Marshall’s book offers a scholarly review of critical thinking about celebrity, an original attempt to theorise its function and significance, and a perceptive comment on current trends in contemporary culture. It is a thorough, intelligent and useful contribution to an important subject.

Marshall deserves high praise for his skillful handling of the topic from the viewpoints of a wide variety of scholarly disciplines-sociology, political science, psychology, semiotics, linguistics, cinema studies, and cultural studies.

David Marshall, rather than dismissing celebrities as lightweight entertainment, smartly demonstrates the ideological work performed by the famous among us. Deftly linking film, literary, psychoanalytic, and social theory to particular case studies-Freud, Baudrillard, and Weber meet Tom Cruise, New Kids on the Block, and Oprah-Marshall offers a provocative rethinking of the power of celebrity.

Marshall has provided an extremely useful and original study of the nature of stardom in the contemporary Western world. Locating the celebrity in a theoretical and historical context, Marshall gives us not only an analysis of the significance of this social position, but a set of tools for analyzing the different forms that it may take. Most importantly, and unlike other studies of the star, he describes the general structure of power in which the celebrity is implicated, and consequently he is able to bring together the realms of entertainment and government. This is an important contribution to our attempts to understand the ways media function in current relations of power.

Contemporary celebrities, especially those in the entertainment industry, often wield significant power outside their areas of talent and expertise. How they derive and exercise their status and power is the subject of this intriguing study. Marshall deserves high praise for his skillful handling of the topic from the viewpoints of a wide variety of scholarly disciplines-sociology, political science, psychology, semiotics, linguistics, cinema studies, and cultural studies. . . . Intriguing also is Marshall’s claim that contemporary politicians are using these three modes of celebrity status to construct their own political identities. Recommended for both public and academic libraries collecting in media and cultural studies.

Thoughtful and solidly academic. . . . With this book, Marshall provides a workable schema with which to view the creation and sustainability of celebrity in western (specifically American) culture….Marshall provides a number of intriguing ideas and tools for cultural critics to use when approaching the concept of celebrity.

P. David Marshall deserves high praise for his skillful handling of the topic from the viewpoints of a wide variety of scholarly disciplines—sociology, political science, psychology, semiotics, linguistics, cinema studies, and cultural studies.

Provides a number of intriguing ideas and tools for cultural critics to use when approaching the concept of celebrity.