The gossip industry has become popular in the last few decades. Our society enjoys knowing about the lives of celebrities. We obsess over celebrities on gossip websites, and even obsess to the extent of stalking these celebrities. This industry has impacted our culture immensely. It has tainted our culture in several ways from creating bad role models for our children to making stalking an everyday affair; either way, the media has changed our society greatly. The gossip industry has brought new entertainment for our pleasure, but it has come with negative consequences.
Our entertainment has changed because of the media. Nowadays, tabloid magazines and gossip websites are among the top forms of entertainment. People love to read the next new article about their favorite celebrity or their favorite celebrity meltdown to watch. Before all the gossip, a lot of people actually read the newspaper to read about important things going on in our society. Now, a lot of the news is just information about celebrities instead of important information such as politics. For example, right now it would not be uncommon for the front page headline to be about Miley Cyrus’s newest antic instead of the crucial government shutdown. We are slowly losing our old ways of sincere and important information.
The celebrity gossip industry has affected our assumptions about entertainment. Usually, we assume that entertainment is just for fun, entertainment is only a reflection of our culture, and entertainment is a personal choice. Nowadays, entertainment is not just for fun. Celebrities entertain us in many ways, but sometimes we do not enjoy what they do yet we still watch them. For instance, many teen idols have had meltdowns. Although it is not fun to...
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...positive articles than the usual negative ones. Our society needs to stop the gossip industry because it is only making our culture worse. Our society is headed in the wrong direction, and if we continue on that path, our society will only suffer more in the distant future. We need to take control of our gossip entertainment because it is only becoming less entertaining and more damaging to our culture.
Works Cited
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Traister, Rebecca. “Hit her baby, One More Time.” Remix: Reading and Composing Culture. Ed. Catherine G. Latterell. 2nd ed. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. martin’s, 2010. 431-434. Print.
A fan in today’s world is usually characterized as the result of the “star system” portrayed in society due to mass media where media figures’ lives are constantly emphasized on a day to day basis. The internet and society are obsessed with news concerning celebrities, and knowing about their personal life. Today’s social media keeps fans constantly updated about celebrities, giving fans the illusion that they know everything about that celebrity and that they are connected somehow. This type of mass media has made the difference between appropriate behavior and inappropriate behavior of fans less noticeable (Lewis 11). These types of fans, the pathological fans, are also classified as the “o...
Reality based television has a broad landscape ranging from competitive game-like shows to programs following the daily lives of a group of people. Every major network now has some form of reality programming because the genre’s shows are high in viewership and require low costs for production. The genre is appealing to viewers because it provides them with a first-hand look into the lives of everyday people, which allows them to observe social behavior that helps them determine what is appropriate or not (Tyree, 2011, p. 397). Since the majority of modern reality stars start out as unknowns, frequent viewers of reality programming believed that fame is obtainable if they appear on a popular show (Mendible, 2004). According to Mendible’s evaluation of the genre in the article Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV, people enjoy reality programs beca...
In "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business" the author Neil, Postman elaborates his ideas of television and other types of media being related culture and society. The book was written in 1985 in the 20th century when many of the technologies we have today did not exist. At the time Postman suggests that American culture, which was symbolized by Las Vegas, was "entirely devoted to the idea of entertainment (Postman, 268)." Specifically the biggest concern about entertainment was a person's appearance. Which still remains true in today's 21st century. In today's television we are still very concerned with appearance even when it comes to doing more important television like the news. In the Introduction Neil Postman's son ask's the question "Can such a book possibly have relevance to you and The World of 2006 and beyond? (Postman 72)" because he feels that now we live in a world with so many other technologies than the primary focus in the book, which is television. However, I feel that many concepts in this book can be applied to the new era of television today. A very big statement that Neil Postman makes in his book is that "The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter, but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which is another issue altogether (Postman 1551). The point of the book is not to attack television itself, but to evaluate what is coming out of it because it has become a method of communication. I am going to discuss how the content on television is being presented, the problem with televisions main concern with entertainment, and the reflection mass media has on politics, society, and culture.
According to the book Celebrity Politics, approximately 10 percent of Americans get national political news from nightly entertainment shows such as the Tonight Show. For Americans under 30, the number is nearly five times as many (Orman and West 100). Citizens are looking to be entertained rather than simply educated by the nightly news. As David Schultz aptly put it, “ The new media cover politics, but only politics as it entertains, in part, because the audience the new media attract is a less politically interested audience than traditional news audiences” (20). The fact is that this American audience is less interested in hard news and more interested in entertainment, which has made celebrities effective activists and endorsers of aid organizations in this increasingly celebrity-obsessed society.
Prince, Victoria. “Celebrity” St. James Encylopedia of Popular Culture Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Vol. 1. Detroit: St. James Press. 2000. 463-465 Student Resources in context. Web. 18 Feb 2014.
No matter where a person goes throughout the United States, they will not walk through the streets of New Jersey or New York for long before they hear the latest scandals with Kim Kardashian or Miley Cyrus. If a person walks into any public store they’ll quickly hear discussion of the latest stars on American Idol from passersby. While we scoff at the antics of celebrities, but at the same time we can foster an almost fanatical desire to be as if not more famous then the people everyone talks about. It is rather human to feel envy, jealously, and desire; we all want to be looked favorably upon. We roll our eyes when someone repeatedly states how beautiful or intelligent a celebrity is, yet even a skeptic can’t help but desire the admiration that celebrity received. Why do men work out? Why do women use such extensive amounts of cosmetics? Why are people so determined to be revered? The answer to individual’s thirst for fame can vary but it’s unavoidable to assume that individual wanted to be the center of attention. We want to be admired, favored, and loved as much as the celebrities that we worship. Reality television has shifted to show the “perfect” life of our celebrities and how happy they are compared to the common people. Neoliberals and authoritarian realized how our fanatical love for our celebrities can be used against us as to quote Frank Furedi from his academic journal on the topic of celebrity culture in which he has stated in the abstract in his first page: “Often celebrity provides an alternative source of validation. The tendency to outsource authority to the celebrity represents an attempt to bypass the problem of legitimacy by politicians and other figures.” Through celebrities’ neoliberals and
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...cians and Creating Celebrity. The media and political process (2 ed., p. 126). London: SAGE.
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.
January 6, 1973, famous anthropologist Margaret Mead published an essay in TV Guide in which she addressed her view of PBS’s series “An American Family.” This series was groundbreaking during that time because is followed the Loud’s, a California family who were neither actors nor public figures just average middle-class family, which was unheard of at the time. The Louds were filmed for seven months and the product was twelve one-hour episodes which showed everything from the monotony of their everyday life to the corrosion of Bill and Pat Loud’s marriage. Meade called this series “a new kind of art form” and marveled at the shows ability to show the drama and entertainment value of the average human condition. Forty years later, as Meade had predicted, reality based television and films have become more understood, respected and prevalent in our modern culture. Extreme success stories of documentaries such as Justin Bieber’s 2011 “Never Say Never” and countless reality shows indicates that a celebrity’s presence , musicians particularly, on reality media channels can change audience’s perceptions, promote new material and help them to stay relevant in the public eye. These “reality” documentaries and TV shows present the audience with carefully edited material that conveys only a fraction of that individual’s personality and character yet has profound effects audience perception and acceptance. The British boy band One Direction is a prime example of how using the model of framing in reality television shows and documentaries effectively promotes projects, molds the opinions of audiences, allows artist to appear more open and relatable and leads to extreme monetary success.
Stints as a child model and commercial actress brought Lohan into the spotlight at the age of three. As she transitioned from childhood to adulthood, it was becoming much more difficult to make such an appearance in the media that she had as a child. “The mass-media sets the public agenda; they are the ones who, as a result of their social event selection and focusing system, assign the priority of the discussion topics on the agenda” (Pachef, 2010). Thus, everything she had done in her personal life the media had documented, making sure the public masses were aware of Lohan. From her drug abuse to her nightlife stories, the media had it. When she even knew she had enough, the media couldn’t let go because they had absorbed so much popularity and power from the public masses from all the stories behind Lohan. Instead of focusing on her recovery, she wanted to feed the media through her actions because it was her only choice to steal the spotlight. The media as well had distorted the image of Lohan on and off the screen, whether it was shooting a new film to having lunch with her parents, by making her look like this “Scarlet A” individual whom society dislikes. The mass media establishes the topics that are worth being acknowledged, and the public is interested in the topics that circulate in the mass media.
Celebrity blogs typically provide great insight into the three important theoretical perspectives in sociology. This paper will analyze the data obtained from five selected celebrity gossip blogs, such as Celebitchy, Yahoo Celebrity, The Huffington Post, Time, and SheKnows. The analysis will be based on the theoretical perspectives of celebrity gossip, particularly conflict theory. For instance, it will address the inequalities that exist in the gossip blogs based on race, gender, class, or sexual inequalities. Additionally, it will identify the interests of those served by the blogs as well as those who get exploited or suffer as a result of the publication of the blogs.
In today’s day and age we live in a society obsessed with celebrity culture. This however, is not a new addiction; our society’s fascination with celebrity culture has been around for decades. Through the years, we’ve seen fandom come in various forms, shapes and sizes. From the groupies of the 60s, to the more recent digital-followers, one thing common among all fans is the pedestal on which they’ve put their favorite celebrity. Some people would argue that fans are not only the most important part of a celebrity’s life, but fans are quintessential in their success. Fans admire them, follow their every move: physical or electronic, and purchase anything and everything that might bring them in looking/feeling more like their desired celebrity. Many experts even believe that fan and fan-clubs often resemble religions. One can easily note the similarities between fans and a religious cult; from worshipping to organizing conventions and event recruiting new followers. To some it might even sound like a disorder, and Dr. Lynn McCutcheon after her intense research, was the first one to coin the term: (CWS) Celebrity Worship Syndrome. According to Psychology Today, CWS can be described as a mental-disorder where an individual becomes completely obsessed with the details of the personal life of a celebrity (Griffiths). A celebrity, as defined by Mark Griffiths, can be any person who is present in the ‘public eye’, including Politicians, authors, and journalists, but according to Dr. McCutcheon research they are more likely to be someone from the world of television, film and/or pop music. Continuing on Justin Bieber’s ad campaign, this paper examines the peculiar relationship between consumers and God-like celebrity figures. It showcase...
...nize that entertainment in a fundamental part of American culture that allows for the diversity that makes our society unique and functional. If we were to rid the world of these influences, who is to say that that would have a positive effect or be any better for our country than what we are exposed to now?
...bout the “real” real world.” Psychology of Popular Media Culture, Vol 2(4). Oct 2013. 237-250. PsychARTICLES. 29 Nov 2013