mirrors

“The image is one thing and the human being is another. It's very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.”
― Elvis Presley

by Luiz

Mirrors, mirrors reflect that is their purposes the celebrity world are just a mirrored

reflection of the public world and yet for some strange reason the celebrity world is 

something to aspire to and look at. The odd thing about the mirror world of the 

celebrities is that they have all the same problems as the ‘real’ world, they have

drug addicted people who have died from overdose such as one of the most recent 

ones Amy Winehouse (also a list can be found here). Yet for us who live in 

Melbourne we rarely hear about the overdose of 9000 people in our city every year. 

That’s around one person of every 400 each year that is still an extremely high 

amount of overdoses that we as the public never hear of or around 24 a day. Yet we 

look into the mirror and morn for weeks on end about a single overdose. I may 

sound harsh but don’t the 9000 have a right to be on the news, what make 

celebrities who just do their jobs so difference from us. 

Celebrities are oxymoron they are human like us and in reality have little value 

(Marshall 2013:1). Yet we in turn give them value as we try and copy them. Photos, 

of celebrities are highly valued for some reason as a whole industries have been 

made to take photos of ‘famous’ people and the list of who is deemed a celebrity is 

growing. Once a pond a time celebrity were the one on silent films now chief such 

as Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey are deemed famous. But what is worst are 

reality TV stars, the ones who are literally famous for no reason, the five minute of 

fame and yet for some unknown reason we follow them. In the news where there 

are sections dedicated to following celebrities and gossip, TV shows such as TMZ 

( and their website) and social media where we actively follow celebrities on sites 

such as twitter.  

Another aspect of celebrities are the ones well known and famous for sport, for 

doing something they enjoy and are good at. For me, my interest is cricket and the 

history of cricket and for one thing I have notices is that names of people long dead

I still know of, why because they were good at their sport, the ones who made it to 

international level, the FredSpofforth, the Don Bradman, these names are name of 

people who ordinary people, like myself, have aspired to be, a mirror of what we

 want to be a goal for the mere mortals. For these people are immortal and for what, 

doing something they are good at, but we can only be as good as we can be. But we 

humans need to aspire to be something to be remembered and that where these 

celebrities be it from sport, music, or acting or one of the many other areas that 

celebrities come from, they are remembered for something.  

The mirror of celebrities can also be seen in the specular economy which the rise

 and fall of celebrities have always interested the general public, the people who 

want and wish to be as famous and well known but never achieving the goal. The 

idea of the specular economy has become progressively more importance for 

celebrities and the public, as the “celebrities are in fact at the forefront of the 

expansion and use of social media and networks for reputation management. 

Indeed, some ‘stars’ such as MC Hammer have remade themselves through their 

presence on Twitter” (Marshall, 2010, p498).

Brian Solis

Many celebrities will post status updated or tweets on Facebook and Twitter 

respectively, but this form of publicity for the celebrates is still generally a two-way 

mirror as Marshall (2010) puts it, a the public are like the cops able to look into the 

interrogation room in which the celebrity is in revealing personal information. 

The reason why specular economy is so big in the world of social media is because 

of the idea of mirrors, we look at celebrities as mirrors, something to aspire to, 

something to aim for, good looks, money and fame. But a mirror can also show 

faults in a person, flaws in celebrities for the example that Marshall uses is 

tiger wood who in 2009 was revealed as a fake, someone who had another persona 

that remained hidden for years.

The fallout of Tiger Woods affairs of 2009 took the world by storm, who was this

man who had lived such a private life to suddenly be reviled as a grand Casanova. 

According to the courier mail tiger wood had up to 120 different affairs in the time 

he was married to his wife of five years. for this reason I think celebrities have 

become more open about their lives on social media because of, one not letting the 

media be the first to find out and secondly to try and publish a good reputation 

with the public by showing more of who they are.

I have covered the mainstream idea of celebrities but in a world dominated by the 

internet and the idea of the Web 2.0 the idea of who is famous is quickly changing, 

for instance on YouTube a video could be famous overnight but as quickly it rose to 

fame it turns to dust. The internet is all way changing in and out of trends as quickly 

as the information can spread and that is extremely quickly and as Grossman is 

quoted in Burns that we call it ‘Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old 

software. But it’s really a revolution’ (Burns, 2009: IX.) Web 2.0 is the key term used 

to describe the change in how users use the internet with the primary focus the 

social aspect of the web, the blog, the video sharing and the micro blogging (i.e 

Twitter and Facebook).

On YouTube where anyone can post videos clips and one can be a celebrity or well 

known for their content for example the Yogcasts are a group of YouTube users that 

upload videos of their gameplay for a number of different games probably most 

well-known for their Mine craft videos. It is possible for any amateurs to become a 

star as the ‘internet democratizes the entrainment industries and lessens the 

dominate of Hollywood in determining who can be and cannot be a star’ (Burns, 

2009: 61). These celebrities have a different and sometime bigger audience than the 

Hollywood ones but one thing these web base celebrities rely on is the loyalty of 

followers and from personal experience I will say that if a web base celebrity has 

posted multiple videos and I enjoy them I will follow them eagerly, hungry for more 

which I can say for more than most Hollywood celebrities. I generally do not follow 

a Hollywood celebrity waiting for their movies.      

Overall celebrities offer a unique look into the mirror. A what-could-be mirror where

we see what we want to be. The specular economy and social media now go hand in 

hand for it produce so many more pictures than official paparazzi releases. The 

internet has allowed the Hollywood grade celebrity to personally so images of 

themselves, what they want to show without being harassed by the paparazzi’s.  

But what is a celebrity is changing with the internet as many regular unloaders on 

YouTube have become well known and have a large following with subscriptions 

and more who follow but don’t subscribe.  This is changing the way we interact 

with our mirrors of celbrities, ordianary people can become celbrities on the 

internet while not living up to the hollywood standards.