Joshua Gamson – författare

People talk so much about the bizarre that it quickly becomes routine. As the talk show circuit becomes increasingly obsessed with sexual nonconformists, many wonder if this form of representation isn't simply exploitation. This book claims that in a sense, talk shows turn everything they touch into "freak shows". But what happens when the freaks talk back? The book argues that from talk shows' lies and sensationalism emerge certain truths. The socially deviant may be featured on-air for ridicule in the public eye, but the result is empowerment through exploitation. The book illuminates the dilemmas and practicalities of media visibility.

People talk so much about the bizarre that it quickly becomes routine. As the talk show circuit becomes increasingly obsessed with sexual nonconformists, many wonder if this form of representation isn't simply exploitation. This book claims that in a sense, talk shows turn everything they touch into "freak shows". But what happens when the freaks talk back? The book argues that from talk shows' lies and sensationalism emerge certain truths. The socially deviant may be featured on-air for ridicule in the public eye, but the result is empowerment through exploitation. The book illuminates the dilemmas and practicalities of media visibility.

Moving from "People" magazine to publicists' offices to tours of stars' homes, Joshua Gamson investigates the larger-than-life terrain of American celebrity culture. In the first major academic work since the early 1940s to seriously analyze the meaning of fame in American life, Gamson begins with the often-heard criticisms that today's heroes have been replaced by pseudoheroes, that notoriety has become detached from merit. He draws on literary and sociological theory, as well as interviews with celebrity-industry workers, to untangle the paradoxical nature of an American popular culture that is both obsessively invested in glamour and fantasy yet also aware of celebrity's transparency and commercialism. Gamson examines the contemporary 'dream machine' that publicists, tabloid newspapers, journalists, and TV interviewers use to create semi-fictional icons. He finds that celebrity watchers, for whom spotting celebrities becomes a spectator sport akin to watching football or fireworks, glean their own rewards in a game that turns as often on playing with inauthenticity as on identifying with stars.Gamson also looks at the 'celebritization' of politics and the complex questions it poses regarding image and reality. He makes clear that to understand American public culture, we must understand that strange, ubiquitous phenomenon, celebrity.

A personal, intimate account of the extraordinary ways that today's families are being created. From adoption and assisted reproduction, to gay and straight parents, coupled and single, and multi-parent families, the stories in Modern Families explain how individuals make unconventional families by accessing a broad range of technological, medical and legal choices that expand our definitions of parenting and kinship. Joshua Gamson introduces us to a child with two mothers, made with one mother's egg and the sperm of a man none of them has ever met; another born in Ethiopia, delivered by his natural grandmother to an orphanage after both his parents died in close succession, and then to the arms of his mother, who is raising him solo. These tales are deeply personal and political. The process of forming these families involved jumping tremendous hurdles—social conventions, legal and medical institutions—with heightened intention and inventiveness, within and across multiple inequities and privileges. Yet each of these families, however they came to be, shares the same universal joys that all families share. A companion for all those who choose to navigate the world of modern kinship, Modern Families provides a "fascinating look at the remarkable range of experiences that is broadening the very idea of family" (Booklist).