The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption

by Daniel Herwitz

Princess Diana, Jackie O, Grace Kelly& mdash;the star icon is the most talked about yet least understood persona. The object of adoration, fantasy, and cult obsession, the star icon is a celebrity, yet she is also something more: a dazzling figure at the center of a media pantomime that is at once voyeuristic and zealously guarded. With skill and humor, Daniel Herwitz pokes at the gears of the celebrity-making machine, recruiting a philosopher's interest in the media, an eye for society, and a love of popular culture to divine our yearning for these iconic figures and the role they play in our lives.

Herwitz portrays the star icon as caught between transcendence and trauma. An effervescent being living on a distant, exalted planet, the star icon is also a melodramatic heroine desperate to escape her life and the ever-watchful eye of the media. The public buoys her up and then eagerly watches her fall, her collapse providing a satisfying conclusion to a story sensationally told& mdash;while leaving the public yearning for a rebirth.

Herwitz locates this double life in the opposing tensions of film, television, religion, and consumer culture, offering fresh perspectives on these subjects while ingeniously mapping society's creation (and destruction) of these special aesthetic stars. Herwitz has a soft spot for popular culture yet remains deeply skeptical of public illusion. He worries that the media distances us from even minimal insight into those who are transfigured into star icons. It also blinds us to the shaping of our political present.

Genres: Nonfiction

176 pages, Hardcover

First published September 12, 2008

Reviews

[Marjanne]

This wasn't necessarily a bad book. I found it rather dull and often asked myself the question "What is this guy trying to say again?" I think the author is attempting to discuss celebrity in an academic way, but it really doesn't work (at least they way he is approaching it). In the end, I don't think he made his point or that he revealed anything about why people make icons out of some celebrities.

[Phyllis Ogle]

"The Star as Icon: Celebrity in the Age of Mass Consumption" by Daniel Boorstin is a seminal work in the field of celebrity studies. The book explores the phenomenon of celebrity culture, focusing on the ways in which celebrities are constructed, consumed and commodified in modern society.

Boorstin's analysis is wide-ranging and insightful, examining the historical roots of celebrity culture, the rise of the mass media, and the impact of technology on the production and dissemination of celebrity images. He also explores the psychological and sociological aspects of celebrity worship, arguing that the desire for celebrity status is rooted in our need for identity, validation and meaning.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book is Boorstin's discussion of the "pseudo-event" - a concept he coined to describe the artificial events created by the media to generate news and keep the public interested. He argues that celebrities are often the focus of such events, and that they are complicit in their own commodification. https://celebageinfo.com/

Overall, "The Star as Icon" is a fascinating and thought-provoking read. Boorstin's insights into the nature of celebrity culture are still relevant today, and the book provides a valuable framework for understanding the role of celebrity in contemporary society. Highly recommended for anyone interested in popular culture, media studies, or sociology.

[Gloria Kim]

Gets better as you press on, especially his notes on television's impact on reality, but his obsession with Diana's tragically beautiful physiognomy at the beginning of the book was odd.

[Tara]

The fabulous cover image made me think that this book was going to cover a range of icons, and it does, but a lot of the book was focused on Princess Diana - a woman who had a starlike aura, yet emerged in the era when the old star system was being replaced by a more disposable celebrity culture. Herwitz touched on the duality of celebrity, its appeal and its superficiality - and argued that the star as icon grew as a reaction to our secular, consumer society. It is an amusing book and he made some good points, but it didn't really go anywhere and I felt that he was sometimes too eager to prove his ironic distance from the subject matter, which ultimately made his book less persuasive than it might have been.

[Simone Collins]

I detested this book. I know that sounds rather harsh, but the style just rubs me the wrong way.
I swear, it reads just like THIS (http://rts.lunistice.com/part1/1_24.html) to me!
I wanted to learn something. I didn't learn a thing- save that the author loves to talk about stars and how we're obsessed with them.

[Jen]

Agree with reviewer before me. This is only coherent in small bursts. I'm not quite sure what I was meant to be learning from reading this book. (To be fair, I skim-read much of it)