Has celebrity lost its lustre?
Posted July 20, 2022 7:14 am.
In today’s Big Story podcast, to be famous now, all you really need is an iPhone, a TikTok account and some creativity.
Gone were the days when celebrity status was dependent on starring film roles, or recording contracts, and the lowered barriers to entry have been great news for BIPOC or 2SLGBTQ+ people whose voices have long been excluded from the popular discourse.
To shed light on how celebrity culture has shifted, we’re joined by Stacy Lee Kong, a writer, editor and critic, and the founder of the pop-culture newsletter, Friday Things. She gave us her take on the current status of celebrity, and shared prescriptions for a fairer and more equitable future of media.
“Celebrities are just a clever trick, they’re a way to get you to think about the way our world works, they are our biggest desires and political beliefs writ large,” she said.
Has this increased access to celebrity caused a dilution of its power? Even as platforms allow people to cut out the middlemen and connect directly with their audience, will we see a new class of gatekeepers arise in their place? And is a more equitable media industry even possible when the profit motive still influences decisions above all else?
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