ABSTRACT
Scholarship on the relationship between celebrity and religion is nearly nonexistent. One or two major works on celebrity have included short ruminations on the analogies between celebrity and religion. Certain psychologists have observed that those who worship celebrities are similar to those who engage in religious worship. People imagine themselves as a celebrity's biggest fan, they follow that celebrity's movements, they are obsessed by the details of that celebrity's life, they consider purchasing artifacts connected to that celebrity, and understand this attention to a celebrity to offer relief from everyday life. Such excessive admiration of or devotion to a person is the very definition of idolization. Consider how many celebrity stories focus on their maintenance of and struggles with their physicality. Connecting celebrities with saints is a tempting analogy to draw since it brings together two categories of commodification, albeit from starkly different paradigms of circulation. A celebrity is a person whose story fascinates so much we keep buying it.
