Preliminary Thoughts on Celebrity

I'm posting below the thirteen "Preliminary Thoughts on Celebrity" that I sent you earlier. I would like you to add one or more "preliminary thoughts" of your own in your own post. Be brave! Don't worry if you're right or wrong or whether or not the point you're making applies in all cases. The object here is to come to a better understanding of the phenomenon of celebrity culture, and to that end, you can learn as much from generalizations that miss the mark as from those that hit the mark. Getting an initial assertion out there to look at and consider allows us to evaluate it and, if appropriate, refine the point. So give it a try!

1.  Heroes and saints attain their status by embodying unique qualities and performing extraordinary deeds (even if those qualities and deeds are of an absolutely familiar type). This is not a requirement of celebrity status. Celebrities can become celebrities without being anything or doing anything extraordinary.

2. Someone can become a celebrity without having any inherently extraordinary qualities and without having accomplished anything in his or her life. The central fact of celebrity is that a person’s talent is separate from his or her status as a celebrity.

3. A celebrity is someone who is recognized.

A celebrity is someone who is recognized by a large number of people.

A celebrity is someone who is recognized by a large number of people whom the celebrity does not recognize.

A celebrity is someone who is known for being recognized (or who is recognized for being known).

4. In defining celebrity in terms of “being recognized for being known,” I am borrowing from a ‘famous’ phrase by Daniel Boorstin: “A celebrity is someone who is famous for being famous.”

I have altered Boorstin’s phrase to do two things:

1) To emphasize the importance of recognition as a process;

2) To emphasize the two stages of this process: being recognized and being known for being recognized.

5. Celebrities are people who are stared at. They are stared at not for anything they have done, but because they have been seen elsewhere. Celebrities are people about whom other people say, “I know him from some place.” “I’ve seen him on TV.”

6. However one first becomes recognized, attaining celebrity status is dependent upon being seen at events and in the public spaces where other celebrities are seen.

7. The presence of celebrities ensures that the media will be present at the event.

8. The relationship of the media and the celebrity is a symbiotic and mutually-sustaining one. The media creates the environment within which celebrities are created: no media, no celebrity. The opposite is also true: the media needs celebrities to ensure that they have an audience.

9. While in the past, involvement in a scandal would generally have brought public censure, it is no longer a necessary detriment to the celebrity’s career.

10. There are at least three levels or statuses associated with contemporary celebrity: celebrities, stars, and superstars. Attainment of celebrity transcendence is marked by instant, global recognition in multiple countries and languages, and those who have attained this status can often be identified by a single name: Brad, Madonna, Messi, Hillary...Apollo, Aphrodite, Hermes, Athena…

11. The vast majority of would-be celebrities end far short of permanent attainment of celebrity status and enshrinement in the celebrity pantheon. Even most of those who actually achieve their proverbial ‘15 minutes of fame’ are then condemned to live in the faint afterglow of their brief moment in the spotlight.  

12. Fame has its opposite – infamy – which imputes a moral value to fame. The structural opposite of celebrity is anonymity, and, in that sense, it has no moral connotation.

13. The Pillars of Celebrity Culture:

1. Public (in all its forms: The Public, Public Places, Publicity, Public Relations)

2. Performance

3. Pleasure

4. Profit

5. Print

6. Pictures

7. Promiscuity