Does the paparazzi serve only to glorify the bourgeoisie and celebrities?

[AK]

Or is it an unwanted menace to the rich, who are entitled to a private life? Discuss.

[CELMX]

It is a bourgeois thing. The paparazzi is propaganda to distract working class people from real life issues. Instead on focusing on the important things, like trade unionism, striking, class war, the working class then is obsessed with bourgeois celebraties.
It's not necessarily to glorify the rich - it is to sell magazines to millions of eager citizens so that they can gain profit.

And, who gives a shit if paparazzi is a menace to the rich. They don't deserve a private life.

All in all, the paparazzi is a profit hungry group that distracts working class from real [working class]life issues. paparazzi = tool of the cappie scum

[RadioRaheem84]

The rich celebs act like the Paparazzi are such a huge burden to them but in reality they act like their burdened to disguise the fact that they love the attention. If they were gone (paparazzi) they would miss the publicity.

It's a way to distract the working class from actually achieving anything useful in life. The Paparazzi capture glimpses of quick fame and glamor enticing millions to seek out ways of becoming a star rather than a doctor or teacher. It makes kids and teenagers suffering under the brunt of poverty wish to become like the ones being snapped at. Yet, the road is long, hard and very very narrow and they're willing to give up everything to get it. It's almost a reflection of our modern economic system.

Yet, everyone at the top that truly matters in a capitalist society (businessmen, politicians, journalists, academics) know that celebs are a joke and constitute nothing more than cogs in a slimy industry that can be bought and sold like any other major communications medium. The only people that take them seriously at all are people that have no knowledge of economics, history and political science, i.e. the hurdled masses.

[MarxSchmarx]

It is a bourgeois thing. The paparazzi is propaganda to distract working class people from real life issues. Instead on focusing on the important things, like trade unionism, striking, class war, the working class then is obsessed with bourgeois celebraties.
It's not necessarily to glorify the rich - it is to sell magazines to millions of eager citizens so that they can gain profit.

And, who gives a shit if paparazzi is a menace to the rich. They don't deserve a private life.

All in all, the paparazzi is a profit hungry group that distracts working class from real [working class]life issues. paparazzi = tool of the cappie scum

In these respects, the paparazzi are no different than most journalists that work for the capitalist press. After all, they fail to cover "real life" issues, as much as the television section of the news paper, the sports sections, or worse, the so-called "business" section.

WHat distinguishes the paparazzi from these other journalists is the intene focus on the individual and the personal. In some respect they help highlight how even the rich and famous are basically the same as the rest of us, in a way, that, say, a column about an olympic runner does not.

Thus while their social function may be one of bourgeois reactionaries, I think on balance they do quite a bit more to level the myth of a noble upper class than many other journalists.

[Raúl Duke]

The paparazzo media to me plays a role at perpetuating the spectacle.

People develop a "social "relationship" with these celebrities through images of celebrities and written/spoken media detail on celebrities and that sort of media information is brought by paparazzi. The celebrities themselves are the subject in this facet of the spectacle, people who are turned into a sort of idol which we are sometimes then told, usually implicit, to emulate in some form (however, this is only possible if the coverage is positive). Not everyone reacts to this kind of media that way...some people just read the stories for a dose of schandenfreude so we can laugh and feel good about the "problems" of the rich and famous. It's a diversion because the premise is we should care about these famous strangers like if they were our neighbors...I mean I never really liked and found absurd how the media tells us we should all mourn for eyz celebrity while 100s die in some far away battle field and we don't ,nor are we told to, care or shed a tear.

[blake 3:17]

You raise an interesting question. In the class struggle can there wins or losses on only one side?

When JFK jr went down I saw it as a defeat for the ruling class, but no win for our side. The less idiots flying helicopters seems right.

[Jimmie Higgins]

While major stars are very wealthy and many become producers and therefore bourgeois, actors - even rich ones - are workers with professional guilds and class-based conflicts with their employers. It is an easy populist thing to hate on the stars (kind of right-wing too), but the real players in Hollywood are the studio executives, the management agencies and so on. They have all the real power and much more money than all but a handful of celebrities.

The paparazzi are the privatized version of the old studio-system "gossip columns" and movie magazines. In Hollywood, major stars are a commodity: Hollywood is based on the star system; first directly through the studios (who had contracted stars with no options in regards to doing publicity for the studios) and now through the management agencies. Stars are convinced or contractually obligated to attend events or go out to whip-up publicity for their films or just keep themselves viable stars so they can be hired for future work.

It's easy to resent stars wanting their privacy, because we think they have so much more money and freedom and so on that we wish we could have and so why are they complaining. But for their perspective, the publicity stuff has nothing to do with their actual work as actors and so all the frenzied press and press junkets and so on are basically making money for their bosses.

[RedRise]

Taking photos of or interviewing popular celebrities then putting in magazines or newspapers is just another way of making money. The celebs didn't ask for the paparazzi (at least most of them didn't). They are literally making money of someone else's fame. I'm not saying that either one is in the right or the wrong and I personally detest both parties but thats what's going on.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

The media is owned by the economic elites of the world. Ergo, it is logical that the major communicators of news media will serve to uphold the interests of the oligarchical strata - the very richest in society.

The paparazzo are just one of the tools employed by Capitalist money to achieve this goal.

[RadioRaheem84]

The media is owned by the economic elites of the world. Ergo, it is logical that the major communicators of news media will serve to uphold the interests of the oligarchical strata - the very richest in society.

The paparazzo are just one of the tools employed by Capitalist money to achieve this goal.

Exactly how many people would buy a magazine that showed people protesting or workers striking? We would, but the larger interests wouldn't want that. They've taken hold of the market to show such and such actress puke her guts out on Sunset Blvd. Exemplifying the rich, no matter how crass their behavior may appear, is a method in which they use to retain power. The point is to show that there is no humility in poverty anymore. Be rich and the consequences for erratic behavior nearly vanish. Be rich and you gain access to total freedom. Be rich and you live the only way of life that can guarantee you any rights, as the only rights you can ever truly have are the ones you gain in the marketplace.

[The Red Next Door]

Everyone is entitled to the right to privacy including those celebs and they don't serve to glorify them unless they are paris hilton and those other bimbos. they serve to make their life a living hell.

[RadioRaheem84]

Everyone is entitled to the right to privacy including those celebs and they don't serve to glorify them unless they are paris hilton and those other bimbos. they serve to make their life a living hell.

Well, I shouldn't have limited the notion to just Paparazzi but the other establishment mags have rich exposes all the time. Ivanka Trump sealed a new deal, lets interview her. Donald Trump is thinking about a new real estate strategy, lets interview him. Warren Buffet is thinking, lets interview him to get his thoughts. Actor X or Actress Y talk about their new home that could house sixteen families.

The Papparazi serve to show the more sensationalist elements of the upper class. Yet, they still promote the idea that being upper class is better than being a working class shmuck. They have a right to privacy but as the Hollywood maxim goes "any publicity is good publicity".