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Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame
With 8 Pages of Black-and-White Photographs
In this captivating history of stardom, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr traces our obsession with fame from the dawn of cinema through the age of the Internet. Why do we obsess over the individuals we come to call stars? How has both the image of stardom and our stars' images changed over the past hundred years? What does celebrity mean if people can now become famous simply for being famous? With brilliant insight and entertaining examples, Burr reveals the blessings and the curses of celebrity for the star and the stargazer alike. From Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, to Archie Leach (a.k.a. Cary Grant), Tom Cruise, and Julia Roberts, to such no-cal stars of today as the Kardashians and the new online celebrity, Gods Like Us is a journey through the fame game at its flashiest, most indulgent, occasionally most tragic, and ultimately it's most culturally revealing.
In this captivating history of stardom, Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr traces our obsession with fame from the dawn of cinema through the age of the Internet. Why do we obsess over the individuals we come to call stars? How has both the image of stardom and our stars' images changed over the past hundred years? What does celebrity mean if people can now become famous simply for being famous? With brilliant insight and entertaining examples, Burr reveals the blessings and the curses of celebrity for the star and the stargazer alike. From Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, to Archie Leach (a.k.a. Cary Grant), Tom Cruise, and Julia Roberts, to such no-cal stars of today as the Kardashians and the new online celebrity, Gods Like Us is a journey through the fame game at its flashiest, most indulgent, occasionally most tragic, and ultimately it's most culturally revealing.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
23 people are currently reading
650 people want to read
About the author
Ty Burr
5 books6 followersTY BURR is the film critic for The Boston Globe. For more than a decade he wrote about movies for Entertainment Weekly, and he has also served in the film acquisitions department of HBO. He estimates that after thirty years of serious movie-watching, he has seen on the order of 10,680 films. On a good day, he remembers 7,000 of them.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
January 30, 2025
Ty Burr is a film critic whose employers have included The Boston Globe and Entertainment Weekly. He's published books on movies. This is not one of them. In Gods Like Us, Mr. Burr has decided to ponder the nature of fame, the artificially crafted persona of the movie star, and his theory regarding what psychological function fandom performs for an audience. Fair enough. Yet, and this was a bit of a surprise, it's not a cinematically informed audience he has chosen to focus upon. It's those in the cheap seats looking for the cheap thrill. ("How and why do we obsess over movie stars?" asks his flyleaf.) In short, he'll be armchair quarterbacking the motivations of the popcorn crowd - which is problematic on so many levels that I'm not going to bother to take it apart.
Mr. Burr begins at the start of moving pictures, some one hundred years ago, and examines by the decade who became famous and why. One might expect what the flyleaf promises: an anecdotal history of celebrity, yet there are very few anecdotes to be found in these chapters. This is broad-brush Hollywood heyday stuff; not history, but history employed to substantiate a theory, which means the movie industry never really comes to life on the page except as it services some guy's take on why we gravitate toward escapist fare. Which, yes, makes it an essay. A 364-page essay. That should have been a 50-page essay. And that's a sad thing on Page 51.
Still, there are a dozen or so paragraphs three-quarters of the way through that address the importance in the modern day of celebrity re-invention. He's got some genuinely interesting ideas going on there. Excellent food for thought - but a long road to the diner.
Mr. Burr begins at the start of moving pictures, some one hundred years ago, and examines by the decade who became famous and why. One might expect what the flyleaf promises: an anecdotal history of celebrity, yet there are very few anecdotes to be found in these chapters. This is broad-brush Hollywood heyday stuff; not history, but history employed to substantiate a theory, which means the movie industry never really comes to life on the page except as it services some guy's take on why we gravitate toward escapist fare. Which, yes, makes it an essay. A 364-page essay. That should have been a 50-page essay. And that's a sad thing on Page 51.
Still, there are a dozen or so paragraphs three-quarters of the way through that address the importance in the modern day of celebrity re-invention. He's got some genuinely interesting ideas going on there. Excellent food for thought - but a long road to the diner.
March 25, 2015
This year, for the first time ever, I turned off the Academy Awards, disgusted with—and perplexed by—what I perceived as the lack (or loss) of true star power. As if reading my mind, this book came along to explain my disenchantment. Burr theorizes that behind every enduring Hollywood success is not just a star but a star-idea, that is, an actor who epitomizes, and adheres faithfully to a specific persona that represents a cultural ideal, an ideal that is reinforced with every film, regardless of role or context. Such star-ideas are, themselves, reincarnations of star-ideas that came before. These include Tom Cruise (“Action Hero”) and Angelina Jolie (“Amazon Queen”). Meryl Streep, who transforms herself with every role, may be a gifted actress, but she is not necessarily a star-idea. After all, how can a changeling give us what we really crave, i.e., predictable identification with—and desire for—deeply held ideas of ourselves? Though Burr’s flip writing style got on my nerves, and I glaze over when writers theorize about the effects of the Internet on our behavior (example: It’s hard to perceives actors as luminaries when we are now the stars of our own Facebook productions), I remain captivated and comforted by the star-idea, and I still hope to find it in today’s crop of actors. It is surely not epitomized by Neil Patrick Harris or Jessica Chastain, but maybe, just maybe, by Jennifer Lawrence: Gutsy Sexpot.
May 22, 2021
"Celebrities: They're Just Like Us!"
If you've ever read a magazine or seen a TV show where the preceding sentence was used in a non-ironic way, then this book is for you. Because in a lot of ways, it both proves the lie in that statement and shows how, in our new digital age, it's actually kind of true. Because Ty Burr, a longtime film critic, writes about the ways in which film stardom has mutated over the years, from anonymous figures on the screen to well-known names we can't escape even if we wanted to (which was especially hard when some of them used their social media platforms to become president). "Gods Like Us" is easily one of the most fun books I've read in a long time, and on a subject that is both captivating and concern-inducing: our worship of celebrities.
Burr begins at the beginning, highlighting how the early "stars" of the Edison Company's films were the films themselves; the process of capturing moving images and projecting them onto big screens was the enticement, not the people in those short movies. But Hollywood came along and realized fairly quickly that people wanted to know the names of the people onscreen (many of them made up because the real names were "too ethnic" or didn't quite sound like a star's name), and then everything about them. And Hollywood, with the help of image makers on their payrolls, obliged. The entertainment industry was as much about selling us an illusion of what stars were "really like" as it was about selling us their movies and assorted pop-culture associations.
Movie stardom, for much of the time that we've had movies, is as much about hiding as it is about revealing; a star's sexuality, family life, hobbies, or political proclivities might at various times either help or hinder their careers, so those in charge had to navigate the waves of public opinion to know what to let out and what to bury from the public eye. Burr does a fantastic job of capturing each moment in the evolution of the star system, from the "studio system" and Production Code era to the internet anyone-can-be-famous system in place today. It's a deft, moving, often hilarious, and usually sobering look at the ways in which we consume fame as much as we do movies or TV or music or whatever, and how that affects the people we look up to (and why maybe our looking up to them is often just a setting-up to scolding them when they fall). I can't recommend this book enough to anyone interested in the ways in which our celebrity culture has evolved and what it says about us as consumers.
If you've ever read a magazine or seen a TV show where the preceding sentence was used in a non-ironic way, then this book is for you. Because in a lot of ways, it both proves the lie in that statement and shows how, in our new digital age, it's actually kind of true. Because Ty Burr, a longtime film critic, writes about the ways in which film stardom has mutated over the years, from anonymous figures on the screen to well-known names we can't escape even if we wanted to (which was especially hard when some of them used their social media platforms to become president). "Gods Like Us" is easily one of the most fun books I've read in a long time, and on a subject that is both captivating and concern-inducing: our worship of celebrities.
Burr begins at the beginning, highlighting how the early "stars" of the Edison Company's films were the films themselves; the process of capturing moving images and projecting them onto big screens was the enticement, not the people in those short movies. But Hollywood came along and realized fairly quickly that people wanted to know the names of the people onscreen (many of them made up because the real names were "too ethnic" or didn't quite sound like a star's name), and then everything about them. And Hollywood, with the help of image makers on their payrolls, obliged. The entertainment industry was as much about selling us an illusion of what stars were "really like" as it was about selling us their movies and assorted pop-culture associations.
Movie stardom, for much of the time that we've had movies, is as much about hiding as it is about revealing; a star's sexuality, family life, hobbies, or political proclivities might at various times either help or hinder their careers, so those in charge had to navigate the waves of public opinion to know what to let out and what to bury from the public eye. Burr does a fantastic job of capturing each moment in the evolution of the star system, from the "studio system" and Production Code era to the internet anyone-can-be-famous system in place today. It's a deft, moving, often hilarious, and usually sobering look at the ways in which we consume fame as much as we do movies or TV or music or whatever, and how that affects the people we look up to (and why maybe our looking up to them is often just a setting-up to scolding them when they fall). I can't recommend this book enough to anyone interested in the ways in which our celebrity culture has evolved and what it says about us as consumers.
August 16, 2019
Throughout the book Gods Like Us, author Ty Burr takes his readers along an eye-widening journey, exploring the reality of familiar celebrities. Giving a fresh take on the modern celebrity professional film critic, Ty Burr, rather than taking the stereotypical approach, takes a deeper look into the truths behind a celebrities persona’s and through the American history of movie stars and their stardom. Revealing how stardom is a blessing and curse, we are told of the many facades and molds that have been created in order to satisfy the intensity of the standard ideals. Actors are seen to have, on a wide variety, a different personality from those of which expected in most scenarios, because of an unsatisfied audience. This book gives readers an underlying truth about the lives of many stars, those of which they are thought to have known throughout their life, due to specific characteristic traits formed in order to please the majority. This book also gives readers a great look into the history of those who lived before us in the way that history has shaped the path for current role models. A great read for those who loved to embark on an adventure to figure out and understand the life of stardom.
February 11, 2022
Burr explores the concept of celebrity from the silent era to present day - the mix of admiration, aspiration, lust, envy, resentment and even contempt we feel for these celestial beings. I find the topic absolutely fascinating, and I’ve enjoyed books by Burr before, notably - The Best Old Movies for Families the Best Old Movies for Families.
The book is half rapid fire Hollywood history mixed with Burr’s analyses of various individual celebrities placing them within their historical/cultural context - his main thesis is that celebrity tells us far more about broader societal anxieties and desires than it does about any individual star. I found this to be an enlightening and moderately enjoyable read if a bit chaotic, overly opinionated and rambling at times.
The book is half rapid fire Hollywood history mixed with Burr’s analyses of various individual celebrities placing them within their historical/cultural context - his main thesis is that celebrity tells us far more about broader societal anxieties and desires than it does about any individual star. I found this to be an enlightening and moderately enjoyable read if a bit chaotic, overly opinionated and rambling at times.
June 13, 2022
compelling and fun contemplation of fame and stardom's outsize role in our cultural imagination
December 18, 2012
Over the recent Thanksgiving break, I finished Ty Burr’s Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame. This is a fascinating portrait of movie stardom, its effect on American culture and vice versa. Burr starts at the beginning of film history in the early 1900s and the silent pictures. The originals studios did not even say who were featured in their films. The earliest stars were completely uncredited. Around 1910, this changed as the American public (or at least those who went to movies-often shown as part of a vaudeville show at that time) began to recognize certain actors and actresses and grew to like them over others. This grew to a need to know who these people were, eventually leading to an interest in everything they did on or offscreen. The earliest major star was Florence Lawrence. Burr traces her rise to stardom followed by her eventual fade in the 1920s as movie audiences passed her by. She eventually drank ant poison and died at the age of 52 in 1931. During these early years many others came and went, and with the invention of sound in the late 20s, nearly all silent film stars were discarded. I would venture to say that to most readers, these names make no impression at all as most of us have no direct memory of these movies or the circumstances these stars lived. However, these are several names that ring bells: Mary Pickford (the early America’s Sweetheart); Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (a great action hero); Lon Chaney, Sr. (The Man of a Thousand Faces); Rudolph Valentino (The Great Lover), Norma Talmadge (the model of Singin’ In the Rain’s Lina Lamont).
The stardom of the silent film stars was amazing. For a public, most of whom were not wealthy, movies stars led the lives they wished for. However, this adulation had a dark side. People were happy to see these same idols show feet of clay when scandals broke out. These included the trial of Fatty Arbuckle for the death of a woman at a party, the fact that prior to their marriage, Pickford and Fairbanks, although married to others carried on an affair, and others.
Following the coming of “talkies,” and the institution of the Hays’ Code for conduct in films, the studios began to sign and promote their own stable of stars. These actors and actresses were groomed in all ways by the studio they worked for. And, in return, the studios made them stars. Early on, there were stars such as Clark Gable, Jimmy Cagney, Greta Garbo and others. There were also those who fought the studio system such as Mae West, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn.
The studio system dominated until the 1950s, when actors like Marlon Brando arrived as a breath of fresh air. His intensity in his performances and his general disgust of the movie business led rise to a new breed of movie star.
This all changed again with the growth of the counterculture movement in the 1960s. And so into the late 1970s and 80s with the appearance of the Hollywood Blockbuster (started by the release of Jaws in 1975). The effect of the Star Wars trilogy on film-making and consequently profits, determined in many ways the type of films we commonly see even now—summer blockbuster releases of superhero films or big action/adventure films with major stars. Of course, the biggest star arising from these films is Harrison Ford who starred in not one, but two blockbuster franchises: Star Wars and the Indiana Jones films. Of course, there are stars who grew out of smaller films such as Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep (who was not as recognized for her abilities then as she is now).
In many ways, current cinema is still dominated by the actors and themes from the late 1970s. However, there has been a growth of independent cinema allowing for unconventional films and actors and actresses to flourish, often with a cult following.
Overall, I found this book to be a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read. I easily recommend it, especially for movie buffs like myself, but also for anyone with an interest in the evolution of films and movie stars.
The stardom of the silent film stars was amazing. For a public, most of whom were not wealthy, movies stars led the lives they wished for. However, this adulation had a dark side. People were happy to see these same idols show feet of clay when scandals broke out. These included the trial of Fatty Arbuckle for the death of a woman at a party, the fact that prior to their marriage, Pickford and Fairbanks, although married to others carried on an affair, and others.
Following the coming of “talkies,” and the institution of the Hays’ Code for conduct in films, the studios began to sign and promote their own stable of stars. These actors and actresses were groomed in all ways by the studio they worked for. And, in return, the studios made them stars. Early on, there were stars such as Clark Gable, Jimmy Cagney, Greta Garbo and others. There were also those who fought the studio system such as Mae West, Bette Davis and Katherine Hepburn.
The studio system dominated until the 1950s, when actors like Marlon Brando arrived as a breath of fresh air. His intensity in his performances and his general disgust of the movie business led rise to a new breed of movie star.
This all changed again with the growth of the counterculture movement in the 1960s. And so into the late 1970s and 80s with the appearance of the Hollywood Blockbuster (started by the release of Jaws in 1975). The effect of the Star Wars trilogy on film-making and consequently profits, determined in many ways the type of films we commonly see even now—summer blockbuster releases of superhero films or big action/adventure films with major stars. Of course, the biggest star arising from these films is Harrison Ford who starred in not one, but two blockbuster franchises: Star Wars and the Indiana Jones films. Of course, there are stars who grew out of smaller films such as Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep (who was not as recognized for her abilities then as she is now).
In many ways, current cinema is still dominated by the actors and themes from the late 1970s. However, there has been a growth of independent cinema allowing for unconventional films and actors and actresses to flourish, often with a cult following.
Overall, I found this book to be a fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable read. I easily recommend it, especially for movie buffs like myself, but also for anyone with an interest in the evolution of films and movie stars.
June 20, 2013
About celebrities, particularly movie stars, and how silent film stars set the template for future stars (often naming modern stars whose "type" is descended from people like Douglas Fairbanks and William S. Hart or drawing unexpected parallels, like between My Super Sweet 16 and Gloria Swanson films). Insightful, with a breezy style, the occasional minor factual errors don't interfere with the major points. It's not clear from his biography, but he must have done his primary research--he's one of the few authors to recognize the central importance of Norma Talmadge and Joe Schenck in 1920s Hollywood and has the best analysis i've seen of her role in popular culture. Personally, one of the most interesting things about the book is reading about modern movies and celebrities which, with my attention always given to old films, is history that completely escaped my notice. I had no idea of the cultural meaning of Harrison Ford or Bill Murray or that Anne Hathaway was the classy but nice girl of the moment. Not to mention the internet celebrities whose 15 minutes of fame came and went without a ripple on my consciousness.
August 26, 2013
Pickford opened the patio door in her nightgown one morning to find a wall of applauding British fans. At a garden party, a seething crowd pulled her out of her car while Fairbanks and the police fought them off; in photos, Mary is clearly terrified. “I touched her dress!” shouted one fan, and again we see the restless throng convulsively ripping something it loves into a million souvenirs. The couple took to seeing the sights of Europe by moonlight.
What the public was saying as it threatened to adore Mary to death was simple: You belong to us. The gods are owned by those who worship them. The dream is not the property of the figures in the dream but of the person having the dream. Zukor understood that. It was the democracy of the new movie stardom, and it was tyrannical. In the end, Mary and Doug reigned for sixteen years from their Hollywood mansion, Pickfair (what else could they call it?), divorcing sadly but without much fanfare in the sound era. They drifted apart, as kings and queens do when they understand that their subjects need them more than they need each other.
***
Depending on whom you ask, the word “celebrity” denotes either a movie star who lives a life of envy and privilege (earned or unearned), an actor or actress (or musician, artist, writer, etc.) who spent years busting their ass in pitiless roles waiting for their one-in-a-million big break, or an unsympathetic four-letter word decrying a culture wasted on the unmitigated worship of vapid, false, pretty-looking idols.
As a child of the movies (ie: someone who has spent far more hours than is probably sensible watching and re-watching the films in his collection, pulling them apart and picking at the chewy depths), I’ve always been a little divided on the concept—respecting the art and the artist when warranted, turning my nose up at the imitators and wannabes searching for their fifteen minutes as they hope to stretch it into an entire career of posing on red carpets and making ludicrous amounts of money. Celebrity is a label not unlike most vocations; where it differs, and what Ty Burr points out in his almost-but-not-quite-academic dissection of the culture surrounding the term, is not just in the financial windfall afforded to most celebrities, but in the degree of social awareness and obsession that comes part and parcel. Because being a celebrity isn’t just a career path, it’s a 24/7 mind-body association that for better or worse disrupts the rest of the world.
In Gods Like Us, Burr, a film critic with The Boston Globe, takes on the concept of celebrity—the lives of some of the more well known (and a few of the more obscure but still important) and their status as gods within our society—from an anthropological standpoint, charting the development of celebrity culture from its earliest days alongside the birth of the film industry through to the current generation of self-made YouTube stars.
Beginning with the origins of film and the studio system, Burr looks at the silent era and the first filmed images, and how, in no time at all, the people on screen became, in concert or not with their ambitions, icons of the changing structure of entertainment. The first few chapters of the book detail the beginnings of this iconographic association, and as illustrated in the quote at the start of this review, the unexpected public fervour that quickly developed alongside it. Burr briskly moves through the silent era and the rise of the studios to the talkies, the emergent fantasies revolving around star envy and how they went from being emergent to manicured, before introducing us to Brando and the breakthrough of stars not wishing to conform or bend to the wills of the studios. Personalities emerge unexpectedly, are quickly taken control of and carefully crafted to fit existing studios’ ideals, only to be upset yet again by a generational shift—it’s a continued narrative within the industry, one that sees studios forever losing ground and attempting to regain control over their self-styled deities.
The introduction of television and the rise of rock and roll added another wrinkle to the culture (or cult) of celebrity, by bringing the celebrities out from the theatres and into people’s homes. Couple this with the counterculture movements of the sixties and seventies, the at-long-last rise of the African American movie star, and the emergence of Andy Warhol as an identifiable celebrity in yet another corner of the entertainment world (with so much of his art and persona based on/critiquing/aping the film world in some fashion) and the notion of celebrity, still revolving around the film world as Earth to the Sun, was changed yet again. By the time the new millennium rolled around, celebrity had been redefined for the umpteenth time to include, quite literally, an individual’s fifteen minutes (or seconds) on the Internet where they became world-renowned (or notorious, as the case may be) for doing something amazing, awkward, intelligent, or earth-shatteringly stupid and posting it online for all to see, and often without a hint of embarrassment.
Beyond simply being an origin story for celebrity culture, Burr’s book is a fairly alarming but not at all surprising indictment of our need to constantly invent for ourselves new beings of worship. Without ever expressly doing so, his argument ties neatly into the criticisms many atheists have of religion as being an artifice dedicated to the creation of a non-existent supreme being or beings so that we on this tiny rock in the middle of a vast and seemingly unending universe don’t have to feel so gloriously alone. Celebrities are tastemakers and trendsetters to hitch our cultural wagons to in order to have decided for us what to wear, how to act, how to think about politics and the world around us. As Burr explores via the current explosion of self-made Internet celebrities, the tone and tenor of the conversation has shifted; while the large booming voices from above still linger and offer their opinions on our day-to-day lives (whether intentional or not), smaller, more isolated voices are now being heard with sometimes equal volume, also spreading their influential thoughts and opinions with the world, and in some cases affecting real change.
Conversely, we have a new type of celebrity, the Felicia Days and Joseph Gordon-Levitts of the world, who understand the privilege they have and the social lottery they’ve won through a mix of hard work and perseverance and being in the right place at the right time, and want to use their position to interact positively with their fans—to in some ways break down the previously omnipresent walls that existed between the average individual and their twenty-million-a-picture icons and to show that hey, we may make a lot more money than you and you know our names, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t want to know yours. Providing, that is, you’re not a stalker or an obsessed fan with thoughts of keeping your favourite star locked in a sex room of your own design.
As Burr points out near the end of the book, our tabloid desire to live vicariously through our icons is what’s spawned this unquenchable desire to throw up every part of our lives on the Internet, to see if anything sticks, to see if we too can win the cultural jackpot and become the next Justin Bieber, rising to stardom from Internet obscurity without all that messy going out into the world and working your ass off in auditions or doing gigs for next to nothing in dive bars across the continent. The tragedy of this is that it’s the notion of celebrity, of each of us becoming individualized gods with wealth and visibility beyond containment, that has pushed so many to be all that they can be, and not necessarily the urge to create, to put forth an artistic stamp on the world.
Gods Like Us is a fascinating look at the industry(ies) that created the very idea of celebrity, how stars have turned that world on its head and claimed their fame for their very own, and the rationality we’ve lost as a species as a result of the lust for power and fame that many are unable or unwilling to quench. The book isn’t a film theory text but a narrative, anthropological glimpse into the culture and social contracts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and how, in the absence of kings and queens and emperors ruling the world, we have created them for ourselves.
What the public was saying as it threatened to adore Mary to death was simple: You belong to us. The gods are owned by those who worship them. The dream is not the property of the figures in the dream but of the person having the dream. Zukor understood that. It was the democracy of the new movie stardom, and it was tyrannical. In the end, Mary and Doug reigned for sixteen years from their Hollywood mansion, Pickfair (what else could they call it?), divorcing sadly but without much fanfare in the sound era. They drifted apart, as kings and queens do when they understand that their subjects need them more than they need each other.
***
Depending on whom you ask, the word “celebrity” denotes either a movie star who lives a life of envy and privilege (earned or unearned), an actor or actress (or musician, artist, writer, etc.) who spent years busting their ass in pitiless roles waiting for their one-in-a-million big break, or an unsympathetic four-letter word decrying a culture wasted on the unmitigated worship of vapid, false, pretty-looking idols.
As a child of the movies (ie: someone who has spent far more hours than is probably sensible watching and re-watching the films in his collection, pulling them apart and picking at the chewy depths), I’ve always been a little divided on the concept—respecting the art and the artist when warranted, turning my nose up at the imitators and wannabes searching for their fifteen minutes as they hope to stretch it into an entire career of posing on red carpets and making ludicrous amounts of money. Celebrity is a label not unlike most vocations; where it differs, and what Ty Burr points out in his almost-but-not-quite-academic dissection of the culture surrounding the term, is not just in the financial windfall afforded to most celebrities, but in the degree of social awareness and obsession that comes part and parcel. Because being a celebrity isn’t just a career path, it’s a 24/7 mind-body association that for better or worse disrupts the rest of the world.
In Gods Like Us, Burr, a film critic with The Boston Globe, takes on the concept of celebrity—the lives of some of the more well known (and a few of the more obscure but still important) and their status as gods within our society—from an anthropological standpoint, charting the development of celebrity culture from its earliest days alongside the birth of the film industry through to the current generation of self-made YouTube stars.
Beginning with the origins of film and the studio system, Burr looks at the silent era and the first filmed images, and how, in no time at all, the people on screen became, in concert or not with their ambitions, icons of the changing structure of entertainment. The first few chapters of the book detail the beginnings of this iconographic association, and as illustrated in the quote at the start of this review, the unexpected public fervour that quickly developed alongside it. Burr briskly moves through the silent era and the rise of the studios to the talkies, the emergent fantasies revolving around star envy and how they went from being emergent to manicured, before introducing us to Brando and the breakthrough of stars not wishing to conform or bend to the wills of the studios. Personalities emerge unexpectedly, are quickly taken control of and carefully crafted to fit existing studios’ ideals, only to be upset yet again by a generational shift—it’s a continued narrative within the industry, one that sees studios forever losing ground and attempting to regain control over their self-styled deities.
The introduction of television and the rise of rock and roll added another wrinkle to the culture (or cult) of celebrity, by bringing the celebrities out from the theatres and into people’s homes. Couple this with the counterculture movements of the sixties and seventies, the at-long-last rise of the African American movie star, and the emergence of Andy Warhol as an identifiable celebrity in yet another corner of the entertainment world (with so much of his art and persona based on/critiquing/aping the film world in some fashion) and the notion of celebrity, still revolving around the film world as Earth to the Sun, was changed yet again. By the time the new millennium rolled around, celebrity had been redefined for the umpteenth time to include, quite literally, an individual’s fifteen minutes (or seconds) on the Internet where they became world-renowned (or notorious, as the case may be) for doing something amazing, awkward, intelligent, or earth-shatteringly stupid and posting it online for all to see, and often without a hint of embarrassment.
Beyond simply being an origin story for celebrity culture, Burr’s book is a fairly alarming but not at all surprising indictment of our need to constantly invent for ourselves new beings of worship. Without ever expressly doing so, his argument ties neatly into the criticisms many atheists have of religion as being an artifice dedicated to the creation of a non-existent supreme being or beings so that we on this tiny rock in the middle of a vast and seemingly unending universe don’t have to feel so gloriously alone. Celebrities are tastemakers and trendsetters to hitch our cultural wagons to in order to have decided for us what to wear, how to act, how to think about politics and the world around us. As Burr explores via the current explosion of self-made Internet celebrities, the tone and tenor of the conversation has shifted; while the large booming voices from above still linger and offer their opinions on our day-to-day lives (whether intentional or not), smaller, more isolated voices are now being heard with sometimes equal volume, also spreading their influential thoughts and opinions with the world, and in some cases affecting real change.
Conversely, we have a new type of celebrity, the Felicia Days and Joseph Gordon-Levitts of the world, who understand the privilege they have and the social lottery they’ve won through a mix of hard work and perseverance and being in the right place at the right time, and want to use their position to interact positively with their fans—to in some ways break down the previously omnipresent walls that existed between the average individual and their twenty-million-a-picture icons and to show that hey, we may make a lot more money than you and you know our names, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t want to know yours. Providing, that is, you’re not a stalker or an obsessed fan with thoughts of keeping your favourite star locked in a sex room of your own design.
As Burr points out near the end of the book, our tabloid desire to live vicariously through our icons is what’s spawned this unquenchable desire to throw up every part of our lives on the Internet, to see if anything sticks, to see if we too can win the cultural jackpot and become the next Justin Bieber, rising to stardom from Internet obscurity without all that messy going out into the world and working your ass off in auditions or doing gigs for next to nothing in dive bars across the continent. The tragedy of this is that it’s the notion of celebrity, of each of us becoming individualized gods with wealth and visibility beyond containment, that has pushed so many to be all that they can be, and not necessarily the urge to create, to put forth an artistic stamp on the world.
Gods Like Us is a fascinating look at the industry(ies) that created the very idea of celebrity, how stars have turned that world on its head and claimed their fame for their very own, and the rationality we’ve lost as a species as a result of the lust for power and fame that many are unable or unwilling to quench. The book isn’t a film theory text but a narrative, anthropological glimpse into the culture and social contracts of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and how, in the absence of kings and queens and emperors ruling the world, we have created them for ourselves.
December 3, 2013
Charting the highs and lows of stardom from the silent idols to today's over-exposed pantheon of celebrities, film critic Ty Burr examines the cultural history of Hollywood fame.
As a longtime reader of Us Magazine along with other trashy entertainment news, one of my favorite pasttimes is learning the incredible history of celebrity. The scandals of today often pale in comparison with the hushed-up doings of the old studio stars like Clark Gable, Clara Bow, and Charlie Chaplin.
Celebrity studies (a fascinating new field that merges film/literary criticism with cultural history) examines the pleasure of watching beautiful and talented people enact fantasies that at once reflect and change our shared culture. Burr, a film critic for The Boston Globe , writes ably of the trends of Hollywood then and now. Even the most ardent buff will add unfamiliar titles to the list of films to see and find him or herself googling unfamiliar names to see the Julia Roberts and Harrison Fords of yesteryear.
If you read everything by academic Anne Helen Petersen (who writes classic celebrity biographies for The Hairpin as well as posting on her own blog, Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style, her Twitter account, and Facebook page), then you may recognize a few of Burr's anecdotes. His book is more than simple history, though: it's also criticism, and it's a pleasure to read Burr's insightful assessments and descriptions.
The stories are fantastic and sometimes unbelievable: for example, the casting of Scarlett O'Hara for the adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's blockbuster novel Gone With the Wind took a full two years and encompassed every star in Hollywood, even the ones that in retrospect make little sense: Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Paulette Goddard, and even a young Lucille Ball. Nationwide auditions were held, exciting a frenzy of speculation and amateur enthusiasm: one woman actually shipped herself into the producer's office in a crate to give him a surprise reading and bonus striptease. In the end, the most coveted role in Hollywood went to an unknown Englishwoman: Vivien Leigh (who at the time was quietly carrying on an adulterous affair with Laurence Olivier).
There are also anecdotes about an entire studio taking daily nooners; the way the studio system cold-bloodedly cultivated its stars (to the point of arranging a marriage for gay actor Rock Hudson); how silent film actors first discovered the crushing wheel of celebrity (Florence Lawrence's trajectory is familiarly tragic), and many memorable turns of phrase from Burr (John Wayne, he writes, emerges like a "Venus on the half-saddle").
Burr mentions stars of prestige and popularity, and various mixtures thereof. There are many eras to examine: the earliest silent films, the bumpy transition to talkies, the heyday of Old Hollywood glamor, the rise of the counterculture (embodied by Marlon Brando, arguably the best actor of all time), then TV, cable, VHS, MTV, indie films, the Internet, and dreaded "reality" television (ugh). Hollywood has always reflected the world around it: bloody wars, new technology, shifts in culture, and larger-than-life personalities show up in Tinseltown as in a funhouse mirror, history's players morphing in unexpected ways. It's fascinating for any student of contemporary culture or of American history.
Marlon Brando, acting god
For your next read, I definitely recommend picking up Anne Helen Petersen's book when it comes out: Scandals of Classic Hollywood . David Thomson has also written extensively on the history of films. With Netflix and the trusty Criterion Collection, even the oldest films hardly seem out of reach any more, so I highly recommend checking them out. A look through past Oscar Best Picture nominees provides a convenient list to start with (though the Academy often got it wrong in their choice of winners).
Quotable:
"When [director D.W. Griffith] tried [the closeup] out in a Biograph film his bosses were horrified. 'We pay for the whole actor, Mr. Griffith,' he was scolded. 'We want to see all of him.'" - 21
"The history of modern fame, from the first movies to today, is a struggle for control between the people who make the product and the people who buy it." - 84
"If anything, star singularities force a need for their persona into the culture rather than the other way around. There was no call for Fred Astaire before Fred Astaire existed. ... The young Katharine Hepburn seemed so eccentric to mainstream audiences that it took fifteen years for them to come around. Edward G. Robinson looked like a toad and was built for character parts and ethnic caricature, but he had the crude forward momentum of a sex symbol; he was a star because he acted like one." - 104
"The problem with gods who look and act like us is that they get old like us, at which point they cease to be gods. So we continually choose new ones as young and beautiful as we hope we are when we look in the mirror. Each freshly born divinity is a reflection of who we think we are at that moment in time and culture, or, more precisely, who we might want to be." - 143
"As always since the very invention of movie stars, these actors and their peers each embody an idea, a narrative whose potential energy is shaped by aspects of physical appearance, attitude, talent, and luck." - 321
As a longtime reader of Us Magazine along with other trashy entertainment news, one of my favorite pasttimes is learning the incredible history of celebrity. The scandals of today often pale in comparison with the hushed-up doings of the old studio stars like Clark Gable, Clara Bow, and Charlie Chaplin.
Celebrity studies (a fascinating new field that merges film/literary criticism with cultural history) examines the pleasure of watching beautiful and talented people enact fantasies that at once reflect and change our shared culture. Burr, a film critic for The Boston Globe , writes ably of the trends of Hollywood then and now. Even the most ardent buff will add unfamiliar titles to the list of films to see and find him or herself googling unfamiliar names to see the Julia Roberts and Harrison Fords of yesteryear.
If you read everything by academic Anne Helen Petersen (who writes classic celebrity biographies for The Hairpin as well as posting on her own blog, Celebrity Gossip, Academic Style, her Twitter account, and Facebook page), then you may recognize a few of Burr's anecdotes. His book is more than simple history, though: it's also criticism, and it's a pleasure to read Burr's insightful assessments and descriptions.
The stories are fantastic and sometimes unbelievable: for example, the casting of Scarlett O'Hara for the adaptation of Margaret Mitchell's blockbuster novel Gone With the Wind took a full two years and encompassed every star in Hollywood, even the ones that in retrospect make little sense: Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Paulette Goddard, and even a young Lucille Ball. Nationwide auditions were held, exciting a frenzy of speculation and amateur enthusiasm: one woman actually shipped herself into the producer's office in a crate to give him a surprise reading and bonus striptease. In the end, the most coveted role in Hollywood went to an unknown Englishwoman: Vivien Leigh (who at the time was quietly carrying on an adulterous affair with Laurence Olivier).
There are also anecdotes about an entire studio taking daily nooners; the way the studio system cold-bloodedly cultivated its stars (to the point of arranging a marriage for gay actor Rock Hudson); how silent film actors first discovered the crushing wheel of celebrity (Florence Lawrence's trajectory is familiarly tragic), and many memorable turns of phrase from Burr (John Wayne, he writes, emerges like a "Venus on the half-saddle").
Burr mentions stars of prestige and popularity, and various mixtures thereof. There are many eras to examine: the earliest silent films, the bumpy transition to talkies, the heyday of Old Hollywood glamor, the rise of the counterculture (embodied by Marlon Brando, arguably the best actor of all time), then TV, cable, VHS, MTV, indie films, the Internet, and dreaded "reality" television (ugh). Hollywood has always reflected the world around it: bloody wars, new technology, shifts in culture, and larger-than-life personalities show up in Tinseltown as in a funhouse mirror, history's players morphing in unexpected ways. It's fascinating for any student of contemporary culture or of American history.
Marlon Brando, acting god
For your next read, I definitely recommend picking up Anne Helen Petersen's book when it comes out: Scandals of Classic Hollywood . David Thomson has also written extensively on the history of films. With Netflix and the trusty Criterion Collection, even the oldest films hardly seem out of reach any more, so I highly recommend checking them out. A look through past Oscar Best Picture nominees provides a convenient list to start with (though the Academy often got it wrong in their choice of winners).
Quotable:
"When [director D.W. Griffith] tried [the closeup] out in a Biograph film his bosses were horrified. 'We pay for the whole actor, Mr. Griffith,' he was scolded. 'We want to see all of him.'" - 21
"The history of modern fame, from the first movies to today, is a struggle for control between the people who make the product and the people who buy it." - 84
"If anything, star singularities force a need for their persona into the culture rather than the other way around. There was no call for Fred Astaire before Fred Astaire existed. ... The young Katharine Hepburn seemed so eccentric to mainstream audiences that it took fifteen years for them to come around. Edward G. Robinson looked like a toad and was built for character parts and ethnic caricature, but he had the crude forward momentum of a sex symbol; he was a star because he acted like one." - 104
"The problem with gods who look and act like us is that they get old like us, at which point they cease to be gods. So we continually choose new ones as young and beautiful as we hope we are when we look in the mirror. Each freshly born divinity is a reflection of who we think we are at that moment in time and culture, or, more precisely, who we might want to be." - 143
"As always since the very invention of movie stars, these actors and their peers each embody an idea, a narrative whose potential energy is shaped by aspects of physical appearance, attitude, talent, and luck." - 321
May 7, 2018
Really interesting look at the last 100 or so years of Hollywood and entertainment in America. Very white, but includes several (admittedly short) chapters on actors of color and their struggles with representation in Hollywood. Contrary to the chapter, the book does not aim to deify our "stars", but rather examine why and how we came to worship/demonize the public figures who populate our screens.
March 26, 2019
A history of American entertainment
Celebrity is the narrative thread guiding this overview of U.S. entertainment history from the silent movie era through today’s You Tube star. It’s a collection of gossipy anecdotes balanced with social context that offers entertaining insight into the function celebrity has served over the decades.
Celebrity is the narrative thread guiding this overview of U.S. entertainment history from the silent movie era through today’s You Tube star. It’s a collection of gossipy anecdotes balanced with social context that offers entertaining insight into the function celebrity has served over the decades.
October 12, 2018
Long, rambling, boring, pointless
Read this book if you want to hear a film critic ramble about all the celebrities in chronological order, absent any coherent thesis, structure or point to it all.
Read this book if you want to hear a film critic ramble about all the celebrities in chronological order, absent any coherent thesis, structure or point to it all.
December 15, 2018
Fascinating exploration of stardom - how it all started, the needs and desires it feeds inside of all of us, our efforts to capture it for ourselves. Thoughtfully and engagingly written, packed with stories of the stars, those long forgotten and those we can never forget. Highly recommend.
October 12, 2017
Incredible insight in the genesis of stardom and celebrity. A gem for the cinephiles of the world.
May 8, 2024
badly written book with amazing information
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November 23, 2016Gods Like Us by Ty Burr is a nonfiction book about movie stars and Hollywood. It analyzes the making of movies and their stars in chronological order, “From Edison’s Blobs to Florence Lawrence” (Burr 1). “How-and why-do we obsess over movie stars? How does fame both reflect and mask the person behind it?” (Jacket). This is why as a society we are so fascinated with movie stars, because we want to know the person behind the fame. This book starts by explaining how movie stars were originally unknown, just the companies which produced them were given credit. I think that the author mentioning this is really important, because it's so different from what we're used to now. Now we know exactly who's in a movie, even if most of us don't know who produced or directed it. This being included was very smart and really helps to show the huge transition movies, their stars, and their viewers have undergone. While this book was very insightful and informative, it was very slow at times. At points it just drones on and on, whereas other parts are extremely interesting. It's a long book with many words on a page, so at times it became hard to read, and I found myself having to reread pages.The book itself was written very well. The author talks to his audience, without just stating facts. There are pictures with little fact bubbles in the middle of the book, but I think it would have been cooler if those pages were spread out more, and put all throughout the book, and this would help with breaking up the parts that seem boring. I would recommend this book to anyone who's looking for a great book with a lot of information. It really does a great job at analyzing our obsession with movie stars, while also showing the growth of the movie industry over the years. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone looking for an easy read, because it's a lot of information Its a lot of information in a big book, so it can be difficult at times to follow everything that's being said.This book definitely challenged my ideas about movie stars, because it really analyzes things that i would have never thought contributed to our love of movie stars, especially going so far back. It also changed my perspective on new and old hollywood, and how much it's changed. I loved learning about old hollywood, and what movies stars were like in the past vs now, because there is a huge difference between how they were perceived, and their contribution to society. Part of this is because of social media telling us every little thing about celebrities, whereas in the past we didn't have as many ways of receiving such knowledge. Finally, this book really made me think. It made me think about how drastic changes, and why they happened. But i'm also left with many questions, like what really caused this to change, other than the media and the times. Overall this was a really good, informational book and I highly suggest it to anyone looking to learn a lot about new and old hollywood and its stars.
August 12, 2019
Recommend for anyone interested in modern celebrity. It is well-written and engaging. I enjoyed the fact that it had profiles of different celebrities and included more recent actors and actresses.
One note is that there is not much about non-white actors and actresses. This is important for discussing how race, ethnicity, class, etc. intersect with what it means to be a celebrity.
If you like this, Jeannine Basinger and Anne Helen Peterson are also good writers on stars, Hollywood, and the meaning of celebrity.
One note is that there is not much about non-white actors and actresses. This is important for discussing how race, ethnicity, class, etc. intersect with what it means to be a celebrity.
If you like this, Jeannine Basinger and Anne Helen Peterson are also good writers on stars, Hollywood, and the meaning of celebrity.
January 6, 2020
Brilliant, illuminating, & enjoyable. Fascinating early chapters on silent movie era - not only why certain people became stars, but why there were stars at all. Author has a wonderful way of distilling essences with just a few words: "The young Frank Sinatra looked like a freshly hatched ostrich but his singing voice promised a slowly cresting big-band orgasm" . . . "how long could James Dean continue playing an exposed adolescent nerve" . . . "the Twilight Zone with its cautionary tales of petty human sins resulting in cosmic retribution." (Almost as good as my favorite movie quote of all time, Pauline Kael describing a Joe Cocker performance as "the Three Stooges impersonating Beethoven having a fit.")
A meager & disappointing photo section, plus some overly metaphorical wordiness at times, are my only complaints so far.
Notes about some a-ha moments I had while reading this book:
-immigration era = silent era (no language barrier)
-flowery outsized stage acting was glorified - changed to admiration for being able to act in front of mechanical objects
-clipped diction of '30s = Depression audience's need to get to the point, no tolerance for flowery excess
-1860s US 20% urban, 1920 50% urban
-Mary Pickford = USA innocence - public didn't want it to slip away
-early screen star characters foreshadowed women's lib
A meager & disappointing photo section, plus some overly metaphorical wordiness at times, are my only complaints so far.
Notes about some a-ha moments I had while reading this book:
-immigration era = silent era (no language barrier)
-flowery outsized stage acting was glorified - changed to admiration for being able to act in front of mechanical objects
-clipped diction of '30s = Depression audience's need to get to the point, no tolerance for flowery excess
-1860s US 20% urban, 1920 50% urban
-Mary Pickford = USA innocence - public didn't want it to slip away
-early screen star characters foreshadowed women's lib
October 7, 2013
I have read a lot of film books, but I haven't read any in about 3 years, partially because I'm picky, and also I've read most of them. But this one had a new perspective that I found very refreshing. It focused on why we like stars; aspects that I take for granted and find obvious when watching a film, and which must have taken the writer years of research to understand. I really loved thinking about these stars in a new light because maybe they don't get enough credit as they deserve. It must be very hard to be an actor, because it's so competitive and finding respect and success at it must be daunting. Reading this book also brings a new light to why we're so entranced by People and Entertainment Weekly magazine. The stuff these so called "gods" went through must have been brutal and so we worship them for having experienced the stuff they had to take on a role.
Reading about the silent movies and how the end for them came so swiftly and how readily the public embraced talkies and the dawn of the golden age was a highlight.
Reading about the silent movies and how the end for them came so swiftly and how readily the public embraced talkies and the dawn of the golden age was a highlight.
January 27, 2013
This book is better for people who know very little about film history than for those who have a firm grounding in the subject. If you are part of the latter group, then you will find lots of details and opinions to quibble with. However, there is nothing egregiously wrong with the facts as Burr presents them, so it's not a bad introduction to the history of filmmaking - and celebrity - and it is filled with fun anecdotes. My main gripe is that the book lacks a certain focus. Perhaps if it were a tad shorter it might better deliver on its opening promise to draw a strong through-line from the anonymous actors of 1895 to the present days of celebrity for all. I still recommend, but with those qualifications. I preferred Ty Burr's previous "The Best Old Movies for Families."
February 11, 2014
Conceptually I'm down with this book. I think it's important to critique our obsession with fame and celebrity, and how that relates to how we live our lives. But in the delivery of this issue, I found this book lacking. It was essentially a recounting and retelling of early Hollywood through to today, but lacking in a true sense of overview. It's true - Clark Gable is like Brad Pitt, or what have you - but a larger cultural sense and context would've improved the impact. The writer is a film critic, not an academic, which means the book is well written and not dense or dry, but a more analytical perspective is missing, and he really misses the mark on being able to properly dissect women, people of color, queers, etc, and how they function both as an audience and as celebrities.
February 22, 2014
Burr expounds on the nature of stardom from the early silent era to the present day in this provocative and well-researched tome. Iconic movie stars, including Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Harrison Ford, Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise are profiled. Burr questions the meaning of stardom in the Internet age, when stardom is often accidentally obtained, the major film studios have limited power, and stars have more currency as "brands" than actors. While Gods Like Us is not a comprehensive overview of Hollywood history, Burr effectively uses representative figures to highlight the nature of stardom in different eras.
Reviewed by David B., Librarian, InfoNow
Reviewed by David B., Librarian, InfoNow
January 26, 2015
An entertaining book exploring stardom from the earliest silent movie stars to the Internet and lonelygirl15. The breadth of the book is incredible and his insights into the changing influence of the studios and how stars rebel and re-rebel against the times are fascinating. However, Burr often makes sweeping generalizations about how stars were viewed, and although I had no argument with those opinions, they were not grounded to facts or mentioned personally. After a while this really grated on me.
I am very glad i read the book though and it really impressed on my the democratization of media and its effects.
I am very glad i read the book though and it really impressed on my the democratization of media and its effects.
April 5, 2013
Michelle Wildgen (Executive Editor, Tin House Magazine): I just came off a glorious spate of neglecting other duties in favor of tearing through a pile of books, and I must say it did me good. At the top of my list was Ty Burr’s Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame, which examines the bizarre cult of Hollywood celebrity, from silent films’ Florence Lawrence to Angelina Jolie, and Burr is especially wonderful at illuminating the particulars of each star’s appeal, breaking down what feels like mere gut feeling into a complex convergence of physical and dramatic characteristics, our own desires and perceptions, and cultural contexts.
March 28, 2014
This book took me a while to slog through. Mostly because after doing a hefty amount of film related readings for school, I had no desire to read more film focused nonfiction. However, Burr's book is a satisfying read and an engaging look at how celebrity has evolved over the years. Each chapter is a time capsule, and Burr's prose brings even the most mundane details to life with wry wit. Whether you're a hardcore film buff or a casual fan, Gods Like Us offers a view into celebrity and cultural identity in the age of cinema that will make you think twice about the nature of success.
November 30, 2012
Engaging history and analysis of movie stardom and celebrity in general, from Florence Lawrence to Snooki, illustrating how consumer engagement with stardom has been dependent on product distribution. I don't know if I agree with Burr's conclusion as to why it is we care about stars, but he does an excellent job of establishing that we do care about them, no matter how much we'd like to think we're above all that. It's a ripping read, too, what's not to love about that?
January 27, 2013
Informative, poignantly insightful, and, at times, very funny. I marked passages and shared with friends. It was just fun for me to share Ty Burr's terrific (to me) writing style, though it might have served to motivate their getting the book for themselves; purchase or library (like me). I can't imagine they would be sorry. And, if you might be curious to know more about certain aspects about film history, there is that, too. Go for it!
May 13, 2013
Really great book. Ty Burr delivers with this book as it deconstructs and reveals every nuance in our celebrity culture. He touches on key figures that are known the world over and more obscure but nonetheless important names like Florence Lawrence. His use of language is riveting without being overly ornate. This is definitely worth the read and a book I plan to add to my own personal collection.
July 16, 2013
Ty Burr's love of movies, and movie history, comes through in every word of Gods Like Us. He looks at the cult of celebrity from the earliest days of motion pictures, and the changing ways in which we ordinary folks relate to the famous. His writing is at times wry, snarky, or thoughtful, depending on the subject matter, and it's an enlightening journey. I stayed up way too late reading this one, because one story led to another.
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