Who Are Hollywood’s Paparazzi? with Dr. Vanessa Díaz

Paris. Lindsay. Kim. We know the celebs in paparazzi photos, but what about the people behind the cameras? This week, Professor Vanessa Díaz takes us inside the world of Hollywood's paparazzi—who are predominantly Latine men, many undocumented—and shares what this profession captures about power, politics, and pop culture in America.

Vanessa Díaz, Associate Professor of Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University, is a multimedia ethnographer and journalist whose work focuses on issues of race, gender, and labor in popular culture across the Americas. Grounded in her experience as a red carpet reporter for People magazine, Díaz’s award winning book Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood (Duke 2020) focuses on hierarchies of labor as well as racial and gender politics in the production of celebrity-focused media. Díaz is also the co-creator of the Bad Bunny Syllabus Project and co-author of UCLA’s 2017 Hollywood Diversity Report.

You can follow her on Twitter @vanessajdiaz and on Instagram @drcrazyness, and learn more about her work by visiting manufacturingcelebritybook.com and badbunnysyllabus.com.

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Transcripts for each episode are available at JonathanVanNess.com.

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Our executive producer is Erica Getto. Our producer is Chris McClure. Our associate producer is Allison Weiss. Our engineer is Nathanael McClure. Production support from Julie Carrillo.

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