Release of Kate Middleton topless photos proves fame is so last century
By: Cahir O'Doherty | Published Wednesday, September 19, 2012, 11:02 AM | Updated Wednesday, September 19, 2012, 11:02 AM
 |
| Kate Middleton |
Last week the shocking news that
Kate Middleton has breasts riveted the world.
Photographed sun bathing semi nude from a very great distance, when the story broke I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be surprised by?
That fact that
Middleton has human anatomy? Or the fact that some truly awful human beings would try to photograph her and that others would offer thousands of pounds to publish those photographs in the tabloid press?
That kind of thing has been going on in Rupert Murdoch's main publications for decades. No one’s surprised by it. So what changed?
I think the surprise, and there appeared to be a lot of surprise, was that it happened to a rather transparently winning human being like
Kate Middleton. She has an open kind face. You can’t fake that. People like her.
So the outrage we have been reading about in the press is based on the premise that she's a bit different, and that things that obviously despicable shouldn't happen to people who are so endearing.
But she must have known it was coming. The hunger for sensation in the tabloid press is too strong. They’ve tapped phones and spied on celebrities. They’ve hired helicopters and invaded weddings. There is nowhere they won’t go to get the goods.
Fame comes with a price after all. And since the dawn of the internet the mystique of fame has been eroding in tandem with the last vestiges of what we used to call a private life.
Once upon a time fame seemed like a glamorous thing and something to aspire to, but now thanks to telephoto lenses and an increasingly unhinged paparazzi we have seen far more than we ever wanted to of the real business of celebrity.
The internet has let the light in on all the magic. Now you'd really want to be out of your mind to pursue it. That's a major change that doesn't get discussed enough.
Andy Warhol said in the future we'd all be famous for fifteen minutes and the reality TV of the last decade took him precisely at his word, elevating people with characteristics no more compelling than how they arrange their hair to the heights of global notoriety. But in making everyone famous they have made fame itself suspect.
Just twenty years ago famous people were usually remote and impossible to approach, but now we regularly see them falling out of their dresses as they tumble into their limousines on their way to another idiotic club. It's the same the world over. Royalty once meant tradition and gravitas, but increasingly it means boobs and naked Las Vegas romps with frothing larger louts.
Kate’s topless shots upset many because we caught a glimpse of the real distress the episode caused her. But that’s already being forgotten as the news cycle turns. Next week
Prince Harry will probably be photographed throwing up or leaving someone’s apartment in the early hours. It’ll be the next big sensation. What’s different is that it’s all starting to feel as tired as Rupert Murdoch looks these days.
Fame, as they say in London, is pants. These days being famous looks like a mostly upsetting experience. It used to signify distinction, but now it’s main ambition seems to be to level us all.
Read more: Alan Shatter calls for an end to ‘creepy keyhole journalism’ after Kate Middleton fiasco
8 Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.| Sep 21, 2012, 12:22 PM EDT
Cahir is waiting for topless pictures of prince Harry.
IrelandNorth | Sep 21, 2012, 08:04 AM EDT
Glitterati being photographed by paparazzi with faces like pepperoni pizzas. Pardon the preponderance of parliamo Italiano epith[i]ts, but what the hell is goin' on with the English royals? What with Harry swinging his terrible thurible in Las Vegas, surrounded by buxom wenches cooing like pidgeons. Now Cáit (Coit) unwrapping her delicate walnut clusters, oblivious to the lustful gazes of long distance photo-lensed shooters. Good lookin' girl, mind you! One's testerone could well subvert one's irrendentist republicanism in a moment of aesthetic aristocractic distraction.
bunkerhill | Sep 20, 2012, 10:21 AM EDT
Kate's escapade has given her and her husband's tour great publicity. Was there someone who forced her and Harry to disrobe? In all my years, and I have know some very successful people, I have never known one of them to do anything like that in public. And here we have two from the same family doing it in a matter of weeks. The press didn't do Diana in, Charles did. Her misery due to his conduct was so apparent for years. Anyway it takes the people of England's mind off their real problems with the economy and lack of homes. There has been very little interest in the US in this story.
cillowen | Sep 19, 2012, 09:49 PM EDT
people stop to look at car wrecks - UKers have been giving such disasters for as long as them having ould erin under their control. Their guinness still keeps em happily swaying in tune to serve at a drop of their hats.
manhattan | Sep 19, 2012, 01:52 PM EDT
Excellent reporting on the terrible things the press do to people in the public eye. People that buy those rags are just as guilty as the creeps that take the pictures and sell them. Thank you.
cillowen | Sep 19, 2012, 11:03 AM EDT
these cats want their cake and eat it too. craving the limelight like Harry showing his manhood and then donning the uniform of respect they get him outta town - in harm's way LOL. Commoner Kate coming face to face with bare breasted reminders while on tour of the commonwealth. Who knew?
SeamusMor | Sep 19, 2012, 10:31 AM EDT
"Topless storm"? A tempest in a "B" cup!
jamieLM | Sep 19, 2012, 10:04 AM EDT
Kate has learned a lesson - no place is safe from the lens, except maybe behind her own palace walls. She probably thought her privacy wouldn't be invaded a half a mile away on a private estate. Now she knows better. How ridiculous that there's such a lucrative market for famous people's nude bodies...as if they looked so different from our own. As a nurse, I've seen more naked bodies than I can count. In spite of shape and size, they're all basically the same. Cover up the faces of similar bodies and you wouldn't know who you were looking at. I think the outrage comes, not so much from the nudity, but from the invasion of Kate's privacy who is a likable person. Kate reminds many of Princess Diana and how Diana died. Many of us can identify with Kate - how we'd feel if someone invaded our privacy. You're right, though. This, too, will fade away.