Empire of Illusion - Chris Hedges [23]
“Have I given you enough? Reward me. Put me on television. Let me share this with millions . . . I know how this works. I give you these things, and you give me a platform. So give me a platform. I am owed . . . I can do it any way you want, too—I can do it funny, or maudlin, or just straight, uninflected—anything. You tell me. I can do it sad, or inspirational, or angry. . . . All this did not happen to us for naught, I can assure you—there is no logic to that, there is logic only in assuming that we suffered for a reason. Just give us our due. . . . I need community, I need feedback, I need love, connection, give-and-take—will bleed if they will love. . . . I will open a vein, an artery. . . . Oh please let me show this to millions. . . . Let me be the conduit. . . . Oh, I want to be the heart pumping blood to everyone! . . . I want—”
“And that will heal you?”
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!”20
We live in an age, Philip Roth wrote, in which the imagination of the novelist lies helpless before what will appear in the morning newspaper: “The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures daily that are the envy of any novelist.” Roth observed that the reality of celebrity culture “stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one’s own meager imagination.”21
Philip Roth’s grasp of the unreality of reality is exemplified in the British reality star Jade Goody.22 A twenty-year-old dental technician who was the only child of two drug addicts, Goody was in 2002 given a role as a contestant in Big Brother 3. She got drunk on the first night of the program. She waltzed around the set topless. She asked what asparagus was and said, “Rio de Janeiro, ain’t that a person?” She referred to East Anglia as “East Angular,” thought Portugal was in Spain, and complained that she was being made an “escape goat.” She thought “pistachio” was a famous painter. She finished fourth in the competition, but this did not, as it would for most others, end her career as a celebrity. She released several successful fitness DVDs and opened a beauty salon in Hertford. She published an autobiography and marketed her own fragrance in the weeks before Christmas 2006, which generated huge sales. She appeared on other reality shows including Celebrity Wife Swap, Celebrity Driving School, Celebrity Weakest Link, and Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes. She also hosted her own reality TV shows, including What Jade Did Next, Jade’s Salon, and Jade’s P.A.
Goody had the essential skill required of all who agree to expose their lives and selves to constant surveillance: She appeared to lack any degree of self-consciousness. She came naturally to exhibitionism, even when she was clearly a figure of ridicule. She opened her life to millions of viewers, even when it involved seamy and messy relationships and personal disasters, with a beguiling innocence. This is a bizarre skill highly prized in celebrity culture. Goody clearly craved the attention and sought to perpetuate it, but she seemed slightly bored or at least indifferent while doing it.
Her appearance, along with her mother Jackiey Budden and model boyfriend Jack Tweed, in the Big Brother house in January 2007, however, backfired. She bullied and taunted Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty, and used crude, racist remarks to describe Shetty, calling her “Shilpa Poppadom.” The show received some 45,000 complaints about her behavior and racist language. Her perfume was yanked from shelves, and publishers dropped plans to publish the paperback version of her autobiography. She apologized abjectly to Indian viewers and appeared on the Indian version of the show, called Bigg Boss. She might have faded from view, like most reality show contestants, but in 2007 she was diagnosed with cervical cancer, learning of the disease while being filmed for the Indian program. The new twist to the drama of her life propelled her back into the spotlight and allowed her a final chance to play a starring role in her life movie. The Living Channel commissioned