Charlie Sheen and Voyeurism

Charlie Sheen and Voyeurism

After reading Charlie Sheen and Voyeurism by Mark Goulston, I realized what kind of world we live in today. We live in a world that relies on television and create opinions and lifestyles from the things televised. Mark Goulston mentions, that people realize how ordinary their own lives are, and therefore they have an urge follow the life of others, by following them in TV shows and social networks. This voyeurism has become a well-known phenomenon that describes the way people live their lives today.

Mark Goulston mentions that people have a hunger for experience, and because of our mundane lives, we seek satisfaction in television programs. This hunger is the one causing us to watch sports, go to the movies and to become riveted to “American Idol” and “Dancing With the Stars”. He calls these people we follow Charlie Sheens, Lindsay Lohans ect. because all celebrities have one thing in common, they live life with full speed and there is always something new and exciting happening in their lives.

I feel that television has come to a point where it can’t manage to create programmes any more complicated than watching people live their version of an ordinary life. This will eventually become a problem, which has an impact on both society, and the way that the next generation will grow up. They will grow up identifying themselves with people like the ones participating in TV shows such as Jersey Shore. They will see fornication and drinking as a part of everyday life, and they will believe that fame through this kind of television, is the way to a successful life. Mark Goulston also mentions, that “introjective identification” is a process, used to describe the way that people see themselves living through someone’s life. This tells us that we are already in the process of giving people the wrong role models, who they live their own lives through. “Introjective identification” was originally used to describe a positive way of living your life through figures like Jesus to God, but it has now evolved into an expression, which is also used in negative situations like mentioned before.

I can relate to the fascination of following famous people myself. I find it absolutely amusing to follow the American celebrities on medias like Instagram and Facebook. I even get jealous of their fabulous lives sometimes. It seems like some of these celebrities live in a world with no worries. They get what they want and they have an endless amount of money that I could kill to own myself. On the contrary, some of these famous people like Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan express some completely different things. They make the rest of us feel good about ourselves and the way we live our own life. We are able to watch them fail in life by doing drugs, drinking too much alcohol and going to prison for acting out. Not that long ago I heard about actress Amanda Bynes acting out in public and later having to go to a mental hospital. Even though it actually is a quite tragic story, we still feel the urge to follow the news about her, because this shows us, that her life isn’t as mundane as ours. Now, months after she was caught acting “crazy”, she is still in the brought up in the news. What is so special about her? A lot of people act out just the way she does, but just because they aren’t famous, they don't get to be on the front page of the tabloids every second week.

One of Mark Goulston’s statements that I wouldn't quite agree with, is that he compares our addiction to follow the celebrities, to the addiction that some of these famous people have to drugs. I think that our addiction is a problem, but he is taking it to a completely different level where he says, that our addiction is as unhealthy and dangerous as doing drugs. I really don’t believe that you can even compare these to things to each other. Doing drugs has the consequence of killing us at some point, but following celebrities don’t. Not many people will see celebrities do drugs, and then find themselves doing it an hour later. If this is the case, then we are dealing with a serious problem that goes beyond the normal consequences of following famous people. Frankly, if this happens, we are dealing with people who are mentally unstable.

All in all I don’t think that we are able to prevent these addictions from happening, so we might as well just keep following the latest news on what Kim Kardashian wears on her night out. As soon as these programmes don’t take over the breaking news on CNN, then I think that we still have a chance to change some other things in our lives, which can prevent us from being completely engulfed by the latest gossip. I personally love to follow celebrities, but I have lots of other things in my live that I appreciate more. It will eventually become a bigger problem than it is now, but as long as we still can relate to the real world, then I am sure we will find a way to cope with this problem.