Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940

Rating:
Summary: Simply stunning!
Review: This is a brilliant book on a subject that we often dismiss as trivial. Remarkably, as you read Ponce de Leon's history of the evolution of celebrity journalism, you realize that most of the strategies the celeb followers and creators employed 100 years ago are still being used today in People, Sports Illustrated and similar magazines. Equally fascinating is the way more astute (or malleable?) celebrities learned to adapt to the culture of celebrity and present themselves in a certain manner so as to fit the necessary mold. (Witness the way Katherine Hepburn posed as an everyday woman with the same concerns as any other homemaker during the 1930's -- the truth was probably very different.) Mr. Ponce de Leon's first book is an engaging and penetrating critique into the ways in which celebrities are presented -- and present themselves -- and how the entire notion of celebrity is manipulated in ways that are designed to reaffirm middle class mores.

Rating:
Summary: Simply stunning!
Review: This is a brilliant book on a subject that we often dismiss as trivial. Remarkably, as you read Ponce de Leon's history of the evolution of celebrity journalism, you realize that most of the strategies the celeb followers and creators employed 100 years ago are still being used today in People, Sports Illustrated and similar magazines. Equally fascinating is the way more astute (or malleable?) celebrities learned to adapt to the culture of celebrity and present themselves in a certain manner so as to fit the necessary mold. (Witness the way Katherine Hepburn posed as an everyday woman with the same concerns as any other homemaker during the 1930's -- the truth was probably very different.) Mr. Ponce de Leon's first book is an engaging and penetrating critique into the ways in which celebrities are presented -- and present themselves -- and how the entire notion of celebrity is manipulated in ways that are designed to reaffirm middle class mores.