This is a weird question.

And I don't know if it belongs here or in EoEO, but I'll ask it here anyways.

A lot of celebrities, musicians especially, while admitting they obviously lead lives that are more touched by privlege and wealth than the majority of people, have also often lamented their lots in life. This isn't seen so much by film and television stars, but is fairly prevalent in the music industry. While I can't really name what I believe to be the first song discussing the hardships of being a rock star, several famous ones spring to mind. Turn the Page by Bob Seger, Highway Song by Blackfoot, and several songs released by the band Three Doors Down discuss how hard travelling, fame and separation can be for musicians who have hit it big.

Given this idea, but also keeping in mind the huge amounts of wealth and the rarity of the experience, do you believe musicians or any other celebrity has any reason to complain about their lives? Should they simply take responsibility for it because they brought it on themselves, or do they really have something to be pitied for?

A lot of people I know or pass by who are interested in celebrity gossip are typically very hard hearted when it comes to apparent turmoil in the life of a celebrity. Is this jealousy? Is it deserved?

My ultimate question, I guess, is are celebrities people too? Can you take their apparent talents, their wealth, their experience out of the equation and see them as average people, or are they always "different?"

Lifestyles of the rich and the famous. They're always companining.
If money is such a problem, well, they've got mansions. I think we should rob them.

Having what they have doesn't make them any less human. As much as complaining doesn't really help anybody, they have just as much right to it as anyone else. I can symphasize with them. No matter what you do being away from home is being away from home. Being sad because you don't have a special someone else is felt just as strongly by rockstars as the janitor at McDonalds. Feeling helpless about things being out of your control is just as frustrating in any situation. What they have doesn't take any of that, or any or example, away. It doesn't make any of it easy to fix either.

Even a Bible celebrity had his woes. I'm not a scholar of all things Biblical, but I have heard of good ol' King Solomon saying that all his wealth was "like the chaff" and was "like striving after the wind", which means that it was all completely pointless and didn't bring him happiness at all.

Even back then, the celebrities were ungrateful sods. :p

Not needing to worry about money just gives them more time to worry about their relationships with the people around them. Furthermore, those relationships are often automatically skewed for the worse due to their wealth and fame and overall unusual position in society.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by fire_of_avalon

And I don't know if it belongs here or in EoEO, but I'll ask it here anyways.

A lot of celebrities, musicians especially, while admitting they obviously lead lives that are more touched by privlege and wealth than the majority of people, have also often lamented their lots in life. This isn't seen so much by film and television stars, but is fairly prevalent in the music industry. While I can't really name what I believe to be the first song discussing the hardships of being a rock star, several famous ones spring to mind. Turn the Page by Bob Seger, Highway Song by Blackfoot, and several songs released by the band Three Doors Down discuss how hard travelling, fame and separation can be for musicians who have hit it big.

Given this idea, but also keeping in mind the huge amounts of wealth and the rarity of the experience, do you believe musicians or any other celebrity has any reason to complain about their lives? Should they simply take responsibility for it because they brought it on themselves, or do they really have something to be pitied for?

A lot of people I know or pass by who are interested in celebrity gossip are typically very hard hearted when it comes to apparent turmoil in the life of a celebrity. Is this jealousy? Is it deserved?

My ultimate question, I guess, is are celebrities people too? Can you take their apparent talents, their wealth, their experience out of the equation and see them as average people, or are they always "different?"

---

I am a little confused by your reference to musicians.

Are you talking about musicians who talk about their hard life in their songs?

Or... in general? :confused:

If it's general then I really have no sympathy for celebrities and their tough life. Because they usually talk about their 'hard life' either when they have a new movie coming out, when they have an auto-biography about to be released, when work has dried up and no one is interested in them anymore so they need to say something to keep the public interested, or when they have some crap TV show to promote.

I only really admire the old celebrities who didn't complain and simply got on with it, people like Lee Marvin, James Coburn, Telly Savalas, Cary Grant... real people with tough lives and backgrounds, who simply made their own way in life.

I mean celebrities in general. I was just using musicians because I was listening to Highway Song and because it's easier to relate to being on the road a lot. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so specific.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by theundeadhero

Having what they have doesn't make them any less human. As much as complaining doesn't really help anybody, they have just as much right to it as anyone else. I can symphasize with them. No matter what you do being away from home is being away from home. Being sad because you don't have a special someone else is felt just as strongly by rockstars as the janitor at McDonalds. Feeling helpless about things being out of your control is just as frustrating in any situation. What they have doesn't take any of that, or any or example, away. It doesn't make any of it easy to fix either.

---

Having a lot of money makes an easy fix for a lot of things though.

The situation at hand here is that celebrities are famous so they think they deserve the sympathy of the world because they can't find love or maybe they're overworked.

NEWSFLASH: If you are trying to get rich, you're going to be overworked. If you worked normally to become rich, then everybody would be rich!

2ndFlash! EVERYBODY has problems with love and life and the universe and family and what-the-f-ever else. Cry me a river. I've got my own problems.

The only thing celebrities have a legitimate right to complain about is the fact that they're targets for theft, assassination, and the far more common PAPPARAZZI.
But that's a side effect of their job. If you're a machinist, you are often the target of many lung diseases or maybe stray shards of steel that can pass through your eyes and blind you... Whatever.
We all know what we're getting into. And if we didn't research, well, we're into it. No turning back, right?

I can understand that they have problems. We all do. But they have a lot of money to help them with most of their problems. I mean, they can keep their kids from going away for 5 years for a unique arson charge that involves... Well, nevermind that.

Bottom Line:

If you're looking for sympathy, you can find it in the dictionary between and Syphillis.

Edit by Kishi: Don't circumvent the filters.

Life is life for everyone, hardships are hardships for everyone.

Wether or not a person is suffering the loss of a pet, their second failed marriage, a friend betraying their darkest secret, living paycheck to paycheck meeting the bare minimum of living, trying to feed yourself while living on the streets, or dealing with the local village plague ...

Hardships are hardships. The level of them does not excuse that everyone goes through them and that they are hard for everyone to get through them.

Everyone thusly has the right to "complain" about them.

does The Road by Tenacious D count as a song lamenting being a rock star? :choc:

Quote:

---

Having a lot of money makes an easy fix for a lot of things though.

---

Really.

Actor A is from Kansas. She's would really like to visit home, but she's been in Brazil filming a new movie for the past month. They'll be there another month. How does money fix that?

Rockstar A is sad because all the girls just want his money instead of a real relationship. How does money fix that?

Actor B just wants somebody close to them to have a good conversation with. He doesn't know anybody very well and is stuck going without. How does money fix that?

Rockstar B is being forced by her record company to use the mixes of her songs they like best, even though she prefers others. They have a set album name in mind that she isn't too crazy about. They own creative control so she doesn't have a choice and is frustrated about it. How does money fix that?


This isn't about famous people whining to the media about what's wrong. It's about famous people having things wrong in general and regular people blowing it off. Noones asking them to do anything about it in the first place.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by theundeadhero

Quote:

---

Having a lot of money makes an easy fix for a lot of things though.

---

Really.

Actor A is from Kansas. She's would really like to visit home, but she's been in Brazil filming a new movie for the past month. They'll be there another month. How does money fix that?

Rockstar A is sad because all the girls just want his money instead of a real relationship. How does money fix that?

Actor B just wants somebody close to them to have a good conversation with. He doesn't know anybody very well and is stuck going without. How does money fix that?

Rockstar B is being forced by her record company to use the mixes of her songs they like best, even though she prefers others. They have a set album name in mind that she isn't too crazy about. They own creative control so she doesn't have a choice and is frustrated about it. How does money fix that?


This isn't about famous people whining to the media about what's wrong. It's about famous people having things wrong in general and regular people blowing it off. Noones asking them to do anything about it in the first place.

---

I said money solves a lot of problems.
Not all problems. Obviously.

All the problems you present are problems that ANYBODY can get. And anybody who isn't rich will most likely have money problems on top of other problems.
Therefore: Rich people got it better than us.

And if they feel the need to whine about their problems, they may.

But nobody's ever done ANYTHING but blow off my problems unless, lo and behold, I can provide cash.

And when cash doesn't solve my problems, I have no choice but to be blown off. Until those actors can do something for me other than charge me money for their services, I can't do anything for them but pay them. I don't know what the heck else they want or why they deserve it or whatever.

Yeah, I reckon they do. Just you look at people like Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. I mean...not sure if you were meaning contemporary celebrities or not. But there's some things that are never easy, and imagine having to live a life in the spotlight, with so much pressure on you and expectations of you. No matter if you have wealth -- that's not going to save your sanity.

Even though they have many benefits to their job, I can see where they're coming from. I don't think famous people bring it upon themselves necessarily... I mean, just because someone can act or write music doesn't mean they deserve to be bombarded by photographs and mobs everywhere they go. The public acts like celebrities are gods and it's ridiculous.

So I would probably be upset too. I don't care how much money you have, living with the frustrations that would accompany fame are gonna build up in anybody. People are kinda whiny no matter what, really...I mean no matter how good your life is, your day to day frustrations make you complain...And I don't think humans are built to handle that amount of attention all the time. That's what I think anyway.

Unless your born into it, it can be assumed that a celebrity will have led a "normal" life with all it's up and downs. Let's also not forget that just because you are famous doesn't mean that you're not still human and as vulnerable to anxiety, fear and stress.

If money and fame are a problem, you can give the money away and stop acting and/or singing. No one is forcing anyone else to be a celebrity (for the most part).

I would say I have no sympathy, but that would require me to care enough to actually decide one way or another whether to feel sympathy. Celebrities are normal in that their problems mean nothing more to me than anyone else's problems. Unless the celebrity is my dad or my girlfriend or someone else in my life, why should it matter to me? Or to anyone?

I think that celebrities have just as much woes in life as we do. It's just that we'd find out more about a celebrity's problems than an average Joe's.

Of course they have problems. Maybe they're not struggling to pay the bills, but money is hardly the only stressful thing in people's lives, and the famous are as human as any of us. On top of that, they have certain problems that we don't have to cope with, like the ever-watching eye of the press. To say they've no right to complain because of their fame is simply unfair.

Even if they are rich and famous now, doesn't mean it was always like that. People write about what they know, past experiences. Past being the key word.