Simultaneously celebrated and denigrated, celebrities represent not only the embodiment of success, but also the ultimate construction of false value. Celebrity and Power questions the impulse to become embroiled with the construction and collapse of the famous, exploring the concept of the new public intimacy: a product of social media in which celebrities from Lady Gaga to Barack Obama are expected to continuously campaign for audiences in new ways. In a new Introduction for this edition, P. David Marshall investigates the viewing public's desire to associate with celebrity and addresses the explosion of instant access to celebrity culture, bringing famous people and their admirers closer than ever before.
Contents
Introduction to the Second Edition. Celebrity in the Digital Era: A New Public Intimacy
Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture
Preface
Part I
1. Tracing the Meaning of the Public Individuals
2. Conceptualizing the Collective: The Mob, the Crowd, the Mass, and the Audience
3. Tools for the Analysis of the Celebrity as a Form of Cultural Power
Part II
4. The Cinematic Apparatus and the Construction of the Film Celebrity
5. Television's Construction of the Celebrity
6. The Meanings of the Popular Music Celebrity: The Construction of Distinctive Authenticity
7. The System of Celebrity
Part III
The Embodiment of Affect in Political Culture
Conclusion: Forms of Power/Forms of Public Subjectivity
Coda: George, Celebrities, and the Shift in Political/Popular Culture
Notes
Index
