Celebrating “selfebrity”

Featured in

  • Published 20040907
  • ISBN: 9780733314537
  • Extent: 268 pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm)

WALK INTO ANY newsagent or bookshop. Scan quickly and then let your eyes rest on the racks and racks and racks of celebrity-obsessed magazines. On each cover is a face Photoshopped to within an inch of its two-dimensional life. Where do these people come from? How did they come to be this way? How is it that, despite hours and hours of in-depth interviews and red-carpet vox pops, they stubbornly remain shiny and salubriously slick?

Tom Cruise wasn’t always going to be Tom Cruise. He actually used to be a shortish, gawky, orthodontically challenged two-bit nobody slowly going nowhere. Then he had his teeth fixed, and who knows what else, and emerged looking as close as he could dream to a latter-day James Dean in the role of the homogenised white-bread rebel in Top Gun. It wasn’t much longer before he became delectably take-home-able as the white-uniformed fledgling lawyer-officer with God on his side and a baseball bat in his hand in A Few Good Men.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Mark Cherry (dec.)

Mark Cherry was a writer, researcher and editor. His interests included education, language, film, popular culture and surfing.He was a member of the Film...

More from this edition

No one to blame

EssayIN THE MEDIA, we do love a trend. If one doesn't exist, in fact, we'll make it up. Two observable instances will suffice for...

Orchestrating the myth

EssayIN OCTOBER 1938, the state-controlled German newspaper Berliner Zeitung am Mittag carried this headline, "In der Staatsoper: Das Wunder Karajan" (In the State Opera,...

One day in Dili

MemoirI WAS NERVOUS and sweating and my stomach was churning. I couldn't help babbling out stupid questions. "So what exactly is meant to be...

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.