The Red Carpet

 

Which of these three statements about the red carpet is NOT true?

• The red carpet is rolled out for celebrities and guests.
• The red carpet is about honoring and welcoming special people.
• The rolling out of the red carpet started with cinema awards.

Read the article and find out if you were right.

How Did The Red Carpet Become The Iconic Runway For Awards Shows?

1 When you hear the phrase red carpet, what comes to mind? Chances are that it’s not the questionable red shag from the ’70s that covers the living room in your relative’s aging home.

2 For many people, the red carpet is synonymous with prestige, status, celebrity, ceremony, and a whole lot of pomp and circumstance. Hollywood’s big night, the Oscars, is a prime example. But this association has a much longer history. To fully understand all that the red carpet means and has come to mean, let’s roll out the red carpet and give the phrase the—what else?—red carpet treatment.

What is the red carpet?

3 The red capet, in the celebrity sense, is “an area at the entrance to a building, usually carpeted in red, where celebrities gather and walk before participating in or taking their seats at a big event.”

4 The red carpet wasn’t always so tied to awards shows. In the Ancient Greek play Agamemnon, the king has a red carpet pathway set out for him when he returns from the Trojan War. It didn’t end well. Red carpets were believed to be reserved for the gods at the time; they walked on them to avoid touching the ground that mortals do.

5 Another definition for red carpet is a strip of carpet (red, obviously) for high-ranking dignitaries and royals so they can avoid having to walk on the ground the rest of us use. The United States president, when traveling by plane to another country, may have a red carpet laid out for him to walk from the plane to the building, for example. Or people who work for the Queen of England may stretch a literal red carpet from her car to the door of wherever she’s going.

6 The growth of what the red carpet means doesn’t stop at celebrities. Today, the red carpet is loaded with metaphorical meanings tied to respect and honoring a person. People roll out the red carpet for special guests, while those who are held in high esteem can get the red carpet treatment at events and restaurants.

How red carpets got rolled out for Hollywood

7 The red carpet has been rolled out for movie stars since the earliest days of big time cinema. The premiere of Robin Hood at the Egyptian Theatre in Los Angeles in 1922 is thought to be the first to feature a red carpet for stars to walk on as they entered the establishment.

8 Despite the long history, red carpets today are most famously associated with the Oscars. At the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles where the Academy Awards are held, organizers lay down a 900 feet long and 33 feet wide red carpet. The vast area is where stars pause to make an entrance. And where there are stars, there’s the press. Fans and reporters lined the edges of the red carpet during the 1922 Robin Hood premiere just as they do outside of the Dolby Theatre today. The red carpet was a way to reach otherwise inaccessible celebrities at a time before everyone could follow every minute of the lives of the rich and famous on social media.

1. What is the other way to call the rolling-out-of-the-red-carpet ritual?
2. Today, what do people mean by the red carpet?
3. Where did the red carpet first appear?
4. Besides movie stars, who else gets the red carpet treatment?
5. When was the red carpet first rolled out at a cinema event?
6. Why was it important for fans to meet celebrities on the red carpet?

Find the words by their synonyms:

• occur to someone (like a thought or idea) p.1 
• ceremony and public display p.2 
• related p.4 
• those who die p. 4 
• of a high social position p.5 
• lay out (1 word) p.5 
• strict p.5 
• give somebody a high value (expression) p.6 
• the first performance, opening p.7 
• very large p.8 
• out of reach, remote p.8 

What's the opposite of (add a prefix)

• mortal 
• accessible 

1. Do you read about celebrities on social media?
2. Do you have a favourite celebrity or someone you really like? Who is it?
3. What do you think of celebrities posting about their everyday life in social networks? Does this really bring them closer to common people? Is it a good way to connect to fans?
4. The red carpet is an opportunity for fashion designers to advertise themselves. Should fashion and cinema go together in this way?
5. Would you rather be in a movie, or be given $500,000? Why?

Would you like to learn some film idioms now?