The Psychology of Celebrity

Gayle Stever

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351252089
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicologia
• Subtopic: Storia e teoria della psicologia

Why are we fascinated by celebrities we've never met? What is the difference between fame and celebrity? How has social media enabled a new wave of celebrities?

The Psychology of Celebrity explores the origins of celebrity culture, the relationships celebrities have with their fans, how fame can affect celebrities, and what shapes our thinking about celebrities we admire. The book also addresses the way in which the media has been and continues to be an outlet for celebrities, culminating in the role of social media, reality television, and technology in our modern society.

Drawing on research featuring real life celebrities from the Kardashians to Michael Jackson, The Psychology of Celebrity shows us that celebrity influence can have both positive and negative outcomes and the impact these can have on our lives.

1

Celebrity

An introduction

The last 20 years have seen an ever-increasing interest in celebrity, particularly by academic scholars. A brand new academic journal called Celebrity Studies debuted in 2010. On the inside cover of this journal it says, “Celebrity Studies is a journal that focuses on the critical exploration of celebrity, stardom, and fame. It seeks to make sense of celebrity by drawing upon a range of interdisciplinary approaches, media forms, historical periods, and national contexts.” In the inaugural issue, Graeme Turner (2010) discussed why such a journal was needed and in this discussion, he explicates reasons that are very similar to why this book is needed, principally that celebrity has our attention and drives our consumption in a 21st-century media-dominated world.

Celebrity inhabits mediated space. Without conversations about celebrities (some would call it “gossip”), there is no fame or celebrity, and without a medium within which to hold the conversations, celebrity simply does not exist. Celebrity is a social thing. It does not exist in isolation.

Defining celebrity

A great deal has been written about celebrity, particularly in the most recent 20 years (which at this writing is 1998 to 2018), but it is still difficult to lock down a succinct definition of celebrity.

The notion of celebrity isn’t simply being known or “famous,” but rather why a person is known. Karen Sternheimer (2015) defines celebrity as “anyone who is watched, noticed and known by a critical mass of strangers” (p. 2). Celebrity is delineated as an interest in the person’s personal life.

Celebrity: state vs. trait

In most writings about celebrity, the word is used as a noun. A person is a celebrity. But what if we thought of celebrity, not as a noun, but rather as a characteristic of an individual, an adjective? We could then talk about celebrity in the same way other characteristics of individuals are discussed. There is a common thread in personality research that tries to differentiate states vs. traits. For example, is extroversion a trait of an individual, as in “Joe is an extrovert?” Or is it a state as in “Helen is in an extroverted mood today?”

Using the word “celebrity” in this way, we could talk about a person’s celebrity as being a state that is potentially transient. Rather than a person being a celebrity, a person can be in a state of celebrity, or could potentially possess the trait of celebrity. Brad Pitt is a celebrity, and that is liable to be a constant trait for him as he has been famous for a very long time. But some individuals are in a state of celebrity that may be here today and gone tomorrow, although transient celebrity is something that most often exists only at the lower levels of the celebrity hierarchy, e.g., single events such as those that happen with a rescue or other single heroic act (van de Rijt, Shor, Ward, & Skiena, 2013).

Celebrities are those who draw our attention

Van Krieken (2012) has suggested that in our complex society, attention is a scarce resource. There are so many things to draw our attention, that where we invest it has to be selective. Celebrities are those who, through unique characteristics or accomplishments or behaviors, draw our attention. When the individual has succeeded in drawing our attention, we could say that the person is in a state of celebrity, or is being celebrated, either for accomplishments or for other unique and attention-drawing characteristics. Sometimes attention is drawn for simply having certain characteristics as in the case of Oscar Wilde, who in the 19th century set out to gain attention by being as outrageous as possible. Wilde achieved a state of celebrity long before he had really accomplished anything that was worthy of fame. For a famous person (achieved celebrity), the attention comes after something has been accomplished, but for those individuals for whom attention is the goal, sometimes nothing whatsoever really has been accomplished but rather the person has used various means to draw attention. This is celebrity without fame, fame being distinguished as being known for a noteworthy accomplishment of some kind. The Kardashians are the most often cited example of attention seekers who have not accomplished much, but they are far from the only ones doing this.

More often a person becomes a celebrity after having achieved fame such as the case of Charles Lindbergh where he became a celebrity after achieving the first transatlantic flight, but Oscar Wilde is an example of someone who achieved celebrity and then after he was already well known, wrote books and plays for which he is known today. Would his plays have been noticed had he not been known? This is a difficult question, one that is not easy to answer, but it is easy to speculate that they might not have been.

Fame and celebrity: the same or different?

One important distinction in some of the writings on this subject is the difference between celebrity and fame. It might seem like a simple thing to say, “Celebrities are people who are famous,” but upon careful analysis, that isn’t such a simple thing to say after all. Let’s consider why.

Rojek (2001) is identified in multiple sources (e.g., Luckhurst & Moody, 2005) as first making clear the distinctions among ascribed, achieved, and attributed celebrity. The first is fame by virtue of birth, the second by virtue of renown or accomplishment, and attributed celebrity is that situation where a person is “known for well- knownness” (Boorstin, 1961, p. 57).

Turner (2004) concurred with a distinction between celebrity and other forms of renown: “We can map the precise moment a public figure becomes a celebrity. It occurs at the point at which media interest in their activities is transferred from reporting on their public role … to investigating the detail of their private lives” (p. 8).

Giles (2000) has developed a taxonomy of fame, in which he described four types of fame: public figures (roles such as political or public service roles), fame based on merit (fame through enduring achievement), show-business stars (singers, actors, etc.), and accidental fame (such as fame through association or through being in the right place at the right time). He then enumerated levels of fame from domain specific (within a particular group), to fame in the local community, to national, and then international fame. He conducted a study with 160 undergraduate students that showed the robustness of his model, with most celebrities fitting easily into the levels and categories proposed.

Driessens (2013) pointed out the confusing use of terms and the disagreement among scholars about meanings, and that each scholar who has written about celebrity has stressed different meanings. For example, Dyer (2004) and also Marshall (1997) have focused on celebrity as a commodity, while Couldry (2003) focused more on celebrity as a creation of media. Among many writers there appears to be a disagreement as to whether or not new forms of celebrity make it more democratic or rather just create new status hierarchies.

Some of the vocabulary used in the study of celebrity can be challenging. For example, let’s take the words “celebritization” and “celebrification.” Driessens (2013) pointed out that these words are confused through much of the writings on celebrity (Gamson, 1994; Turner, 2004), and determining what each term means and how it differs from the other takes some explanation. According to Driessens, “celebritization” happens when a field of study or cause draws on prominent people in order to bring that cause or area to public attention. When environmental activists concerned with global warming used the celebrity of figures like Al Gore, Leonardo di Caprio, or Mark Ruffalo to promote their cause, that field was said to be celebritized (Boykoff & Goodman, 2009). “Celebrification” happens when an ordinary individual becomes a celebrity. One other way to look at these two terms is to note that celebrification happens to an individual, whereas celebritization happens to a group.

One of the struggles when writing about celebrity and fame is to try to keep the terms distinct when, in fact, they really are a part of one another. Many writers use the terms interchangeably. In this discussion I will try to maintain the distinction between fame as achieved celebrity as opposed to celebrity as ascribed or attributed. If this isn’t clear to you, that’s OK. It isn’t always clear to everyone else either! But here is an example to help.

An example of fame vs. celebrity

To recap, in order to have a celebrity, you must have an audience or public, because one is defined in relation to the other. The words “fame,” “renown,” or even “achieved celebrity” are used to talk about a person who is well known for an outstanding accomplishment. “Celebrity” is reserved for knowing about a person’s personal life and behavior apart from the initial action that brought them to our attention. A person can be both famous and a celebrity, or one or the other (or neither).

The example I found that made this most clear to me was an article written by Trevor Parry-Giles (2008) on the subject of United States President John Adams. Parry-Giles takes David McCullough (2002) to task for his biography on Adams, alleging that he “promotes this founder’s celebrity rather than his meritorious fame” (p. 83). According to this historian, one can look at Adams in terms of the things he accomplished, the things for which he is best known, his presidency, his part in the Declaration of Independence, his foreign diplomacy, political philosophy, and other accomplishments central to the history of the country. But instead McCullough champions Adams on a personal level, relying on the “affective rhetorics of praise and admiration that dominate contemporary celebrity politics” (p. 88). To state that Adams contributed in a major way to the drafting of the Declaration of Independence is to focus on a thing for which he is famous. But to say that Adams was a great guy, a good husband, a passionate defender of the country, and an all-around good person is to focus on his person rather than on his accomplishments. This would appear to be what differentiates celebrity from fame.

Is celebrity a strictly modern phenomenon or has it existed in complex societies throughout history?

A number of scholarly books have been written that focus on the history of celebrity including those by Braudy (1997, Inglis (2010), and Cashmore (2014). In each of these discussions, some overall themes emerge with respect to how to divide human history into distinct eras of celebrity.

Some writers believe that celebrity was a 20th-century invention (e.g., Schickel, 2000), but many others feel that the celebrity dates back to Alexander, The Great (Braudy, 1997) or the Caesars (Garland, 2010), in other words to 60 BC or even earlier.

Others argue that celebrity as we know it today emerged in 1660 with actors achieving star status in the theater in London (Luckhurst & Moody, 2005), and also later on Broadway in New York City (Gabler, 1995). With the rise of visual media, including photographs, the era of “the image” was born (Boorstin, 1961), with the advent of silent films in 1902 bringing image fame to a much higher level. Stars like Greta Garbo and Charlie Chaplin became instantly recognizable in this era.

20th-century celebrity

Also prevalent in the early 20th century were popular radio broadcasts and the stars who were featured on them. The “talkies” (films with sound) began an era of major film stars who were promoted by large studios like MGM (Gardner, 1990). Television begins another distinct era, with celebrities entering the intimacy of our living rooms and making us feel “at home” with them (Horton & Wohl, 1956). “In 1945, there were probably fewer than 10,000 sets in the country. This figure soared to about 6 million in 1950, and to almost 60 million by 1960” (The World Book Encyclopedia. Chicago: World Book Inc., 2003: 119). In the 1980s, a shift away from mass media and towards specialized media markets meant there were many more celebrities, but it became harder and harder for an individual celebrity to captivate the entire marketplace.

The culture of celebrity

Almost one century ago, a novel system of social status emerged in human history. From its beginnings on the coasts of North America, it grew into a global hierarchy, entwining itself into huge spheres of the social world. By the late 20th century, members of the high-status group had come to expect obsequious deference, exact significant financial tribute, and lay claim to legal privilege, as aristocratic and caste elites did in earlier centuries. But the new status system was different. It was born out of capitalism and mass media, and its dynamics reflected the conditions of the modern era. This system is called celebrity.

(Kurzman et al., 2007, p. 347)

There are a number of points to be made about this paragraph that make it worth quoting in its entirety. First of all, it highlights an aspect of one disagreement amongst scholars as to when “celebrity” began. Individuals who meet the definition of celebrity go back at least as far as Alexander, the Great. Garland (2010) framed his discussion of celebrity using examples from ancient history and emphatically maintained that “the phenomenon of celebrity culture is by no means peculiar to our age” (p. 484). In creating his argument, he enumerated specific psychological factors contributing to the creation of celebrity that have existed throughout recorded human history. These included the desire for recognition, the desire to be remembered, the desire for wealth, sex, and power, and in many cases, an altruistic motive to promote causes that the celebrity believed to be important. He applied all of these factors to the case of Emperor Augustus in ancient Rome.

But “celebrity society,” (Van Krieken, 2012) a culture dominated by the status hierarchy that is determined specifically by being a member of an elite class of people who are well known and talked about, dates back to the early 20th century. While celebrities certainly were identified in the 1700s and 1800s (Brock, 2006; Luckhurst & Moody, 2005), the dominance of celebrity culture as the defining aspect of status in society is a much more recent development.

What emerged in the 20th century was celebrity-driven culture and not the concept of celebrity. Celebrities had been around for a long time, but the focus on celebrity as a driving cultural and economic force was perpetuated by mass media, in particular visual mass media, which originated and proliferated mostly in the 20th century with the introduction of film, television, and ultimately the Internet.

Previous incarnations of celebrity were spawned from the photograph, the monument, the printed word, and other “slower” forms of media. An example of this was Abraham Lincoln, the first president to be recognized for his face because of widely circulated photos (Braudy, 1997). The greater speed with which fame could be achieved and communicated with the advent of moving pictures was what made the 20th-century phenomenon different.

The era of mass media began with industrialization (Toffler, 1980) so it might make sense to draw a connection between the industrialized beginnings of mass media and celebrity. The invention of the printing press formally marks, at the very least, the potential for mass media and that was about 1440. Luckhurst and Moody (2005) traced the derivation of critical terms, noting that the term “fame” was used as early as 1290 and that “famous” gained recognized usage in the Shakespearean era. Celebrate, celebrity, and celebrated all first appeared around the 1600s. They differentiated the term “notoriety” as being associated with being known as the result of controversy and scandal.

Driessens (2013) pointed out that “little attention has been paid to the prevalence of celebrity in previous epochs” (p. 644) and took exception to Schickel’s (2000) assertion that celebrity is a 20th- century phenomenon. Graeme Turner (2004) asserted, Braudy “is one of the … few to have addressed contemporary celebrity … by insisting on its continuity with earlier versions of fame” (p. 9), given that others position modern celebrity as fundamentally a phenomenon of the mass media (Rojek, 2001). Those who agree with him include Barry (2008), Gledhill (1991), Sternheimer (2015), Mole (2009), as well as Luckhurst and Moody (2005). Perhaps the problem was the lack of distinction made between individual celebrities who are common in early history, as opposed to the celebrity society described by Van Krieken (2012).

Celebrity and the rise of industrial society

All of the preceding discussion is related to Alvin Toffler’s (1990) theory about power shifts (covered more thoroughly in Chapter 2). He explains that at the beginning of human history, power was determined by physical strength. With the shift to industrial society, power also shifted to a society based on material wealth. During the third wave of change, which he identified as being roughly in the 1970s and 1980s (Toffler, 1980), power shifts once again from physical might, to wealth to a third arena – information. Recall that we have said that “celebrity” is determined by the allocation of a limited resource called “attention.” These are two ways of saying a similar thing as status conferred by those who command our attention, and power based on information are two sides of the same angle.

The individual celebrity has been around for many centuries, but a social structure that glorifies renown has happened mostly with the advent of mass visual media. Many famous people were launched...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• 1 Celebrity: an introduction
• 2 Psychology and celebrity: social science theories
• 3 Celebrity vs. fame
• 4 Challenges of life as a celebrity
• 5 Celebrities and their fans
• 6 De-massification of media and the birth of social media
• Epilogue
• Further reading
• References