Word: schickele
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Richard Schickel...
Celebrity status, as the checkout-counter newspapers constantly remind us, is no guarantor of happiness or security. Schickel reels off the familiar tragedies of those who found there was no room at the top: John Belushi, Freddie Prinze, Dylan Thomas, Janis Joplin, Marilyn Monroe. Yet some of the deceased, like proper legends, have regained their power in death. Humphrey Bogart is a greater celebrity now than when he was alive; so is John Lennon. The fade-out has become as important in life as onscreen; no wonder Hollywood repartee has become standardized: "Elvis Presley is dead." "Good career move...
What makes Schickel's argument cogent is not only critical analysis but autobiography--the stammering voice from the heart. A child of the Midwest during the '40s and early '50s, Schickel belongs to the last generation that automatically placed "silver" before "screen" and "glamorous" before "star." The world of celebrities, he confides, became "The Great Other Place"--a promised land of grace and charm and wit where nobody was ordinary, nobody was dull...
...moral outrage in middle age measures the degree of early infatuation and ultimate disappointment. With the passion of a lover betrayed, Schickel protests that celebrities in the arts "are used to simplify complex matters of the mind and spirit." We look at the face and ignore the work. Celebrities "subvert rationalism in politics." We neglect the issues and vote for the image most skillfully packaged on TV. In every department of life, celebrities are a "corruption," Schickel's label for the shallowness and glitz of late 20th century civilization. With considerable reason, he blames celebrities and the cameras without which...
...author throws away his script and improvises a coruscating sermon. Celebrities become the graven images of this slack age, and on their well-coiffed, carefully blow-dried heads he calls down fire and brimstone. Others have drawn up the formal indictment against the cult of celebrities. Schickel offers a white-hot jeremiad. In idolizing and loathing the celebrities we conspire to create, we bury real humanity. Woe unto the celebrities whom we are so good at killing, he warns, and woe unto us. Is there an answer to this sorry circle of fame and deceit? Schickel's conclusion: "Resistance," holding...