Impersonation: A Phenomenology Of Fame

Impersonation is a term referring to just by simply imitating someone. The one who imitates or copies the behaviour of another is what we called impersonator. From the moment of someone’s birth, he would become accustomed to imitating others around him for he doesn’t know anything at first, thus making him a natural impersonator (Fogelman, 2000). The nature in this sense pertains on how impersonators understand this situation they are in to and how it was accepted in the society.

After analysing and interpreting the data, the researchers found out that the informants viewed the nature of impersonation in different concepts, such as impersonation as a step to fame/popularity, impersonation as a career, impersonation as a talent, impersonation as a form of comedy acts, and impersonation as a tribute to a celebrity.

Impersonation as a step to fame/popularity, it all begins in the idea of celebrity and fame. As to the informants, impersonation is possible because of celebrities we admire. This can be reflected from the study of Donna Rockwell and David C. Giles (2009) entitled “Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame.” They concluded that the object of much

According to Iyare (2013), in taking the opportunity to impersonate takes a lot of effort and time, thus making it a full time job. According to Ferris (2011), celebrity impersonators’ role is to assume in performing in somebody else’s feet. In effect, their ability to present the celebrity must be exceptional. Nowadays, “many of the celebrity impersonators have become well-paid artists imitating the real “Stars” with a deep sense of responsibility to their art and the business created around them. Most of the impersonators, in their professional and private lives, try to be true to the character that they emulate to the extent that nothing they would do would deface the image of the artist” (Fogelman, 2000, p.