Week 3
“Celebrity can also refer to astate of being or cultural phenomenon…” (Marwick, boyd 140). Interestingly enough, Marwick goes on to explore celebrity as a process in which the representation of one’s image becomes a commodity. What does this mean? There are many numerous examples of this in everyday life: famous people sell their image. For example, take the widely popular Kardashian family. They sell their image by broadcasting their day-to-day lives through Reality TV. And who watches the show? Millions and millions of people. How many Instagram followers do each of the Kardashian daughters have on Instagram, and who knows, even on Twitter? At least over 10 million each. Why? Because the family is marketed as a cultural phenomenon, as a commodity.
But is this dangerous, as Marwick and boyd point out? Is the “trivial, dangerous decadence of American culture” a pathology to the people who consume it (141)? American popular culture is all around us, on the Internet, on TV, even on that giant billboard you pass by while on the way to work everyday. Even new media and technology nowadays have allowed for interaction between celebrities and their fans—Twitter, for example, creates an invisible relationship of affiliation and intimacy. These are discrete symbols of celebrity stardom that unconsciously become embedded into our everyday lives. We idolize the representations of famous people, which eventually become a practice, as indicated by Marwick and boyd (141).
