Scandal and gossip are almost always synonymous with the entertainment industry. You can’t walk past a newsstand without some tabloid featuring scathing headlines that read something ridiculous along the lines of “Exposed: Lindsay Lohan’s secret affair with a monkey.”
What some people don’t understand is the highly publicized and somewhat jarring scandals that saturate the entertainment news market are almost a necessity when it comes to the careers of celebrities.
It’s sad to say, but a star can become irrelevant very quickly if there isn’t some form of hearsay being circulated about him or her. No one really likes a squeaky-clean pop star or a saintly Hollywood starlet. We as pop culture zealots want drama, and we want it all the time.
But who’s to say that we don’t want to see celebrities bounce back and recover from libelous blather or from all of the bad press?
Even in the aftermath of a rather heartbreaking and terribly public divorce with Russell Brand, Katy Perry is laughing, smiling and promoting her fragrance and supporting charities, not to mention she still finds time to tour and perform live shows.
After Rihanna’s altercation with ex-boyfriend Chris Brown and a quick break from the spotlight, fans and critics alike raved over her album “Rated R.” Even after the most awful of events, people can rise against the negativity of what happened to them, produce quality art and, quite frankly, get on with their lives.
But everyone, not just celebrities, can find success after bad relationships. In research compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics in 2002, studies revealed that “54 percent of divorced women remarry within 5 years, and 75 percent of divorced women remarry within 10 years.”
So yes, it’s not just the celebs that can move on, but also your “Average Joe.”
But what is with this fascination with celebrities and their blunders and downfalls? Why can’t we look away from the car wreck?
“Honestly, I think that people like hearing about celebrity scandals so much because it's something that people don't really relate to,” said journalism sophomore Ashley Loose. “Of course there's going to be the average people that have divorces, family issues, addictions and things like that, but celebrities seem like more important or higher figures, so people are automatically drawn to want to hear about how they deal with it or what went wrong in their lives since they always seem so ‘perfect.’”
Cary Tennis of Salon writes that celebrities are like gods and goddesses: “A strong interest in their betrothals and betrayals, their binges and fasts, their tragedies, to me indicates an interest in the world of magical characters.”
I frankly love to watch those aforementioned car wrecks. It’s actually quite entertaining to wrap myself in another person’s drama, especially someone I’ve never met. It’s only natural of me.
But it’s also the human in me that loves to see a success story come out of the horrible, unfortunate, and yet oh-so-amusing scandals that go hand-in-hand with some of the Hollywood elite.
We can — and should — pay attention to the entertainment industry’s little pieces of chitchat and rumor. Scandal can be both entertaining and informative. When we realize that celebrities are people, too, how we react to their joys and sorrows is what really counts.
Reach the columnist at jermac@asu.edu
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