"In this context, a celebrity is nothing more than a person who is primarily known for being well-known... At the heart of this preoccupation with fame - this cult of celebrity - is the creation of instant celebrities through the launch of successful new television series, whose stars quickly became the flavour of the month in the tabloid press...
A former Guardian editor says 'the prominence given to television and entertainment personalities is perhaps the nearest thing to 'an opium of the people'. In this respect, popular television and the popular press feed off one another'. The cult of celebrity took over first the supermarket tabloids, then the British tabloids, finally making inroads into the establishment press...
A reporter who deserted the establishment press and jumped on the celebrity bandwagon at the outset of the phenomenon remembers how it all started: 'the celebrity worshipping syndrome spilled over from the US about fifteen, sixteen, maybe eighteen years ago, to Britain... It's now done in this perniciously personal style. They want to know who's getting fat, and who's freaky. And then who's on drugs and booze and whose life has crashed around them. And everybody now is confessing to have been on drugs and booze and that's worn out as impact. For Christ's sake, what do we do next? We've done their sexual stuff, we've done their drugs stuff, we've done their adultery, their diseases, we cannibalize them, we eat them up.'...
The last decade has seen the most exhaustive invasion of privacy in history, with the most intimate details of celebrities' personal lives flashed around the world... A reporter says 'I mean, when celebrities sell their wedding pictures for publication, as intimate an experience as you can have, and you sell it to a magazine, then you're strictly into a matter of commerce."
A fine portrait of the last few years, Heat, Kerry Katona, Jade Goody, hand-wringing from the Guardian and all. Only this is from Shock! Horror! The Tabloids in Action by S.J.Taylor, published in 1991, and the decade she's talking about is the 1980s.
2 comments:
Yes, but it's not really invasion of privacy, when celebrities choose to sell/provide access to their personal lives, is it?
privacy never really existed ! It's just that peoples interests have changed !Everything has a "price", the problem is finding it. Remember,in times of powerful technology it's still easier to manipulate a man than a machine :)
Post a Comment