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The drama of celebrity
Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive?0In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable. Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the \"divine\" Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era's most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel.0Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.
Book
Pregnant with the Stars
\"Check out that baby bump!\" Online and print magazines, television shows, and personal blogs are awash with gossip and speculation about pregnant celebrities. What drives our cultural obsession with celebrity baby bumps? Pregnant with the Stars examines the American fascination with, and judgment of, celebrity pregnancy, and exposes how our seemingly innocent interest in \"baby bumps\" actually reinforces troubling standards about femininity, race, and class, while increasing the surveillance and regulation of all women in our society.
This book charts how the American understanding of pregnancy has evolved by examining pop culture coverage of the pregnant celebrity body. Investigating and comparing the media coverage of pregnant celebrities, including Jennifer Garner, Angelina Jolie, Beyoncé Knowles, Kristen Bell, M.I.A., Jodie Foster, and Mila Kunis, Renée Cramer shows us how women are categorized and defined by their pregnancies. Their stories provide a paparazzi-sized lens through which we can interpret a complex set of social and legal regulations of pregnant women.
Cramer exposes how cultural ideas like the \"rockin' post-baby body\" are not only unattainable; they are a means of social control. Combining cultural and legal analysis, Pregnant with the Stars uncovers a world where pregnant celebrities are governed and controlled alongside the recent, and troubling, proliferation of restrictive laws aimed at women in the realm of reproductive justice and freedom. Cramer asks each reader and cultural consumer to recognize that the seeing, judging, and discussion of the \"baby bump\" isn't merely frivolous celebrity gossip—it is an act of surveillance, commodification, and control.
eBook
The star as icon : celebrity in the age of mass consumption
Here the author portrays the star icon as a individual caught between transcendence and trauma. He worries that popular media distances us from even minimal insight into those who are transfigured into star icons and keeps us from understanding the role of media, celebrity, and star culture in British politics.
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(Extra)Ordinary?
(Extra)Ordinary? edited by Jade Alexander and Katarzyna Bronk engages in research on the ways and means in which celebrity status has been created, controlled, dispersed and received in the past as well as the present.
eBook
Stellar Transformations
Stellar Transformations: Movie Stars of the 2010s circles around questions of stardom, performance, and their cultural contexts in ways that remind us of the alluring magic of stars while also bringing to the fore the changing ways in which viewers engaged with them during the last decade.
eBook
Oprah
“Today on Oprah,” intoned the TV announcer, and all over America viewers tuned in to learn, empathize, and celebrate. In this book, Kathryn Lofton investigates the Oprah phenomenon and finds in Winfrey’s empire—Harpo Productions, O Magazine, and her new television network—an uncanny reflection of religion in modern society. Lofton shows that when Oprah liked, needed, or believed something, she offered her audience nothing less than spiritual revolution, reinforced by practices that fuse consumer behavior, celebrity ambition, and religious idiom. In short, Oprah Winfrey is a media messiah for a secular age. Lofton’s unique approach also situates the Oprah enterprise culturally, illuminating how Winfrey reflects and continues historical patterns of American religions.
eBook
AKB48
Since its formation as a girl group with 20 members in 2005, AKB48 has become a phenomenal success and institution in Japan. Having originally recruited fans by handing out photocopied fliers on the street and performing daily in a dedicated theater in the Akihabara area of Tokyo, AKB48 now saturates Japan. Its members--nearly 800 of them, including five additional sister groups and four so-called \"rival groups\" in locations across Japan as well as six sister groups in major Asian cities overseas - appear in print, broadcast, online, and social media; in advertisements and on products; at home and on the train; on- and off-screen. Such multi-platform omnipresence is characteristic of the \"idol,\" a heavily produced and promoted performer who is in intimate relation to fans and appeals to them for support. And AKB48's appeals have astonishing results. From 2010 to 2018, the group's singles have occupied the top two to five spots of the Oricon Yearly Singles Chart, and almost all sold over a million copies. They hold the record for most singles sold by a female artist or group, highest Japanese sales of a single by a female artist or group, most consecutive million-selling singles sold in Japan, most million-selling singles in Japan, and more. At a time when affect is more important than ever in economic, political, and social theory, this book explores the intersection of idols and affect in contemporary Japan and beyond.
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Bret Easton Ellis
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