Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940 [Library Binding]

Charles L. Ponce de Leon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2001 | ISBN-10: 0807827290 | ISBN-13: 978-0807827291 | Edition: 1st Edition

Few features of contemporary American culture are as widely lamented as the public's obsession with celebrity--and the trivializing effect this obsession has on what appears as news. Nevertheless, America's "culture of celebrity" remains misunderstood, particularly when critics discuss its historical roots.

In this pathbreaking book, Charles Ponce de Leon provides a new interpretation of the emergence of celebrity. Focusing on the development of human-interest journalism about prominent public figures, he illuminates the ways in which new forms of press coverage gradually undermined the belief that famous people were "great," instead encouraging the public to regard them as complex, interesting, even flawed individuals and offering readers seemingly intimate glimpses of the "real" selves that were presumed to lie behind the calculated, self-promotional fronts that celebrities displayed in public. But human-interest journalism about celebrities did more than simply offer celebrities a new means of gaining publicity or provide readers with "inside dope," says Ponce de Leon. In chapters devoted to celebrities from the realms of business, politics, entertainment, and sports, he shows how authors of celebrity journalism used their writings to weigh in on subjects as wide-ranging as social class, race relations, gender roles, democracy, political reform, self-expression, material success, competition, and the work ethic, offering the public a new lens through which to view these issues.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A fascinating contribution to one of the most important developments of modern America. One has only to think for a moment about contemporary culture to wish to know where our obsessions with celebrity come from and, more profoundly, what impact celebrating celebrity has had on our civilization. (James B. Gilbert, University of Maryland at College Park)

Fills an important gap in historical scholarship, providing the first sustained consideration of how the notion of celebrity status emerged from the late nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth. (Daniel Horowitz, author of Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique)

About the Author

Charles L. Ponce de Leon is associate professor of history at Purchase College, State University of New York.

Product Details

• Library Binding: 352 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press; 1st Edition edition (December 9, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807827290
• ISBN-13: 978-0807827291
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,039,842 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply stunning!, August 7, 2003

By 

Scott Hercher (Scranton, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940 (Paperback)

This is a brilliant book on a subject that we often dismiss as trivial. Remarkably, as you read Ponce de Leon's history of the evolution of celebrity journalism, you realize that most of the strategies the celeb followers and creators employed 100 years ago are still being used today in People, Sports Illustrated and similar magazines. Equally fascinating is the way more astute (or malleable?) celebrities learned to adapt to the culture of celebrity and present themselves in a certain manner so as to fit the necessary mold. (Witness the way Katherine Hepburn posed as an everyday woman with the same concerns as any other homemaker during the 1930's -- the truth was probably very different.) Mr. Ponce de Leon's first book is an engaging and penetrating critique into the ways in which celebrities are presented -- and present themselves -- and how the entire notion of celebrity is manipulated in ways that are designed to reaffirm middle class mores.