I MAY never be able to understand the kind of debilitating adoration the likes of Sarah Geronimo receives from her fans but her all-too-public breakdown recently was easy to relate to in a number of levels.
It was painful to watch for it parted open the proverbial backstage curtain that should never be seen by the audience.
Commenting on her 15 years in showbiz, achieving the highest form of success as the most bankable Filipino singer at present who is also a movie actress and a TV personality at a time when the era of so-called superstars is long gone, Sarah Geronimo, arguably the only superstar of her generation, revealed before a Las Vegas Nevada concert audience, that despite her success she feels empty and unfulfilled.
She spoke about the pressures of work since she was a teenager and the constant demand to always be a role model to her young adoring public.
She also expressed her dismay over people’s displeasure and when they depart when she cannot meet their standards for perfection. It is known that members of her family keep a tight reign over her affairs even her love life.
The impact of her admission did not exactly break her fans’ hearts some of whom were recorded to have laughed in the video they took of her confession. It was something unexpected of their idol whom they have always known to perform with gusto like a wind-up doll. They can only offer nervous and awkward laughter as their idol unravelled before them.
The transparent act of Sarah Geronimo was in keeping with her personality, one that she had always held in the eyes of her audience as a young hopeful singer up to her superstar status. She had always conveyed an honest persona sometimes to a grating fault.
Somehow it is clear that there is very little practice of what we call in dramaturgical sociology as role distance and that her humble superstar persona was a total identity, one that she held on or off stage.
Other performers, perhaps of their class upbringing and inherent coy, have learned to distance themselves from the roles that they play. They may have been flustered at first but they soon get the hang of it. They realize that the adulation, gloss, and glamour are all a sham and they need to build personalities outside the ones they show before their fans. Geronimo does not seem to have learned this trick since she is completely taken in by the mask that she wears as a performer.
And the self-awareness was also painful with Sarah publicly acknowledging that her breakdown was not what her audience paid for and that she was sorry.
In one statement, she reveals the political economy behind her stardom that has also chained her to 15 years of practice and performance with practically little break in between.
A period of rest away from the spotlight should have been enough to create a sense of normalcy for the star, the kind of rest that will allow her to nurture a life separate from her stardom.
But the wheels of show business is ruthless and unstoppable. As long as she rakes in profits for the corporation, her coterie of support staff that include make-up artists, dance instructors, and others as well as the financial needs of her extended family members, she must be the hamster on the wheel ogled by an audience on the storefront window.
It is for these reasons and more that her dramatic breakdown, documented by diligent fans and then posted on YouTube, has gained more traction beyond the popsters, her legion of loyal fans. It has even reverberated and made an impact among the acknowledged kulturati who were apparently touched by her revelations.
To be a cultural worker, in a broad sense, whether you are a performer before the spotlight or a writer behind the shadows involves a great degree of, not just physical labor, but also emotional work.
In the course of her repetitive performances, drawing from her emotional reserves each time, she must have called out from inside herself once again her deep emotional reserves that night in Las Vegas and found it empty. Many of us have found ourselves at that point in our lives actually and her breakdown was easily relatable.
Here was a worker who, in the middle of what she does best, had the spunk and temerity to stop, explain herself to her audience, and tell them that she is tired and empty. How many of us will also have that chance and actually be heard?