Blog #3 Hollywood “Glamour”

I watched the Emmy’s tonight and every time I watch any Hollywood award show like such I just laugh so hard at the ridiculousness. They can get so cult-like and almost creepy. Watching all the extravagant celebrities announce the nominations totally reminded me of The Hunger Games.

Obviously The Hunger Games is way worse than Hollywood. However they’re similar this way, in The Hunger Games it sure is as glamorous as life can get for the people at the top, but there’s really no in between of the top and the bottom. In The Hunger Games, you’re either at the top living a life of wealth and fame or you’re a peasant fighting for your life. In Hollywood, you’re either in with the glamour scene or you’re fighting with everyone else at the bottom to make it there. Everyone is out for themselves and mostly willing to do anything in order to become famous and rich. The glamour of Hollywood is an illusion in that it’s only offered to such an exclusive group of people.

Hollywood culture facilitates Norma Desmond’s delusions because like I have stated, people have to work so hard to make it to the top and it is a huge deal to finally achieve being at the top, if you ever do make it. So then to eventually have to come back to being irrelevant after becoming used to the insane glamour would definitely take a mental toll on most people. Norma Desmond demonstrates this perfectly in the ending scene, as she’s completely ignorant to the fact of why she’s really being interviewed and pretends that she’s making a movie and says “I’m ready for my close-up.”

William Faulkner completely puts down Hollywood as being completely lacking of morals or culture. I understood where he’s coming from, however there is culture. There are values. There are traditions. They just aren’t good ones. There’s always a culture in any place. Hollywood just isn’t a very wholesome culture. Faulkner shows Ira become completely immoral because trying to make it in Hollywood makes most people go insane or at least drastically changes them.

In A Table at Ciro’s, really supports my claim at the beginning of my post that what makes Hollywood so fake is the amount of people who actually get to enjoy the glamour. Ciro’s is a restaurant in L.A. and every employee only works there because they didn’t achieve their dreams. The quote “And a year in Hollywood is at least a decade anywhere else.” Hollywood is mentally and physically draining. But I think what this quote may be saying is that you can do things in a year in Hollywood that would take you a decade to achieve anywhere else. As well as the idea that time is money. One year wasted of not making it in Hollywood can feel like a decade.