- Celebrity relationships begin, and sometimes they end.
It's unlikely that most of us
will ever know the celebrities personally,
so why do we care so much about their love lives?
- We care about celebrities
because we're always looking for role models
on who to emulate as far as how we want to live our lives.
We want to know how to navigate our own relationships.
How do we look like that, feel like that, behave like that?
How do we love like that?
- The fantasy of seeing couples that are famous,
that are successful, they're glamorous,
they're in stable relationships provides comfort
but also provides a model for which a lot of people aspire.
Whilst everything else seems to be falling apart,
these fantasy couples seem to provide stability
in something that we want.
- Some experts say an ultra-invested fan
can develop a parasocial relationship with a celebrity.
- In parasocial relationships, we actually believe
that we have a relationship with the celebrity,
and we start giving them
all of these attributes that we imagine.
So it's really a one-sided relationship
between the fan and the celebrity.
- It's a mistake to assume that audiences
are gullible and stupid.
There's a spectrum of audience behavior.
Some audiences totally buy every last thing that they see
and read in the press and the media,
and they buy into it wholeheartedly.
Other people have more resistance to that,
and they use celebrities productively.
- While we may associate this behavior with Beliebers
or Swifties or Rihanna's The Navy,
this fascination is as old as Hollywood itself,
and the rise of the paparazzi
made the mystery of celebrities a bit more clear.
- What happens during the middle of the 20th century
is the focus becomes on behind the scenes
rather than the public persona.
There's a famous photograph of Elizabeth Taylor
and Richard Burton on a yacht off the coast of Italy,
and they are having an extramarital affair.
That's caught on camera by the paparazzi,
which were a new phenomenon at that period of time.
That scandal begins the celebrity world
that we know today.
Right there, it was their private lives made public
that became the focus of their celebrity personas.
- But people have to also understand I'm still a human.
Still my personal emotions
and what I'm personally dealing with.
- Nowadays, celebrities often invite fans
into their personal lives on their own.
Some use massive platforms
to put everything on display while others
drop clues more discreetly. -
♪ 'Cause I know that it's delicate ♪
♪ Isn't it delicate? ♪
-Celebrity culture depends on getting to see
some behind-the-scenes things,
whether that's being in their home --
-I want to welcome y'all to my house, the Dogg house.
Slide in.
- Or on holiday or interviews. - I have one little girl
that has two daddies and three brothers.
She's 2 years old, and she knows it.
- That is kind of the agreement of the relationship
that we have now with celebrities
is that they will give us a bit of the behind-the-scenes
in order to keep themselves in the public sphere.
- Chrissy's here, guys. - Super boring.
- Hi. - Hi.
- Do you have any requests, Chrissy?
- Well, I had to wear a towel.
- Romance and falling in love and creating a couple
and a family's still a pretty predominant narrative
or even fantasy maybe for some that
is some enjoyable to be a part of.
- And while cult followings exist,
not every fan is as invested as the next.
But overall interest in who's together
and who's not can say a lot
about what we're going through as a society at a given moment.
- There's a danger when we're talking about celebrity
to assume that it's a frivolous activity,
and that's something that, you know,
we do just for entertainment.
But as with lots of popular culture, it's important.
The study of celebrity tells us
what's valuable in our society and our culture.
- There's no way that the eye candy of Jennifer Lopez
and Ben Affleck isn't going to garner all of our eyeballs.
They were in love before.
Are they in love again?
And because human beings are storytellers,
we're always attracted to the story.
So maybe you could think of it as we're attracted more
to the story of Jennifer and Ben than we are to Jennifer
and Ben themselves. -
♪ Where I came from ♪
♪ From the Bronx ♪
-But like many things in life, boundaries are important.
Knowing which celebrity qualities to mimic is key.
- I think it is healthy
if we pick and choose certain things about them.
"Oh, they're very philanthropic. They give a lot of money.
They care about other people."
It does become negative when we give all of our power
over and our own existence over to the celebrity
or the celebrity couple
when, really, we need to be the celebrity in our own lives.