Articles
Miss Pooja
A recent billboard proudly proclaimed that Miss Pooja was going to make an appearance at a local Asian festival. On the appointed day, we drove past the outdoor fairgrounds and saw a jammed parking lot and thousands of people who were, I assume, breathlessly awaiting the appearance of Miss Pooja.
Who is Miss Pooja? I don’t have the foggiest idea. Whoever she is, I wouldn’t pay two dollars to see her, and I sure wouldn’t fight the seething masses who paid a whole lot more to watch Miss Pooja do whatever Miss Pooja is famous for. To me, Miss Pooja is just a person – no aura, no mystique, no intrigue. I have no desire to meet Miss Pooja, but if I did I wouldn’t be giddy. But a lot of people would because they apparently know a whole lot more about Miss Pooja than I do. Many are awed by her talent and beauty, have read articles about her – and in the process have created a fictional image that likely has little bearing in reality. And therein lies the point behind this article.
The difference between me and Miss Pooja’s fans is that they have objectified her and I haven’t. Celebrities are objectified by marketers who create a mythical persona that they sell to the public: bad boy; reformed alcoholic/druggie; sex-symbol; hermit; humanitarian; hardscrabble upbringing; etc. These are all caricatures, not the real people. Has anybody, except her family, ever seen the real Dolly Parton?! We are being sold a product and all too willingly buy into the celebrity mystique. There are some people that we have built up so much in our minds that if we came face to face with them, we would sweat, hyperventilate and blabber.
But I don’t feel that way about Miss Pooja, and that tells me that we project these feelings onto others. Picture when the Beatles deplaned in the U.S. and hordes of teens girls were screaming, sobbing and fainting. John, Paul, George and Ringo didn’t even know these poor waifs existed, yet there they were swooning and hysterical on the tarmac over feelings they manufactured in their own minds.
But one doesn’t have to be a celebrity to be objectified. We can objectify anyone if they possess the qualities that titillate us or inflame our passions. But when we do so, we compromise their dignity as a creature made in the image of God, and we lose our perspective on them as a human being. Maybe they cultivated being ogled or adored, but the Christian ought to know better than to accommodate them. Some even overly esteemed leaders of the early church, particularly Peter, James and John, “who seemed to be pillars.” But Paul said, “But from those who seemed to be something – whatever they were, it makes no difference to me; God shows personal favoritism to no man – for those who seemed to be something added nothing to me” (Gal 2:6, 9). All that mattered to Paul was what God was doing in their lives (Gal 2:7-8)
So what’s the point? People are just … people. They have souls. They have spiritual and emotional needs that aren’t met by legions of adoring fans or shelves of trophies. They are prisoners of the paranoia their own aura has created: “Does this person really care about me, or are they just thrilled to be meeting a celebrity?” Yes, we can appreciate the superb talents of an athlete, musician or author, but let’s not deify them. That level of adoration is misplaced and destructive to both the worshiper and the worshiped.
