Why does society put celebrities on a pedestal?

Earning a living in the spotlight as a Hollywood television or film actor or actress is considered a very easy job by much of society, a career filled with good times and lots of money, and those jobs would be considered dream jobs to much of the movie going and television watching public.... and this is just part of the reason we idolize and put celebrities on a pedestal. We also see the characters they play in shows on television and in movies and how in a large part of these roles the characters live unrealistically good lives where a lot less goes wrong and there are far fewer real deal negative consequences for making terrible decisions and screwing up in general. As humans I feel we have a hard time differentiating between the lives our favorites characters play on TV and in movies and what is real life.

I have heard so many times a person ask why things couldn't be more like they were on TV in a similar scenario.. this always perplexes me because the answer is always the same.. it is a TV show/a movie, nowhere close to real life. So not only do the people we see on television and in movies have what much of society sees as a well paid, quite easy, inherently powerful and influential job but when they are doing their job they play characters with much much cooler and nicer lives than we do at home in real life. This leads to coveting.

We covet celebrities and the perfect lives we see them live on TV and in movies and perceive their real lives to be far better than ours too. This leads to us putting them on that pedestal. We wish we were them instead of us.

But wait there is more... American society loves to see the successful or perceived as successful people fail. We do, admit it. So this ties all of our coveting, envy, unrealistic expectations of ourselves and our own lives, and idolizing of celebrities in the perfect storm of what we also love to watch.. failure.

We like to vent all of these unrealistic but sometimes secret and sometimes not so secret feelings of personal inadequacy on watching them fail. After all they deserve it right? They live perfect lives and should be punished for it right?

We idolize them and put them on pedestals for all of these reasons AND so we can watch them fall off and remind us that the world they live in IS imperfectly real and we do need that reminder. We do. So it is a formula for emotional survival for the celebrity watching public.

We need to know that our lives are okay at least so we take the people who we perceive to have perfect lives and put them on a pedestal so we can watch them fall and know we are not all that different after all.

I think that individuals who aspire to something that effects others in a positive way is admired by many and watching movies and television is one of the top things to do to unwind at the end of a busy day. So, after a long day, when your watching someone who makes you smile or laugh, apart from family and friends, it is always a good thing.

I think the short answer is because "them" meaning people who control the media believe that is what "we" want and so they hype up the objectivity of such coverage. But is that really what we want? Personally I feel subjectively inclined to question the generalised nature of this assertion?

Because it seems to me that while some members of society are indeed enraptured by celebrities to the point of ecstatic infatuation, others get most of their sadistic pleasure from watching or from participating in the humiliation or downfall of celebrities and a third group, if which I count myself as a member of, are thoroughly disinterested, fed up and bored to tears by the excessive coverage of the news media of the private life of so-called celebrities. To some degree I think the bench mark of the beholder is dependent on his or her own life, character and personality. People who have little or no life of their own are more likely to be infatuated with observing celebrities than people with lives of their own.

And there are of course different sorts of celebrities featured on TV and in newspapers. There are politicians like Bush or Obama, sporting stars like Tiger woods , TV personalities who do such things as read the news, star in soap operas, cook or sing or otherwise perform with their voice or body like Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber, or there are those individuals who feature in such voyeuristic TV shows as "Big Brother" or "The Apprentice", about whom I personally do not give a damn but it seems others are fascinated by them. Admiration or otherwise of somebody artistic, such as in singing or musical performance, may be dependent on the musical taste of the observer, while in the case of politicians clearly we all have our own individual views.

Some are enchanted by presentation personalities on TV Channels like Fox News, while others are of very much the opposite persuasion because they consider them biased, and like to see the pedestal demolished from underneath. So my conclusion in answering this question is it is because beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. But we are all different and our eyes see different things and our brains interpret those different things we see in different ways.

Vive La Difference.

We all want to be famous at some point in our lives, but because we get held back for the obvious reasons like money, family, in-house contacts, college, etc. We appreciate others who have got that far and so we actually end up putting them on that pedestal. We can be jealous or envious, but we still enjoy their hard work, it's relaxing at the end of the day and sure definetely keeps me motivated and entertained.It's just like any job but harder being chased by papparazi's left and right, I mean you can forget your private life from then on. It gets harder for them to keep themselves famous with all the competition around them.

I know I would rather have a 9-5 job and time with my husband and children. I would not give that up for anything.

Because they make lots of money and this is a very materialistic society. Because they are generally better looking than the average person and this is a vain society. Because people are generally not introspective and they like the fantasy of feeling close to these people based on what they read in the tabloids.

If tabloids printed stuff about your next door neighbor, you'd probably feel closer to that person as well. Even if everything the tabloids printed was wrong.

Personally, I believe it to be a chain of events and conditions in the long run. But- short answer first: A need to belong to something bigger than them. I desire to believe in someone they somehow identify with having a 'good life', thus by proxy instituting that they themselves can also have this 'good life'.

A sense that they would rather have the celebrity's life and thus, they do not want to see that celebrity fall. Living vicariously through the celebrity. I digress... my short answer is sufficient.Heh.

We are made to believe by idiots that celebrities make more money hence contribute more to society, we are also made to believe to follow celebrities by people who want to dumb us down and make us believe that following a rock or movie star is more impacting on our life then what G. W Bush Or Obama does or even Bill Gates or Steve jobs. ted.com/ huffingtonpost.com/ If you don't see the diference , you need help ...

In a word-ENVY. People all think that these people live the good life and have tons of cars and beautiful homes and the perfect family. Some might even envy the multiple marraiges.

People see these people at their best, mostly, and think it's all glitz and glamour. Personally I think you can have that life and I am not impressed by it. The only celebrities I do admire are some boxers and sports players, but not these TV or movie stars.

What do they do? Act. I have worked in midtown Manhattan and have seeen them all the time at the studios and restaurants.

For fun if you want to annoy them say with a big smile and tell them I loved you in that movie.........and then name a movie you know they weren't in. When they say I wasn't in that shrug your shoulders and walk away. When one of these people cure cancer or have a solution to World peace I will admire them then.

But some of the good looking ones were nice to look at.

I think that it is a matter of I wish I could do that or I wish I could have that. Celebrities are talented, live the lives most of us wish we could live, are treated special because they who they are. These are all our dream, so we live vicariously through them.

We become part of their family, we get to know them, we join their fan clubs, just so we can be close the the excitement of that person, to share in a part of their limelight.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.