Panache

“Johnny, this child belongs to you. Johnny, I love you! Our souls are connected.” A woman yelled at Johnny Depp during the court trials that he was attending in Fairfax, Virginia. She was quickly escorted out of the courtroom.

And this is just an example of how far the parasocial relationships can go. The lead attorney in the case Elaine Bredehoft, said in the trial room at one point that this is what she was afraid of. As soon as people see stars like Johnny himself, they forget how to behave, his charm and stardom is difficult to get over with.

But why does this happen? Among the plethora of famous people, why do we start liking a celebrity? We might not go crazy about them. But we prioritise them and might argue with the people who say anything against them. Why do we do that, when they may or may not have any clue that we exist?

What is the para-social relationship?

“A term coined by Horton and Wohl in 1956 refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by members of an audience in their mediated encounters with certain performers in the mass media, particularly on television.”

If you have ever loved Harry Potter or Edward Cullen during your teenage years. Unfortunately, that also comes into the category of a para-social relationship. So, doesn’t matter if they are real or they are just fictional characters. As far as you have a one-sided attraction towards them, you are in a relationship with them.

Another definition says, “of or relating to the connection or imagined connection between a regular person and a fictional character, celebrity, or other public figure.”

There are three stages or levels a person may feel connected to a famous personality. Considering we are social animals and may feel a connection to various individuals in multiple ways. Parasocial starts with social attraction. It means how a personality represents themselves, whether you agree with the social causes and social values they agree with or not.

Then comes physical attraction. It does not need to be sexual. But you may feel a deep connection with the personalities who have the same height as yours, the same hair colour as yours or the same body shape as yours.

The last and final level is the task attraction. You may feel attracted to an actor because they are good at acting, A singer because, you like the songs sung by them. Or maybe a sports person because they are good at playing the sport that you like.

We all know that we have experienced these phenomena. But is it harmful? Or is there a dark side to it? It seems like we have this habit of putting our favourite people on a pedestal. When it comes to celebrities, we always have this habit of considering them the best.

We often see fans crying at concerts or on meet and greet occasions when they start crying as soon as their favourite celebrity personality comes in front of them. The simple reason is the degree of devotion to celebrities can range from a simple crush to a delusion that they have an intimate relationship with the star which does not exist. We have idolized them for so long and dreamt about meeting them in person so often that when we meet them, we get overwhelmed by emotions and sometimes even start crying.

Everyone loves Queen Bey and you can see the devotion in people at her concerts.

Beyonce often leans down from her stage and asks people for their names. In a viral video, Beyonce asked the name of a guy who tells his complete name and mentioned Beyonce’s last name “Knowles” as his last name.

To prove that he is right. He shows his Identity card, something that looks like a driver’s license. She was left baffled looking at it and asked the guy, “Are you, my cousin?” To which he replied, “I am your husband, I took your name.” After the conversation, the singer and billionaire make sure to gift him a towel that she touched with her body as a souvenir.

This is a perfect example of a Para Social Relationship and even a Para Social Interaction. But it ended up healthily. Unfortunately, not every relationship has that fate.

Doja Cat

An extreme example of a parasocial relationship is what happened with Doja Cat. However, media frenzy and paranoia are other things to blame as well.

But Doja Cat was an internet personality who became famous from her Moo video where she put French fries in her nose. For most of the time, Doja was known as the girl who put fries in her nose and sang about Cow noises.

All of that changed as soon as she gave out some noteworthy songs where she rapped and sang. The genre of these songs was mostly pop. And then she released her album “Planet Her”. Her singles not only got her appreciation from her fans but also got her grammies which she was extremely thankful for. She organized some tours and performed in front of a live audience. She showed some “weird” behaviour on the internet but, that was mostly overlooked by her fans.

Suddenly it changed when she lost weight and shaved her head. Her sudden success made some of the people on the internet say that she has sold her soul to the devil. Others said that she shaved her head and lost weight because she was a devil worshipper.

Though Doja has always been silent about her personal life. But she takes no chance to block people who ever call her on her work and her relationship. The relationship was pulled out by the media channels and Doja herself never shared anything about it.

People went ahead and started asking her to break up with her current boyfriend who has allegations of sexual assault in the past. The people while making the request claimed that they care about her and thus she should break up because they don’t want to see her getting hurt.

Doja tells these people to mind their own business and that she can take care of herself. If you go to Doja’s Instagram account, you can regularly see the posts on her stories that keep spreading news about her. She recently uploaded a screenshot of her YouTube account where all the videos that called her a devil worshipper were lined.

Though her replies are more profound in her recent music. In the two singles she has released “Attention” and “Paint the Town Red” she has not only mocked the people calling her a devil worshipper in her way but also the fact that no matter what anyone thinks about her, she doesn’t care about anyone’s opinion. No doubt that not giving people what they want has caused some cracks in her fan following.

But, para-social relationships were all about love. And these reactions are creating hate. How is that possible? And how a simple delusion can lead to such drastic results? If that is not clear enough. Let’s move to another example with our favourite Tay -Tay.

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift decided to re-record her albums. Those albums contained the song that she wrote about her exes and their relationships at the time. But as these songs get re-released, her fans, the swifties, are getting angry at all her exes and sending them personal messages.

As it happened in the case of John Mayer one of her exes, who received a death threat from one of Taylor’s fans. The message read “Fuck Yourself you ugly bitch, I hope you choke on something.”

John responded with a long text stating that he has been getting a lot of death threats lately. He further mentioned, “Do you really hope that I die?”

The person responded, “OMG WHAT I don’t want you to die.” They apologized to John Mayer and admitted that they thought that he would not see the messages.

But you never know when the whole thing about Taylor Swift and John Mayer became so personal to her fans. Taylor dated him from 2009 to 2010, while she was 19 years old and John was 32. And that was long ago. And as much as Swifties are protective of Taylor Swift, doing all of it would not achieve any results.

The Accessibility

I know there was a time when celebrities simply used to give one or two interviews during award ceremonies and movie premieres and that used to be all. So, the delusion that para-social relationships are rarely used to manifest themselves. If you have been wondering what changed? The answer is celebrities are more accessible to us than they ever were. You can see, that previous examples are a live testimony of the same.

Social Media has given an inside view into the lives of celebrities which eventually makes fans think that they know them in more ways. They follow them on social media as they do their other friends’ and families’ accounts.

Which gives them the illusion that they know each other in similar ways. Magazines, Blogs and YouTube feature videos like Architectural Digest and 73 Questions also give an inside-out peek at the celebrity living and their houses to people. Thus, making them think that they know them fairly well. When that is not true at all.

That was not the case previously, as celebrities used to have fewer public appearances and fewer media channels would feature them. These features were also the ones where they could share a detail or two and that is all.

But now it is more often a competition to share more of your personal life so you can be more “relatable” to the public. The more we have access to celebrity life and information, the more entitled we feel to dig deep and to know more.

No doubt Katy Perry did a 72-hour live stream of how her days go by.

Pedro Pascal

“This day would be better if one of you were Pedro Pascal”,

“This meeting would be better if one of you were Pedro Pascal.”

Candles inscribed with aforementioned quotes.

Pedro Pascal’s tapestry and wall hangings where he is dressed in the clothes of Jesus.

If you were to search all these items a few years ago. They were nowhere to be found. You would not even find the name of Pedro when he had already done some iconic work in Game of Thrones and Narcos. But suddenly, he came into the limelight and the whole world became his fan.

Imagine being his hardcore fan and buying Jesus candles and tapestry with his face on it. And a certain news flash by where he makes a human mistake.

And suddenly all his image and fame would be for nothing. The same people and the same media would run after him and would degrade him in multiple ways.

Or at least that is what happened with Britney Spears.

Britney Spears

The social relationship between Britney and her fans worked out pretty well during her conservatorship fight. Though the battle was legal, not much part could be played by her fans who were supporting her from the outside and going on marches for her. But they offered her mental support and she was thankful for it. After all, a fan devised a theory about her cryptic posts on Instagram and promised to lend her support. We are all aware of what happened next.

However, all of these conversations started much later. There was also a time when the same media and fans led her to shut her doors.

During the early 2000s, Britney’s image was more of a sweet, Catholic girl from a Disney show. But not only her relationship with Justin Timberlake was widely discussed by media and her fans. Her divorce and separation were also gossiped about, brutally.

Yes, everyone apologized about the way they treated Britney during that time including her ex-husband. But there was a bad time that she went through. And there was not a single trace of empathy or apology for her at that moment.

Amber Heard

The same thing also applies to Amber. As per the court proceedings and evidence, she might be in the wrong place in her relationship. And she wrongfully accused Johnny Depp of domestic assault. However, she herself admitted in an interview that the way the media and people treated her was wrong.

These might be the fans of Johnny Depp but some joined the conversation because it was going viral at the moment.

I am still waiting for the moment when one person remembers the fact that she was inhumanely treated. After years of dehumanising her, the media and public would admit and apologize for their behaviour before moving on to the next big thing.

The Role of Media

That would bring us to the role of Media in working as a catalyst to construct a para-social relationship.

“Hailey Bieber Vs. Selene Gomez: What is going on between the two?”

“A thousand hearts broke when he announced that he is getting engaged.”

“Is Chris Evans no longer single?”

“Who was Dua Lipa seen with last night?”

These headlines might seem familiar to you. So, if you have been thinking that it is celebrities’ fault that they share a little more to develop feelings for them among the people. That might not be completely true.

But some celebrities still want to live a hush-hush life and would prefer not to be interfered with by the public eye.

However, the more privately a celebrity lives, the more in demand for their photos and videos. The paparazzi and freelance photographers remain in high competition to be the first to click pictures and get a personal view of celebrities inside lives that famous personalities don’t want to share.

So, is there no winning? There is. We need to realise that the public persona of a celebrity is highly manipulated.

In the world of cancel culture, celebrities fabricate their personalities all the time. Based on the 3 levels on which parasocial relationships are made. The PR team and the marketing agency would be working on those 3 factors to show you the type of image they want to construct about them in a given period. It is all an illusion and none of it is true.

Since we are social beings, we are meant to have a relationship with our favourite beings but it needs to be all fun. The more they share about their lives with us, we need to know they are humans like us and need not carry a load of expectations of their fans. Neither they need to be put on any pedestal of any kind.