The Fame Game
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett Takes on the Fame Game With Her New Book, Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity
By David Hershkovits
Graph based on a chart found on p. 107 of Starstruck
Who isn't obsessed with celebrity? My Rupert Murdoch may be your Angelina Jolie may be her Sarah Jessica Parker, but in all cases our appetites can never be satiated. Tell me more, more and more! Even Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, an assistant professor at USC's School of Policy, Planning and Development, is obsessed; so much so that she has written Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity, a data-driven excursion into the image-drenched world of the media, paparazzi, publicists and the flesh and blood they feed on. Never before has so much statistical analysis been brought to bear on the likes of Britney Spears, Clint Eastwood and Lara Flynn Boyle and the subtle but meaningful differences between A-, B- and C-list celebrities.
In her first book, The Warhol Economy, Currid-Halkett explored how New York's economy was shaped by celebrity culture. "I discovered that where they partied and went to dinner really, really mattered to their careers," she says.
For Starstruck, she wanted a more systematic way of analyzing the celebrity milieu. Using the vast archive of Getty Images' event photos, she was able to track the social behavior of the stars through their parties. "Getty is so good at documenting who's in the photographs,
when the photo was taken, what event and so forth that the caption info was all I needed," she says. From this data, she was able to make some conclusions. For instance, if there is one golden rule for both A-list and residual celebrities, it is this: "Don't go to Vegas," writes Currid-Halkett. "Going to an event in Las Vegas not only does not influence your Star Currency, even worse, sticking around has a negative influence."
And did you know that A-list stars go to far fewer events, yet get photographed more frequently, than B- and C-listers who have to work that much harder (i.e. go to more events) to maintain the public's interest in their shenanigans? Hence her conclusion that Paris Hilton is actually a hard worker. "She is!" insists Currid-Halkett. "I gained a lot of respect for Paris Hilton when I was done with this research."
Here, PAPER editor-in-chief David Hershkovits speaks with Currid-Halkett about the science of celebrity, politicians as stars and, naturally, the Kardashian sisters.
David Hershkovits: You approach celebrity somewhat like a cultural anthropologist, observing the natives at work.
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: You're right. The tool that I employed, besides interviewing, was ehtnography, or what they call 'participant observation,' where you spend a lot of time in the subject's world. There is only so much you can do with data; you do need to engage with the
people that are actually doing the thing you're studying.
DH: Unlike in The Warhol Economy, where you took more of a data driven approach.
ECH: Right, but that's also partly because what are the chances I'm going to get Angelina Jolie to sit down and talk to me about her career?
DH: To what extent are celebrities in control of their narratives? Or is there a pop, an unknown factor that comes into play, that actually does the work?
ECH: Well, I think that there is undoubtedly a bit of je ne sais quoi that can't be bottled. I do think that stars act differently than every one else.
DH: And that's by constitution? That's what makes them a star?
ECH: When I talk to people who work behind the scenes, they've said that some of the charisma is manufactured. When they're interviewing stars, things are so controlled that the stars sometimes come across in a charismatic, articulate way that's not actually true to how they would be if the set wasn't managed and the questions hadn't been given to the star beforehand by their publicist. I don't think [star quality] is innate in celebrities necessarily; they get themselves in front of the camera, they show up to the event, they penetrate the right network.They're also interested in the public being interested in them.
DH: Even as much as they complain about it.
ECH: Totally. There are plenty of good-looking talented stars who we know nothing about so their celebrity reaches a limit pretty quickly.
DH: Right. How many Brad Pitts are there out there?
ECH: Even someone like Keira Knightley who is very pretty, very talented and is someone we would be interested in, keeps to herself. There's only so much celebrity, and by that I mean that collective obsession we can have with someone who doesn't give us anything. She's made an active choice.
DH: Like Robert De Niro, for example, who is very present in New York but he's not really a subject of all the gossip columns. Occasionally something will burst out, but he wants to be private and he's sincere about it. Therefore, he doesn't get all that attention. In order to be a celebrity you really have to want to be a celebrity.
ECH: That is absolutely what I mean.
DH: In Starstruck, you also make a distinction between being famous and being a celebrity.
ECH: Yes. Robert De Niro; Keira Knightley; Woody Allen: They're all famous but they've controlled the information about them that's given to the public. In that sense, they're actually less of a celebrity than Angelina Jolie or Paris Hilton or any of the those people who are feeding things to the media or showing up in places where they know a photo is going to be taken.
DH: I am very interested in your tagging of all of the Getty Images and going about drawing conclusions based on all of the information about A-list celebrity versus B- and C-list and what it takes to be one or the other. What was the thought process that went into all of that work?
ECH: Well, to start off with, and this actually is an extension of The Warhol Economy, what I was interested in were these really successful people in creative industries, who by any other name, are stars or celebrities, right? So, how did they become that? And I had already in my work in The Warhol Economy known that there was the social milieu, the environment in which they partied or went to dinner or showed up at an industry event really, really mattered to their careers. But I didn't know a systematic way of tracking and analyzing it. So this is where Getty Images came in because I thought to myself, 'How could I find out what they're doing?" And then I thought, 'Oh My God, of course, photographs.' Because the events are photographed many times over and we can actually track their social behavior through the study of the photographs of the events they go to. And, I thought, 'Well, what's the best example of this? Paparazzi photos are good but they're kind of downtime photos and they're more chaotic. I wanted a systematic approach and so I went to Getty Images which has the most comprehensive photographic agency in the world with a huge stockpile of photographs
DH: And you came up with some interesting conclusions, one of which I'm fascinated by and I keep telling everyone about, is that the A-list celebrities go to fewer events, but get photographed more, and the B- and C-list have to work much harder at getting photographed so they have to go to more events.
ECH: Right. The A-list travel more, but go to fewer events, because photographers always want a picture of them at the events. So its kind of a one-to-one ratio: they can guarantee that they are going to get into the press by virtue of just being on the A-list and going to whatever elite event that they go to. The B- and the C-list have to work that much harder. Another group that has to work that much harder are stars that are not considered talented but are just media driven. So those stars that frequently show up in the tabloids, in the gossip columns, and on blogs.
DH: If someone wanted to be a celebrity, could they learn from your book what to do?
ECH: To a certain extent, yes. What my book demonstrates is that celebrities behave differently than everyone else and celebrities are people who we just collectively care about more than other people and are genuinely more fascinated with. They exist on all levels of society and, so actually, if you look at your Facebook friends, you see the celebrities of your Facebook page acting a lot like Paris Hilton. They're constantly [updating] what's going on in their life, they have tons and tons of friends, we are given information about them and they are in the spotlight and that is, in fact, what all celebrities do. They perpetuate our fascination by giving us material to work with; they get themselves in the spotlight whatever that spotlight is. In the case of Hollywood, it's a camera flash which helps them connect with lots and lots of people.
DH: In order to be a celebrity do you have to live your life out in the open warts and all?
ECH: Absolutely. The thing about celebrity, of course, is that it's not a positive or negative thing. It's just a state of being. Whether you're notorious or admire people are still talking about you, which is the point.
DH: So it's true that there's no such thing as bad publicity.
ECH: I think in the case of celebrity it is. You may want a particular kind of star power which means that if you're Angelina Jolie you've evolved from wearing a vial of blood around your neck to going to Darfur. But, yes, at the end of the day if we're measuring column inches, it doesn't really matter how it happens as long as it does.
DH: How would that apply to Charlie Sheen today or Lindsay Lohan?
ECH: Well, they're very interesting because their celebrity is certainly accomplishing the goal of them being collectively talked about and we are fascinated with them, but their particular kind of celebrity will produce repercussions for their careers. Whether it's the practicality of the insurance for Lohan to work on a film or the fact that we think Charlie Sheen is kind of a bad
person like we do Mel Gibson, that adds implications to their celebrity.
DH: Are there any particular celebrities that you're particularly fascinated by?
ECH: As trite as it may seem, I do think that the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt coverage is extraordinary because it's so contradictory and they are so good at giving us the only information they want us to know. We never really know what's going on. They are kind of the ultimate celebrities in that sense.
DH: So you think that they're the best at manipulating it to their advantage?
ECH: They are. The media tries different angles because obviously their images sell issues, but you know they keep us guessing. This keeps us interested, which is the point.
DH: What do you think about the continued fascination with some dead celebrities? Like Vanity Fair's recent Marilyn Monroe cover, for example. Do celebrities ever really 'die?'
ECH: Oh, some do. I think celebrity is ephemeral. Most people who become celebrities at some point evolve into just being famous -- we know their name but we're not really caring about their every move. But I think when stars die at the height of their stardom we remain collectively obsessed with the. One can definitely observe that we haven't stopped obsessing about those stars who died tragically young in he middle of their star power. I don't think that that means there's a good trade off there. It would have been much better if Marilyn Monroe had grown old, but because she did die when she was beautiful and glamorous, and when we were still so intrigue, that's the image we were left with. And so we continue to think about her like that.
DH: As opposed to Greta Garbo let's say...
ECH: Or Brigitte Bardot.
DH: Right now the Kardashian sisters and even the second and third members of the family are becoming gossip fodder and cover story material. Do you think they'll have any lasting interest or are they just a blip on the radar?
ECH: Reality stars' celebrity is much more fleeting because the barriers to entry are so much
lower.
DH: It's more fame than celebrity.
ECH: Yes, I think for a moment we're obsessed but it really is only a hot minute. Some [reality stars] seem to be able to translate it more long-term, I mean the late reality star Jade Goody, from the UK did. She was on Big Brother and then she developed a whole brand and wrote books.The Kardashians will be interesting, Kim Kardashian may
actually transcend
DH: But is more now required from her? Does she have to have a singing career or do any real work that way? Or can she maintain her celebrity by simply going out to parties and being photographed?
ECH: Well, if she does, then she'll be a version of Paris Hilton, and I think we have lost a bit interest in Paris Hilton.
DH: Do you think celebrities doing their own tweeting has changed the PR paradigm?
ECH: I don't know if tweeting is a great idea for stars, I think it is for that fleeting celebrity. They certainly develop followers and then they announce these major events in there life over tweeting. We followed Lindsay Lohan and her break up with Samantha Ronson, I think, over twitter. But that's not what the A-list does. I don't think any of the A-list uses that kind of social media. It's way too ubiquitous and frankly too democratic to be meaningfully A-list material, so yes some celebrities do it and will continue to do it but I do think they will diminish their star power by using those channels. I actually think that the agent at CAA and your fantastic publicist controlling the media is the way to maintain a really glorious image rather than over-saturation, which I think does happen over time with something like Twitter.
DH: Can we look at politicians as entertainers now that they're becoming part of the spectacle themselves? Is the drive to be a celebrity what's going to make someone a successful politician more than knowing anything about the issues, which seems to be the least important thing at this time.
ECH: I've been thinking about this a bit, too. Barack Obama is a bona fide celebrity. We cared about everything under the sun about him, we still do. That said, like the genuine A-list in Hollywood, there has to be substance backing it up. Christine O'Donnell is a celebrity, but she's also a joke. Sarah Palin has caught our attention and she may even, if she runs in 2012, be the Republican party nominee. But no one who takes politics seriously and who looks at the numbers thinks that she can actually become President. And why is that? Because she does not have any substance. She is not a serious political operator with real policy goals and real vision for the country.
DH: But haven't we turned a corner with society as a spectacle and now we're at a point beyond content? The important thing the image not the substance.
ECH: Obviously image matters. There's the famous Nixon vs.Kennedy debate and the sweaty upper lip. People who heard the debate thought Nixon won and people who saw the debate thought Kennedy won. So there's no question that image has mattered for decades. You do need substance, but I think more important thing is that you don't self-combust. The thing with
someone like Palin is that if she never dropped the ball, we might be worried she'd
get the election. She's pretty and charismatic and has great sound bytes and she gets the party energized but at some point, as we've seen before, she might come across as really stupid and unaware and uninformed and then anyone sensible who votes will say, 'That's a bad idea.' Now, if she miraculously never drops the ball, and she's able to just be pretty
and outrageous and keep it together then, yes, that might take her to the next level. But I
think that anyone who thinks about these things assumes that at some point there's
going to be a problem with her, and even Republicans are going to say, "I know we want to
win the election, but she's not fit."
DH: Hopefully. I'm always wondering, though, if our culture has jumped the shark to the point where it doesn't matter.
ECH: That would be terrifying.
DH: Do you have any predictions for the coming year in terms of celebrities or people to watch out for on your radar screen?
ECH: It seems to me that the Gossip Girl coterie is getting bigger and bigger. I don't even think the show has a huge viewership but they, as a group, are really watched, I think the Kardashians, definitely. I think Taylor Swift is very interesting because she's very talented and she's definitely evolving from her tween, fairy costume days to being this really attractive, talented, award- winning musician that's everywhere. And dating Jake Gyllenhaal doesn't hurt her image either.
A shorter version of this story appears in PAPER's Winter 2010-2011 issue.
★ STARSTRUCK: THE BUSINESS OF CELEBRITY, PUBLISHED BY FABER & FABER, IS OUT NOW. ★
Who isn't obsessed with celebrity? My Rupert Murdoch may be your Angelina Jolie may be her Sarah Jessica Parker, but in all cases our appetites can never be satiated. Tell me more, more and more! Even Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, an assistant professor at USC's School of Policy, Planning and Development, is obsessed; so much so that she has written Starstruck: The Business of Celebrity, a data-driven excursion into the image-drenched world of the media, paparazzi, publicists and the flesh and blood they feed on. Never before has so much statistical analysis been brought to bear on the likes of Britney Spears, Clint Eastwood and Lara Flynn Boyle and the subtle but meaningful differences between A-, B- and C-list celebrities.
In her first book, The Warhol Economy, Currid-Halkett explored how New York's economy was shaped by celebrity culture. "I discovered that where they partied and went to dinner really, really mattered to their careers," she says.
For Starstruck, she wanted a more systematic way of analyzing the celebrity milieu. Using the vast archive of Getty Images' event photos, she was able to track the social behavior of the stars through their parties. "Getty is so good at documenting who's in the photographs,
when the photo was taken, what event and so forth that the caption info was all I needed," she says. From this data, she was able to make some conclusions. For instance, if there is one golden rule for both A-list and residual celebrities, it is this: "Don't go to Vegas," writes Currid-Halkett. "Going to an event in Las Vegas not only does not influence your Star Currency, even worse, sticking around has a negative influence."
And did you know that A-list stars go to far fewer events, yet get photographed more frequently, than B- and C-listers who have to work that much harder (i.e. go to more events) to maintain the public's interest in their shenanigans? Hence her conclusion that Paris Hilton is actually a hard worker. "She is!" insists Currid-Halkett. "I gained a lot of respect for Paris Hilton when I was done with this research."
Here, PAPER editor-in-chief David Hershkovits speaks with Currid-Halkett about the science of celebrity, politicians as stars and, naturally, the Kardashian sisters.
David Hershkovits: You approach celebrity somewhat like a cultural anthropologist, observing the natives at work.
Elizabeth Currid-Halkett: You're right. The tool that I employed, besides interviewing, was ehtnography, or what they call 'participant observation,' where you spend a lot of time in the subject's world. There is only so much you can do with data; you do need to engage with the
people that are actually doing the thing you're studying.
DH: Unlike in The Warhol Economy, where you took more of a data driven approach.
ECH: Right, but that's also partly because what are the chances I'm going to get Angelina Jolie to sit down and talk to me about her career?
DH: To what extent are celebrities in control of their narratives? Or is there a pop, an unknown factor that comes into play, that actually does the work?
ECH: Well, I think that there is undoubtedly a bit of je ne sais quoi that can't be bottled. I do think that stars act differently than every one else.
DH: And that's by constitution? That's what makes them a star?
ECH: When I talk to people who work behind the scenes, they've said that some of the charisma is manufactured. When they're interviewing stars, things are so controlled that the stars sometimes come across in a charismatic, articulate way that's not actually true to how they would be if the set wasn't managed and the questions hadn't been given to the star beforehand by their publicist. I don't think [star quality] is innate in celebrities necessarily; they get themselves in front of the camera, they show up to the event, they penetrate the right network.They're also interested in the public being interested in them.
DH: Even as much as they complain about it.
ECH: Totally. There are plenty of good-looking talented stars who we know nothing about so their celebrity reaches a limit pretty quickly.
DH: Right. How many Brad Pitts are there out there?
ECH: Even someone like Keira Knightley who is very pretty, very talented and is someone we would be interested in, keeps to herself. There's only so much celebrity, and by that I mean that collective obsession we can have with someone who doesn't give us anything. She's made an active choice.
DH: Like Robert De Niro, for example, who is very present in New York but he's not really a subject of all the gossip columns. Occasionally something will burst out, but he wants to be private and he's sincere about it. Therefore, he doesn't get all that attention. In order to be a celebrity you really have to want to be a celebrity.
ECH: That is absolutely what I mean.
DH: In Starstruck, you also make a distinction between being famous and being a celebrity.
ECH: Yes. Robert De Niro; Keira Knightley; Woody Allen: They're all famous but they've controlled the information about them that's given to the public. In that sense, they're actually less of a celebrity than Angelina Jolie or Paris Hilton or any of the those people who are feeding things to the media or showing up in places where they know a photo is going to be taken.
DH: I am very interested in your tagging of all of the Getty Images and going about drawing conclusions based on all of the information about A-list celebrity versus B- and C-list and what it takes to be one or the other. What was the thought process that went into all of that work?
ECH: Well, to start off with, and this actually is an extension of The Warhol Economy, what I was interested in were these really successful people in creative industries, who by any other name, are stars or celebrities, right? So, how did they become that? And I had already in my work in The Warhol Economy known that there was the social milieu, the environment in which they partied or went to dinner or showed up at an industry event really, really mattered to their careers. But I didn't know a systematic way of tracking and analyzing it. So this is where Getty Images came in because I thought to myself, 'How could I find out what they're doing?" And then I thought, 'Oh My God, of course, photographs.' Because the events are photographed many times over and we can actually track their social behavior through the study of the photographs of the events they go to. And, I thought, 'Well, what's the best example of this? Paparazzi photos are good but they're kind of downtime photos and they're more chaotic. I wanted a systematic approach and so I went to Getty Images which has the most comprehensive photographic agency in the world with a huge stockpile of photographs
DH: And you came up with some interesting conclusions, one of which I'm fascinated by and I keep telling everyone about, is that the A-list celebrities go to fewer events, but get photographed more, and the B- and C-list have to work much harder at getting photographed so they have to go to more events.
ECH: Right. The A-list travel more, but go to fewer events, because photographers always want a picture of them at the events. So its kind of a one-to-one ratio: they can guarantee that they are going to get into the press by virtue of just being on the A-list and going to whatever elite event that they go to. The B- and the C-list have to work that much harder. Another group that has to work that much harder are stars that are not considered talented but are just media driven. So those stars that frequently show up in the tabloids, in the gossip columns, and on blogs.
DH: If someone wanted to be a celebrity, could they learn from your book what to do?
ECH: To a certain extent, yes. What my book demonstrates is that celebrities behave differently than everyone else and celebrities are people who we just collectively care about more than other people and are genuinely more fascinated with. They exist on all levels of society and, so actually, if you look at your Facebook friends, you see the celebrities of your Facebook page acting a lot like Paris Hilton. They're constantly [updating] what's going on in their life, they have tons and tons of friends, we are given information about them and they are in the spotlight and that is, in fact, what all celebrities do. They perpetuate our fascination by giving us material to work with; they get themselves in the spotlight whatever that spotlight is. In the case of Hollywood, it's a camera flash which helps them connect with lots and lots of people.
DH: In order to be a celebrity do you have to live your life out in the open warts and all?
ECH: Absolutely. The thing about celebrity, of course, is that it's not a positive or negative thing. It's just a state of being. Whether you're notorious or admire people are still talking about you, which is the point.
DH: So it's true that there's no such thing as bad publicity.
ECH: I think in the case of celebrity it is. You may want a particular kind of star power which means that if you're Angelina Jolie you've evolved from wearing a vial of blood around your neck to going to Darfur. But, yes, at the end of the day if we're measuring column inches, it doesn't really matter how it happens as long as it does.
DH: How would that apply to Charlie Sheen today or Lindsay Lohan?
ECH: Well, they're very interesting because their celebrity is certainly accomplishing the goal of them being collectively talked about and we are fascinated with them, but their particular kind of celebrity will produce repercussions for their careers. Whether it's the practicality of the insurance for Lohan to work on a film or the fact that we think Charlie Sheen is kind of a bad
person like we do Mel Gibson, that adds implications to their celebrity.
DH: Are there any particular celebrities that you're particularly fascinated by?
ECH: As trite as it may seem, I do think that the Angelina Jolie/Brad Pitt coverage is extraordinary because it's so contradictory and they are so good at giving us the only information they want us to know. We never really know what's going on. They are kind of the ultimate celebrities in that sense.
DH: So you think that they're the best at manipulating it to their advantage?
ECH: They are. The media tries different angles because obviously their images sell issues, but you know they keep us guessing. This keeps us interested, which is the point.
DH: What do you think about the continued fascination with some dead celebrities? Like Vanity Fair's recent Marilyn Monroe cover, for example. Do celebrities ever really 'die?'
ECH: Oh, some do. I think celebrity is ephemeral. Most people who become celebrities at some point evolve into just being famous -- we know their name but we're not really caring about their every move. But I think when stars die at the height of their stardom we remain collectively obsessed with the. One can definitely observe that we haven't stopped obsessing about those stars who died tragically young in he middle of their star power. I don't think that that means there's a good trade off there. It would have been much better if Marilyn Monroe had grown old, but because she did die when she was beautiful and glamorous, and when we were still so intrigue, that's the image we were left with. And so we continue to think about her like that.
DH: As opposed to Greta Garbo let's say...
ECH: Or Brigitte Bardot.
DH: Right now the Kardashian sisters and even the second and third members of the family are becoming gossip fodder and cover story material. Do you think they'll have any lasting interest or are they just a blip on the radar?
ECH: Reality stars' celebrity is much more fleeting because the barriers to entry are so much
lower.
DH: It's more fame than celebrity.
ECH: Yes, I think for a moment we're obsessed but it really is only a hot minute. Some [reality stars] seem to be able to translate it more long-term, I mean the late reality star Jade Goody, from the UK did. She was on Big Brother and then she developed a whole brand and wrote books.The Kardashians will be interesting, Kim Kardashian may
actually transcend
DH: But is more now required from her? Does she have to have a singing career or do any real work that way? Or can she maintain her celebrity by simply going out to parties and being photographed?
ECH: Well, if she does, then she'll be a version of Paris Hilton, and I think we have lost a bit interest in Paris Hilton.
DH: Do you think celebrities doing their own tweeting has changed the PR paradigm?
ECH: I don't know if tweeting is a great idea for stars, I think it is for that fleeting celebrity. They certainly develop followers and then they announce these major events in there life over tweeting. We followed Lindsay Lohan and her break up with Samantha Ronson, I think, over twitter. But that's not what the A-list does. I don't think any of the A-list uses that kind of social media. It's way too ubiquitous and frankly too democratic to be meaningfully A-list material, so yes some celebrities do it and will continue to do it but I do think they will diminish their star power by using those channels. I actually think that the agent at CAA and your fantastic publicist controlling the media is the way to maintain a really glorious image rather than over-saturation, which I think does happen over time with something like Twitter.
DH: Can we look at politicians as entertainers now that they're becoming part of the spectacle themselves? Is the drive to be a celebrity what's going to make someone a successful politician more than knowing anything about the issues, which seems to be the least important thing at this time.
ECH: I've been thinking about this a bit, too. Barack Obama is a bona fide celebrity. We cared about everything under the sun about him, we still do. That said, like the genuine A-list in Hollywood, there has to be substance backing it up. Christine O'Donnell is a celebrity, but she's also a joke. Sarah Palin has caught our attention and she may even, if she runs in 2012, be the Republican party nominee. But no one who takes politics seriously and who looks at the numbers thinks that she can actually become President. And why is that? Because she does not have any substance. She is not a serious political operator with real policy goals and real vision for the country.
DH: But haven't we turned a corner with society as a spectacle and now we're at a point beyond content? The important thing the image not the substance.
ECH: Obviously image matters. There's the famous Nixon vs.Kennedy debate and the sweaty upper lip. People who heard the debate thought Nixon won and people who saw the debate thought Kennedy won. So there's no question that image has mattered for decades. You do need substance, but I think more important thing is that you don't self-combust. The thing with
someone like Palin is that if she never dropped the ball, we might be worried she'd
get the election. She's pretty and charismatic and has great sound bytes and she gets the party energized but at some point, as we've seen before, she might come across as really stupid and unaware and uninformed and then anyone sensible who votes will say, 'That's a bad idea.' Now, if she miraculously never drops the ball, and she's able to just be pretty
and outrageous and keep it together then, yes, that might take her to the next level. But I
think that anyone who thinks about these things assumes that at some point there's
going to be a problem with her, and even Republicans are going to say, "I know we want to
win the election, but she's not fit."
DH: Hopefully. I'm always wondering, though, if our culture has jumped the shark to the point where it doesn't matter.
ECH: That would be terrifying.
DH: Do you have any predictions for the coming year in terms of celebrities or people to watch out for on your radar screen?
ECH: It seems to me that the Gossip Girl coterie is getting bigger and bigger. I don't even think the show has a huge viewership but they, as a group, are really watched, I think the Kardashians, definitely. I think Taylor Swift is very interesting because she's very talented and she's definitely evolving from her tween, fairy costume days to being this really attractive, talented, award- winning musician that's everywhere. And dating Jake Gyllenhaal doesn't hurt her image either.
A shorter version of this story appears in PAPER's Winter 2010-2011 issue.
★ STARSTRUCK: THE BUSINESS OF CELEBRITY, PUBLISHED BY FABER & FABER, IS OUT NOW. ★
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