Tom Cruise Syndrome

I was just reading a rant from the wife of one of the sports writers I read regularly. The writer is the Sports Guy who writes for ESPN.com and his wife writes a weekly rant in his football picks column. Anyway, she was going off this week about how she is sick of the show Grey’s Anatomy. Lost in her diatribe about various celebrity couples was a really underrated point about the entertainment world and celebrity worship. She explained that since finding out about the actors’ personal lives in the tabloids, she finds their performances less believable or is distracted by what she knows about the actors.

I think we can officially call this “Tom Cruise Syndrome.” Cruise had, for years I’m sure, been a complete whackjob. I’m sure that years before he was jumping on Oprah’s couch, he believed crazy things and had mixed up values and everything that he gets demonized for now. The only difference is that we didn’t know it about him. He had carefully protected his private life and so we didn’t know how loopy he really was. Then when he finally opened up and showed who he really was he suddenly became unwatchable as a movie star. I watched MI:3 thinking the whole time, about him jumping up and down on a couch and generally alienating everyone who knows someone who could benefit from mental health medication. He was the same actor, giving the same performance, but I couldn’t buy it any more.

I think celebrities generally overestimate their ability to overcome this. They often act shocked and appalled when people find out who they really are and then stop wanting to watch them pretend to be someone else. As if we’re wrong to discriminate against bad behavior and crazy life choices.

Whether it is a homosexual portraying a heterosexual relationship, or a devout peace activist playing a shoot ‘em up action hero or a racist jerk playing….well….anything, I don’t care how good the acting is, I just don’t buy it.

The interesting thing is that nearly all of our popular entertainment options probably exist only through willful blindness. We try really hard to convince ourselves that the stars we like are good people and really just better, cooler versions of things we like about ourselves or wish we could be. In reality, their lives are mostly a mess meaning they are (rash generalization) for the most part likely Godless, immoral, zoloft hating, couch jumping, pot smoking, neck tattoo having freaks. But none of that matters to us because until they throw it in our face, we pretend it isn’t true. The signs are everywhere but we ignore them so we can continue to enjoy our favorite shows, music and movies.

All of that to say, I’m really down on the paparazzi right now. Not because they invade the privacy of millionaire camera-hogs, but because they force me to admit the stars’ camera hogging isn’t their only pig-like characteristic. I would rather all movie stars be good people, but for now I would also settle for not having to see and read about how much they are not.

Maybe all of this is just reason number 1,536,345 not to deify our celebrities based on anything, but especially not their on-screen personas that so rarely, I'm sure, reflect nothing but their ability to pretend.