Martha Stewart: What Price, Fame?What do famous people have that we (the not-yet famous) don’t have?What they have is celebrity! This word comes from “celebrate,” which is derived from Latin usage, meaning to frequent in large numbers. It’s connection to ritual and pastime is found in “celebration,” where we mark together a recent success or the passing of an important milestone and share this moment by a special meal, drink, or sometimes a religious service. A celebrity is someone who is well known, revered, one who draws a multitude of people and attention when he or she is present or to what he or she is doing. Celebrities are “stars.” The reason we call them stars references back to more ancient times, when our myths identified the stars with god-like names and powers, and an ability to influence the events of our lives. As a great performance or feat can sometimes truly move us, we may come to identify the performer as having some of that stellar stuff, and designate him (or her) as a star, set above the rest of us. Unfortunately, not all celebrities remain stars in our eyes. Martha Stewart achieved her ascension through her ability to convey elegance and style to the masses. Martha became a multimedia success, with very high name-recognition, which is itself a quality that easily generated additional commercial success as a corporate spokesperson. So, Martha Stewart, the celebrity mega entrepreneur may well become the victim of one of the classic fatal flaws: her apparent greed in using insider information to profit from a stock sale. Was Martha Stewart singled out for this treatment because she is a rich, powerful woman, whose success is resented by many? Was she under investigation because she is a celebrity? I don’t think so and I hope not, but I cannot remember the name of any other person investigated for the same offence. What’s different in her case is that we all know about it and we can all recite some of the details. Martha Stewart’s woes get the front page just as O.J. Simpson’s trial did and not the other several thousand murder or insider trading trials that have happened since his case was concluded. The reason that this case has gotten so much of our attention is that just as we have watched the ascent of these and other mortals into the apparent immortality of stardom and celebrity, we now compellingly watch their demise, perhaps with even greater interest. We both love and hate our stars at times. They set the benchmark for what is humanly possible and at the same time they remind us of what we, ourselves, cannot do. Watching the public downfall of an O.J. Simpson or now, that of Martha Stewart, can be understood, sociologically as a type of ritual sacrifice. Taken down a notch or two, our celebrities are revealed, as great as their achievements may have been, to be no more than mirrors of our own selves and aspirations. In the words of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, who was one of the biggest celebrities of all time, “Men at some time are masters of their fates. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” |
