COMMENT: FAME, SCENE CELEBRITIES AND THE FUTURE OF GAY CULTURE

Clubland, Comment, Highlights by Alex Hopkins on November 26, 2009 at 6:17 am

Apparently X Factor 2009 ends on 12th December. I say ‘apparently’ because loathing the superficial trite-fest as I do, I had to Google the date. Personally, I could not care less, yet this auspicious landmark is sure to be engraved on many a London scene queen’s mind.

It will represent the end of countless Saturday nights spent in G.A.Y. bar screaming and squirming in excruciating delight as one naive, fame hungry hopeful after another suffers at the hands of the deliciously camp Simon Cowell.

As tawdry and superficial as the show may be it represents a highly potent bland of escapism. I don’t have a problem with escapism per se – it is one of the few safeguards of our sanity. My issue is that the show, like all reality television, exults and promotes the quick fix theory of fame.

Its promise of instant gratification and maximum output with minimal input symbolises all that is bad about society – it is also a mindset that has, sadly, been internalised by many young gay people today.

The gay counterpart of the X Factor quick fame fix is the endless list of gay club promoters, DJs and ‘scene celebrities’ we are inundated with today. Their existences are based solely on courting the kind of idolisation that an X Factor winner so fiercely covets. Being seen is all the matters, attracting notoriety is their primary motivation and conspicuous consumption is their modus operandi. Where though, exactly, is their body of work?

Since when did prancing around the entrance to Fire in some gaudy frock or lip synching to some techno remix by a twenty something in a baseball cap constitute hard graft? Is standing on a club door clad in garish knickers with lumps of K dangling from your nostrils either creative or groundbreaking? I think not.

The sad fact is that these individuals are held up as role models for gay people today. They have nothing to say about gay culture apart from highlighting the frivolity and fragility of appearances. Even still, the gay press are quite happy to waste pages on non entities trading in other people’s recycled ideas and passing themselves off as ‘legendary’ while marginalising someone with even a modicum of real talent.

What hope is there for the future of a valid, respected gay culture if individuals who really do have something new and inventive to say are not given the exposure that they deserve? What chance do our upcoming artists, writers and performers have if they are not given the coverage they merit? They are left floundering in a few column inches below the glitter, schmaltz and frankly questionable mentality of some floozie in suspenders with the audacity to claim they are a revolutionary gender bending ‘scene star.’

We have a rich and varied gay heritage – something that needs to be celebrated and built upon. It should be a source of real pride for us, something that we can hold up as a model of solid achievement to the straight world. Yet unless we actually begin to focus on this and foster and encourage real talent this will be forgotten.

Like X Factor, our ‘scene celebrities’ peddling their deluded concept of fame offer us an innocuous and amusing diversion. There will always be a place for them, but this should not be at the expense of people who have the substance to shape our community and culture in the years ahead.

Alex Hopkins is a writer and journalist. His blog can be found at http://alexhopkins.wordpress.com/