There is a star

[matrixmann]

In the beginning, we just wanted to create art to keep the people entertained and to teach them a lesson about life once in a while. Our actors wore masks and for the names of our play writers, we used pseudonyms, so that no-one on street could recognize them by their looks and recognize them by their names being called out. It was a nessecary protection to all our people involved because the vice squads didn't always like what we displayed. It also was nessecary to ensure that only the message is being heard, only the play gets the regards.
But some time, this all changed. Actors suddenly got up on stage showing their true faces, revealing their names and making sure everyone knew them in town. They were selfish and craved for admiration. They... took great care of that people thought they were above them. Being worth more than all the regular folks.
From then, the writers started to do the same. They tried to be on everyone's lips, entering competition with the actors that stand on the stage.
With the fight for the attention also the fight for the payment arose.
Everyone has thought that only his task is being important for the play.
They started to despise each other.
And by despising, the quality of the performance also decreased.
The message was more silent than ever. More silent than repression, exclusion and every kind of state violence could ever make it. All just by mere competition and sophomoric.
Albeit this point in time seems to mark it, humans, in the East as well as in the West, as well as in the North and as well as in the South, worship the people that climb a stage and see them as a hero, much more than people that actually are heroes. They call their names and cheer whenever they see them, they want devotional objects and autographs and sometimes be with them for a night. Or even worse: Be with them for their entire life.
The actors themselves, as well as all others which show their art on stage, pride themselves on the show that they present, regardless of the content, if they bring something useful to the audience, reckless about the people which make happen that they have anything to present at all.
People, like then, assume they're above it all and not even death is something that could reach them.
They act like they never age and everything forever is going to stay the same.
They engage in admiration and monuments, like they sort of saved the world.
Like our actors, they think they're invincible and everything should just be about adoring them all over the day.

Comments

[mandarinsun.livejournal.com]

Nietzsche's first book was called Birth Of Tragedy and was a study of the plays of the Ancient Greeks and an analysis of why there was plays at all, what purpose did it serve, etc... I don't believe in trying to summarize Nietzsche. People have taken what he said and used parts of it to support one thing and other people have taken some things he said and used it to support the opposite thing and people aren't wrong to do that. I don't think summarizing him does his thought justice.

That being said, he focused on how all plays were either Dionysian, done to bring people pleasure, or tragedies and that it was unclear why people loved tragedies so much because the characters have every bad thing happen to them, but somehow people loved them. I think Nietzsche went on to say that through the coming centuries, people either loved plays that emphasize pleasure or tragedy and he preferred tragic periods and had a lot of criticism for plays done for pleasure.


Also, I think in the past people lauded writers more than actors and the work was much better. For instance, in Russia, people were waiting for who would be the next Tolstoy. There were even special schools where writers would go to to try to become the next Tolstoy. In the US, in the 1920s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and maybe even some after that and some before it, people could read short stories by good writers like F.Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner etc.. and nearly everyone would read them. So educated people were all thinking about which writer was best and thinking about it and I think the quality of story was much better.


In Victorian London, writers like Charles Dickens, and a lot of others, would compete to publish novels in small bits and pieces in weekly newspapers. So, there must have been hundreds of writers trying to make a living that way.

Anyway, that's what I know about this topic. I think that it changed when it went from being about finding the next good writer to finding the next good actor. I guess it had to do with photographs and then movies and now how everyone photographs and films everything which is ironic because the more they use their cameras, the less quality photos emerge.

[matrixmann]

This somehow is why I wrote this like an ancient story. First, it wasn't always this way, and second: What made that happen that people turned so obsessed about their superstars?

Now thinking about it what you meantion, it seems like the big break with before must have been like at the beginning of the past century. I don't blame cinema and all this for that, it's rather - you can say, capitalism discovered how much you can make money with that shit and how you can manipulate people with it. Distract them.
And therefore it's nessecary to get the focus off the stories, towards the people who embody it.
And that's something that clearly happened by the beginning of the 20th century (not the Roaring / Golden twenties, this already took its direction before).