Embracing Insincerity: Paris Hilton and the Value of Celebrity
by Rocky Casale
It is not entirely wasteful to question how unimportant or irrelevant public figures make their way into our vernacular and counterproductively captivate and enthrall American society. Ms. Paris Hilton, a public figure said to have no particular talents and abilities, an archetype for the modern dehumanized celebrity, made a name for herself by branding it on perfumes, night clubs, pornography and consumer product lines such as clothing and jewelry. Reviewed by Warner Brothers Recording as a failed pop-diva and by television critics as a vapid and obtuse reality television actress, it would seem that Ms. Hilton were slipping toward the edge of infamy. This is not the case. The heiress of the Hilton hotel fortune, model, actress, pop recording artist, entrepreneur and porn star would like to permeate every vocation out there, and she tries, with an undeterred determination, to dominate the airwaves.
In her deliberate resignation of what remained of her private life over to the public sphere, Ms. Hilton resolves to live in a proverbial ‘glass house’. Here, her many willed errors are clearly seen and sensationalized by the press, and pejoratively discussed and written about in two dollar gossip rags, on second-rate television entertainment channels and in seemingly respectable newspapers such as The New York Times. Your undivided attention is her aspiration. Every vitriol mention of the young heiress’s life seems to reinforce the ‘tarnished image’ that Ms. Hilton retreats inside and capitalizes on for money and fame. Call it the clever publicity in the dark age of celebrity.
Call it what you will, Ms. Hilton’s tragedies and vaginal close ups are entertainment at its worst. In The Trash Princess, Kay S. Hynowitz argues that Paris ‘personifies the decadence of our cultural moment…mirroring us at our contemporary worst.’
‘She has become a synonym for American materialism, bad manners, greed, ‘like’ and ‘whatever’, Valley Girl inarticulateness, parochialism, arrogance, promiscuity, antifeminism, exposed roots and navels, entitlement, cell-phone addiction, anorexia and bulimia, predilection for gas guzzling private transportation, pornified womanhood, exhibitionism, narcissism—you name it.’
Note the many negative adjectives to which Ms. Hilton is routinely linked. Still, she has persevered, or her image did. Yet her perceived fame is disproportionate to what she has truly earned. In 2002, the leak of a homemade sex tape with then boyfriend Rick Solomon catapulted Ms. Hilton into the celebrity stratosphere overnight. She, of course, strenuously denies that the leaked video, which preceded the debut of her unremarkable reality television series, The Simple Life by two weeks, was a ploy for publicity, crafted by her publicist or members of the Fox television network. Whatever the reasons were for the videos timely release in the World Wide Web and through various media outlets, first-week ratings of the reality show were high, clearly suggesting just how well sex can sell a product, which is what Ms. Hilton there after became.
It is classically popular in American culture for great audiences to nourish and place value in the subculture of celebrity. Icons are made and elevated higher and higher until their image and behavior ceases to generate sensational, as it were, news. Once celebrity power erodes, and sooner or later it does, audiences lose interest. They stop tuning in to the reality T.V. shows, stop buying the magazines and perfumes and porn videos. They effectually stop generating wealth and attention for the celebrity. Ms. Hilton’s power, like many, is temporal and her recent I-am-above-the-law expectations that led to her premature release from jail galvanized a renewed public hatred for Ms. Hilton, for injustice, and for two-tiered America. It is the inevitable crash and burn finale that all celebrities, who never earned true fame with posterity, are destined, and audiences love to witness the mortifying failure, right down to the stints of jail time and third trips to rehab. With incredible alacrity, audiences retract their admiration and begin to distance themselves from a tired and predictable celebrity. Ms. Hilton, for example, will attract fewer photographers and writers; she will fade into the gray point on Hollywood’s fabled horizon.
