Blog interrupted

Every blogger has fallow periods, usually followed by an apology. My excuse is that I have spent the last few months working on the neighbourhood development plan for my parish and two of the adjoining parishes. But actually, the Plan took over four years, during which I have had to learn what I could about the land-use planning system in England. The resulting Martley, Knightwick and Doddenham Neighbourhood Plan was accepted by a large majority at a referendum on 30 November 2017, and so this episode of my life is over.

But I have also been doing other things. I have written a paper for an academic journal jointly with Maria Lyons, who, like myself, is unattached to any institution. This has been accepted subject to revision. I have also reviewed about half a dozen papers submitted to academic journals, in most cases recommending extensive changes. Otherwise, life has chugged on. I am still Vice Chairman of the Parish Council, attend (and occasionally lead) sessions with the University of the Third Age (U3A), and go on holiday in Spain and Portugal with my wife.

Anyway, I promise that I will once again post blogs regularly.

Sex and alcohol in Elmdon Airport

I had many jobs in my teenage years: all in school and university holidays. Christmas meant working in the Post Office- at first as a sorter, and then delivering letters and parcels. Easter and summer breaks were more diverse. I remember working on a comptometer (a mechanical calculating machine) totting up orders for ice-cream, and packing books in the basement of a public library. The summer job I had before I went to University was as an airport hand (temporary) at Elmdon Airport.

Elmdon Airport followed the custom of the time of being named after the nearest small village rather than the nearest major city (in this case Birmingham). The Airport in 1965 was a tiny affair compared to the present Birmingham International Airport. There was a single airport terminal building constructed in modernist style in 1939. This had an attractive curved frontage and projecting ‘wings’, intended to provide shelter to passengers walking out to the small aeroplanes of the time. As you entered the terminal, there was a row of desks on the left that were staffed by the Airport’s main operator, British European Airways. On the facing wall, there was another row of desks operated by the Airport for other airlines. Passengers checked in their suitcases, which were loaded by hand onto trolleys (no conveyor belts). Passengers then went to a lounge thick with cigarette smoke, and eventually to one of the waiting rooms in an ugly two-storey extension to the main terminal. They were led out to the aeroplane by a member of the airline staff. There were few passengers. No jet planes used Elmdon Airport at that time, and most flights were on Vickers Viscounts and Fokker Friendships. Some old Douglas DC-3 planes were still in operation.

The airport in summer supplemented its full-time airport hands by recruiting a squad of APH(T)s. These were, like myself, all students, and had the job of loading luggage onto trolleys and from them into the aeroplane holds, pushing the stairs to and from the aeroplanes, sweeping-up, and otherwise keeping the airport tidy. We wore shapeless dark blue overalls and a beret. The work was not taxing, but it did involve shifts. I remember cycling from my home in Shirley to the Airport early one bright summer morning, in a world with few cars and lorries. We were managed by a short rather aggressive man called ‘Reg’, with a face like a wrinkled Mr Punch. He came across as a frightening character, who often threatened the permanent airport hands with the sack (‘get your cards’!). However, looking back, I see this as quite theatrical. No-one was sacked, and Reg did not bully the staff, whether permanent or temporary.

At breaktimes, the airport hands would gather in a staff room. This was the only opportunity for the students to meet the permanent members of staff, although the two groups generally did not exchange many ideas. The permanent airport hands were not an inspiring or inspired group of workers. Without Reg to push them along, they would probably have done as little as possible. Their conversation with each other at breaktimes concerned only two topics: alcohol and sex. Both were reported in the same flat affectless way. There was going down to the pub (always called the ‘boozer’), and there was sex with their wife. This was always described as being on the ‘nest’, as in “I had a good time of the nest last night”. And that was it. Looking back, I regret not showing more interest in their lives. I could have asked them about their experiences of National Service, where they went on holiday, and which football team they supported. Instead, I stayed within my small group of fellow-students, who were people of my own age and interests. Shortly after I finished work at the Airport, I went there as a passenger, to fly to Dublin for a holiday. None of the staff recognised me.

How to be a celebrity

Let’s compare two people. The first is Sir Paul Nurse. He is a geneticist who researched the process of cell-division associated with cancer. He has won a Nobel Prize, is President of the Royal Society and Head of the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation. Sir Paul is very famous among medical researchers, but is not known to the wider public. He does not appear in gossip columns, has not been on Strictly Come Dancing or similar shows, and does not promote commercial products on television. He is therefore not a celebrity.

The second person is Kate Hopkins. She became famous as a singularly unpleasant contestant on a television programme The Apprentice, but has subsequently taken her unpleasantness to I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here and Big Brother. Her second marriage was filmed on a television programme, and she has made various guest appearances on television. She writes newspaper columns (in The Sun and now The Mail), which have become famous for their vicious remarks. On drowned migrants, she said: “No, I don't care. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in the water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don't care“. Kate Hopkins is a celebrity.

The word ‘celebrity’ is used loosely to designate anyone who is famous. But ths is misleading. There are many famous sportsmen, singers, actors and politicians who seek  publicity to promote their careers but also strive to maintain a private life. Yet because they are famous, they become the focus of public curiosity and adulation, and hence the targets of the stalkers in the mass media, with their long-distance cameras, raids on refuse bins, and offers of cash to former confidantes and lovers. A more appropriate definition of a ‘celebrity’ is therefore someone who, like Kate Hopkins, makes money by achieving fame from a relentless quest for publicity.

How then do you become such a celebrity? The first step is to come to public notice,  through either some positive or negative achievement. From there, it is essential to market in the mass media your personality and intimate revelations about your personal life. This provides an impression of intimacy for the voyeur-public, but, more importantly, can generate income from guest appearances, articles in the press and so on. A measure of your successful attainment of celebrity status is when you become a subject for gossip, revelations, and moralising. This achievement, however, can not be taken for granted, and you will need to constantly generate news through repeated changes of appearance, personal revelations, well-publicised outbreaks of shocking behaviour, or the expression of bizarre opinions. These do not need to be true or authentic: the press are eager for copy and the public believe what they want to believe. Many celebrities seem to be pleasant and charming people, but it is bad behaviour that most attracts attention. Revelations about shocking behaviour range from giving silly names to the celebrity’s children, relationships or disputes with other celebrities, sexual incontinence, and extreme personal extravagance. Weddings are a particularly occasion for the latter because film and photo rights can be sold, and product brands can be advertised. The production of revelations has now become industrialised with the development of social media. It is claimed that a celebrity should aim at a minimum output of six twitter feeds a day, although this work can of course be devolved to agents. Similarly, celebrities will usually employ a ghost writer to pen their ‘autobiography’. These can become almost an annual production - Katie Price produced four in six years. Ghost writers can also be used to generate novels, published in the name of the celebrity.

Changes of appearance can be either in clothes (particularly at red-carpet events), hairstyle or plastic surgery. In the ultra-competitive celebrity marketplace, there is trend towards ever-more extreme modifications. Lady Gaga attracted publicity by wearing a dress made of meat, which clearly exceeded Madonna’s earlier attire of cone-shaped bras. The former ‘glamour model’ Katie Price became famous for plastic surgery to increase her breast size to a grotesque 32FF. She has subsequently had various other operations on her breasts, as well as liposuction on her hips and thighs, fat implanted into her lips to boost her pout, and a nose job. Most female celebrities will at some point appear naked, either in photo-shoots, music videos, vlogs, or sex videos (which they will usually denounce as pirated).

The ultimate achievement of a celebrity career is to become a super-celebrity. The person then becomes a 2D icon, converted from a human being into a brand, which can be exploited to develop new and diverse product-lines such as perfumes or clothes. The super-celebrity career is extremely profitable. Maria Sharapova has endorsed Motorola, Land Rover, Canon, Tag Heuer, Tiffany (her own range of earrings), Nike (her  own collection), Gatorade, Tropicana, Cole Haan (her range of shoes and handbags), Prince and then Head racquets, and Porsche (‘brand ambassador’). She also brands a line of sweets called ‘Sugarpova’, and at one time considered changing her name to help promote it. In 2014, she earned $22 million from endorsements, compared with a measly $2.4 million from winning tennis matches.

It is wrong to see super-celebrities as some kind of capitalist conspiracy to delude the public: celebrities thrive because they meet an urgent popular demand. Super-celebrities provide for many people an idealised version of the self, in image, possessions and behaviour. The stream of news about the celebrity’s supposed ‘private life’ provides a pseudo-intimacy, such that millions of people around the world eagerly follow the most banal information about their deeds. Needless to say, this appearance of intimacy is spurious because celebrities carefully control access, often for their personal protection. A large entourage surrounds each super-celebrity.

The culture of celebrity has significantly changed how people see the world and how they believe they should behave in it. One of the distinctive features of celebrity is the combination of an elevated status and wealth with revelations of a supposedly mundane daily life. This creates an illusion that celebrities are like the rest of us, and therefore that all could become rich and famous instantly, without any special talent or endeavour. Since this is untrue, it also creates a sense of frustration and anger, which can be exploited by a new breed of celebrity politicians such as Donald Trump. These pose as defenders of the common man and woman against unspecified ‘elites’, display their vast wealth and behave badly. In so doing, they act as an intermediary for people to project their own resentments and inadequacies on to others. The power this gives can bewilder even the celebrity politician. Donald Trump said “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters”.

Celebrities can of course be brought low. The public can switch their adulation to another person, although why and how this happens is not clear. It may just be that the public gets bored and a more entertaining competitor comes along. The only sure way of maintaining celebrity status in the long term is to die tragically young. The deaths of super-celebrities then become vast public events, in which the immortality and great virtue of the celebrity is asserted. An example is the death of Princess Diana in 1997, in which a million people lined the streets of London in a massive display of collective grief. In the four weeks after her death, the suicide rate in England and Wales rose by 17%. In other words, the pull of celebrity was so great that significant numbers of people wished to join her in death.

See also: New gods for old http://stuartcumella.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/new-gods-for-old.html
               The rise of the celebrity wedding http://stuartcumella.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/rise-of-celebrity-wedding.html