There should be a pane of thick, darkened glass between idol and audience. To be accessible was to lose. The man who sits in a cafe all day, mumbling as he reads the papers: he’s accessible. A taxi driver is accessible. A star shouldn’t even be seen eating.
That's a quote by Chris O'Leary, in a post about David Bowie, a subject on which O'Leary has done a lot of very good writing. Specifically about Bowie's internet ventures of the late 1990s. But it has me thinking beyond that field.
A while ago I started seeing people―mainly girls and young women―talking about "feeling seen." As in, "Thank you, that really makes me feel seen." But is this always a good thing, and is it a rare thing? We live in a world of both extensive surveillance and voluntary (more-or-less) self-exposure on social media. Everyone's seen. Everyone's seen a lot.
There's something to be said for stars going the Greta Garbo route: making movies or records or whatever and retreating to a private realm the rest of the time, while your image floats through the world on posters and covers. For the rest of us, it's probably better to blend into the physical world, not trying to sell yourself. It's definitely better for children and teens.
And it's probably not happening anytime soon. Still, worth trying.
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