Charlie Sheen’s Disposable Celebrity

James Dean, Marilyn, Elvis… Fifty years ago, a classic book defined celebrities in the TV age as “well-known for their well-knowness,” and, it often turned out, as disposable as Kleenex when their fame burned out.

Historian Daniel Boorstin wrote “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo Events in America,” a prophecy now having its umpteenth replay as a survey shows Charlie Sheen getting more Internet and social media attention than Barack Obama.

Confusion about reality has gone global, with a Chinese newspaper chiding Americans for being “unfilial” and making Boorstin’s point about pseudo events by confusing Martin Sheen’s role in “The West Wing” with real life: “He [Charlie] ignored his own father’s advice to keep quiet, who was once the president of the US. Sheen is a disgrace, unfilial to his father and his fatherland.”

In the half-century that fame has been uncoupled from achievement and appearances from reality, aided by cable TV and the Internet, the world we think we live in has become a 24/7 soap opera, designed to keep us watching and reading between commercials and pop-up ads.

As Sheen’s latest cell-phone rant goes viral, his antics become fodder for fighting off boredom while, in the obscurity of sanity, his family suffers and goes on with real life, completing a devout film, “The Way,” starring his father and directed by his brother, about “small miracles on a daily basis.”

Charlie Sheen’s meltdown may have the perverse effect of calling some attention to this modest effort, but it will pale compared to the near-pornographic interest in his personal drama.

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