If the celebrities are leaders, who are their followers? And why?
“Celebricracy” is a word I have coined for the domination of popular culture by people who are famous for being famous. They rule the magazine racks in news agents, grocery stores, and the like. I see them as I wait to pay for the laundry detergent. I see them so often that I am sorry to say I recognize some. They rule the television air waves on the morning shows with their carefully managed infidelities, eccentricities, and fashions. This I know from watching the muted television screens in the gym as I push my twelve kilometers every second morning. No doubt they rule elsewhere, places that are mercifully unknown to me.
Celebracrats are to be distinguished from people famous, at least in the first instance, for doing something. Excluded are the likes of Shane Warne (a genius with a cricket ball), David Beckham (who really could bend it like no other), Michael Jordan (a god who played basketball), Vanessa Williams (she really can hit that tennis ball), Angela Merkel (the German chancellor who proved housewives can make a second career), and so on. Of course, there are crossovers like Warne and Beckham whose fame started with the hard work of atheletics and then transcended that into celebrisphere.
What they have in common is quite simple, money. Enough of it to pursue this career of ephemera. Since none of them has ever worked, I notice that one fashion in clothing is work clothes. All rather like that French queen dressing in shepardess gear with dyed lambs. Look what happened to her.
I think you mean Venus(not Vanessa) Williams. And wouldn’t you spell it “celebricrats”? I guess you can spell it however you want, since it is your word.
“domination of popular culture” is a problemtic concept. Of course the famous-for-being-famous celebrities are easy to ridicule but what explains their status? Does the media coverage of Paris Hilton really reflect opular interest? Presumably, editors know their audiences, but I’ve never met anyone who folows her “career.”
Ironically, invention of “reality television,” wherein celebrities initially were displaced by “ordinary people,” soon became a means of inventing new (15-minute) celebrities.
What’s going on here?