The history of celebrity: from Bernhardt to the Kardashians
the-tls.co.uk
the-tls.co.uk
Braudy’s hypothesis is the celebrity has always been an inherently quasi-religious phenomenon. Religious only in the sense though of being post-death or of having an afterlife. Attaining celebrity is a transcendent goal in each generation a few can reach.
Every era of society has a means of attaining life in the next world. This is often seen as the ultimate purpose / highest goal one can achieve. The best way to attain this is being known in eras beyond the one you live in. Sometimes this is via extreme piousness (sainthood), military and political conquest (history), or in modern conceptions, being so extremely known in the present it simulates a forever-knowing effect through everyone-knowing.
Wish I could describe it better, but here is the book: https://www.amazon.com/Frenzy-Renown-Fame-Its-History/dp/067...
Certain actors, like Keanu Reeves. Tom Hanks etc. first get a good guy reputation, then they become like celebrity saints. First they probably were just a good guys, but now it has become a marketing angle that affects their actions.
Afterlife is after all, nothing more than being remembered by those who are still around. The ancient Egyptian pharaohs, particularly Tutankhamen achieved it well. Just not as they imagined it all those years ago.
With MTV giving birth to Micheal Jackson and Madonna the Celeb-industrial complex understood its potential. And here we are 40 years later with a large part of the world run by Celebrities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jackson_5
He was 6 at the time.
MTV started almost two decades later.
That was the groundbreaking event that changed everything. The video was as important as the single. Every act from that day on wanted to duplicate or surpass "that video". The Buggles "Video Killed the Radio Star", was a hit in 1979. It was used unchanged in MTV's launch transmission two years later.
Music programmes were increasingly built around videos and clips, rather than performances. You'd get mostly videos with perhaps just one or two acts miming along to their single, or playing in the studio. By 81 all significant releases came with a video. MTV was just a place to play them back to back. Videos were very well established and expected by then. Which is no doubt why MTV launched.
Video certainly changed style over the 80s, and every other decade, just as they had 1975-81, but what doesn't evolve over a decade? The 80s brought more emphasis on production and direction. By the mid and late 80s videos were being shot on film, ran longer with far bigger budgets. Acts were starting to be created for video first, and with MTV and other music programmes in mind.
Of course they were a chance to be creative and have fun as well, but that can be the case for any promo material. The thing with MTV was that it was such a low cost concept for a network. Instead of paying for programming like most TV, music videos were essentially free (if not sold to the network in a reversal of the typical TV transaction).
It was like a paid infomercial for bands and albums, except actually entertaining in its own right.
Funny, I get exactly the opposite impression - that celebrities are just distractions to keep people entertained ...
A safe assertion, I guess, given the number of the living who have seen Bernhardt perform.
I hadn't even been aware of Sarah Bernhardt until a couple of months ago, when I visited the Alphonse Mucha museum in Prague. It was she who essentially launched his career in art, by commissioning him to make posters for her performances. And through his art, I could feel her personality reaching across time to me. I'm not sure if I'd actually like her performances, but she felt like someone with skill at holding attention, that's for sure.