opposite of invisible - the celebrity
The opposite of invisible is the obnoxious, someone annoying or objectionable due to being a showoff or attracting undue attention to oneself. The definition of a celebrity, someone who achieves a secular state of grace. Showered with what they perceive as the good things of life: fame, fortune, sex, celebrities think that they have power to ignore the rules. In exchange, all they allow their lives to become a grotesque display, they trade-in both their privacy and dignity to shed any semblance of an autonomous life to become an image that everyone knows.
Fame used to be the result of action; for example, courage, endurance, and risk taking. Some women and men became famous for doing great good (explorers, educators, scientists, military leaders, and champions of civil liberties), while others are famous because of terrible evil (highwaymen, dictators, and criminals). Regardless of good or evil, fame was something earned. Not now. Today the celebrity is famous for being famous. Good and evil are beside the point. Today, celebrities come from the entertainment industry, actors like Mel Gibson and porn stars like Kim Kardashian. Other celebrities became famous for twisting the news, like Nancy Grace. Some celebrities display no special talents, but have instead family or marriage connections; for example, Paris Hilton. Others have some talent, but they become celebrities because of reprehensible conduct, like Courtney Love. Short-lived celebrity can be achieved by submitting to the ridicules of reality television.
As the Spectacle expands into the most intimate corners of our lives, celebrities are awarded increased respect, moral authority, and political power-including the Presidency of the United States. Nonetheless, the celebrity is to pitied. Constantly in the spotlight before an ever fickle public, incessantly clutching and striving, celebrities endure a lifetime of deprivations that most of us wouldn’t tolerate for a minute. Still worse, they end up believing the falsehoods upon which their fame is based. Celebrities work hard to deceive, to present a front, an image which looks good. But it’s a façade. But in the end, the deceivers are themselves deceived, trapped in a life of delusion, an imaginary world they created and can never leave. And it only gets worse as they grow older and become caricatures of their younger selves. In the end, there’s not just an enduring sadness to celebrities, but also a depressing lack of style.
Let them be, they’re punished enough
