The Making of a Celebrity

Rhetorical Analysis: The Making of a Celebrity

Task: Select an entertainer (singer, musician, artist, actor, comic, etc.) who made his or her pop-culture debut within the past 12 months. Using Internet and print resources, document how the entertainer, his publicist, and his production company have marketed the entertainer in order to stimulate interest, sales, and/or viewership for the entertainer’s projects.

You may wish to consider/document the following:

1. Talk show appearance(s).
2. Internet websites, including official and unofficial sites.
3. Advertisements.
4. Magazine snapshots or features. (Why do you think celebrities always make grand entrances? Published pictures = Free advertising.)
5. Awards or reviews. (Did you ever wonder why there seem to be thousands of awards shows? Aren’t we always more interested in an “award-winner”?)
6. Glamour shots.
7. Celebrity gossip pages.
8. Guest appearances.
9. Outrageous stunts or antics. (Think Paris Hilton. Then think no more.)

(Of course, this list is NOT complete.)

Collect your sources. Analyze the apparent strategies used in order to publicize this person’s name, drawing attention. How was this person “marketed”? How did they draw attention to themselves?

Create a one-page analysis using bullet points to indicate the strategies at play. For example:

????????

Next

For submission:

1. Photocopies or printed pages from all sources used.
2. Bibliography for all sources.
3.  

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