Introduction

      In the twenty-first century, celebrity culture and celebrity journalism are everywhere: they are inescapable fixtures in our media landscape and our everyday lives. Celebrity culture has become a central, dominant, and structuring force in American life, leading some to note that our society has become “celebritized” or “celebrified.”1 Whether you’re standing in the checkout line at the supermarket or drugstore, checking your Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or Twitter feed, or, of course, simply turning on your TV, celebrities—the stories they tell, the stories about them—bombard us from every media outlet. The famous face is ubiquitous, it seems to spring up in every direction, an undeniable presence that surrounds and consumes us, as we consume it. While this is a revolution especially of the past twenty-five years, its origins go much farther back. This book provides an overview of that revolution, its repressed history, the underestimated cultural work it has done, its consequences, and especially the role that new communications technologies have played in enabling it.

      Yes, of course, from Mary Pickford to Bette Davis to Marilyn Monroe, stars claimed the center stage of American life in the twentieth century. But in 1980, only 19.9 percent of homes had cable TV (and most cable companies only offered up to twelve channels), the celebrity magazines had not yet gone through their rapid, multiple mitoses, there was no reality TV that instantly manufactured stars, there were not yet celebrity chefs and celebrity chief executive officers, and there was no Internet or social media. Now we have all these. Thus, the status of celebrity culture and gossip has changed dramatically, especially since the early twenty-first century. Celebrity culture and gossip, except for truly major, high-profile romances or divorces (like those between superstars Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in the 1960s and ’70s), were seen as down-market, trashy, irrelevant fare that educated or respectable middle-class people should avoid. But today these are impossible to avoid and, more importantly, knowing about celebrities—at least some of them anyway—is now an often necessary part of one’s cultural arsenal of knowledge. The tone has changed as well, especially with the multiplication of gossip magazines, blogs, and social media in the twenty-first century and their delight in scandal and often the derision of celebrities as well as the opportunity for us to feel closer to and even interact with those who are well known. What is the significance of all this, for us, and our society?

      Celebrity culture today consists of four major building blocks: the celebrity, of course, the media, the public, and the celebrity production industry, which consists of managers, agents, promoters, and some elements of the media, from gossip magazines to Instagram. Celebrity itself has typically involved four elements: a person, some kind of achievement, subsequent publicity, and then what posterity has thought about them ever since.2 Thus celebrity can be, of course, fleeting and banal: today’s star could easily be tomorrow’s has-been. But the fact of celebrity culture, its permanence and growth, the industry that supports it, the huge profits it generates, the distractions it provides—and promotes—these are no longer trivial. Celebrity gossip and culture used to be confined to fan magazines, a few tabloids, and certain TV talk shows. Now, celebrities and stories about them are everywhere, in the nightly news and in politics, on the covers of women’s and public affairs magazines, on reality TV shows and multiple, proliferating TV talk shows, and especially on our smartphones. Indeed, the country’s forty-fifth president was a former reality TV show star, who converted his status as a celebrity into political power. When what used to be more on the margins of the media becomes absolutely central to it, and thus to our culture, we need to understand how and why, and what the implications are for our society and for us as individuals.

      What, then, do we mean when we speak of a celebrity and why they can matter so powerfully to so many people? Celebrity derives from the Latin root celebrem, which suggests that one is celebrated, but also thronged, flocked by a crowd.3 Indeed, celebrities are persons who live their lives in the public eye; by definition, they are highly visible, known to many. Such mass visibility relies on and is made possible by the media; thus some have argued that celebrity is “essentially a media production.”4 More to the point, celebrity gives one a kind of capital, which accrues from “accumulated media visibility that results from recurrent media representations.”5 Celebrities are enviable because they are given greater presence, a wider scope of agency and activity in the world; they are allowed to move on the public stage while others watch.6 Celebrities are deferred to as unique, entitled individuals: they go to the head of the line, or don’t have to stand in one at all; they rise above the herd. They gain additional economic power by endorsing products and brands, and they are invited into expanded social networks, where they get to meet other powerful or famous people. Celebrity status confers upon a person not only economic power but also a certain discursive power. Celebrities have a voice above others—a voice that is legitimately significant. If an ordinary person seeks to bring attention to a national or international problem, few listen. When Oprah or George Clooney or Selena Gomez do or say something, they get a national and even international platform, and so the celebrity capital they possess can be converted into other kinds of capital—political, philanthropic, and the like.7 As the Harvey Weinstein scandals and #metoo movement dramatized, celebrity voices can bring attention to problems that have vexed everyday people for decades, in this case sexual harassment and misconduct.

      What is the difference between fame and celebrity? Being a celebrity today of course means being well known. But in ancient and medieval times, one could indeed be famous—as a king, queen, or emperor, as a successful military leader—but not necessarily constantly visible. When identities and social roles were quite fixed by birth and social position, and demarcated, between peasants, artisans, the aristocracy, and then royalty, there was a line of authority from top to bottom, with those at the bottom rarely seeing those at the top. Fame was reserved for those rare people who were known because of their hereditary positions or extraordinary achievements; there was an aura around them; they were remote and inaccessible. As the historian Neal Gabler has noted, “Indeed, fame was less likely to be sought than imposed as a consequence of accomplishment or office. In effect, it was a mantle one wore, not something one chased.”8 So fame rested on distance, deference to greatness (whether achieved or inherited), and often adoration. Compared to today there were very few outlets for widespread visibility. The proliferation of media and communications technologies beginning in the nineteenth century, especially those involving the mechanical reproduction of images like photography and film, changed all that and enabled the democratization of fame. The big change, as Gabler noted, is that now the whole point of being famous is visibility: “being seen on the right pages and at the right places with the right people. To hold yourself aloof seems pathological.”

      Today, some twenty-first-century celebrities, it is said, are famous simply for being famous. Scholars such as Leo Lowenthal argued that there exist different types of celebrities—some who are known for their hard work, talents, and achievements, and others who are infamous for their sensational lifestyles, scandals, and pure entertainment value.9 Chris Rojek divided celebrity status into three categories: ascribed, meaning you were born into fame, like a member of a royal family or child of a celebrity; achieved, meaning you earned it through admired accomplishments; and attributed, which is a media-generated fame, such as a reality TV star or someone involved in a scandal.10 Thus, while we may tend to think of celebrities as models of excellence—the smartest, fastest, and most beautiful, the most talented—they may also be models of scorn—the notorious, the wasteful, the failed. Still others consider them as mere irritants, purposeless chimeras.

      Celebrity culture is not only about the hallowed few who find the spotlight—it is also, perhaps especially, about the fans who consume it and the pleasures we find in that consumption. We relish the escape, the fantasies of wealth, beauty, and deference, and the ability to feel superior