Quote:
Originally Posted by Future Raptor Ace
Also if her parents wanted their shops and address known they would have done so themselves.
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Put yourself in the position of Alizée's parents. If your daughter had become famous, wouldn't you feel parasitic or even incompetent ever actively trading on her fame, as if your business had no value to provide clients? Doing that would be like putting up a sign saying "Sure, we are overpriced and low in quality, but you really like our daughter, don't you???" All the nice parents I have ever know at least aspire to be buoyancy for their kids - not anchors.
Yet if it happened that people learned about your business, perhaps as a side-effect of a famous daughter, and they had a need it could meet in a competitive manner, would you want to turn that business away? You know, Corsica is arguably the most underdeveloped part of France. There are almost no large firms and I bet jobs are not that easy to come by. *IF* you were visiting there and had a need some tiny firm could fill, would it be harmful to patronize it? Most Americans work for big firms, take its marketing for granted, and don't appreciate what small businesses need to survive and prosper.
Now I'm sure Alizée's parents don't want to be personally strip-searched about their intimate family secrets at their work place - who does? Any decent person, including fans - perhaps especially fans who love Alizée - would not do such a thing anyway, simply because they shop there.
I am not unsympathetic to the privacy needs of famous people, even entertainers. Decades ago now, my late mother came to spend a week at my lodging in metro Boston during a difficult time in her life. In the middle of the week, I even took off a day from work to escort her to the wonderful Museum of Fine Arts there. The place was largely empty then, but who should we notice standing in an adjacent room but the (now-deceased) famous Hollywood actress Katherine Hepburn, accompanied by a friend!
When mother said she would go over to speak with Hepburn, I begged her not to do so. I said that the woman had obviously picked the least busy time of the week, so she could enjoy the museum as just another visitor, and it would be ungrateful to encroach upon her non-professional time, as no doubt do too many who recognize her do.
But Mother was more demure than for which I had given her credit in advance. As I stood my place alone, biting my lip, she briefly went over and said hello, to which Hepburn nodded graciously with a smile. Mother told me she had only said: "It's so nice to see you, Miss Hepburn!" and then left her to enjoy her visit.
Needless to say, it sure made my mother happy all day long during a very unhappy time in her life. I was grateful to Katherine Hepburn for being so kind and gentle with the one millionth total stranger who wanted to say she had spent a few seconds with Katherine Hepburn, once during an otherwise ordinary life. (And I did NOT go over to thank her, LOL!)
Isn't there some way we can say thank you to Alizée's parents for their gift to us? Her Mom even traveled with her in the early years, doing all sorts of things so she could make it big enough that we could discover and enjoy Alizée now. Her Dad geeked her up so that she could be the facile user of all sorts of vocationally relevant digital gear. They say the last album only sold about 50,000 copies, and mainly far from France at that. Alizée is not the French superstar she was at the start of the century. I doubt making the shops of her parents known to fans will result in their being mobbed by many maniacs who will chisel out a brick at night to enjoy a stolen souvenir.
By the way, thank you Miss Hepburn ...wherever you are!
