The Celebrity Persona Pandemic

Forerunners: Ideas First

by P. David Marshall

The Celebrity Persona Pandemic explores how the construction of a public persona is fetishized in contemporary culture. As social media has progressively led to a greater focus on the production of the self, so this book looks at the most visible versions of persona through figures such as Stephen Colbert, Cate Blachett, and Justin Bieber, as well as fictional characters like Spock and Harry Potter. Ultimately, P. David Marshall closely studies how persona culture shapes our notions of value and significance, and dramatically shifts cultural politics.

Forerunners is a thought-in-process series of breakthrough digital works. Written between fresh ideas and finished books, Forerunners draws on scholarly work initiated in notable blogs, social media, conference plenaries, journal articles, and the synergy of academic exchange. This is gray literature where intense thinking, change, and speculation take place in scholarship.

104 pages, Paperback

Published October 31, 2016

Reviews

[Austin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This reads like a high school essay LOL. Maybe this might have been more interesting or relevant in 2016 when it came out, but now it just feels like well-trod territory.

[Sahil Raghavan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Useful but not particularly insightful past a surface level.

[Frank · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice overview into the idea of persona in the modern age. However, I wished it went into a little more depth about the subject.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Over the past five or six years, who HASN’T curated a non- curated image, and said that anything short of that is autism and sociopathy… which is the definition of sociopathy?

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well-argued articulation of what has become an inescapable force (the celebrity persona pandemic) in our ever more influencer influenced world.