The Theater of Public Life: Celebrity Culture as a Tool of the Modern Media

Abstract

Celebrity culture holds a sinister mirror to Western society. Although we question our para-social relationships to celebrities as their heightened distance between us and them seem's to exceed further and further throughout the decades, we must wonder what the intention of social figures functions means to us. Through historical, social, and various cultural analysis I seek to understand what celebrity means, and how it has become adapted as a tool of the media.