Who is Responsible for Hollywood's Celebrity Fetish?

Loo, back in Hollywood's heyday of the 40s and 50s, there were many trash magazines revelling in the sordid private lives of its stars. Today is no different. There were bimbos in Hollywood before and there are bimbos now. The public loves salacious gossip and reading about the perverted sex lives of the Hollywood stars no matter who they are or how crap they are. It's Hollywood, baby! Love it or leave it, I say. If you want to be enriched by culture then move to New York. LA is for the perverted, coke-fuelled low-lifes of Hollywood where money is everything and the only culture to be found in LA is ina tub of yoghurt. Isn't LA great!

Reply

The question is, when did the American Media decide to cover this stuff? We've always had tabloids and Entertainment Tonight, but somewhere after E!, things got out of hand.

Reply

"Baby boomers need to seize control of the culture..."

Spare me! Baby boomers are the ones who OWN all this media that's covering Paris Hilton. How much more control do they need?

Reply

I’d like to digress a bit into sci-fi…

For all the Kubrick (and IPhone) buffs out there:

A new spoof video making use of 2001: A Space Odyssey recently came out, and there's a mild amount of interest in the site itself: myiphoneevolution.com.

The video spoof itself is fun, but it would appear that there's an even more compelling reason to check the site out...

The guys who made the site are now calling for a contest for people to make their own viral videos!

I can't wait to see what people can come up with.

Reply

Yeah, uh. What Donna said.

I don't know about there being any need for The Baby Boomers to wrest control away from The Slackers - but I am pretty darned sure that if media, bloggers and etc turned the focus onto other sides of celebrity more often (ie, happily married couples, well adjusted & well educated teen actors, celebrities using their power to fight poverty and be productive citizens, etc), the national attention could be somewhat turned away from a lot of this circus.

Reply

Every generation seems to think the generation that follows after it is destroying the very fabric of society, etc etc. Read some Cicero and you'll find that the orator was complaining of the very same phenomenon in Rome two thousand years ago.

Donna is right. The baby boomers own the media companies and, by and large, are holding the reins of our society by just about any possible measure (gov't offices, business leadership, philanthropy, etc). There's nothing for them to seize control of. They are already at the helm. The Paris Hiltons and Lindsay Lohans of the world are merely tools.

Reply

Interesting thesis ProgGrrl, except that it doesnt really hold up. The media is in the business of making money. They don't put stuff out and say read this cause theres nothing else. They put stuff out that they know will get their media outlet the most coverage. Unfortunately, that tends to be the smut and degradation that you see on the front pages everyday. So the question is "whose fault is this?" Well, its our fault. If we started listening to the people reporting about the postive aspects of life then they would start putting out more articles like ProgGrrl described. Its a free market, and the market supplies what people demand. As much as I hate to say it, its time for people stop blaming the media for what they watch and start blaming themselves. If everyones really so tired of Paris and Nicole then stop watching all the trash thats reported on them. When E!'s ratings go in the toilet they'll HAVE to adjust their programming to try and find what interests people. But with Simple Life ratings through the roof, and the People Magazines that report on Anna Nicole Smiths death selling like hot cakes, there is no reason why they should stop giving us the stories we've been demanding of them.

Reply

nice site you have, thanks for sharing, have a look at http://badmovieknights.com/ when you get time :>

Reply