DOCSLIB.ORG

Fame Attack : the Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Fame Attack : the Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences Rojek, Chris. "Demand Side Factors." Fame Attack: The Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. 98–122. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 24 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849661386.ch-007>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 24 September 2021, 02:29 UTC. Copyright © Chris Rojek 2012. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 7 Demand Side Factors emand side explanations fall into three categories: Articulation and the Culture of Display; Hero Worship and Narcissistic Idealization; Religion, and its Decline in the West. All three identify celebrity as the response to the recognition of some sort of emotional defi cit in personal relationships and public life. Thus, briefl y, Articulation Dand the Culture of Display arise from the demand for social acknowledgement; Hero Worship and Narcissistic Idealization are rooted in a lack of self-esteem; and Religion, and its Decline in the West, refers to the erosion of organized religion and the collapse of conjoining moral integrity that provides a coherent sense of stability and order. 1 Supply-based accounts of celebrity infl ation highlight the issues of leadership and manipulation. They provide a top-down perspective that portrays the enlargement of celebrity to be the result of the combination of the acquisitive motives of celebrity impresarios, the gigantic expansion of channels of communication, especially print, fi lm, cable and satellite and the avaricious business interests of corporations. The PR-Media hub is analysed as the gatekeeper, employed by cultural impresarios and business executives, to ration exposure and stoke the fi res of public interest. It applies a campaign of manoeuvre and calculated hearsay to make audiences receptive, and to position stars in a favourable light. Vertical and horizontal sides to this strategy must be differentiated. In terms of vertical manoeuvring, the PR-Media hub is dedicated to making stars cultural skyscrapers in their fi eld of activity. That is winning the best movie roles, writing the most discussed books, recording the best regarded music, triumphing in the most prestigious sports tournaments, championing the best fashion designs, and so on. Horizontal manoeuvring refers to positioning stars as celebrity diplomats, celanthrophists, celebrity environmentalists, celebrity endorsers, etc. When the PR-Media hub raises the celebrity upon the social horizon as the conscience of the public, their public appeal is maximized. They are portrayed as sharing the concerns and voicing the thoughts of the silent majority. Their highly visible acts of celanthropy provides a general substitute for the many, dispersed feelings and aspirations of ordinary people. The celebrity acts as a reed for public opinion and is the representative agent of public concerns. When George goes on a fact-fi nding mission to Darfur, Angelina visits Somalian refugee camps in Kenya and Haiti as UN Goodwill Ambassador, and Bono dines with Kofi Annan and Barack Obama to [ 98 ] BBookook 11.indb.indb 9988 114/11/114/11/11 11:56:56 PPMM Demand Side Factors [ 99 ] discuss debt relief in Africa, they stand in as ‘big citizens’ purportedly representing the will of the public. With supply side explanations of celebrity infl ation the accent is upon moulding public opinion through the strategic manipulation of celebrity associational values and the halo of prestige. This assumes that power is concentrated in the hands of the suppliers. Once again, to invoke the unintentionally disturbing phrase coined by Bernays (1928), it is the vision of ‘the invisible government’ in celebrity culture that drives the show. In contrast, demand side approaches start with the proposition of want and vulnerability in the body politic. According to this line of argument, celebrity is ubiquitous because people hanker after, and, in some cases, obsessionally crave, larger, sanitized versions of themselves or idealized substitutes. That is versions free from insecure doubts about personal worth, disabling worries about social status and painful anxieties that life has no meaning. From this vantage point, it is the emotional loneliness, powerlessness and insecurity of the public that is the key to celebrity culture. In effect, stars are credited with therapeutic powers. Celebrity carries positive associations of action, drama, prestige and power. Identifi cation with this culture affords ordinary people voyeuristic experience of heroic public impact and making a difference in the world. By wishing upon a star we move to the elusive land of the frontier, where old rules do not apply and everything is possible. Common experiences of estrangement from politics and isolation from glamour dissolve by empathizing with celebrity agents and their highly public interventions. Celebrities become public representatives of private troubles and anxieties. When Bob Geldof threw in his lot with the task of remedying famine in Ethiopia he did so not only as a rock star but as the representative of Everyman. Celebrities articulate and implement a ‘can do’ attitude that contrasts with a widespread public sense of impotence about approaching and solving public problems. Large sections of society project the emotions of compassion, benefi cence and the desire for recognition onto stars. Projection can elevate some celebrities into positions of political and social signifi cance. Indeed some have gone down in history as class champions. When the Beatles achieved global celebrity in the 1960s, they were feted not only as talented composers and musicians, but also as ‘four working-class lads from Liverpool’. Charlie Chaplin, who hailed from the South London slums, occupied the same class position in the silent fi lm era. In the United States, the success of Clara Bow (the ‘It’ Girl), James Brown, Johnny Cash, 2Pac and Puff Daddy partly refl ects their public position as warriors of class and ethnicity. The role of celebrities in class battles, to say nothing of wars between the sexes and racial confl icts, is of historical importance. Celebrities not only represent private troubles and anxieties, they articulate general collective aspirations of class, gender, BBookook 11.indb.indb 9999 114/11/114/11/11 11:56:56 PPMM [ 100 ] Fame Attack race and nation. In a world where visual culture is increasingly important as a medium of communication, and soft news is exchanged, fi rst and foremost, by sound bites, the face of the celebrity is shorthand for powerful emotional connections and complex political arguments (Castells, 2009). Demand approaches therefore bifurcate between analysing celebrity as part of the psychology of projection and viewing stars as agents of resistance and change. Although these traditions of analysis involve contrasting assumptions and lines of investigation, they share the hypothesis that celebrities are agents for problem solving. They are lionized and courted because they promise to supply answers to emotional defi cit disorders. It goes without saying that these solutions may be delusional. If personal and public problems were simply a matter of getting the right celebrity to articulate and tackle them, they would have been banished from the chart of human history long ago. However, without gainsaying the validity of this point, stars can assuage personal dilemmas and provide a sense of momentum for tackling public ills. This brings me to the question of the detailed differences between the three demand side explanations of celebrity infl ation. Articulation and the culture of display What does articulation and the culture of display have to do with the infl ation of celebrity culture? On the face of it, the question is eminently reasonable, because issues of articulation in class and race are based on collective experience. In contrast, celebrity culture revolves around individuals and groups. True, there is a collective dimension in the shape of the audience. Moreover, this may be infl uenced by distinctions of class and race. That is some celebrities may appeal more strongly to one class or race, or combination of classes and races, than to others. And yet, to propose that the audience for a given celebrity consists entirely of one class/race or class/race combination is implausible. The cult of modern fame is mostly blind to distinctions of this sort. However, on closer inspection, especially of the history of achieved celebrity, the links between class and race, the culture of display and fame become transparent and irresistible. Over the last 250 years, the history of celebrity has been dominated fi rst by the struggle, and second by the gradual, albeit incomplete, replacement of ascribed forms of celebrity with achieved types. Celebrity used to be chiefl y about destiny. Those born into an ascribed status were meant to live life in the time-honoured way. 2 Today, in the age of the new aristocracy of fame, it is mainly about the distribution of chances of upward mobility that arise from democracy, industrial- urban development and the expansion and intrusion of the media. BBookook 11.indb.indb 110000 114/11/114/11/11 11:56:56 PPMM Demand Side Factors [ 101 ] Ascribed celebrity refers to the assumption of fame by dint of genealogy or marriage. For example, Prince William and Prince Harry are internationally famous because they are children of the prospective British monarch and therefore, heirs to the throne. Their mother, Princess Diana, was born into the aristocracy, but only acquired signifi cant international fame via her marriage to the Prince of Wales. Ascribed celebrities may add or subtract to their complement of fame by virtue of their deeds. For example, Diana was indeed famous when she married Prince Charles. However, she only became a global superstar following her famous BBC television interview with Martin Bashir (1995) in which she revealed her husband’s infi delity (which tacitly identifi ed her with the plight of countless women in the world), and also fronted various international charity campaigns.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • In the Time of the Microcelebrity: Celebrification and the Youtuber Zoella
    In The Time of the Microcelebrity Celebrification and the YouTuber Zoella Jerslev, Anne Published in: International Journal of Communication Publication date: 2016 Document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Document license: CC BY-ND Citation for published version (APA): Jerslev, A. (2016). In The Time of the Microcelebrity: Celebrification and the YouTuber Zoella. International Journal of Communication, 10, 5233-5251. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5078/1822 Download date: 24. Sep. 2021 International Journal of Communication 10(2016), 5233–5251 1932–8036/20160005 In the Time of the Microcelebrity: Celebrification and the YouTuber Zoella ANNE JERSLEV University of Copenhagen, Denmark This article discusses the temporal changes in celebrity culture occasioned by the dissemination of digital media, social network sites, and video-sharing platforms, arguing that, in contemporary celebrity culture, different temporalities are connected to the performance of celebrity in different media: a temporality of plenty, of permanent updating related to digital media celebrity; and a temporality of scarcity distinctive of large-scale international film and television celebrities. The article takes issue with the term celebrification and suggests that celebrification on social media platforms works along a temporality of permanent updating, of immediacy and authenticity. Taking UK YouTube vlogger and microcelebrity Zoella as the analytical case, the article points out that microcelebrity strategies are especially connected with the display of accessibility, presence, and intimacy online; moreover, the broadening of processes of celebrification beyond YouTube may put pressure on microcelebrities’ claim to authenticity. Keywords: celebrification, microcelebrity, YouTubers, vlogging, social media, celebrity culture YouTubers are a huge phenomenon online.
    [Show full text]
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Ever-Evolving Art of Self
    RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND THE EVER-EVOLVING ART OF SELF-RELIANT READING BY THEODORE REND BARTON A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of WAKE FOREST UNIVERSITY GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS English December 2012 Winston-Salem, North Carolina Approved by: Eric Wilson, Ph.D., Advisor Barry Maine, Ph.D., Chair Omaar Hena, Ph.D. My efforts and their results are dedicated to my grandmothers Irene Sauban and Jeanne Barton whose lives demonstrated the magnanimous effects of constant reading, and also to my brother William Barton who never hesitates to read from the text of the world. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project and I are indebted to innumerable people for their love, support, and patience. I will always have indefatigable gratitude for my time with Eric Wilson, and for his indelible influence on my intellectual development while at Wake Forest University and in London. It must be rare that a graduate student is given the opportunity to study with a mentor whom he truly admires and looks up to, and I am cognizant of how lucky I’ve been. Similarly, it’s difficult to express the extent of my appreciation for Omaar Hena, but it’s clear that Wake is unbelievably lucky to employ him for what is certain to be a ground breaking and distinguished career in post-colonial studies. I also must thank my Cal. State professors Chad Luck, Margaret Doane, Cynthia Cotter, and Julie Sophia Paegle for preparing me for the rigors of graduate school and for their encouragement.
    [Show full text]
  • Barack Obama and Celebrity Spectacle1
    International Journal of Communication 3 (2009), 715-741 1932-8036/20090715 Barack Obama and Celebrity Spectacle1 DOUGLAS KELLNER University of California at Los Angeles In the contemporary era of media politics, image and media spectacle have played an increasingly important role in presidential politics and other domains of society. With the increasing tabloidization of corporate journalism, lines between news, information and entertainment have blurred, and politics has become a form of entertainment and spectacle. Candidates enlist celebrities in their election campaigns and are increasingly covered in the same way as celebrities, with tabloidized news obsessing about their private lives. In this context, presidential candidates themselves become celebrities and are packaged and sold like the products of the culture industry. In this study, I will suggest some of the ways that the logic of the spectacle promoted the candidacy of Barack Obama and how he has become a master of the spectacle and global celebrity of the top rank. I will discuss how he became a supercelebrity in the presidential primaries and general election of 2008 and utilized media spectacle to help his win the presidency. Finally, I will discuss how Obama has so far in the first 100 Days of his presidency deployed his status as global celebrity and utilized media spectacle to advance his agenda. In the contemporary era, celebrities are mass idols, venerated and celebrated by the media. The media produces celebrities and so naturally the most popular figures promoted by the media industries become celebrities. Entertainment industry figures and sports stars have long been at the center of celebrity culture, employing public relations and image specialists to put out positive buzz and stories concerning their clients, but business tycoons and politicians have also become celebrities in recent years.
    [Show full text]
  • Die Offiziellen Deutschen Charts
    Die Offiziellen Deutschen Charts Die kompletten Listen – Woche für Woche basierend auf den offiziellen Charts von „Der Musikmarkt“ und „Media Control“ aufbereitet von Volker Dörken, Wuppertal Deutschland - Die Offiziellen Single-Charts Pos Vorwochen Woc BP 1 01.01.1996 1 1 1 7 1 4 Earth Song ... Michael Jackson 2 2 2 12 1 6 Gangsta's Paradise ... Coolio feat. LV 3 3 3 18 2 Eine Insel Mit Zwei Bergen ... Dolls United 4 4 5 5 4 Back In The U.K. ... Scooter 5 5 4 14 2 I Got 5 On It ... Luniz 6 6 6 10 5 Inside Out ... Culture Beat 7 7 7 9 6 Thunder ... East 17 8 8 8 9 7 Can't Stop Raving ... Dune 9 9 9 13 8 Hymn ... Music Instructor 10 10 22 6 10 Captain Jack ... Captain Jack . 11 11 18 5 11 Miss Sarajevo ... The Passengers 12 12 15 9 12 Where The Wild Roses Grow ... Kylie Minogue & Nick Cave 13 13 11 7 11 Goldeneye ... Tina Turner 14 14 38 5 14 Missing ... Everything But The Girl 15 15 16 15 15 A Question Of Honour ... Sarah Brightman 16 16 10 17 2 Boombastic ... Shaggy 17 17 23 6 17 You Know ... Caught In The Act 18 18 17 10 16 110 011 001 ... Das Modul 19 19 35 10 19 I'd Lie For You And That's The Truth ... Meat Loaf 20 20 29 7 20 You'll See ... Madonna . 21 21 14 11 11 Willy Use A Billy…Boy ... E‐Rotic 22 22 12 14 3 Stayin' Alive ..
    [Show full text]
  • The Unwatched Life Is Not Worth Living: the Lee Vation of the Ordinary in Celebrity Culture
    The University of San Francisco USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center Sociology College of Arts and Sciences 2011 The nU watched Life Is Not worth Living: The Elevation of the Ordinary in Celebrity Culture Joshua Gamson University of San Francisco, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://repository.usfca.edu/soc Part of the Sociology Commons, and the Television Commons Recommended Citation Gamson, J. (2011). The unwatched life is not worth living: The lee vation of the ordinary in celebrity culture. PMLA, 126(4), 1061-1069. doi:10.1632/pmla.2011.126.4.1061 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts and Sciences at USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. It has been accepted for inclusion in Sociology by an authorized administrator of USF Scholarship: a digital repository @ Gleeson Library | Geschke Center. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 126.4 ] theories and methodologies The Unwatched Life Is Not Worth Living: The Elevation WHEN MY FIRST DAUGHTER WAS BORN A FEW YEARS AGO, I ENTERED A CELEBRITY NEWS BLACKOUT, A SOMEWHAT DISCOMFITING CONDITION of the Ordinary in for a sociologist of celebrity. When she entered preschool, though, Celebrity Culture I resubscribed to Us Weekly and devoured its morsels like a starv- ing man at McDonald’s: Kim Kardashian and her then- boyfriend ate at Chipotle on their irst date! Ashton Kutcher was mad about his joshua gamson neighbor’s noisy construction! Lindsay Lohan is back in rehab! I felt less disconnected from others, comforted by the familiar company, a little dirtier and a little lighter.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Casanova's Celebrity: a Case Study of Well-Knownness in 18Th -Century
    Casanova’s Celebrity: a Case Study of Well-knownness in 18th-century Europe Nicola Jody Vinovrski BA(Hons) LLB GDipPLEAT DALF A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Queensland in 2015 School of Languages and Cultures Centre for the History of European Discourses 1 Abstract Giacomo Casanova was born on 2 April 1725 in Venice and died in Dux, Bohemia on 4 June 1798. The voluminous manuscript of his memoirs, written in French, was recently acquired by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France for approximately £6 million, demonstrating the cultural significance of those memoirs today. The purchase resulted in an exhibition, the publication and reprinting of many of Casanova’s own writings and numerous new works about Casanova since 2010. The timing of this thesis coincides with a renewed academic interest in Casanova. Popular interest in him has been fairly constant since the 19th century. Given his interesting life story and the fact that he still interests international publics today, we might ask: Was he famous in his own time? Was he a celebrity? What is the difference between these two things? In historical accounts of fame and celebrity theory, it is argued that older models of fame (associated with merit or achievement) preceded the relatively recent phenomenon of celebrity (associated with artifice, media manipulation and a distinct lack of achievement). Historical studies of fame, or particular instances of it by scholars of the 18th century, focus on figures whose fame can be tied to a particular achievement or ascribed status, for example authors, politicians, actors, artists, composers, musicians and monarchs.
    [Show full text]
  • Celebrity Power: Spotlighting and Persuasion in the Media
    Celebrity Power: Spotlighting and Persuasion in the Media BY ©2014 Mark Harvey Submitted to the graduate degree program in Political Science and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Committee: ____________________________________ Chairperson Mark R. Joslyn ____________________________________ Donald P. Haider-Markel ____________________________________ Burdett A. Loomis ____________________________________ John J. Kennedy ____________________________________ James F. Daugherty Defended April 1, 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Mark Harvey certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Celebrity Power: Spotlighting and Persuasion in the Media ____________________________________ Chairperson Mark R. Joslyn Date Approved: April 1, 2014 ii Abstract As technological and business demands have transformed the operation and demands on news and entertainment media, celebrity activists have proliferated. Only a few years ago, the notion that these celebrities were anything other than opportunistic was laughable. Less likely was the prospect that celebrities might have real power to change minds or affect outcomes. It is difficult enough for politicians to set public agendas. Can celebrities compete? This dissertation compares celebrities to politicians and focuses upon one key area of potential power: media agenda setting. If celebrities hope to change the public agenda to focus on the issues they think are important, can they gain attention for those issues and are they persuasive? The results of a time series analysis and an experimental study conclude that they are capable of not only competing with politicians in “spotlighting” and persuasion on political issues, but may at times, exceed their abilities. These findings potentially upend what many political scientists assume about power, particularly scholars who study policymaking, policy entrepreneurship, and social movements.
    [Show full text]
  • Celebrity in the Contemporary Era Hannah Hamad What We May Be
    Celebrity in the Contemporary Era Hannah Hamad What we may be looking at in more recent times is a redefining of what a celebrity actually is. It’s not a Hollywood star necessarily. It’s a hairdresser from Essex who’s been on television.’ Ian Drury, Celebrity Publisher, Starsuckers (dir. Chris Atkins, 2009) In 2012, pop star and celebrity style icon Lady Gaga capitalised on the cultural currency of twenty-first century celebrity by bottling fame and selling it. Literally. In August of that year, the Italian American singer and performance artist (known independently of her celebrity persona as Stefani Germanotta) launched her first fragrance 'Lady Gaga Fame' in the global fragrance market. It sold big, it sold fast, and it was enormously profitable to its stakeholders. As Lee Barron notes, 'Lady Gaga Fame' "reportedly sold six million bottles in its first week of release." (2015, 60) This example is instructive for understanding some of the dominant operational logics and industrial mechanics of contemporary celebrity in various ways and for a number of reasons. The concept itself (i.e. the idea that fame can be bottled and sold) speaks directly to the longstanding Marxist cultural studies notion of 'standardisation' - the idea, foundationally theorised by Theodor Adorno, that popular cultural products can serve capitalism most profitably when they are reduced to simple formulae that are replicated and re-introduced to the mass market with slight variation that produces the illusion of differentiation for the consuming audience. Adorno elucidates this phenomenon most famously in relation to the commonalities and simplicities in chord structure and lyric that he identified in popular music recordings (1990 [1941]).
    [Show full text]
  • You May Know Me from Youtube: (Micro)-Celebrity in Social Media.” in a Companion to Celebrity, Marshall, P.D
    Micro-Celebrity in Social Media | 1 Marwick, A. (in press, 2015). “You May Know Me From YouTube: (Micro)-Celebrity in Social Media.” In A Companion to Celebrity, Marshall, P.D. and Redmond, S., Eds. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Inc. Pre-Print Version: Please refer to published version for page numbers Introduction While fame has existed for centuries, celebrity is inextricably linked to media. The peculiar mixture of larger-than-life personas and the feelings of connection and intimacy they inspire are formed and spread through mass media (Rojek 2001). Thus, as media changes, so does celebrity. In the last two decades, we have seen dramatic changes in the concept of celebrity from one related solely to mass and broadcast media to one that reflects a more diverse media landscape; for instance, reality television has both revealed the mundane day-to-day lives of pop stars and sitcom actors as it simultaneously transforms ordinary people into celebrities (Kavka 2012). More recently, media technologies like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Vine, and Instagram have enabled both famous and non-famous people to generate vast quantities of personal media, manipulate and distribute this content widely, and reach out to (real or imagined) audiences. The contemporary shift from broadcast to participatory media, and the popularity of social media technologies among young people, have contributed to two major changes in celebrity culture. First, “traditional” celebrities have embraced social media to create direct, unmediated relationships with fans, or at least the illusion of such. Seeming to bypass the traditional brokers of celebrity attention like agents and managers, young stars like Lady Gaga and Kim Kardashian provide snapshots of their lives and interactions with followers that give the impression of candid, unfettered access.
    [Show full text]
  • Fame Attack : the Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences
    Rojek, Chris. "Celebrity Supernova." Fame Attack: The Inflation of Celebrity and Its Consequences. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. 1–26. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 28 Sep. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781849661386.ch-001>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 28 September 2021, 03:46 UTC. Copyright © Chris Rojek 2012. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 1 Celebrity Supernova arah Fawcett-Majors and Michael Jackson died on the same day. As events go in the time and tide of newsworthy celebrity culture, the exit of Fawcett-Majors was as perverse as that of Aldous Huxley on 22 November 1963: the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. A celebrity supernova refers to the death of an individual whose fame is Fso immense that their existence frames the character of the age. It is an image of a cultural presence of something that is not only bigger, but also higher than ourselves. All cultures require institutions dedicated to promoting transcendence. That is cultural escalators that transport ordinary men and women from private cares and the dun horizon of daily monotony, into a bigger, richer mental and social space. In premodern society, religion, magic and totemism supplied men and women with a sense of following the grand plan of Creation. In the words of Eliade, in archaic society ‘life is lived on a twofold plane; it takes its course as human existence and, at the same time, shares in a transhuman life, that of the cosmos or the gods’ (Eliade, 1957: 167).
    [Show full text]
  • Glory-Seeking: a Timeless and Puzzling Craving of the Human Soul
    Glory-Seeking: A Timeless and Puzzling Craving of the Human Soul Author: Eric Marturano Persistent link: http://hdl.handle.net/2345/3865 This work is posted on eScholarship@BC, Boston College University Libraries. Boston College Electronic Thesis or Dissertation, 2014 Copyright is held by the author, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise noted. BOSTON COLLEGE GLORY-SEEKING: A TIMELESS AND PUZZLING CRAVING OF THE HUMAN SOUL A Senior Honors Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences Philosophy Department By ERIC MARTURANO May 1, 2014 © Copyright by ERIC THOMAS MARTURANO 2014 ABSTRACT Glory-seeking: A Timeless & Puzzling Craving of the Human Soul Written by: Eric Marturano Advised by: Professor Christopher Constas Philosophers throughout the ages have grappled with the concept of glory-seeking and have offered many different references, analyses, insights, and explanations. Three great thinkers in particular stand out above the rest: Plato, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Paul Sartre. While these three minds span from circa 420 BC all the way up to 1980 AD, they all would agree that glory-seeking certainly matters – they would most likely argue over the following: In what way? For Plato, glory-seeking is an inherent part of the human soul. It matters because it is an essential part of our being. Plato’s model for the soul found in The Republic as well as a comparable illustration in the Phaedrus expresses this claim most thoroughly. Additional support for the idea of glory-seeking being an existing precondition of humanity can be found in other ancient works as well, most notably Homer’s Iliad.
    [Show full text]
  • Comparing Western and South Korean Celebrity Twitter Strategies Tara G
    Elizabethtown College JayScholar Communications: Student Scholarship & Creative Communications Works Spring 2018 Comparing Western and South Korean Celebrity Twitter Strategies Tara G. Siano Elizabethtown College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://jayscholar.etown.edu/commstu Part of the Social Media Commons Recommended Citation Siano, Tara G., "Comparing Western and South Korean Celebrity Twitter Strategies" (2018). Communications: Student Scholarship & Creative Works. 1. https://jayscholar.etown.edu/commstu/1 This Student Research Paper is brought to you for free and open access by the Communications at JayScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Communications: Student Scholarship & Creative Works by an authorized administrator of JayScholar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Comparing Western and South Korean Celebrity Twitter Strategies By Tara G. Siano This thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in the Discipline in Communications and the Elizabethtown College Honors Program May 2, 2018 Thesis Director___________________ Kirsten Johnson, Ph.D. Second Reader___________________________________ Kelly Poniatowski, Ph.D. Third Reader__________________________________________ Mahua Bhattacharya, Ph.D. Running Head: CELEBRITY TWITTER STRATEGIES 1 Comparing Western and South Korean Celebrity Twitter Strategies Tara Siano Elizabethtown College CELEBRITY TWITTER STRATEGIES 2 Abstract In 2017, South Korean idol group, Bangtan Sonyeondan (BTS), became the first Korean pop group to win a Billboard Music Award for Top Social Artist. This award is fan voted and indicates strong audience engagement and a skillful use of social media. K-Pop is becoming more and more popular due to an effective use of social media for global music distribution, and identifying the Twitter strategies of Korean idol groups has applications beyond the music industry.
    [Show full text]