I could do without some of those "journalists" like Jonathan Van Meter who shill for their favorite actor/actress, but on the other hand, Selena Gomez should expect questions about the cult church she goes to, the Bieber or not Bieber guys she dates,etc. After all, she is the one on social media, bleating every move she makes, all for $$...
3
Hypocritical of Caramanica to write this after his extremely wishy washy piece on Kanye, which refused to say anything at all about one of the most famous/controversial performers of our time
10
There isn't much quite as boring, trite and unimportant as celebrity "journalism," an oxymoron of the first order. Not to be unkind, but many who are famous for being famous are the least interesting of all, devoid of both intellect -and- talent.To have complexity requires far more than just fame.
Eclectic Pragmatism — http://eclectic-pragmatist.tumblr.com/
Eclectic Pragmatist — https://medium.com/eclectic-pragmatism
6
My father was the "rock star" of our household. Fast forwarding 43 years, my 7-year old wants to be "famous" like the performer Lil' Pump whom he happily emulates.
Rather than operating in a vacuum, contemporary culture slips into every void. It imposes its will on the airwaves and devices both big and small. It never sleeps.
3
Today, most everyone using social media, including celebrities, see it as a tool, not for genuine in-depth two-way conversation, but as a means to protect (and cultivate) their image, and for celebrities, their brand identity, preferring to exist merely as faceless, sterilized commodities in the marketplace.
9
This is a genre of journalism whose funeral can't come fast enough. O the conventions of the celebrity profile, the shallow intimacies, those shared shopping trips and lazy lunches displaying a simulacrum of friendship between the celeb and the journo. It's almost always unilluminating , even that Gwyneth profile by a wonderful writer conformed to these conventions to its detriment.
Yes who can blame a celebrity for dodging this chore? Better to speak directly on twitter and instagram and have your public answer back, a better simulacrum of friendship than the tired celebrity profile.
10
@Jay Why
I agree entirely, and would add that these interviews create massive conflicts of interest for reporters and news institutions.
1
It's not the "celebrity profile" that has gone the way of the rotary phone, but that of the pop music celebrity. And, as one who remembers his first pop music profile - Jann Wenner's terrific interview with Michael Bloomfield in late 1967 - do I really want to know more about Lil Xan and Noah Cyrus? Does anyone??
11
Mourning the loss of the celebrity profile in the music industry - the way they used to be written - is like telling a sixteen year-old his music stinks, it's nothing like the old days. Today's pop isn't written for old people and neither are the profiles. However, there are still excellent profiles being written about interesting people in the New York Times and elsewhere. Whether or not you are a fan of Carrie Coon (The Leftovers, TV series; Mary Jane, theater), read the profile on this singular actor by Michael Schulman in the current issue of The New Yorker. Ms. Coon is as honest and illuminating as she is inspiring.
4
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the
American people."
--- H.L. Mencken
6
Folks, if you haven't read the John Lennon interview the author links to (the (in)famous "Lennon Remembers" interview), go check it out now. It's a doozy.
5
Paul’s interview in GQ paid off with his new album Egypt Station debuting at Number 1 on Billboard.
Sometimes taking the risk to interview with a journalist brings unexpected benefits for an artist. Maybe some younger artist will see the benefit of doing real interviews.
8
Why would anyone care what Beyoncé, Swift, or McCartney for that matter, have to say? They’re entertainers not philosophers, scholars, or deep thinkers. Either their acts entertain you or they don’t. Buy their products & attend their performances or don’t.
5
The Times itself just posted amazingly written profiles by Caity Weaver of Maya Rudolph and by Taffy Brodesser-Akner of Gwyneth Paltrow and Ethan Hawke. Weaver and Brodesser-Akner are two of the very best in the game, and they actually make these profiles worth reading.
I'm not sure what Caramanica's argument is here, or how seriously we should take it if he doesn't even consider his own colleagues' work.
6
Unlike most of the self-assured, somewhat uninformed opinions here, I think the views of celebrities on their music, politics, and social reality would be interesting.
2
The classic celebrity profile remains Truman Capote’s interview with Marlon Brando from 1954 I believe. Read that piece then jump to TMZ and you’ll see what the author is talking about.
It isn’t about vapid celebrities, it is about peeling back the layer of celebrity worship. Today, with Twitter and TMZ it is all noise and no signal.
6
I’m viewing these “celebrities” unwillingness to submit their lives and opinions to critique as them centering their art / music as their contribution to society... not their personal lives, sex lives, or opinions on anything further. I don’t have much of a problem with it either.
If an artist wants their job to be their art, and not their lifestyle, then that’s calm?
2
The loss is real. So real. But I feel that I will be able to face up eventually, with the help of pharmaceuticals.
7
"Answering questions is part of the job." This is a Tiger Beat mentality. Bob Dylan has never relied on "celebrity journalism" to tell us about who he is, why his art matters, or why we should care. Beyonce and Taylor Swift combined are no match for Dylan (but I am old and what do I know) but they both deserve the right to just let their art speak for itself. Magazines trod on through their long slow death. Sad.
9
The collapse of first-rate celebrity journalism is much more the doing of magazines than the artists themselves. It began when major magazines began allowing the celebrity subject to dictate the photographer, writer and other elements of their coverage. Vogue was so desperate to get Beyonce on the cover that they basically allowed her to write her own worthless story. That's not serving their readers or anyone else. Sure, they'll sell a few more copies with a gorgeous Bey cover, but many readers will be disappointed or annoyed, and Vogue has forever ceded control to Beyonce that they'll never get back (at least until her star inevitably begins to fade).
But the major celebrities are losing too. A great and revealing interview still has the ability to make headlines and be talked about for months. Madonna was a master of this. And just this month, Paul McCartney managed to tell us a previously untold Beatles story that shocked and amused, and it's not something he was ever going to post on Instagram. Is anyone really talking about Vogue's Beyonce coverage?
15
Celebrity journalism? Never a sadder phrase has been uttered. There's thousands of years of artists and artistic works on hand with nary a celeb mag to promote them.
9
I don't get it. Why is it that anything a celebrity thinks, does or says amounts to a hill of beans? These people are so far removed from the real world that their opinions and observations are all but meaningless, yet the clones gleefully hang from every word or gesture like it was a matter of life and death. Just another example of a society that is consumed by image and uninterested or unmoved by anything of genuine import.
10
"What’s replaced it isn’t satisfying: either outright silence, or more often, unidirectional narratives offered through social media."
Satisfying to whom? I'll bet that relentlessly rabid paparazzi and frenzied nonstop coverage have made silence and control of their voices VERY satisfying to the objects (victims?) thereof.
"Monologue, not dialogue. It threatens to upend the role of the celebrity press..."
And that's a problem why, exactly?
2
I've never been a consumer of the Celebrity Press, but the larger theme here is how our culture now frames feedback from the larger world. If everyone is empowered to control their narrative—their outgoing message, the response from people who receive it, and who those receivers are—to the point where they only have to speak to their base and never to legitimate critics, how will they get beyond what is only meaningful to them and their circle? How will they mature in their scope and skills beyond their current state? How will they continue to grow as human beings?
7
@Chris
Perhaps they will grow as all human being grow; they will mature, gathering life experiences, regardless of the life lived. I'm not sure why anyone would expect a celebrity life to be the same as the lives of ordinary people; they are not, because their lives depend on both celebrity and talent, both of which qualities the Beatles had in spades. Celebrities are on film, in tabloids and covered in the regular press. That does not describe an "ordinary" life, even if these individuals share all common human emotions. They are reacting to rather extraordinary lives.
1
just because someone can memorize a script or sing a song or dress with more than 1/2 of their whatsis hanging out does NOT make them an authority of other things.
people who are their fans should possibly appreciate their art, but unless these 'celebrities' have real experience in other fields and other subjects, these fans should not be so easily gullible.
8
@linh When asked about Trump, Dolly Parton was criticized when she answered that she didn't think her opinion should matter. As usual, she was exactly correct, bless her.
14
Terry Gross is still working, right? In my opinion you aren't a true celebrity until she interviews you on "Fresh Air".
27
@Alexandra Terry Gross did two talks with Macca in 2001 and gain in 2012. Ringo appeared on her show in 1995.
Now that cheap phones with cameras, sound recording, and editing/animation features are pedestrian and ubiquitous, along with not-as-free-as-we-think broadcast platforms, everyone is a star and a commentator and an analyst and an editor and a producer. Consequently, as a result of all the brightness, a lot of darkness has literally bore it's way in. Like bacteria, here we go again...
9
"Celebrity Journalism" an oxymoron if I ever heard one. So-called "revealing" interviews have been around since at least the early days of film stars. Studios and managers controlled the questions, content and mythology of the celebrities, which is completely revealed now by how many had to live closeted lives as gays or lesbians, or have faked marriages, or domestic setups that were as staged as any movie, television or theatre set. Celebrity interviews today are just as faked. and even more unnecessary. let the Potemkin village of "celebrity journalism" die. sorry if it put a bunch of you out of business.
16
And in other news, the President controls the news-cycle via twitter.
The gatekeepers are dead. Musicians don't need MTV or Rolling Stone to communicate to their fans. Movie and TV stars don't need Entertainment Tonight or Weekly, or any magazine.
And fans don't need intermediaries to "distill" what a star says in an interview- they can follow and enjoy who they like. Their choice.
The people have already ruled on this-- check the ratings, circulation- The gatekeepers have no one to hold back.
10
Vapid people hanging onto the utterances of equally vapid people. No wonder voter turnout in this country is pathetically low; more people care about the Kardashians’ toenail polish than about climate change. If indeed this form of “information” is passé, we can only rejoice.
36
Oh my gosh, a threat to spend the role of the celebrity press! Whatever will we do?!!!
Thank you NYT for standing up so strongly for an institution that is so critical to the lives of so many Americans!
11
@Winston Galt You might think the celebrity press is vapid and worthless, but this article is articulating a larger theme - that because celebrities (and down) "control their own narrative" there is no room for pushback or criticism. It's not just affecting movie stars - we're moving into a world where nobody has to be answerable to the fourth estate. When journalists become irrelevant, all we'll be left with is spin and social media managers.
7
"There will be no further explanation.
There will be just reputation." -Taylor Swift
4
Just finding out that Little Xan exists is celebrity profile enough for me.
50
Personally, I think McCartney is much better looking than Beyonce, but Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen were all more talented and interesting than either of them. And they didn't bother with NY fashion magazines.
10
@me I don’t agree with you about Beyonce’, who, in my opinion, is one of earth’s most attractive humans, but when I looked at the other photo I was wondering if Mr. McCartney was transitioning. He’s starting to look like my Aunt Brenda.
5
sorry, but your inclusion of the Sun-Yi interview by Daphne Merkin does not seem comparable to the other "friends" interviewing each other. In the former, the writer had historical context that I thought contributed to an understanding of a long, and muddied, situation. Further, you disregard that those who run media and the corporations who own them are hardly impartial of what they cover and how they cover it. Friendships and power dynamics among the rich and famous influence the coverage of the rich and famous. The period of journalism that you admire was short and anomalous in the history of celebrity coverage.
12
As an avid Beatles fan since they "invaded" America I was never that interested in their personal lives (though I did want to marry Paul when I was nine years old back in 1963). What I really wanted was to be "a fly on the wall" at Abbey Road Studios and watch them record all of their excellent music.
23
In that case, you should read the book by engineer Geoff Emerick. He describes each session in detail. Great book.
1
@Pablo It is indeed an excellent book. Also Barry Miles's "Many Years From Now", a bio of McCartney published in 1997. It's as close to an autobiography by Paul as we've gotten so far as he gave the author a lot of cooperation. The passages about Paul and John's songwriting processes shed good light on so much of their now timeless music. That Macca stayed in mid-60os "Swinging" London while the other Fabs went suburban is illuminating as it gave him the opportunity to absorb first hand the ethos and ferment of that decade. Hence "Blackbird" in 1968.
Maybe, just maybe the press did it to themselves by misquoting celebrities over and over again. By ever zooming in on every angle they could to pry out some personal and salacious detail instead of discussing the artists work and serious career efforts. By having a personal agenda against the artist and skewing the whole interview to make them however their confirmation bias dictates it needed to be.
We live in bitter times. Acrimonious and ripping-fabric times. Being a celebrity feels enough like being on fire; all the more reason they layer themselves with afforded and found control. Good for them. This is leveraging of their soul, their vision and voice.
Journalists were sloppy and disrespectful for decades. Unfair and hurtful. They had their chance.
It’s a new age now.
Control is good.
13
After I read Taffy Brodesser-Akner's recent profile of Gwyneth Paltrow in the NYT I emailed it to a friend with the subject line "This writer is a stone-cold killer". It's inconceivable to me why a celebrity would roll the dice on a profile like that when it is, as you point out, so much easier now to control your narrative, and so much more damaging in viral times when you don't. 'Gotcha' profiles - whether we like them or not - are going to become quite rare. And, probably much to the relief of celebrities, I don't think many people will care.
18
I think it's expecting too much for celebrities ever to be candid in interviews. And I suspect that's always been the case. When Hollywood studios reigned, the publicity departments crafted a backstory for each of the stars, and the fan magazines dutifully published what the publicists wanted. Today, the celebrities themselves craft their own backstory; they also see the press as an adversary because the paparazzi and the Internet trolls regularly invade their privacy; they are guarded in what they say and sometimes what they do in public. Accordingly I think it's folly to expect a celebrity to bare his or her soul in print.
25
“It was the way that the people making the most interesting culture explained themselves...”
Perhaps today much of the culture being made is not that interesting, or needs much explaining.
New ways, new means.
13
There are legion of brilliant, provocative thinkers out there so yes please, less Beyonce and more of them. I don't care if their pretty or sing. I care what they think and how they articulate it.
17
Could it be that most of these stars simply don't have anything to say? I can't imagine Katy Perry having anything remotely illuminating to reveal to anybody. Those that do have interesting things to say -- Lady Gaga, Jay-Z -- have been interviewed extensively by the likes of Howard Stern, David Letterman and so on. A pop star that's musically talented, physically attractive AND eloquent and thoughtful has always been and will always be a rare bird indeed.
34
"This generation is one of all-access hyperdocumentation, making the promise of celebrity journalism... largely irrelevant."
I couldn't agree more, but maybe that's because we live in an age of self-concocted self-importance and so many celebrities simply have little to say.
The death knell of celebrity "journalism" -- we can only hope.
11
Regardless of what you think of the importance of the subject matter, the article touches on an important distinction in our age of information overload: for some things where information is readily knowable, there is, in fact, some skill needed to get beyond a superficial understanding.
Whether it's celebrity interviews, practicing law, or planning your finances, simply being able to access information doesn't make your work product good.
42
It's telling that you repeatedly refer to this as "celebrity journalism." Therein lies the problem. Celebrity musicians who began as Disney/Nick actors (Drake, Selena Gomez...) just aren't interesting. Beyonce was reared in a stage mom bootcamp and has famously never had anything to say about anything.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of real musicians still out here giving great interview. They're also the ones packing the clubs night after night - the real music industry, not the celebrities of the month racking up YouTube views.
57
Celebrity culture was invented in the United States, as were many other practices. The internet was invented here. The Chinese have institutions that are as good or better than ours, but they send their students here anyway to discover and perhaps bring back home American Inventitiveness, the major tool of the US in world commerce. The term inventing oneself probably originated here as well.
2
@Ida Tarbell Celebrity culture started after Charles II allowed women to play women's parts in the theater, and they became famous.
2
I am so sick of our culture's obsession with celebrity. There are some talented people out there for sure. Many of the celebrated have little talent other than to whom they were born. If we celebrated people who make a real difference in the quality of life it would be so much better than the adoration of Kardashians.
45
The celebrity as echo chamber. Just what the world needs - more echo chambers.
5