Fame and Celebrity - Snoop Dogg Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Fame and Celebrity - Snoop Dogg - Essay Example The process of producing a celebrity undergoes a different kind of ‘commodification’. Celebrityhood, as it is specifically called, is a process in which people are transformed into ‘commodities’, that is, to be manufactured and consumed. The production of celebrities is facilitated by various forms of media, such as television, film, newspapers, magazines, the Internet, and others (Couldry 2003). The objective of this study is to analyze the mechanism of celebrityhood through an inclusive examination of one contemporary celebrity; for this case, the gangsta rapper Snoop Dogg. The study will attempt to discuss how Snoop Dogg was ‘celebritized’ across a range of media by applying the fundamental theories and concepts covered in the discussion on the sociology of celebrity. Primarily, the paper will examine the systems of celebrity production relevant to Snoop Dogg’s rise to fame. Then, the concepts of cultural industries and cultural intermediaries will be taken into account so as to thoroughly analyze the various components that facilitated the production and consumption of Snoop Dogg as a celebrity. The next section will discuss the production of fame mechanism, involving the rise of celebrity journalism, tabloidization, and celebrity scandal. Finally, the paper will wrap up the discussion by providing sociological analyses of the ‘celebritization’ of Snoop Dogg, using the relevant theories of sociological imagination by C. Wright Mills and the ‘powerless elite’ by Alberoni. The production of Snoop Dogg as a celebrity was facilitated by a variety of medium, namely, stardom and the movies, magazines, newspapers and tabloids, reality television and most importantly, the popular music’s star system. Snoop was introduced to stardom through the assistance of other famous rappers, such as Dr. Dre, who gave Snoop’s biggest musical break (Haggins 2007). However, stardom presented Snoop differently as a rising celebrity to the public.