Sunday, October 21, 2018

Fame: The Hijacking of Reality By Justine Bateman

I was drawn to this book because I followed Bateman years ago when I was growing up.  Her writing style is a bit strange.  It is rife with fragments and repetitions.  At many points in the book, I considered ending it and writing this book off as a loss.  However I pressed on.


Bateman covers the ups and downs of fame.  Not so much a memoir but a glimpse into what fame brings you and quite frankly takes away.  Bateman talks about her early career and her  metric
 rise to 'A List' status. The one concept she drives home is that Fame is not something you set out to get, it is actually something that is bestowed upon you or "sprayed on you"  The book shows an interesting perspective and calls out some of the fallacies we concur up when we thing of fame.

Obviously, the timeline of her "fame" is a pre-social media one and she discusses the pain of reading articles written about her.  We tend to think that actors or famous people are immune to the painful comments people make about us, but Bateman breaks it down to see the famous person's perspective.

She discusses her appearance and how the media attacked her.  Although she did not discuss it, in real life, she struggled with an eating disorder where should would binge and purge.  She eventually got help for it and was able to move past it.  She has aged as anyone would.  I do not think she is ugly today.  She is certainly not the 17 year old we grew to love when we were that age, but then none of us are.

I recommend this book.  It is a little distracting at first, but when you get the cadence of her repetition and her fragmented style, you can learn a lot about fame and people's thought process from a different perspective.


Justine in her teens and today

Justine is the sister of Jason Bateman, a famous actor himself.  Although he has continued to act, Justine has take a role behind the camera and in different aspects of "the business"



Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Akashic Books (October 2, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1617756601
ISBN-13: 978-1617756603

 

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