What motivates such detailed attention?  How can Paris ‘grab’ our focus to the extent that I am now writing an article about it for Lifeline’s newsletter?

Morning Report attempted its own answer, by playing the comments of an American commentator.  It was a matter, he opined, that our lives were usually so complex, that it was a relief to be able to concentrate on something that really didn’t matter at all.  Like a ‘time out’ from our complications and our frettings!

There might be something to this view, although I want to suggest that it leaves something out.

What it leaves out is the sense of underlying fascination that was generated around Paris as she was sentenced to prison, went to prison, left prison, returned to prison, and finally left again.  It’s revealing that through all of this it wasn’t hard to find people with a strong view of whether these comings and goings should or shouldn’t have been happening. Even the hardiest of anti-Hollywood-star-watchers could be found offering an opinion:  “She should stump up and do her time, like everyone else!”

Our fascination suggests that we are dealing here with our own projections. It is perhaps that our attention has less to do with Paris herself and more to do with our own projections onto her.  Somehow this young woman has been ‘selected’ to epitomise our own aspirations and desires, to be our heroine or maybe our anti-heroine.

None of us wants to be locked into our own selves, or to feel limited to our current boundaries.  We look to be more than what we are, to be united in a community which is more than the sum of its parts.  In other words, we look for transcendence.  And these transcendent aspirations we can easily bestow upon someone who appears to ‘fit’ our desire.  So now, by virtue of our projections, a young slim blond woman becomes the Fairest Godde who is able command our rapt attention.

Except that she couldn’t command anything at all, if it weren’t for the fact that we have first made ourselves so biddable.

People have been offering these projections for a very long time and are going to continue to do so for a very long time into the future.  What’s the rub?  Well, to me the rub is that I hope that this sort of thing we saw as Paris left prison isn’t our best effort at seeking transcendence from our present self and current limitations.  Because if it is, I fear that we are making ourselves satisfied with a kind of false transcendence, in just enough dosage to inoculate us from real encounter with others.

I wonder that maybe stellar personalities like the Paris Hiltons of this world have learned early and well how to style their appearance and behaviours in order match all our projections, a situation that may look like it will benefit us but which ultimately is more likely to leave us bereft.  I hope that we learn to engage with the similarity and the difference we find in each other, those essential elements likely to stimulate us into being more than what we are.