THE PITFALLS OF FAME

By Andrew Williams

"Avoid celebrity."--Robert Fripp
Grok this: Fripp is not telling us to avoid celebrities, although he and
numerous famous names would appreciate it if you did. He is also not
telling us to avoid success in a chosen profession. What he's talking
about are the literal trappings of celebrity: limos, TV appearances,
interviews, scads of scantily clad fe/males--whatever distracts you from
work, love and rest and extinguishes the creative fires within.
All this fell into place as I was reading a piece in a local paper
previewing the Michael Jackson interview that aired on ABC's 20/20 program
last Thursday night. After a nice start, in which the writer mulled
"analyz(ing) the effects of stardom on a person's psyche, on the role of
celebrity vis-a-vis the public obsession with wanting to know," s/he took
the easy way out and dished the freaky stuff.
As the writer went down the list of Jackson's so-called aberrant behavior,
I kept thinking, as I have for decades, "If you or I had grown up in the
same environment as he did--instant fame at age 5, an abusive, controlling
father, unable to lead even a semblance of a 'normal' life--we might've
turned out like that."
"Well," the counterargument goes, "his sister Janet had the same parents
and became famous at about the same age, yet she's normal." First, define
'normal'--that is, give a statistical/psychological mean for behavior that
can be applied equally to every human being. Second, children raised by
the same parents in the same environments with the same conditions do
*not* turn out the same. Third, a similar case study can be obtained from
the life of Brian Wilson. True, his stardom came later, but the price he
paid was equally heavy, and the results (reclusiveness, odd behavior,
years of intensive therapy) oddly similar.
I have a lot of sympathy for Michael Jackson. He is, in a metaphorical
sense, the "Boy in the Bubble:" every appearance, every peccadillo, every
marriage is studied like a virus under electron microscope. How would you
like all your quirks to become Page One news the instant someone blabs
them to the press? If the skeletons in my closet are to be exposed, I want
to be the one to expose them, so I can give them the appropriate contexts.
There is a world of difference between making public appearances and
having your private life X-rayed in public without your prior knowledge or
consent.
The writer of the review did make at least one insightful observation. I
quote: "Here is a man who grew up in the public eye, and both loathes the
attention he gets at the same time he feeds on it, like a vampire." Gee,
sounds like a human reaction to me. We can all love and hate things at the
same time: parents, lovers, siblings, ice cream. And yet the writer's
language sneakily suggests that this is an abnormal reaction.
Old AmerIndian wisdom says "Do not judge a man until you have first walked
a mile in his moccasins." Amongst all of Michael Jackson's
judges--journalists, armchair psychiatrists, district attorneys, et.al.--I
don't know of any who have done this. Do you?