If celebrity worship is odd but explainable on previously discussed grounds, how then do we explain the obsession with celebrity relationships? Sure, they can appear glamorous and perfect, the appeal of that is obvious, and so too is the appeal of rooting for the happiness of others. There is far more to this, however, than happy feelings and simple aspiration. Indeed, these are more justifications and explanations and can be countered by the fact that many celebrity relationships are despised by large swaths of the population. So, it must be agreed that there is far more to this interest than the reasons one might give if put on the spot and asked why they follow the actions of celebrity couples. One purpose this behavior serves is to provide images of a desired relationship that one can project onto their own relationships and partners.
Given the lack of proximity to the celebrity relationships the common populace follows, it is obvious that this behavior does far more for those engaging in it than the celebrities themselves. Cheering on a happy celebrity couple or casting judgement on one that involves an adulterous spouse can be an attempt by the observer to gain luck and insight into their own relationships. At the very least, this observation provides subtle and overt cues for how one can operate in their own love life.
A seemingly healthy celebrity relationship can be viewed in an aspirational fashion, and one that ends or carries on poorly provides us with both cautionary images and confirmation within which we can seek refuge while nursing our own failings in life and love. Someone new to love or in the initial stages of a new relationship can even benefit from both sides of the aspirational-confirmational spectrum.
On the aspirational side, one need only scan social media to find endless examples of celebrity couples posing, dressing, and displaying their supposed love in a fashion akin to how you might observe celebrities in a tabloid. One the confirmational side one who see celebrities begin a PR feud after a breakup may decide to make their own public in a subliminal or obvious fashion, thinking that is the normal reaction.
It is worth acknowledging that celebrity relationship idolatry, like all idolatry, can be both destructive and unproductive, though it is never without purpose if only on a subconscious level. Nothing relating to archetypes and symbols is ever without purpose even when it may seem so frivolous to a disinterested on looker. Many are without positive relationships to observe in their own life, and for these individuals having aspirational or confirmational relationships to observe is vital. Celebrity couples give the lost and unexplained to a place to turn to develop an understanding of relationship archetypes.
As alluded to before, those new to love may lean with greater emphasis on celebrity love archetypes as they form their first romantic relationships. Eventually, though, after enough experiences with and in love come and go, the image of a perfect relationship grows blurrier. This does not however mean that the lover projects less as they become jaded, but rather that they begin to project more tangible and practicable archetypes from their own love experience. A thirty-year-old woman may not view her and her new boyfriend as Amal and George Clooney, instead she may view herself more realistically and her new lover as a rebooted or reformed version of a past lover.
It is in this change that I believe men and women can develop a “type” as it is known. This can manifest in the attempt to resolve a “one that got away” situation or in more subtle ways. Though one might see a potential lover as looking like a past love, the projection process is not something that begins consciously. Memories have a funny way of working themselves into our visions of the future and this is evident when projecting qualities onto partners in relationships. We may, for example. connect someone’s face structure or hair color with a past lover’s, and this may trigger the projection of that past lover’s qualities onto the new person, but only one of these processes is within our control. The connection formed through this form or projection may well prove positive, but its origins can be traced to nostalgia distorted memories and an imperfect association mechanism.
This search to find once more a past love remembered as perfect by projecting it onto a new lover is rarely taking place on just one end of a relationship. In fact, it is often in new relationships where we can find relief from past pain via this mechanism. The duality of these scenarios can be found well summed up in country singer Dwight Yoakam’s 1990 hit ‘Turn it On, Turn it Up, Turn me Loose’. The lines where he does so read as follow, “If a tear should fall, if I should whisper her name/ To some stranger I’m holdin’ while we’re dancin’ to an old Buck Owens song/ I know she won’t mind, she won’t even know/ She’ll be dancing with a memory crying teardrops of her own”
The lines as written may seem too clunky and complex to fit into a catchy song, but they work nicely when sung and provide more depth than one often encounters in modern songwriting regardless of genre. The verse presents the concept of a jaded or perhaps we could say experienced relationship archetype projection process. Although experiences with bad love can be informative and important in forming future relationships, they can also lead to a person chasing the incomplete memories of a past relationship in the past. The avoidance of this trap numbers among the many reasons one might not want to grow too adventurous in love.
Projecting our hopes, dreams, and desires onto lovers is no different than how we project our subconscious view of our perfect self onto celebrities and other role models. Yes, we are projecting onto someone who we love or want to love rather than a celebrity, but similarly, they are qualities that we ourselves approve of knowingly or unknowingly. As with celebrity archetype projection, these projected qualities serve the purpose of bringing out something within ourselves. This is not to suggest we simply project qualities onto lovers as a means of using them to our benefit, instead it is to suggest that as with celebrities we look up to, projecting qualities onto those who we love serve in our journey of self-discovery or self-actualization.
Celebrity couples, past loves, parents, and friends are some of the places where we spot or project relationship archetypes, but they are by no means the only ones. To be an effective tool for archetype projection or observation, a couple need not be real and can be more useful when fictional. Relationships in film and literature, for example, have proven more enduring and powerful than most of the real-world celebrity relationships we can observe, perfect as those may appear. Stripped of the frills of regular life, a well-constructed fictional couple can be more relatable than people we observe.
The ability of writers to distill archetypes from their observations of the world, to remove obfuscations to our seeing them clearly provide a valuable tool in our ability to understand these archetypes on a more conscious level. The conscious mind aside, these symbols have value that goes far beyond page turning entertainment.
In great literature, it is possible to observe the entire body of relationship archetypes in a single book. One can see this in Anna Karenina, for a shining example, or rather examples. In AK Tolstoy presents a sweeping variety of relationship archetypes in epic fashion against the backdrop of Russia’s differing rural and urban aristocracies. Given the book’s length and scope, Tolstoy was able to present these relationships, with their love, lust, hurt, joy, disappointments, and all other human emotions in their fullness.
Beginning with Levin and Kitty, we can see confirmational archetypes in Levin’s nervous desire to pursue Kitty and her disinterest in requiting. We can feel his heartbreak when she chooses the younger Vronsky over him. We can relate to Kitty then being cast aside from Vronsky and realizing that Levin was the man for her all along. Eventually we see another confirmational relationship archetype in Kitty and Levin in the genuine love they have developed despite their (mainly Levin’s) incomplete joy with life. Fulfilled or not, we can then relate to the young couple settling into the rhythms of married life and beginning a family. In the end they offer us something to both aspire toward and to in which to feel confirmed.
Then, on the initially aspirational but eventually cautionary side, we have Anna and Vronksy. In this couple Tolstoy plays perfectly to our archetypal understanding of a couple that was meant for each other regardless of who they had previously decided to settle down with. As the reader continues, though, they move from aspirational love/lust and into seeing what this form of tragic love archetype leads to. While we can relate to Anna’s disinterest with her stuffy husband, we see her behavior tear her family apart and turn her from a beacon of aspiration to a cautionary symbol. We watch the humiliation she causes her husband to endure come full circle until all she can do is numb the pain and guilt with morphine. Anna is introduced to us, beautiful, collected, and vibrant on a train ride to help resolve a family dispute. It ends with her having taken the wrong path in life, ending on a different set of tracks.
We learn not of Vronsky’s fate in the military, but we witness the embarrassment he brings his family. We see what takes place when lusters perceive themselves as lovers and cast aside their senses amidst their intoxication. We may want to aspire to their initial passion, but we are given a lesson in what doing so can result in. This aspirational archetype turns cautionary only to reveal itself as a confirmational archetype of what a healthy relationship is but only in the absence of what is healthy.
We can relate to Levin and Kitty, to Anna and Vronsky, not because we know them but because we see and feel ourselves and spot archetypes we understand in their behavior. We can all understand Anna and Vronsky’s innate desire, to Kitty’s humiliation at being cast aside as she watches her love dance with the married Anna just feet away. It takes little to find something relatable in Levin’s half-stepped and skeptical approach to the rocky but unavoidable world of love. In Anna Karenina, we see ourselves, our relationships, and loves we have known from real world observation presented in remarkable fullness.
When we see these sorts of archetypes in literature and film, we can then use our understanding to consciously spot similar archetypes in the real world. Knowing these archetypes helps us to either avoid or move toward them in our own lives. This shows that just as with celebrity relationships, film and literature provide far greater value than the obvious entertainment it may be considered to offer. Rather than a waste of time, these seemingly optional and vacuous forms of entertainment can play a vital role in human development.
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