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Lindsay, a former child star who suffered a nervous breakdown after developing the ability to hear what anyone says about her, comes to see this as an asset when, after her father's death, she learns that she is not alone.
Moving from People magazine to publicists' offices to tours of stars' homes, Joshua Gamson investigates the larger-than-life terrain of American celebrity culture. In the first major academic work since the early 1940s to seriously analyze the meaning of fame in American life, Gamson begins with the often-heard criticisms that today's heroes have been replaced by pseudoheroes, that notoriety has become detached from merit. He draws on literary and sociological theory, as well as interviews with celebrity-industry workers, to untangle the paradoxical nature of an American popular culture that is both obsessively invested in glamour and fantasy yet also aware of celebrity's transparency and commercialism. Gamson examines the contemporary "dream machine" that publicists, tabloid newspapers, journalists, and TV interviewers use to create semi-fictional icons. He finds that celebrity watchers, for whom spotting celebrities becomes a spectator sport akin to watching football or fireworks, glean their own rewards in a game that turns as often on playing with inauthenticity as on identifying with stars. Gamson also looks at the "celebritization" of politics and the complex questions it poses regarding image and reality. He makes clear that to understand American public culture, we must understand that strange, ubiquitous phenomenon, celebrity.
What drives people to crave fame and celebrity? How does fame affect people psychologically? These issues are frequently discussed by the media but up till now psychologists have shied away from an academic away from an academic investigation of the phenomenon of fame. In this lively, eclectic book David Giles examines fame and celebrity from a variety of perspectives. He argues that fame should be seen as a process rather than a state of being, and that 'celebrity' has largely emerged through the technological developments of the last 150 years. Part of our problem in dealing with celebrities, and the problem celebrities have dealing with the public, is that the social conditions produced by the explosion in mass communications have irrevocably altered the way we live. However we know little about many of the phenomena these conditions have produced - such as the 'parasocial interaction' between television viewers and media characters, and the quasi-religious activity of 'fans'. Perhaps the biggest single dilemma for celebrities is the fact that the vehicle that creates fame for them - the media - is also their tormentor. To address these questions, David Giles draws on research from psychology, sociology, media and communications studies, history and anthropology - as well as his own experiences as a music journalist in the 1980s. He argues that the history of fame is inextricably linked to the emergence of the individual self as a central theme of Western culture, and considers how the desire for authenticity, as well as individual privacy, have created anxieties for celebrities which are best understood in their historical and cultural context.
"Newport, Rhode Island has been a city of innovation since its beginning nearly four centuries ago. Some of the claims on a national level are true, while some have been greatly distorted over the years. The freethinking citizens include the first to defeat a British squadron and the author of the first written constitution guaranteeing the right to religious freedom in world history. The first law banning the importation of Negroes in the colonies was enacted in the city, and the first Methodist church in the world with a steeple and bell is located here. But was the first female lighthouse keeper in America from here? Was Newport the first place where a medical lecture was given? Author and research historian Brian M. Stinson offers a chronological collection of vignettes detailing the city's many firsts." --
The historical and cultural context of fame in the twenty-first century Today, celebrity culture is an inescapable part of our media landscape and our everyday lives. This was not always the case. Over the past century, media technologies have increasingly expanded the production and proliferation of fame. Celebrity explores this revolution and its often under-estimated impact on American culture. Using numerous precedent-setting examples spanning more than one hundred years of media history, Douglas and McDonnell trace the dynamic relationship between celebrity and the technologies of mass communication that have shaped the nature of fame in the United States. Revealing how televised music fanned a worldwide phenomenon called “Beatlemania” and how Kim Kardashian broke the internet, Douglas and McDonnell also show how the media has shaped both the lives of the famous and the nature of the spotlight itself. Celebrity examines the production, circulation, and effects of celebrity culture to consider the impact of stars from Shirley Temple to Muhammad Ali to the homegrown star made possible by your Instagram feed. It maps ever-evolving media technologies as they adeptly interweave the lives of the rich and famous into ours: from newspapers and photography in the nineteenth century, to the twentieth century’s radio, cinema, and television, up to the revolutionary impact of the internet and social media. Today, mass media relies upon an ever-changing cast of celebrities to grab our attention and money, and new stars are conquering new platforms to build their adoring audiences and enhance their images. In the era of YouTube, Snapchat, and reality television, fame may be fleeting, but its impact on society is profound and lasting.
Fiction. Looking for a better life, Nora Simms sails from the East Coast to gold rush San Francisco with a plan for success: to strike it rich by trading on her good looks. But when a string of murders claims several of her fellow "women of ill fame," Nora grows uneasy with how closely linked all of the victims are to her. Even her rise to the top of her profession and a move to the fashionable part of town don't shelter her from the danger, and she must distinguish friend from foe in a race to discover the identity of the killer. "WOMAN OF ILL FAME deftly sidesteps all the hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold clichA[a¬As you think you see coming as it follows its heroine through the muddy two-fisted brawl that was gold rush San Francisco. The book starts with a bang, and for me it never lets up; I enjoyed the hell out of it"--Tamim Ansary
The battle to save the world is being joined by a powerful new group of warriors. Celebrities are lending their name to conservation causes, and conservation itself is growing its own stars to fight and speak for nature. In this timely and essential book, Dan Brockington argues that this alliance grows from the mutually supportive publicity celebrity and conservation causes provide for each other, and more fundamentally, that the flourishing of celebrity and charismatic conservation is part of an ever-closer intertwining of conservation and corporate capitalism. Celebrity promotions, the investments of rich executives, and the wealthy social networks of charismatic conservationists are producing more commodified and commercial conservation strategies; conservation becomes an ever more important means of generating profit. Celebrity and the Environment provides vital critical analysis of this new phenomena and argues that, ironically, there may be a hidden cost to celebrity power to individual's relationships with the wild. The author argues that whilst wildlife television documentaries flourish, there is a significant decline in visits to national parks in many countries around the world and this is evidence that t a time when conservationists are calling for us to restore our relationships with the wild, many people are doing so simply by following the exploits of celebrity conservationists.
The Acropolis in Athens has captured the imaginations of readers, writers and travellers for centuries and every year draws crowds from all over the world. One of the world's most famous heritage sites, it has long been a national monument of Greece and a potent symbol of western civilization. But the Acropolis is typically viewed in the context of 5th-century-BC Athenian society, while the multiple local and international meanings and identities that the site shapes today are overlooked. This book looks at the meaning of the Acropolis in contemporary Greece. How are global ideas adopted and adapted by local cultures? How do Greeks deal with the national and international features of their ancient classical heritage? How do the global cultural constructions surrounding the Acropolis become part of local practices which project Greek cultural difference?The author examines this historic site as a powerful agent for negotiations of power on an international level. Drawing from a wide range of sources as well as original fieldwork, this handsomely illustrated book will make compelling reading for anyone interested in heritage issues, archaeology, anthropology material culture studies, and tourism.
In contemporary society, the cult of celebrity is inescapable. Anyone can be turned into a celebrity, and anything can be made into a celebrity event. Celebrity has become a part of everyday life, a common reference point. But how have people like Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Bill Clinton or Princess Diana impressed themselves so powerfully on the public mind? Do they have unique qualities, or have their images been constructed by the media? And what of the dark side of celebrity – why is the hunger to be in the public eye so great that people are prepared to go to any lengths to achieve it, as numerous mass murderers and serial killers have done. Chris Rojek brings together celebrated figures from the arts, sports, politics and other public spheres, from O.J. Simpson and Marilyn Monroe to Hitler and David Bowie, and touches on many movements and fads, including punk, rock-and-roll and fashion. Rojek analyzes the difference between ascribed celebrity, which derives from bloodline, and achieved celebrity, which follows on from personal achievement - the difference between Princess Margaret and, say, Woody Allen. He also shows how there is no parallel in history to today's ubiquitous "living" form of celebrity, powered by newspapers, PR departments, magazines and electronic mass media.