Why are we fascinated by celebrities?

Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant make the front pages for their possible misdeeds. The tabloids are full of news about Reese Witherspoon’s baby boy. Why do we care? Here is one account:

On the surface, the celebrity rags seem to be about sex. But their real subject is reproduction and the future of the human tribe. On the savannah, we needed to monitor how our clan was faring, and given our small populations we could do the job by ourselves, gossiping about how Gronk had left Zumba and that last night she slipped into Uggah’s cave to make a baby, and what our chance might be to steal one of them as a mate. But in a country of 290 million people, where even our next-door neighbors are strangers, we still need to flex those savannah needs for gossip and information in order to measure our species’ prospect. What better proxy than the young, wealthy, handsome, and visible alpha-male and -female breeding stock that Hollywood employs?

So writes Jack Shafer on Slate.com, see his full analysis. I agree, though I would be reluctant to write with such a reductionist tone myself. Furthermore I think we use celebrities for more prosaic reasons as well. We are fascinated by what produces relative status, something we all seek. We also use celebrities as a topic of social conversation, a means of showing that we are in touch, a way of signaling our views on various issues, and as a vicarious outlet for our hopes and fears. For more, see my What Price Fame?, also shown on the right bar on this blog.