The Doubting-Thomas Effect

Abstract

Charismatic celebrities have open wounds. Fans have probing fingers. Drawn together by doubt, as in Caravaggio'sThe Incredulity of Saint Thomas, they collaborate in hopes of reassurance. The baroque painter shows Christ guiding the hand of the doubting apostle, who finds the bloodless hole and inserts his index finger up to the second knuckle. The quizzical expression on Thomas's face highlights by contrast Christ's patient indulgence as they come together in an impromptu ritual of verification, initiating what a recent theorist of celebrity calls the Saint Thomas effect, which describes the need of fans for intimate authentication, insisting, as they tend to do, on all the gory details (Rojek 62). The deep contradictions at the heart of celebrity incite this relentless probing: a divine being, apparently not at all like them (having risen from the dead, for instance), may prove in crucially titillating ways to be just like them after all. But what the millions of fingers seek they never satisfactorily find. For the celebrity to remain celebrated, the contradiction that defines his or her mystery must remain in continual uncertainty, flickering between highlight and shadow, visibility and invisibility, teasing the eyes of the beholders and leaving them in doubt, like the searing effect of Caravaggio's chiaroscuro, which catches Saint Thomas at a moment of suspense, still undecided between skepticism and belief.