Gilded Butterflies

It really all is quite funny, when you stop to think about it.

Day 1: you log into a showbiz website, and you find out that Cheryl Cole has 'done it': she's become a judge on US X Factor. A few days later: back you go, and you find out that she's been fired. No 'chemistry', apparently, and no-one can understand her accent. You fight the schadenfreude. You fight that irritation at her legendary thinness. Her big hair. Her embodiment of the victory of style over actual talent. You manage not to laugh, or even smirk. But then - good lord - you go back again on Day 3 and reports are suggesting she's been reinstated. Publicity stunt, some say, while others allege it's to avoid a massive pay-out, and others again suggest that she's got some kind of hold over Simon Cowell. You roll your eyes. It seems hard to believe, that this brunette Barbie doll should be the focus of so much news worldwide. Laughable. Ludicrous. But then Day 4 comes and they say it's final. She's been fired. Replaced. She's gone. Over. Yesterday's news - yesterday's hair style - yesterday's fashion. She's been supplanted and, in a twist on the words of her own sponsorship advertising slogan: she isn't worth it.

Final though they call it, you can't help but wonder what will come next. A new relationship or a return to an old one? Renewed TV stardom nearer again to home? A breakdown - a tragic stance - the loss of further weight? The last chapter has certainly not been written, because our love of celebrity seems undimmed. We're glued to talent shows, even when they don't seem to offer the talent the name suggests. Gossip magazines are read, and tabloid scandals are the stuff of far too many workplace lunch breaks. Working through King Lear with a sixth form class this year, I was struck all over again by Lear's lines as he prepares to go to prison with Cordelia as the play draws to a close:

'We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage (...) and so we'll live,

And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh

At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues

Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,

Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;

And take upon 's the mystery of things,

As if we were God's spies…'

As Lear and Cordelia leave for prison, he shrugs off the intricacies of court life, that he'd cared so much about before, caring little now for grace and favour and political advantage. He laughs, now, at the fickleness of fame, the temporary rich gaudiness of those who pass in and out of favour with the breeze. I made reference, as my students sat bemused and patient, to Hello magazine, to Heat, the X Factor, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They got my point, I think; then someone asked me did I know that Megan Fox had the line about the gilded butterflies tattooed on her right shoulder. What a delightful illustration of irony, I thought, that someone who, with her transitory beauty and debatable talent, should have the very line she embodies tattooed on her shoulder... the shoulder over which she might glance anxiously now and then, to check whether a threat might be approaching. How fitting, too, that the tattoo should be a slightly inaccurate representation of Shakespeare's line. Megan Fox's tattoo reads 'We will all laugh at gilded butterflies'; the very point of the line, in the play, is that only having gone through such gruelling ordeals as they have endured can Lear and Cordelia understand the 'gilded butterfly' as worthy of ridicule, whereas beforehand they could not have had such perspective. We cannot 'all' laugh like this, without bitterness, but with a somehow regretful, sad amusement. The epiphany which the lines represent is that of the tragic figure, not of the everyman that is our role. Punctuating the tragedy with applause or laughter or tears, we become part of the Chorus, experiencing by proxy of emotion and trying to gain some wisdom as we watch or read. It's another of Shakespeare's moments of tragic anagnorisis, of course - one of the times he makes a tragic hero outline a whole new understanding of the human condition to an audience as they experience all the emotional renewal of catharsis. With the fulfillment of the tragic completion just ahead, the audience grasps the understanding of life, and grips the arm of the theatre seat for support, knuckles white as Lear and Cordelia understand life fully just as they are, inevitably, about to leave it...

But what of gilded butterflies?

Our gilded butterflies, today, are our celebrities. Who's in, who's out - it's never been chronicled so well. Celebrity magazines, newspapers, websites, blogs, Twitter... it's endless. Limitless. The whispers around the workplace watercooler expand themselves in texts and tweets and emails and messageboard postings. Superinjunctions bloom like cherry blossom; the strong wind of gossip scatters the expensive petals and reveals the harsh realities of flawed celebrity beneath like branches and trunk grown crooked from a harsh prevailing wind.

And it's not just the famous either: the properly famous - the popstars, the sports stars and the rest. The 'somebodys'. It's the 'nobodys' too. In an age of online messageboards and networking, maybe we're all famous. Maybe it's the manifestation of the prophecy that one day we'll 'all be famous for fifteen minutes'. We've found new ways of judging one another and finding one another inadequate. How many followers do you have on Twitter? How many follow your blog? How many friends do you have on Facebook? The questions accuse. Does somebody malign you? 'Unfriend' you? 'Flame' you? Suddenly what happens when you lose a friend has changed: instead of feeling sad, upset, the loss of a friend means that your cachet is actuarially reduced. Your stock falls. You're just not really worth it any more...

It reminds me a bit of the last few days of primary school. Armed with little notebooks and coloured biros, we all wandered around at break and lunchtimes, as we got ready to leave the only world of school we'd known so far, collecting 'autographs' and good luck messages. There was a victory to be had in who 'got everyone' most quickly. I knew I'd never win, but even then I was amused at watching the ones most likely to succeed. They worked the playground, and I laugh now when I think back to that eleven-year-old insincerity. 'You're my friend forever, here, write me a message...' - easy words to someone you'd probably never see again.

How is it different, now, adding a Facebook friend or Twitter contact? Updating your statistics with someone for whom you have scant regard, making your stock rise and the value of a so-called 'friendship' fall in equal and opposite reaction? Showbiz or real world, online or on the news-stands, the popularity index is as fickle as an Irish summer, as fragile as a butterfly's dusty and colourful wing, and as real as a hairstyle conjured up to boost a flagging image.

It really all is quite tragic, when you stop to think about it.