It is always wrong to use another person as an object for your own enjoyment.
A ubiquitous example of this immoral practice is when a man lusts after a woman; however, I think it also occurs everyday when we make famous persons into objects for our own entertainment.
I don’t keep up with much Hollywood news, but it’s hard not to hear of the sad antics of Britney Spears, which are plastered on the front page of just about every mainstream news site I go to.
The media “gives the people what they want”, so it is us who are really to blame for feeding the flames that burn famous persons like Ms. Spears. That is not to say that they are not without responsibility for their actions; they are responsible for them, but when a person is only ever treated as an object by other people, is it any wonder when they react in a negative way, often leading to their own destruction?
Photographers hound Ms. Spears to take pictures of her, delighting in catching her looking disheveled; the media tracks her every “breakdown”, court appearance, and cigarette, gossiping gleefully over every misstep and problem. In short, they make her into an object for their own and their consumers’ entertainment.
The result is that instead of seeing Ms. Spears as a young woman, a mother, who needs a lot of grace and love to help her become the woman God made her to be, she is seen as an object, and therefore a mere thing that exists for our pleasure and amusement.
One of the insidious consequences of this pervasive sin is that we as people become accustomed to using others as objects, which degrades how we view people in general, how we love our family and friends, and our growth in virtue.
If there is a call to action from this post, it would be to stop buying those magazines that make their money from Ms. Spears’ and others’ misfortune or scandal, to stop reading articles on websites that are objectifying famous people, and to pray for them whenever you catch some headline blaring their latest escapade.
