"Public Enemies" Draws Route from Gangsters to Kardashians

I saw "Public Enemies" last night, drawn to it by its prinicpals: the brilliant Johnny Depp, the ravishing Marion Cotillard of "La Vie en Rose" fame, and director Michael Mann, whose handsome handiwork I have admired from his earlier days in the TV ("The Longest Mile," the seminal cop show, "Miami Vice"). While my opinion of the film itself is best left in another commentary (HINT: I found it more stylish than substantive), I found myself interested in an issue that was as timely in the 1933 time frame of the film as it is today: media personalities.Depp plays gangster John Dillinger, who enthralled the nation during The Great Depression (yes, a depression greater than the current one) with his daring bank robberies. You would think that ordinary folks down on their luck would not care about someone making a living through dishonest means, but there must have been a Robin Hoodian element to it all. The film shows ordinary folks lining the streets to get a glimpse of him, and I can attest through my own research that this really happened.

This was not the first time for unlikely public adulation. George Burns wrote in "All My Best Friends," his memoir about vaudeville:

"Not only didn't you have to be good or bad to be a headliner (on the vaudeville stage), you didn't even have to be a performer. The vaudeville stage was the only place people could, 'live and in person,' the same celebrities they were reading about in the newspapers. Famous criminal, particularly women who were involved in 'crimes of passion.' appeared in vaudeville after being acquited or after being released from prison.... After Charles Lindbergh became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, he turned down a $100,000 offer to play a West Coast theater for one week."

Note the phrase ''the same celebrities they were reading about in the newspapers." Now look at the fascination for people like the Ozzy Osbourne family, the Kardashians, and the necrophiliac coverage of the late, great Michael Jackson. If we look at the early history of television, the performers who were most popular and successful were those who came from vaudeville, such as Milton Berle, Ed Wynn and Jack Benny. While television has often been called "the electronic fireplace," is it possible that it is really vaudeville-in-a-box?

Furthermore, is our desire for celebrity news and worship in our genes, a natural function that can be traced back to the Greek and Roman stages? ("And here for your listening pleasure, folks, is Nero. He will entertain you with his fiddling while Rome burns.")

Maybe we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves. What do you think?

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