they must be good?" One might think. Or, "They are popular and successful. They must be good people."

Because they project themselves onto others when the other fails they see themselves as failing. They identified with the other long enough to feel empathy subconsciously for them. But no matter how much empathy they have for their failed celebrity they must distance themselves from them socially. They rebuke them and signal their allegiance to decency based on the current ethics they adhere to and make their position known to others so that they will not be found out to be just as weak, and corrupt as their favorite famous person.

The question to ask when a person is revealed to be an immoral person, after amassing so much of what we all covet, is how did others allow this to happen? Who supported this corrupt individual throughout their career? Should we blame it on all of the consumers that paid for their success or was it their friends, family members and coworkers that allowed them to flourish while inside they were a blight on decency and a disgrace to those that have the moral bravery to do the right thing?

Famous people should be scrutinized in the same manner as everyone else. We should remain objective about others and not make wild assumptions about who they are based on their appearances in popular media. Also, because politicians are famous people they should be scrutinized just like everybody else as well and laws should apply to all equally. It seems that the rich and powerful sometimes skirt the justice system creating another reason for people to see them as superior. This difference generates more jealousy, resentment, and outrage.

No one should be surprised that someone they don't know, at all, turns out to be a "bad person." There are a lot of "bad" people out there and in the case of politics, I can see why a bad person might be drawn to the power there or born into the corrupting nature of power.

Also, we tend to value money and we assume famous people have money. People wish they could be rich, famous and popular so they look at those who have accomplished such things as if they were them. They put themselves into the shoes of their favorite celebrities and imagine that they are them. They want to relate to and become friends with their celebrities. So, when they find out that their favorite famous person did something socially, legally or morally reprehensible they are taken aback because the venire of their idealism has been stripped away.

Maybe others wish they could be as free and powerful as celebrities and they both envy them and resent them and so they display confused and inconsistent stances on celebrity behavior.

Maybe people covet what celebrities have and so they jump on any opportunity to spite and shame them due to their own jealous nature.

Maybe public outrage is just another mechanism to feel included and socially accepted.

I'm not saying people shouldn't be outraged about immoral celebrities but I don't think they should be more outraged about them than anyone else. We should be outraged at anyone that commits terrible crimes or engages in immoral actions. Also, I don't think we should be surprised when someone we don't know is not the person we assumed they were. Maybe it is just easy to jump on the bandwagon of celebrity outrage because the subject of the outrage is well known. I think it important not to deify others and not to pay so much mind to things that have no real effect on you. There are enough things to worry about going on in my neighborhood and around the people I care about that to worry about what Bill Cosby did doesn't seem that important to me.

Maybe we need these famous baddies to teach us a lesson about making assumptions or elevating people due to their status. Maybe we use these public shamings to teach others that no one is safe from scrutiny. Maybe we jump on the famous case of impropriety to showcase our virtue in a way that resounds throughout the land and reinforces our values. Maybe it's just another case of "first world problems" and entertainment. Maybe we revel in any opportunity to display our moral superiority and regain power over the powerful. Maybe the media leeches onto the famous to capitalize on their fame. Maybe pointing out the failures of others distracts us from our own weaknesses and failures.

Building Film

Sometimes I forget the 7 years I spent building film.

When I was 19 I got my first management position working for a three screen movie theater. The man that hired me was a great example of how to be a good manager. He was knowledgeable, authoritative, balanced and had a great sense of humor. His honesty and strong work ethic was admirable and I learned a lot from him. I remember one time I decided to get entirely too high on a lunch break and when I was back on shift he noticed immediately. Instead of reacting with moral outrage or firing me, he made a few jokes and then after I had time to come down and realize how I had put my position in jeopardy, he took me aside and had a conversation about what he expected of me and how once he was done expressing his disappointment he made it a point to not keep a grudge. That's when I learned that you can be a leader by being honest about your expectations and not let the tension create a long lasting problem. 

That theater is also where I learned how to build film. Before digital cameras and digital projectors 35 milometer film dominated the film industry and it was a lot of fun to work with. A standard movie came on about three to six separate reels that had to be spliced together to make two very large reels. Then the two huge reels were threaded onto a huge metal platter. Also, the ads at the beginning of the movie had to be added in as well as the cues for the projector to turn off and the theater lights to go down and then back up had to be added. Then the film was threaded through a complex set of rollers, through the projector and back onto another platter from the inside out. 

The reels would arrive in large metal tins containing the separate reels and trailers that would be added. Sometimes the tins would have code names so that the handlers wouldn't know what movie it was and steal it. This was always a fun part of the business because it meant that I knew something most people did not and that what I was working with was very important and expensive. After the media would arrive I would have to create the approved trailer reel. At the beginning end of a reel were many frames of black that would have to be cut off with a splicer tool and when two ends would meet I would tape them together on each side of the seam. It was important to cut exactly at the frame ends and the connect them smoothly. With 24 frames per second and about an inch per frame a two hour movie was roughly 170,000 inches or 14,400 feet (~4 miles), so it took quite a while to turn separate pieces of discrete media into one coherent presentation. 

I can remember one time, when I was first starting in the projection booth, I was alone trying to build a film late at night when most of an entire reel fell to the floor. I spent hours, cursing and sweating, trying to wind up and disentangle long lines of dark film strewn this way and that across the floor. I would often stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning previewing the films that I built to make sure there weren't any errors. I watched "The Notebook", "Veggie Tales" and many other terrible movies but I also watched some of the best movies alone or with work mates after hours where we had the entire theater to ourselves. 

I spent hundreds of hours working in dark booths manipulating hundreds of miles of 35 mm film and developed an expertise in an area that would soon become obsolete but I met a lot of great people, had great conversations and learned a lot in projection booths. I worked hard and learned most of what there was to know about the projection profession, when I wasn't distracted from my work by an amazing scene in the next great movie or surveying the theater from the booth window watching people eating entire dinners or engaging in public sexual acts. It was a time well spent but to no real end. Soon after I left the theater I worked at converted to all digital and building film changed to organizing files on a computer. There are still theaters that haven't converted and there will always be those who appreciate film and the older ways and I'm glad I got the experience of being a small part of the real film industry.

*Here are some pictures from the internet that projectionists might appreciate.