RafaelFajardo

We extol celebrity at a time when it has never seemed more fleeting or meaningless. A lot more people are famous now for doing, well, nothing—and, so what? Fran Lebowitz in her Empire HBO documentary (Produced by Graydon Carter! Directed by Martin Scorsese!) complained—and I’m paraphrasing—that what has really been lost in American culture is connoisseurship: the ability to tell the difference between what’s genuinely good and what’s mediocre. She’s bemoaning the fact that we don’t seem to be at that point anymore where the ability to be very good at something and to be rewarded for that talent (with attention, respect, money) exists. That era is not really gone—at least not in the alarmist Empire way Fran thinks it is, even though every day in American culture it feels like it may have evaporated—but only if you have an Empire viewpoint. When you’re “being” a housewife on a reality show, your fame shelf-life is short because so many other people can do what you do and you can be replaced instantly (and they are every season and everyone’s okay with it). Very few people become famous today because they can actually do interesting things and Charlie Sheen has been, admittedly, not one of them. Charlie Sheen staggers amiably through a bad sitcom. He’s fine. He’s inoffensive. Sheen barely engages with anyone on Two and a Half Men. He retains a semi-stunned look of restrained disgust at the shoddiness and unearned smarminess of the proceedings. If Sheen was allowed to give Charlie Harper more personality—a spark, a genuine leer—he would probably throw the sitcom woodenness of Two and a Half Men off balance.