Content area
Full text
Understanding Celebrity, by Graeme Turner. London, UK; Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004. 148 pp. $115.00 cloth. ISBN: 0-7619-4167-3. $36.95 paper. ISBN: 0-7619-4168-1.
Understanding Celebrity is a thorough introduction to the process of creating and sustaining celebrity as a market commodity. Turner successfully separates his work from previous evaluations of celebrity by clarifying the differences between types of celebrity and thoroughly identifying distinct areas of production. In a split from the central paradigms surrounding the study of celebrity, that is, the "celebrity culture," Turner instead offers a clear evaluation of the agents of production, with the intent to highlight their contribution to the construction and consumption of celebrity.
The chapters are divided into three sections. In Part One "Introduction," Turner looks at the field of celebrity study, describes the rise of celebrity, and provides a clear account of the function of celebrity in current society. Providing a substantial review of the work on the construction of celebrity and fame, he focuses on the social functions of celebrity and on the culture of the media industry itself. Critical of the so-called...