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The role of media in celebrities
Impact of celebrities in our society
The role of media in celebrities
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Thou Shalt Not Worship False Idols…Sorry!
When Harvilesky makes note that there is a “slow-motion backlash against celebrity culture” and that celebrities deserve to be, “cut down to the size of ordinary citizens”, it is somewhat humorous in the fact that the people doing the cutting and the supposed backlash comes from the very people who have elevated these celebrities to the status they currently hold. The notion of celebrity has become in the United States what royalty is to the Britains. Professor Christopher Cooke of Gresham College in a speech regarding the status of celebrities and how and why our country has become obsessed with their common activities said, “While the modern celebrity may possess a talent, that is no longer the sine qua non of achieving celebrity status. Increasingly that status would seem to be dependent on, and indeed to a great extent, manufactured, by the mass media.” What this indicates is that celebrities are no longer famous for their talent in any particular medium, at this point certain celebrities are famous for the simple act of being famous. I...
Essay #2: Classical Argument: People fear what they do not know or understand. Madness, or insanity, can be defined as severe mental illness or abnormal behavior. It can mean that one cannot conform to society or is simply foolish. Every definition of the word, however, pertains to some deficiency in one’s relationship with oneself or the world. If a man cannot get along with people in the world because he does not operate by the same set of logical principles, moral precepts, or social graces that the society around him accepts, that society might consider him insane.
In other words, photography can be used to present objectivity, to facilitate treatment and for future re-admissions of the insane. With his presentation Diamond’s application of photography to the insane in asylums became widespread. Just a few years later in 1858 British psychiatrist John Conolly published, “The Physiognomy of Insanity,” in The Medical Times and Gazette. In this series of essays Conolly reproduces photos taken by Diamond and provides a detail of each photo selected. I have included four of the plates Conolly used in his essay below.
Many people might say that stars are merely a product of the Hollywood system needing to make a profit; Hollywood manufactures a product and creates the demand for it. A star's image is processed through advertisements and promotions and has little to do with what the audience wants and needs from entertainment. There is a widespread mentality that any Average Joe can become a star with enough resources backing him up. Richard Dyer points out, however, that even movies full of stars fail, and stars can and do fall out of fashion (12). A star's economic worth is not invulnerable to audiences' opinions. The audience isn't so easily controlled.
Marshall P. David (1997). Celebrity Power; Fame in Contemporary Culture. May 16, 2010. Electronically retrieved from
George Packer argues how “celebrities loom larger on the social horizon than they do in more equitable times, overshadowing the rest of us” individuals.
In a world where billionaires and celebrities can have more influence over the public than government, the word power has become interchangeable with success. Although many of us have fantasized of our lives if we were famous, the majority of the population have given up on the notion of becoming famous, and have become more realistic towards future dreams and desires. However, what qualities drive people of fame to do things that keep their name out in the eye of the public? People desire power. Genuine power is the ability to influence.
We can become famous via Facebook or our second lives and it seems easier now to become famous because of the internet. Now days there are more and more reality shows and those were just normal people who lived interesting lives. Those normal people now have a TV show, what will happen if we all get TV shows about our lives. Still, there are still classic actors who actually know how to do their job rather than just a reality show. No matter what these actors or non-actors do, we still aspire to be
“Posts.” Fame is a dangerous Drug: A Phenomenological Glimpse of Celebrity.” N.p. ,n.d. Web 15. Feb 2014
How is that even possible? The dictionary definition of the word insanity is the state of being seriously, mentally ill (“Definition of the Word Insanity”). Insanity is also classified as a medical diagnosis. Insanity came from the Latin word insanitatem (“History of the Word Insanity”). People started using this word in the 1580’s. The Latins interpreted insanity as unhealthy Modern day society uses the word insanity too loosely. Although the dictionary definition of insanity is not wrong, several cases that prove having “insanity” does not always mean “being seriously mentally ill” has came to surface.
The star text of a celebrity can help to decipher their image and transitions they may undergo. In order to better understand these transitions, one must know the definition of a star text. A star text is the sum of everything we affiliate with celebrities, which includes their body of work, promotion, publicity, and audience participation (Jackson, 08/09/16). One must note that “celebrity doesn 't happen because someone has extraordinary qualities – it is discursively constructed by the way in which the person is publicised and meanings about them circulate” (O 'Shaughnessy and Stadler 424). Destiny Hope Cyrus, “an American singer and actress, became a sensation in the television series
A celebrity is not a person known for his/her talent or achievement, but an individual recognized for his/her reputation created by the media. The phase of stardom is slippery, and media may choose to represent celebrities varying from exaggerated admiration to mockery. The three texts chosen, movie "Sunset Boulevard", feature article "Over the Hilton" and television show "Celebrity Uncensored Six" are texts presenting different perception of celebrities than their usual images - either corrupted by the encircling media, overloads oneself with self-indulgence, or just mocks celebrity in a broad spectrum. Such media items empower and impresses the audience by perceiving celebrities as people who pay the price of privacy to gain well knowness, signifying the vanity of stardom from the commonly accepted images.
We are part of a generation that is obsessed with celebrity culture. Celebrities are distinctive. Media and consumers alike invented them to be a different race of super beings: flawless, divine and above all the real moral world. In a 1995 New York Times article “In contrast, 9 out of 10 of those polled could think of something
“ The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success, “ as Bruce Feirstein would say. The insane are merely the ones who are not given their chance to change the world. They are, instead, locked away before society begins to take grip on the ravings of the mad man. Genius, on the other hand, is what is created when the insane are given their time to speak out. When Renfield began to address himself to the question he was confronted with, he did so with the utmost impartiality of the completest sanity. This leads the astute reader to wonder if renfield was, in fact, completely sane but driven to madness while being locked within the confines of an asylum. Even the sanest person may have insane tendencies when over tasked. This simply represents the imperfectness of humans. How do you know if you are truly sane when you do not know the attributes of the mad man from his point of view? Insanity is contagious and those that get it should be counted lucky to get it as it is a mark of genius. It gives us the other side of the sword used to lash out against conformity and discord.
The deception of media consumers allows for the abuse of economic infrastructures of society. An obsession with celebrities’ lives passifies ordinary people in accepting the stratification of the elite businesses and the ordinary citizens. Though pseudo-events and celebrity worship may not be exactly complementary, the similarities of both leaves the public to be utterly vulnerable unless they begin to critically think for themselves.
Movie stars. They are celebrated. They are perfect. They are larger than life. The ideas that we have formed in our minds centered on the stars that we idolize make these people seem inhuman. We know everything about them and we know nothing about them; it is this conflicting concept that leaves audiences thirsty for a drink of insight into the lifestyles of the icons that dominate movie theater screens across the nation. This fascination and desire for connection with celebrities whom we have never met stems from a concept elaborated on by Richard Dyer. He speculates about stardom in terms of appearances; those that are representations of reality, and those that are manufactured constructs. Stardom is a result of these appearances—we actually know nothing about them beyond what we see and hear from the information presented to us. The media’s construction of stars encourages us to question these appearances in terms of “really”—what is that actor really like (Dyer, 2)? This enduring query is what keeps audiences coming back for more, in an attempt to decipher which construction of a star is “real”. Is it the character he played in his most recent film? Is it the version of him that graced the latest tabloid cover? Is it a hidden self that we do not know about? Each of these varied and fluctuating presentations of stars that we are forced to analyze create different meanings and effects that frame audience’s opinions about a star and ignite cultural conversations.