Why are celebrities important?
She photographs poets and writers. Sepia toning and fading of the edges is very pictorial and reminisant of painting styles of the day. Enhancing the romantic themes.
Acting the part from the poem Theres usually a religious theme.
Actors were the celebs of the time.
The woman in the image has been a sitter for various aesthetic artists. The women that pose for painters are subjects of Julia Margrets works.
No use of sepia and soft toning. - treatment of the male sitters. Celebration of what they did rather than how they look. Reference to his craft and poetry with his book and pocket watch. Signifying status. He is seated in a definite pose, less staged and mythical.
Very first motion picture LEEDS!
This is the silent movie era.
Contemporary film that portrays the feel of the silent movie.
The story portrays the rise and fall of the actor and actress.
He is a renowned actor and she is a rising star who stumbles across fame.
Examines the inevitability of celebs going in and out of fashion.
Exotic dancing. She made a living fgrom her looks and talent on stage.
She worked for the resistance in the 2nd world war. She spyed on the
nazi's using her fame as a cover.
She helped people get visas and passports. She helped colonies in africa too.
She has 2 sides to her public and private persona.
Beyonce often uses reference to josephine baker throughout her carea.
Racial stereotyping. Reuse of the banana.
1920'2, 30'2 onwards makes the cinema become a common place
Clark gable is an on screen hero and an off screen hero. He was in the military.
Mixing of the on screen and off screen personality creating a god like status.
Bette Davis has an interesting approach to acting. She liked to play rolls of people
that weren't liked. She seeks out roles where she is less attractive or evil.
Her attitude to fame was that she married a man that didn't know who she was.
She instigated a canteen that provided for US servicemen. Celebrities
waited on the people. Role reversal. No apparent in reality television.
The opposite is Marilyn Monroe. She's there to be enjoyed and looked at
for her physical presence. She starts to cross into other areas of
her relationship. We have a sense of her private life coming through on her life on film
this ultimately ruined her but froze her in history.
Iconic Image. - Making a comment on our inability to conceive of somebody who has such an elevated status as a celebrity. Its difficult to perceive them as anything else than the spectacle.
Objects are placed in the image for a significant meaning.
Floating paintbrush to remind you its a painted image.
Photorealism reminds us of the difference between the
person and the repeated image.
Elvis is shown as the classic cowboy image repeated.
He looks at celebs as a consumer culture.
Hollywood churning out stars. Its all about money.
Warhol - "everybody has their fifteen minutes of fame"
He encourages subcultural characters to hang out at his factory.
Mixture of arty and bohemian lifestyles all hanging out together.
Factory is a reference to the creation of stars.
Turning low status people into stars.
Opposite to the clean cut image of elvis...
Movement of politicians into the celebrity field.
At the time Kennedy was good looking with a beautiful wife
they became subjective of Warhols works.
He survived the Marilyn scandal but ended up being shot.
Not so indestructible. This footage becomes the most valuable
film footage ever. 16million dollar film.
Kennedy's speeches were communicated through TV
becoming popular amongst the people.
Late 19402's TV RISE
CInema DECLINES
Removed the experience from the public domain
to the private domain.
Filming of the Jackson family - acting scripted situations for comic value
There are lots of writings about Michael.
Documenting his change in appearance.
His child hood trauma may of had something
to do with this.
Her change in image changes for every tour and album.
Here she is recycling the hollywood era. Reference to the sage where wealth
is celebrated rather than seen in bad taste. More of a mark of success.
Marilyn Character. - Madonna makes herself iconic.
She looks completely different from one album to another.
This can be looked at as a post modern recycling of the past.
Lady Gaga is a post post modernist
Rather than a star sticking with one image like back in the day
nowadays people change every single time, taking
aspects from every era. One could argue this is just for the
spectacle not to represent the person.
Trying to trump madonna.
Is she represented as a piece of meat.
or is it a statement about us eating meat.
contemporary obsession with convenience
of packaged meat.
Contemporary version of Barak Obama.
Using this to reach a wider audience.
Celebrity status attached to royals. This started the 1980's
Diana was younger than him and not as elevated.
She represent an innocence. She's seen as a fitting match.
As the relationship deteriates she starts to reinvent herself.
She makes herself as a fashion status.
Mass mourning. Celebrities owned by the public.
The greater the status the more dramatic the loss.
Repeated here with whitney...broadcasted because so many people wanted to be part of
the event. Sense of ownership and commercial value of a celebrities death.
Invincible super hero status.
Commercial value attached to these Imitations acts.
Industry involved around celebrity market.
Preservation of celebrities.
imitation Celeb photos. Using the language of the paparazzi in her photography.
long lens feel. She's playing on the language of the spied on moment.
People want to see the underside of the celebrity.
Celebrity culture in shops now. Become the celeb by wearing there clothing
Kitsch
Hybrid Figures - merging male and female to create a third odd person.
Not identifiable as a star - generic robotic stars - bit cubist.
Expose Kony
Hand Out
women of the arts; to the Hollywood Era; through Andy Warhols Factory and into the
contemporary celebrity where the line between Joe public and star, between fan and idol is
easily crossed, or even erased.
In doing so it aims to lead into an examination of contemporary ‘liquid’ identity as Zygmunt
Bauman describes it, which is facilitated by technology and social media.
The lecture also touches on the entry of the politician into the celebrity market and aims to
present this as a side effect of our increasingly ‘spectacular’ society.
The camera and the eye are always trained on the famous. Their movements are mapped.
Papparazzi will stalk celebrities with telephoto zoom lenses to capture their private moments
and with flashes to memorialise their public displays and promotions. Perhaps celebrities
represent the vanguard of the surveillance society , where ones anonymity is surrendered to
the benefits of the cybernetic consumer culture. Our desires are mapped , recorded and
thereby become the material for more precise and directed appeals than mass advertising
could ever achieve.
Despite their regular protests about the invasion of privacy, celebrities are complicit in being
surveilled and monitored: it is part of their job. The camera thus becomes their mirror and the
celebrity’s cultural reflection via the camera is internalised into celebrity culture itself. It is a
form of narcissism, an obsession with image and the body, and concern over presentation
and representation that pervades a city such as Los Angeles. The ripples of this reflecting
pool widen outwards to the audiences themselves into a much more expansive
internalisation of the look and the desire to be looked at. In the era of new media where
blogs and webcams spar for our affections with film and television, the reflections of the
private self sometimes become the material for the individuals desire to be recognised in the
public world- to be famous.
(Marshall: 2006:549)
