Celebrity Cults: The Cult of Oprah Winfrey
The cult of celebrity describes a prevalent tendency in popular culture for people to care so much about famous persons. A good example is Oprah Winfrey, who is an incredibly renowned person. Besides being a person, Oprah can also be said to be a corporate institution, a business, or a product. The beginning of Oprah as a product began with her entertainment talk show. With time, however, she changed her show to a transformational one: “Now our mission…is to use television to transform people’s lives, to make viewers see themselves differently, and to bring happiness and a sense of fulfillment into every home.” It was Oprah’s idea to transform people’s lives that transformed her into a product. Over time, there was an explosion of stuff or products associated with the celebrity such as the Oprah Book Club, the Oprah Magazine, oprah.com, and the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Oprah uses these products to communicate to her viewers what she likes and what she hates: she can recommend books for her followers to read, or products they can buy, she tells them how to think, how to be happy, how to live a healthy life.
Because of the above, Professor Thomases compares Oprah to a religion. But unlike other religions such as Christianity and Islam, which have houses of worship, Oprah does not have a house of worship. Instead, she uses her networks, her talk show, and her products to reach her many followers. Oprah describes herself as a spiritual person. She was born into the church and raised according to the ways of the church by her grandmother. According to her, she believes in God, and she prays every day before going to bed.
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