Back in March, when the only way you could avoid jokes about warlocks, tiger blood and F-18s was to hole yourself up in your Beverly Hills mansion for 36 hours with a couple of well-paid porn stars and enough cocaine to make Pablo Escobar blush, Newsweek published an essay by the writer Bret Easton Ellis.
In the essay, Ellis made an interesting argument: Charlie Sheen was not sabotaging his own career, not contributing to the moral erosion of society, not alienating his fans but instead making all the right moves as a celebrity in the 21st century. Ellis broke the world of pop-culture into two grups: empire, or the antiquated, non-ironic celebrity behavior, and post-empire, the fame-seeking, stunt-prone new school. Aaron Sorkin, Robert Downey Jr. and Anne Hathaway are empire. Snookie (and the rest of the “Jersey Shore” cast), Ricky Gervais and James Franco are post.
As, said Ellis, is Charlie Sheen. The article’s message can be distilled down to two lines. The first is about a third of the way through: “What Sheen has exemplified and has clarified is the moment in the culture when not caring what the public thinks about you or your personal life is what matters most – and what makes the public love you even more.”
The other is a little later on: “Being publicly mocked is part of the game, and you’re a fool if you don’t play along.”
But here’s the thing: Ellis missed the point. He completely overlooked the most essential piece of the puzzle. Grouping celebrities into those two groups doesn’t make sense because it doesn’t account for talent.
Let’s take a look at three ratings from two shows with affirmed post-empire leads. According to Nielsen, “Jersey Shore had a rating of 4.4 for the episode that ran the week of September 5. The week before that, “Two and a Half Men,” which was showing syndicated reruns, drew a 5.9. That means approximately 2 million more people chose to watch episodes of a show that they’d almost certainly already seen than a brand new episode of a “reality” show featuring the most Empire group imaginable. For further comparison, the first game of the NFL season received a 16.0.
Is the cast of “Jersey Shore” uninhibited? Yes. Popular? Yes. Are they skilled at being on TV? Not even a little bit. When you really step back and examine it, the scene that plays out on MTV every week resembles neither a scripted television show nor real life. Same with “Real Housewives.” Same (sadly) with “Teen Mom.” The people on the shows live interesting, sometimes entertaining lives, but they’re neither comfortable enough to ignore the camera nor good enough at acting to pretend they aren’t going to watch themselves on TV in a few months. And, thus, they’re less popular than both a scripted show and a televised broadcast of reality like the Packers game.
To put it another way: People didn’t tune in to “Two and a Half Men” because Charlie Sheen was a self-destructive trainwreck. They tuned in to “Two and a Half Men” because he’s really good at playing a self-destructive trainwreck on TV. To be a real celebrity, to have people care enough about what you do or say that they make the decision to watch you do it, you have to be good at something, like acting, say, or catching a football. Otherwise you’re just a show on TLC.
That’s what Ellis got wrong. Talent will always trump hype, no matter how savvy or self-aware or persistent or post-empire the person in question is. Viewers will always gravitate toward skill and actors will always be more famous than socialites. It’s true that name recognition is more important than likability, it’s true that all press is good press, but advertising dollars beat them all.
Tonight, after Sheen (presumably) watches Ashton Kutcher’s debut in “Two and a Half Men” from his couch, which is (presumably) made of silicon and uncut coke, Charlie Sheen might flip over to Comedy Central to watch a bunch of comedians make fun of him for an hour. During that show he’ll sit there and smile and take it in part not only because he’s disgustingly rich and post-empire, but also because he knows there’s always a part where the comedians say how talented he is and that they watch his show every week with their families. And that – not the other stuff – is why he’ll remain a celebrity.
