Origin of the world celebrity “comes from the Latin word ‘celebritatem’ meaning, literally, ‘condition of being famous’.” (inrebus.com) This condition is described as a state of being recognized for who a person is, not for what is he/she doing. But the question is how a person becomes a celebrity? How can someone get recognized? The immediate answer claims that the main cause for celebrity even to exist is media interest in such person. In today’s world, practically no one would be able to become a celebrity without media because media are managing all the information in the world.
There are three possible areas of media interest while creating a celebrity. The first one is heritable interest. This includes for example royal families. In Britain, the royal family is always number one topic in entertaining media. The journalists watch all generations and relatives of the family and daily offer the public the newest information about their favorite sovereign.
The second possibility of becoming a celebrity is simply to “go for it.” Those people are basically doing everything to draw media’s attention to themselves. A person can either constantly work on his/her image and become famous with time, which is logically time-consuming and demands strong will and a lot of hard work, or the other way is to be “quick-fermented.” This label refers to someone who has very fast and strong entrance into public sub consciousness. An example of the first method would be actors who started in small regional theaters, going through national theater, and than passing onto television. Those celebrities are usually perceived positively by its audiences because the public can appreciate their hard work and realize that those people should be recognized for their actions. An example of the second method would be new partners of existing celebrities.
The last way of becoming famous is simply an “accident” for which media create an interest in a given person, for example public heroes. However, those stars have a very short live-span since the topic of their story is quickly exhaustible.
When a celebrity exists, media has to “take care of its baby” by keeping the public up to date with the stars live story. Moreover it is also up to the media to decide whether the celebrity will be fancied or hated by choosing its type of media coverage. Again, there are two possible ways in which celebrities are being portrayed. The first one is covering only the positives about given persona and overriding all scandals, making those invisible to the public. In this case, celebrity’s impression is positive and its influence on its public is much higher than in the second case because this celebrity is taken seriously. The second way of portraying is rather for public entertainment and tries to discredit the people for everything they do. This approach of media also highly influences public opinion on the celebrity and creates a negative stance towards them.
To conclude, it should be stated that celebrities would not have any influence on people if it was not for the media who arranged their existence and created their public image. The way how celebrities influence you, my readers, is absolutely your decision since it is not very hard to distinguish media’s intention while giving coverage to certain celebrity. Let them have some positive effect on you.
Reference list:
Latin Languages and its vicinities online. (January 3, 2008). In Rebus. Retrieved January 5, 2009, from http://www.inrebus.com/index.php?entry=entry080103-161402
I found this essay highly interesting and informative. Good conception and composition! I also appreciate that the conclusion is more positive than negative- I did not really expect that. I just have one suggestion- I think that a video introducing a story of some celebrity (for example, a celebrity who used to be well-known, and now nobody recognizes him/her now) would greatly illustrate your article. But it is just my opinion.
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