Video Killed the Radio Star & the Fans Killed the Arts: on celebrity worship and corporate greed | Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, Phoebe Bridgers, Disney’s Aladdin, and the Odyssey
I was planning on writing this essay this week, then changed my mind when I found out about Dolly Parton. As fans of the amazing country icon mourn her, it didn’t feel like the right time to dissect celebrity worship.
This morning (at the time of writing this) I woke up to more sad news about another one of my favorite artists: the wonderfully talented Tim Curry had also left us.
It was actually this second bit of bad news that convinced me to write this essay. While I reflected on the lives of both Parton and Curry, two outspoken misfits who refused to tone themselves down, I had the thought that had they been born into this generation of artists, we may never have had the privilege of knowing their art. So I sat back down with my postponed essay.
Singin’ in the Rain (1952), directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, is a musical rom-com set during the transition from silent film to “talking pictures”. The film deals with the idea of obsolete talent, as three silent film actors struggle to find work in an industry that has moved on to actors with more appealing voices.
A few decades later, Video Killed the Radio Star (VKRS) was released by the Buggles. The hit centers around this fear of obsolescence for artists as a result of technological advancements and attitude shifts. Just as it was no longer enough to be a good actor in Singin’ in the Rain, musical performance became less about musical talent and more about appearance and spectacle, as famously exacerbated by MTV (bit of trivia: VKRS was the first ever song aired on the channel).
With the rise of tabloid culture in the early 2000s, there were new expectations for artists and talent. Later on, social media added even more expectations on top of that. Of course, social media also gave fame to many, like Justin Bieber and Bo Burnham. Just as tabloid culture gave us Britany Spears and Beyonce, television gave us Elvis and Sinatra, and “talking pictures” gave us Rita Moreno and Fred Astaire. But who did we lose in that process?
Robin Williams predicted this
Fantastic Mr Fox (2009), directed by Wes Anderson is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s a stop-motion animation movie, plagued by the modern-day Hollywood phenomenon of casting A-List celebrities to voice characters.
This shift towards household names in animation has been “killing” specialized voice actors, a unique and dying type of talent. Just have a look at Tom Kenny’s IMDB page and see how many times he appeared, undetected, in your childhood favorites.
It’s easy to notice this shift if you know that it’s happening. King of the Hill (1997-2010) technically ongoing as it was recently rebooted and Bob’s Burgers (2011- ), both share a creator1 and are well known for the amazing voice acting and the comedic talent of their casts. On the other hand, newer animated shows like Bojack Horseman (2014-2020) and Arcane (2021-2024) rely heavily on celebrity voice acting. Both these shows cast actors with distinctive voices for their main cast, who can draw in a larger audience than a specialized voice actor would.
Would you believe me if I said Disney’s Aladdin (1992), directed by Ron Clements and John Musker is responsible for “killing” the voice actor?
Robin Williams, who had a talent for voice acting, was asked multiple times by Disney to voice the genie in their adaptation of the Middle-Eastern folktale. Williams refused to work with them until they agreed not to use him for advertising purposes.
“I’m doing it basically because I want to be part of this animation tradition. I want something for my children. One deal is, I just don’t want to sell anything—as in Burger King, as in toys, as in stuff.”
⸻ Robin Williams in an interview for New York Magazine in 1993
Disney did not honor the deal. Instead they heavily advertised Williams’ name and his performance as the genie in Aladdin to draw in a bigger audience and sell more tickets, merch, and home-videos.
This started something new in Hollywood. Another cycle of VKRS. You can thank Aladdin for an A-Lister packed Kung Fu Panda, Kristen Bell as a Disney princess, and Zendaya cast as Shrek’s daughter. Can you name a talented specialized voice actor, who has had a major role in a major motion picture in the last five years? I can’t.
Is it a good script or do we just love Anne Hathaway?
Many years since a reluctant genie, we now have kids growing up with Will Smith genie, instead of a new talent (preferably Arab). It’s not just voice acting that’s being “killed”, but acting as a whole. And animation and original writing while we’re at it.
In a cinema culture constantly dominated by the same ten actors and their iPhone face the Margot Robbie and Jacob Eloridification of Hollywood, Inde Navarrette stands out to audiences and moviegoers. I haven’t seen Obsession (2026), directed by Curry Barker, yet, but I’ve read the praise and heard great things2. How much of what the audience loved was made possible by giving us a fresh, talented face?
Given how many times I’ve seen Navarette’s name pop up in my news and social media feeds since the movie came out, it seems that she was a big part of what audiences responded to. This happens almost every time someone notably talented enters the scene. But it doesn’t seem to change much.
Art is being ruined by corporate greed. We’re in a purgatory of lazy and greedy executives green-lighting another remake, another sequel, another reboot, another adaptation that misses the point of the source material starring someone you’ve seen in ten other films this year and a nepo baby.
Tickets to see Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026) have been selling out well in advance, with predatory scalpers, extended theatrical runs, and very expensive tickets. This popularity isn’t necessarily based on merit: Emily Wilson, the most highly regarded translator of the source material, wrote an unflattering review, calling the narrative gimmicky and the writing abysmal3. Still, audiences are headed to their theaters in droves to watch the star-studded spectacle, many choosing to because their “fave” is in it. And with a line-up like that, you’re bound to attract almost everyone who’s in any way on the celebrity worship scale.
Hold on, what is the celebrity worship scale?
Parasocial relationships are one-sided emotional connections people form with celebrities or media figures4. On a surface level, you could say everyone experiences parasocial relationships in some way or another at varying points in their life. Following a celebrity on Instagram could be called parasocial. Mourning artists you’ve never met could be called parasocial. There are levels to this, and as you can see, parasocial relationships with celebrities can be very normal. What isn’t normal, though, is celebrity worship.
Celebrity worship is defined as an extreme feeling of attachment to a celebrity. The behaviors associated with celebrity worship are measured on a scale, which many people unknowingly land on.
The first and lowest level of celebrity worship is the entertainment-social level. This level is characterized by deriving entertainment from a celebrity’s life and engaging in social interaction based on an interest in a celebrity. This includes things like fan clubs, discussing a celebrity wedding (like Dua Lipa’s), or researching or discussing a celebrity’s life. 5 Note that this is somewhat normal for children and teenagers, and becomes more concerning the older you get.
Would Phoebe Bridgers be as popular without celebrity worship?
Now that the difference between parasocial relationships and celebrity worship has been laid out, we can talk about how this is shaping the arts.
Like many fans of Phoebe Bridgers, I bought her latest album Lost Weekend on vinyl. While searching through TikTok, trying to decide between variants, I came across this video about the album. In the video, Joan (@justpeers on TikTok) criticizes how the new standard in engaging with art and music is being shaped by obsessive celebrity culture.
Many fans no longer engage with the art on a personal level, but rather as a piece of their fave’s life, a fragment of their personal experiences being shared with the fanbase to be decoded and deciphered. Remember, this behavior at least lands you in group one on the worship scale, and is not considered healthy for adults.
Joan highlights this by referencing the results on Genius when searching for the meaning behind the lyrics “Bobby, you taught me that I know nothing” on the track Kill Me.
“She thought she knew what love was with Paul, thought she knew what she was doing, her engagement, her life. Then Bobby comes along and flips it all on its head. Pheobe wonders how she can be certain about anything, If a kiss hello can undo everything she thought she understood, then what she had before wasn’t really knowledge at all, just something she assumed was true because she’d never felt the alternative.”
The offending paragraph (which also appears AI generated, unfortunately) from the Kill Me lyrics page on Genius
“…I think that when you know—or when you think you know the person, when you have this parasocial relationship, it changes how you listen to it. It becomes less about the meaning of the songs and more so about, like, “hmm.. I know who this is about!” […] And I think that it maybe has to do with attention span, and also an entitlement that people have to constantly be entertained by these artists who they support and feel entitlement to their life and (have) opinions about their life.”
⸻ @justpeers on TikTok
Without a true appreciation for the art, rather than an obsession with the personal drama of the artist’s life, à la Phoebe Bridgers’ relationships, we might’ve never had Dolly Parton, who had been in a devoted marriage for nearly six decades and most of her career.
We might’ve never had Tim Curry in our lives if we were in remake and Emerald Fennel and Christopher Nolan hell. Curry took risky, campy roles and made a cult classic in The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), directed by Jim Sharman, a piece of art embraced by “misfits”, and embracing them right back.
The thing we loved about Parton and Curry, who we now grieve together, was their real talent and how they showed up. They used that talent to make a positive change. They were both described as some of the kindest, most compassionate individuals. And they both had an amazing sense of humor too.
We, the fans, are inadvertently and carelessly killing the arts. Whether it is through celebrity worship and demanding to be entertained by an artist’s personal life, or by playing into the hands of greedy and lazy executives and producers. It’s all done in our name, for our money. It’s not very nuanced to say that it’s all on us, of course, but when we’re not going out of our way to support small artists and independent labels, film studios, and game studios, we’re killing the arts.
Go watch Coyote vs Acme this weekend, which was shelved by Warner Bros in 2023 as part of a tax write off, after so many talented artists worked hard on it. It’s only now seeing the light of day thanks to Ketchup Entertainment, an indie film company9.
Go support your indie theater. Choose the movie made by a small studio. See a local band perform a small gig at a venue with sticky floors. Tip the buskers whose music you think sounds nice as you walk past on your way to lunch. We spend enough time and money making rich celebrities and lazy executives richer. If you can afford an exorbitantly priced ticket to see The Odyssey or several variants of the same Sabrina Carpenter vinyl, then you can probably spare five bucks for a busker or a writer on here.
Support the arts. Do it to honor your favorite artists 💖🖤
f you know any small artists (or independent studios) or are yourself one, please let me know in the comments! I would love to take a look at your work x
Talk soon,
Dahlia
