Celebrity versus Talent

 Who could have predicted Hollywood's sudden flowering? When Keanu Reeves publishes his debut novel, The Book of Elsewhere, in July, he will join a swelling cohort of celebrity writers. Tom Hanks, Sean Penn and Millie Bobby Brown have all published novels in recent years...

The reason is not, I think, a sudden upgrade in the intellectual calibre of our celebrities... The relevant factor is a new and extreme deference to the power of the "personal brand" which originated on social media but now pervades our culture. Possession of a "platform" or a "following" is now a licence to do pretty much whatever you like creatively, regardless of your talent.

Consider publishing. Modern  Britain's bestselling novelist, Richard Osman, is loved as a writer but it is relevant to his success that he was a famous TV personality first. Children's fiction is beset with celebrities exploiting their name recognition. David Walliams is the most famous example...

Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
British School
Photo Credit: Victoria Art Gallery.[CC BY-NC-ND] 

Once creative success led to fame. Now fame is a necessary condition of creative success... For nowadays a lucrative book deal depends as much on a writer's "following" as the quality of his or her prose...

The uncritical vehemence of online fan culture (whereby anybody who dares to criticise a Harry Styles song online will be abused by furious teenagers for eternity) is a symptom of a cultural ecosystem that encourages attachment not to particular songs or books but to personalities...

Indeed, talent is a positive affront to  the spirit of our time. Because talent is unequally distributed through the population, it offends the progressive notion that everybody's self-expression is equally valuable...

The other problem is that because talent very often resides in weird or unattractive people, it sits uneasily with the commercial imperatives of a culture industry obsessed with image and personality...

New technology promises to to devalue talent even further. Many have lauded the way AI - which is already being used to produce cheap romance and fantasy - will "democratise" fiction (and perhaps film-making and songwriting)...

When anyone is capable of "writing" a novel, the books that emerge as bestsellers will be  those attached to celebrated personalities with platforms. The talented but anonymous will find themselves surplus to requirements.

(James Marriott, The Times, 2024)

Other celebrities exploiting their name recognition include Geri Halliwell, Clare Balding, Russell Brand, Frank Lampard, Bruce Springsteen and Meghan Markle.