Sympathy For The Hotdog

On Saturday night I found myself in what, for me, was a very strange and unlikely situation.  Sitting in a noisy pub I found myself:

1. engaged in a discussion about the widely reported crises in the marriage between Cheryl and Ashley Cole, and
2. arguing in defence of the former X-Factor winner as entitled to some privacy and perhaps even a measure of sympathy.

What made the entire situation even more bizarre was the fact that complimenting my role-reversal was my friend’s equally unexpected insistence that Cole had, to over-simplify things, made her own celebrity bed and had to lie in it.  Anyone who knows us both would tell you that I’m the one who rants and raves about pop stars and popular culture while he can appreciate them while turning an astute critical, cultural and aesthetic eye on their products.  Where I tend to shout and rage, my friend can provide a gentler, more reflective voice.

Back in November, I wrote a post with the title Cheryl Cole is a Hotdog.  In it I expressed my distaste for Cole as both a product and an illustration of a cultural process that manufactures the empty presence and appearance of celebrity in order to satisfy our desire to be witness to actual talent and greatness.  Cole is not the only such product, but she’s one that is continually shoved in my face, especially during X-Factor season (when the aforementioned post was made) so she was a fairly obvious target for and illustration of my arguments.  As far as I can tell, she has no amazing musical talent either as a member of Girls Aloud or as a solo artist nor can she dance particularly well.  Given my own arrhythmic disabilities I probably shouldn’t be too harsh on the last point.   What she is good at is being the object of a popular adoration that is willing to take the visible, superficial markers of fame (fashionable clothes, obvious wealth etc) as definitive indicators of  the talent and achievement they are supposed to reward and indicate without caring to inquire if fame and some form of greatness are actually involved.

That’s what really bothers me about Cheryl Cole and many other celebrities.  So many of us are willing to participate in and encourage a cycle that satisfies a desire to witness true greatness through a succession of empty cyphers.  Celebrities like Cheryl Cole are incorrectly seen as set apart from and elevated above  their fellow humans because people believe they are rare and unique.  People react by placing them in a category of rarefied individuals who deserve special treatment and to whom the normal rules of behaviour and social intercourse don’t necessarily apply.  This is wrong.

Cheryl Cole is not a great genius.  She is, as I argued in November, a cheap, empty cultural product that we are all at least partially responsible for, including me.  In some small, almost undetectable way my writing about her contributes to the process of manufactured fame she is part of.  She doesn’t deserve special treatment in the form of accolades, honours, praise or opportunities that the rest of us are denied as non-celebrities.  All she did was be part of a winning team in a contest of mediocrity.  Still, I can’t really blame her for taking the opportunities that then presented themselves.

As the ongoing saga of Mr Cole’s serial infidelity has stretched on and on I’ve found myself thinking about my vehement conviction that Cheryl Cole shouldn’t actually be treated any differently than the rest of us non-hotdogs.  This led me directly to the position I found myself arguing in favour of on Saturday night.  If, as I maintain, Cheryl Cole is not actually anything special, if she is just an empty celebrity package and doesn’t deserve to be treated differently than the rest of us, then it doesn’t matter what the situation is, she shouldn’t be subject to different rules in any situation.  No ordinary individual would expect to discover his or her spouse had been unfaithful through one of the daily newspapers, nor would that person find it acceptable.  If those same papers continued to add pile revelation of cheating upon revelation accompanied by intimate photographs on the unfaithful spouse my guess is that a lawsuit might well result and that some of the very same red-tops who are so excited about what’s happened in the Cole household would be outraged at the affront to common decency.

I don’t know Cheryl Cole and I don’t particularly want to.  I suspect I would irritate her and she would bore me.  At the same time I also suspect that as empty as she might be as a simulacrum of celebrity there’s still enough of a human about her that her husband’s behaviour  must be nothing other than painful and humiliating and that’s without all the ongoing press reports and speculation.  She may have chosen to live her professional life in the public eye.  She may not deserve the fame, status and wealth that have been accorded to her, but it is vital to remember that she achieved her status through the desire and help of a very willing public.  From my standpoint it would be hypocritical for me to say that I don’t think Cheryl Cole is special or deserving of special treatment in general, but that in the case of her marriage falling to pieces she doesn’t deserve the privacy or sympathy due to anyone else.

To argue that along the lines that Cheryl Cole, as a celebrity, has decided to make a living in the public eye and therefore cannot expect any privacy or consideration when it comes to her private life shows just how naked and uncaring the popular desires and public appetites motivating the celebrity-as-hotdog manufacturing process really are.  At the moment those feasting on the empty-calories of Cole’s fame are unable to disguise, and in many cases unaware of, the fact that they are simply chewing this particular hotdog up before spitting it back onto their plates.

Celebrity or peon, genius of sub-average, I’m not so sure anyone deserves to be treated like that.

Post Script

I still not sure about this post, mainly because I feel like the criticism I’m making remains part of sordid instance of the celebrity process.  I’m going to go ahead with it.  I’m also aware the it may seem to be arguing that real celebrities of true talent and greatness would be fair game for the kind of publicity Cole is currently receiving.  That’s not the case, but it is a separate issue.  As I said at the beginning this post was inspired by the fact that I found myself defending Cheryl Cole’s right to at least a measure of privacy and some sympathy something I still can’t believe happened.  As I’ve tried to explain though, my views of the celebrity process in general made doing so, in my eyes at least, the only tenable position.