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The Unwatched Life Is Not Worth Living: The Elevation of the Ordinary in Celebrity Culture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Joshua Gamson
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Extract

When my first daughter was born a few years ago, I entered a celebrity news blackout, a somewhat discomfiting condition for a sociologist of celebrity. When she entered preschool, though, I resubscribed to Us Weekly and devoured its morsels like a starving man at McDonald's: Kim Kardashian and her then-boyfriend ate at Chipotle on their first date! Ashton Kutcher was mad about his neighbor's noisy construction! Lindsay Lohan is back in rehab! I felt less disconnected from others, comforted by the familiar company, a little dirtier and a little lighter.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 126 , Issue 4: Special Topic: Celebrity, Fame, Notoriety , October 2011 , pp. 1061 - 1069
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2011

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