Intimate Strangers

Résumé du livre

Beginning with the American movie business in the 1920's, examines modern cultural history, covering film, theater, television, the press, pop music and art, to assess the phenomenon of celebrity and its influence on society. Considering the careers of figures as diverse as John Kennedy and Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe and Dwight Eisenhower, Walter Cronkite and Andy Warhol, among dozens of others, reflects on the dangerous, sometimes deadly, political and social consequences of the fascinating, largely unacknowledged relationship between the famous elite and the unfamous majority. In demonstrating how the carefully fostered illusion of intimacy between these two groups has created a devastating confusion between public life and private life, in showing how the play of celebrity symbols has largely replaced the play of ideas in our society, this work takes us on a journey to the heart of contemporary darkness -- and offers, finally, a chilling warning about the psychopathic consequences of our national obsession with celebrity.