| Description |
xiii, 312 pages ; 21 cm |
| Contents |
Introduction: The Peach Basket -- 1.. Magic Bullets -- 2.. Where We Came In -- 3.. Where I Came In -- 4.. Super Hero, Super Victim -- 5.. The Politics of Illusion -- 6.. Heroic Figures, Heroic Numbers -- 7.. Coherent Lives -- 8.. The New Tyranny -- Afterword: Celebrity 2000 |
| Summary |
"Richard Schickel, who has been called "one of our most perceptive and connective critics," has written a knowing, witty, and alarming study of a public phenomenon that profoundly affects our private lives -- and our secret lives of dreams and fantasy. In trying to understand the power of celebrity in modern life, Mr. Schickel ranges through every realm of our culture -- film, theatre, television, literature, art, the media, pop music, politics -- for examples of how celebrity shapes our world and bends our minds. He considers the careers of figures as diverse as John Kennedy and Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Andy Warhol, among dozens of others. And he reflects on the dangerous, sometimes deadly political and social consequences of the fascinating, largely unacknowledged relationship between the famous elite and the unfamous majority. In demonstrating how the carefully fostered illusion of intimacy between these two groups has created a devastating confusion between public life and private life, in showing how the play of celebrity symbols has largely replaced the play of ideas in American society, Schickel takes us on a journey to the heart of contemporary darkness -- and offers, finally, a chilling warning about the psychopathic consequences of our national obsession with celebrity. In a new Afterword he shows how the new democratization of celebrity -- in the form of the Internet -- fits into his analysis. Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET |
| Notes |
Originally published: Garden City, N.Y. : Doubleday, 1985 |
| Subject |
Fame -- Social aspects -- United States.
|
|
Popular culture -- United States -- History -- 20th century.
|
| SUBJECT |
United States -- Social life and customs -- 1971- http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140543
|
| LC no. |
00043032 |
| ISBN |
1566633176 (acid-free paper) |
|
