Free Daily Reads 2022: Article 216

Article Title: Celebrity matters

Article Summary

In the article at issue, the author tries to find out the meaning and implications of the term ‘celebrity’, and the cause for its relevance. On the basis of examples of ‘celebrity’ figures at different times in history, she concludes that ‘celebrity’ is much more a concept than a person. The kind of image a figure provides to society, through means like the mass media, is what contributes to the celebrity of a person, which explains why notorious people were more often considered celebrities than respectable ones. The reason was that celebrities, contradictory in being both relatable and ideal, wanted to make us live lives like theirs, and the infamous had much more interesting lives. Celebrity culture does not possess that contradiction alone – it also creates people who are iconoclasts and notorious but are pillars of society. The author also delves into the origins of celebrity in the article, and decides on the 18^th or/and 19^th centuries to have inaugurated this trend, as celebrity is created by mass appeal and consumption, which industries began around then. In the 20^th century, the trend became increasingly more inflated in proportion. The last question the author tackles is why people engage with celebrities at all – whether negatively or positively. She finds that it is because people want to be relevant and adored, too.