Next-Wave Ezine > church & culture

My Celebrity Neighbor
By Nathan Colquhoun

The guys at the apartment and I were watching the ending credits of V.I.P. a little while ago and we were making comments on how pointless it was. I guess for most guys this would be a great show, beautiful women flaunting what they have to flaunt, investigating crime and always seem to need to go undercover as strippers to solve it. What more could a guy want? We were making fun of them though because they can’t act whatsoever and it was so cheesy watching them walk towards the camera with that “I’m so hot” strut.

For some reason one of us asked, “Is she still married to that guy?” There was no details, no names, it was just this random statement that sent the conversation flying We started talking about Pamela Anderson and her marriage life and then we talked about Brittany and the Hilton girls. I’m sure we talked about the ever so hot Brad Pitt and how annoying Ashley Simpson is. We know about who deserves what punishment in the NBA outbreak and how well Ty of that cheesy decorating show can cut a piece of wood. I hate celebrity talk, mostly because I’ve never been updated on current issues so I could never participate, but that’s beside the point. I never know what’s going on, and I get all my information from what people are saying, never about what I read. I don’t really do it on purpose, I was an active kid when I was younger and I never really found time to read the grocery store tabloid.

Does it ever strike you as weird that we know as much as we do about someone we’ve never met and will probably never meet? We know how many husbands Britney Spears has had and if she’s pregnant or not. We know who is married to whom all through Hollywood, who isn’t married to whom anymore and who’s thinking about not being married to whomever anymore. We know about the Olson’s psychological problems and who’s gay and lesbian. Our magazine racks are full of magazines that have nothing but inside looks at celebrity lives and our primetime shows are full of everything that you can think of to find out more about celebrities. We have TV shows about their homes, their cars, their marriages and their biographies. So not only do we admire and adore our celebrities, we admire their stuff too.

Most of us know more about the person in a magazine or in that box we call a TV than we know about our neighbor, our resident or the person next to us in the classroom. That’s a problem. We live in a culture where we can know about anyone across the world and no nothing about the neighbor across the street. There isn’t really any point elucidating the dangers of this, I think it speaks for itself. We are loosing very quickly the meaning of community and giving power to people in our lives that are at the front of magazine covers. We find it much easier to open up a tabloid then to call our friend. We’d much rather have a few laughs at Nick and Jessica’s show then deal with our marriage and relationship issues. It’s so much more convenient to keep up to date with people that have their lives posted on every major newspaper then it is to go out with a friend and really get into their lives.

Another thing about this disease is that it’s easy. It’s easy to read about someone else and have them read nothing about you. You can know about all their deep and dark secrets and keep your own safe. You can hide. You can look at all the trouble in the world and gawk at how awful it is and it’s so easy to let your own troubles slip away. It’s easy to have a one-sided relationship with the girl in Maxim or the amazing guitar player in Rolling Stone. They are beautiful, smart, rich, funny and they love long walks on the beach and their little dog named Snowball. They have issues which are posted on all the tabloids, but its ok; they are allowed to screw-up. Besides, they are human. We can extend grace to them. We love to watch their highs and lows of life exposed; it’s good to know there are other humans out there that are struggling too. It’s good to see people’s darkness and light being exposed, because it keeps the pressure off you.

This isn’t good; we have completely lost what it means to live in community. I don’t even read about celebrities and I still find it completely hard to approach my best friends with some issues. Why is it that I have such a hard time exposing my own darkness but such an easy time reading and watching others? Communities aren’t built by reading gossip-filled tabloids and watching TV. Communities are made by leaving the tabloids for toilet time only and getting out with people and getting involved in their lives. How well do you really know your friends? Do you know more about your favourite celebrity than you do about you next door neighbor? Get to know people, not pictures. It’s almost another type of pornography; we’ll call it relational pornography. We feed off of these people in magazine and on TV and there is never any commitment. We use them for our relational fix, so we fill that quick void to know people and then we move on. This sounds awfully familiar with what happens in the sex trade. Could it be possible that our obsessions with celebrities is nothing more than a pornography addiction?

The severing of our lives from the people next to us and the attachment to fake people on TV isn’t healthy. It makes us fake and excommunicated. It makes us ineffective and irrelevant to the people around us. We allow ourselves to hide and feel safe when really it’s the most dangerous spot we could be in. We need to learn to love our neighbors. We need to learn to listen to our peers and take time and energy and invest them into relationships. The only way we can do this is if we open up ourselves, and bare ourselves even the scariest, darkest and shaming parts. We need to be vulnerable. It’s only there where we can love and be loved, in the bareness of honesty and brokenness before each other and God. We need to learn to value friendships, even though they take more time and effort then reading a magazine or watching Dr. Phil or Oprah. It’s time that we start being friends to those who really need it and who we really need instead of eavesdropping through TV and stalking through tabloids. It’s time that we start making our neighbors celebrities.

My name is Nathan Colquhoun. I am currently enrolled at York University in Toronto and am in my third year of Religious Studies. I live with three amazing guys in Sarnia. I am in the beginning stages of planting a church with Darryl and Joe in Sarnia , On. I am part of a company called Epiphaneia and we organize conferences (like the Evolving Church and Cultivate Gathering.) . I am part of a church plant network run by Life Cycle Project and co-run Resonate Greenhouses . I created Canon 25, the student magazine for Tyndale University. I am part of Resonate, a network of emerging thinkers in Canada . I am a fiance to Rachel Pede. I do some graphic design for my company called Storyboard Solutions. I like soft music when I'm studying and loud music when I'm not.