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Critical Cultural Communication
Celebrity
The historical and cultural context of fame in the twenty-first century
Today, celebrity culture is an inescapable part of our media landscape and our everyday lives. This was not always the case. Over the past century, media technologies have increasingly expanded the production and proliferation of fame. Celebrity explores this revolution and its often under-estimated impact on American culture. Using numerous precedent-setting examples spanning more than one hundred years of media history, Douglas and McDonnell trace the dynamic relationship between celebrity and the technologies of mass communication that have shaped the nature of fame in the United States.
Revealing how televised music fanned a worldwide phenomenon called “Beatlemania” and how Kim Kardashian broke the internet, Douglas and McDonnell also show how the media has shaped both the lives of the famous and the nature of the spotlight itself. Celebrity examines the production, circulation, and effects of celebrity culture to consider the impact of stars from Shirley Temple to Muhammad Ali to the homegrown star made possible by your Instagram feed. It maps ever-evolving media technologies as they adeptly interweave the lives of the rich and famous into from newspapers and photography in the nineteenth century, to the twentieth century’s radio, cinema, and television, up to the revolutionary impact of the internet and social media.
Today, mass media relies upon an ever-changing cast of celebrities to grab our attention and money, and new stars are conquering new platforms to build their adoring audiences and enhance their images. In the era of YouTube, Snapchat, and reality television, fame may be fleeting, but its impact on society is profound and lasting.
Today, celebrity culture is an inescapable part of our media landscape and our everyday lives. This was not always the case. Over the past century, media technologies have increasingly expanded the production and proliferation of fame. Celebrity explores this revolution and its often under-estimated impact on American culture. Using numerous precedent-setting examples spanning more than one hundred years of media history, Douglas and McDonnell trace the dynamic relationship between celebrity and the technologies of mass communication that have shaped the nature of fame in the United States.
Revealing how televised music fanned a worldwide phenomenon called “Beatlemania” and how Kim Kardashian broke the internet, Douglas and McDonnell also show how the media has shaped both the lives of the famous and the nature of the spotlight itself. Celebrity examines the production, circulation, and effects of celebrity culture to consider the impact of stars from Shirley Temple to Muhammad Ali to the homegrown star made possible by your Instagram feed. It maps ever-evolving media technologies as they adeptly interweave the lives of the rich and famous into from newspapers and photography in the nineteenth century, to the twentieth century’s radio, cinema, and television, up to the revolutionary impact of the internet and social media.
Today, mass media relies upon an ever-changing cast of celebrities to grab our attention and money, and new stars are conquering new platforms to build their adoring audiences and enhance their images. In the era of YouTube, Snapchat, and reality television, fame may be fleeting, but its impact on society is profound and lasting.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
326 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 2019
About the author
Susan J. Douglas
14 books79 followersSusan J. Douglas is a prize-winning author, columnist, and cultural critic, and the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at The University of Michigan. Her book Where the Girls Are was widely praised, and chosen one of the top ten books of 1994 by National Public Radio, Entertainment Weekly and The McLaughlin Group. In her most recent book, Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism’s Work Is Done (Henry Holt, 2010) Douglas continues her analysis of the mixed messages surrounding women, and the struggle she sees in the media between embedded feminism on the one hand and enlightened sexism on the other. And she takes on the myth that women “have it all” and that full equality for women has been achieved. She has lectured at colleges and universities around the country, and has appeared on The Today Show, The CBS Early Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Working Woman, CNBC's Equal Time, NPR's Fresh Air, Weekend Edition, The Diane Rehm Show, Talk of the Nation, and Michael Feldman’s Whad’ya Know.
She is also the author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women (with Meredith Michaels, The Free Press, 2004); Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Times Books, 1999), which won the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture, and Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins, 1987). Douglas has written for The Nation, In These Times, The Village Voice, Ms., The Washington Post and TV Guide, and was media critic for The Progressive from 1992-1998. Her column “Back Talk” appears monthly in In These Times.
Douglas is the 2010 Chair of the Board of The George Foster Peabody Awards, one of the most prestigious prizes in electronic media, which recognize distinguished achievement and meritorious service by radio and television networks, stations, producing organizations, cable television organizations, websites and individuals. In 1999 she was also named an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor for excellence in undergraduate education. She has a daughter, Ella, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband, T.R. Durham.
She is also the author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women (with Meredith Michaels, The Free Press, 2004); Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Times Books, 1999), which won the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture, and Inventing American Broadcasting, 1899-1922 (Johns Hopkins, 1987). Douglas has written for The Nation, In These Times, The Village Voice, Ms., The Washington Post and TV Guide, and was media critic for The Progressive from 1992-1998. Her column “Back Talk” appears monthly in In These Times.
Douglas is the 2010 Chair of the Board of The George Foster Peabody Awards, one of the most prestigious prizes in electronic media, which recognize distinguished achievement and meritorious service by radio and television networks, stations, producing organizations, cable television organizations, websites and individuals. In 1999 she was also named an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor for excellence in undergraduate education. She has a daughter, Ella, and lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband, T.R. Durham.
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