The Culture of Celebrity

A few years ago I visited the champagne cellar of Piper-Heidsieck in Reims, a city in eastern France. At the entrance there is a plaque proclaiming that the cellar had been dedicated by Marie Antoinette. At the end of the tour, one steps into a small museum consisting entirely of photographs of famous people drinking champagne. And who are these worthies? Are they perhaps members of today’s royal houses? Presidents or prime ministers of great nations? Economic titans? Nobel Prize winners? Of course not. They are movie stars, and almost all of them are American—Marilyn Monroe to Clint Eastwood. The premise of the exhibit is unmistakable: Hollywood stars are the royalty of this century. Celebrity is what the global village has in common, to gossip about. Doomed Marie should only have dreamed of such popularity.

To single out a few human beings for special attention is nothing new. Other societies have held up for admiration, emulation, and fear the likenesses of exemplary s...