Why do so many people care so much about celebrities? Who decides who gets to be a star? What are the privileges and pleasures of fandom? Do celebrities ever deserve the outsized attention they receive?
In this fascinating and deeply researched book, Sharon Marcus challenges everything you thought you knew about our obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories we tell about celebrities and fans. The result: a high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable.
Drawing on scrapbooks, personal diaries, and vintage fan mail, Marcus traces celebrity culture back to its nineteenth-century roots, when people the world over found themselves captivated by celebrity chefs, bad-boy poets, and actors such as the “divine” Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), as famous in her day as the Beatles in theirs. Known in her youth for sleeping in a coffin, hailed in maturity as a woman of genius, Bernhardt became a global superstar thanks to savvy engagement with her era’s most innovative media and technologies: the popular press, commercial photography, and speedy new forms of travel.
Whether you love celebrity culture or hate it, The Drama of Celebrity will change how you think about one of the most important phenomena of modern times.
"[An] inventive, stimulating book. . . . [Sharon] Marcus is a brilliant theorist and analyst of theater history."—Elaine Showalter, New York Times
"[An] insightful and often entertaining take on celebrity. . . . The linchpin of the author's study is French stage actress Sarah Bernhardt, a master of self-promotion. To the shelves of works about Bernhardt, Marcus brings a singular take—richly illustrated throughout by reproduced drawings, paintings, and photographs—that fascinates as it explains her concepts of celebrity."—Kirkus
"Marcus’s study of Bernhardt, a Jewish actress, is remarkable. Even though this is an academic text, it reads so well. And wow, could we read a bajillion more books on Sarah Bernhardt!!!"—Emily Burack, Alma
"Marcus’s great achievement here is that she leads us on a journey of understanding celebrity and stardom with a richer history than we are often want to take."—D. Gilson, Lambda Literary
"The Drama of Celebrity by Sharon Marcus is a hybrid of biography and sociological treatise on one of the most important phenomena of modern times . . . why we are attracted to — or, conversely, repulsed by — celebrity culture."—Kitty Kelley, Washington Independent Review of Books
"[An] insightful and engaging examination of celebrity culture . . . Marcus augments her analysis by drawing on types of sources that are rarely used, such as scrapbooks, letters and life writing produced by fans of celebrities. The inclusion of normally neglected voices adds richness and depth to this work, ensuring it is more comprehensive than most earlier studies of this intriguing subject."—Eleanor Fitzsimons, Literary Review
"You don’t have to be into celebrity culture to appreciate this readable study."—Steven Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald
"I love the book."—Radhika Jones
"In lucid prose, [Marcus] describes celebrity as a drama with three main characters: celebrities, the public that adores and judges them, and the media producers who exalt, criticize and satirize . . . The star of the book is Sarah Bernhardt . . . The book reproduces a rich trove of archival material which, if it does not bring Bernhardt back to life, at least reveals the scintillating liveliness of her image a century ago . . . Spend 200 pages with Sarah Bernhardt, and Kim Kardashian’s provocations come to seem less shocking."—Irina Dumitrescu, Times Literary Supplement
"[An] excellent new book . . . Marcus [has] performed a great service by illuminating the extraordinary gift possessed by [Sarah Bernhardt]."—Joseph Roach, Los Angeles Review of Books
"The Drama of Celebrity is premised on a fundamental continuity between Bernhardt’s era and our own, and Marcus is surely right to contend that the star did much to invent what we now recognize as celebrity culture."—Ruth Bernard Yeazell, New York Review of Books
"[S]parky, feisty and compelling . . . . Sharon Marcus’s book is tour de force and the author a total star."—Jonathan Margolis, Jewish Chronicle
"Olivia Vinall delivers an engaging narration of Marcus's exhaustive research on the origins of modern celebrity culture . . . [her] pace and tone are just right for this fascinating investigation of celebrity in our media-driven world."—Audiofile Magazine
"The book will hold readers’ interest and change their understanding of the triangular interaction involving celebrities, media producers and the public."—Richard Weigel, Bowling Green Daily News
"[In The Drama of Celebrity], Marcus challenges everything that has been thought about the obsession with fame. Icons are not merely famous for being famous; the media alone cannot make or break stars; fans are not simply passive dupes. Instead, journalists, the public, and celebrities themselves all compete, passionately and expertly, to shape the stories told about celebrities and fans. The result: A high-stakes drama as endless as it is unpredictable."—Society’s Books of Note
"One of the most widely researched and acutely conceptualized books that I have had the pleasure to read in recent years."—Nicholas White, Modern Language Review
"[In The Drama of Celebrity,] Marcus traces a long history of modern celebrity culture, which she triangulates in negotiations among stars, fans, and the media. The book is elegantly organized, with each chapter turning around a key 'configuration' of celebrity culture—defiance, sensation, intimacy, multiplication, judgment, and merit—and a key celebrity, the actress Sarah Bernhardt."—Lauren Eriks Cline, Victorian Literature and Culture
"Marcus’ core thesis—that celebrity is a process rather than an individual—is a compelling one in that it challenges the reader to view fame as a social relationship, one in which we all play a role, regardless of whether or not we choose to engage with particular stars."—Andrea McDonnell, Journal of British Studies
"Marcus’s book is necessary reading for anyone wishing to understand the workings of celebrity."—Kelly Boyd, Journal of Victorian Culture
"A serious, sophisticated, and potentially game changing study of celebrity."—Mary Lynn Stewart, American Historical Review
"With prismatic clarity based on authoritative scholarship, The Drama of Celebrity refracts the dazzling light of star power into its constituent colors. Scores of celebrities, past and present, share the limelight, but the exemplary Sarah Bernhardt, golden-voiced queen of the unforgettable gesture, commands center stage throughout Sharon Marcus's field-defining and compellingly readable book."—Joseph Roach, author of The Player’s Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting and It
"A landmark book for the history of popular culture. Combining a rigorous analytical intelligence with deep, meticulous research into neglected sources such as fan scrapbooks, Marcus demonstrates how the nineteenth-century theater set the mold for celebrity culture today. A brilliant, transformative account of the way that celebrity works."—Deborah Cohen, author of Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain
"Utterly brilliant. Marcus travels back to the nineteenth century and returns bearing a high-definition mirror for our own celebrity-driven era. She maps the dynamics of fame, reveals their consistency through time, and teaches us how to better inhabit our mediated world today. No fan could ask for more."—Fred Turner, author of The Democratic Surround: Multimedia and American Liberalism from World War II to the Psychedelic Sixties
"How did present-day ideas about celebrity come into being? What—and who—makes a celebrity? Excavating a cornucopia of unlikely sources, from dreams about celebrities to scrapbooks kept by ordinary fans, Sharon Marcus reveals the origins of celebrity culture to lie in dramatic negotiations between publics, media, and celebrities themselves. The resulting book is itself dramatic: a deeply researched story that manages to provide a long history of this timeliest of phenomena."—Leah Price, Harvard University
"The Drama of Celebrity is a stunning work of cultural history and social theory about what creates stars on the stage, the screen, and all platforms in between. Sharon Marcus has written both a brilliant account of the different actors whose work can make or break a celebrity, and a fascinating investigation into why so many people care. The result is a memorable book that will engage readers across the academy and beyond."—Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, and the Decline of Civic Life
"One of the great strengths of The Drama of Celebrity is its insistence—and proof—that the forms of celebrity and fandom we consider so modern go back at least to the middle of the nineteenth century. It is the fans who emerge as the stars of this book."—Eric Smoodin, University of California, Davis
"I have not read such a stimulating and original book for a long time. Marcus brings the experience and thrill of nineteenth-century theater to life, but that is only the start of it. With extraordinary elegance, she manages to think about the historical and the theoretical together, and this book will swiftly establish itself as one of enduring value and importance."—Clare Pettitt, King’s College London
