We began our last show with a discussion of potential impending Apocalypse–evidently on the mind of one of our audience members due to the current ironically zeitgeist-y fixation on the year 2012 as the Deadline For All Things.
Naturally this transitioned, ere long, to an extended discussion of popular culture. (For my own part, this usually works in reverse; I find I can’t absorb much mainstream pop culture (of, say, the Keeping Up With The Kardashians variety) before my thoughts inevitably drift to the destruction of the human race by our own witless hands. But I digress.) Our dive into pop culture led us in several rich directions, a couple of which have stayed on Kobi’s and my minds in the days since the show ended; we’ll be following up on a couple of those threads here.The first of same:
WHO IS THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON IN THE WORLD?
As one might imagine, the segue into this topic came from when Tiger Woods arose in The Conversation–as was, I suppose inevitable, his marital infidelity being both the scandal du jour and possibly one of the more lasting stories of the decade. I will set my personal fascination with our collective fascination with Tiger Woods aside for the moment–perhaps I’ll use an alternate post to explore why it is that we admire athletes and politicians on equal footing and now, it seems, demand model behavior from both groups–and focus on the question of who is the most famous person in the world, which we bandied about as a group on Tuesday.
Our early suggestions included most of the names that keep cropping up on various internet lists, from the quasi-official to the half-assedly bloviational. We mentioned: Barack Obama, George Bush, Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, Kim Kardashian, Madonna, Oprah, Osama Bin Laden, David and Victoria Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo (he’s also soccer player, kids), Nelson Mandela, the Pope, and Harry Reid, among others. (The last of these suggestions was made by a girl who was, I believe, being faceitious, though with certain people it can be difficult to be certain and devastating to assume.)
A few observations here:
- We had some difficulty deciding what “famous” actually meant. Does it mean that an individual plucked randomly from the faceless hordes of humanity would recognize the name? The face? The accomplishments? Would be influenced by the person? Excluding President Obama, Pope Benedict and Kim Kardashian, each of those criteria probably leads to a different answer.
- When we say “famous” are we, by implication, excluding the deceased? For some reason, it strikes me that we are–that saying that Jesus or Hitler or Mao or Gandhi or Einstein is the most famous person in the world kind of misses the point. (Sorry, John Lennon.) and that post-death recognizability is something other than fame. But what the fuck is it? We don’t have a very good word. Immortality? Not exactly. It’s more like legacyhavingness, that rarest of dreams that drives Kim Kardashian and all the rest of us egotists.
- When we say “famous” are we, by implication, excluding the infamous? I suppose infamy is best seen, in this context, as just one form of fame. But it seems odd to measure Osama Bin Laden on the same fame scale as, say, Posh Spice, and that he’d be better categorized with other people who are well-known for doing explicitly horrible things. Like, say, making a sex tape with Ray-J.
- When we say “famous” are we, by implication, excluding the fictional? It was pointed out that more people the world over recognize certain fictitious personages–Ronald McDonald and Mickey Mouse were mentioned, though I’d throw Santa Claus, Mario, and Kim Kardashian in there as well–than possibly any of the real people above. This is, of course, horrifying. It’s also confusing in conjunction with the “alive or dead” debate, since how, then, does one decide when a fictional character is no longer comparable to others. Mario is to Barack Obama, one might posit, as Sherlock Holmes is to Charles Darwin, at least inasmuch as the former two are currently active and the latter two stopped releasing albums a while back. Except that now there’s a new Sherlock Holmes movie coming out, which means that now Sherlock Holmes will be back in the public consciousness (two points to Warner Bros. for casting ex-addict Robert Downey Jr. in the role of Literature’s Favorite Coke-Fiend). And–and this is the point where I had to stop thinking about this–if we separate the fictional from the non-, is it possible that Jesus Christ wins in both categories, like the year Dennis Eckersley won both the AL Cy Young and the MVP awards?
As you can probably imagine, gentle reader, my head is about to explode with confusion and gratification; if we were keeping rankings on a gridded scorecard, mine would have five colors of pen, lines connecting various circled entries, and notes scribbled in the margins, and it would require a z-axis to try to put thinks in order.
Which is why I love doing this show.
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