I really don't get the whole idea of being a fan of someone. I don't mean fan, as in I-really-enjoy-that-music, which I certainly do. I appreciate talent and skill, especially when they come together, in any field, from singing to dancing to figure skating to waiting tables or knitting, all of which can be an art form. I honor and respect anyone who really masters these or any other skills, which is what elevates them from craft to art.
No, I don't get being a fan (short for 'fanatic'), as in I-love-everything-she-does-have-to-have-the-CD-immediately-willing-to-camp-out-in-line-for-tickets-to-every-concert-buy-the-tee-shirt-follow-her-on-Twitter-and-cut-my-hair-like-hers. I don't get it, and I never have. When I was 5 or 6, my Mom (bless her heart) took my toddler sister and me to see the movie, "A Hard Day's Night". I didn't get why all those teenage girls were screaming their heads off. Yes, the Beatles were the hottest thing on Earth, but they weren't even in the theater -- it was a movie.
So when Michael Jackson died, I said as much to my sister, now a very wise woman, who replied, "People see God through these very talented people." Okay, that I get. I do really get that Michael Jackson was channeling energy, at least some of the time, and that that experience can be called 'seeing God'. In an interview on ABC news, Martin Bashir asked him what he thought when he danced, and he answered words to the effect of "I don't think; you can't think, because that ruins it; you just have to be the music". Umm, doesn't that sound like channeling music through the body? And wow, was he a superlative dancer.
I think this second type of fan creates a number of problems, both for the fan, and more obviously for the channel, aka celebrity. It seems to me that if you're a fan, you're probably not honoring your own ability to channel, or to touch God, or have God flow through you, or however you want to say it. What a waste, for the fan and for the world!
The problem for the celebrity/channel is that fans don't discriminate between the person, who is just as human as anyone else (which is probably why one of People magazine's most popular features is something like "Celebrities are Just Like You and Me"), and the channeled energy, which is special. So the channels get treated like deities, and can lose touch with reality, especially if their adulation began quite young, before they even knew who they were. Wouldn't that at least partly explain the meltdowns of Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, and of course, Michael Jackson?
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