Speaker 1: All presidents are sociopaths or at the very least psychologically unusual. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I look in the mirror every morning and say, there
Speaker 1: is no one else one. There's three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: million who can do the job I can. This is
Speaker 1: a relatively new field, in part because of the growing
Speaker 1: awareness that dogs weren't just pets, but the dogs also
Speaker 1: have some real and tangible benefits. Willie Mays and Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth athletes who weren't able to monetize themselves in the
Speaker 1: way that they should have been able to. You know,
Speaker 1: Serena is different. We've heard this so many times over
Speaker 1: the years. When Diane and Charles divorce, the monarchy was over.
Speaker 1: When Harry and Meghan gave the interview for OPRAH, people said,
Speaker 1: the monarchy is over. Welcome to One Day University talks
Speaker 1: with the world's most engaging and inspiring professors discussing their
Speaker 1: most popular courses, the ones that students line up to hear.
Speaker 1: The One Day University podcasts gives you a front row
Speaker 1: seat to learn on your schedule. I'm Steven Schragis. Fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago I founded One Day University to present top
Speaker 1: performing professors on stages across the country. There's no homework, exams,
Speaker 1: or student loans. It's learning for the sake of learning.
Speaker 1: In each episode, I'll sit down with a different professor
Speaker 1: to talk about one of their highly rated lectures. No
Speaker 1: matter your interests, We've got you've covered. Our conversations will
Speaker 1: include politics, history, science, music, arts, sports, and pop culture.
Speaker 1: Our first episode falls into the pop culture category. The
Speaker 1: ninety fifth Academy Awards were held last weekend, with Everything Everywhere,
Speaker 1: All at Once winning Best Picture and six other Oscars.
Speaker 1: Millions of people tuned in to see some famous faces,
Speaker 1: including Lady Gaga, Nicole Kidman, Steven Spielberg, and Rihanna. Fans
Speaker 1: of Tom Cruise may have been disappointed to learn that
Speaker 1: he was a no show, even though his film Top
Speaker 1: Gun Maverick was nominated for Best Picture. Professor Susan Douglas
Speaker 1: has studied our relationship with the rich and famous. She
Speaker 1: has a lecture for One Day University titled a History
Speaker 1: of Fame The Power of Celebrity. She teaches communication and
Speaker 1: Media at the University of Michigan, and she's written several
Speaker 1: books on gender and mass media. With the Oscars behind us,
Speaker 1: I was curious if Susan believed that movie stars still
Speaker 1: even exist, or if they are a relic of the past.
Speaker 1: I think it was a very unusual Oscar season. But
Speaker 1: I do think we still have movie stars. But here's
Speaker 1: the hitch. A lot of them have gone to television,
Speaker 1: you know, in part because streaming has offered so many
Speaker 1: opportunities to a list actors, Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, Jane Fond,
Speaker 1: what could go on and on. And this started with
Speaker 1: the entrepreneurial work of Netflix and Amazon, and then COVID
Speaker 1: hit and people stopped going to the movies. And so
Speaker 1: I do think there are still movie stars. There are
Speaker 1: more independent productions that are getting more attention, and maybe
Speaker 1: people whose names we didn't quite recognize this Oscar cycle,
Speaker 1: we'll become more recognizable in the future. But I don't
Speaker 1: believe that Tom Cruise and a few others are the
Speaker 1: only movie stars left. Let's start at the beginning with
Speaker 1: the origins. Where did the word celebrity come from? Do
Speaker 1: you have any idea. I'm not sure where it came from,
Speaker 1: but it was certainly in use by the eighteen forties.
Speaker 1: By that time, there were theatrical stars in the United States,
Speaker 1: and so you began to get the emergence of the
Speaker 1: notion of celebrity by mid century. Then why was there
Speaker 1: this interest and need for celebrities and how responsible was
Speaker 1: the media for this rise of celebrity culture. Then you
Speaker 1: had a symbiotic relationship between the rise of inexpensive newspapers
Speaker 1: meant for the general public, not expensive political papers, and
Speaker 1: they needed content, and you had the ever expanding entertainment industry.
Speaker 1: You know, first it was theaters, and then the circus,
Speaker 1: and then by the late nineteenth century you had vaudeville,
Speaker 1: and vaudeville wanted to promote its stars. Newspapers wanted content,
Speaker 1: and so they worked together with each other. And of
Speaker 1: course the media played a major role in producing which
Speaker 1: stars were the best, you know, behind the scenes with
Speaker 1: the stars, all of that, and they were fed a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff by first vaudeville entrepreneurs and of course
Speaker 1: then later and most famously, you know, the producers of
Speaker 1: movie Okay, then let's talk about two types of stars. One,
Speaker 1: you mentioned sports stars and movie stars. Specifically, I'm thinking
Speaker 1: of Babe Ruth and Mary Pickford. These two were really important,
Speaker 1: and in fact, movie studios were at first sort of
Speaker 1: reluctant to even let this all happen. You want to
Speaker 1: tell us about that, Yeah, sure, movie studios, you know,
Speaker 1: very early on, this is the Nickelodeon period, you know,
Speaker 1: from roughly nineteen oh five to round nineteen eleven, they
Speaker 1: didn't want to put the names of the players on
Speaker 1: the screen because they thought they would demand more money.
Speaker 1: But what they found out is that viewers began to
Speaker 1: respond to specific actors like Mary Pickford. Everybody referred to
Speaker 1: her as the girl with the curls, and people wanted
Speaker 1: to see more of the girl with the curls, for example.
Speaker 1: So they began to realize by nineteen eleven it was
Speaker 1: good box office to put people's names out because those
Speaker 1: stars could then promote movies. So that's when the shift
Speaker 1: begins to happen. And Babe Ruth was he really the
Speaker 1: first sort of gigantic sports celebrity. He was. Yes, you know,
Speaker 1: there were boxing stars, but boxing was very controversial at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the nineteenth century because of interracial clashes
Speaker 1: around who should be the world champion. But Babe Ruth,
Speaker 1: I mean, let's remember Babe Ruth when he was with
Speaker 1: Red Sox. He was a great pitcher, and a great hitter,
Speaker 1: like who can do that? And so he obviously had
Speaker 1: enormous talent. And then when he went to the Yankees
Speaker 1: and you kept hitting homer after homer and helping them
Speaker 1: win World Series. By this time, baseball was not only
Speaker 1: being covered in newspapers. By the nineteen twenty, star is
Speaker 1: being covered by radio, and that enhanced his star them
Speaker 1: even more. Okay, Susan, you mentioned radio. One part of
Speaker 1: your talk, which I had found fascinating because I never
Speaker 1: really thought about it before, was your explanation about how
Speaker 1: it was radio that created many African American stars. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this really relates to the great migration that occurred
Speaker 1: during World War One. There was a great need for
Speaker 1: workers in cities and up north, and you had sixty
Speaker 1: thousand African Americans migrate into Chicago. And some of those
Speaker 1: migrants were jazz musicians who have been playing in the
Speaker 1: bordelos in New Orleans. But the bordellos were shut down
Speaker 1: as like a national security issue in New Orleans. So
Speaker 1: people like Louis Armstrong ended up in Chicago. So you
Speaker 1: had something that's very important in Chicago. You had a
Speaker 1: market for black music and independent companies arose producing what
Speaker 1: was called race music, and they were mostly recording either
Speaker 1: blues Mamie Smith, Bessie Smith, but they were also recording
Speaker 1: what was called hot jazz. And this music became hugely
Speaker 1: popular and white listeners loved this music. And so even
Speaker 1: though radio was, like all the media, very segregated, very
Speaker 1: discriminatory against black performers, nonetheless, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith,
Speaker 1: they all became stars on radio. And we have to
Speaker 1: remember radio is a medium that denies sight to its audience,
Speaker 1: and so it was easier for black stars to become
Speaker 1: stars on a medium like that. Let's move on to
Speaker 1: something very different. Walter Winchell and the rise of gossip.
Speaker 1: Who was he and why was the gossip industry so important?
Speaker 1: So gossip columns had started in the nineteen twenties and
Speaker 1: they basically kind of fell on the heels of the
Speaker 1: rye of movie magazines. You know, movie magazines starred in lateeens,
Speaker 1: early twenties. So Winchell started out, you know, as a
Speaker 1: newspaper gossip columnist, and he moved to radio in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen thirties, and he had this rat tat style
Speaker 1: of delivery, and he mixed news with celebrity gossip and
Speaker 1: celebrity dirt. And he had a way of inventing all
Speaker 1: kinds of language in terms to stand for divorce, romantic liaisons, etc.
Speaker 1: And so what Winchell did is he melded legit news
Speaker 1: with gossip, bringing gossip into broadcasting for the first time,
Speaker 1: and he became enormously influential because of that, he could
Speaker 1: make or break careers. I mean, hardly anybody has heard
Speaker 1: of Walter Winchell now, but Walter Winchell from the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties until the early nineteen fifties was a superstar and enormously,
Speaker 1: enormously influential, and you know, forty million people listened to him.
Speaker 1: So if he wanted to condemn your career, he could.
Speaker 1: It seems to me that People Magazine has been around forever,
Speaker 1: but as you point out, it hasn't. That's not true.
Speaker 1: Why was People Magazine so important in this area of fame? Okay,
Speaker 1: So the story about People Magazine is that Time Magazine
Speaker 1: was doing focus groups, doing research on you know, people's
Speaker 1: engagement with Time magazine, and what they found was that
Speaker 1: whenever somebody got Time Magazine, the first section they went
Speaker 1: to was in the back of the book People, and
Speaker 1: they said, Aha, let's start a whole magazine. This was
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy four, and of course it became a
Speaker 1: smash hit, and the early People magazine had a mix
Speaker 1: of celebrities and everyday people that they wanted to profile.
Speaker 1: And during this period in the nineteen seventies, you begin
Speaker 1: to get the early metastasizing of celebrity culture because you
Speaker 1: get People, and then you get Us Weekly, the imitator.
Speaker 1: You get Barbara Walters specials in the mid nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: you know where she starts interviewing celebrities. By the early
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, where you're getting Entertainment Tonight and then Lifestyles
Speaker 1: of the rich and famous. So you're beginning to get
Speaker 1: this kind of rolling building up of celebrity culture. Tell
Speaker 1: us a little bit more about what you called the
Speaker 1: blurring of the lines between news and entertainment. Why did
Speaker 1: news expand its coverage of celebrities so much? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: as I noted earlier, this really started with Walter Rinchell
Speaker 1: bringing gossip into news, and for a while, when television
Speaker 1: news was establishing its credibility, we didn't have much coverage
Speaker 1: of celebrity in the nightly news. That began to change
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties and beyond. One of the reasons
Speaker 1: is that the news divisions of the networks in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen eighties were spun off of the entertainment divisions,
Speaker 1: meaning that the entertainment divisions which were making all this money,
Speaker 1: were not carrying the news divisions anymore. Now the news
Speaker 1: divisions had to make it on their own, and they
Speaker 1: had to have good ratings and all the rest. And
Speaker 1: so you began to see like Dan Rather on the
Speaker 1: nightly news covering the divorce of Mike Tyson and Robin Gibbons,
Speaker 1: and you're like, what is that? And then of course
Speaker 1: you have the proliferation of cable, first cable news and
Speaker 1: then cable shows, and so cable twenty four hour cable.
Speaker 1: There's a twenty four seven maw that needs to be filled, right,
Speaker 1: and there isn't that much politics all the time. And
Speaker 1: also foreign news bureaus were cut, so you fill that
Speaker 1: with stories about Britney spears. Celebrity news is cheap, you
Speaker 1: can recycle it, people flock to it, and at the
Speaker 1: same time we start to get more and more politicians
Speaker 1: being treated like celebrities. And of course, the ultimate blurring
Speaker 1: moment is twenty sixteen when you have the star of
Speaker 1: a reality TV show transform that into becoming president of
Speaker 1: the United States. So, you know, we're at a really
Speaker 1: odd moment now where politics is as much or more
Speaker 1: entertainment as it is public policy and politics. This has
Speaker 1: been a long process and here we are. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll explore social media's impact on fame and the religious
Speaker 1: undertones of celebrity worship. You described three different types of
Speaker 1: celebrity ascribed, achieved, and attributed. So what's the difference between
Speaker 1: those three? So achieved is obvious, You've earned it, Lebron James,
Speaker 1: Meryl Street, the Rolling Stones. You know, people admired for
Speaker 1: their obvious talent and achievements. Ascribed is you were born
Speaker 1: into it. And right now we have a very prominent
Speaker 1: ascribed celebrity, Prince Harry with the number one bestselling book
Speaker 1: Spare And so you're a child of a celebrity, You're
Speaker 1: born into the royal family. You had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with it. Some ascribed celebrities remain celebrities and others don't.
Speaker 1: And then attributed is it happens to you, usually through
Speaker 1: US scandal or some kind of other event. Nobody knew
Speaker 1: who Monica Lewinsky was right until the scandal of her
Speaker 1: relationship with Bill Clinton comes out, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: she is famous. She is well known simply because she
Speaker 1: is caught in a scandal. Some other examples, if attributed
Speaker 1: can be one hit wonders, a lottery winner can be
Speaker 1: famous for a short period of time and it goes away.
Speaker 1: Often attributed celebrity is the one that most rapidly fades.
Speaker 1: The notion of what is and who is newsworthy has
Speaker 1: changed dramatically. Seems like anyone can be a star. You
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about that. Yes, there's
Speaker 1: a term for this called the demotic turn, which comes
Speaker 1: from the word democracy. And this really began around the
Speaker 1: year two thousand. So there were stars of big hit shows,
Speaker 1: friends er. The shows were doing incredibly well. The stars
Speaker 1: kept demanding more money because they were making a lot
Speaker 1: of money for the networks at the time. And after
Speaker 1: a while, the networks were getting fed up with it
Speaker 1: because they wanted to keep their profit margins high. And meanwhile,
Speaker 1: there had been this little show on MTV called The
Speaker 1: real World. He throw seven people together an apartment, see
Speaker 1: what happens. That started in nineteen ninety two. By the
Speaker 1: late nineties, it was doing very well for MTV. So
Speaker 1: then we get this show called Survivor. The first episode
Speaker 1: of Survivor was a smash hit, and that led to
Speaker 1: more and more reality TV. Now why was reality TV
Speaker 1: produced on MOSS It was so much cheaper to produce
Speaker 1: than scripted shows. You could get people who would be
Speaker 1: on those shows for free because they wanted to be
Speaker 1: on television, and so you were cutting your costs way down,
Speaker 1: and boom you get the explosion of reality to V.
Speaker 1: And then, of course this intersects with the rise of
Speaker 1: social media, right and people beginning to think, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe I can become a star on Instagram. And of course,
Speaker 1: more recently we now have TikTok stars and we have
Speaker 1: YouTube stars, people who have basically crafted themselves into personalities
Speaker 1: through social media. So when this term demotic turn was coined,
Speaker 1: it barely anticipated the rampant democratization of celebrity in our culture.
Speaker 1: Here's another phrase I learned from your lecture that sounded
Speaker 1: very scientific to me. Parasocial interaction. What's that all about? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a complicated term for something we all do. So, Steve,
Speaker 1: have you ever sat in front of your television set
Speaker 1: and yelled at a newscaster as if he or she
Speaker 1: could hear you, or in a horror film, don't go
Speaker 1: in there, don't go in there. Parasocial relationships refer to
Speaker 1: us having imagined relationships with people as if we know them,
Speaker 1: as if they can hear us, when, of course it's
Speaker 1: a very asymmetrical relationship. You know, we may know a
Speaker 1: ton about Jennifer Aniston, she has no idea who I am, right,
Speaker 1: and so parasocial relationships are the relationships that we form
Speaker 1: with stars, and so some people can have very strong
Speaker 1: parasocial relationships, you know, be very devoted fans. A parasocial
Speaker 1: relationship can also be negative, right, I could have a
Speaker 1: very strong negative parasocial hatred of somebody famous. So, but
Speaker 1: that's what it refers to, is that connection that every
Speaker 1: day people have often powerful with as people. Can you
Speaker 1: comment on some of the privileges and power of celebrity
Speaker 1: and and some of the drawbacks for both celebrities and
Speaker 1: for the people who become so invested in their lives. So, look,
Speaker 1: celebrities have a wider voice in the world than we do.
Speaker 1: They go to the front of the line. I don't
Speaker 1: imagine Tom Cruise ever having to go to the Division
Speaker 1: of motor vehicles and waiting, you know, two hours to
Speaker 1: get as light as renewed. They go to the head
Speaker 1: of the line. So you know, those are some of
Speaker 1: the privileges that they get downfall or you know, the
Speaker 1: anti privileges is really loss of privacy. Many celebrities really
Speaker 1: hate the loss of privacy. They are under scrutiny all
Speaker 1: the time. One slight mistake and especially now in the
Speaker 1: era of social media. Boy, you know, can you get
Speaker 1: banged up on on one slip of the tongue or
Speaker 1: one mistake. And I will say in particular really worrying
Speaker 1: about the privacy of your children, which has become a
Speaker 1: big deal for a lot of celebrities. Those are some
Speaker 1: really quite serious downsides. There's what some people would would
Speaker 1: actually call a religious aspect to celebrity fascination, including pilgrimages
Speaker 1: to important sites like the one in Memphis, and you
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. So Grace Land is of
Speaker 1: course a complete monument to Elvis and his grave is there,
Speaker 1: and I went there with some colleagues on an off day,
Speaker 1: and there were fans laying flowers on the grave. So
Speaker 1: in terms of religion, there is, you know, a hypothesis
Speaker 1: that celebrity worship is kind of a substitute for religion.
Speaker 1: And if you've been to any rock concerts recently, think
Speaker 1: about how the stars are beautifully lit on the stage,
Speaker 1: almost haload. They are above us, they are illuminated. We're below.
Speaker 1: Maybe we're holding candles, you know, to pay tribute to them.
Speaker 1: We sing along with them. They're above us. They're like gods.
Speaker 1: The way that musical stars in particular are staged is
Speaker 1: very godlike, and people can become obsessed with what we
Speaker 1: call reliquaries, you know, a shock of somebody's hair, a
Speaker 1: piece of Michael Jackson's clothing, whatever. So some have argued
Speaker 1: that there is a religiosity to celebrity worship and celebrity culture.
Speaker 1: There were two Oscar nominated films that focused on past
Speaker 1: movie stars, Elvis and Blonde, which was about Marilyn Monroe.
Speaker 1: Why do you think they're still making movies about those
Speaker 1: two and others so many decades later. There are certain stars,
Speaker 1: especially those who've died young, who've died tragically who are
Speaker 1: preserved forever in their use. And James Dean is another one. Right,
Speaker 1: we go back and revisit these stars in their youthful beauty,
Speaker 1: and what these stars kind of symbolize for us is
Speaker 1: a kind of immortality, because yes, Marilyn Monroe is long gone,
Speaker 1: Elvis is long gone, but we have posters of them,
Speaker 1: we have their music, their films, They live on in
Speaker 1: all kinds of imagery and sound. It appeals to some
Speaker 1: notion of not really ever dying. That again ties in
Speaker 1: with our fantasies about and relationship with stars. Okay, Susan,
Speaker 1: one last question. Do you think the existence of celebrities
Speaker 1: has an overall positive or negative effect on society and culture? Well, Steven,
Speaker 1: I'd like to turn that question around a little bit
Speaker 1: and ask what do celebrities provide? What do they take away?
Speaker 1: What do they justify? And so celebrities in if you
Speaker 1: want to go with a positive route, they provide everyday
Speaker 1: people with role models. They provide everyday people with aspirational
Speaker 1: stories about success. They provide everyday people with a kind
Speaker 1: of social glue. So you know, if I am sitting
Speaker 1: next to you on an airplane and we start talking,
Speaker 1: and there's been a political scandal and a celebrity scandal.
Speaker 1: The last thing I'm going to do is talk to
Speaker 1: you about the political scan given the part as a
Speaker 1: nature or politics right now, but a celebrity scandal, you
Speaker 1: and I can be experts on that have a moral
Speaker 1: compass about it, and in our conversation we affirm our
Speaker 1: own morality about right and wrong. I think some of
Speaker 1: the damaging things about celebrity culture is they enact standards
Speaker 1: of beauty and slimness and youth that very few people
Speaker 1: kind of achieve, yet too many people seek to measure
Speaker 1: themselves by. They justify hierarchies of race and class, They
Speaker 1: make hierarchies seem thrilling. They justify having way too much money.
Speaker 1: And I think there are some problems with celebrity culture,
Speaker 1: and they kind of legitimate a notion of who deserves
Speaker 1: what and who doesn't deserve certain things. Susan, thank you
Speaker 1: so much again for doing this. We really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: With such an interesting subject and an unusual subject, I
Speaker 1: learned a lot. I hope our listeners did too. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us, Thanks for having me, it was great fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us here. At One Day University. Sign
Speaker 1: up at our website one dayu dot com to become
Speaker 1: a member and access over seven hundred full length video
Speaker 1: lectures from the world's finest professors. You could also download
Speaker 1: our app. There you can learn more about today's episode
Speaker 1: and watch University of Michigan Professor Susan Douglas's lecture on
Speaker 1: fame and Celebrity, as well as her talks on the
Speaker 1: history of radio pagism and more. Join us next time
Speaker 1: when we talk about the Biden presidency. I would put
Speaker 1: his legislati accomplishments up against almost anyone's since Franklin Roosevelt
Speaker 1: or Lyndon Johnson for the first two years of his presidency.
Speaker 1: One Day University is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
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