Send in the Celebrities

I met Aaron Eckhart the other day.

Not to name-drop or anything, but he totally talked to me about that time he asked Gwyneth Paltrow for acting advice, the fact that Sean Penn is going to attend his wedding someday, the endearing way that Steven Soderbergh just stands next to his cast members during scene takes to build rapport, and his next dream project which involves Angelina Jolie and romance comedy. He also mentioned that he studied comic books to prepare for Two-Face and brought his parents along for our meeting.

Okay, okay, so it was a Harvard University Television-sponsored event that brought me into the same room as Eckhart, but being in the room alongside other extremely excited students made me realize that we have a tendency to fawn over visiting celebrities in an effusively exuberant manner. And this has to stop. The amount of obligatory laughter that resonated throughout the room during some of his stories made me cringe. The crowd that mobbed him for photos and autographs seemed reminiscent of ever-adoring fans surrounding Mickey Mouse at Disneyland.

I suppose it’s just human nature to go a tad crazy over seeing a famous person in, well, person—especially when it’s someone whose movies you’ve watched or image you’ve seen plastered on multiple surfaces. But we should remember to maintain our composure and dignity in the presence of people we admire.

Here at school, we get a lot of celebrities dropping by. From alums like former Vice President Al Gore ’69 and John Lithgow ’67 to guests making club-affiliated appearances like Alec Baldwin at the Institute of Politics and novelist Jonathan Safran Foer with the Harvard College Vegetarian Society (not sure about that last connection either, if you ask me). We have the Office of the Arts shuttling performers in to teach workshops, and the Harvard Foundation lotterying dinner tickets with award-winning artists every year.

At different events I’ve attended, I’ve observed a pattern to the way students here respond to celebrities. First, there is the seat-snatching. You can’t breathe the same air as the Famous Person if you can’t get a chair in the place (during the Eckhart event, the girl next to me annoyingly encroached upon my chair with half a butt cheek to make room for her near-hyperventilating friend on her own seat). Second, there is the profuse head-nodding accompanied by earnest forward-leaning until one nearly falls out of their deftly-obtained seat. Third, there is the aforementioned obligatory laugher. Everyone seems to have gotten the memo that states how necessary it is to laugh loudly at each slightly off-hand and self-deprecating joke a visiting celeb tells. Fourth, there are eager and long-winded questions following the Opening of the Floor to Questions (tip to asking a good question: Remember that it’s not exactly 20/20 here). Fifth, there is the storming and stampeding towards the celeb to ask personal, self-directed questions, mostly in attempts to seek advice for one’s prospective post-graduate career.

Underlying this pattern is the constant need that we have to always be networking and making long strides towards our future careers. We act as if this is the only time we’ll ever interact with famous people again. It’s almost as if we feel that their fame will somehow rub off on us if we can get close enough to them, or that hey, maybe we’ll impress ‘em so much with that 100-word-long question that they’ll offer us an “in” somewhere.

There’s a news flash somewhere in this and it’s the fact that people who subscribe to these philosophies just come off as incredibly needy.

One girl at the event stammered to string her sentences together when Eckhart turned to her and asked what she wanted to do with her life. I suspect that I wasn’t the only person who felt her palpable need to impress him with a witty response. Another girl lingered around behind him as he signed more autographs, despite the solid fifteen minutes that had passed after she’d already taken her picture with him. A guy nodded his head repeatedly in deep gratitude, practically kowtowing before Eckhart’s well-polished shoes.

Everyone, we don’t need to come off as needy! We don’t need to impress anyone, and we certainly don’t need to prove ourselves to famous people just because they’re in established job positions. We are worthy individuals, too. There’s a good chance that someday we’ll be the ones invited back for talks and encounter younger generations seeking our pearls of wisdom.

It’s fine to look up to someone and be in awe of him or her for certain achievements and contributions in a field. But just remember that there is a way to show your admiration and keep your dignity. And no amount of name-dropping, seat-snatching, or pontificating-questioning is going to help with that purpose.

Next time: Thank, not fawn. Or, better yet: Think before you fawn.

Sanyee Yuan ’12 is a psychology concentrator in Eliot House.