Video Essay and Exegesis: Stardom, Religion, and Celebrity Culture

This assignment is a video essay and exegesis exploring the complex relationship between celebrity culture and religion. It delves into the phenomenon of celebrity worship, examining how stars like Lionel Messi are idolized and treated with a reverence often associated with religious figures. The essay discusses the reasons behind this idolization, drawing parallels between the devotion of fans and religious practices. The exegesis provides a critical analysis of the video essay, discussing its aims, objectives, and the theories and arguments explored. The assignment references the celebrity's role in liquid capitalism and the media's influence in promoting celebrity culture. The essay also references how celebrities have filled the void left by the decline of traditional religious figures. The assignment includes references to academic sources and video examples to support its arguments, offering a comprehensive examination of the topic.

Stardom
and
Religion

How Celebrity relates to
Religion?
• The relationship between celebrities and fans
are frequently included with unusual high
rates of dependence that is non-reciprocal.
• Though worshiping celebrity is regularly
condemned publicly and considered idolatry
that hold intimations of slavery, the devils
work and the false consciousness.
• The illicit behaviors of celebrities are often
forgiven and are given justification of, but the
same activities of non-celebrities are
considered punishable.

“LIONEL MESSI”
• First of all Messi is the most extravagantly
gifted footballer, knows exactly what to
do when.
• • You can mark him as tightly as possible
but you will observe that when he
receives the ball he always makes space
for him, this is his wonderful intelligence.
• • He can produce magic whenever he is
needed the most. Not with Argentina but
that's not his fault totally.

Is MESSI GOD?
• Lionel Messi and football together is
considered to be “inmessionate” or which
refers to the perfect way of playing football.
• Messi is regarded as an ultimate ability of
playing football and is also known as the best
football player of all time.
• Messi is exemplary in the sports and even
today within the history of international
football,
• no one can match the features of Lionel Messi.

Why stars are idolized?
• People having weaker identities try
to surrender themselves to
individual having identity that are
more popular and powerful that
than them.
• Holy people and warriors have
been always a material of idolatry
during the past dawn of history.
• In recent times movies and blogs
have facilitated the same for the
recent media celebrities.

The currency of celebrity worship
• It is very surprising to think that people are
more interested in the lives of people with
whom they would never meet.
• On the other hand for very shallow reasons
we start to dislike a certain person because
he or she is a celebrity.
• We mock at athletes because they are not of
the same color as us and we also stop going
to the events of those celebrities who have a
different political opinion.

Reference
• Kahr, B., 2019. Celebrity Mad: Why Otherwise
Intelligent People Worship Fame. Routledge.
• Perera, G.N.R., Dissanayake, D.M.R. and
Wanninayake, W.M.C.B., 2018. Influence of
Celebrity Worship Motives (CWM) on Customer
Brand Relationship (CBR) towards Services
Brands. Archives of Business Research, 6(8).
• Yen, C.H. and Croy, W.G., 2016. Film tourism:
Celebrity involvement, celebrity worship and
destination image. Current Issues in
Tourism, 19(10), pp.1027-1044.