Claims to Fame Celebrity in Contemporary America

Name: Claims to Fame Celebrity in Contemporary America
Availability: InStock
ISBN: 9780520083530

ISBN-10: 0520083539

ISBN-13: 9780520083530

Edition: 1994

Authors: Joshua Gamson

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Moving from People magazine to publicists' offices to tours of stars' homes, Joshua Gamson investigates the larger-than-life terrain of American celebrity culture. In the first major academic work since the early 1940s to seriously analyze the meaning of fame in American life, Gamson begins with the often-heard criticisms that today's heroes have been replaced by pseudoheroes, that notoriety has become detached from merit. He draws on literary and sociological theory, as well as interviews with celebrity-industry workers, to untangle the paradoxical nature of an American popular culture that is both obsessively invested in glamour and fantasy yet also aware of celebrity's transparency and…

Book details

List price: $29.95
Copyright year: 1994
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 3/2/1994
Binding: Paperback
Pages: 270
Size: 6.00" wide x 9.00" long x 0.70" tall
Weight: 0.946
Language: English



List of Illustrations


Acknowledgments


Introduction: Explaining Angelyne



The Great and the Gifted: Celebrity in the Early Twentieth Century



The Name and the Product: Late Twentieth-Century Celebrity



Industrial-Strength Celebrity



The Negotiated Celebration



Props, Cues, and the Advantages of Not Knowing: Audiences in the World of Celebrity Production



Hunting, Sporting, and the Willing Audience: The Celebrity-Watching Tourist Circuit



Can't Beat the Real Thing: Production Awareness and the Problem of Authenticity



Believing Games


Conclusion: Celebrity, Democracy, Power, and Play


Appendix: Theoretical and Methodological Notes


Notes


Works Cited


Index