The Fame Issue
What happens after fame? What does a once-famous person become? These and other questions may make sense from the user's point of view, as there are figures who, after being a regular presence on television, in newspapers and magazines, disappear from our view. But when you dig a little deeper, you realize that maybe fame is a flame that isn't so easily extinguished.
It was in 2014 that an extraordinary sighting led several media outlets to eagerly report what had happened: a well-known Portuguese singer, twice winner of the Festival da Canção, was working in a fast-food restaurant in the center of Lisbon. Dora, an artist who represented Portugal at Eurovision on two occasions in the second half of the 1980s, was seen and identified behind a counter in a colorful uniform taking orders for hamburgers and fries in medium, large, or XXL packages, as well as meals specifically prepared and packaged to make children happy. Dora was another of the many victims of ephemeral glory and supposedly fleeting fame. But she was mainly, and like so many other figures who become known to the public and then disappear or fall into disgrace, a victim of a certain morbid curiosity, with a touch of malice, that makes some people look at ex-famous people with a complex cocktail of feelings, which can include pity, derision, satisfaction and compassion all rolled into one. Indecipherable human nature allows us, in certain situations, to combine empathy and schadenfreude with the greatest of ease. Our relationship with the fame of others is very intricate and winding. If famous people are so often projections of one's desires, dreams, and ambitions, ex-famous people are a kind of guilty pleasure that we keep close to our hearts because they serve to remind us that even successful people can have things go wrong - and it's possible that we can insidiously find some pleasure there. (I speak in the first person plural for the sake of style and self-denial, because I don't see myself in any of this. It's the others who feel this way and think this way. It's always the others).
Andy Warhol is said to have said, according to pop mythology, that "in the future" everyone would have the right to be famous for 15 minutes. What the precursor of Pop Art, polemicist, and centrifuge of New York social life, meant by the expression was that, in the future not too far removed from the present in which he lived and in which works of art were industrially produced and quickly consumed, fame would be as accessible and futile as it would be ephemeral. In essence, that post-modernity would also come to the process of allowing people to be famous. Not surprisingly, if works of art no longer had to obey canons to be recognized, why should fame have to depend on details as insignificant as merit, talent, or prominence? After all, to be famous it was enough - and still is (although sometimes it isn't even necessary) - to appear on television. People become known because they are famous, they become famous because they are known, and vice versa, in a virtually infinite exercise. The popular use of the expression attributed to Warhol has, however, been slightly damaged, and distorted. It's the natural order of things. People - that generic designation we give to humans from whom we demarcate ourselves - have the extraordinary ability to ruin concepts, to disfigure them with exquisite skill. Thus, the frivolous aspect of easy and immediate fame was devalued concerning the facet that delimited its duration: those 15 minutes. But there seems to have been a miscalculation. Warhol, a visionary, failed to anticipate that fame is a skin you put on and don't take off anymore, no matter how ephemeral and irrelevant the reason behind it may be. A famous person may be off the media's radar, but they will always be in the sights of an indiscreet lens.
Perpetual fame
Mea culpa: the term "ex-famous" is lazy. Fame is something that sticks to you and never comes off again. So, famous for 15 minutes, famous forever. What can happen, and often does, is that the peak of fame passes and what remains is the mistaken idea that so-and-so was once famous and is no longer. It's even the case that someone is in the news because they were once famous: in the meantime, they've fallen into the mundane broth of anonymity and, for some reason, they're in the news again, as if they've been revived, along with their fame, precisely because they no longer have the spotlight on them. Dora's case is just a local and circumstantial example (more recent news reports show that the singer who was seen working in a restaurant has since returned to the stage in musical shows by Filipe La Féria - although not the ultimate exponent of media success, it is an inspiring story: Dora fought for her goals and managed to return to show business). But let's think about international cases, which abound. For example, Macaulay Culkin. Once a child prodigy, the little genius from Home Alone is now not even the most famous of the Culkins, especially since his brother Kieron shone in Succession. And can you say that Mcaulay is an ex-famous? Of course not. He hasn't been seen working in fast-food restaurants, but he has been caught in situations that are certainly much more embarrassing and difficult to justify. However, even without having starred in any major film in the last twenty years, Macaulay Culkin continues to be in the news for even the most modest and mundane reasons, which corroborates the previous statement: famous once, famous for life.
Culkin's case is not a good example. The star of one of the biggest blockbusters of the late 20th century, he could be famous all his life, even if he sat on the back porch chewing tobacco and drinking bourbon. However, that's not even the case. Macaulay Culkin never definitively abandoned the star system, just as he was never abandoned by the system. With a film career that has adopted irregularity as its standard, the once-small Macaulay has made more or less discreet appearances in more or less expendable films. In 2022, he voiced a character in Entergalactic, an Anglo-American animated telefilm whose voice cast included actors like Timothée Chalamet or Jaden Smith, for example. He also had a musical project for half a decade, between 2013 and 2018, called The Pizza Underground - a band that parodied Velvet Underground songs by replacing the original lyrics with ones that included pizza. Yes, pizza. Is it worth it? Maybe not. Did it get noticed? Absolutely. At least on the New York music circuit, The Pizza Underground has made quite a splash. And, in large part, the notoriety it achieved was due precisely to Culkin's inheritance of fame, an inheritance that acts as a kind of invisible halo that hangs over his head and prevents him from being discreet, whatever Macaulay does. What happens to Culkin also happens to others. There's no shortage of ex-actors, ex-musicians, ex-models, ex-artists, in short, ex-famous people, reprising their lazy expressions from earlier, with invisible halos over their heads signaling their past in the limelight. When they appear, we ordinary citizens automatically know: that guy over there used to be famous, I know his face from somewhere.
One such celebrity who has fallen out of favor is Lindsay Lohan. The disuse of these celebrities is not because the media have stopped using them. At least, that's not the case with Lindsay - or practically anyone else, in principle. What happens is that these figures - for better or worse, public figures - are used by the media as if they were no longer celebrities. Thus, they become news in a very particular way, in which people are invited to remember them as if no one remembers who they are anymore. "You may not remember Lindsay Lohan, but she was seen driving drunk," (and any similarity between the example and reality is not purely coincidental). A person who isn't famous doesn't become news for being a mother, as Lohan was recently, or for being admitted to rehab, as happened to the actress in the 2010s, after she had problems with drug and alcohol addiction, as well as sex. Lindsay Lohan, now 37 and with a heavy backstory, starred in some of the biggest movie hits for sassy teenagers in the early 2000s. Then came problems and she drifted away - or was pushed away - from the world of flashbulbs and red carpets that seemed destined for her. She made bad movies. She stopped making movies. But life went on and in 2022 she starred in Falling For Christmas, one of those mediocre films with a simple recipe, made to entertain and released during the season when people most like to go to the movies. It may not seem like much, but when you consider that the woman once known as Li-Lo overdosed at the age of 18, perhaps it's fairer to see this as a story of recovery that's only half over.
The radar and the crosshairs
Earlier, I was talking about going off the radar (and being in the crosshairs) of the media. Some personalities, who once occupied a prominent place in the popular imagination, have disappeared almost without a trace. Without much effort on my part, or searches facilitated by search engines, three names come to mind in this category: Pamela Anderson, Calista Flockhart, and Michael "Mike" Meyers, who should above all not be confused with the eponymous Michael Myers (John Carpenter fans will understand why). Let's start with Myers, who began his career on Saturday Night Live, achieved cult success with Wayne's World (1992), and reached the zenith of fame with Austin Powers, a movie saga that parodied the James Bond films between the late 90s and the first decade of the 21st century. Mike Myers played the spy who gave the saga its name and thus became a mainstream star, against the odds since he came from alternative humor. But after almost two decades, and after having appeared discreetly in films such as Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds or voicing Shrek in the saga of the same name, Myers has become discreet, almost invisible. The website Colider.com recently published an article entitled What Ever Happened to Mike Myers? in which we learn that the actor and screenwriter have been working more on writing than in front of the camera. He hasn't stopped, he's just become a little quieter.
American television and, consequently, the television scene in the Western world. For more than five years she gave body and soul to Ally McBeal, the main character in the series of the same name. Ally McBeal, whose story was set in Boston, followed a temperamental lawyer as she tried to find her ideal love while keeping her career on track. The formula was successful at the time, and characters like Ally McBeal proved appealing to the general public. But Calista Flockhart was perhaps, along with Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City (a contemporary series of Ally McBeal), the biggest star of the television era. The actress practically disappeared after playing one of the lead roles in Brothers & Sisters (2006-2011), and even reduced her appearances at public events. Equally far from the limelight and the covers is the girl who in the 1990s was the lifeguard of many teenagers' dreams. Her role as C.J. Parker in Baywatch elevated Pamela Anderson to the status of planetary star, partly thanks to the curvaceous and voluptuous body she had at the height of her twenties, partly thanks to the orange swimsuit that revealed her body without slipping into indecency. In the private sphere, that closed world where everyone is free to be indecent at will and with total legitimacy, Pamela had a bad idea of making home sex videos with her then-husband, musician Tommy Lee (Mötley Crüe). The tapes containing the couple's performances ended up in the wrong hands and it wasn't long before copies started circulating - the case resulted in the miniseries Pam & Tommy, from 2022. The release of this series about the scandal - a scandal, it should be stressed, that happened because an electrician stole the VHS tape containing the private footage of Pamela and Tommy Lee - was not authorized by the Baywatch network, but that didn't stop the production from reaching the general public. In response, the actress, motivated by her sons Brandon and Dylan, decided to allow director Ryan White to collect a series of home videos documenting her daily life over many years. Based on these videos and interviews, White made a documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, to share the actress's version of what happened with the world. At the time of the scandal, Pam & Tommy didn't survive, but Pamela Anderson's career did. In fact, not only did it endure, it even took on a greater dimension, extending to the cinema, for example in Barbwire, which was very successful, especially considering the quality of the film. Pamela's post-fame years - as if Pamela could ever stop being famous - were divided between animal rights activism and anti-pornography activism, among other causes that the actress embraced, such as defending Julian Assange (WikiLeaks) or raising funds to support AIDS/HIV patients. For a few years, Pamela lived in the South of France, near Marseille, before returning to her native Canada in 2018. She has been living in Vancouver since 2019. Being who she is, and after these recent releases that have, in a way, brought her back to fame, it's not surprising that Pamela continues to make headlines whenever she does anything in public. Fortunately, there's no record of her private life being invaded again.
*Originally translated from The Fame Issue, published October 2023. Full credits and stories in the print issue.
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