The first volume to examine the iconic Elizabeth Taylor in this light, Elizabeth Taylor: A Private Life for Public Consumption
paints Taylor as the seminal representation of “celebrity.” A figure of
enormous charisma and cultural sway, she intrigued a global audience
with her marriages and extra-marital improprieties, as well as her
extravagant jewelry, her never-ending illnesses, her dependency on
alcohol, and her perplexing friendship with Michael Jackson. Despite her
continued world-renown, however, most people would be hard-pressed to
name even three of her films, though she made over seventy.
Ellis Cashmore traces our modern, hyperactive celebrity culture back to a single instant in Taylor's life: the publicizing of her scandalous affair with Richard Burton by photographer Marcelo Geppetti in 1962, which announced the arrival of a new generation of predatory photojournalists and, along with them, a strange conflation between the public and private lives of celebrities. Taylor's life and public reception, Cashmore reveals, epitomizes the modern phenomenon of “celebrity.”
Ellis Cashmore traces our modern, hyperactive celebrity culture back to a single instant in Taylor's life: the publicizing of her scandalous affair with Richard Burton by photographer Marcelo Geppetti in 1962, which announced the arrival of a new generation of predatory photojournalists and, along with them, a strange conflation between the public and private lives of celebrities. Taylor's life and public reception, Cashmore reveals, epitomizes the modern phenomenon of “celebrity.”
My Take:
I received this book in
exchange for an honest review. This was simply a great book. It had so
much information about, not only, Elizabeth Taylor but also of all the
other people that she came into contact with. It was wonderfully written
and told a tale that I hadn't read before. I think that Elizabeth would
have approved.
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