Celebrity isnt just harmless fun its the smiling face of the corporate machine

[SecularMotion]

Now that a reality TV star is preparing to become president of the United States, can we agree that celebrity culture is more than just harmless fun – that it might, in fact, be an essential component of the systems that govern our lives?

The rise of celebrity culture did not happen by itself. It has long been cultivated by advertisers, marketers and the media. And it has a function. The more distant and impersonal corporations become, the more they rely on other people’s faces to connect them to their customers.

Corporation means body; capital means head. But corporate capital has neither head nor body. It is hard for people to attach themselves to a homogenised franchise owned by a hedge fund whose corporate identity consists of a filing cabinet in Panama City. So the machine needs a mask. It must wear the face of someone we see as often as we see our next-door neighbours. It is pointless to ask what Kim Kardashian does to earn her living: her role is to exist in our minds. By playing our virtual neighbour, she induces a click of recognition on behalf of whatever grey monolith sits behind her this week.

An obsession with celebrity does not lie quietly beside the other things we value; it takes their place. A study published in the journal Cyberpsychology reveals that an extraordinary shift appears to have taken place between 1997 and 2007 in the US. In 1997, the dominant values (as judged by an adult audience) expressed by the shows most popular among nine- to 11 year-olds were community feeling, followed by benevolence. Fame came 15th out of the 16 values tested. By 2007, when shows such as Hannah Montana prevailed, fame came first, followed by achievement, image, popularity and financial success. Community feeling had fallen to 11th, benevolence to 12th.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/celebrity-corporate-machine-fame-big-business-donald-trump-kim-kardashian?CMP=share_btn_tw

[Roy Rolling]

1. A Witness

Those of us old enough to be in filmmaking and television for at least 20 years have personally witnessed the change.

That is why crew and others surrounding the D-List Celebrity-in-Chief NEVER support him nor get values from manufactured and deliberately fake personalities.

Reality=Fake

The shows that aren't deliberately fake are no different than people who are unscripted, but make every move and sentence conscious of the TV camera and their performance.

[lastlib]

2. HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!

This may be the most important thing we read! It's ESSENTIAL that everyone understand what this is saying!!