Celebrity Stalkers — Err, I Mean Collectors

Glossy 8 x 10’s, signed books, tickets to special events, props from television sets, movie scripts, dollar bills with celebrity faces, sports equipment, cards, personal items, clothing, these all seem to be the stock and trade of fans, but apparently we want more.As if the paparazzi weren’t bad enough, fans obsessed with their favorite celebrities now run about trying to obtain photos and autographs of their own. (I admit, I myself have done that!)

This fan-atical attention to persons in the public seems rather normal, and we tell ourselves that being a celebrity means a bit of intrusion now and then. When the chance to bid and buy personal artifacts arises, we jump in and bid, and we tell ourselves that celebs want all this attention, or why would they have these auctions for charity?

It’s not like we are trying to insinuate ourselves into their lives or solicit real friendships with them or anything, we just want a piece of them… or their lives…

We fans buy strange little things, and normal large things, which become important because of their connection to a celebrity. Case in point, Barbra Streisand’s Floral Print Sofa. It sold for $264.00 — a decent price for a used couch, but I wonder what they did with it? Surely a couch so important as to have Ms. Streisand’s delightful derriere rest upon it was not left in the family room for Joey to spill Kool-Aid on it and Fido to take a nap… One must have a rather large home to dedicate a furnature shrine to the one you adore.

And adore them we do. We seek more unique items such as locks of hair and the 3 tablespoons of water said to have been touched by Elvis at a 1977 concert.

Some of us even want souvenirs of their tragedies.

With head lines such as Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston’s Complete Divorce File, Marilyn Monroe’s Signed Hospital Patient Card, celebrity last will and testaments, and even “Chris Penn’s Autopsy Report Now Available”, websites lure in the collector who simply must have it all. This is the creepier side of celebrity collecting, to be sure.

Why do we do all this, in such a modern and enlightened age? Do we really think objects and paper become imbued and infused with the very life essence of the beings we admire?

Paul Gray pondered this in 1996 regarding the public sale of the estate of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. He said, “We are much too busy and progressive, thank you, for the magic charms and potions and amulets that so bedazzled our dim ancestors. We clasp at this faith and manage to hold on in spite of the myriad irrationalities of daily life. But every so often some public event gives our congratulatory self-image a sharp blow to the chops.”

He continued, describing the actual event as “not only a bewildering binge of conspicuous consumption but a perverse tribute, crass in some eyes and innocently romantic in others, to the allure of nostalgia and of the woman who single-handedly, and in many ways involuntarily, redefined the culture of celebrity.”

This notion is called celebrity worship, and be it romantic or crass, creepy or stylish, we all raise our paddles in salute to celebrities.