Analysis Of Graeme Turner 's Understanding Celebrity

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

According to Webster dictionary, a celebrity is defined as a famous or celebrated person. Celebrities serves as role models, heroes, cultural commentators, charity spokespeople, and political candidates. An exploration of celebrity culture uncovers changing conceptions of legitimacy, authority, and credibility at play in our culture (The Hedgehog Review, 2005) .There is a celebrity culture that has engulfed Canada, and indeed North America for a while now because celebrity culture is alluring, even to those who are embarrassed to admit it. There has been increasing infiltration of celebrity culture into politics. The media might have deliberately and unwittingly contributed in perpetuating this celebrity culture.

Media sensationalism creates an interesting phenomenon; more often than not, the comments made by varying levels of popular culture stars become catch phrases, buzz words, and the be-all end-all definition of an individual. These occurrences happen, for better or worse, and an individual becomes intrinsically linked to those statements for the rest of their living life and well after. Sometimes these comments are uplifting and promote the betterment of man; but sometimes they serve to berate or belittle a group as well, often times with very little thought being put into what has been disseminated. In either case, they are merely the opinions of an individual who happens to be famous. At times, the subject of opinion may hold little

When talking about celebrity culture as a para-religion, Ward refers to the ideas of sociologists and authors such as Emile Durkheim and David Chidester,

The article describes how children are impacted by popular culture and how popular culture has an effect on their identities and personalities through those celebrity.

This picture is a perfect portrayal of celebrity culture in today’s era. The desire to be virtually ‘connected’ and share everything in one’s life is the new trend. And this has resulted from the constant competition from the new community of ‘microcelebrities’, which is based on achieving fame through broadcasting oneself through media. One of the demeaning aspect of the picture is the lack of genuineness and enforcement of stylish lifestyle on the audience which makes it loose the emotional quotient.

Hollywood is a very powerful modern day institution, where a star's image can characterize, shape and circulate societal myths and ideologies. The construction of a star's image as a commodity of their societal myths and ideologies has the extraordinary power to exert messages so that even the smallest details become significant yet not overtly obvious. How a star's image is produced and then consumed can justify a society's relationship with that image and therefore aid in explaining the social construction of what society deems as their 'reality'. A star's image is created through a range of representations churned out by Hollywood. Capitalism from the commercialization of these images has made Hollywood the dominant force it is

A celebrity’s power plays a major part in influencing modern culture. Society regards celebrities as highly important, serving as arbiters to current trends all over the world. Famous icons are powered by electronic media. Children and adolescents idolise the icons of the moment thus imitating their style or behaviour. In the video clip “Stupid Girls” Pink, a world-renowned pop artist, addresses the distinct womanly actions placed in society.

Ever since the start of commercial radio in the 20’s and the since the first silver screen entered the market, broadcasting messages by celebrities has been a tool employed to endorse products.”Just about every star was associated with one sponsor’s product he or she plugged.”(1). Over the years celebrity endorsement became an essential part of marketing (more than 25% of television ads feature celebrities)(5), for the endorser it became an easy way of generating an income while for the endorsing company it became a guaranteed way to reach a wide segment of potential clients.

A star’s image is a concept carefully molded by the celebrity himself or herself with the aid of many factors such as audience reception and current ideological trends. Star image, by definition, given by O’Shaughnessy and Stadler, is “the qualities, ideals, and values that a star represents, based on their films and other performances, and on media information circulated about them” (430). A change of star image encompasses the sum of everything we, as in the audience, affiliate with that star. That means changing the star’s body of work, promotion, publicity, and audience practices. These factors put together is also known as star text (Professor Josh Jackson, September 8, 2016, University of California, Berkeley). Jennifer Lawrence had a particular star text before she took on the role of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games and was instead known for her role of Ree Dolly in Winter’s Bone. This new role launched Lawrence into a different star text she was previously known for. Though it seemed like the change is solely based on her landing an already popular role, the change in her star text is still calculated in order for her to maintain a certain image that landed her at the top of the celebrity social ladder. This careful manipulation of a celebrity’s image as she takes on a role that guaranteed a big impact on her acting career demonstrates how a star’s image is important when it comes to maintaining what the celebrity, and everyone who is working with that

Celebrities are everywhere in the news, the latest gossip appears in the weekly magazines without fail. Whether they be an actor, athlete, dancer, designer, model, singer or just rich; there is someone out there who is watching that person like a hawk, not letting a single breath go unnoticed. Such is the life of the rich and famous, under the incessant gaze of journalists and the paparazzi. Lives that many people take a great interest in and admire to the point where others would liken this great interest and admiration to a cult-like worship of celebrities. This is a brief description of what I think to be celebrity culture.

As I read through this verbose chapter I began to pick up on the dominating themes of celebrity culture and their development over time. I consider myself somewhat of a celebrity super fan but as I read I realized I have never dove deeper into the meaning of celebrity but merely skimmed the surface. During my perusal of the chapter many thought-provoking concepts jumped out at me.

The survey results shows us that 77.3% of the participants do not encourage celebrity worship in which most of them agree that something must be done to stop celebrity worship. However, I also noticed that even though some participants said that they do not encourage worship, a few of them said that they have a celebrity they worship. This tells us that despite them not encouraging celebrity worship, they still worship a celebrity. From this research, people can now understand why it is not good to worship celebrities and those who actually worship them would know more about it. The participants that do not encourage celebrity worship agreed with me that celebrity worship is unhealthy and can cause fans to become overly obsessed over their

Have you ever wondered what influences us to behave the way we do? Look a certain way? Or even looked for an explanation to what causes us to apply a certain perspective regarding personal and controversial issues? One of the answers to these questions may revolve around the influence we absorb from celebrities. A definitive term for celebrity is an iconic figure to a category or group who has achieved success in one or multiple aspects of their lives. As a result, these individuals have drawn in publicity and fame. Over the years with the advances in media and other forms of communication, celebrities have become topics of discussion worldwide, rather if it’s at school, with colleagues or at the dinner table, it is fair to say that

Today public figures such as celebrities are looked up to by people of all ages. Often viewed as role models, celebrities appear on television with the entire world watching, and are known for their wealth, talent and fame. A role model is defined as “A person who serves as an example of the values, attitudes, and behaviors associated with a role. ” ("Role model." Definition 1. Web). Whether celebrities enjoy being in the spotlight or not, they are looked up to by millions of people around the world and thus have a social obligation to behave well. Such role models have an effect on the lives of people in society as they have the ability to shape the views, ideas, and actions of their fans. It is important for celebrities to be positive and responsible in displaying good morals and values because many individuals are dependent on the media role models of today. Because of the large role celebrities play in society they should be obligated to be positive and influential role models.