Karen Sternheimer: The Hollywood Effect

Karen Sternheimer, a professor of sociology at USC, is the author, most recently, of Celebrity Culture and the American Dream: Stardom and Social Mobility.

Americans don't seem bothered enough by the country's growing wealth divide to do much about it, according to a recent Harvard Business School survey. In part, that's probably because they vastly underestimate the gap, believing the top 20% own 59% of the nation's wealth when they actually own 84%.

But there's another, less obvious reason for our passivity — the hope and glory pushed by an all-pervasive news, gossip and star-driven celebrity culture.

The core of the American dream teaches us that the formula for achieving wealth involves hard work, determination and luck. Celebrities, and the coverage of them, seem to provide visible proof of this message every day: If it can happen to Justin Bieber, it can happen to me. So why change the system?

The connection between stardom and social mobility is as old as the first fan magazines of a century ago. Silent-film star Ruth Clifford was an orphan who peered through a knothole at the Edison Studios lot in New Jersey before getting her big break, according to a 1919 issue of Photoplay. Virginia Valli was a stenographer traveling through a dangerous part of Chicago while struggling to support her mother and sister before leading the "limousine life," a 1918 story in the same magazine details....