The Virtual Idol: Producing and Consuming Digital Femininity

Abstract

Idols exist primarily as a carefully constructed mode of performance. While, of necessity, this mode of performance is most commonly generated by a living body, dependence upon a physically present performer is not inevitable. Originating in Japan but also experimented with elsewhere, the virtual idol is a media performance which exists independently of the referent of any living performer. While the virtual idol is a native inhabitant of the digital media world in which all idols primarily operate, it perhaps remains the case that a lack of living materiality limits her capacity to emulate traditional forms of media celebrity; at the same time, however, this media image’s independence from any single living body provides an opportunity for a new kind of relationship between idol and fan to appear. This new kind of relationship, being overwhelmingly one between an artificial woman and a male consumer, crucially depends upon the commodification and mass-production of a certain kind of femininity.