The Image by Daniel J. Boorstin Page A

“celebrity.”
    The word “celebrity” (from the Latin
celebritas
for “multitude” or “fame” and
celeber
meaning “frequented,” “populous,” or “famous”) originally meant not a person but a condition—as the Oxford English Dictionary says, “the condition of being much talked about; famousness, notoriety.” In this sense its use dates from at least the early seventeenth century. Even then it had a weaker meaning than “fame” or “renown.” Matthew Arnold, for example, remarked in the nineteenth century that while the philosopher Spinoza’s followers had “celebrity,” Spinoza himself had “fame.”
    For us, however, “celebrity” means primarily a person—“a person of celebrity.” This usage of the word significantly dates from the early years of the Graphic Revolution, the first example being about 1850. Emerson spoke of “the celebrities of wealth and fashion” (1848). Now American dictionaries define a celebrity as “a famous or well-publicized person.”
    The celebrity in the distinctive modern sense could not have existed in any earlier age, or in America before the Graphic Revolution.
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness
.
    His qualities—or rather his lack of qualities—illustrate our peculiar problems. He is neither good nor bad, great nor petty. He is the human pseudo-event. He has beenfabricated on purpose to satisfy our exaggerated expectations of human greatness. He is morally neutral. The product of no conspiracy, of no group promoting vice or emptiness, he is made by honest, industrious men of high professional ethics doing their job, “informing” and educating us. He is made by all of us who willingly read about him, who like to see him on television, who buy recordings of his voice, and talk about him to our friends. His relation to morality and even to reality is highly ambiguous. He is like the woman
in
an Elinor Glyn novel who describes another by saying, “She is like a figure in an Elinor Glyn novel.”
    The massive
Celebrity Register
(1959), compiled by Earl Blackwell and Cleveland Amory, now gives us a well-documented definition of the word, illustrated by over 2,200 biographies. “We think we have a better yardstick than the
Social Register
, or
Who’s Who
, or any such book,” they explain. “Our point is that it is impossible to be accurate in listing a man’s social standing—even if anyone cared; and it’s impossible to list accurately the success or value of men; but you
can
judge a man as a celebrity—all you have to do is weigh his press clippings.” The
Celebrity Register
’s alphabetical order shows Mortimer Adler followed by Polly Adler, the Dalai Lama listed beside TV comedienne Dagmar, Dwight Eisenhower preceding Anita Ekberg, ex-President Herbert Hoover following ex-torch singer Libby Holman, Pope John XXIII coming after Mr. John the hat designer, and Bertrand Russell followed by Jane Russell. They are all celebrities. The well-knownness which they have in common overshadows everything else.
    The advertising world has proved the market appeal of celebrities. In trade jargon celebrities are “big names.” Endorsement advertising not only uses celebrities; it helps make them. Anything that makes a well-known name still better known automatically raises its status as a celebrity. The old practice, well established before the nineteenth century, of declaring the prestige of a product by the phrase “By Appointment to His Majesty” was, of course, a kind of useof the testimonial endorsement. But the King was in fact a great person, one of illustrious lineage and with impressive actual and symbolic powers. The King was not a venal endorser, and he was likely to use only superior products. He was not a mere celebrity. For the test of celebrity is nothing more than well-knownness.
    Studies of biographies in popular magazines suggest that editors, and supposedly also readers, of such magazines not long ago shifted