What do a 41-minute sex tape featuring a little-known personal stylist and a sombre self-portrait in oils by the Renaissance polymath Albrecht Dürer have in common? According to a compelling new study of the ways in which we see ourselves and attempt to shape how we’re seen by others, they are both masterpieces not just of self-promotion, but self-creation. Kim Kardashian, Superstar – as the tape became known – and Dürer’s Self-Portrait at 28 are controversial statements of their subjects’ fame worthiness and magnetism; both were successfully parlayed into real-life celebrity and riches.
The eye-opening comparison is typical of Self-Made, US cultural critic Tara Isabella Burton’s fun, insightful romp through an identity parade of geniuses, dandies, charlatans, moguls and film stars. It’s a journey that culminates in the billions of us with smartphone cameras and social media accounts.
Burton is a scholar of religion in its broadest sense. Her previous book, Strange Rites, unpacked the ways in which people stubbornly continue to create meaning, ritual and faith in supposedly ever more secular western societies. Self-Made picks up that thread, identifying a key imaginative shift during the Renaissance as the foundation of our 21st-century world of selfies and brand collabs. As belief in God as the arbiter of destiny began to wane, faith in humans’ ability to shape their own selves and therefore their lives grew. (In Dürer’s 1500 self-portrait, the artist appears face-on in a pose usually reserved for depictions of Jesus.) Self-Made is strong on the weirdly mystical dimensions of celebrity: the notion that there are innate qualities that can be nurtured but not learned or taught. Set against this is the idea that such “God-given” talents can, however, be diligently imitated – and that an “artificial” star can become as famous as an “authentic” one. Plastic can be worth just as much as gold, if people believe it is.
Today’s famous-for-being-famous social media influencers have two historical ancestors, Burton argues, the European “natural aristocrat” whose pose of easy elegance put him above the common herd; and the American “self-made man” who rose to fame and fortune through grit, ambition and hard graft. One entertaining way she tracks the evolution of these ideas is through changing fashions in self-help books: texts that offer ordinary people the tantalising prospect of making themselves special. The Italian diplomat Baldassare Castiglione’s 1528 how-to handbook for aspiring gentlemen, The Book of the Courtier, created such a sensation that by 1600 it had been reprinted 59 times in Italy and translated into German, Latin, Spanish, French, English and Polish. Its central argument – that the perfect man-about-court must display sprezzatura, effortless nonchalance in everything he does – is inherited by the dandies of succeeding centuries, from Regency socialite Beau Brummell to Oscar Wilde. In Renaissance Italy as in 1890s London, trying too hard was the absolute death of cool.
But aristocratic languor was anathema to the self-consciously democratic founders of the US, who saw diligent self-improvement as “a political and ethical necessity”. The first blockbusters of the American publishing industry were “secular hagiographies” of industrious, virtuous figures with titles such as Representative Men, Men of Our Times and The Lives and Deeds of Our Self-Made Men. As the nation grew and changed, so did its aspirations. By the time of the robber-baron boom of the late 19th century, middle-class morality tales had given way to “prosperity gospel” titles like Thought-Force in Business and Everyday Life, the core message being that you can think your way to limitless wealth. (The genre has been a favourite ever since, from the Depression-era bestseller Think and Grow Rich to Donald Trump’s ghostwritten guide for would-be 1980s tycoons, The Art of the Deal.)
These mantras of self-empowerment had a flip side: those who failed to become rich or famous only had themselves to blame. Through history, as Burton points out, this usually meant women, children, people of colour, the poor and other marginalised groups – as well as the enslaved and colonised people whose labour was integral to western economies. “Self-creation,” she writes, “demanded another category of human being: the lifeless, bovine public to witness the spectacle.” Self-Made is incisive on men’s long near-monopoly on public acclaim, and the way that this has partially shifted with successive waves of technology. Early Hollywood made aspirational stars of women like Clara Bow and Barbara Stanwyck; reality TV – pioneered by the controversial series An American Family in the early 1970s – did the same for “ordinary” people; and now social media holds out the promise of a chance at celebrity – and at monetising it – to anyone with a phone.
This liberation is far more qualified than it appears. In an internet-driven economy, Burton writes, curating our professional and personal selves is now “something that all of us must do in order to maintain our financial and social position” – on a playing field that is as far from level as ever. In place of a select few Renaissance men of genius, we’re all now self-makers, whether we like it or not – and this witty, sceptical book is the thought-provoking story of how we got here.
• Self-Made: Creating Our Identities from Da Vinci to the Kardashians by Tara Isabella is published by Hodder & Stoughton (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
