Truth vs. Fiction

Chapter 5 -- Privacy and Spectacle: The Reversible Panopticon and Media-Saturated Society by Larry Gross, Image Ethics in the Digital Age

"But the star image was always a dual one, as the audience was invited to consume both the fictional roles played on the screen and the supposedly real, although often equally fictional, persona of the star as an individual. The public's seemingly endless fascination with the real characters and lives of the stars feeds a burgeoning "rhetoric of authenticity" that builds on the assumption that "what is behind or below the surface is, unquestionably and virtually by definition, the truth"" (98).

Larry Gross touches on the thin line that separates privacy and spectacle in things/people that have been assigned celebrity status by society, in society. The quote above speaks of the issue that I beg to address -- when does a celebrity's private life become a spectacle in light of having "dual personas" shown in different contexts?

Growing up in a Hollywood-saturated society, I can personally empathize with the seeming fascination with characters played by and actual lives of celebrities. But also presently living in a technology-saturated world, I cannot help but draw similarities between the spectacle that celebrities have become and the spectacle that people make themselves out to be on the world wide web, especially on social networking sites such as Facebook.

What defines the "real character" of the person from his/her actual life when he/she is presented on Facebook? Facebook garners millions of users -- and I presume even more viewers -- each day. For those whose profiles are made public, whose profiles are accessible to strangers, they become something of a spectacle as the world is able to see their lives and form some sort of connection with them. The same goes for people whose profiles are privatized. Their profiles are still public to their friends. Some of these friends might still be in contact with them, but most of them probably are not. Do their lives then become something of a show to be watched as one scrolls down their profile page?

I clearly see this rhetoric of authenticity in the reality show, Keeping Up With The Kardashians. The audience are welcomed into this family's life -- the reality they wish to portray, in order to fit the tastes of the audiences... But we have no idea what reality of their life truly is. Without the cameras, without the scripts, without the staged actions, who are they truly? How do they truly interact with each other? This "truth" that the public believes limits us to the romanticized version of everything... But we are left questioning what the truth really is. Which is probably why people still desire to meet their celebrity idols in real life, because we still understand somewhere within us that the TV portrayal of such celebrities are fictional in every way.