Celebrity culture
Encyclopedia
A celebrity culture is the structure that influences those deemed to be celebrities
.
s are replete with examples of individuals who are well known by the general public. Some of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt
set in motion devices to ensure their own fame for centuries to come.
Celebrity culture, once restricted to royalty and biblical/mythical figures, has pervaded many sectors of society including business, publishing, and even academia (the scilebrities). With every scientific advance names have become attached to discoveries. Especially for large contributions to humanity, the contributor is usually regarded honourably. Mass media
has increased the exposure and power of celebrity. A trend has developed that celebrity carries with it increasingly more social capital
than in earlier times. Each nation or cultural community (linguistic, ethnic, religious) has its own independent celebrity system, but this is becoming less the case due to globalization
. (see j-pop
)
are a problem for celebrities. Another problem is celebrity marriage. There is research that suggests child celebrities have poor emotional health in adulthood, and often turn to drug abuse. Celebrity status is ranked by a "A-list" or "B-list" hierarchy. Sometimes people who achieved celebrity status come to regret it, e.g. Bart Spring in 't Veld
, who came to loathe the reality TV celebrity culture which Big Brother
, of which he was the first winner in the world, instigated.
, where actors and music stars promote their latest films and albums, and by many celebrity magazines such as People
, Us
, and Star
.
. Many celebrity icons, regardless of their chronological age, are renowned for appearing incredibly immature and throwing temper tantrums whenever they don't get their own way'. Dan Millman
'coined the term Acquired Situational Narcissism to describe the destructive and outrageous behaviour of those who are constantly in the public eye. This late-acquired narcissism...' - tantrum-y.
has replaced fame. The social role of the town drunk
, the court jester
, or the sexually indecent are not new, but arguably, the glorification of these individuals is.
Another explanation, used by Chuck Palahniuk
, is that this exaggeration of modern celebrity culture is created out of a need for drama and spectacle. In the book Haunted, he describes the pattern of creating a celebrity as a god-like figure, and once this image is created, the desire to destroy it and shame the individual in the most extreme ways possible. Tabloid magazines are the prototype example of this theory.
, Adam Rich
and Pauly Shore
to stage their own deaths.
Sometimes a false death mention can cause a person to rethink their legacy. Alfred Nobel
founded the Nobel Prize
s after an erroneous obituary labelled him a "merchant of death" due to his invention and selling of dynamite
.
Celebrities who were far more famous after their deaths than during their lifetime (and often were completely or relatively unknown) include Greek philosopher Socrates
; scientist Galileo Galilei
; 1800s-era poet John Keats
; painter Vincent van Gogh
; poet and novelist Edgar Allan Poe
; singer Eva Cassidy
; writer Emily Dickinson
; artist Edith Holden
, whose 1906 diary was a best-seller when published posthumously in 1977); writer Franz Kafka
; diarist Anne Frank
; philosopher Soren Kierkegaard; writer John Kennedy Toole
(who posthumously won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
12 years after his death); author Stieg Larsson
(who died with his Millennium novels unpublished) and William Webb Ellis
, the alleged inventor of Rugby football
.
Herostratus
, a young Greek man arson
ed the Temple of Artemis
(one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
) in 356 BC in order to immortalize his name. Although authorities at the time tried to expunge him from history and punished people with the death penalty for even merely mentioning his name, he succeeded in achieving lasting fame, as his name is well known to this day.
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
.
Brief history of celebrity culture
Any medium can be viewed as a vehicle for creating a celebrity culture. The famous religious books of the world's faithFaith
Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or a belief that is not based on proof. In religion, faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition,...
s are replete with examples of individuals who are well known by the general public. Some of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
set in motion devices to ensure their own fame for centuries to come.
Celebrity culture, once restricted to royalty and biblical/mythical figures, has pervaded many sectors of society including business, publishing, and even academia (the scilebrities). With every scientific advance names have become attached to discoveries. Especially for large contributions to humanity, the contributor is usually regarded honourably. Mass media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
has increased the exposure and power of celebrity. A trend has developed that celebrity carries with it increasingly more social capital
Social capital
Social capital is a sociological concept, which refers to connections within and between social networks. The concept of social capital highlights the value of social relations and the role of cooperation and confidence to get collective or economic results. The term social capital is frequently...
than in earlier times. Each nation or cultural community (linguistic, ethnic, religious) has its own independent celebrity system, but this is becoming less the case due to globalization
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
. (see j-pop
J-pop
, an abbreviation for Japanese pop, is a musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in 1960s music, such as The Beatles, and replaced kayōkyoku in the Japanese music scene...
)
Modern celebrity culture
Celebrity status is widely sought after by many people. Celebrities are often displeased by their status. PaparazziPaparazzi
Paparazzi is an Italian term used to refer to photojournalists who specialize in candid photography of celebrities, politicians, and other prominent people...
are a problem for celebrities. Another problem is celebrity marriage. There is research that suggests child celebrities have poor emotional health in adulthood, and often turn to drug abuse. Celebrity status is ranked by a "A-list" or "B-list" hierarchy. Sometimes people who achieved celebrity status come to regret it, e.g. Bart Spring in 't Veld
Bart Spring in 't Veld
Bart Spring in 't Veld is a Dutch television producer and the first winner of Big Brother in the world: in 1999 he won the first Big Brother in The Netherlands. Ever since then, he has been trying to rid himself of the image created by the show that he claimed 'stole [his] life'...
, who came to loathe the reality TV celebrity culture which Big Brother
Big Brother 1999 (Netherlands)
The first ever season of Big Brother started on 16 September and would last until 30 December 1999 . Big Brother was broadcast by the Dutch television channel Veronica, which formed part of the Holland Media Groep...
, of which he was the first winner in the world, instigated.
Vehicles of celebrity culture
In the USA, celebrity culture is created and disseminated by television talk shows such as Entertainment TonightEntertainment Tonight
Entertainment Tonight is a daily tabloid television entertainment television news show that is syndicated by CBS Television Distribution throughout the United States, Canada and in many countries around the world. Linda Bell Blue is currently the program's executive producer...
, where actors and music stars promote their latest films and albums, and by many celebrity magazines such as People
People (magazine)
In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...
, Us
Us Weekly
Us Weekly is a celebrity gossip magazine, founded in 1977 by The New York Times Company, who sold it in 1980. It was acquired by Wenner Media in 1986. The publication covers topics ranging from celebrity relationships to the latest trends in fashion, beauty, and entertainment...
, and Star
Star (magazine)
Star is an American celebrity tabloid magazine.-History:Star was founded by Rupert Murdoch in 1974 as competition to the tabloid National Enquirer with its headquarters in New York City. In the late 1980s it moved its offices to Tarrytown, NY and in 1990 Murdoch sold the magazine to The Enquirers...
.
Tantrums
In the celebrity culture of the 21st century, the "Tantrumical" may come to full flower in the form of 'the celebrity tantrumTantrum
A tantrum is an emotional outburst, usually associated with children or those in emotional distress, that is typically characterized by stubbornness, crying, screaming, yelling, shrieking, defiance, angry ranting, a resistance to attempts at pacification and, in some cases, violence...
. Many celebrity icons, regardless of their chronological age, are renowned for appearing incredibly immature and throwing temper tantrums whenever they don't get their own way'. Dan Millman
Dan Millman
Dan Millman is a former Trampolining world champion athlete, university coach, martial arts instructor and college professor, and an author of fourteen self-help books, currently published in 29 languages, the most famous of which is the semi-autobiographical novel, Way of the Peaceful Warrior ,...
'coined the term Acquired Situational Narcissism to describe the destructive and outrageous behaviour of those who are constantly in the public eye. This late-acquired narcissism...' - tantrum-y.
Complaints
A common complaint of modern celebrity culture is that the public, instead of seeking virtues or talents in celebrities, seek those who are the most willing to break ethical boundaries, or those who are most aggressive in self-promotion. In other words, infamyInfamy
Infamy, in common usage, is notoriety gained from a negative incident or reputation . The word stems from the Latin infamia, antonym of fama ....
has replaced fame. The social role of the town drunk
Town drunk
The town drunk is a stock character, almost always male, who is drunk more often than sober.The town drunk typically dwells in a small enough town that he is the only conspicuous alcoholic...
, the court jester
Court jester
A jester, joker, jokester, fool, wit-cracker, prankster, or buffoon was a person employed to tell jokes and provide general entertainment, typically for a European monarch. Jesters are stereotypically thought to have worn brightly colored clothes and eccentric hats in a motley pattern...
, or the sexually indecent are not new, but arguably, the glorification of these individuals is.
Explanations
One possible explanation of this trend is that an artificial importance has been created in order to promote a product or a service, rather than to record a purely biographical event. As more new products are launched in a world market that is constantly expanding, the need for more celebrities has become an [industry] in itself.Another explanation, used by Chuck Palahniuk
Chuck Palahniuk
Charles Michael "Chuck" Palahniuk is an American transgressional fiction novelist and freelance journalist. He is best known for the award-winning novel Fight Club, which was later made into a film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter...
, is that this exaggeration of modern celebrity culture is created out of a need for drama and spectacle. In the book Haunted, he describes the pattern of creating a celebrity as a god-like figure, and once this image is created, the desire to destroy it and shame the individual in the most extreme ways possible. Tabloid magazines are the prototype example of this theory.
Posthumous fame
Some creators such as poets, artists, musicians, and inventors are little-known and little-appreciated during their lives, but are feted as brilliant innovators after their deaths. In some cases, after historians uncover a creator's role in the development of some type of cultural or technical process, the contributions of these little-known individuals become more widely known. A desire to achieve this type of posthumous fame may have motivated Alan AbelAlan Abel
Alan Abel is an American prankster, hoaxter, writer, mockumentary filmmaker, and jazz percussionist famous for several hoaxes that became media circuses.- Education and early career :...
, Adam Rich
Adam Rich
Adam Rich is an American actor.-Career:Rich is most remembered for his role as the youngest son, Nicholas Bradford, on the television series Eight is Enough, which ran for five seasons, from 1977-1981. After leaving that show, he made guest appearances on The Love Boat, CHiPS, Fantasy Island, The...
and Pauly Shore
Pauly Shore Is Dead
-Additional notes:The film did see a release to theaters in Sacramento, California, and has found/developed a following on DVD.Music from the band Staind's album "Break the Cycle" is used in the movie. Aaron Lewis, vocalist of Staind, also has an appearance in the DVD. Eminem and now deceased...
to stage their own deaths.
Sometimes a false death mention can cause a person to rethink their legacy. Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a Swedish chemist, engineer, innovator, and armaments manufacturer. He is the inventor of dynamite. Nobel also owned Bofors, which he had redirected from its previous role as primarily an iron and steel producer to a major manufacturer of cannon and other armaments...
founded the Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
s after an erroneous obituary labelled him a "merchant of death" due to his invention and selling of dynamite
Dynamite
Dynamite is an explosive material based on nitroglycerin, initially using diatomaceous earth , or another absorbent substance such as powdered shells, clay, sawdust, or wood pulp. Dynamites using organic materials such as sawdust are less stable and such use has been generally discontinued...
.
Celebrities who were far more famous after their deaths than during their lifetime (and often were completely or relatively unknown) include Greek philosopher Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
; scientist Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei , was an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher who played a major role in the Scientific Revolution. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for Copernicanism...
; 1800s-era poet John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
; painter Vincent van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...
; poet and novelist Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
; singer Eva Cassidy
Eva Cassidy
Eva Marie Cassidy was an American vocalist known for her interpretations of jazz, blues, folk, gospel, country and pop classics. In 1992 she released her first album, The Other Side, a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by a live solo album, Live at Blues Alley in 1996...
; writer Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson was an American poet. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, to a successful family with strong community ties, she lived a mostly introverted and reclusive life...
; artist Edith Holden
Edith Holden
Edith Blackwell Holden was a British artist and art teacher. She became famous following the posthumous publication of her Nature Notes for 1906, in facsimile form, as the book The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady in 1977, which was an enormous publishing success, frequently given as a gift...
, whose 1906 diary was a best-seller when published posthumously in 1977); writer Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...
; diarist Anne Frank
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...
; philosopher Soren Kierkegaard; writer John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole
John Kennedy Toole was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, best-known for his posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces. He also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole's novels were rejected...
(who posthumously won a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It originated as the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel, which was awarded between 1918 and 1947.-1910s:...
12 years after his death); author Stieg Larsson
Stieg Larsson
Karl Stig-Erland Larsson , who wrote professionally as Stieg Larsson, was a Swedish journalist and writer, born in Skelleftehamn outside Skellefteå. He is best known for writing the "Millennium series" of crime novels, which were published posthumously...
(who died with his Millennium novels unpublished) and William Webb Ellis
William Webb Ellis
Rev. William Webb Ellis was an Anglican clergyman who is famous for allegedly being the inventor of Rugby football whilst a pupil at Rugby School....
, the alleged inventor of Rugby football
Rugby football
Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...
.
Herostratus
Herostratus
Herostratus was a young man and arsonist; seeking notoriety, he burned down the Temple of Artemis in ancient Greece.-Occurrence:On July 21, 356 BC, Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus in what is now Turkey...
, a young Greek man arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
ed the Temple of Artemis
Temple of Artemis
The Temple of Artemis , also known less precisely as the Temple of Diana, was a Greek temple dedicated to a goddess Greeks identified as Artemis and was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was situated at Ephesus , and was completely rebuilt three times before its eventual destruction...
(one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
The Seven Wonders of the World refers to remarkable constructions of classical antiquity listed by various authors in guidebooks popular among the ancient Hellenic tourists, particularly in the 1st and 2nd centuries BC...
) in 356 BC in order to immortalize his name. Although authorities at the time tried to expunge him from history and punished people with the death penalty for even merely mentioning his name, he succeeded in achieving lasting fame, as his name is well known to this day.