This book examines contemporary celebrity culture with an emphasis on how young celebrities are manufactured, how fan communities are cultivated, and how young audiences consume and aspire to fame.

The twenty-first century has seen an explosion in the ways and means in which children can become part of celebrity culture. With the rise in popularity of reality TV, child beauty pageants, talent shows, and social media platforms, as well as more established routes to fame through TV, cinema, theatre and music, the number of children establishing a presence in public life continues to proliferate. Childhood and Celebrity brings together international scholarly writing and research about famous children, and representations of childhood, from a range of disciplines including Childhood Studies, Celebrity Studies, Cultural Studies and Film Studies in order to open up a theoretical space in which to explore and understand the complex relationship between contemporary childhood and celebrity culture. This unique collection includes detailed case studies of specific child performers such as McCaulay Culkin and Miley Cyrus, histories of child stars in the ‘Golden Age’ of Hollywood, analyses of representations of children in film and discussions of children as media creators and producers. Key themes of transgression, gender, ‘coming of age’, childhood innocence and children’s rights recur in the chapters and present a compelling argument for the emergence of the field of Childhood and Celebrity as an area of study in its own right.

Celebrity, Aspiration and Contemporary Youth uses the lens of celebrity to explore how young people think about their futures under austerity. Based on an interdisciplinary study, the book offers fresh insights into contemporary youth aspirations and inequalities. It helps us to understand young people's transitions into adulthood at a time of socio-economic 'crisis'. Drawing on original data, the authors examine what it means for young people to be forming their aspirations within the context of 'austere meritocracy'. The book addresses three central questions: What kinds of futures do young people desire and imagine for themselves? What is required of young people in the process of achieving these futures? And how are inequalities embedded and reproduced within these? Using young people's 'celebrity talk' to explore their aspirations, the authors challenge stereotypes of young people as a fame-hungry, get-rich-quick generation. Instead, they show how young people engage critically with celebrity and its discourses. Key chapters focus on how young people talk about youth, work, authenticity, success, happiness, money and fame in relation to their own lives and those of celebrities. Each of these chapters contains a case study of an international celebrity, including, Beyoncé, Will Smith, Bill Gates, Prince Harry and Kim Kardashian. The authors conclude with possibilities for social change. They show that celebrity offers an important way of working with young people to critically explore what futures are possible and for whom.

What is celebrity? How do celebrities influence society? Why do we hang on their every word, tweet or status update? Celebrity Cultures offers a fresh insight into the field of celebrity studies by updating existing debates and exploring recent developments. From the PR campaigns of Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger as Governor of California, this book critically evaluates a number of diverse celebrity case-studies and considers what they reveal about contemporary global society. Taking into account issues such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, economics, politics and the media, the book draws upon a range of cultural theorists including Theodore Adorno and Jean Baudrillard. Over the course of ten richly illustrated chapters, the book: Draws upon sociology, cultural theory, media analysis and celebrity commentary to explore and re-evaluate the study of celebrity. Examines the international appeal of celebrity including examples from India, China, South Korea and Indonesia. Includes chapter introductions identifying key points and annotated further reading suggestions. Celebrity Cultures is an invaluable resource for students of celebrity, media and cultural studies.

Celebrity Culture and the American Dream, Second Edition considers how major economic and historical factors shaped the nature of celebrity culture as we know it today, retaining the first edition’s examples from the first celebrity fan magazines of 1911 to the present and expanding to include updated examples and additional discussion on the role of the internet and social media in today’s celebrity culture. Equally important, the book explains how and why the story of Hollywood celebrities matters, sociologically speaking, to an understanding of American society, to the changing nature of the American Dream, and to the relation between class and culture. This book is an ideal addition to courses on inequalities, celebrity culture, media, and cultural studies.

Simultaneously celebrated and denigrated, celebrities represent not only the embodiment of success, but also the ultimate construction of false value. Celebrity and Power questions the impulse to become embroiled with the construction and collapse of the famous, exploring the concept of the new public intimacy: a product of social media in which celebrities from Lady Gaga to Barack Obama are expected to continuously campaign for audiences in new ways. In a new Introduction for this edition, P. David Marshall investigates the viewing public’s desire to associate with celebrity and addresses the explosion of instant access to celebrity culture, bringing famous people and their admirers closer than ever before.

It is a truism to suggest that celebrity pervades all areas of life today. The growth and expansion of celebrity culture in recent years has been accompanied by an explosion of studies of the social function of celebrity and investigations into the fascination of specific celebrities. And yet fundamental questions about what the system of celebrity means for our society have yet to be resolved: Is celebrity a democratization of fame or a powerful hierarchy built on exclusion? Is celebrity created through public demand or is it manufactured? Is the growth of celebrity a harmful dumbing down of culture or an expansion of the public sphere? Why has celebrity come to have such prominence in today’s expanding media? Milly Williamson unpacks these questions for students and researchers alike, re-examining some of the accepted explanations for celebrity culture. The book questions assumptions about the inevitability of the growth of celebrity culture, instead explaining how environments were created in which celebrity output flourished. It provides a compelling new history of the development of celebrity (both long-term and recent) which highlights the relationship between the economic function of celebrity in various media and entertainment industries and its changing social meanings and patterns of consumption.