Q: What books would you recommend to someone interested in learning about the cult of celebrity, besides yours of course?
A: Theodor Adorno’s The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture and Daniel Boorstin’s book The Image are classic dismissals of celebrity culture as exploitative, deceptive and superficial. Richard Dyer’s book Stars complicated that view by arguing that celebrities appeal to us because they help to reconcile social contradictions: Marilyn Monroe, for example, embodied the 1950s ideal that femininity be both innocent and seductive, naive and knowing. But celebrity, as my book argues, is participatory and sensational, so the best way to understand it is to go to a live event or spend some time on social media and experience how celebrities, media and publics interact.
Q: Alive or dead, what celebrities would you invite to a dinner party?
A: I’d invite some of the performers I most admire from the last 150 years: Sarah Bernhardt, the international star who provides the through-line forThe Drama of Celebrity; Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis, both of whom resembled Bernhardt in their eccentricity, independence and longevity as actresses; Margot Fonteyn, the ballerina; Maria Callas, the opera singer; and Joni Mitchell, singer-songwriter. Lots of strong personalities, with everyone except Fonteyn vying to be the center of attention—it would be a terrible party.