Reality Matters_ 19 Writers Come Clean About the Shows We Can't Stop Watching - Anna David [21]
Byron attributed his demise to “envy, jealousy, and all uncharitableness,” but is that accurate? To see celebrities as just another privileged class, subject to the same animosities as any other well-off group, doesn’t do justice to the complexity of people’s feelings toward them. Clark Gable once remarked to David Niven that, when it came to the contract between a star and his public, the public had read the small print and the star hadn’t. All it took was one tiny violation and the adoring crowds turned into a baying mob. “So, when we get knocked off by gangsters…or get hooked on booze or dope or get ourselves thrown out of business because of scandals or because we just get old, that’s the payoff and the public feels satisfied,” said Gable. “Yeah, it’s a good idea to read that small print.”
Perhaps the best place to seek an explanation for why fans have a tendency to destroy their idols is The Golden Bough, J. G. Frazer’s comparative study of magic and religion. In Books II and III, titled “Killing the God” and “The Scapegoat,” he discusses various primitive religions in which individuals who are believed to be the living embodiment of divine beings are first worshipped, then put to death by their followers. According to Frazer, human sacrifices such as this were designed to strengthen and revitalize the god or goddess that the victim was impersonating. The savages who performed these rituals weren’t actually trying to kill their gods; rather, by murdering their human proxies they were seeking to preserve the immortality of their deities. Indeed, Frazer maintained that the Easter celebration of the death and resurrection of Christ had its origin in these primitive rituals.
There’s one passage in particular in The Golden Bough that should serve as a warning to anyone tempted to appear on a reality show. According to Frazer, some divine kings managed to avoid being killed by their followers by nominating a proxy to be put to death in their stead. The princes of Malabar, for instance, delegated supreme power to one of their subjects, allowed him to lord it over them for five years, then sat back and watched as the man’s head was chopped off. Clearly, the celebrities created by reality television programs are the modern-day equivalents of these chumps. Nonentities are plucked from the hoi polloi, allowed to enjoy the privileges of fame for a few precious years, and then ritually sacrificed in the tabloids. In this way, the public’s bloodlust is satisfied and proper celebrities are able to hang on to their own privileged status for a little bit longer.
As race day approached on The Other Boat Race, I came down with a bad case of the jitters. We’d raced against at least half a dozen other crews at this stage, not just the sixteen-year-olds, and they’d all beaten us, but that wasn’t my chief concern. My big worry was that I had become so discombobulated on every single one of these occasions that I had come off my seat. The upshot was that I’d spent several minutes of each race flailing around, desperately trying to get back on my slider as it careered back and forth in time with the motion of the boat. It was a bit like trying to remount a mechanical bull when it was at full tilt.
Still, at least I’d come up with a solution to this problem. Just before the start of the race I was planning to superglue myself to the seat. Unless the boat capsized, I would probably be okay.
No such easy solution presented itself to the problem of “catching a crab.” This is rowing-speak for putting your oar in at the wrong angle and getting it stuck in the forward position. Due to the momentum of the boat, once you’ve caught a crab it’s almost impossible to rectify the situation. But you can’t just sit there and do nothing, since your oar is effectively acting