The Drama of Celebrity

by Sharon Marcus

Overview

A bold new account of how celebrity works

Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive?

In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable.

Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the "divine" Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era’s most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel.

Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691177595
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	06/25/2019
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	2.70(w) x 4.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sharon Marcus is the Orlando Harriman Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She is a founding editor of Public Books and the author of the award-winning Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England (Princeton) and Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century Paris and London. Twitter @MarcusSharon

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

1 Defiance 21

2 Sensation 45

3 Savagery 68

4 Intimacy 94

5 Multiplication 120

6 Imitation 148

7 Judgment 171

Merit 194

Conclusion 215

Acknowledgments 221

Notes 223

Bibliography 275

Illustration Credits 297

Index 299

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"[An] inventive, stimulating book. . . . Marcus is a brilliant theorist and analyst of theater history."—Elaine Showalter, New York Times

"Sharon Marcus's book is a tour de force."—Jonathan Margolis, Jewish Chronicle

"I love the book."—Radhika Jones, WBUR's On Point

"In lucid prose, [Marcus] describes celebrity as a drama with three main characters: celebrities, the public that adores and judges them, and the media producers who exalt, criticize and satirize."—Irina Dumitrescu, Times Literary Supplement

"Utterly brilliant. Marcus travels back to the nineteenth century and returns bearing a high-definition mirror for our own celebrity-driven era. She maps the dynamics of fame, reveals their consistency through time, and teaches us how to better inhabit our mediated world today. No fan could ask for more."—Fred Turner, author of The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties

Editorial Reviews

…[an] inventive, stimulating book…By highlighting Bernhardt's agency and stamina, Marcus aims to overturn the elite intellectual position that the media is largely responsible for creating celebrities who are mere commodities; she wants to challenge the perception that 21st-century celebrity is "synonymous with an empty renown that has no basis in merit or achievement."

The New York Times Book Review - Elaine Showalter

"[In The Drama of Celebrity], Marcus challenges everything that has been thought about the obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories told about celebrities and fans. The result: A high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable."

Society’s Books of Note

"[An] inventive, stimulating book. . . . [Sharon] Marcus is a brilliant theorist and analyst of theater history."—-Elaine Showalter, New York Times

From the Publisher

"Olivia Vinall delivers an engaging narration of Marcus's exhaustive research on the origins of modern celebrity culture . . . [her] pace and tone are just right for this fascinating investigation of celebrity in our media-driven world."

Audiofile Magazine

"[In The Drama of Celebrity], Marcus challenges everything that has been thought about the obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories told about celebrities and fans. The result: A high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable."

Society’s Books of Note

2019-03-10
Fame and the famous are put in perspective in this insightful and often entertaining take on celebrity.

Given the author's scholarly credentials—Marcus (Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England, 2007, etc.) is a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and a founding editor of the book review website Public Books—some readers may expect an erudite work that drains the fun and color from a take on fame. Though there are instances of overly academic language—e.g., "defiant celebrities speak to a paradoxically social investment in fantasies of anti-social autarky"—for the most part, the author's heavily researched observations (notes and bibliography total more than 75 pages) both divert and provoke. Fleshing out her basic point that fame results from a confluence of the public, media, and celebrities, Marcus follows Marilyn Monroe taking her fight with Twentieth Century Fox to her fans as well as news stories of fans stampeding and endangering the public at an early Elvis Presley concert in Vancouver. The linchpin of the author's study is French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, a master of self-promotion. To the shelves of works about Bernhardt, Marcus brings a singular take—richly illustrated throughout by reproduced drawings, paintings, and photographs—that fascinates as it explains her concepts of celebrity. She also makes it clear that the idea of fandom existed long before the E! network, People, and other media thrived on it. Marcus effectively breaks down her broad topic into considerations of intimacy, sensation, imitation, and other elements she sees as components of her subject. In one of the book's most impressive discussions, the author defines what some consider undefinable: She suggests that star quality can be defined not as some vague interior quality but rather something concrete that results from "arresting facial expressions, vocal acrobatics, and extravagant, riveting body movements."

Marcus ably shows why and how celebrities are not like you and me.

Kirkus Reviews