She's a wholly confected creation, and a threat to global artistic endeavour.
I speak of course, of Minnie Mouse.
But why the uproar? Tilly Norwood is the online protege of a Dutch comedienne who is based in London, which is wholly appropriate because it is right up Shakespeare's street had he had the tech to do something similar.
Why tho' do we love Mickey, Minnie, Buzz Lightyear and K-Pop demon-hunters, but feel mixed emotions about Tilly?
Well the people more likely to be emotional than you and I are those most likely to be losing their jobs over it, and that's anyone who broadly speaking is famous for being famous. With YouTube we approach Warhol's prediction that everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes, but AI just extended it to those who've enjoyed it for a longer period of time altogether... Julie Andrews must be delighted to have been born at just the right time, so as for instance to have been spotted by Walt himself.
Actors are, and never moreso than nowadays, as untouchable as the stars. As I was based in Heathrow, we'd any number of such people on board and I recall one of the cabin attendants asking Brad Pitt if he'd like a coffee, and being told that all such questions had to be addressed to his assistant... never meet your hero unless it's Woody Allen.
Increasing these seventy degrees of separation is the fact nobody goes to cinemas any more, so that films and their human content are no more 'real' to us than any other online avatar; tho' I'm going to make an exception here for Gregory House: he's my best friend, and yet only exists inside that screen.
It may mean that the only people left coining it are sports stars. Why though do we not see those being replaced, when EA Sports can undoubtably produce a facsimile?
It probably has much to do with religious or community feeling, most missed as we all descend into the vortex of loneliness and lives lived exclusively via the medium of a screen. Don't go away just yet, though, remembering I love you most for what you do by way of massaging my stats. (Ed. not the same area of musculature.)
For instance I don't know why people go to motor races when you can drive over to Aldi in your own car ~ but I did attend Le Mans once because it was effectively free and I walked the entire track prior the race and altogether enjoyed the occasion.
And that is largely it. Despite bands being replaced by singer-songwriters or CGI we still like to see the ones that are still around. I for instance was intent on attending the final gigs performed by Wilko Johnson once he was diagnosed with cancer, and was one of those requesting my money back when he went into remission.
And it's the same with football (soccer to the unenlightened). One reason that the FA decisively rejected the idea of US-style fixed leagues was the fact that most here originate and represent communities based in towns rather than cybersphere: most originated in churches or factories.
Thus the English draw strength not so much from attending church, as from joining together on the stands or in pubs around a communal screen. And one thing I liked about Australians in London back in the '80s was they'd a beer-hall in London they christened 'Church' so they could tell the folks at home they would be 'going to church' Sunday mornings.
At the end of the day ~ or the credits ~ Tilly threatens us too, in two different ways.
Firstly in societies moving from subsuming the id in religious or communal ritual she threatens our pursuit of glorification of the self by being younger, better-looking and more talented.
Secondly she treads upon our dreams, and not softly. Brad upped sticks to move to Hollywood, where he first earned money dressed as a giant chicken advertising local fare at a restaurant. Tilly deprives us all of the chance of dressing as that chicken in the hope of one day treading the red carpet.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind then to watch Tilly instead of Brad on a Saturday night after a pizza in the (retail) park... that is the question.
Colin Hilton is a real-life idiot.
