Seeing Stars

Seeing Stars explores the ways in which celebrities are 'manufactured', how they establish their hold on the public imagination, and how social responses enable them to be what they are. Celebrity culture is marked by three main responses: adulation, identification, and emulation. The book proposes that these responses are generated as a result of media constructions of celebrities. Therefore, celebrity culture is something that must be studied as a consequence of new forms of media representation and mass culture. The book's aim is to explore this phenomenon, especially from the 1990s. It is intended as a popular introduction to celebrity culture and a new 'society of spectacle' that is visible in India today through a rigorous analyses of a range of media sources.