Reality television and the hypertrophic celebrity in Victoria Beckham: Coming to America

Abstract

Tom Mole argues that contemporary celebrity culture has undergone a ‘hypertrophic’ shift marked by the public's increasing fascination with the mechanics of celebrity production over individual celebrities themselves. This article examines reality television, more specifically what I call ‘celebrity-sanctioned reality television’, as a symptom of this broader shift. Both reality television and hypertrophic celebrity culture rely on the privileged access to the ‘real’ self while simultaneously offering heightened awareness of the processes of constructing that ‘real’, making the television genre an ideal vehicle for the promotion of the hypertrophic celebrity. The 2007 reality special, Victoria Beckham: Coming to America, is analysed as a celebrity-sanctioned use of reality television that explicitly aims to deconstruct the celebrity façade in a bid to re-articulate Victoria Beckham's celebrity image within the American celebrity system. The programme playfully and ironically weds the textual characteristics of reality television to hypertrophic celebrity culture in order to maintain control over the public presentation of the celebrity image – even as it purports to disrupt and expose it. The article concludes with a brief discussion of audience readings of the programme in order to discuss further the viability of the hypertrophic project as a means to construct and maintain attributed celebrity status.