Promotional Information

This book is an analysis of celebrity culture today. Rojek explores celebrity engineering, technologies of fame creation and issues of loneliness and uncertainty.

Table of Contents

Preface: The New Aristocracy of Fame 1. Celebrity Super Nova 2. The Fame Formula 3. Celebrity and Sickness 4. Charisma Gulch 5. Exposure Management 6. Supply Side Factors in Celebrity Inflation 7. Demand Side Factors 8. Para-Social Relations 9. The Icarus Complex 10. Reality TV: The Return of the Fool 11. The Sphinx of Celebrity and the Idolatry Fun Fair

About the Author

Chris Rojek is Professor of Sociology and Culture at Brunel University. His most recent publications include Pop Music, Pop Culture (Polity, 2011), The Labour of Leisure (Sage, 2010), Brit-Myth (Reaktion, 2007), and Frank Sinatra (Polity, 2004). He has also co-authored two books and edited and nine others, including a four volume collection Celebrity (Routledge, 2009).

Reviews

In Fame Attack, Chris Rojek makes a powerful argument for recognising the crucial role that celebrity plays in our media culture, as well as the contribution played by the publicity industries in managing that role. Rejecting elite or taste-based dismissals of celebrity, this a brave and nuanced confrontation of the downside of contemporary celebrity as a cultural formation.
*Graeme Turner, University of Queensland, Australia*