Claire Goes to Hollywood

Claire is a cave girl who lived 40,000 years ago. If you have been following her story, you know she has recently chosen a mate. Her choice was important because cave-dwelling was a dangerous occupation. In Claire's time, humans did not have very much control over their environment. People used to get their "power" from physical tools like weapons and fire, and if you partnered with a person who was good at using those tools, you survived. Then about 10,000 years ago, humans figured out how to grow and store food. People started trading that food for other things that they needed, but physically trading stuff was inefficient and cumbersome. So people eventually agreed to start using money to represent wealth instead. It seemed like a good idea at the time...but now it appears that the accumulation of "money" has become the pastime for many modern humans.

But I digress.

This is the continuing story of Cavegirl Claire, and she chose a boy named Amir to partner with. Amir did not have any possessions with which to impress Claire. People in a nomadic tribe could not collect more resources than they could immediately make use of. If anyone did, that dweller would not be able to move quickly when the tribe needed to follow a herd—and they might be left behind. So how did Claire decide on Amir? What signals of success could she use to find out what Amir was “worth?”

Claire was impressed with Amir, not because he had the most bison pelts or the biggest penis. She was impressed because he did a lot for their tribe. He hunted…he gathered…he collected wood…he killed babies if they were born with deformities. Amir made himself useful. He did whatever needed to be done. In fact, I don’t think the division of labor was as clearly defined in Claire’s day as most researchers believe. I think tribes like Claire’s operated with an “all hands on deck” philosophy. It was the Industrial Revolution that has given humans the idea that the best way to contribute to society is to get really good at one thing. It is an assembly line mentality that did not exist in Claire’s day. There was ALWAYS something that needed to be done in a prehistoric tribe or the tribe might not survive.

But there was something unique that Amir did for Claire’s tribe: he told stories. He had a passion for sharing what happened on hunts, which ultimately made the tribe function more efficiently. Since everyone learned from Amir what was happening away from the campsite, they knew more about the surrounding terrain and were able to coordinate their gathering efforts more easily. And in the process of telling his stories, Amir showed his face to more people in his tribe. He was a prehistoric famous person. He was a bad-ass storyteller. His “value” was how good he was at sharing information and how dedicated he was to his tribe. His survival was worth the drain on his tribe’s scarce resources, and he would not be abandoned if he got sick or injured. As a result, Amir had authentic confidence. He felt and acted like he mattered—and Claire wanted a piece of that action.

Now just for fun, let’s imagine that Claire has fallen into a wormhole and arrived in modern-day Hollywood. Would she be as impressed with the storytellers who hang out there? There would be a few things she would need to adjust for, of course: the amount of people, what they were wearing, house-dwelling, being able to accumulate resources, tools making everything easier…and she might not even recognize what she should be eating and what she shouldn’t. But the biggest over-all paradigm shift Claire would need to get used to is how much control she would have over her environment. She could control the temperature with a thermostat (or her phone,) sleep whenever she wanted, predators were basically non-existent, and food would pretty much come to her. Once she had gotten used to all these updates, she’d probably think they were pretty cool. But there is a non-observable layer of “value" in Hollywood that Claire would not recognize. In addition, some of the modern amenities/advancements she might enjoy could actually set her back if her goal is to choose a dependable storyteller to partner with.

Let's say Claire decides on an actor named Sasha. Sasha seems to have it all: big houses, awards, a helicopter and lots of friends. He has more control over his environment than anyone Claire has ever met! He can get anyone to do anything he wants, or he can get anywhere he wants anytime he wants to go. He can do this because he can afford the tools to make it happen. But with all these tools/modern signals of success distracting Claire, she does not notice the original "thing" that attracted Claire to Amir is actually missing: Sasha does not have authentic confidence. It would be easy to make this mistake since Sasha appears to be very confident. But his power is based on money, not solely on his acting ability. Yes, his ability makes him money, but as an actor in Hollywood, Sasha has "precarious power." While his success is based on his popularity with fans, he does not get his power/money directly from them. Sasha gets his money from production companies...and if Sasha’s popularity dissipates, so does his ability to make money. Unbeknownst to Claire—or even fans themselves—most fans like to be told the same story over and over. They also grow accustomed to certain actors playing certain roles, which ultimately forces production companies to type-cast most actors. This gives many storytellers in Hollywood a limited shelf-life. Then, when fans get bored with certain performers, production companies get a new “better” face with which to sell stories. Modern storytellers, no matter how famous, will not feel as confident as Amir did.

Despite all that has changed since our cave-dwelling days, humans still assume that confidence is a signal of dependability. As a result, some performers fake confidence when they try out for roles, record music, or play sports, so they will seem dependable to the people who are hiring them. Then they are bet on like racehorses. There are also plenty of tricks—like dental work, entourages, Botox and body-part lifts—to prop up those performers who are popular in an attempt to make them feel more confident. They are then expected to perform better and make the production companies more money. While Amir had other talents and other uses, modern storytellers might believe they can only be good at one thing. An actor losing power in Hollywood might ask themselves, “If I am not storyteller, what am I?” Performers with a singular purpose working in Hollywood could feel frustrated or confused and possibly lose any authentic confidence they might have once had. All they might wish to do is tell stories, include fans, and feel useful like Amir. But ultimately, the motivation for most production companies to make movies is not to increase coordination or teach anyone anything new—it’s to make a profit. Sasha does not have dependable power because his worth is not really based on his own actions…and if Claire could have seen past the temporary ownership of Sasha’s fancy tools, I doubt she would have been all that impressed.

Up Next: There are more mistakes to be made in “To Fan is Human.” 

References

Bateman, J. (2018.) Fame: The Hijacking of Reality. Akashic Books, New York.

Currier, R. L. (2015). Unbound: How Eight Technologies Made us Human and Brought our World to the Brink. Arcade/Skyhorse Publishing, Delaware.

Decker, D. (1998). The Anatomy of a Screenplay. The Screenwriters Group, Chicago.

van Vugt, M. & Anjana, A. (2011). Naturally Selected: The Evolutionary Science of Leadership. HarperCollins e-Publishers.

Waytz, A. (2017). The Psychology of Social Status. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-psychology-of-social/


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