Icons: The Celebrity Exposures of Markus and Indrani

Explores how young people think about their futures under austerity. Based on an interdisciplinary study, this book offers fresh insights into contemporary youth aspirations and inequalities. It helps us to understand young people's transitions into adulthood at a time of socio-economic 'crisis'.

Challenging the study of both celebrity and the cinema, Mandy Merck argues that modern fame and film melodrama are part of the same worldview, one that cannot resolve the relation of personal worth to social esteem. Tracing the history of this conundrum back to the philosophy of the seventeenth century ...