“All the public owes you is a good performance.” Humphrey Bogart said it in 1949, and 77 years later we are still debating it when discussing celebrities, fame, and the growing tendency to publicize every aspect of their private lives. Does a person who has consciously, or even unconsciously, pursued a career in entertainment still deserve privacy? Or does becoming a public figure extend to the entirety of their existence? It is a question made even more relevant by the permanent presence of social media in our lives, as is the case with almost everything today. On one hand, becoming a public personality has become easier thanks to the accessibility of digital platforms; on the other, these same platforms create a stronger, albeit artificial, sense of intimacy with people who, until a few years ago, seemed completely unreachable.
Celebrity culture and the expansion of public performance
These may sound like first-world problems, of course, but the reality is that modern celebrity culture has dramatically expanded the stage on which stars are expected to perform. It is no longer just about the concert stage, the music video, the film set, the fashion runway, or the red carpet appearance. Now, the performance extends to everything that happens whenever they are not alone. A celebrity only needs to be spotted by a fan in a restaurant, refuse an autograph, and suddenly the carefully curated image of the “down-to-earth person” collapses. We have seen it happen countless times: Harry Styles glaring at someone photographing him in a supermarket in Rome; Justin Bieber publicly admitting he is tired of feeling like “an animal in a zoo”; or Chappell Roan angrily addressing fans on TikTok who approach her in public: “I’m a random bitch. You’re a random bitch. I don’t give a fuck if you think it’s selfish of me to say no for a photo.” Then there is the tragically iconic breakdown of Britney Spears attacking a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella, head-shaving included.
When fans become followers
Some celebrities, willingly or not, end up assuming an almost messianic role because of the devotion with which fans follow them. Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Madonna possess an almost ancestral power over their audiences, whose admiration often resembles discipleship more than simple support. At this level, stars stop being perceived as real people, individuals with flaws, contradictions, and the ability to make mistakes, and instead become idealized figures to emulate. Take Sabrina Carpenter during the first weekend of Coachella. A fan celebrated her using a zaghrouta, a traditional Middle Eastern ululation, which Carpenter jokingly mistook for yodeling. Within hours, she was accused online of being Islamophobic. It becomes a kind of digital witch hunt where making a mistake is almost inevitable. They are, and we are, all elephants in a crystal shop.
The danger of parasocial relationships
This is the curse of parasocial relationships: they convince us that we truly know someone simply because we consume their image every day. What we fail to understand is that the image we have grown attached to is constructed. It is a public persona, a role being performed, and we are merely spectators. The distinction between the individual and the character becomes especially blurred with actors who repeatedly play similar roles onscreen. Hugh Grant is perceived as the charming romantic lead, despite appearing, in reality, far less pleasant than his characters suggest. Anne Hathaway embodies the sweet girl-next-door archetype, yet when she refuses photos or autographs because she “cannot stop for everyone,” she is immediately labeled an egocentric diva. Ironically, Hathaway is now portraying a fading pop star in Mother Mary, a film explicitly centered on celebrity status, identity, and the endless hamster wheel of performance that fame creates.
Who are celebrities when the cameras stop rolling?
Until now, we have mostly considered celebrity culture from the audience’s perspective. But Mother Mary offers the opposite point of view: that of the celebrity trapped inside the machinery of constant performance. Can someone who is perpetually performing still recognize themselves? At what point does the line between the private self and the public persona begin to dissolve? In the film, Hathaway’s character asks a designer to create a dress that feels authentically “hers,” something capable of expressing her true essence. But if expressing your personality requires someone else’s creativity, is it really your personality at all? Who are you, truly? The confident stage lion adored by millions, or the insecure off-stage individual desperately searching for approval? These are questions we could explore endlessly, eventually arriving at broader reflections about the different masks all of us wear in everyday life. But this is not an analysis of One, No One and One Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello.
What does our obsession with celebrities say about us?
What I keep wondering, especially when reading criticism directed at Chappell Roan and accusations of diva behavior, is what role we ourselves play as consumers of entertainment. More importantly, I wonder what is missing in our lives that drives us to seek emotional closeness with people who are fundamentally distant from us. Have we lost touch with reality? Are we lonely? Or is this an unconscious act of revenge, a desire to rebalance the relationship between ordinary people and those we place on pedestals? Because perhaps the real issue with celebrity obsession is not that famous people stop acting like ordinary humans. Perhaps it is that we no longer allow them to be human at all.
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