artworks to be widely copied and distributed, thus shattering the aura, challenging the notion of the one-of-a-kind and authentic work, and shifting focus away from the object’s symbolic value by reinstituting the work back into everyday life, where it can be acquired and used by anyone and thus brought closer to the masses. The process of reproduction, then, results in the democratization of art, an effect that Benjamin sees as politically useful, even progressive. Thus, as media scholar Paddy Scannell notes, “New forms of mass communication may transform consumers into active participants and therein lays a new relationship between producers, products, and audiences. Not the worship of the author (as genius) or of the work (as truth and beauty) by an adoring audience, but a more equal and collaborative relationship in which the author aligns himself with the audience (the masses), takes their point of view, and gives it expression in his work.”49
In the decades that accompanied and followed the Industrial Revolution, rapidly changing technologies meant that artistic modes of self-representation were quickly expanding. Advances in printing, etching, and, later, photography allowed anyone with a relatively small amount of money to record and distribute a likeness. As a result, a greater number of people could become recognizable, their images and stories disbursed, which meant that it was no longer only the wealthy and powerful who could hope for attention or renown. At the same time, photographic reproductions allowed the public access to the images of the elite and influential, thus erasing the feeling of distance between the famous “them” and the rest of us. So while Benjamin argued that technological advancements allowed for the democratization of art, these developments also shaped the nature of fame. As self-representation became less dependent on large and expensive artistic processes like sculpture and oil painting, the aura of the famous figure—his or her uniqueness as a public person at a distance or remove from the rest of society—was thereby diminished. Fame, and the famous, appeared more accessible. Meanwhile, newspapers and photography gave the public a greater sense of access to, and influence over, well-known figures. It is this evolution that we trace in the pages ahead.
Overview of the Book
Celebrity thus provides an overview account of the history of stardom, its dynamic relationship with technologies of mass communication, and the academic theories that have emerged to help explain the production, circulation, and effects of celebrity culture. We offer a brief history of fame, and the historical modes of celebrity production, and how they have changed (and persisted) over time. We cannot possibly discuss everyone who became a celebrity since the nineteenth century, so we have sought to focus on certain exemplars of different types of fame and stardom. A central aspect of the history of fame is, in Braudy’s words, the “changing ways by which individuals have sought to bring themselves to the attention of others and, not incidentally, have thereby gained power over them.” From the beginning, “fame has required publicity,”50 the forms of which have also both persisted and evolved. Within this narrative, we uncover the relationship between fame, politics, fandom, and economic and discursive power.
The exponential speed in which technologies have developed throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries has prompted significant changes in the role celebrities play in society, and in the ways audiences engage and interact with them. It is through our interaction with famous figures via these mediated encounters that they come to hold meaning and value, for us and for our culture. We will emphasize the central role of the media and communications technologies and their particular affordances, to the manufacture, proliferation, and democratization of fame and celebrity. So we take a closer look at the development of media technologies, from newspapers, photography, and early fan magazines through to radio and television and including contemporary digital platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, in order to understand how each new advance in media molds the meaning of celebrity within popular culture at that particular historical moment. We will also consider how these evolving technologies interact with, shape, and are shaped by the changing industrial conditions around the production of fame.
While many elements of celebrity—who becomes one and why, how it is produced—have remained surprisingly constant over the years, it is also crucial to pay attention to how historical context shapes visibility and stardom. Evolving attitudes about race, gender, appropriate public behavior, sex and sexuality, and about authority and power all contribute to who does and does not gain celebrity status in different historical eras. What has been condemned as celebrity behavior in one era—say, having a child out of wedlock—barely raises an eyebrow in another.
Celebrity culture is a huge and profitable industry in the United States. It also plays a major role in constituting who we are, and what we hope for and dream about. And celebrity culture has a history. However evanescent and trivial particular celebrities and their triumphs and tragedies may be over the years, this media juggernaut, and what lies in its wake, is not immaterial. We need to appreciate its evolution, its industrial production, and its multiple effects, especially now, when celebrity culture has its grip on nearly every aspect of American life.
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Theories of Celebrity
Why, exactly, do we have celebrities and, now, so many of them? What needs do they fulfill, in our culture and our economy, even in our politics? But, also, what needs do they fill in us? Why do we as individuals pay attention to them, talk about them, adulate them, or, alternatively, hate them? What pleasures do they offer us and how has that contributed to the sheer numbers of celebrities, including “everyday people,” who have become famous, especially in the twenty-first century? How are we to think about and make sense of this phenomenon? Here we address these questions, examining the work of scholars who have considered both the broader sociological and historical explanations for the rise of celebrity and the more individual and psychological analyses of our engagement with people we will never meet or know. And it is important to emphasize that many of these theories are not mutually exclusive, but can work together to help us appreciate why this has become such a salient feature of modern life.
The Importance of the Audience
As previously noted, the rise of celebrity is made possible through the individual’s relationship to a mass audience, a public. The role of the audience is, therefore, crucial in the production and maintenance of fame. Indeed, as P. David Marshall argues, it is the public, the celebrity’s “followers,” who empower the construction of celebrity itself.1 “The historical emergence of the celebrity sign,” Marshall points out, “coincides and correlates with the rise of the audience as a social category,” adding that “Celebrity is an acknowledgement of the public’s power.”2 It is the attention of the public, our fascination and adulation, which make celebrity as a phenomenon possible. So at the heart of celebrity culture was, and is, a contradiction. Celebrities are seen as unique and elevated people, above the masses, yet are absolutely dependent on the good will and admiration of those masses for ongoing recognition and success. Thus, the twin pulls on our desire that celebrities be special and transcendent yet also regular people and “just like us.”
Francesco Alberoni offers similar observations about the power of the audience, suggesting that stars, despite their influence and success, are in fact powerless, at the mercy of the public. It is the public’s judgment of the famous that allows the elite to maintain their position. One of the ways in which this judgment functions is through the public’s perpetual affirmation and reaffirmation of social codes vis-à-vis celebrity actors. Celebrities, Alberoni notes, play a critical role in maintaining social standards and cohesion in large-scale society. As regularly (sometimes constantly) “observable” and “knowable” individuals, celebrities are available to be evaluated, loved, or criticized by their audience.3 The lives of celebrities, Alberoni writes, especially their social relationships, can be “a benchmark for positive or negative evaluation” by us, and a source both of identification and a projection of the needs of a mass audience. They are also “a living testimony to the possibility of achieving a rise in personal status.”4
Celebrities and Presentation of Self
