Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity in America

by Richard Schickel

Book Overview

In explaining the power of celebrity in modern life, Richard Schickel ranges through every realm of our culture-film, theatre, television, literature, art, the media, pop music, politics-for examples of how celebrity shapes our world and bends our minds.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1566633176
• ISBN13: 9781566633178
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: Globe Pequot Publishing Group Inc/Bloomsbury
• Length: 334 Pages
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

great celebrico-politico-culturo analysis

Schickel's book is a good read. He may be long on film criticism at times, but he makes up for those irrelevant tangents into the recesses of Marlon Brando's film career by imbuing the work with clever insights into the beliefs and attitudes that shape how Americans think about living life under the gaze. And Shickel is right about at least one thing: great reasoning isn't attended by a flash of popularity or excessive revenue--the hallmarks of modern celebrity. Only in places older than America--places where a premium has historically been placed on the life of the mind--do we encounter figures who have posthumously transcended popularity in public consciousness. Giants of contemplative rationality--Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Martin Luther, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Darwin, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Freud, and many others--have all attained a once-and-for-all celebrity to which no current celebrity, American or otherwise, can approximate. If it ever occurs to you to wonder, "Why is America so dumb?", Shickel wants you to realize that the answer probably has something to do with how our culture esteems the wrong kind of people for the wrong kinds of things. In the long run, when the sun burns out and the universe shrinks back down to a pinhead, wouldn't you rather have been Einstein than Madonna??

Fine Book

An incisive and clearly delineated look at celebrity, especially astute in dealing with the fading of celebrity. In a time of omni-celebrities the book becomes pertinent in being able to understand such impossible figures as one called Paris Hilton, how a woman of no talent can propell herself into the ranks of most recognizable "celebrities." Schickel's book is, also, a pleasure to read

There Are None So Blind

I got this initially to assist in my study of celebrity life (ala movie actors and rock stars), and I discovered a much more interesting subject in the process. The effects of the media on our culture, society, morals, ethics and most importantly the voting process, and how the mass media has served not to make a better informed public but one drowning in information we can not possibly sort through before new information is again introduced. Covering the famous from Charlie Chaplin and Ronald Reagan, Schickel explores all of the reasons for the rise and fall of celebrities, and the relationship between those who have and those who believe they have not. In the end, it is simply that the false intimacy that has been created prevents real intimacy, and that in this world of 900 channels we are losing our humanity and replacing it with long distance rightness.