As we saw in regards to the star and the dictator, the celebrity is the hinge through which power is articulated in a state that has been throughly commodified. He or she acts as the hidden point of union between the so-called democratic and totalitarian states (3.2).

At this point several threads come together: as surface—an inversion and flattening of exterior and interior (5.2)—the celebrity becomes the very incarnation of capitalism, both human-commodity (2.10) and flesh of the contemporary world (4.8). As heir to the dandy (2.13), the celebrity’s realm is aesthetics, fashion and opinion are his main weapons (2.5). A good deal of the “soft” totalitarianism (5.4) which characterizes post-industrial societies is channeled trough them. As sovereign-commodities, movie and TV stars, rock, pop and reggaeton musicians, athletes and models are the masters of ceremony of an ever growing media spectacle. In them, sovereignty disappears from the sphere of politics and reappears in the sphere of economy and entertainment, where it spreads to all the strata of society (3.2). In fact, politics has also been absorbed and transformed into a commodity, thus becoming pop-politics, a sordid display that has more of reality show than of genuine democratic process (4.14, 4.15). The spectacular character of contemporary politics can be verified in the presidencies of Dmitri Medveded of Russia and Ivan Duque of Colombia, who have served as media masks (read, “puppets”) of their ex-presidents.