Download or read book Circus Life and Circus Celebrities written by Thomas Frost and published by . This book was released on 1875 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Celebrity written by Susan J. Douglas and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historical and cultural context of fame in the twenty-first century Today, celebrity culture is an inescapable part of our media landscape and our everyday lives. This was not always the case. Over the past century, media technologies have increasingly expanded the production and proliferation of fame. Celebrity explores this revolution and its often under-estimated impact on American culture. Using numerous precedent-setting examples spanning more than one hundred years of media history, Douglas and McDonnell trace the dynamic relationship between celebrity and the technologies of mass communication that have shaped the nature of fame in the United States. Revealing how televised music fanned a worldwide phenomenon called “Beatlemania” and how Kim Kardashian broke the internet, Douglas and McDonnell also show how the media has shaped both the lives of the famous and the nature of the spotlight itself. Celebrity examines the production, circulation, and effects of celebrity culture to consider the impact of stars from Shirley Temple to Muhammad Ali to the homegrown star made possible by your Instagram feed. It maps ever-evolving media technologies as they adeptly interweave the lives of the rich and famous into ours: from newspapers and photography in the nineteenth century, to the twentieth century’s radio, cinema, and television, up to the revolutionary impact of the internet and social media. Today, mass media relies upon an ever-changing cast of celebrities to grab our attention and money, and new stars are conquering new platforms to build their adoring audiences and enhance their images. In the era of YouTube, Snapchat, and reality television, fame may be fleeting, but its impact on society is profound and lasting.
Download or read book Celebrity Mad written by Brett Kahr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-08-28 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This short book by Professor Brett Kahr provides a psychoanalytic understanding of fame and celebrity in the early twenty-first century, building upon the bedrock foundations of the Freudian corpus. The book is divided into six chapters. Chapter One explores the psychology of the celebrity, questioning narcissistic and exhibitionist psychopathology, while Chapter Two examines the psychological state of those of who revel in the fame of others and in celebrity culture more broadly, and offers a discussion of the "Celebrity Worship Syndrome". Chapter Three provides a very brief history of the concept of celebrity itself, arguing that, contrary to popular opinion, the culture of celebrification cannot be blamed on twenty-first-century media moguls, but, rather, that such a preoccupation with famous personalities can be traced back to ancient times and demonstrates the need to broaden our analysis to include the role of deep, unconscious psychological forces. In Chapter Four, Kahr reviews some important theoretical concepts advanced by Freud and Winnicott, which provide an important foundation for the psychoanalytic study of fame, while Chapter Five provides a more comprehensive theory of the unconscious psychological roots of the need to worship fame and to seek it, drawing upon a multitude of sources, ranging from psychoanalytic theory and developmental psychological research, to film, archaeology, and, perhaps surprisingly, the history of infanticide. The book concludes, in Chapter Six, by studying the psychodynamics of celebrity and fame, arguing that being recognised by one’s family and friends in the intimate context of home life may well be the very best way to become a celebrity. Celebrity Mad outlines a psychoanalytic theory of the roots of our obsession with fame. It will be of great interest to psychoanalytic practitioners and researchers, as well as to readers interested in the psychology of fame.
Download or read book Star Struck written by Sam Riley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2009-12-09 with total page 447 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This balanced examination looks at America's pervasive celebrity culture, concentrating on the period from 1950 to the present day. Star Struck: An Encyclopedia of Celebrity Culture is neither a stern critic nor an apologist for celebrity infatuation, a phenomenon that sometimes supplants more weighty matters yet constitutes one of our nation's biggest exports. This encyclopedia covers American celebrity culture from 1950 to 2008, examining its various aspects—and its impact—through 86 entries by 30 expert contributors. Demonstrating that all celebrities are famous, but not all famous people are celebrities, the book cuts across the various entertainment medias and their legions of individual "stars." It looks at sports celebrities and examines the role of celebrity in more serious pursuits and institutions such as the news media, corporations, politics, the arts, medicine, and the law. Also included are entries devoted to such topics as paranoia and celebrity, one-name celebrities, celebrity nicknames, family unit celebrity, sidekick celebrities, and even criminal celebrities.
Download or read book Circus Mania written by Douglas McPherson and published by Peter Owen Publishers. This book was released on 2018-02-22 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Roll up! Roll up! See the wondrous new face of Circus Mania, 250 years in the making! Full of the remarkable tales of circus life that made it a classic on its first outing. Learn about the origins of the circus from Roman times, to the colourful characters that make the circus the international phenomenon it is today. Circus Mania 2.0 is bigger, better and couldn't be timelier. Two hundred and fifty years after Philip Astley invented the circus it has never been more diverse and captivating, the global success of the spectacular Cirque du Soleil just one testament to its enduring and universal appeal. In Britain alone there are traditional family circuses for kids and arty shows for adults, circuses in tents and circuses in theatres, circuses with animals and circuses without, the Circus of Horrors for clubbers, the comedy-based Circus Hilarious and cabaret-style hybrids on the burlesque circuit and this form of entertainment is popular around the world. What all circuses have in common are the extraordinary skills, dedication and lifestyle of those involved a unique strain of performers who blend the discipline of sports stars with the razzmatazz of showbiz; itinerant entertainers who have often had circus blood in their families for generations; world-class gymnasts who risk death twice daily, serve on the tea stand in between shows and help take down the big top afterwards. Circus Mania is a journey into this unique world, each chapter an access-all-areas pass to a different circus, talking to the trapeze flyers, clowns, animal trainers and showmen about their lives, work and customs and offering insight into the development of this traditional entertainment from the earliest times.
Download or read book Celebrity Colonialism written by Robert Clarke and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-12 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Celebrity Colonialism brings together studies on an array of personalities, movements and events from the colonial era to the present, and explores the intersection of discourses, formations and institutions that condition celebrity in colonial and postcolonial cultures. Across nineteen chapters, it examines the entanglements of fame and power fame in colonial and postcolonial settings. Each chapter demonstrates the sometimes highly ambivalent roles played by famous personalities as endorsements and apologists for, antagonists and challengers of, colonial, imperial and postcolonial institutions and practices. And each in their way provides an insight into the complex set of meanings implied by novel term “celebrity colonialism.” The contributions to this collection demonstrate that celebrity provides a powerful lens for examining the nexus of discourses, institutions and practices associated with the dynamics of appropriation, domination, resistance and reconciliation that characterize colonial and postcolonial cultural politics. Taken together the contributions to Celebrity Colonialism argue that the examination of celebrity promises to enrich our understanding of what colonialism was and, more significantly, what it has become.
Download or read book Showing Off Showing Up written by Laurie Frederik and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2017-05-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The interdisciplinary essays in Showing Off, Showing Up examine acts of showing, a particular species of performance that relies on competition and judgment, active spectatorship, embodied excess, and exposure of core values and hidden truths. Acts of showing highlight those dimensions of performance that can most manipulate spectators and consumers, often through over-the-top heightening and skewing of presentation. Many forms of showing and of heightened performance, however, operate more enigmatically and covertly while still profoundly affecting the social world, even if our reactions to them are initially flippant or unconcerned because “it’s just a show.” Examining a wide range of examples—from dog shows to competitive dancing to carnivals to striptease, the essays illuminate how such events variously foster competition, exaggerate a characteristic, and reveal hidden truths. There is as much to be learned about the power of showing through subtlety and underlying intentionality as through overt display. The book’s theoretical introduction and 12 essays by leading scholars reveal how diverse, particularly efficacious genres of showing are theoretically connected and why they merit more concerted attention, especially in the 21st century.
Download or read book Moneywood written by William Stadiem and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As wild and sexy and over the top as the decade it brings to life, author, William Stadiem, tells the inside story of Hollywood producers in the 80s. From hits like Beverly Hills Cop, Top Gun and Batman to flops like Heaven's Gate, Howard the Duck and Leonard Part 6, Hollywood was never more excessive than it was in the 1980s. In this, the Moneywood era, the purse strings were not controlled by reasonably consenting adults but by pop culture cowboys who couldn't balance their own checkbooks. What they could do was sweet talk the talent, seduce the starlets, snowball the Japanese and slither out of Dodge when the low grosses trickled in. Their out of control lifestyles and know-nothing, raging narcissistic personalities make the original brutal studio heads like Sam Goldwyn and Jack Warner seem like Oxford dons. Yet, for all their flops, these Scoundrels of Spago turned Hollywood into a Big Business that was catnip to Wall Street. They were The Producers, and they were way beyond anything Mel Brooks could dream up. The Moneywood cast of characters includes: -Simpson and Bruckheimer; Guber and Peters; Eisner/Katzenberg/Ovitz: An unusual fresh take on the usual subjects. -Ray Stark, the wizard of Holmby Hills, the most powerful producer of the 80s. -Mario Kassar and Andy Vajna, the Rambo boys, who went from making wigs to making blockbusters. -Menahem Golan-Yoram Globus, the Israeli schlockmeisters who proved that every star had a price. -David Begelman, the embezzler, gambler and sex addict who was rewarded for his sins by getting to run both Columbia and MGM. -Roland Betts, the aristocratic Silver Screen Partners founder and former Yale frat-mate of George W. Bush who was a master at playing the Reagan White House card. -Giancarlo Parretti, the Italian cannery worker who bought MGM, with a little help from his (Sicilian) friends. -David Puttnam The high-toned English advertising whiz who was supposed to raise the Hollywood bar, but ended up barred from Hollywood. Moneywood is the ultimate expose of the real hit men of Hollywood's go-go decade.
Download or read book Reality Check written by Michael Essany and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2013-07-24 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you have a concept for a reality TV show, but aren't sure about the next steps? Loaded with practical, step-by-step advice on the art and business of reality TV producing, and featuring insights from Mark Burnett, Dick Clark, and other top producers, Reality Check takes you from idea to...reality! At age 13, Michael Essany launched a lowly cable access TV talk show from his parents' basement in Valparaiso, Indiana. Fast forward to 2001, and Michael had turned his little talk show, The Michael Essany Show, into a multimillion-dollar project that quickly became one of the most talked about reality television shows. If Michael can do it, so can you. But be prepared for a lot of hard work and a few reality checks. This book includes compelling advice on how to: * Better understand the nature, complexities, and potential of the reality genre * Physically produce original reality programming * Get past the gatekeepers and deliver quality pitches to major networks and production companies * Legally protect yourself, your work, and your intellectual property * Learn from glories and the gaffes of those who toiled before you * Utilize the internet and other multimedia outlets to create and generate revenue from reality programming * Avoid the professional pitfalls of the reality TV industry * Parlay reality television projects into a successful and enduring career
Download or read book Circus World written by Andrea Ringer and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1870s to the 1960s, circuses crisscrossed the nation providing entertainment. A unique workforce of human and animal laborers from around the world put on the show. They also formed the backbone of a tented entertainment industry that raised new questions about what constituted work and who counted as a worker. Andrea Ringer examines the industry-wide circus world--the collection of shows that traveled by rail, wagon, steamboat, and car--and the traditional and nontraditional laborers who created it. Performers and their onstage labor played an integral part in the popularity of the circus. But behind the scenes, other laborers performed the endless menial tasks that kept the show on the road. Circus operators regulated employee behavior both inside and outside the tent even as the employees themselves blurred the line between leisure and labor until, in all parts of the show, the workers could not escape their work. Illuminating and vivid, Circus World delves into the gender, class, and even species concerns within an extinct way of life.
Download or read book Secrets of Stylists written by Sasha Charnin Morrison and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2011-04-29 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this unprecedented insider's guide, fashion industry veteran Sasha Charnin Morrison opens her little black book of celebrity stylists and shares their top secrets on creating unforgettable looks, landing a choice job, and working with the pros. Interviews with key players reveal the ins and outs of the glamorous (and often gritty) world of styling, while hundreds of glossy photos illustrate good (and bad) looks. Full of real-life advice, this guide profiles famous image transformations undertaken by stars like Nicole Richie and Katie Holmes, outlines the essentials every stylist must have on hand (double-sided tape, cutlets, manzierres, Spanx, and more!) and, most importantly, shows how to get a Choo in the door and then survive in this ultra-fabulous, ultra-competitive industry.
Download or read book 100 Entertainers Who Changed America 2 volumes written by Robert C. Sickels and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-08-08 with total page 1174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This fascinating and thought-provoking read challenges readers to consider entertainers and entertainment in new ways, and highlights figures from outside the worlds of film, television, and music as influential "pop stars." Comprising approximately 100 entries from more than 50 contributors from a variety of fields, this book covers a wide historical swath of entertainment figures chosen primarily for their lasting influence on American popular culture, not their popularity. The result is a unique collection that spotlights a vastly different array of figures than would normally be included in a collection of this nature—and appeals to readers ranging from high school students to professionals researching specific entertainers. Each subject individual's influence on popular culture is analyzed from the context of his or her time to the present in a lively and engaging way and through a variety of intellectual approaches. Many entries examine commonly discussed figures' influence on popular culture in ways not normally seen—for example, the widespread appeal of Woody Allen's essay collections to other comedians; or the effect of cinematic adaptations of Tennessee Williams' plays in breaking down Hollywood censorship.
Download or read book Celebrity in Chief written by Alan Schroeder and published by Westview Press. This book was released on 2004-02-04 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tells the colorful story of how the two most visible branches of American celebrity-the presidency and Hollywood-came together in a marriage of pop culture and politics
Download or read book Street Style written by Brent Luvaas and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-04-07 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2019 John Collier Jr Award Street style blogging has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity over the last decade. Amateur photographers, often with no formal training in fashion, have become critical arbiters of taste and trends, influencing the representations that appear in magazines and on runways, and putting new cities on the fashion world map. This cutting-edge book documents the evolution of street style photography, from the fieldwork photos of early anthropology to the glamorized snapshots that appear on blogs today, and explores the structural shifts in the global fashion industry that street style has helped bring about. Chronicling author and anthropologist Brent Luvaas' experience over three years of blogging through vivid street imagery and rich ethnographic detail, this book turns the lens of street style photography back onto anthropology itself, arguing that the phenomenon is a powerful mode of amateur ethnography. Bloggers blur the distinction between professional and amateur, insider and outsider, self and brand. This book documents that blur from the ground level-from the streets of Philadelphia to the sidewalks of New York Fashion Week. Street Style is an essential read for students and scholars of fashion, anthropology, sociology, media and cultural studies, and fans of street style photography alike.
Download or read book Inventing Elsa Maxwell written by Sam Staggs and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inventing Elsa Maxwell, the first biography of this extraordinary woman, tells the witty story of a life lived out loud. With Inventing Elsa Maxwell, Sam Staggs has crafted a landmark biography. Elsa Maxwell (1881-1963) invented herself–not once, but repeatedly. Built like a bulldog, she ascended from the San Francisco middle class to the heights of society in New York, London, Paris, Venice, and Monte Carlo. Shunning boredom and predictability, Elsa established herself as party-giver extraordinaire in Europe with come-as-you-are parties, treasure hunts (e.g., retrieve a slipper from the foot of a singer at the Casino de Paris), and murder parties that drew the ire of the British parliament. She set New York a-twitter with her soirees at the Waldorf, her costume parties, and her headline-grabbing guest lists of the rich and royal, movie stars, society high and low, and those on the make all mixed together in let-'er-rip gaiety. All the while, Elsa dashed off newspaper columns, made films in Hollywood, wrote bestselling books, and turned up on TV talk shows. She hobnobbed with friends like Noel Coward and Cole Porter. Late in life, she fell in love with Maria Callas, who spurned her and broke Elsa's heart. Her feud with the Duchess of Windsor made headlines for three years in the 1950s. One of the twentieth century's most colorful characters is brought back to life in this biography by the author of All About All About Eve.
Download or read book Female Aerialists in the 1920s and Early 1930s written by Kate Holmes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Female solo aerialists of the 1920s and early 1930s were internationally popular performers in the largest live performance mass entertainment of the period in the UK and USA. Yet these aerialists and this period in circus history have been largely forgotten despite the iconic image of ‘the’ female aerialist still flaring in the popular imagination. Kate Holmes uses insights gained as a practitioner to reconstruct in detail the British and American performances and public personae of key stars such as Lillian Leitzel, Luisita Leers, and the Flying Codonas, revealing what is performed and implicit in today’s practice. Using a wealth of original sources, this book considers the forgotten stars whose legacy of the cultural image of the female aerialist echoes. Locating performers within wider cultural histories of sport, glamour, and gender, this book asks important questions about their stardom, including: Why were female aerialists so alluring when their muscularity challenged conservative ideals of femininity and how did they participate in change? What was it about their movements and the spaces they performed in that activated such strong audience responses? This book is vital reading for students and practitioners of aerial performance, circus, gender, popular performance, and performance studies.
Download or read book Television Specials written by Vincent Terrace and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2024-10-15 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1954 NBC President Pat Weaver introduced "spectaculars"--lavish entertainment shows designed to bring a new dimension to television. Though special programs had been around since 1939, Weaver's effort heralded a new age, with programs ranging from variety shows with big name hosts (Judy Garland, Cher, Perry Como, Bob Hope, for instance) through animated holiday specials and outstanding dramas to acclaimed children's programming. This is the guide to 3,197 entertainment specials, 1939 to 1993, that were broadcast on network, cable or syndicated television. For each show the cast, including guest stars and announcer, is provided. Also included are comprehensive production credits (director, producer, writer and music), dates aired, networks and running times, and program synopses.
