By now, everyone knows that movie star, Patrick Swayze passed on this week. In a year when we have lost so many celebrities too soon, Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett on the same day, we may reflect on celebrity and the huge shadow it casts on American society in the twenty-first society. It is impossible to be uninfluenced by celebrity today.  But is there something deeper than just a hyper alert media that fuels our fascination with celebrities and the lush life?

Furthermore is our obsession with celebrity deaths a nod to our fears of our own imminent death. Perhaps mortality is the only thing we have in common with the rich and famous. 

Here’s a stretch.  Is there anything in the belief that people love celebrities and especially movie stars and athletes because they take us some place else?  Because we are emotionally involved in something other than our own problems when we are watching them? Or perhaps they make us think.  Thinking and feeling are key elements involved in the affect of art and being human.  So that could be the big stretch; that celebrities are artists that create art and art is elusive, yet powerful and necessary to the human existence.  You can argue that there are many celebrities that don’t appear to be artists and some forms of music (rap), movies (horror) or literature (romance novels) aren’t art. 

But the old saying goes.  One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.