Social Resentment and The Gossip Hypothesis
archive from an old blog - theartoftelevision. written circa 2014.
Celebrity worship, Eric Gans (2002) says is explicitly a failure to love your neighbour. What does this mean? Simply speaking celebrity worship could be a product of social resentment. Our jealousy of our people who have superior skills, or social standing can lead us to use celebrities to look down on our 'neighbours', and thus avoid admiring them and ease our inferiority feelings.
Before mass media our social network was considerably smaller. It was limited by our physical surroundings. The people in our social network were, in other words, our neighbours. Now, however, if we choose we can live entirely in the virtual world, and because we are constantly exposed to celebrities they become a part of that network. They seem to be close to us, even though the distance is much bigger. This leads to the second theory - the gossip hypothesis. This is an evolutionary explanation for celebrity worship. However, it only describes one aspect of it - our thirst for knowledge about celebrities' exploits. As humans, we replaced the social act of grooming (which other primates spend almost 20% of the day doing) with language. This allowed us to form larger groups and share information rapidly. It was also a way to maintain peace in the group, as grooming did. Thus it was vital to us. Important information included things like the activities of the alpha male (so that the others could potentially impregnate his female). Today our social network has changed, and we talk about celebrities' exploits, because they are the new alpha males and females. They have wealth, status and fame. We humanize them by consuming media concerning their latest exploits, mistakes and private lives.
