Sanity and celebrity culture

By Salama A Salama

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Education, in the conventional sense of the word, is no longer in fashion. Arabic itself comes under constant sniping, particularly from a kind of hybridised street lingo. People just don't seem to need Arabic anymore. Why use it when you can get along with a little English and a lot of attitude? You don't need to know much, just make sure it's the right stuff. But what is the right stuff? Not philosophy, biology, history or physics.

What people seem interested in these days are snippets from the lives of celebrities, how they live and eat, what brought them success, what they think of the world and so on. This is what matters to most of the public. You may know nothing about space, nothing about the exploits of Hubble or Soyuz, nothing about bird flu or global warming. But you're still going to be fine so long as you keep track of the right stuff. Snapshots of the life of celebrities are now everywhere. We are kept informed of their mood at work and home, in programmes and commercials. Celebrities get paid for it. And we get less time to think about anything else, let alone our real problems.

You don't have to worry about anything so long as you know why one television presenter switched to another show or why two singers have fallen out. If you are conservative by nature, just swap the singers for the TV-evangelists, or for some sports personality, and mire yourself in the minutiae of their lives.

Celebrity used to be accorded to a select few. But it is getting easier to come by. People can be catapulted to celebrity by getting married or divorced, stealing jewellery or torturing their maid. Anyone, it seems, can become the darling of the television audience just because something has gone wrong in his or her life. Talk shows need their fodder, that's what it's all about.

The problem is to keep track of it all. In order to stay on the ball you have to watch soap operas, chat shows and video clips which seem to go on forever and are screened simultaneously. After which you must then surf the Net and scan glossy magazines for more of the same. Do not think for a moment you can rely on the staid, buttoned-up official press. That will get you nowhere.

Perhaps someone should ask the minister of information to set aside a channel for election campaigns. No one will watch it. Who would want to miss out on video-clips to watch politicians making promises they don't intend to keep? But at least if there is a separate channel the politicians won't interrupt the chat shows.

Soon, perhaps, elections will be staged the American way, with dancing and singing and actors endorsing candidates. Let's get some cheerleaders to lighten things up. In conservative south Egypt perhaps we can adopt Ramadan-style celebrations with hospitality banquets and religious chanting.

I am not even criticising. All I ask is for us to examine what we really want. In recent years advertising companies have succeeded in banishing cultural and scientific shows from prime time. Is this really what we want? Wouldn't it be wise to do things a little differently? I know there is no point in fighting progress. Perhaps, though, we can do something about the shape of that progress, if only to maintain a modicum of sanity.