Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity [Hardcover]

Richard Schickel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1985

In trying to understand the power of celebrity in modern life, Richard Schickel ranges through every realm of our culture — film, theatre, television, literature, art, the media, pop music, politics — for examples of how celebrity shapes our world and bends our minds. He considers the careers of figures as diverse as John Kennedy and Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Dwight Eisenhower, Walter Cronkite and Andy Warhol, among dozens of others. And he reflects on the dangerous, sometimes deadly, political and social consequences of the fascinating, largely unacknowledged relationship between the famous elite and the unfamous majority. In demonstrating how the carefully fostered illusion of intimacy between these two groups has created a devastating confusion between public life and private life, in showing how the play of celebrity symbols has largely replaced the play of ideas in our society, Schickel takes us on a journey to the heart of contemporary darkness — and offers, finally, a chilling warning about the psychopathic consequences of our national obsession with celebrity. "Intimate Strangers is, simply, in my estimation, the single most important book about celebrity." — Neal Gabler.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Film critic and author Schickel examines the "celebrity system" that pervades popular culture and judges that it has, among other things, confused the realms of public and private life, encouraged fantasizing at the expense of reason, and trivialized and simplified complex issues. "Provocative, disturbing and often brilliant," PW commented.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

A fascinating, disturbing book. (Library Journal )

Cogent...Schickel offers white-hot jeremiad. (Melvin Maddocks Time )

Intimate Strangers is, simply, in my estimation, the single most important book about celebrity. (Neal Gabler ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 299 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday Books; First Edition edition (March 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385123361
• ISBN-13: 978-0385123365
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,348,685 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There Are None So Blind, June 20, 2003

By 

I've Gotta "blankagenda2" (Brookshire, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity (Paperback)

I got this initially to assist in my study of celebrity life (ala movie actors and rock stars), and I discovered a much more interesting subject in the process. The effects of the media on our culture, society, morals, ethics and most importantly the voting process, and how the mass media has served not to make a better informed public but one drowning in information we can not possibly sort through before new information is again introduced. Covering the famous from Charlie Chaplin and Ronald Reagan, Schickel explores all of the reasons for the rise and fall of celebrities, and the relationship between those who have and those who believe they have not. In the end, it is simply that the false intimacy that has been created prevents real intimacy, and that in this world of 900 channels we are losing our humanity and replacing it with long distance rightness.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars great celebrico-politico-culturo analysis, January 21, 2008

By 

B. L. Williams (South Orange, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity (Paperback)

Schickel's book is a good read. He may be long on film criticism at times, but he makes up for those irrelevant tangents into the recesses of Marlon Brando's film career by imbuing the work with clever insights into the beliefs and attitudes that shape how Americans think about living life under the gaze.

And Shickel is right about at least one thing: great reasoning isn't attended by a flash of popularity or excessive revenue--the hallmarks of modern celebrity. Only in places older than America--places where a premium has historically been placed on the life of the mind--do we encounter figures who have posthumously transcended popularity in public consciousness. Giants of contemplative rationality--Plato, Aristotle, Copernicus, Martin Luther, Galileo, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Darwin, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, Freud, and many others--have all attained a once-and-for-all celebrity to which no current celebrity, American or otherwise, can approximate.

If it ever occurs to you to wonder, "Why is America so dumb?", Shickel wants you to realize that the answer probably has something to do with how our culture esteems the wrong kind of people for the wrong kinds of things. In the long run, when the sun burns out and the universe shrinks back down to a pinhead, wouldn't you rather have been Einstein than Madonna??

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine Book, February 11, 2006

By 

Alan Shapiro (CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity (Paperback)

An incisive and clearly delineated look at celebrity, especially astute in dealing with the fading of celebrity. In a time of omni-celebrities the book becomes pertinent in being able to understand such impossible figures as one called Paris Hilton, how a woman of no talent can propell herself into the ranks of most recognizable "celebrities." Schickel's book is, also, a pleasure to read