In this fascinating and topical beginners guide, Ellis Cashmore explores the intriguing issue of celebrity culture: its origins, its meaning and its global influence. Covering such varied perspectives as fame addiction, the ‘celebrification’ of politics and celebrity fatigue, Cashmore analyzes the relationship celebrity has with commodification and the consumer society, and investigates the new media and the quest for self-perfection. Cashmore takes readers on a quest that visits the Hollywood film industry of the early twentieth century, the film set of Cleopatra in the 1970s, the dressing room of Madonna in the 1980s, the burial of Diana in the 1990s, and the Big Brother house of the early 2000s. Author of Beckham and Tyson, Cashmore collects research, theory, and case studies en route as he explores the intriguing issue of celebrity culture: its origins, its meaning, and its global influence. Including reviews of existing literature, and an outline of key contemporary topics, this absorbing book skilfully explains why we have become so captivated by the lives and loves of the celebrity and, in so doing, presents the clearest, most comprehensive, wide-ranging, and accessible account of celebrity culture to date.

What is celebrity? How do celebrities influence society? Why do we hang on their every word, tweet or status update? Celebrity Cultures offers a fresh insight into the field of celebrity studies by updating existing debates and exploring recent developments. From the PR campaigns of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California, this book critically evaluates a number of diverse celebrity case-studies and considers what they reveal about contemporary global society. Taking into account issues such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, economics, politics and the media, the book draws upon a range of cultural theorists including Theodore Adorno and Jean Baudrillard. Over the course of ten richly illustrated chapters, the book: Draws upon sociology, cultural theory, media analysis and celebrity commentary to explore and re-evaluate the study of celebrity. Examines the international appeal of celebrity including examples from India, China, South Korea and Indonesia. Includes chapter introductions identifying key points and annotated further reading suggestions. Celebrity Cultures is an invaluable resource for students of celebrity, media and cultural studies.

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, Second Edition considers how major economic and historical factors shaped the nature of celebrity culture as we know it today, retaining the first edition’s examples from the first celebrity fan magazines of 1911 to the present and expanding to include updated examples and additional discussion on the role of the internet and social media in today’s celebrity culture. Equally important, the book explains how and why the story of Hollywood celebrities matters, sociologically speaking, to an understanding of American society, to the changing nature of the American Dream, and to the relation between class and culture. This book is an ideal addition to courses on inequalities, celebrity culture, media, and cultural studies.

In this fascinating and topical beginners guide, Ellis Cashmore explores the intriguing issue of celebrity culture: its origins, its meaning and its global influence. Covering such varied perspectives as fame addiction, the 'celebrification' of politics and celebrity fatigue, Cashmore analyzes the relationship celebrity has with commodification and the consumer society, and investigates the new media and the quest for self-perfection. Cashmore takes readers on a quest that visits the Hollywood film industry of the early twentieth century, the film set of Cleopatra in the 1970s, the dressing room of Madonna in the 1980s, the burial of Diana in the 1990s, and the Big Brother house of the early 2000s. Author of Beckham and Tyson, Cashmore collects research, theory, and case studies en route as he explores the intriguing issue of celebrity culture: its origins, its meaning, and its global influence. Including reviews of existing literature, and an outline of key contemporary topics, this absorbing book skilfully explains why we have become so captivated by the lives and loves of the celebrity and, in so doing, presents the clearest, most comprehensive, wide-ranging, and accessible account of celebrity culture to date.

The interrelationship between fashion and celebrity is now a salient and pervasive feature of the media world. This accessible text presents the first in-depth study of the phenomenon, assessing the degree to which celebrity culture has reshaped the fashion system. Fashion and Celebrity Culture critically examines the history of this relationship from its growth in the 19th century to its mutation during the twentieth century to the dramatic changes that have befallen it in the last two decades. It addresses the fashion-celebrity nexus as it plays itself out across mainstream cinema, television and music and in the celebrity status of a range of designers, models and artists. It explores the strategies that have enabled visual culture to recast itself in the new climate of celebrity obsession, popular culture and the art world to respond adaptively to its insistent pressures. With its engaging analysis and case studies from Lillian Gish to Louis Vuitton to Lady Gaga, Fashion and Celebrity Culture is of major interest to students of fashion, media studies, film, television studies and popular culture, and anyone with an interest in this global phenomenon.

Haven’t we all seen a Black Panther movie and listened to at least a few Harry Styles tunes? Who hasn’t seen a Taylor Swift video? Or can’t name an incident or two involving the Kardashians? Popular fascination with the rich and famous is an inescapable part of contemporary consumer culture. Celebrity Culture is a comprehensive yet accessible survey of the pervasive phenomenon. This new edition of the textbook is fully revised and updated, incorporating up-to-date examples, case studies and additional features, including a timeline and retrospections at the end of chapters. Whilst recognizing that celebrities have existed for centuries, Cashmore argues that celebrity culture in the 21st century is a novel and unique phenomenon driven by rampant consumerism, advertising and the media. He describes the evolution of a new kind of fame, the growth of consumerism, the rise of the paparazzi, the fluctuating value of sex scandals, the transmutation of blackness, the metamorphosis of the British royal family, the emergence of influencers, the appeal of celebrity couples, the increased visibility of queer culture, the transformation of politics, the reconstruction of talent and the attempts of theories to grasp celebrity culture’s magnetism. Celebrity Culture will appeal to a wide undergraduate audience throughout the social sciences and humanities.

An analysis of the cult of celebrity in modern society.

The collection of essays in the book moves from the largest domain of celebrity culture in India – Bollywood – through celebrity life writing and biopics and, finally, to the politics of and by celebrity culture. The book begins with an exploration of films made around celebrity victims to the vernacular cosmopolitanism of Bollywood stars’ philanthropic and humanitarian work and, finally, to celebrity charisma and its role in the current era of ‘post-truth.’ Two studies of celebrity biopics and auto/biographies – from sports stars to Bollywood stars – and their disease memoirs are included. Finally, a section of essays are devoted to celebrity cultural politics, including Indian writing as a celebrity, the Narmada River as a celebrity, the desacralization of celebrity statues, Arundhati Roy’s celebrated and celebrity activism and the self-fashioning of Indian authors in the age of digital culture.

This volume explores the topics relating to celebrity culture by presenting varied expert opinions that examine many of the different aspects that comprise this issue.

It is a truism to suggest that celebrity pervades all areas of life today. The growth and expansion of celebrity culture in recent years has been accompanied by an explosion of studies of the social function of celebrity and investigations into the fascination of specific celebrities. And yet fundamental questions about what the system of celebrity means for our society have yet to be resolved: Is celebrity a democratization of fame or a powerful hierarchy built on exclusion? Is celebrity created through public demand or is it manufactured? Is the growth of celebrity a harmful dumbing down of culture or an expansion of the public sphere? Why has celebrity come to have such prominence in today’s expanding media? Milly Williamson unpacks these questions for students and researchers alike, re-examining some of the accepted explanations for celebrity culture. The book questions assumptions about the inevitability of the growth of celebrity culture, instead explaining how environments were created in which celebrity output flourished. It provides a compelling new history of the development of celebrity (both long-term and recent) which highlights the relationship between the economic function of celebrity in various media and entertainment industries and its changing social meanings and patterns of consumption.