EBOOK
About
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
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. "[An] inventive, stimulating book. . . . [Sharon] Marcus is a brilliant theorist and analyst of theater history."---Elaine Showalter, New York Times "[An] insightful and often entertaining take on celebrity. . . . 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." "Marcus's study of Bernhardt, a Jewish actress, is remarkable. Even though this is an academic text, it reads so well. And wow, could we read a bajillion more books on Sarah Bernhardt!!!"---Emily Burack, Alma "Marcus's great achievement here is that she leads us on a journey of understanding celebrity and stardom with a richer history than we are often want to take."---D. Gilson, Lambda Literary "The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus is a hybrid of biography and sociological treatise on one of the most important phenomena of modern times . . . why we are attracted to - or, conversely, repulsed by - celebrity culture."---Kitty Kelley, Washington Independent Review of Books "[An] insightful and engaging examination of celebrity culture . . . Marcus augments her analysis by drawing on types of sources that are rarely used, such as scrapbooks, letters and life writing produced by fans of celebrities. The inclusion of normally neglected voices adds richness and depth to this work, ensuring it is more comprehensive than most earlier studies of this intriguing subject."---Eleanor Fitzsimons, Literary Review "You don't have to be into celebrity culture to appreciate this readable study."---Steven Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald "I love the book." "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 . . . The star of the book is Sarah Bernhardt . . . The book reproduces a rich trove of archival material which, if it does
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. "[An] inventive, stimulating book. . . . [Sharon] Marcus is a brilliant theorist and analyst of theater history."---Elaine Showalter, New York Times "[An] insightful and often entertaining take on celebrity. . . . 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." "Marcus's study of Bernhardt, a Jewish actress, is remarkable. Even though this is an academic text, it reads so well. And wow, could we read a bajillion more books on Sarah Bernhardt!!!"---Emily Burack, Alma "Marcus's great achievement here is that she leads us on a journey of understanding celebrity and stardom with a richer history than we are often want to take."---D. Gilson, Lambda Literary "The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus is a hybrid of biography and sociological treatise on one of the most important phenomena of modern times . . . why we are attracted to - or, conversely, repulsed by - celebrity culture."---Kitty Kelley, Washington Independent Review of Books "[An] insightful and engaging examination of celebrity culture . . . Marcus augments her analysis by drawing on types of sources that are rarely used, such as scrapbooks, letters and life writing produced by fans of celebrities. The inclusion of normally neglected voices adds richness and depth to this work, ensuring it is more comprehensive than most earlier studies of this intriguing subject."---Eleanor Fitzsimons, Literary Review "You don't have to be into celebrity culture to appreciate this readable study."---Steven Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald "I love the book." "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 . . . The star of the book is Sarah Bernhardt . . . The book reproduces a rich trove of archival material which, if it does