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Privacy rights of celebrities
Impact of mass media in culture
Impact of mass media in culture
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Recommended: Privacy rights of celebrities
“Jon Gosselin caught sneaking out of lover’s house!” “Oprah is gay!” “Kirstie Ally weighs 250 pounds!” “John Travolta’s son dies on the bathroom floor!” These are just a few examples of the startling headlines that might be boldly smeared across, magazines, newspapers, and internet sites. Because of our need to know, various forms of entertainment media devote their entire attention to exposing the personal, private and intimate details of celebrity’s lives. They are captured in embarrassing moments, profound sadness, and deep intimacy. We learn the major and minor details of their lives--from their first kiss to their last divorce. We know where they shop and where they eat, who they date and often whether or not they wear underpants. We have followed them down their road to self destruction and have been waiting at the door when they leave prison, rehab or the hospital. A star’s quest for fame and celebrity is often a trade off that comes with a costly price tag; despite their mega paychecks it is a price even they cannot afford. The price of fame comes at the expense of their personal life and privacy.
For as long as there has been the art of entertainment, there has been someone who came before, paving the way to fame by virtue of promotion. However, until the twentieth century promoting performers was random, without structure and poorly planned. P.T. Barnum was among the most notable early public relations managers. The book, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America, reads, “Barnum himself was a show… in one of the most widely read books of the later nineteenth century, Barnum revealed the tricks of attention gathering and image creation, by taking readers behind the scenes.” (Gameson 22) In doing, Barnum ga...
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...iety feels towards the celebrities’ increases as new mediums to access the celebrities are introduced; rules of propriety in regards to privacy are discarded. Movie studios, networks, gossip columnist and the stars themselves recognize the unique power the public holds in maintaining the celebrity’s fame. In attempt to preserve fame and appease society’s ever increasing “need to know”, reality and fantasy are merged, the outcome is the loss of anonymity and privacy to the star.
Works Cited
Freydkin, Donna. "People - Celebrities Fight for Privacy." 7 July 2004. USAToday.com. Web. 18 May 2009.
Gameson, Joshua. Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America. Berkeley: Univesity of California Press. 1994. Print.
Walls, Jeannette. "For Some Celebs, Price of Fame Getting Too Steep." 20 October 2006.
msmbc.msn.com. Web.19 May 2009.
Marshall P. David (1997). Celebrity Power; Fame in Contemporary Culture. May 16, 2010. Electronically retrieved from
Murphy, Patrick J. "The Price of Fame: Two Instructive Accounts." Pulse Literary Magazine. 21 October 2003.
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.
...uld be justifiable to emphasize that a good number of them find it sickening to miss the limelight. . Nonetheless, it goes without mentioning that celebrities get exploited because some gossip stories explore the things that would otherwise be considered to be private.
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.
The public has been revolutionary to have access into celebrities’ private life thanks to the “paparazzi”. Definitely, celebrities will always be in front of the camera. It comes with the frame. Nevertheless, it does not justify photographing and the lives of people at the expanse of their privacy.
The lives of celebrities might seem so enchanting from the outside, at some point, they are. Who would not want to have a lot of money, fabulous vacations, enormous houses, a variety of cars, it really seems like a dream, doesn’t it? But if truth be told, “all that glitters is not gold”. Yes, their lives seem to glitter, so do their dresses and suits, however they all struggle with different issues, as normal human beings, but the major one is privacy.
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
Havrilesky, Heather. “Stalking Celebrities.” Remix: Reading and Composing Culture. Ed. Catherine G. Latterell. 2nd ed. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. martin’s, 2010. 446-450. Print.
The beginning of Lady Gaga’s career, unbenowst to the majority, dedicated itself soley for fame culture commentary. When Lady Gaga released her widely acclaimed album “The Fame” in August 2008, she sold 12 million copies of an album based off of the whole concept of being in a culture obsessed with becoming the celebrity as the ultimate validation of living. The media, obsessed with Lady Gaga’s whole concept, absorbed her presence in the spotlight and made her into a massive worldwide star. She once told Rolling Stone, “I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be — and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth” (Lady Gaga). Her manipulation of the public is possible from the culture revolving around celebrities. Celebration of celebrity culture is perpetuated throughout media outlets and consumed by public masses. In the Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges discusses celebrity culture and its underlying connections to pseudo-events, which are a form of mass media manipulation through a carefully crafted event. Celebrity culture and pseudo-events are often forces for economic gains through the deception of the public.
Like the Greek Gods and Heroes, Hollywood celebrities rarely die on screen. They often possess superhuman powers and are gilded with either Herculean invincibility or Venetian beauty. If they do die, it either represents a martyrdom like Christ's death, or is due to an Achilles heel or a dark fate, serving to heighten the tragedy. Finally, the Hollywood celebrity manifests a god-like ubiquity both on and off the screen- they can be in many places at one time - acting on thousands of screens, smiling from thousand of billboards and photographed and interviewed in thousan...
When living their day-to-day lives in the public eye, many celebrities must deal with gossip columnists, the infatuation of stalkers, and the unrelenting paparazzi. They follow celebrities into restaurants, their children’s schools, on vacations, and even their residential neighborhoods (Jones). By seeking out and publishing the whereabouts of celebrities, they cannot be sure who will find or come across that information. The paparazzi ...
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)?
SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 07 Feb. 2014. Sisto, Joseph. " Do Celebrities Forfeit the Right to Privacy?"