Celebrity And Entertainment Obsession

Celebrity culture surrounds us. We are inundated with information about actors and actresses, athletes, musicians, and others who have become famous or infamous. Although we never will likely meet or get to know them, our interest in them seems boundless. We are literally obsessed with being entertained as well as with the people who entertain us. Who our celebrities are has also shifted; in the past, celebrity status was bestowed on men and women of great accomplishment, those who had given the world something to be proud of and to celebrate. Conversely, today’s celebrities are generally people involved in entertainment—from TV newscasters to people who appear on reality television programs, as well as some who are simply famous for being famous. What remains an enigma is why we, as a society, are so infatuated with being entertained, as well as with those who entertain us and appear in the media. This book makes sense of this spectacle by explaining the reasons for this obsession from a psychological, social, and historical perspective. It suggests that we have become addicted in much the same way that a person becomes addicted to drugs or alcohol. Finally, the author offers his observations on how to free our minds from this captivation. Anyone interested in understanding more about our need to live vicariously through the rich and famous will find answers in this book.

OVERCOMING CELEBRITY OBSESSIONis a star-studded journey from celebrity obsession to fulfilling life in three easy phases. When a fan is obsessed, a story character version of the celebrity is created. It is through the fans celebrity characterization that guides the fan through Phase 1. Upon understanding why the fan was obsessed in the first place, the journey through Phase 2 begins. This is the dark part of the fans life that the fan used the favorite celebrity to escape from. Professional counseling is not recommended in Phase 1, but can begin in Phase 2. In order to get the most from Phase 3, the fan must be able to look at parts of his or her real life and pull out the celebrity obsession. For example, every time someone couldnt communicate or understand me, I saw that as my John Travolta obsession. If I was not given a chance to help out during a particular event, that was my David Cassidy obsession. It is in Phase 3 where we discuss personal behavior and set goals both professional and personal. The typical celebrity obsession theory is, the obsession is because of hero worship. Until now, celebrity obsession therapy has been in the hands of professionals who have never lived through celebrity obsession. Typical celebrity obsession studies state, that obsessed people need to stop obsessing over celebrities and get on with life. Diane knows better than that. She believes the fan needs to take some time to celebrity obsess while inOVERCOMING CELEBRITY OBSESSIONin order to work through what is stopping the fan from getting the most out of life. Why would you want to put your celebrity obsession into the hands of someone with an advanced college degree or two, who has never been celebrity obsessed?

An analytical study of America's rabid fascination with the lives of celebrities draws on numerous personal interviews--with fans, Hollywood insiders, and would-be celebrities--to examine the psychological, sociological, and biological roots of the obsession, as well as its implications for modern life. By the author of Braving Home. Reprint.

Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive? In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable. Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era's most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel. Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.

Few features of contemporary American culture are as widely lamented as the public's obsession with celebrity--and the trivializing effect this obsession has on what appears as news. Nevertheless, America's "culture of celebrity" remains misunderstood, particularly when critics discuss its historical roots. In this pathbreaking book, Charles Ponce de Leon provides a new interpretation of the emergence of celebrity. Focusing on the development of human-interest journalism about prominent public figures, he illuminates the ways in which new forms of press coverage gradually undermined the belief that famous people were "great," instead encouraging the public to regard them as complex, interesting, even flawed individuals and offering readers seemingly intimate glimpses of the "real" selves that were presumed to lie behind the calculated, self-promotional fronts that celebrities displayed in public. But human-interest journalism about celebrities did more than simply offer celebrities a new means of gaining publicity or provide readers with the "inside dope," says Ponce de Leon. In chapters devoted to celebrities from the realms of business, politics, entertainment, and sports, he shows how authors of celebrity journalism used their writings to weigh in on subjects as wide-ranging as social class, race relations, gender roles, democracy, political reform, self-expression, material success, competition, and the work ethic, offering the public a new lens through which to view these issues.

This book offers rare insight into the world of celebrity and media in China and beyond, looking closely at the dynamics of stardom and celebrity endorsement and examining its marketing and media impact. Through interviews with celebrities and entertainment industry practitioners, the authors discuss the social, cultural and economic influences.

In this taut and thrilling debut, an unraveling woman, unhappily childless and recently separated, becomes fixated on her neighbor--the beautiful, famous actress. The unnamed narrator can't help noticing with wry irony that, though she and the actress live just a few doors apart, they are separated by a chasm of professional success and personal fulfillment. When an interaction with the actress at the annual block party takes a disastrous turn, what began as an innocent preoccupation spirals quickly, and lethally, into a frightening and irretrievable madness.

Whether you lust after it, loathe it, or feign apathy toward it, fame is in your face. Cintra Wilson gets to the heart of our humiliating fascination with celebrity and all its preposterous trappings in these hilarious, whip-smart, and subversive essays. Often radical and always a scream, Wilson takes on every sacred cow, toppling icons as diverse as Barbra Streisand, Ike Turner, Michael Jackson, and-for obvious reasons-Bruce Willis. She exposes events like the Oscars and even athletic jamborees as having grown a "tumescent aura of Otherness." Wilson's scathing and irresistible dissections of Las Vegas as "the Death Star of Entertainment," and Los Angeles as "a giant peach of a dream crawling with centipedes" pulse with her enlightened rejection of all things false and vain and egotistical. Written with her trademark zeal and intelligence, A Massive Swelling is the antidote for the fame virus that infects us all.