SOCIALIST UNITY

I can understand why some people think that the press reaction to Michael Jackson’s death is over the top, for example this video from the Third Estate blog raises a valid contrast with the anonymous and unreported deaths of the poor and dispossessed around the world.

But Michael Jackson was a towering figure, with a massive impact on our wider culture in both good and bad ways. His music and dance were genuinely extraordinary, both innovative and accomplished, and his grasp of the possibility of music video was ground breaking. The huge pleasure that his music brought to millions means that the respect for him was entirely deserved, and the grief at his passing is both sincere and justified.

Yet it was his bizarre lifestyle that clouds our remembrance of him. Seemingly in a perpetually arrested childhood, trapped like Peter Pan in emotional unfulfillment, he lived in a gilded cage that he built around himself; reconstructing his own body in a narcissistic merry-go-round of cosmetic surgery which suggests deep unhappiness.

As a performer Michael Jackson became a commodity, elevated by his star status to a position where the small affections and acts of freindship and solidarity of daily, ordinary life were denied him. It is hardly suprising that cut off as he was from the potential of normal adult relationships he preferred the company of children, in his own personal Disney land.

The most indecent aspect of the celebrity industry is that it destroys those who have the greatest success.

It is difficult not to be moved by the sad demise of Jade Goody, who succumbed to her cancer in the early hours of this morning. Few of us really knew Jade apart from her media persona but even so there was definitely something about her that appealed to millions. There were no airs or graces. She stood before the media and the public warts and all, assiduously inviting everyone into her private life and getting rich on the back of it. In this sense, the starring role she assumed in 2002’s Big Brother Three has never ended. She began her celebrity life as it ended: in a goldfish bowl.

Since her very long goodbye began, Jade’s celebrity started the ascent to media demi-godhood. Most distastefully we saw Jade’s “final words” and glossy obituary published several days before her death. And now the media will be clamoring to position her as a saintly mother figure - a working class “peoples’ princess” if you will.This is of course hypocrisy of the highest order. The News of the World are leading the pack with sycophantic tributes and laurels to “brave Jade”. But this along with its Sun stablemate were at the forefront of some of the most disgusting press ever leveled at a celebrity. Who can forget their “vote out the pig” campaign while she was ensconced in BB3? Their superior and condescending attacks over the Shilpa Shetty episode? The very press that made Jade delightfully put the boot in when and wherever it could. Their mountains of tribute and praise over the coming days will “forget” all this.

Jade was something more than a run of the mill tabloid hate figure. Her tough working class upbringing, lack of education and “proper” social mores stirred up the class prejudices of the Mail-Express-Telegraph bigot brigade and Guardianista left-liberals alike. Coupled with her Z-list status as a “lower class” celebrity famous for being famous (like Kerry Katona and Katie Price/Jordan), Jade’s persona symbolised all the cliches the elite have about the dangerous class. She was symptomatic of the broken society for conservatives. Jade epitomised the non-PC “barbarism” of the white working class for swathes of the liberal-left. The “race row” of 2007’s Celebrity Big Brother witnessed both sections of elite opinion uniting to give vent to their class prejudices. It was a frenzy of condemnation some on the left shamefully felt compelled to join.

Jade’s career distills the trajectory celebrity has taken since the 1980s. As I’ve noted before, the cultural developments of that decade laid the foundation for an altered perception of celebrity. Our would-be immortals were by degrees knocked off their pedestals and shown up by the media as flawed human beings like the rest of us. This demystification of celebrity aura has unfolded in bizarre and increasingly perverse ways. The normalisation of celebrity figures has paradoxically created an aura that makes celebrity even more seductive. Living life in the public eye holds the promise of effortless fame and wealth, provided one has no qualms of bearing all about bedroom malfunctions and drugs and booze hells when required. It is also a life more attainable than ever before. The proliferation of reality shows and the internet have “democratised” celebrity - anyone, whether they have talent or not - can make it. All that’s required is being in the right place at the right time. But this is an extremely precarious world. Marx’s observation that the petit bourgeoisie live in constant fear of being cast back down by big capital is an apposite anticipation of celebrity status anxiety. The truth is celebrity and celebrities are nothing more than commodities. The demystification of celebrity has seen them move from valued figures to mutually interchangeable and utterly disposable objects buffeted by a capricious media. The gap left in the OK!/Heat firmament by Jade’s passing will be filled by Jade’s surviving family and the Cheryl Coles and Andy Scott-Lees of this world. So it is with any celebrity.

Nevertheless Jade proved to be a skilled and astute player of the celebrity game. Her self-flagellation and public penance after BB7 showed clearly that she recognised the shaky foundations of her fame. And we knew she knew this, as news of her cancer was greeted in some quarters as a cynical move to rebuild her career demonstrates.

Jade’s death is very sad and all my sympathy goes to her family and friends. But as her personality fades from popular consciousness and other celebrities fill her place, Jade’s claim to celebrity immortality will be ever more predicated on the nature of her death. Whatever one thinks of Jade’s conduct in her final months it is this very public dying that is uniquely hers. Celebrities die, but she’s the first who has done it with Living TV at her bed side. And sadly, given the nature of contemporary celebrity, she will not be the last.

Also at A Very Public Sociologist

Tommy Sheridan is quite open that he has gone onto Celebrity Big Brother for the money, reputed to be around £100000. As he explains himself: “Why not? It’s an honest offer of employment.”; and as the Scotsman reports “the 44-year-old, … , is currently studying law and has no regular income. He failed to gain re-election to Holyrood and recently lost a slot on Talk 107 when the station closed.”

Sheridan entering the Big Brother house is rather different from Galloway doing so, as Sheridan has suffered a number of political and personal set-backs, whereas George entered the Big Brother house while he was at the top of his game. Indeed the consequences of Galloway’s visit have been a mixed bag, as there was certainly a downside, but equally it raised his profile, and led to His extraordinarily successful Talk Sport show; ordinary people are rather more forgiving and sensible than the political activists who get in a lather about that sort of thing.

Let us set aside for one moment the acrimony and division in the Scottish left over the libel action by Tommy against the News of the World, and the subsequent break down of relations. There is plenty to be said about that, but none of it can be said while there is a potential perjury prosecution hanging in the air.

I want to look at a different issue, which is the conventional wisdom that has grown up on the left that MPs and MSPs should only take a “workers wage”, the average wage of their constituents. This is constantly used as a stick to beat up George Galloway by his ultra-left critics, usually combined with luridly exaggerated accounts of George’s income and lifestyle.

To a certain extent there is an element of hypocritical Puritanism in these complaints; but the political issue is the complex one of what relationship a political movement’s leaders have with their organisation.

In truth, Tommy Sheridan has been taking a “workers wage” for the whole period that he has been a member of the Scottish parliament. One result of which is that Sheridan has very little financial security or independence; and he is quite unlike the average working woman and man among his former constituents, he is famous throughout Scotland, and cannot simply get another job – he has been a full time political activist his whole life, and would never get an ordinary job in an office or factory.

Nor can it be said that his taking a “workers wage” had any beneficial bearing on the relationship he had with the party when the dispute arose over whether or not to sue the NOTW for libel. Indeed, it could be argued that one of the political problems that the SSP had was that after six MSPs were elected there was a disproportionate pull towards Holyrood; and one unintended consequence of the workers wage policy is that the MSPs contributed the bulk of the party’s income.

Insisting that elected representatives only take an average salary of their constituents is a gimmick – and like all gimmicks may prove popular, but has no substance.

The real pressure upon professional politicians is not the lure of money, but the corrupting and soporific danger of incorporation into the safe, still waters of the political establishment. In the brilliant 1947 film “Fame is the Spur”, Michael Redgrave plays a socialist politician who becomes a self-caricature, living off his past glories as a radical while toadying to his betters. It is an all too familiar story, from Ramsey McDonald to Neil Kinnock, and beyond.

In reality the political classes are not lavishly rewarded financially, although they do alright, and a large part of the reward they get for the job is the social capital and approval they receive from within the parliamentary and media institutions. To remain perpetually rebellious, and an outsider requires enormous strength of character, and political support from others. It also requires financial independence.

To take the example of George Galloway, there is no doubt that he is an extraordinary rebel. If he was primarily interested in making money then there are many easier ways to do so than devotion to radical anti-imperialists politics, touring the country speaking in town halls and community centres; and leading militant marches to the Israeli embassy. He has resisted the pressure to conform and become incorporated, and gaining a higher than average income has been no impediment to his rebelliousness.

The difficult dilemma of mainstream politics, especially electoral politics, is that you have to build around personable, charismatic individuals who can promote themselves, your party and your cause through the press. This is always going to prove problematic if those individuals disagree with their organisation over any fundamental issues, and no formula or rule is going to wish away that real world problem. The most extreme example in recent years was the extraordinary break by Jim Anderton, the party leader, and most of the MPs from the left wing New Zealand Alliance Party in 2002.

But the other side is that outside of politics the only asset someone like Tommy Sheridan has is that extraordinary personality. It was the Scottish Socialist Party, and then Solidarity, who insisted that Tommy only take an average workers wage. Now he has no money, and it seems entirely reasonable to me that he should take what ever work opportunities he can get, including making a prat of himself on reality TV.

More from A Very Public Sociologist, Madam Miaow, Andrew Coates, Splintered Sunrise.

I have a sort of fascination with Boy George, just because he was born on exactly the same day as me, 14th June 1961, just a few miles away from where I was born. He represents an alternative reality for me where I might have made different choices, and had different talents.

The picture that has come across during his recent trial is of a lonely and bewildered character, whose life has ironically been ruined by success in our shallow celebrity soaked culture.

His self-destruction is a sad reflection of how our society has no shared values and common sense of purpose, and if all you care about is selfishness and hedonism, then how can anyone who submits to those dysfuntional ambitions ever be really happy?