Celebrity Status on Culture
by MAX MANTEL ‘25
Drew Barrymore became a scab recently; her show will return to air despite the current WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. This goes against the public image she’s spent years cultivating: one of positivity, optimism, and friendliness, which is particularly relevant to her career as a talk show host. A talk show is largely dependent on the friendly personality of the host, and when it becomes clear that that personality is manufactured, audiences will leave. This kind of problem isn’t unique to Barrymore, in fact, it’s just one effect of celebrities curating fake personalities.
After all, celebrities are just people at the end of the day, and with the rise of social media, that’s all they really need to be. Celebrity culture has shifted with the arrival of platforms like YouTube and TikTok, where achieving fame and relevancy is as simple as being relatable. That isn’t inherently negative, but it does put more pressure on celebrities to maintain a curated image that their team has constructed for them.
Now more than ever, success in the star world ties into maintaining a public image, often overtaking the career of the initial celebrity. Actors like Bryan Cranston and Gwenyth Paltrow have used their own brands and connections to launch businesses removed from their talents, with most of the marketing simply being their faces. This can create a symbiotic relationship between the celebrity and their product: Paltrow’s own business and its… strange marketing choices haven’t done her any favors, and even influencers like Tana Mongeau have seen public ridicule due to failed business ventures (in this case, Tana’s convention). The court of public opinion is not an easy one to play in, and in making their image so intertwined with their career, celebs run the risk of ruining both.
Perhaps this issue is most prevalent in regard to current “influencers.” The influencer is the modern celebrity, building a fanbase purely off of their antics and life. Celebrity culture feels this shift as well; actors and singers now promote themselves through vlogs, interviews, funny tweets, and their general personalities. This culture change is largely indicative of our increasing urge to see celebrities as “real people” — people who experience the same trivial problems as us despite their fame and wealth. It’s easier to form parasocial relationships and “bonds” with those who do share more of themselves and have created a more holistic self-image. In this way, every celebrity is an influencer to some degree, if not for the fact that they simply have influence. That influence is a double-edged sword though, as it comes with much scrutiny. Celebrities are called out and lambasted online for smaller and smaller things daily, by people both vitriolic and jealous. Oftentimes it feels like the public looks for things that are wrong with celebrities; if one cannot live up to the image they try to project, public opinion on them will shift quickly. As we are invested in their success, we are invested in their failure.
This is perhaps most obvious when examining celebrities like Ye and Elon Musk, who, despite initially gaining public recognition through their music and business ventures, now thrive off of the fact that their actions are absurd and frankly, entertaining. There will always be a market for entertaining failure. As long as we feel the urge to idolize public figures, that will always be the case.
