A celebrity is a person or animal made famous either by a specific talent that brought them a lot of attention or something that they have done that brings them coverage by the media. Celebrities include sports figures, actors, musicians, and others who have attained wealth through great business ideas or having being born into wealth.
Greg Jenner (2020) describes celebrity as “ A unique persona made widely known to the public via media coverage, and whose life is publicly consumed as dramatic entertainment, and whose commercial brand is made profitable for those who exploit their popularity, and perhaps also for themselves.” The earliest celebrities would have been royalty, great leaders, warriors and philosophers from the first civilizations such as Sargon of Akkad in Sumerian times, Tutankhamun from ancient Egypt, Moses and King David from Semitic history and the famous philosophers from Ancient Greece such as Plato, Democritus and Diogenes. In more recent history great thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Adam Smith and Albert Einstein have achieved celebrity status for their ideas in politics and science.
In the 20th century, celebrities like Marilyn Monroe and Sean Connery became iconic through the developing of the movie industry and it was not only their movies that garnered publicity but also their private lives. with the rising of Hollywood and cinema also came the development of the music industry and bands and singers became in the words of John Lennon from the Beatles “ More popular than Jesus.”
Nowadays, becoming a celebrity seems fairly easy with social platforms like YouTube and Instagram, were ordinary people can gather huge amounts of followers with their comedy, fashion or music. There are also so many talent shows on television that launch the careers of unsigned acts bringing them immediate fame and occasional fortune.
What the future of celebrity will be I’m unsure. I would guess that with the continuing dominance of social media, CCTV and ever increasing restrictions on the privacy of the public, eventually everyone will be a celebrity whether they like it or not with the normalization of Orwellian surveillance. I think soon, hopefully not in my lifetime but soon, we will all be celebrities in Big Brother.
Greg Jenner., 2020,. Dead Famous: an unexpected history of celebrity.
