Movie Stars As Sources Of Wisdom

bs866806 at 163.com bs866806 at 163.com
Sat Jan 19 06:05:47 EST 2008


Why do many people look to movie stars for answers to some of life's
most challenging questions?

While we have great respect for the art of acting, as explicated from
Stanislavsky to Strasberg, the latter of whom we knew well and were
fond of, we have never understood how the usual snippets who decide to
become actors ascend in the minds of the public from being initially
generally regarded as likely ne'er-do-wells to being considered the
most readily available font of insightful advice on just about every
topic that troubles the frontal lobe of contemporary humanity.

Are we so doubtful of our own confidence to make up our minds that the
resplendent light in which a current movie star is illuminated by his
own publicity agents blinds us to the very probable vapidity of his or
her own mind? After all, there is a certain disjunction between what
movie stars do to win our attentions and what we expect of them once
they succeed.

They bring themselves to our attention by committing to memory, or by
reading off one kind of prompter or another, words devised by others.
We won't go so far as to say they achieve renown by presenting the
thoughts of others, since realistic drama, in most of its contemporary
manifestations, is apparently unable to present characters who might
actually have an occasional considerable thought.

But, once they ascend to the starry vault that hovers over us, do we
expect of them anything consonant with the ability to recite the usual
inanities? No, suddenly we want these storied performers to transform
themselves into the wise harbingers of original insight and exemplary
advice. We even search the most mundane aspects of their personal
lives for a hint or two as to how we might enhance the happiness of
our own comparatively desultory lives. Or, just as often, we suppose,
in the hope of finding that, despite their great reservoir of
astonishing expertise, their own lives are inexplicably entangled in
antics so confoundedly absurd that their shortcomings make us feel far
superior in the relatively rickety guidance of our own lives.

Since we can only be sure that the lights of stage and screen will
continue to be presented to us with all the wiles that can be managed
through the deft employment of colorful media, as the engaging
exemplars of how we should only hope to live, it appears that the only
way to alter the mutual mockery is to become more realistic about what
we really ought to expect from our dazzling stars-brights.

http://www.cncarrental.cn/html/Humor/20060929/25390.html



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