Remote: Reflections On Life In The Shadow Of Celebrity: Analysis

The second release of Remote: Reflections on Life in the Shadow of Celebrity includes a foreword by Philip Lopate, an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet and teacher. As the reprint is from 2003, the views that Lopate has on David Shileds's collection of essays is radically differet than the aforementioned revievers from 1996. Lopate says that Shields refuses to delve into a “convenient narrative arc of victimization, addiction, denial, revelation and faith, he insists on trying to convey the unredeemed flotsam and jetsam of daily American experience. (2003)” What he implies is that the traditional authors who cling to the correctness of form and the propriety of topics are nowadays found lacking, be it in creativity or the
Lopate states that one of the most important elements of good modern writing is self-awareness and truthfulness in discovering the ugliness of human nature. Lopate's foreword clarifies two fundamental themes that appear in the book. “The fear that one is not really alive unless the media had fastened on oneself, (2003)” means that nowadays the importance of the media has risen to almost riddiculus levels, where people are often more invested in artificial lives of the characters in various programms or celebrities, than in their own lives, forgoing their families and social life. The second theme is the motif of identity. Lopate asks wheter the thoughts in our heads are “even our own, or are we merely channeling messages from the mass media, which function as a kind of exoskeleton. (2003)” The idea of the mass media influencing people on such a fundamental basis as thoughts leads to the confusion between the psychological portrayal of an individual and the
The bumper stickers are not exclusive items, the access to them is rather easy as long as they remain on the market. As such, they create quite consistent image of population, based on popularity of particular bumper stickers. Seeing as the phrases that David Shileds collected and published before the year 2000, that still remain valid and common, the image of the society has not changed that much within these days. What the critics in 1996 did not, or rather did not want to ackcnowledge is the sterotypicallity of people. Life Story is an overview of a life, from the moment of birth until death, of an unknown individual whose life can be summarised by bumper stickers. Creating such an obvious stereotype is a way for the author to write an authobiographical piece but moreover, a chance to make a statement on the society. People create stereotypes and models, out of their behaviours and claims. Philip Lopate says in his foreword that “the white space between sections permits easy jumps from the personal to the impersonal, the trivial to the lofty, (2003)” claiming that the reception of the text can be dual,but at the same time it allows for creation of various smaller stereotypes that can be put together and as a whole make a rather mocking portrayal of a cliché American. The stereotypes that can be found in the text are more often than not degrading and quite