Does the Decline of Celebrity Culture Herald an Egalitarian Turn?

In discussing the decline of the institution of celebrity it is standard to discuss, besides changes in particular lines of activity that made for celebrity (the way we make movies in the franchise era, the narrowed base of interest in professional sport, etc.) the factors of saturation, and fragmentation. There is simply so much going on pop culturally that fewer and fewer people are likely to be looking in the same direction at once in the age of streaming and YouTube and all the rest than before it--and any single figure that much less likely to tower over contemporary culture as a whole. At the same time the amount of work required to keep an individual in the public eye, and the saturation of our lives with tabloid-type product, makes it harder to cultivate the kind of image, simultaneously one-dimensional and larger-than-life, so central to celebrity--all as celebrity itself may have been cheapened by the advent of such things as "reality" stars, online "influencers," and the rest. (Why actually develop a talent such as acting or singing, or the ability to perform extraordinary physical feats on the playing field or court, when just recording yourself mouthing stupidities--or making noises with other parts of your anatomy--may be the path to fame and riches?) Yet this hardly exhausts the discussion. Especially since the pandemic, and the backlash to a certain ill-conceived cover of Imagine, some have also argued for the decline of celebrity reflecting a deeper change in values--the shift of society in a more egalitarian direction.

Such a possibility seems important enough from the standpoint of the trajectory of a whole culture to be worth considering. (Certainly more so than wringing one's hands over the stupidities that make people stars on YouTube.) But does the claim for such a shift actually stand up to any scrutiny?

Certainly it is the case that celebrity culture is inherently inegalitarian, setting as it does a few above the rest, who are lavished with rewards above the rest, often insanely far above the rest, and typically wildly out of proportion to claims for an individual's excellence at what they do--and indeed many people celebrities without doing anything at all, simply because of who their parents are. And certainly it is plausible that those who are fascinated by celebrities in an uncritical way accept the inegalitarianism on some level, even celebrate it, with the reverse also true, and some arguing for a correlation between the obsession with celebrity and egalitarianism supportable through cross-country comparison. George Clooney may be overstating the reality when he says that in France "they don't give a @#!% about fame," but it is still common for observers from both sides of the Atlantic to remark there being less fascination with, less obsequiousness toward, celebrity on the European continent than is the case in the United States (and even to connect it with the greater egalitarianism of Europe relative to the U.S.). Indeed, it may be suggestive of a turn against inegalitarianism having its reflection in attitudes toward those forms of celebrity rooted in the ultra-elitist world of high fashion, with its foundation on luxury consumption, has seen a particularly steep decline. (Perhaps most obvious in the much-discussed "decline of the supermodel," it would also seem evident in the visibility of other figures from that world. For instance, what fashion designer of today can one compare for sheer name recognition and media visibility with the '90s-era Gianni Versace or Isaac Mizrahi?)

Still, if there is a relationship, perhaps a very robust relationship, between celebrity and egalitarianism, with not just correlation but causation identifiable, it is not to be assumed that a decline of celebrity culture in America means America's turning more egalitarian--and much reason to think this is not what is happening. Certainly the content of American politics has not been suggestive of such a shift, whether one looks at electoral outcomes, or what has factored into them, the stance of a centrist-to-the-core Democratic Party more interested in blocking or deflecting challenges from the left than opposing the right, and utterly unwilling to make concessions to the working people it has disappointed so consistently for so long in that way signified by the extreme stupidity that is its "Abundance Agenda." Certainly one would never sense a more egalitarian mood looking at the conduct of the "billionaire class," the people who do their thinking for them to all evidences not advising them to maintain a lower profile, enjoy their vast wealth a little more discretely, show a bit of humility or consideration for others or contrition for past foolishnesses, maybe acknowledge that they have been very well-rewarded indeed, and that because they were very lucky in ways beyond counting, with that luck making all the difference. Instead they have only gone on amping up their displays of vulgar swagger punctuated by displays of extreme self-pity about how they haven't got their due from society, as what Tony Randall once said in a movie in jest, they say in earnest about millionaires being a discriminated minority group, all as they insist that the propaganda on their behalf of a media they largely own never sufficient, and publicly give it further direction to that end in a manner making a mockery of those tepid Progressive-era principles supposed to somehow safeguard the purity of journalism from its domination by money in a capitalist society. The result is that the evidence for celebrity culture's decline being reflective of more egalitarian values seems at best mixed--all as even if there really is such a turn its manifestation in this manner any backlash against celebrity on egalitarian grounds a fairly trivial venting of such feeling of the kind that preserves rather than changes a status quo.