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Celebrity culture effects on society
Celebrity culture effects on society
The Impact Of The Media On The Lives Of Celebrities
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Do you ever look in the mirror, pose and say WOW! Im so Beyoncé. Or wonder what Brad Pitt would be eating for breakfast? Or ponder whether Miley Cyrus could ever afford proper clothes? Celebrities have become a central fixation in our lives that we often forget to live our own. We idolize them, follow their every move and treat them as modern day demi gods. (PAUSE) Celebrity has become synonymous with cynosure. And no cynosure doesn’t mean an attention seeking hotshot who is willing to do anything for fame. It is a person that becomes the centre of our admiration and attention due to their brilliance. Is it just me or the thesaurus has got it wrong. Our modern day obsession with celebrities raises the question between respect for sheer brilliance and talent vs. a shallow fascination that is a sign of our degenerating society. Why do these particular people get so much attention? They can either be entertaining or culturally significant.Within the 21st century context, has talent been replaced with controversy, image obsession and mindless presence? (PAUSE) An example of this con...
Celebrities hold a strong power to influence the lifestyle trends of an audience. As members of the entertainment industry, celebrities are looked up to as role models by a large general public. With such high exposure, celebrities essentially hold the power to positively or negatively influence their followers, from fashion trends to behavioral tendencies, the attitudes and lifestyle habits of celebrities influence cultural qualities and the way in which many people function within society. Mindy Kaling’s career started when she became an intern on the popular show “Late Night with Conan O’ Brien”. Mindy was a 19-year-old sophomore at Dartmouth College when she first started her internship.
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.
Marshall P. David (1997). Celebrity Power; Fame in Contemporary Culture. May 16, 2010. Electronically retrieved from
“Posts.” Fame is a dangerous Drug: A Phenomenological Glimpse of Celebrity.” N.p. ,n.d. Web 15. Feb 2014
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
In his article Stars as a Cinematic Phenomenon, he used the ‘photo effect’ conception of Roland Barthes to examine the present/ absent paradox of stars. He proposed influential qualitative distinctions in between stardom in films and television. He argued that ‘Stars are incomplete images outside the cinema: the performance of the film is the moment of completion of images in subsidiary circulation, in newspapers, fanzines, etc. Further, a paradox is present in these subsidiary forms. The star is at once ordinary and extraordinary, available for desire and unattainable. This paradox is repeated and intensified in cinema by the regime of presence-yet-absence that is the filmic image’(1992). Therefore, the impractical mode of ‘this is was’ on nature of stardom ‘awakens a series of psychic mechanisms which involve various impossible images’, such as ‘the narcissistic experience of the mirror phase’(1992). Ellis then continued to indicate televisual stardom, which is more current or ‘immediate’ than cinematic fame. He argued that ‘What television does present is the “personality”. The personality is someone who is famous for being famous and is famous only in so far as he or she makes frequent television appearances… In some ways, they are the opposite of stars, agreeable voids rather than sites of conflicting meanings’. Ellis’ thesis definitely points out the differences between cinema and television fame, due to the multimedia and transmedia of current era implies a much more diverse and unpredictable relationship in between stars’ images in any kind of
Do ever look in the mirror, pose and say WOW im so Beyoncé? Or wonder what Brad Pitt would be eating for breakfast? Or just think, will Miley Cyrus ever afford proper clothes? Celebrities are so engrossed into our lives that sometimes we just forget to live our own. We idolize them, follow their every move and treat them as modern gods. Is this really due to their brilliance and talent? Is that why they are always the centre of our attention? Referring to all of this reminds me of how one day I was randomly looking up synonyms for the word cynosure. And guess what I saw; cynosure is a synonym for celebrity. Yes Celebrity! Are you trying to tell me thesuraus.com that a celebrity is a person that becomes the centre of our attention due to their brilliance? Are we obsessed and attracted to celebrities due to their talent? Are they really the ultimate definition of cynosure? Think about it, why do these particular people get so much attention? In one way or another it is because they are either entertaining or culturally significant. To be entertaining you would assume that a person wou...
This exposure has proven necessary for these people to initiate or validate the pursuit of their careers. Rosie O’Donnell, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake and more all made debuts into the pool of professional entertainment through Star Search. Although this screen time can be used as a positive influence, shows like American Idol may take advantage of this public stage by exploiting the large number of unserious or less talented contestants to employ comedic elements as an entertainment factor. Writer Katherine Meizel examines this phenomenon in “Making the Dream a Reality (Show) when she states, “American Idol chronicles the dual construction of this ‘‘dream,’’ in its realization for a happy few and… the most cringe-inducing moments of one or more seasons” (475-476). For this exact reason, despite the celebrity endorsements and recording contracts offered, a bit of the gravity of what is at stake for contestants and credibility of the contest is lost to the
There was once a time when there were more simplistic views on life; where truth and justice prevailed above all and the main concerns of society were much more primitive. However, those times have long vanished and have now been strategically replaced by the commodity that celebrity culture fully encompasses. Guy Debord writes in The Society of the Spectacle, that the “spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation amongst people, mediated by images” (Debord, 4). By this, he simply means that the spectacle is constructed by the daily images devised by celebrities, reality television, and pseudo-events. And those images have altered and strongly influenced the way people perceive themselves and others, as well as the social
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 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.
...ildren, and most of their time must be enjoyed in creating their own private space. During our childhood, we build the seeds of creativity that will eventually determine our personality. And during adulthood, we always look back to the wonders of our youth. Show business is very hard for anyone, particularly for kids. Children do not belong in the entertainment industry. Young stars often complain about a stolen childhood, the pressure they have to face at a young age forcing them to mature fast, and the risks of exposure to dirty show business while still an innocent playful child. Celebrities who were exposed to the limelight at a tender age become scarred for life by early success and tend to compensate for the childhood they were deprived of during their later years in life.
Much of today’s society seems obsessed on what actors/actress, athletes, and music artist are wearing, eating, who they are marrying, dating, where they are vacationing, what affairs they are having or have had, and how they live their everyday lives. What’s so interesting about this obsession is as a society we are implacable and often place celebrities on a pedestal, only to destroy them when they are illusive or promiscuous. Media outlets are swift to report when celebrities are in trouble but quickly forget all their accomplishments. It’s as if we want them to be perfect but once they are associated with a scandal we embark on destroying their reputation and character. Should society hold celebrities to higher standards just because they are paid millions for endorsements and a craft they worked hard to perfect? Do we as a society have the right to castigate celebrities when they misbehave? Do celebrities have the right to become livid when they are focused on for their immoral behavior? Do they love the media attention only when it benefits them? Before we can answer the above questions, would we, furthermore, can we live our life as a celebrity if given the opportunity?
Have you seen the pictures of Madonna and her baby yet? Have you ever surfed the web and stumbled onto a site about celebrities? Probably so. There are thousands of sites on the web about celebrities; their official web sites, pictorials and biographical information. You can’t even go into a supermarket without being bombarded by tabloids.You can’t listen to the radio in the car. TV shows and whole networks rely on entertainment and celebrities in the news. VH1, MTV and E! are excellent examples of this. Many people make their living off celebrities and their personal lives. But why does this need to be explored? Producers and journalists say they are only making and reporting on what the people want. The general public say they only watch and read this “news” because it is so readily available. Lets face it, it would be easier to find matches for “Madonna and her baby “ on the web than it would be to find “biological engineering”.
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.