Celebrity Magazines
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Celebrity magazines seem to proliferate and thrive, though critics find them to be too personality-oriented, with minimal news value. The audience for these magazines is clearly large, and the success of magazines such as People and Us has influenced other magazines to include more personality profiles and celebrity interviews than they might otherwise print. An analysis of two issues of these magazines will show the types of article they contain and suggest clues to the purposes they serve, the audience they address, and the methods they use. It is expected that these magazines cater to a certain view of the world in which celebrities and their lives are not held up as role models as much as they are held up as ideals to be both emulated and knocked down at the same time. That is, readers are treated vicariously both to the benefits of celebrity while also being given cautionary tales proving that the lives of celebrities are, after all, not perfect. There are certain generic qualities to the messages in these magazines. First, they are celebrity-driven, depending on personalities of all sorts for their subject matter. They do not contain articles on issues except when a celebrity is promoting that issue, and then it is the celebrity who is featured and the issue that is relegated to a minor role. In the November 8, 1993 issue of People, for instance, the closest thing to an article with an issue in it was a biography of filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker, who produced a fil
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developed out of the "People" section in Time magazine which offered short pieces on celebrities. People magazine is also given to short stories and lots of pictures, and pictures are another element that sets these magazines apart. The ratio of text to picture is much lower for these magazines than for issue-oriented magazines or news magazines.
Why so much attention lavished on celebrities, a group that is difficult to define beyond stating that they are well known enough to be given attention by this type of magazine? Christina Kelly, a writer of articles for these magazines, considers this question and notes that the reasons why people are celebrities are many. Some are talented, but there are many people with no talent at all who have become celebrities. Some are heroes, while others are involved in scandals and cannot be considered heroes at all. Kelly says that celebrities "satisfy our insatiable demand for something to talk about outside our own inconsequential little lives." In the past, gossip served much the same purpose, though it took place in a smaller group and concerned people closer to those doing the gossiping. With the advent of magazines in the 1850s, written gossip was developed. The movies mad sta
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1584
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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