Celebrity

History

The condition of being well-known is immemorial: dramatists and philosophers earned reputations for their wisdom, and political and military leaders for notable achievements since the growth of Aegean city-states from 900 BCE. Homer, Pythagoras, and Plato remain canonical figures. Alexander the Great commemorated victories over the Persian Empire by naming cities in his honor: the Egyptian port Alexandria was founded in 332 BCE. Alexander has been identified by Leo Braudy, in his The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History (1986) as the first figure to foment his own fame.

[Page 150]Certainly, famous people appear throughout history; indeed, the way we study history is principally through the decisions and deeds of the famous. But celebrities index a particular type of historical context, one in which fame and accomplishments are decoupled. Some scholars argue that this is not unique to the late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. “In the first half of the eighteenth century a process occurred by which a nascent culture of celebrity began to form side by side with an existing culture of fame,” recorded Stella Tillyard in her work “Celebrity in 18th-Century London” (2005, 22). She identifies three specific sets of circumstances: a weak English monarchy with limited moral authority, the lapsing of legislation controlling the numbers of printing presses, and, to some extent, printing itself, “and a public interested in new ways of thinking about other people and themselves” (22).

Combined with limited prohibition on libel and the proliferation of places of entertainment, these led to a culture in which the casual and unconstrained conversation we now know as gossip about others' lives, public and private, became a kind of right of citizenship. There is a resemblance to the social conditions that underlay the growth of celebrity in the 1990s: (1) a loss of confidence in traditional leadership, (2) a multiplication of global media channels, and (3) an uncommon interest in the personal and hitherto confidential affairs of other people.

Voyeurism/Performance

As the authority and indeed credibility of established leaders receded, consumers searched for newer sources of inspiration. They found them amid the burgeoning media channels filled with inexpensive content culled from music videos, talk shows, and what was once called light entertainment. In another era, prying into those aspects of another's life considered private might be unwholesomely voyeuristic, even prurient. Yet, in this field of inquiry, the media found a new resource; and, during the 1990s, more invasive forms of journalism gave rise to a new type of figure for which impertinent inquiries became a necessary condition. To be a celebrity, one required others to take an interest in one's personal affairs. Those others were the consumers known as fans.

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