Dear Readers,

Here I am continuing to answer some of the questions I’ve received on the changing nature of gossip and celebrity. (Click here to read Part One of my Q & A on celebrity culture.)

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“How did celebrity culture change in the 1970s?”

The late ‘60s and early ‘70s saw the unraveling of the movie studio system altogether – the idea of the infamous seven-year contract. Stars became independent and made their own choices, successes and failures. As for sex – well, Marilyn Monroe was the last REAL sex symbol. Not because she was so sexy – she wasn’t, her characters were not real women – but because now EVERY actress was a sex symbol of some sort. They were all naked, they didn’t wear bras. And in real life, you saw it too – getting excited over some lady onscreen in a tight satin dress seemed rather silly, when the girl down the block was wearing a transparent blouse and a micro-miniskirt.

So changes in mores, manners, speech and behavior changed reporting and celebrity. (Even I had to give in, and now use the expression “diss.”)

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“How did Andy Warhol put a new spin on celebrity culture?”

Andy Warhol proved you could make a success from nothing. All you needed to do was say “this is art” – a painting of a Campbell’s soup can – and if you said it with enough fey authority, it was so. You could take any hustler or addict, dress or undress them and call them underground “superstars.” It was a sly counterculture devolution of old-fashioned stardom, which Warhol himself worshipped. And he did supply us with those words by which we now all live: “In the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes.” It’s too bad, really, that he didn’t live to see what the Internet has wrought.

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“What was the impact of People magazine?”

People magazine differed from Life and Look because it focused primarily on celebrities – the prototype issue in 1973 had Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton on the cover. It was simply an advancement of the great fan magazine genre – Modern Screen, Photoplay began to go under in the early ‘70s.

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“What was the impact of Elvis’s death on tabloid journalism?”

I think the only thing that Elvis’s death did for the tabloids was to allow a photo of his corpse in his coffin – I don’t know that the tabs changed very much because he became a dead idol of worship. He and Monroe are in a class by themselves.

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“What was the significance of Ron Galella stalking Jackie Onassis?”

The significance of Ron stalking Jackie was that each became the face of the opposing team – Ron the relentless, heartless paparazzo; Jackie, the star seeking privacy. It actually benefited both. Ron did take one of the most iconic candid shots of her, one that captured all of her elusive look/don’t look/follow/don’t follow me allure. She, by the way, was in many ways the ultimate star. Like Garbo, she rarely spoke, did not reveal herself. She was the total sphinx.

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“The effects of John Lennon’s murder and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan?”

I won’t attempt to analyze John Hinckley Jr. or Mark David Chapman or their reasons for attempting or succeeding in killing famous people. I loathe putting killers on pedestals. John Lennon’s murder was a horror and it robbed the world of a great artist. Reagan’s shooting horribly wounded others. And by the way, I sympathize greatly with Yoko Ono – and not just because she had to see her husband gunned down in front of her. I think she has always received a raw deal, image wise. Even a racist one.


John Lennon and Yoko Ono, 1969/Image: Wikipedia

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“What has been the impact of reality television?”

The impact of reality TV has been incalculable. And not in a good way. It encourages the worst kind of exhibitionism and narcissism. Qualities that are now totally ingrained in our culture. Personally, I don’t enjoy seeing people humiliated. It smacks of the Roman arena.

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