The Fragility and Price of Fame
After watching the recent documentaries on Brittany Spears and Caroline Flack, I feel we are in crisis in terms of fame and mental health. In fact, we probably have been for some time. Our world is dominated by a bombardment of social media and a craving for reality TV and celebrity. What started with shows like Big Brother have now risen to a plethora of reality TV shows including Love Island and goodness knows how many shows depicting people in difficult situations or their love live for all to see. The Broadcasting companies will continue to more shows like this because this is apparently what the public want to see. As someone in their 50’s I appreciate that these sorts of programmes are not aimed at my sort of age group and many young people love them and are even addicted to them. However, I do feel this sort of lazy TV is both representing and rousing up a concerning trend in the public wanting to see life as a soap opera. We take delight in seeing people in uncomfortable situations, people arguing and even fighting on our TV Screens. Our society is encouraging more and more people to appear to TV screens for them to be set up, mocked and their lives intensively inspected. All supposedly to entertain us. More and more young people are craving for some sort of fame without appreciating the true consequences. Fame is addictive and it must be so flattering to get all the attention and see your name in lights. However, it comes at a huge price as your life is now in the hands of a media that just doesn’t really care. Any mistakes will be exaggerated and splashed all over the newspapers for public fodder. We all looked in horror at seeing some of the newspaper headlines and pictures after the Caroline Flack situation when her public life was dissected for all to see. The newspapers will just say they are only publishing what the public want to see. The juicy gossip and the sensational headlines! In truth they are probably correct. These stories persuade people to tune in or buy the relevant newspaper. They would soon stop doing these programmes or selling newspapers if the viewing figures were very low. There is no real training in becoming famous. It is on the job. Some people are able to handle it no matter, but there are so many fragile people out there who have no idea what will hit them until their whole life is exposed to the world. Television Companies have a responsibility to help people, so they are better prepared. However, I feel they don’t have much concern as long as it is making them money. The media will just say that it is the price they pay for their desire for becoming famous.
It is the same on Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter who revel in huge membership figures but don’t seem to take any responsibility for some of the vile, racist and hatred comments that are published on their sites on a daily basis. Because fame is so compulsive people are so eager to read any comments written about them. If you are a fragile person then any spiteful and hateful content is bound to have a negative effect on your mind and as a consequence your mental health will suffer.
We recently had the Harry and Meghan interview by Oprah Winfrey splashed on our TV screens. I personally didn’t watch it. The reason was not because I wanted to take sides on the subject or disbelieve anybody. I didn’t watch it because I saw it as another reality TV soap opera masterminded by television. Whatever your opinion is on the couple, I believe they are the latest victims to be preyed upon by the media to satisfy an increasing demand in sensational stories and the craving for gossip no matter what is or isn’t the truth. The broadsheets and television companies don’t care about Harry and Meghan or anyone else’s life trashed in public. As long as people buy in to it or tune to revel in it then that’s ok!
If this is what we want in our lives, then I fear there will be many more fragile people out there who will fall victim to the price of fame.
We all were deeply sad, shocked and horrified watching the Brittany Spears and Caroline Flack documentary. However, will we learn from what happened to Caroline Flack? Is she just another fragile person that falls through the cracks and we move on to enjoying the next reality TV show or juicy piece of gossip on a newspaper headline? Do people care? If we really care about Mental Health, then we MUST care.
