Celebrity = "Celebrate Me"

When I was younger, like most naïve and overly-ambitions children, I dreamt of becoming either an astronaut or a celebrity. But couldn’t it be argued that an astronaut can also be a celebrity?

Marshall (2008, pp. 498) defines a celebrity as the ‘complex celebration of the individual’ which in any case can be applied to anyone whose accomplishments become distinguished either amongst or above others. In this sense I think it’s safe to say that Bruce Willis, otherwise his character Harry Stamper in the film Armageddon, justifies my point precisely.   
 

With contemporary culture becoming increasingly technology tolerant it was only a matter of time before celebrities and the like took to social media platforms to enhance their own exposure and gossip hype. Audiences are contagiously drawn into the glamourized red carpet world of the spectacular but also the ‘specular’ (Marshall, pp. 498). The ‘twoway mirror of projection on to the screen and the circulation… and interaction with those images and texts into the wider world’ (Marshall, pp. 498). This translates to the world of the celebrity who are consciously aware of their involvement as an actor but also as a perception held amongst the public persona.  

Audiences are now openly invited into the privatised, often intimate world of celebrities who have succumbed to ‘an emerging comfortability with a society of surveillance’ (Marshall, pp. 498). Various social networking sites such as Twitter allow for an informal exchange of ideas and information which creates a new relationship between celebs and fans as instigated through media technologies and new social trends.
 

 

 

 

Now in all honesty, who didn’t just read that captioned photo above in their best Sean Connery accent?

 

References:

Marshall, P.D 2008, ‘The Specular Economy’, Society. Vol. 47, No. 6, pp. 498-502.

Images sourced from Google > Images search engine database, retrieved 6 September 2012, <http://www.google.com.au/imgres?q=celebrity+meme&num=10&hl=en&biw=1366&bih=595&tbm=isch&tbnid=ioNR_HlE7AJPOM:&imgrefurl=http://mustachehunting.com/2011/06/14/sean-connery-meme/&docid=7OAMFtQS2ZjsfM&imgurl=http://bbac02.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/251003_10150616464750023_849185022_18825618_1563149_n.jpg&w=480&h=649&ei=D4NJUIuRMImkiQeS8oH4DA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=274&vpy=109&dur=6584&hovh=261&hovw=193&tx=82&ty=113&sig=110402164007182811584&page=1&tbnh=124&tbnw=90&start=0&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0,i:76>.