номер 2, страница 110 - гдз по английскому языку 11 класс учебник Вербицкая, Каминс Карр

Unit Ten.

Track seventy-three.

Part One.

Good afternoon, everyone. I must say it's nice to see so many of you here. Or is it really that cold outside?

No, seriously. I hope you'll find today's talk interesting. Our topic is celebrity, and I'd like to start by asking what is a celebrity?

A famous person.

Thank you, yes. A celebrity is certainly a famous person. And anything else? Well, a celebrity is, and I quote, a person who is widely recognized in a society and commands public and media attention.

So, one needs to be famous to reach celebrity status. But this is not always enough. There has to be a level of public interest, which may or may not be connected to the reason they're famous. A public figure such as a politician or industry leader may be famous, but not a celebrity, unless something else triggers media interest. For example, Virgin director Richard Branson attempting to go around the world in a balloon.

At this point, I should also make a distinction between national versus global celebrities.

Each nation has its own, mainly independent celebrity system. And as a result, people who are well known in, for example, India, might be unknown abroad.

Some celebrities can be considered global. That is, they are known across the world. Actors and musicians and high-powered religious or political figures make up most of this group.

An example of someone who crossed over from national to global status is Shakira.

A singer who was well known in the Spanish-speaking world and then achieved international fame through English-language versions of her songs.

Now, an important question is how and when were the first celebrities created? Well, before the twentieth century, celebrity status was restricted to biblical or mythical figures and royalty. For example, some of the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. It took the film industry to invent the modern, so-called, personality. And the first truly global celebrity was Charlie Chaplin, the music hall entertainer from South London, who found fame in Hollywood in the nineteen twenties and thirties.

At that time, the growing mass media was helping to make celebrity culture a national pastime in the United States. Even during the Great Depression of the nineteen thirties, Hollywood thrived, with about eighty million people a week going to the cinema.

Uh-huh.