Hollywood celebrities in the USA have constantly given us an outlet for our imagination, just as the gods and demigods of historic Greece and Rome once did. Hollywood celebrities are our myth bearers; carriers with the divine forces of good, evil, lust, and redemption. "The wish for kings is an old and familiar wish, as well-known in medieval Europe as in ancient Mesopotamia," writes Lewis Lapham in his book The Wish For Kings. "The ancient Greeks assigned trace elements of the divine to trees and winds and stones. A river god sulks, and the child drowns; a sky god smiles, and the corn ripens. The modern Americans assign similar powers not only to whales and spotted owls but also to individuals blessed with the aura of celebrity."
Historically, renowned people were recorded in stone and in paint. Alexander the Great was the first famous person in the modern sense, contends Leo Braudy, Ph.D., professor of English at the University of Southern California and writer of The Frenzy of Renown. "Not only did he want to be unique, but he wanted to tell everybody about it, and he had an apparatus for telling everybody about it.celebritieshollywoodcelebrityvideossocietypeople
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