Pacific Standard May-June 2013 Cover

The Harry Factor

May 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
prince-harry

Now that Prince Harry has returned to Great Britain it’s maybe time to look critically on the significance of his visit for Americans. What are royal visits for? Why do Americans react to them so intensely? The seven-day trip of His Royal Highness Prince Henry of Wales, coinciding with the visit of Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, sparked an intense, strange enthusiasm. But this sort of thing is nothing new. In fact, we’ve had the exact same fascination with foreign royal families for centuries, almost since we stopped have one of our own. We’ve always been into this, the ... Read More

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Jolie’s Mastectomy: Celebrities Serve as Medical Role Models

May 14, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
jolie-rice

Will Angelina Jolie’s decision to undergo a double mastectomy influence the medical decisions of others? Research on a similar high-profile case, also featuring an influential public figure, suggests it very well might—at least in the short term. In October 1987, first lady Nancy Reagan underwent a modified radical mastectomy after a cancerous lesion was discovered on one of her breasts. The operation generated massive news coverage and prompted a debate over whether, by opting for such a radical procedure, she was sending a message to American women: The best way to respond to breast ... Read More

More like this: BLOGS, Health
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Fame, Once Established, Is Not Fleeting

May 2, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
jagger

According to artist Andy Warhol’s much-quoted prophecy, in the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes. In fact, it’s more likely that 0.15 percent of us will have fame for a lifetime. Newly published research concludes that, contrary to Warhol’s prediction, genuine celebrity status does not disappear as quickly as it appeared. Once you become famous, you tend to stay famous. “Fame exhibits strong continuity even in entertainment, on television, and on blogs, where it has been thought to be most ephemeral,” writes a research team led by Stony Brook University ... Read More

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The Price of Fame for Performers and Athletes: Shorter Lives

April 17, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
obit-photos

Do famous, successful people live longer lives? New research suggests the answer depends upon how they achieved their fame and success. An analysis of 1,000 obituaries from The New York Times finds the average age of death for notable people varies depending upon their occupation. Athletes, performers, and creative types such as writers and artists died younger, on average, while people in business, politics, and the military hung on the longest. “Fame and achievement in performance-related careers may be earned at the cost of a shorter life expectancy,” write Australian researchers ... Read More

More like this: Findings, Health
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Snack Food, Star Appeal

March 20, 2013 • By • Leave a Comment
Footballer-turned-snack-spokesman Gary Lineker (PHOTO: INGENIE)

It’s good to be Gary Lineker, once Britain’s national football star and forever her beloved son. In the decades since leaving the pitch, Lineker has launched a media career—announcing matches for the BBC and voicing a cartoon character known as Underground Ernie—married a Maxim model, made a cameo in “Bend It Like Beckham,” attracted more than a million Twitter followers, and since 1995, served as the celebrity spokesman for Walkers potato crisps. (For a time, his favorite flavor was rebranded “Salt-and-Lineker.”) That Lineker is, according to everyone, an all-around nice ... Read More

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Female Pop Stars: Prepare to Disrobe

July 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

There is no shortage of voices decrying the sexualization of mass culture. Just last month, actor and director David Schwimmer complained to a London newspaper: “We have this real emphasis on how important it is to look young and sexual, so that’s the message we’re sending our girls. Look at the biggest pop stars around at the moment: Everything they do is about sex.” Newly published research finds the former Friends star has a point: Over the past four decades, images of female celebrities have become much more sexualized. Evidence of this trend, which troubles feminists and social ... Read More

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A Psychological Autopsy of Bobby Fischer

December 14, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
A Psychological Autopsy of Bobby Fischer

At a 1958 tournament in Yugoslavia, Mikhail Tal, a legendary attacking grandmaster and one-time world champion, mocked chess prodigy Bobby Fischer for being "cuckoo." Tal's taunting may have been a deliberate attempt to rattle Fischer, then just 15 but already a major force in the highly competitive world of high-level chess. But others from that world — including a number of grandmasters who'd spent time with him — thought Fischer not just eccentric, but deeply troubled. At a tournament in Bulgaria four years later, U.S. grandmaster Robert Byrne suggested that Fischer see a ... Read More

More like this: Culture, Culture & Society, January-February 2011, Miller-McCune Research Essay, Science
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Eliot Spitzer’s Rise and Fall, and Potential Return

November 4, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

It's hard to imagine a fall from grace that happened faster, and with more finality, than Eliot Spitzer's. Once nicknamed "The Sheriff of Wall Street" because, as New York state attorney general, he prosecuted some of America's biggest financial criminals, Spitzer was elected governor with a whopping 69 percent of the vote and seemed a contender for the nation's first Jewish president. Then it was revealed that he had been patronizing expensive call girls, and Spitzer's public career was over almost overnight. But were the revelations of sexual misconduct the result of leaks to the press ... Read More

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Celebrity Product Endorsements on the Brain

May 27, 2010 • By • 1 Comment

For some of us, the increasingly popular practice of celebrity product endorsements is puzzling. What difference does it make if Brad Pitt recommends a particular pen, or Sally Field a certain cereal? Unless the famous spokesperson has a specific area of expertise — say, Tiger Woods endorsing a set of golf clubs — why would anyone care? A new study suggests the answer involves superstar-specific happy memories stored in our cerebral cortex. Using brain-scan technology, researchers found those positive emotions get transferred from the personality to the product, producing a more ... Read More

More like this: Business & Economics, Findings, NEWS
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Counting the Stars

November 5, 2009 • By • Leave a Comment

Metacritic.com is an acclaimed Web site that combines thousands of media reviews of entertainment offerings — movies, games, books and albums — into a Metascore, a sort of weighted average of critics' reviews that ranges from zero to 100. Analysis of just a small subset of the site's information shows the power of numbers to confirm — or defy — expectation. The Actors The colored horizontal bars on this chart present a graphical representation of the distribution of scores given to movies in which each of the listed actors appear. The numbers inside the bars represent the average ... Read More

More like this: Graphic Art, Media, November-December 2009
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