Paparazzi are sensation hunters

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:42

If you are a celebrity, then paparazzi will definitely become your unwanted companions. These are freelance journalists who make money by selling shots of screen stars, politics, sports and other areas of life, whose characters are of great interest to the public.

Forgot about ethics

The meaning of the word "paparazzi" is invariably colored with negative semantics, since the way tireless photographers use is tactless and immoral. They can sit for hours in an “ambush” in order to snatch out the juicy details of the personal life of some famous person with a photographic lens. Of course, such pictures are taken without the knowledge and consent of the characters themselves.

Origin of the word

Where did this word come from, the very sound of which hints at the meaning of the profession? In 1960, the famous Italian film director Federico Fellini created a film called La Dolce Vita, one of whose heroes was a ubiquitous correspondent-photographer named Paparazzo. The director provided this character with all the features thata sly and annoying journalist hunting for a sensation. This word has a phonetic resemblance to the Sicilian name for a mosquito. According to Fellini, a paparazzo (plural - paparazzi) is something like an annoyingly buzzing insect that swoops in, hovering over you, and then stings. The master even drew the paparazzi, whose appearance resembles an unpleasantly curved figure, from which it breathes unscrupulousness and impudence.

Fellini's film made photographer Paparazzo a household name. The word acquired a plural form and became a symbol of a journalist chasing "fried" facts and ambiguous episodes. For the first time, the American magazine Time used the lexeme in this sense, and the term instantly spread through the pages of other printed publications.

Newspapers and magazines appeared that relied on paparazzi materials. These were publications focused on scandalous stories from the life of stars. After a while, they were joined by a similar kind of TV show.

What is the difference between a journalist and a paparazzi

Often, the paparazzi's photo lens is likened to the muzzle of a gun, from which sensation-hungry photographers "shoot" at celebrities, denouncing or compromising them, thereby distorting their lives. The difference between a journalist and a paparazzi is so great that these words are by no means synonymous. The first one conducts an honest objective investigation in order for truth and law to triumph. It has nothing to do with a creature that "stuck" to the eye of the camera and hid inbushes, in order to capture details of the intimate life of a famous person that are not intended for the public, and then break a solid jackpot on this.

What about the law?

On the one hand, the law protects a person's right to privacy, on the other hand, there is freedom of the press. Many paparazzi go to great lengths to get what they want, they can impersonate other people, cheat, break into private areas, forge documents and appearances. Their main arguments are that public people themselves make a choice in favor of having their whole life in sight, that this is, after all, a way to earn money and a condition for popularity. In their opinion, the relationship between show business stars and paparazzi is a mutual unspoken agreement that they feed each other.

Indeed, celebrities would not be celebrities if their faces and details of their private lives were not flashed in the press, but they also have the right to immunity, like all other people.

Who is to blame for the paparazzi?

Demand creates supply. As long as there are people leafing through the yellow press with interest, there will also be correspondents obsequiously tossing "strawberries". Very few in disgust throw away a newspaper in which a sensational photograph of a star after an unsuccessful plastic surgery flashes, then an ambiguous frame of love joys of a respected person. Most of us will become interested and look at ethically unsightly photographs. People are curious. And who are the paparazzi in this case, if not tradersa hot commodity?