Kevin McGeary

THE new school year has started, and film actress Zhou Dongyu has, to her credit, chosen to live in a student dormitory like an average girl of her age. Is this part of the beginning of the end of celebrity culture? Many people thought the cult of celebrity had reached its peak, or base, in 2003 when four celebrities were given an enema on British national television with the winner even showing the results.

At one time, achieving celebrity status would require something extraordinary, such as overthrowing an empire or inventing a religion. But in the early 20th century, advances in technology and tabloid journalism made it possible to become famous for more trivial achievements, such as singing -- Enrico Caruso -- or falling over -- Charlie Chaplin.

Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness" was published in 1902. If follows the multi-talented European imperialist Kurtz, who goes into the Congolese jungle and, after initially contributing to the society in a positive way, is allured by his status as a celebrity. In the end he has no affection or respect for the people who worship him and cares little about anything other than his own barren, pointless fame. Joseph Conrad was an astute predictor of the century that had just begun.

In 2009, a survey showed that the top three career choices for children in Britain were sportsman, popstar and actor, compared with teacher, banker and doctor 25 years earlier. Does this mean that children are all attention-seekers and less interested in disease prevention and education than they were in the 1980s? Allow me to indulge in some autobiography.

When I was 14, I formed a band with my classmate Bob. Most of our songs were about fame, alcoholism and one-night-stands, the kinds of problems we wished we were having. At one rehearsal, Bob gazed into a mirror and earnestly said: "One day, that face will be on every billboard in the world?" Unfortunately, I did not ask: "What? Even the one's advertising Viagra?"

Our band never had any success, mostly because we were too busy talking about how we would get our revenge on the world after becoming famous, and we forgot to actually record any songs. But I have experienced celebrity, albeit the lowest form of celebrity, that is being a foreigner in a small town in China. The experience taught me that having strangers ask for your photograph, and being shouted at across the street, make it more difficult, not less difficult, to form genuine friendships.

Symbollically, my last week in that small town in Hunan Province saw the death of Michael Jackson. I had an extra level of sympathy for the late singer. Yes, he was weird, but you would be too if you walked into a wall of sycophancy everywhere you went.

Children are probably no more shallow than before. It is simply a case, as pointed out by Guardian journalist Emma Brockes, that children go where the respect is, and respect has gone to some weird places over the past century. Rock band U2 may sell out stadiums everywhere they go, but when historians of the future talk about the people who really made a difference during this era, they are more likely to talk about Hervey Stockman who died this year. It was Stockman who in 1956 flew the first solo espionage flight over the Soviet Union... in a U2 plane.

(The author is a Shenzhen Daily senior copy editor and writer.)