EVERYONE may love a wedding, but even if the blushing bride was your oldest and dearest friend, most people would blanch if she asked them to look at more than 400 pictures of her big day. Yet this week the celebrity magazine Hello! has brought out a
special 100-page edition featuring just that number of photos of happy newly weds Autumn Kelly and Peter Phillips – and millions of readers are expected to pay the glossy mag's £2 cover charge for the privilege of viewing them.
Of course the Phillips' wedding snaps also include members of the proud groom's regal family, including his top-ranking relation, granny, (aka Her Majesty the Queen) as well as his mum Princess Anne, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, Prince Harry with girlfriend Chelsy Davy, and Kate Middleton.
MPs, royal commentators and (possibly jealous) rival publications have reacted with horror to the fact that a royal couple have "sold themselves" in this manner for a reported £500,000. But for those who are not regular readers of celebrity magazines equally shocking is the idea that anyone – let alone 8 million worldwide – would want to look at so many pictures of formally posed wedding photos of a couple they'd never met and had barely heard of before now. Just what is it about the Hello! format that makes it so alluring to so many?
The magazine – which celebrated its 20th birthday this month – describes itself as the "Rolls-Royce of celebrity titles" and certainly it features more aristocrats and fewer Z-list reality-TV contestants than competitors such as Heat and OK!
From Hello!'s first issue – with Princess Anne on the cover – the magazine has strived for a "better class" of interviewee and, probably because of this, has tended to be kinder to its subjects than many celebrity mags with stylised at-home photographs and sycophantic interviews, rather than unflattering paparazzi snaps and cruel comments. It has also developed a tradition of devoting many pages to one person, couple or event in each issue, but even for Hello! 100 pages is pretty astounding.
Looking at 400 photos – many of which have been taken in such formulaic poses that they're barely distinguishable from those of the previous week's chosen happy couple – takes a considerable amount of time, so just what do readers get from it?
"It's almost like a feel-good movie – everything's pretty and glossy and happy all the time," suggests Ellis Cashmore, professor of culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University and the author of Celebrity/Culture.
"It's so carefully presented that it's almost like an instruction book on how to live a happy and successful life, and that's something people buy in to. It's for people who see celebrities as people to aspire to be like rather than to laugh at, and they just can't get enough of it."
According to Cashmore, the readers of the magazine that graces a thousand dentists' waiting rooms are looking for something very different to the readers of Heat; they don't want to believe celebrities have cellulite, affairs or leave the house without their underwear.
"Everybody likes a fairytale, and that's exactly what Hello! packages in every issue," she adds.
Certainly the Phillips' wedding party didn't receive the "circle of shame" treatment that some other celebrity magazines would have given them. (One has horrible visions of the Queen's underarm sweat patch being highlighted in close-up by a gleeful picture editor of OK!). Instead Hello! goes to the opposite extreme. The bride is always "radiant", the ceremony is like a "fairytale" and the magazine's cover is "stunning", "intimate" and that all important "world exclusive".
But while it's easy to ridicule Hello! for its fawning style and repetitive photographs, its format and the extensive spreads are undeniably popular, and the magazine is published in 12 different countries.
So is this a damning indictment of modern culture's obsession with celebrity, or does it in fact simply appeal to the basic human instinct of curiosity?
"Of course there's an element of voyeurism when it comes to reading Hello! magazine," says celebrity psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos. "However unlike magazines which specialise in unflattering shots, I think readers of Hello! feel more comfortable with the fact that they're being invited into celebrities homes rather than barging their way in uninvited. There's a sense of politeness and a sense that the celebrity has made you feel welcome."
The full article contains 760 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
