The Cult of Contemporary Celebrity Essay - 1367 Words

Celebrity: (noun) 1. A well known person. 2. Fame, being famous. No doubt every simian tribe of hunter-gatherers had their local celebrities: the woman who gave birth to quintuplets, the boy who swallowed a porcupine and survived, the man who wrestled with a tyrannosaurus and... well, he probably would have died, but celebrity status would have been applied posthumously. nbsp;If, however, the man wrestling with a Tyrannosaurus was a modern Hollywood celebrity, not only would he have lived, he would have pocketed something like $20 million for his efforts, and earned the adulation of several billion people. The global celebration of modern celebrity is partly a product of our pre-historic need for heroes. In a world where†¦show more content†¦Information on celebrities is not only very popular with the general public, it also popular with journalists. Interviewing a movie star requires almost no effort. The celebritys publicist will provide you with every significant and insignificant detail of the celebritys life. All you have to do is read this information, interview the subject, cut and paste what the celebrity says so the interview has a coherent structure, and `bang, there is your thousand or two thousand word article. Because of this modern media frenzy there are as many divisions of Hollywood celebrity as there are bird species in the Amazon. As the dim-witted, obtuse and lethargic stars of Big Brother proved last summer - you dont need any skills to become a celebrity these days, you just need to be in the media. In Hollywood there are A-list commercial celebrities like Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and nbsp;Julia Roberts. There are your B-list celebrities like Ben Affleck, Kevin Kline and Uma Thurman (they might not have to audition for parts, but nor can they expect a fee any higher than a couple of million dollars.) 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