Toying with shortcuts to celebrity has its consequences

By Misha Berson
Seattle Times theater critic

Rap star Sean "P. Diddy" Combs recently starred in the Broadway revival of "A Raisin in the Sun."

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So, you want to be a Broadway leading man. Or a beauty queen. Or a top athlete.

Good news: It may not take years of study, great genes or even talent to reach these pinnacles. If you believe the mounting hype of our shortcut society, you could just zoom to the top.

The not-so-subliminal message Americans are getting now is: Slow and steady does not win the race. Neither does skill acquisition, necessarily, or mastery of craft. But speed rules.

"Success and celebrity have become de-linked from virtue and ability," says David Callahan, a fellow at Demos (a New York think tank) and author of the 2004 book "The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead."

"You have total nobodies who have accomplished nothing and are suddenly rich and famous, so people think getting to the top is not about hard work and making sacrifices," Callahan notes. "It's just about playing the game and being in the right place in the right time."

	DEBBIE VANSTORY Paris Hilton went from society girl to star.

Society-gals-turned-stars such as Paris Hilton. Plain Janes transformed into Living Dolls. Warp-speed literary lions. Such whiz-kids have it so much better than the rest of us. Or do they?

Along with the hyper-flash of this new world order comes cutting corners, missing nuances and risking a crash-and-burn landing after a speedy ascent. Whether it's having a breakneck makeover, or waging a quickie war, there are social consequences for all of us.

How does this manifest itself across the cultural landscape? How did we get this way — and how do you crank down the pace to something less frenetic?

Let's consider some notable contemporary shortcuts:

Showbiz shortcuts

Phenomenon: When rap music performer and impresario Sean "P. Diddy" Combs set his cap to be a serious stage actor, he didn't devote years to taking voice and acting classes, or graduate from supporting roles to meatier parts.

Instead, he spent five months prepping with an acting coach to star as Walter Lee Younger in a major Broadway revival of "A Raisin in the Sun."

	Sidney Poitier spent years working on his craft before starring in the 1959 debut of "A Raisin in the Sun."

That's five months to learn a craft Sidney Poitier spent years acquiring, before starring in the 1959 debut of Lorraine Hansberry's masterwork.

Producers knew Combs was a novice but banked on his marquee value. And it paid dividends: "A Raisin in the Sun" was a rare box-office hit last season.

Combs had done at least a little acting pre-Broadway. (He appeared in the film "Monster's Ball.") Even more disheartening is the cash-in, klieg-light star treatment for gossip-column bunnies and media-made celebs.

Consider Paris Hilton, a pretty heiress to a hotel fortune. Famous first as a socialite party girl, she's everywhere now: starring in a so-called reality TV show that flaunts her pampered airhead ways, designing a line of jewelry, acting in films.

Or William Hung. The geeky engineering student won a recording contract and ironic celebrity status for being possibly the worst singer ever to audition for "American Idol." Now his 15 minutes of fame has stretched on to include a singing tour of Asia.

	William Hung scored a recording contract and ironic celebrity status after his singing audition for "American Idol."

Consequences: While seemingly harmless, the cult of instant celebrity tells the world that the American appetite for vapidity is boundless. Why do we lavish so much attention, interest, air time and money on artistically unproven VIPs, when more genuinely accomplished artists go unsung?

Sure, it's cheesy fun to track celebs, and the "famous for being famous" have been with us since the advent of the printing press. But it's a matter of degree.

As James Wolcott wrote in July's Vanity Fair, we're now "inundated with nonentities" who "fill the bottomless void of the country's attention deficit."

Combs deserves a little credit for drawing youths to a thoughtful African-American play about the effects of poverty and racism. And for admitting to the New York Post, "Look, I'm still an aspiring actor. I have a long way to go. I'm not Sidney Poitier or Denzel Washington. ... "

But Combs' humility aside, it was clear from his performance he was ill-equipped for a big Broadway debut. And casting him, instead of a name actor who already paid his theatrical dues (say, Don Cheadle or Jeffrey Wright) telegraphs that fame trumps toil and talent.

Same goes for the hiring of relative stage novices (Ashley Judd, Jason Patric, Scott Foley) for hefty New York stage roles recently. Their lackluster turns may have sold tickets but also turned Broadway into the minor leagues.

Fast track to beauty

Phenomenon: It's a fairy tale come true. One day, you're an average-looking gal. Then, presto-chango: You're a sleek-bodied, taut-faced, full-lipped honey, fit for a swimsuit spread.

That's loosely the premise of such TV series as "Extreme Makeover," "The Swan," "I Want a Makeover" and so on.

	ROBERT VOETS/FOX Before: "The Swan" contestant Rachel Love-Fraser. After: Love-Fraser, crowned "The Ultimate Swan".

Observes Virginia Blum in her book "Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery," our "make-over mad world" promotes aesthetic perfection as a right, or a duty. Like it's your job to fit the Hollywood/Madison Avenue ideal of a firm-chinned, flat-bellied, straight nosed babe, at any age or cost.

According to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, between 1997 and 2003 cosmetic surgical procedures in the U.S. rose 87 percent, to about 1.8 million.

Consider the transformation of "Swan" beauty queen (and Sammamish resident) Rachel Love-Fraser. Love-Fraser underwent a nose job, a lip job, brow and breast lifts, liposuction and dental work to win her crown. She also got counseling to remind her that it's really inner beauty that matters.

Consequences: How can talk-therapy, or all the self-esteem workshops in the world, counteract a million media messages relating female happiness to full breasts, unwrinkled skin and washboard tummies?

As Eve Ensler points out in her Seattle-workshopped, Broadway-bound solo show "The Good Body," we subliminally equate being beautiful with being virtuous. Conversely, looking plain or merely pleasant is almost sinful.

No wonder changing eating and exercise habits appeals far less than the pronto fixes of cosmetic surgery and extreme diets.

In moderation (or for the truly disfigured) cosmetic surgery can be a godsend. But has the more excessive flesh reshaping and siphoning made "average" women happier?

The faking-it shortcut

Phenomenon: The fast track sometimes isn't fast enough, so deception is needed to grease matters along.

New York Times reporter Jayson Blair and New Republic writer Stephen Glass invented news stories to bypass the hard grunt work of real journalism. And when their deceit was discovered, they won lucrative book contracts to write about it.

Cheating scandals abound: Athletes are disqualified for ingesting steroids and other performance drugs. Plagiarism charges tarnish the reputations of such scholar-authors as Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose, and résumé-padding haunts admired figures like poet and professor Quincy Troupe.

The British reality-TV series "Faking It" takes careerist scamming to comic extremes. It gives "regular" folks a month to revamp and fake out a panel of experts by coming on as a top polo player or a slick TV reporter.

Consequences: "Faking it" is harmless and amusing as a TV stunt. But real-time, fast-lane fakery in sports, in politics, publishing and on Wall Street?

In "The Cheating Culture," Callahan suggests rampant cheating is having a corrupting effect on our society, making us into a nation where greed and ambition rule, costly mistakes are made and children discern that honesty isn't truly the best policy.

"Young people see those who get to the top cut corners," says Callahan. "It becomes the norm."

Another effect: When cheaters fraudulently raise the bar (or profit margin, or grade-point average), they set unrealistic standards we're all expected to meet.

Why, and what next?

Why are we so prone to shortcuts?

One likely factor is the boom-and bust mentality that runs from our Gold Rush past to our dot-com, news-media present. Our national faith in get-rich-quick schemes and jackpot windfalls has turned us into a breed of impatient optimists and gamblers.

And what of the effects of voracious TV-watching, and being blasted with more images of lickety-split fame and fortune than any previous U.S. generation?

"Our values have changed a great deal over the last 50 years," comments Callahan. "The '80s and '90s have been unusually individualistic and materialistic times, with people judging their self-worth by their net worth."

The constant deification of instant wealth "provokes a great deal of envy in the eyes of millions," says Callahan. "Basically, working over many years to reach a goal is so much harder."

A way out?

An alternate vision of success is proposed in a 2003 book by Rafe Esquith, titled (as it happens), "There Are No Shortcuts."

An award-winning public school teacher, Esquith told his Los Angeles inner-city students that the Declaration of Independence promises them only "the pursuit of happiness."

"What happened to pursuit?" he writes. "We aren't handed happiness. We're given an opportunity to pursue it. But how many children really pursue their dreams anymore? How can you go after things when you're sitting in front of a television set or a computer screen?"

Esquith hung a "There are no shortcuts" banner in his classroom, and "from the time they grasped its meaning, this simple phrase affected everything [my students] did."

That is: They read more novels and Shakespeare plays, worked through harder math problems, came to class early and left late. And they accepted the idea that hard work is its own reward.

It better be. Few of us 300 million or so U.S. citizens will reach superstardom, no matter how many corners we cut.

Are most of us then doomed to be frustrated, unfulfilled also-rans and wannabes? Again, it depends on how we define success. Despite the mass cheating he details in his book, Callahan suggests we may be poised to move back to "virtuous cycles" and "positive norms."

"There have been previous periods of American history where the focus has been more on collective sacrifice and shared responsibility than it is now," he states. "And there's not just a chance of the pendulum swinging back — it always does historically in this country. There's always a backlash eventually against extreme wealth and individualism. Maybe it's starting already."

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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