SENTINEL WATCH September 29, 2008 Issue

BEYOND CELEBRITY CULTURE

LYLE YOUNG

MUCH OF THE MEDIA —from Cape Town to Los Angeles to Brisbane — provide the public with celebrity images and information in abundance. This "news," fed by whole celebrity industries, covers actors, actresses, athletes, politicians, and others, and can extend to their friends, families, and even their "exes." Usually these subjects of attention are alive and well; in other cases, they've actually been gone for some decades. But no matter, they still live on as icons and reference points in popular culture.

Looking at this, one can quickly see that the roots of celebrity culture lie in the belief that physical beauty and scandal are attractive, and can be used for financial gain. To me, there's a Biblical comparison to today's celebrity culture in chapter 19 of the book of Acts. It tells about how some Jews and Greeks in Ephesus in Asia Minor (today, Turkey), at a time when St. Paul was healing and preaching there, felt the power of God and of Jesus' teachings. As a result, some of these people who had practiced sorcery burned their scrolls, which presumably contained spells, in public. The value of the scrolls was 50,000 drachmas, a drachma being equal to about a day's wages. This caused such an awareness of the Christian teaching that the professional image-makers of the city's idol industry feared for their livelihood.

Many people in Ephesus worshipped Artemis, who in Greek mythology was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, the twin sister of Apollo, and the goddess of forests, wild animals, and fertility. The Ephesian temple, erected originally to Artemis, stood as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And at the time, there was a lively trade in the production of shrines to the famous goddess.

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