Usually, I write these blogs in advance and schedule them for Tuesday and Thursday around 12pm, but I've been a bit rushed off my feet recently. I'm now typing away at my laptop after a work day, but it seems quite poetically timed. Yesterday, I was out of the office on lunch and on my way back - almost directly outside of the office - I walked past and locked eyes with James McAvoy. A literal Xavier passing a fictional Xavier. I got into the office and, naturally, told everyone I'd seen James McAvoy. I was slightly frozen so I didn't bring attention to him - it was a busy Shaftesbury Avenue after all - and it started the thought of what I planned to talk about here in this post.
As much as I understand the human nature of all celebrities, I am one to be slightly taken by parasocial relationships with them. I have actors I would love to work with and obsessively follow their careers. I have musicians whose songs have soundtracked recoveries from depression and that fuel my good days. I have TV showrunners who I idolise and aspire to be. But it's a strange relationship, isn't it? I've often had this conversation with one of my best friend's - who is also similarly, sometimes more-so - enraptured by the same parasocial relationships.
Across my life, I've found this connection evolve and the way I am bothered - or more accurately not bothered - by the way people perceive me now. A lot of people have a very sneery, almost condescending commentary on how people feel attached to celebrities or their idols. That being said, there is definitely a balance to what is healthy - both for the sake of the celebrity, for your own sense of reality and, most crucially, for your own comparative self-perception.
Take for example the stars of Normal People - Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal - as a duo and as individual actors and personalities in their own right. My phone background contains the two of them amid the series finale with the quote "and we'll be okay" at the bottom. My TikTok and often my Instagram is often littered with Normal People edits or Daisy edits or edits about the sweet, soulmate nature of their friendship. By all accounts, they are a big part of my life. They starred in easily one of the most impactful tv shows of my life and one that refuses to leave my mind - that, my friends, is my roman empire - so they are really kind of on a pedestal. I think if I were to meet them in person and had the chance to talk to them, it would be quite natural and I am of a mindset that you can hold people up as images to aspire to or to remind you of the things that made you feel.
People can say all they want about people who seem obsessive or who are too involved in following the lives of these people, but people need something and someone to look up to in this world. Often, when those people don't necessarily exist in their life in the form they need it, celebrities are their next port of call. In fact, when balanced with a healthy understanding that the only thing that separates us from them is money, fame and a little bit of luck, those relationships can actually be quite healthy. We're inspired to drive forward our careers, we're inspired to produce higher quality content, we're inspired to work on becoming a better version of ourselves. We're inspired, even, to live. Either directly through something that celebrity has said or indirectly through the presence that person has during some of our hardest moments in life, it gives us something to look forward to; to live for.
I KNOW that sounds SO dramatic. Like, bro, friends, family and hopes exist and, yes, that's all true and all have an impact in many of the same ways. Yet, when you're looking for someone in the same situation as you or who has lived through the same niche things as you or, conversely, you're looking for someone so vastly different from you, celebs can be transformational.
That doesn't mean there aren't complications. Celebrities are not perfect. Idols are so very rarely idols in the way we want them to be. Sometimes, they do something reprehensible or they disappoint the view of them we had - whether something largely and objectively terribly, or something on a more subjective level - and it shatters something in us. This is where I think we need to have the largest self awareness and separation. It's merely setting a boundary with yourself around the fact that they can be an idol of yours but that:
A) That idol will always be, in some ways, false because it is not based on an intimate knowledge of that person and is subject to change.
B) They are just another human that deserves privacy, respect and the ultimate freedom to make mistakes (within reason.)
Turning up at their houses, aggressively accosting them in the street, demanding a photo, interrupting dinners with family, being furious when they don't live up to the exact standard you've created for them. All of these things are the things that create the unhealthy, concerning parasocial stereotype we know of today. It leaves a sour taste and creates an even larger gap between the celebrity and the fan.
Our relationship with celebrities - especially when one-sided - should always be based upon a value system of respect without unbridled loyalty, love without unfailing devotion and admiration without comparison.
It's an unusual element to life, though, so it's something we grow to understand our connection to. Are we being unhealthy? Is it impacting our self-esteem? These are all questions we learn to evolve from but that don't negate the positive benefits of having idols and having celebrities we love.
Sometimes it's healthy.
Sometimes it's not.
It's your job to know which one you are and, when healthy, to embrace it and f**k everyone else.
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