Post 1

Unfortunately, exposure to celebrity culture is currently inevitable, unless you live under a rock or in a town without convenience stores. Tabloid magazines are so popular and more significantly, so loud in their appearance and general composition, that it is difficult to stay uninformed about the ‘truthful,’ dramatic details about celebrities. I usually do not buy tabloid magazines unless I’m going to be on a beach or in an airplane, but I usually hear about the up-to-date gossip from my friends. The headlines on the cover of these magazines basically tell what you need to know, anyway, without actually reading the story. The article, “Seeing by Starlight: Celebrity Obsession,” gives an explanation of why we, the ‘regular people,’ need to know things about the lives of famous people that we actually have no concrete, personal connection to. The fact that we can talk to each other about celebrities makes us feel connected to celebrities and connected to each other. When we can live vicariously through celebrities, it distracts us from the worries of our own lives and gives us a platform for relating our daily dramas to famous people’s dramas, making our lives more exciting and interesting in the process.

In my opinion, the VF article about Lindsay Lohan is really well written. I feel this way because the article seems unbiased about Lindsay by offering different depictions of her through the quotes included, the author’s input, and the accompanying photographs. At first I thought the article was depicting Lindsay as most other articles about her have in the past, as a stupid party girl with no sense of responsibility and no respect for herself or her image. I came to this conclusion because the article kept citing quotes of hers that included the words “like” and “whatever.” The article also included information that contradicted what Lindsay said in her quotes. In addition, the author’s opinions about her were not convincingly positive. However, later on in the article, I feel that the author did a good job of delving deeper into the reasons why Lindsay may act the way she does and be the way she is, to the point where I was feeling sorry for Lindsay. I feel like the person that emerges from the article is a girl who is really talented and looking for a way out of her current situation. The photographs portray her as more of a mature woman with a career ahead of her, yet the article describes her wearing ripped jean shorts and uggs (something that should not be worn by anyone that expects to be taken seriously, much less a twenty-four year old. I feel that the conclusions the reader is encouraged to draw about Hollywood fame and the media is that together they can influence your life in an extremely negative way if you let them control your actions and essentially you as a person.