Lewis Lapham: celebrity's Big Brother

by: Chris Bilton

October 28, 2009 1:00 PM

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In my magazine-fetishizing mind, I assumed that long-time Harper’s editor Lewis Lapham’s free lecture at the ROM last night would be a hot ticket. But it seems that the 74-year old author, intellectual, humorist and in-law to Brian Mulroney is a far bigger draw than even I imagined. Arriving a half hour before the 7pm lecture, I learn that the theatre is already full and there’s a line-up for the overflow room where folks are more than happy to watch the event on CCTV. All this for a guy whose current venture, Lapham’s Quarterly, is a densely curated tome comprised of historical texts, essays and other curiosities that make for high concept issue-length arguments on topics like money, education and states of war. Who says print is dead?

Seriously though, Lapham is a genius. He’s also a beautiful prose stylist and often venomously funny. So the opportunity to hear him speak about the culture of celebrity is a great thing indeed. It’s also well suited to the ROM’s current exhibit, Vanity Fair Portraits, which isn’t necessarily a mandate of the Eva Holtby Lecture on Contemporary Culture series, but just happened to work out well this year. In any case, Lapham’s lecture lives up to the packed-house hype.

Though impeccably dressed in a charcoal suit, at first glance Lapham seems frailer than he appears in photographs. But with a magnanimous throat-clear aimed directly into the microphone, he instantly asserts the kind of authority of a man who wrote the (satirical) rulebook on the art of brown-nosing your way to influence. That is, in one unsubtle move, he imparts a far different kind of influence.

Soon, Lapham is explaining how an invitation to host a panel discussion resulted in him being told that his choice of speakers (including Sam Sheppard) was not relevant enough for the event or, as he says, merely “low-burning flames unlikely to attract a crowd of moths.” This example of artistry versus celebrity is then supported with references to Cicero’s return to the Bay of Naples and some sage advice from Gore Vidal: “Never miss a chance to have sex or appear on TV.” Lapham has a tendency to drag out the last word of such sentences, which adds to the hypnotic effect of a slow-coasting mid-baritone voice that’s shot through with a hint of gravel.

Lapham continues to juggle some 3,000 years worth of notes on “high-definition personalities,” but he centres on the writings of Marshall McLuhan as the key to our current obsession with gazing into the “pool of Narcissus,” where the time is always now and the camera’s eye is as interested in a bloodbath in Afghanistan as it is a bubble bath in Paris. For him, the quintessential event in modern history — “McLuhan’s word made flesh” as he says — was O.J. Simpson’s white Ford Bronco speeding along the LA freeway. This moment is where the media gave itself over to “free-range spectacle and brute sensation.”

The medium as the message is most problematic in politics, Lapham continues, as this is where we run into an authority of personality, and where world leaders sum up in 20 words or less things that can’t be explained in 10- or 20,000. Though Lapham is a card-carrying critic of former president George W. Bush (his last book was titled Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration), he is hardly waving the banner for Barack Obama’s message of hope. It’s no surprise then that he criticizes the recent Nobel Peace Prize action, since President Obama was “recognized for his being, not his becoming.”

At this point, Lapham is joined on stage by a panel including Globe and Mail interviewer Sarah Hampson, Ryerson film professor Murray Pomerance and the one and only Don McKellar. Sadly, this group does not lend itself to the fevered debate one might expect. Lapham expands on some of the arguments from his lecture and McKellar provides much hilarity (he has the guest of honour laughing on a number of occasions). Pomerance offers some of the most engaging discussion, but only when he manages to engage Lapham. What’s disappointing is that Hampson doesn’t take the opportunity to really question Lapham about anything, instead opting for half-formed notions of why we love celebrities.

In the end, it’s the final question from an audience member that best serves the discussion: a young man who says he would never line up for Britney Spears but would gladly do so for tonight’s event asks what Lapham thinks of his own celebrity. Despite his storied career, Lapham admits that he doesn’t consider himself a celebrity. “There’s a great deal of freedom in being anonymous,” he says, adding, “When you become something of a commodity, you can’t change your mind as much as I do.”

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Lewis Lapham: celebrity's Big Brother

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