The Curious Economics of Celebrity Appearances

Celebrities are people, much in the mysterious, metaphorical way that corporations are people. They have normal human things, like children and emotions, but they also have entourages and price tags and auras. (Those last two make them sound like oil paintings, which they also have.) Nowhere is their ontological status muddier than in the strange ritual of the paid party appearance, wherein an A-lister attends an event as one-third guest, one-third entertainer, and one-third really glamorous piece of decoration.