Turning a celebrity into a non-person?
I am looking for a word which describes the act of taking someone famous or respected, an idol, and turning them into a symbol of what they represent instead of a person, i.e. they lose their human characteristics and become a sort of god which other people can worship.
I find this really difficult to describe, but it should fit in these types of sentences:
- The novel does not ______ Wilfred Owen, which in turn allows the audience to see him as a normal man with problems they can relate with.
- The biography over-_______ Bill Gates, which is a shame because the audience is left uninterested in his stories and detached from him as a character.
- She's ______(past tense) him completely, creating a soulless effigy of the person he represents.
Maybe the word means the act of making an idol out of someone? But I don't think it is idolising....
Try deify It should suffice. It means to worship, regard or treat (someone or something) as a god or to make a god of (something or someone).
Consider iconize
Treat as an icon: they iconized him as an iron-jawed symbol of American manhood
Icon is defined as
A person or thing regarded as a representative symbol of something: this iron-jawed icon of American manhood
Similarly, but with more negative connotatoins, there is caricature (both verb and noun)
Make or give a comically or grotesquely exaggerated representation of (someone or something):
he was caricatured on the cover of TV Guide
a play that caricatures the legal profession
Oxford Dictionaries Online
How about iconify - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Iconify
An icon is less than a person: it represents specific qualities and is thus much "simpler" than a real person.
There is 'sanctify'
verb (used with object), sanctified, sanctifying.
1 - to make holy; set apart as sacred; consecrate.
www.dictionary.com
In the case of 'sanctify', of course no-one is suggesting in this context that the object is actually made holy, or becomes saintly, but it would be understood as a metaphor for the intended meaning here.
1.The novel does not sanctify Wilfred Owen, which in turn allows the audience to see him as a normal man with problems they can relate with.