<\/p>\n
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates<\/a> from.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Everything changed, except what stayed the same: The public still wants to be entertained by a clique of characters who command seemingly limitless wealth and preternatural beauty. Creators like Emily and Jordan are part of a group of self-made critics who focus not just on these celebrities, but on the mechanisms behind them. \u201cYou can\u2019t be naive to the impact that it has, the billions of dollars that it generates, the specific type of body dysmorphia<\/a> it creates for people based on whatever plastic surgery is in fashion at the time,\u201d Emily says. \u201cPop culture is a window into what we value and what we are entertained by and the kind of morals that we uphold,\u201d agrees Jordan.\u00a0<\/p>\n These critics argue that Ignoring celebrity culture<\/a> doesn\u2019t make you smarter, or less shallow, or more free. Ignoring celebrity culture means leaving yourself vulnerable to the exploitations of a giant industry. Dismiss celebrity as frivolous? You simply won\u2019t know what you\u2019re being sold. \u201cIn some ways that\u2019s how scholars and journalists and reviewers have always talked about celebrities,\u201d says Sharon Marcus, a professor at Columbia University and author of The Drama of Celebrity<\/em><\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s analytical\u2014you want to get under the hood and see how the whole thing works.\u201d To Jordan, a recent graduate who studied psychology, that\u2019s exactly what it is\u2014she thinks of it as a giant \u201ccase study\u201d of humans that just happens to involve celebrities. \u201cFor me it\u2019s not really about the gossip, or knowing what Zendaya is wearing,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s more about the overall structure and system behind it, and how that reflects how we see the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Academics who study media have been making this argument for taking pop culture seriously for years. \u201cIn a democracy like the United States,\u201d wrote<\/a> Ray B. Brown, who is considered<\/a> the founder of academic pop culture studies, \u201c[pop culture] is the voice of the people\u2014their likes and dislikes, their habits and attitudes\u2014the lifeblood of their daily existence, their way of life.\u201d Celebrities fill our screens and news sources, they impact the stock market, they influence politics\u2014consider our presidents who were TV stars first (both Regan and Trump). Our culture\u2019s decision makers, from economists to FBI agents to Supreme Court justices, may imagine that they live outside of the sphere of influence of pop culture; they do not.<\/p>\n