in order to understand the explosion of twenty-first-century celebrification and the ways it functions in an urbanized, globalized, and hyperlinked culture, we need to look back, before the advent of the smartphone and Facebook, to the relationship between mass communication technologies and the evolution of celebrity in our history. Emphasizing this link, between the particular affordances of different media, both traditional and digital, and the nature and proliferation of celebrity culture, is one of our central points. As Richard Schickel argues in his study of fame, “The history of celebrity and the history of communications technology over the last century are very closely linked.”15 Yet while Schickel suggests that celebrity is a phenomenon that only truly begins in the twentieth century, we look further back in time, especially to the nineteenth century when modes of mass communication and forms of mass entertainments proliferated, in an effort to trace the production, evolution, and uses of celebrity and its effects on the everyday lives of ordinary people.
Media technologies have, during different eras, enabled individuals to broadcast themselves—their ideas and images—to a large-scale audience. In this way, mediated representation allows the individual to become known by the many. The media, therefore, whether magazines, radio, the Internet, or Twitter, have been central to the production and maintenance of celebrity. Each media technology critically shapes and refines the way in which we come to know, perceive, and interpret the ideas and images it presents. As David Schmid writes, “The introduction of each new media technology represents a decisive shift in both the types of fame available in a culture and the ability of that culture to disseminate fame.”16 Indeed, contemporary media technologies, in which multidirectional interaction and response have supplanted the broadcast model, continue to redefine our relationship with famous figures. Because the television interview and on-camera close-ups simulate face-to-face interaction, and because interviewers have become more prying and more unctuous, audiences can establish (and imagine) a new form of intimacy with stars that did not previously exist. And now, with celebrity Facebook pages and Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat accounts, fans can feel an even greater familiarity and intimacy with totally unknown and unknowable people. While this is a pseudointimacy, intimacy at a distance, an intimacy that is not reciprocated, there is certainly a great pleasure for fans here—they can feel they are in the know, in an inner circle. Yet, at the same time, we can now eavesdrop on celebrities, put the stars under surveillance, without having to respond, be clever, or expose ourselves to them.
Who becomes a celebrity and why? What is our role in celebrity production, in who gets to stay in the spotlight and who doesn’t? The book begins by reviewing the various theoretical approaches that have sought to explain the power and significance of celebrity culture, the ideological work it does, and the relationship between stars and audiences. Why do we even have celebrities, and why do they matter to us as individuals and as a society? In tracing the evolution of academic thought on the subject of fame and fandom, we may better appreciate not only the power of the stars themselves but also the scope and potential of the relationship between ordinary people and celebrities.
Fame and the Quest for Immortality
What is the allure, the pull, of fame? Why do some people actively seek it and others—many of us—fantasize about it? In the twenty-first century, being a celebrity seems to bring so much: wealth, of course, being known in a way others are not, being envied, being deferred to, having other famous friends who, presumably, are exciting and fun.
The desire for fame is nothing new; it has existed for millennia. It springs from another deep human fantasy, a longing: the desire for immortality. Fame seems to promise an escape from one of the basic inevitabilities of life—death. For certain celebrities, even years after they die, their presence continues to exist, living on in the images and recordings that made them famous. Posters of Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn still grace people’s walls, and images of celebrities as diverse as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, and Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz are “managed” by rights companies so that, decades after their deaths, they can still be used to sell products. They are gone, but still with us, in an uncanny mode of eternal life through media imagery. Like secular gods, the famous defy the rules of human existence while also providing us with aspirational models to worship. They continue to live on after their death through us, their fans. It is we who make the stars immortal as we worship and deify our favorite actors or musicians. Elvis’s Graceland has become a sacred site for his fans where people still leave flowers on his grave (some even believing he’s still alive). Fans collect autographs or pictures, or even possessions of their idols, documenting the existence of stars and possessing some modicum of their being, creating their own celebrity reliquaries.
Thousands of years ago, this quest for immortality, to be remembered by posterity, was restricted to a very privileged few. In ancient times, as Leo Braudy notes in his history of fame, with kings, like the pharaohs, also seen as gods, “fame meant a grandeur almost totally separate from ordinary human nature.” There was an “extraordinary exaltation of a single man” through art, his headgear and clothing, palaces, and through monumental tombs like the pyramids, all testifying to and asserting his power and immortality. The tombs of the Chinese emperors, Mayan rulers, and Egyptian pharaohs contained inscriptions, amulets, and objects that proclaimed the deceased’s singularity and influence. These relics showed the powerful individual imbued with godlike powers, their persona linked to mythic narratives and imagery through carvings, paintings, and decorations of the body.17
For the ancient Greeks, it was heroism, the “pursuit of honor,” achieved primarily through war and conquest, that allowed men—through the legends about them—to live beyond death. Epics such as the Iliad and the Odyssey immortalized heroic achievements and inspired the person Leo Braudy calls the “first famous person,” Alexander the Great (356–323 BC). Alexander did win fame through his wide-ranging conquests, but, as Braudy notes, “Nothing was ever enough for him.”18 He sought fame not through some predetermined, ascribed status, like being the son of a king or emperor, but through his achievements. He was determined to have these achievements, and his image, widely known and preserved for posterity. As Karsten Dahmen notes, “Much of Alexander’s importance lies in his posthumous fame.”19
Today, we may not think that we are participating in the reproduction of fame when digging around in our pockets for spare change, but in ancient societies coins played an important role in self-promotion. They were one of the earliest mass-produced technologies for circulating fame, and set the precedent for presidents and kings to have their faces on coins and later on bills. Alexander the Great imprinted his likeness on coins in order to make his image and authority known to his subjects, although it was after his death that Greek and Roman rulers promulgated most of the coins bearing his likeness in an effort to be allied with his empire-building.20 Widely circulated and able to withstand time and touch, coins allowed for the spread of the ruler’s face across wide swaths of territory. The power of the coin lay not only in its ability to provide a visual representation of a leader whom most subjects would never see, but also to couple that image with phrases and iconography that conveyed a sense of authority and gravitas. When new coins appeared, the person on the street knew there was a new government and a new leader. Alexander minted coins as he conquered, circulating his likeness to current and future subjects. In his monetary renderings, his features were blended with those of Greek gods and icons of mythology like Hercules. In this way, Alexander’s coins not only captured his likeness but also linked him with recognizable qualities and themes with which he wished to be associated.21 While Alexander died at the age of thirty-three, his fame lived on through the continued circulation of these coins.22
There were other representations of Alexander: paintings and mosaics (he had himself depicted “clad in panther skin,” which was normally associated with the gods),23 portrait heads and busts, and statues in stone and bronze.24 Sculpture also allowed for the public display of one’s face and body. The human figure carved in stone provided a lasting depiction of the subject’s entire body, and then positioned that body in the public space, for all to see. Imposing and grand, statues confronted the viewer with the presence of their subjects, a moment of poise, or of active heroism, frozen in time
