Young Celebrity Girl Portrait

In the 1970s, academics began analyzing the phenomenon of celebrity and stardom. According to Sofia Johansson the "canonical texts on stardom" include Daniel Boorstin's The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961) and 1970s articles by Boorstin, Alberoni, and Dyer which examined the "representations of stars and on aspects of the Hollywood star system." Johansson notes "more recent analyses within media and cultural studies" in the 1990s and 2000s have instead dealt with the idea of a pervasive, contemporary, 'celebrity culture'."
According to Madow, "fame is a "relational" phenomenon, something that is conferred by others. A person can, within the limits of his natural talents, make himself strong or swift or learned. But he cannot, in this same sense, make himself famous, any more than he can make himself loved." Madow goes on to point out that "fame is often conferred or withheld, just as love is, for reasons and on grounds other than "merit." This means that regardless of how "... strenuously the star may ... try to "monitor" and "shape" it, the media and the public always play a substantial part in the image-making process."
Bob Greene argues for "most of man's history...people of talent would work to create something--something written, something painted, something sculpted, something acted out--and it would be passed on to audiences." With the rise of reality TV shows, Greene points out audiences have been turned into the creators. He argues the "alleged stars of the reality shows Survivor and Big Brother, have become famous not for doing, but merely for being."
Greene says "You simply have to be present, in the right place at the right time." Whereas publicly famous people "were once defined as such based upon the fact their remarkable skills had brought them to the attention of the public." Greene states with reality TV, "one can become a public person just by being a person, in public."