The Star as Icon

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Princess Diana, Jackie O, Grace Kelly-the star icon is the most talked about yet least understood public persona. The object of adoration, fantasy, and cult obsession, the star icon is a celebrity, yet she is also something more: a dazzling figure at the center of a media pantomime that is at once voyeuristic and zealously guarded. With skill and humor, Daniel Herwitz pokes at the gears of the celebrity-making machine, recruiting a philosopher's interest in the media, an eye for society, and a love of popular culture to divine our yearning for these iconic figures and the particular role they play in our lives. Herwitz portrays the star icon as a fraught individual caught between transcendence and trauma. An effervescent being living on a distant, exalted planet, the star is also a melodramatic heroine desperate to escape her dismal life and the ever-watchful eye of the media. The public buoys her up and then eagerly watches her fall, her collapse providing a satisfying conclusion to a story sensationally told-while, at the same time, leaving the public yearning for a rebirth. Herwitz locates this double life in the opposing tensions of film, television, religion, and consumerism, therefore offering fresh perspectives on all of these subjects and ingeniously mapping society's creation (and destruction) of these special aesthetic stars. Though he is in love with popular culture, Herwitz remains deeply skeptical of public illusion. He worries that popular media is distancing us from even minimal insight into those who are transfigured into star icons as well as the role of media, celebrity, and star culture in American and British politics.