Not at all.
Paparazzi, like any other profession, serve to satisfy a collective need (for gossip) on one side, and on the other side the need of budding celebrities to become real ones, and have-beens to maintain their status.
Budding celebrities would give one kidney for paparazzi to chase them. Only when they get there, to the top, with the help of paparazzi, they start whining about "privacy." Give me a break.
When I was young, I saw the
Dolce Vita syndrome through different eyes. My mother lived there (Rome) for a while, and after she left, I went there again to spend some days with a relative. I was asked along to a birthday party one night and after the meal was over, some of us breezed down to the Via Veneto for a giggle, and as I had the ubiquitous camera and little grey Braun flash with me, we decided to play a game of faux paps, with myself annoying one of the prettier girls from the party as she walked down through the pavement tables, waving a dismissive hand at me and calling out no photos! no photos! Caught up in the excitement, I also shot some total strangers sitting at tables, and as you suggest, those girls were delighted - if possibly surprised - to be snapped. But that was another era.
And yep, my knowing anything about paps came from the Italian magazines that I used to get sent sometimes, which were full of Rome film gossip and snaps. Cinecitta was the European equivalent of Hollywood for several years. (I linked here to photographer Chiara Samugheo some while ago - she had hundreds of star covers and features from Rome.) Then, I saw the
DV film and understood the origin of the word. I stoppd having access to
Silver Screen,
Photoplay etc. when we left India, so I'd forgotten all about columnists Walter Winchell, Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons. Instead, I found lots of books by photographers Peter Basch, Peter Gowland and Don Ornitz (Fawcett Publications?) where they featured stars and starlets from around the world movie industry. I realised, years later, that the movie stills those guys shot as PR for stars were so superior to the anodyne, interchangeable Photoshopped plastic replica people of today's publications.
But the magazines. They moved from entertainment to gutter crawling, catering to the unfathomed depths of readership minds. I really don't care to know if some tart is or is not wearing knickers as she gets out of the hired limo.
If "stars" need them, great, but they and their hunters have their closed niche in society too, and as long as they work it out amongst their own ranks, cool. But street's another ballgame where people play at paps but don't have the outlets to make the sales nor the opportunities to snap the celebs they would seek. Instead, they annoy the casual passer by.
So yeah, there's the break for which you asked
;-)
