Fame is quite a doubled-edged sword. For all the riches, there are rumours, indiscretion and media around every corner. I myself thus both do and don't want to be famous, and not just for my own sake.
This current saga with Grant Hackett (he's an Australian Olympic swimming Gold medalist, for you non-Aussies) is the latest in which a star has been put up on a pedestal. Why do we even feel we must do that to our icons? Just like everybody else, they can only give so much, and their flaws run very deep. Verbally celebrating them like titans is fine, but just so long as we remember they are still human.
Now, I'm not saying Hackett or any other star who's been embroiled in a media scandal didn't misbehave. He must've done something wrong. But beyond that he obviously has serious demons which he should be able to battle privately, so why can't he? He never chose to be famous anyway, nobody ever has. For a more infamous example, Winona Ryder's shoplifting incident in 2001 occurred while she was on prescription medication, and those issues can be overwhelming for even the most obscure person.
Filmmaker Brett Morgen, in his astonishing 2015 Kurt Cobain documentary Cobain: Montage of Heck, delivered a very moving condemnation of the destructiveness of our fame-obsessed culture by showing how the media's invasions of its subject's private life greatly exacerbated his problems (irresponsible though his behaviour often was). But sadly, celebs now have the cards stacked against them even higher.
Can't they at least be dealt another hand?
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