| Title | : | The Drama of Celebrity |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0691177597 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780691177595 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 328 |
| Publication | : | Published June 25, 2019 |
Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive?
In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable.
Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the “divine” Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era’s most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel.
Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.
The Drama of Celebrity Reviews
-
I didn't really too much for this one and is one of the few times where the cover of the book actually was better than the book itself (at least in my book picking experiences :D). Although it was still a pretty good book, it wasn't really about what the jacket or intro explained itself to be.
On description, the book was touted as going into "what makes a celebrity" as in why and/or how does one rise to the level of a celebrity. Pretty interesting, right? While the book does technically do that, it doesn't explain it from a cognitive sense. It doesn't explain why a lot of society is engrossed or obsessed with celebrities lives, nor does it provide many modern day examples of fandom with the exception of some small references to stars like Beyonce, Madonna, and the like. What the book is actually about in that sense is how it takes almost equal effort between the public, media, and the artist themself to rise them to the level of a celebrity, with most of the effort being carried out by the artist in a planned and deliberate way. It does this mostly by providing the rise of Sarah Bernhardt, one of the first play actors one can trace celebrity culture too. A pioneer of sorts.
What the book does do, rather well too, is provide a detailed history of celebrities and how the celebrity culture has changed or progressed rather, over time. In this sense the book was pretty interesting. It shows how the obsessions over the Kardashians or the rise of Donald Trump is in no way new or due to the internet's fairly new existence but rather just a evolved version of similar practices from our past.
All in all I'm unsure who I'd recommend this book to. It read much more like a college thesis or case study than it did an informational and entertaining book. It wasn't bad but I don't think it was good enough to really recommend either. -
2.5
Overall a pretty good primer on celebrity and parasocial relationship. It’s short and has points that are worth discussing and considering, even if there are parts where it feels like it only just scratch the surface instead of truly digging in deeper.
This is part because the book talks a lot about Sarah Bernhardt - and as a contemporary audience might not be entirely familiar with the actress, often has to explain the context of who Sarah Bernhardt is.
And I have to say that the use of Sarah Bernhardt as a case study is… an interesting choice, especially as the book seems to want to make a point that should be far more relevant to the contemporary audience.
On one hand, I do understand that, as using the long deceased Bernhardt gives the book much retrospective context and frees it up from any possible libel allegations.
On the other I think Sarah Bernhardt is a little too far in the past for the point of this book to really sink in for people who needs to hear it the most, due to an inherent level of denialism on their end.
But also ultimately, I don’t suppose those who are already deep in parasocialism would enjoy this kind of book. So that did leave a lot of questions on the target audience of this book.
(Me, who needs some easily digestible nonfiction to listen on audiobook format while working I guess..???) -
Drawing bit and pieces from critical theory, it's very much an unbearable mourning to address such fascinating topic. I suggest reading "Behave" from Robert Sapolsky, it's a more in-depth way to talk about social phenomenon, especially on obedience and pretty faces.
