📘 Part 3: Famous People

This episode's vocabulary

Grassroots (adj.) - ordinary people in a society or organization, rather than the leaders.

Conformity (noun) - behaviour that follows the usual standards that are expected by a group or society.

Akin (adj.) - having some of the same qualities; similar.

Behold (verb) - to see or look at someone or something.

Creeping (adj.) - happening, developing, or moving slowly or gradually.

Prominence (noun) - the state of being easily seen or well known.

Prime (adj.) - main or most important.

Diminish (verb) - to reduce or be reduced in size or importance.

Eclipse (verb) - to make another person or thing seem much less important, good, or famous.

Recognition (noun) - if you are given recognition, people show admiration and respect for your achievements.

Contribution (noun) - something that you contribute or do to help produce or achieve something together with other people, or to help make something successful.

Credence (noun) - acceptance, support, or belief that something is true.

Scratch the surface - to deal with only a small part of a subject or a problem.

Cautionary (adj.) - giving a warning.

Outright (adj.) - direct.

Unsavory (noun) - unpleasant, or morally offensive.

Feasible (adj.) - able to be made, done, or achieved.

Correspondingly (adj.) - in a way that is similar to, connected with, or caused by something else.

Proceed (verb) - to continue as planned.

Emulate (verb) - to copy something achieved by someone else and try to do it as well as they have.

Evaluate (verb) - to judge or calculate the quality, importance, amount, or value of something.

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Questions and Answers

M: What kinds of people are famous in your country?

R: Oh, the same as everywhere else, really. Movie stars, authors, anyone who comes to the public eye via the media, really.

M: How do people become famous?

R: Well, there are very few grassroots famous people who create fame for and by themselves. They sort of rely on mass media to do that, which leads to a certain level of conformity. And that gets a little boring sometimes.

M: What kind of media help people become famous?

R: Well, visual media largely. They sort of shine a spotlight on this person and in short announce to the world something akin to look here. Look at this person and behold what they've done. And then they blast it far and wide for all to hear and see.

M: What are the differences between the famous people today and those 10 or 50 years ago?

R: Um, well, the ever creeping social media is sort of democratizing this process of becoming famous more so now. And famous people are more accessible via the same mechanisms. I suppose one could comment on the growing diversity and famous people too as other cultures gained prominence and find acceptance. Those are the biggest differences, I think.

M: Do you think famous people are necessarily good in their fields?

R: Not really. A prime example of this is Stephen Hawking, a brilliant mind trapped in a very unfortunate situation for sure. But he wasn't a leading scientist by far. I don't mean to diminish his achievements, but I think this is the disadvantage of some people becoming famous. There are other people who are eclipsed when they might deserve more recognition. And you can see this with the contributions made by other physicists who were in the same field as Stephen Hawking, for example.

M: Do you think the media pay too much attention to celebrities?

R: Yeah, absolutely. Um, actually, I want to go on record and state sort of loudly and proudly that no one in their right mind you give any credence to anything that celebrities have to say outside of their industry. Like, I don't care what Tom Cruise thinks about religion. Like that's not his specialism, his opinions on acting and sort of related industries I'm willing to hear about. But I'm not taking his advice about my soul.

M: Are celebrities an inspiration to the younger generation?

R: No. On the face of it, yes. If want young people to be successful. However, when you scratch the surface, you find, well, firstly, that this is only one conception of success. And secondly, it's got a cost. These people have a lot of problems mentally that come about as a result of their fame. It completely goes to their heads. So they should serve as cautionary tales instead of outright inspiration, in my opinion.

M: Do you think that famous people ever have a negative influence on ordinary people?

R: One hundred percent. I remember watching a video essay about male celebrity body transformations and the impact it has on young men and women and their own body images. It leads to a lot of disappointment, unrealistic body image and other unsavory things. And that's just one example. Like I could go on forever about this kind of thing.

M: Do you think famous people should be more responsible for their bodies and for what they're doing?

R: Well, it's their body. They can do what they like with it. So, no, it's other people's responsibility to be aware that celebrities don't represent a realistic ideal to follow because they have access to all of these other resources that these people don't have access to.

M: So ordinary people shouldn't just believe everything that celebrities say or do?

R: No, that's not feasible. Like, it's totally unrealistic as a way of managing your life by comparing it to someone who has access to completely different resources and has entirely different problems to deal with than you do.

M: What qualities do famous people have in common?

R: Well, they all seem to have a massive drive for success at almost any cost, and then they suffer a correspondingly significant amount of consequences for this effort. So movie stars are great at acting and getting attention and that attention to proceeds to invade their lives in a way that violates the most basic boundaries. Even scientists get this, like Einstein was a brilliant mind and helped reshape the world, but he wasn't a very nice person to be in love with. I'll just refer you to what he had to say about his wife. This is why we should be really careful when trying to emulate these people.

M: What about the future? Do you think there'll be more famous people in the future?

R: There will be more famous people, but we'll have more of a critical eye when we evaluate everything that they're coming out with. I absolutely believe that.

M: And in what industries do you think people will become more famous?

R: Well, social media is always a growing one, but that's the medium. The actual industries themselves will be people who comment on more specialized areas, like video game commentary, for example.

M: Thank you for your answers.

R: No problem.

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