As the American culture enters further into the areas of reality, and tabloid television, one may find themselves building a stronger curiosity of a particular celebrity especially when it concerns their personal life. If not all, most of us are guilty for having some kind of interest in one’s favorite or most talked about celebrity. Whether it is their dating life, legal battle, or a life crisis the general public has developed a strong interest of the private lives of the Hollywood society. The question now is whether or not we have a right to have an interest in their lives.
Generally, a primary question would be to ask one self that if the personal lives of a celebrity is so important to be held private, why hasn’t anything been done in the past ten years to prevent bad PR? Thus leading us to the age old phrase “All publicity is good publicity”. For example, there have been countless occasions of feud battles between two celebrities. In a recent article, music mix news discussed the on and off again feud between Female Rapper Nikki Minaj and Veteran Rapper Lil Kim. Kim reflected her feelings towards Minaj’s excessive need to copy her. Saying “I hate you Lil’ Kim clone/clown, all this buffonery, the sh– stops now … We all know your last name is what got you your job, you’s a put-together gimmick, something like a collage.” In one her recent raps. Another questionable situation would be “bad choices” made by celebrities. For example the Britney Spears and Madonna controversial kiss during the 2003 VMA’s practically stripping Spears of any last bit of innocence she had left in her reputation. However, did Britney really think she would walk away from this performance without any comment or opinion? Madonna, already known for being unpredictable, was judged less than the previous Mickey Mouse Club superstar. But are these cases of actual scandals or publicity stunts to increase their career? Another way to understand our need to be involved is to put ourselves in a typical situation. When driving down the road and passing an accident, one will automatically obtain the need to know every detail of the scene. How bad was the accident? Did anyone get hurt? Did anyone die? The drama of someone’s life other than our own creates a therapy like impression to feel better about one’s own life. Not only does one feel gratification, but they also develop a desire to see how long it takes until a Hollywood couple breaks up, or a rock and roll singer reaches his/her breaking point. The general “What crazy thing are they going to do next” interest that becomes more and more addicting. Not only are we glued to what goes on when the cameras aren’t rolling we create a sense of dominance that we would never be as irresponsible or immature as a celebrity can appear to be. Nonetheless, we all make mistakes; the only difference is most of us don’t have the paparazzi monitoring our every move, waiting for that moment when we actually do make a mistake.
We could argue the now popular social media aspect of a celebrities life. With popular websites like Facebook and Twitter, stars are incorporating these sites to include their fans in the everyday events of their life. The argument would be that they're inviting us into their personal lives. Many have already been recorded for being too open i.e singer John Mayer for posting personal information regarding his love life. However, this being the current trend are celebrities forced by their management to discuss their business to the world or can they limit the amount of information they reveal to their fans?
Although there are a lot of negative reasons that one finds the private lives of a celebrity interesting, there are also positive reasoning. Each one of us can name at least one celebrity that intrigues us in one way or another whether it is how much we relate to them, how we may follow their sense of style, or how we may perceive this person as a role model. In particular for the younger generation. They gravitate towards the need to know everything about this specific person in hopes of becoming their biggest fan. In the last year teenage girls and guys diagnosed with what Hollywood call “Bieber Fever” are obsessing over the16 year old musician Justin Bieber, who went from posting videos on YouTube to now to being a platinum selling artists. Being a teenager is already hard enough, but having a role model like Justin to idolize, one would say helps them transition into becoming more popular and confident around other people.
Now back to the original question? Do we have a right to have interest in their personal lives?
Based on research regardless of how bad the media is towards celebrities, in one way or another it advances their career. As much as we want to see them fail we still leave a sense of hope that they will pull through. However, would we want to be the center of attention for every mistake and slip-up in our lives? To an extent we do deal with a lack of privacy due to social networking online, society now has to deal with whether or not an ex is monotoring their current relationship or if tagged pic comes back to haunt them. Just like us, celebrities are humans too and make a lot of the same mistakes. The only distinction is we have the ability to keep our mistakes a secret and move on while celebrities have to live with the embarrassment forever. So basically in the end no, we don’t have a right to know the business of someone that has nothing to do with us, it is a privilege that we are given this information whether it be accurate or inaccurate.
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