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Celebrity Magazines

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 film about the Clinton presidential campaign. November 1993's Us magazine provided somewhat more issue-driven material with departments more like editorials, one of which examined the vital issue of who was responsible for any devastation caused by MTV's cartoon characters Beavis and Butt-Head.

Second, there are two broad types of celebrity featured in these magazines. The first are generic celebrities, superstars who sell magazines almost anytime they appea...

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Celebrity Magazines. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:00, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1681365.html