The great clashes to come will be less between left and right than between those inside and outside a dying establishment
We live, at first blush, under the absolute dominion of celebrity. The former and future president of the United States spent more than a decade as a reality TV star. Taylor Swift just concluded the largest and most lucrative pop music tour in the history of the world. Mass entertainment vehicles remain star-driven – just ask anyone flocking to see Wicked (Ariana Grande) or Gladiator II (Pedro Pascal, Denzel Washington) this holiday season. And that’s not to mention all the petty dramas of the attractive and famous that still keep us all gossiping.
It might be strange, then, to make a completely counterintuitive claim: that we are leaving the age of traditional mass celebrity. And not only are we leaving it, but we are drifting into a new, uncertain era, one where fresh hostility has emerged against those who, even a few years ago, would have received blind worship and little more.
Ross Barkan is a writer based in New York
