Joshua Gamson: The Name and the Product - Late Twentieth-Century Celebrity

Gamson discusses the making of celebrity in the late 20th century, focusing on how the industry has changed, how the production of celebrity has changed and how media texts' coverage of celebs has changed readers/viewers positions on the industry.

Key points:

- Celebrity has become increasingly industrialized
- Hype, purchase, manipulation, self-promotion and association have become central elements in celebrity discourse
- Most critical to these developments was a shakeup of the movie studio industry - independent studios began to grow, rise of 'agents' meant greater powers to cultivate 'talent'
- Film stars became 'proprietors of their own image' which they could sell to film makers

Gamson identifies key changes in the PR industry post-World War II in which several components affected celebrity:

1. Specialised strategies to target perceived needs and desires of audience. Advertising adopted marketing that focused on consumer lifestyle and attitudes.
2. Practices and interests of journalists and PR operatives have got closer - news has become more dependent on PR sources
3. Technologies to provide visual image that 'imitates the representation of an event/person' have become highly developed. Press releases provide ready-packaged stories.
4. Early 70's saw a boom in magazine and newspaper coverage of 'people and personality'.

Gamson talks about how being famous = commercial product. The links between celebrity and selling in the early 50's meant that celebs began to be represented not only as useful to sell and endorse products but as a business itself by selling - celebrity became 'merchandise', 'property' a 'commodity'.

Celeb-production: where once an agent's job was to discover talent, it’s now about finding a market and manufacturing a celeb to suit it

The argument that celebs portray a certain image and finding the 'real' behind the image still applies today. Behind-the-scenes looks into the world of celeb and documentaries have attempted to show the 'real' but again, that is questionable. Gamson talks about how readers/viewers are often given a set of 'tools' or 'instructions' by media texts in order to not only find the 'real' behind the image but also view the fabrication process of how celebs are constructed to amuse.

Irony is one of the clearest developments in the late 20th Century - particularly in magazines aimed at young, educated people. 'Inside gossip' and mockery has become commonplace in many magazines, where the audience is invited to 'take its power further with a new, cynical distance from the production of celeb and celeb images.'

Celebrity texts now reposition readers to 'see the joke’ of the performed self of celebrity. Cynicism, irony and invitations behind the scenes keep readers/viewers tuned in.