Garrett sent me something today from his blog that I like a lot about celebrity pantheons:

I have this theory that our culture uses celebrities as sort of a panthenon of Gods unto which we look for answers about our own relationships. Just look at the whole Jennifer Aniston / Brad Pitt breakup - I couldn’t believe how devestated customers were and the magazines were flying off the shelf. I admit, I am pious to the scripture as well. To add wieght to this position, there is a whole section in a couple of those magazines that are about how the celebs are “just like us” -. You know, pictures where their zippers are down, or them eating too many tortilla chips, or locking themselves out of the car . I think that’s funny because it’s exactly what people say about the Greek myths, how the God’s aren’t perfect an are used to show our own human weaknesses. So I’m wondering - If celebrties are the gods, then what are the paparazzi? Ascetic god-seekers, trying to catch a glimpse of divinity?

Good stuff. He sent me this as a related item to my post about creating an esoteric teaching system based on celebrities as mythical symbolic carriers of encoded meaning.

Also related to this and worthwhile (I think) is an older post about how sitcoms are essentially polytheism.