In my project I discuss the effect that celebrity culture has on modern day society. The mass media have a stranglehold on what we see, what we read and what we believe through television, newspapers and the internet. It is almost inescapable but the question is does the power of the mass media and the cult of celebrity alienate us from ourselves and stunt our true desires in life?
In order to philosophically deconstruct this phenomenon my methodology revolves around the examination of the theories of Guy Debord and his notion of the spectacle, Theodor Adorno’s attack on mass culture in The Culture Industry and Karl Marx’s critique of commodity fetishism in Das Kapital.
“The more he contemplates, the less he lives; the more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires” (Debord, Society of the spectacle 16: 2004)