Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Synonyms: Celebrities, Advertisers

Actors, Athletes, talk-show hosts, etc. Celebrities - a universal term that applies to all the previous occupations mentioned - have become kind of assholes, to put it bluntly. And not assholes in the sense that they don't sign autographs to adoring fans or, on occasion, punch out a paparazzi. No. Assholes in the sense that they aren't really respectable as people. Even to what Americans have determined and accepted to be the best actors of our time aren't really worthy of the praise that we give them. Even intelligent americans, who analyze acting and debate it intellectually, are susceptible to giving unjustified praise to some of these actors.

I am not talking about these actors' or actresses' actual acting. I'm talking about the other means of which they are now accumulating money. What these people do outside the acting industry. For instance, I saw Leonardo Di Caprio advertising for some watch or shirt or whatever (it was just a picture of him staring out into the distance, so whatever he was advertising wasn't obviously clear, unless he was just advertising himself) embedded in the pages of a magazine.

Clearly, Leonardo doesn't want many people to know that he is doing advertising while simultaneously starring in some of the biggest movies of the past decade. In other words, Leonardo isn't promoting AXE body spray in T.V. commercials. But nonetheless, he is partaking in the greedy-evils that is advertising. For what it is worth, my contention is that if a company needs a celebrity to sell their product they are implicitly admitting that their product would not last based on quality alone. Right? I mean, I understand Tiger Woods hitting a certain golf club may get more people to buy the club, which in turn may expedite people's awareness of the quality of the club and thus get more people to buy it sooner. But last year, in a marketing class that I took in college (where I also learned that marketing is basically false representations and manipulations) I learned that quality and word-of-mouth is the underlying determinant of how much a product will make, in profits that is. But in the age of constant advertisements and a reprising role corporations are taking apparently with no regard or enforcement of anti-trust laws, celebrities are all too quick to get their money-sucking hands in on the enterprise that is advertising.

Acting is still worthy of respect. Seeing an actor like Christian Bale totally lose himself and embody a drug-addict of a brother in The Fighter is an amazing performance to watch. Acting still has the capacity to give its viewers otherwise not received insights, as well as over-discussed debates. But when you see one of your favorite actors or actresses hocking a watch or make-up, its hard to respect them as individuals, which indirectly compromises the respectability of their acting. Please celebrities, take pride in your acting and accept that that is your job, not advertising. 

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