Celebrity Nation

March 1, 2023
Why the adulation of celebrities is a recipe for social decay. One of the most eye-popping facts in this book is that Kim Kardashian has 326 million followers on Instagram as of September 2022. This simple data point shows the level that celebrity culture--i.e., being famous mainly for being famous--has reached in the U.S. and the world. Jones is a former editor of People magazine, a publication that played a role in building the celebrity machine, although now he has a jaundiced view of the whole business. The author identifies Elizabeth Taylor as one of the first to turn her life into a curated performance. After she stopped making movies, she generated millions of dollars in endorsements and eventually her own product line, which set a pattern for future generations. The big change, notes Jones, came with the social media revolution and the scale it provided. "The marriage of social media with celebrity culture was made in branding heaven," he writes. "Just as the broad reach of television had once overshadowed the traditional legacy print media, so too did social media offer unparalleled reach, frequency, and intimacy, especially to younger consumers." Paris Hilton was one of the first to grasp the potential of social media and understood that even the occasional scandal could be good for business. There were a host of imitators, and the formula worked best if it included a touch of vulnerability, which helped the manufactured image of authenticity. Jones points to surveys showing that many teenagers count being famous as their life goal, which underlines how celebrities have elbowed aside people of actual accomplishment. A few celebrities have used their profiles and wealth for good works. Jones hopes that this will become more common, but he doesn't sound convinced. However, the author provides a solid examination of how we got here. A disquieting, well-researched exploration of the celebrity phenomenon and its consequences for our society.

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March 1, 2023

Jones (William Clark and the Shaping of the West) utilizes his background as the former managing editor of People magazine to probe how celebrity worship has shaped political and cultural landscapes, as well as individual lives. This is a well-researched, astute examination of the blurred lines between heroes and celebrities. The book's narrative and plot points are immensely readable, but perhaps a little too linear and thesis-driven for the shapeshifting nature of celebrities. The author rightly argues that people are made and unmade by the willingness to do anything for fame, and many often lose their humanness and transform from enviable into exorable. The book covers a vast amount of ground and draws on a mix of academic studies and less scholarly sources to showcase the ubiquity of fame and its impact. The end result is a fascinating look at a theoretical concept, made real by the examples the author is so deeply fluent in from his years at People. VERDICT Although the ending is a little too simplistic, this book could spark debate in university classrooms or at dinner tables, where the abundance of celebrities and celebrity podcasts suits U.S. tastes as much as apple pie.--Emily Bowles

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March 27, 2023
In this hit-or-miss survey, former People magazine editor Jones (Great Expectations) contends that “the preoccupation with romanticizing celebrity has led to a coarsening of American culture” and a shift away from the “harder-won values of heroes—accomplishment, achievement, selflessness, inspiration.” There was a time, Jones recalls, when celebrity and heroism were more closely intertwined, and the book’s most successful sections detail the author’s encounters with Elizabeth Taylor, Princess Diana, and other famous figures who used their renown as a force for good. Though Jones acknowledges that the rise of social media has helped diversify “the halls of celebrity,” he takes a dim view of such stars as Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton, for whom “becoming a celebrity was not an achievement but rather a condition—the condition of being talked about.” Other topics include the role of 19th-century theatrical portraits in fostering “the primacy of the celebrity image,” the rise of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop and other celebrity brands, and the advent of CGI influencers like Miquela Sousa, whose Instagram account describes her as “a 19-year-old Robot living in L.A.” Though Jones is an astute chronicler of celebrity culture, his observations don’t quite gel into a cohesive thesis. Still, gossip hounds will have much to chew on.