A free preview collection of essays from Tom Payne, author of FAME We may regard celebrities as deities, but that does not mean we worship them with deference. From prehistory to the present, humanity has possessed a primal urge first to exalt the famous but then to cut them down (Michael Jackson, anyone?). Why do we treat the ones we love like burnt offerings in a ritual of human sacrifice? Perhaps because that is exactly what they are. In this collection of essays, Tom Payne -- of the website Popcropolis and the "trenchant, unsettling, and darkly hilarious" Fame (New York Times Book Review) -- draws the narratives of the past and the immediate present into one intriguing story. INCLUDES AN EXCERPT FROM FAME!

While the impact that legendary actors and actresses have had on the development of the Hollywood film industry is well known, few have recognised the power of movie fans on shaping the industry. This books redresses that balance, and is the first study of Hollywood's golden era to examine the period from the viewpoint of the fans. Using fan club journals, fan letters, studio production records, and other previously unpublished archival sources, Samantha Barbas reveals how the passion, enthusiasm, and ongoing activism of film fans in Hollywood's golden era transformed early cinema, the modern mass media and American popular culture.

In contemporary society, the cult of celebrity is inescapable. Anyone can be turned into a celebrity, and anything can be made into a celebrity event. Celebrity has become a part of everyday life, a common reference point. But how have people like Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Bill Clinton or Princess Diana impressed themselves so powerfully on the public mind? Do they have unique qualities, or have their images been constructed by the media? And what of the dark side of celebrity – why is the hunger to be in the public eye so great that people are prepared to go to any lengths to achieve it, as numerous mass murderers and serial killers have done. Chris Rojek brings together celebrated figures from the arts, sports, politics and other public spheres, from O.J. Simpson and Marilyn Monroe to Hitler and David Bowie, and touches on many movements and fads, including punk, rock-and-roll and fashion. Rojek analyzes the difference between ascribed celebrity, which derives from bloodline, and achieved celebrity, which follows on from personal achievement - the difference between Princess Margaret and, say, Woody Allen. He also shows how there is no parallel in history to today's ubiquitous "living" form of celebrity, powered by newspapers, PR departments, magazines and electronic mass media.

"The first American celebrity fashion designer of the twentieth century, Valentina lived on equal social footing with the high society and movie star clients she dressed a formidable claim when one considers that Norma Shearer, Marlene Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Gloria Swanson, as well as generations of Vanderbilts and Whitneys were all loyal Valentina customers. Presciently aware of the power of the media, Valentina s meteoric rise to fame and fortune in the 1940s helped to elevate the social status of the American fashion designer." "The first book fully dedicated to this fascinating woman s life and career, this volume includes many never-before-seen masterworks of photography, including platinum prints by Horst P. Horst, George Hoyningen-Huene, and Cecil Beaton, as well as original sketches, letters, snapshots, and ephemera from private collections around the world and the estate of Valentina Schlee." --Book Jacket.

On television, in magazines and books, on the internet and in films, celebrities of all sorts seem to monopolize our attention. Celebrity Society brings new dimensions to our understanding of celebrity, capturing the way in which the figure of ‘the celebrity’ is bound up with the emergence of modernity. It outlines how the ‘celebrification of society’ is not just the twentieth-century product of Hollywood and television, but a long-term historical process, beginning with the printing press, theatre and art. By looking beyond the accounts of celebrity ‘culture’, Robert van Krieken develops an analysis of ‘celebrity society’, with its own constantly changing social practices and structures, moral grammar, construction of self and identity, legal order and political economy organized around the distribution of visibility, attention and recognition. Drawing on the work of Norbert Elias, the book explains how contemporary celebrity society is the heir (or heiress) of court society, taking on but also democratizing many of the functions of the aristocracy. The book also develops the idea of celebrity as driven by the ‘economics of attention’, because attention has become a vital and increasingly valuable resource in the information age. This engaging new book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars in sociology, politics, history, celebrity studies, cultural studies, the sociology of media and cultural theory.

In this stunning book, photographer Brian Howell takes us into the world of celebrity impersonators--the faux famous people who make a living at pretending to be someone else. Taken at various impersonator conventions and stage shows throughout North America, the photographs are both startling and poignant--for all of the frivolity and double takes (''Isn't that Paris Hilton?'') there is also a sense of the real person beneath the makeup and the artifice. Accompanying the portraits are first-person narratives by many of the subjects, many of whom feel personally close to those they are impersonating, even if they have never met them. In addition, in two essays, cultural critic Norbert Ruebsaat looks at the history of celebrity culture, and Geist magazine editor Stephen Osborne delves into the nature of photographing impersonators. As such, the book investigates the nature of fame in this era of celebrity blogs, stalkerazzi, and reality television-and how our obsession with famous people says as much about us as it does about them.