American Celebrity Research Articles

Socio-cognitive Approach to the Analysis of Selected American (Athletes) Celebrity Speeches

The pervasiveness of celebrity figures in contemporary media and the effect they have on the minds of the public made investigating their discourse and exhibiting the way they think a worthy topic to study closely. Celebrities, as a social group, use language as a means of inspiration, encouragement, and empowerment. In this regard, they become exemplary and inspirational to the public by conveying their opinion, attitude, ideas, and knowledge. It is worth saying, most celebrities are simultaneously influential, especially entertainers like sports stars. Their discourse is usually imbued with and drenched in feelings, qualities, morals, and values that attract people to follow them, share characteristics with them and watch them. Accordingly, the researchers of the current study selected three American athlete celebrities' speeches to analyze and investigate the type of language used and the kind of ideology imbued within the speeches. Van Dijk’s model (1995a, 2016) of the socio-cognitive approach, mainly the discourse-cognition-society paradigm, is applied to analyze the speeches. The main aim is to show how discourse, social and cognitive structures are used to convey ideologies and what types of ideologies are instilled in the (selected) athlete celebrities’ speeches. After conducting the analysis, the study ends with the conclusion that some profile athletes are key influencers as spokespersons in society at large and they mainly depict themselves in a positive bright way that assists in spreading their mindsets and ideologies.

Ophthalmia Neonatorum, Helen Keller, and the Social Dimensions of Eye Disease.

The aim of this study was to describe how an early 20th-century American celebrity attempted to influence public perception of ophthalmic neonatorum. This study reviews the editorial written by Helen Keller in the 1909 Ladies' Home Journal and related historical documents about the prevention of blindness from neonatal conjunctivitis. Although blind, deaf, and nulliparous, Helen Keller at the age of 29 sensed that the newborn children of many American women were being denied preventative treatment for ophthalmia neonatorum. In her editorial in the Ladies' Home Journal discussing the complications of venereal disease she urged women to become proactive in matters of personal and family health care. Helen Keller viewed blindness from ophthalmia neonatorum as a failure of the American health care system. Her solution was to impart women with enough knowledge to seek care from educated medical professionals. The observation that many women and their children were receiving substandard care reflected a fundamental problem with disparities in the delivery of perinatal health care. Her insights are as relevant today as they were in 1909.

Shared identity endorsement narratives: a framework for studying celebrity endorsements of minority political candidates in the US

Abstract This article introduces the concept of shared identity endorsement narratives (SIENs), or celebrity endorsements of political candidates that intentionally highlight shared social identities between the endorser and the endorsed. Scholars of celebrity endorsements in political contexts have primarily focused on the efficacy rather than the rhetorical content of these endorsements and what latent social structures make them effective. Through close readings of two SIENs of Vice President Kamala Harris by American celebrities of Indian descent, I draw upon social identity theory to elucidate the ways in which these endorsements create valuable networks of support for Indian Americans, but simultaneously create homogenizing articulations of Indian American identity that exploit caste, ethnolinguistic, and racial differences. Analyzing how Indian Americans and other minority groups present themselves/connect with their community provides insights into what it takes to succeed in America’s diversifying political and media landscape.

Performing Trauma in Central Africa: Shadows of Empire By Laura Edmondson

Reviewed by: Performing Trauma in Central Africa: Shadows of Empire by Laura Edmondson Sky Herington Performing Trauma in Central Africa: Shadows of Empire BY LAURA EDMONDSON Indiana UP, 2018. xii + 348 pp. ISBN 9780253032478 paper. In the context of an ever-expanding humanitarian sector, particularly active in Africa, scholarship interrogating the ethics and effects of arts-based therapeutic models in humanitarian interventions has increasingly turned to performance as both a fruitful object and an important tool of study. In Performing Trauma in Central Africa, Laura Edmondson develops this approach, drawing on performance theory in a compelling analysis of a variety of cultural responses to mass violence and trauma in the Great Lakes region over the last two decades. Borrowing from Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman, Edmondson uses an "empire of trauma" (5) as a lens that reveals the limiting master-narratives of suffering and healing that are regularly perpetuated by Western-sponsored arts interventions. Scrutinizing neoliberal solutions to managing the aftermath of conflict, she investigates how Central African trauma is packaged to "obscure rather than to illuminate empire's complicity in a world order that sustains mass death and systemic violence" (9) and is made to soothe and satiate empire's appetites. If local artistic expression is prone to manipulation and co-option by both INGOs and African states, however, empire's trauma market is not a straightforward vampirization of African suffering by the imperial consumer. Performance is a site through which local actors might legitimate such narratives but also, simultaneously, reappropriate them for their own ends: in contexts of scarcity, trauma narratives can serve as vital resources. The historical overview of the region in the first chapter immediately reveals the advantages of Edmondson's geographical focus, which allows room for a detailed presentation of the specificities of each country's history while also establishing, through a transnational approach, the interconnectedness of conflicts across the region. Mapping the "roots and routes" (38) of mass violence and genocide, Edmondson analyzes the concept of "competitive memory" (59) and considers how a single mass trauma might overshadow others in the public imagination, creating a hierarchy of suffering. The following four chapters offer a wide range of case studies of the cultural production that has emerged from these intersecting histories of violence in Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Fieldwork in 2004 at a US-sponsored rehabilitation center for former child soldiers in northern Uganda, for example, informs Edmondson's reflections on the constructed linear narratives of these children's experiences, performed as spectacle for the benefit of foreign visitors. The exploration of the Western consumption of spectacle is then expanded in an examination of the performative strategies of the post-genocide Rwandan state, while in the Congolese context interventions by American humanitarian organizations are seen to shrink spaces of suffering and eclipse the trauma of those excluded from victim groups recognized on the world stage. Finally, Edmondson returns to a post-conflict northern Uganda in 2010 and reflects on the role of INGOs and American celebrities in the complex dynamics of trauma branding. Such branding projects are however sidestepped by many [End Page 193] northern Ugandans in their use of memorialization and demands on the state for "living memorials" (252) that respond to their material needs. A different approach is taken in the book's final chapter in which, drawing on her own experience running theater workshops in northern Uganda and Rwanda, Edmondson searches for new models of theater activism detached from its "humanitarian baggage" (287). Since, she argues, "neoliberal pressures are more easily negotiated than opposed" (271), staying at home is not an option. Instead she seeks to offer Western theater activists a guide to avoiding those pitfalls of empire discussed in the preceding chapters and tentatively concludes, borrowing from Emmanuel Lévinas, that a stance of "radical passivity" (276)—involving shared vulnerability, open-ended collaboration, and the acceptation of inaction—might be a useful, if sometimes elusive, point of departure from which to develop a more ethical approach to intercultural performance outside of the influence of empire. This explicit identification of an imagined reader in the closing pages echoes the emphasis on the perspectives of Western agents found...

Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood by Vanessa Díaz

Reviewed by: Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood by Vanessa Díaz Chihab El Khachab Vanessa Díaz, Manufacturing Celebrity: Latino Paparazzi and Women Reporters in Hollywood. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. 328 pp. Manufacturing Celebrity is an ethnography of the celebrity media industry based in Los Angeles, with an emphasis on the precarious work of paparazzi and celebrity reporters working with magazines such as People and Us weekly. The book contributes to the existing literature on precarious labour in the American media industries as well as the broader field of media anthropology. It is divided into three main parts covering the labour of Latino paparazzi, the labour of white female celebrity reporters, and the content of celebrity magazines. Chapter 1 is an engaging ethnography of the everyday work of Latino paparazzi in Los Angeles, while Chapter 2 delves into the overall political economy of paparazzi images. With a focus on the death of Chris Guerra, a Latino paparazzo, after a police altercation on the job, Chapter 3 reflects on the disposability of racialized bodies in contemporary America. Chapters 4 and 5 provide, respectively, an ethnographic study of red-carpet routines and a strong analysis of the precarity of white celebrity reporters. Finally, Chapter 6 delves into the work of “body teams” in celebrity magazines, which are tasked with covering and manufacturing celebrity bodies on a daily basis, while Chapter 7 explores the power of blended couple names à la “Brangelina.” The book’s core strength lies in its detailed ethnographic attention to the racialized and gendered work of the celebrity media industry, a well-established theme in existing scholarship on American film and television production more broadly. Chapter 1, for instance, details how paparazzi [End Page 197] shifted from being a mostly white male profession before the 2000s to a workforce of mostly Spanish-speaking Latino men, both documented and undocumented, working in precarious circumstances whether through agencies or as freelancers. The author highlights the unspoken skills and professional ethics upheld by paparazzi in the face of widespread condemnation—and in some cases criminalization—of their daily livelihoods. In a similar vein, Chapter 5 narrates the sexualization of female celebrity reporters’ work, which attracted media attention after the #MeToo movement, yet was integral to the industry’s working practices for decades. The chapter shows how reporters are expected to work in numerous informal spaces—classrooms, hospitals, restaurants, houses, nightclubs—in which their physical safety becomes secondary to their ability to elicit information by all means necessary. Another strength of the book is the analysis of the commercial conditions under which celebrity images are made and sold. Chapter 2, in particular, explains the political economy of the boom in paparazzi images after Us weekly, Life and Style, and Star became major competitors to People in the weekly celebrity magazine sector in the early 2000s. This boom not only affected the livelihoods of paparazzi, but also the value attached to certain kinds of images. For instance, whereas “exclusive” shots of celebrities were very valuable in the 2000s, the growing number of “candid” paparazzi images meant that magazines paid less and less to buy their rights, while incentivizing the paparazzi to sell their images multiple times to multiple outlets. The author astutely notes the collusion between celebrities, agents, publicists, and paparazzi in producing the candid images fed to weekly magazines; a collusion hinging all at once on the productive labour of paparazzi and their professional marginalization to avoid legal liabilities on the magazines themselves. While rich in ethnographic detail, the book makes some ambitious claims that are not always supported by ethnography or theoretical elaboration. For instance, the reader is told that Donald Trump’s election to the presidency demonstrates how “the power of celebrity and Hollywood stardom has never held more social, cultural, political, and economic power than it does now” (16). This statement is not supported by a strong historicization of American celebrity culture in the book, whose sources are mostly restricted to the 2000s. This short-term historical focus gives little confidence in the author’s claim that the power of celebrity is unprecedented, since growth in the celebrity media industry’s size cannot [End Page...

Racism Through the Lens of Stand-up Comedy: Digital Ethnography of Netflix Specials

Comedy scripts the monotony of life in a language that humours all and mirrors the disruptive social reality of private life. Today, stand-up comedy is a multibillion-dollar entertainment business, and its practitioners are revered figures in popular culture. The article compares the performances of two American celebrity stand-up comedians, D. L. Hughley and Kevin Hart, through their respective Netflix specials. Their content is drawn from the lived experience of growing up Black in America, yet they differ in comic style. While D. L. Hughley traverses the highs and lows of African-American lives in the States, presenting a satirical take on social issues, Kevin Hart paints a self-deprecating portrait of his personal life. He is animated and free-spirited and exaggerates anecdotal familial episodes to humour the audience. Their performance sheds light on the significance of humour in Black lives and highlights the importance of comedy beyond the realm of amusement as a public communication tool.

The death of the star: celebrity decay and the Gothic portrait in Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych

ABSTRACT This article uses Gothic studies to examine the preoccupation with death in Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Diptych. Drawing on the Gothic convention of the decaying portrait, I argue that Marilyn Diptych communicates a wider tension between immortality and death at the heart of American celebrity culture in the 1960s. The decaying portrait is a traditional motif within the Gothic novel, but this article explores how the portrait itself embodies Gothic qualities of decay. While Warhol’s Electric Chair has been previously analysed within a Gothic framework, I uncover the Gothicness of the celebrity portrait and situate Marilyn Diptych in the context of Marilyn Monroe’s death and the wider culture of mediatised disaster in the 1960s. Ultimately, this article demonstrates how Marilyn Diptych epitomises the landscape of celebrity in the 1960s. As a period of technological modernity dominated by television, the 1960s is a media-saturated image culture that enables the creation and preservation of new kinds of celebrities. However, the period is also tainted by relentless global and domestic crises, within which high-profile celebrity deaths feature strongly. This overwhelming culture of death problematises media immortality by exposing celebrities as fragile Gothic bodies prone to decay.

Indigenous Celebrity: Entanglements with Fame ed. by Jennifer Adese and Robert Alexander Innes (review)

Reviewed by: Indigenous Celebrity: Entanglements with Fame ed. by Jennifer Adese and Robert Alexander Innes Liza Black (bio) Indigenous Celebrity: Entanglements with Fame edited by Jennifer Adese and Robert Alexander Innes University of Manitoba Press, 2021 THIS TRANSNATIONAL COLLECTION looks at many aspects of fame within arenas of sports, activism, feminism, masculinity, language renewal, and music; many of which are rooted in tribal histories. Although the editors begin with an intense foray into Native identity politics, they use this as a window into the power of fame and its hold upon audiences. Rather than delving into whether their subjects possess legitimate claims to Native identities, they ask a series of important questions about celebrity revolving around responsibility, engagement, and oppression. The authors turn to celebrity studies, noting that all celebrity scholars agree that regardless of the debates on the origins and meaning of celebrity, all celebrity is indeed manufactured. Adese and Innes explore Black celebrity studies, noting its linking of racism to celebrity status and appropriations of Blackness among celebrities. Notably they contrast the celebrations of the English monarchy with the derogation of so-called Nigerian princes (9). Transitioning toward Indigenous studies, Adese and Innes note the foundation of colonialism as that which benefits stardom. The editors go on to emphasize the failure of cultural and media studies to "meaningfully" address the realities of Indigenous and African American interactions with celebrity (10). They note especially the volume's insistence that Indigenous and African American peoples are not individualized in the same ways as white celebrities are but are placed in positions where they must in some way speak for their tribal, ethnic, or racial community. In no way does this volume merely catalogue biographies of the famous. Indeed, the editors see celebrity as "a site of struggle" (16). Their intention is "not to provide a comprehensive historical account of all Indigenous entanglements with celebrity, nor is it to provide an in-depth theorization of cultural and media studies approaches to celebrity. Rather, our purposes are to highlight some of the prevailing points of overlap among Indigeneity, celebrity, and fame and to prod at some of the tensions" (17). Chapter 1 by Reneé Mazinegiizhigoo-kwe Bédard contrasts Anishinaabeg concepts of respect for those upholding traditional Anishinaabeg ways with American celebrity culture's emphasis on the individual. Chapter 2, written [End Page 173] by David Lakisa, Katerina Teaiwa, Daryl Adair, and Tracy Taylor, builds its analysis on interviews with ten rugby players. The authors highlight two competing phenomena: the workings of mana, which is obtained through success in sports, and the racism athletes endured in spite of the acquisition of mana. Chapter 3 by Kahente Horn-Miller also looks at Indigenous values in accordance with celebrity. Horn-Miller's mother used her flashpoints of celebrity status to introduce the needs of Mohawk people into media discourse. In that sense, although she was individualized, she turned that spotlight toward her community's oppression. The fourth chapter, by Jonathan Hill and Virginia McLaurin, takes note of Indigenous celebrities who turn to activism within their celebrity status. They make their case based on interviews with celebrities opposed to recent construction of oil pipelines. Chapter 5, by Karen Fox, highlights the strains under which Australian Indigenous celebrities navigated an incredibly repressive moment against Indigenous people while advocating for their communities and maintaining their access to work and celebrity status. Chapter 6, written by Kim Anderson and Brendan Hokowhitu, analyzes the boxing match of Justin Trudeau and Patrick Brazeau, noting Brazeau's impossible position as an Anishinaabeg man being mediated by the Canadian media as either a "savage" had he won or echoing the loss of land endured by all Indigenous people if he were to lose. Chapter 7, by Jenny Davis, uses Jean O'Brien's concept of firsting and lasting to critique our language around Indigenous language speakers, positioning them as the last and thus erased. Chapter 8, by Aadita Chaudhury, looks at celebrity status imposed upon the Indigenous people of India who are also laboring under the same type of "lasting" terminology that erases their very presence. In chapter 9, Christina Giacona dissects "The Pale Faced Indian" to chart its shift from a...

Self-praise by Chinese and American celebrities on TV talk shows

Self-praise, a social practice that threatens the positive face of the addressee, is a relatively under-explored topic in politeness research. This article examines self-praise strategies used by Chinese and American celebrities. Based on an existing taxonomy of self-praise strategies, namely, explicit self-praise without modification, explicit self-praise with modification, and implicit self-praise, we collected data from two Chinese TV shows (Yang Lan Interview One on One and Jin Xing Show) and two American TV shows (The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Charlie Rose Show). Through a detailed analysis of interactions between host and celebrity within Leech’s (2014) General Strategy of Politeness, it is found that there are four modification devices and three implicit frames in their self-praise. Additionally, American celebrities tend to praise themselves explicitly while Chinese counterparts always mitigate it. Cultural differences exhibited in the form of face-preserving needs and attitudes to the audience may account for preferences for different self-praise strategies in the two linguistic communities. The findings not only open a cross-cultural window to self-praise research but also offer insights into third-person politeness theorising.

American presidents and politicians in rhyming slang

The article is aimed at identifying onomastic rhymes as part of rhyming slang and analyzing them from a socio-cultural perspective. They are built on the names of American celebrities from the world of politics and social activities and believed to be fixers of cultural and historical items that are of certain value from the point of view of culture-oriented linguistics, cross-cultural communication and the general study of culture. TThe research methods applied are determined by the purpose and objectives of the research and include a descriptive and a linguistic ones, the latter comprising context and definitional analysis, and also semantic interpretation. The rhymes are based on the names that have been widely represented in the media from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day, thus forming part of the modern cultural collective memory of the carriers of the English-speaking culture. The noted tendency of preferential creation of new rhymes, exploiting precedent onyms, became dominant in the development of rhyming slang at the turn of the century. The authors come to the conclusion that the rhymes illustrating the world of high politics have been added to the well-mastered and familiar onomastic rhymes, built on the names of celebrities from the world of cinema, pop music, popular culture and sports. The article brings to light the rhymes that have not yet been recorded in authoritative slang dictionaries. The research results can be of interest to the specialists working on the topics of intercultural communication, linguistic and cultural studies, cultural linguistics, political linguistics, euphemization, contrastive linguistics of the English and Russian languages.

Deadnaming as disformative utterance

‘Deadnaming’ is the act of referring to trans people by the names assigned to them in infancy in cases where they have rejected those names. In this paper, Judith Butler’s (1997) theorising of injurious speech is united with Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall’s (2005) tactics of intersubjective identity formation to conceptualise deadnaming as a speech act with a harmful perlocutionary force, which may be employed to denaturalise or illegitimate a trans person’s acts of self-determination. This is demonstrated by an analysis of entries on the crowdsourced website Urban Dictionary that were posted in response to American celebrity Caitlyn Jenner’s public coming out as a trans woman in 2015. Attempts by Urban Dictionary’s users to ‘redefine’ Jenner’s names both reveal the cisnormative assumptions that motivate deliberate acts of deadnaming and expose anxieties about how the public visibility of trans people threatens the alleged naturalness of those assumptions.

CULTURAL TERMS IN EFL TEXTBOOKS FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

This paper analyses the Festival/Cultural section of the four most used 6th Primary EFL textbooks in La Rioja (North of Spain) to examine whether (i) festivals is a topic covered in the syllabi of these four materials, (ii) the topics and terms refer to British and American celebrations, represent festivals in other English-speaking communities or allude to students’ own culture, and (iii) songs and rhymes are included in the materials and related to the celebrations represented in them.
 Our findings show that the most recurrent cultural topics are everyday living, values, beliefs and attitudes and ritual behaviour. As for the cultural terms, our sample mostly portrays references to the target culture. Songs and rhymes are part of the teaching materials, but are barely related to the festivals. These data seem to show that sociocultural aspects are gaining importance in ELT primary materials, but they mostly focus on the target culture and omit references to students’ own culture.

Starstruck in the Promised Land: How the Arts Shaped Passions About Israel by Shalom Goldman

Reviewed by: Starstruck in the Promised Land: How the Arts Shaped Passions About Israel by Shalom Goldman Jessica Carr (bio) Starstruck in the Promised Land: How the Arts Shaped Passions About Israel. By Shalom Goldman. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. 256 pp. In Starstruck in the Promised Land, Shalom Goldman recovers many unheralded figures and events that diffused Zionism into United States consciousness, as seen in Chapter Four, "Advocates for Zion: Sinatra, Steinbeck, Baldwin, and Bellow." The book also aims to recover the ways that US celebrities as different as Whitney Houston, Barbra Streisand, and Madonna have served the State of Israel. Assembling brief reviews of the reception of these personalities allows us to see the role of celebrity, a tactic that Israeli state builders have used to develop strong feelings of love and pride in Palestine/Israel and in the United States. This tactic jettisoned features of the place for emotions and ideas about the place. These state builders, Goldman suggests, knew what they were doing—building national myths—and they tapped American celebrity and the lens of the Bible through which Americans saw "the Promised Land." The greatest contribution of Goldman's work is to demonstrate the similarities between American capitalist marketing strategies and Zionism. The book attends to both "geopolitical factors" and "softer cultural factors" (75). He illuminates the power marketing strategies offered to [End Page 440] Zionists to gain control of the narrative in the United States and the United Nations. In his analysis of the film Exodus, for instance, Goldman brings up its appearance in an early episode of Mad Men. Don Draper tells his Israeli clients, "All I know is the Bible," and Draper's extramarital lover Rachel explains she will not move there because "For me it's more an idea than a place" (79). Goldman includes this scene to emphasize Exodus as similar marketing, but he disagrees. He argues, "But for Draper's Israeli clients, Israel is first and foremost a place, and one that they would like to see promoted in the United States" (79). Goldman brings much to analyzing the iconography of Israel in film by recalling this scene in Mad Men. However, it seems that the Israelis knew exactly what they were doing by turning to Draper, who knows that it is emotion, and not a thing itself, that sells. The Israelis intentionally selected a non-Jew with no familiarity with the State of Israel or Jewish Americans to popularize the new nation. Goldman recounts Israeli officials courting "American cultural icons." Ben Gurion, he writes, "developed a strong rapport with many visiting celebrities" (84). The State of Israel made a case for itself via celebrity and celebrities. Goldman shows that politics and theology are always culturally mediated. The book bridges memoir and research, often including Goldman's personal perspective. Yet Goldman does not always climb far enough out of his own background to be critical. Though Chapter Five offers some sense of how religious Zionism moved politically right and theologically toward millennial messianism, it is not "traditional" to seek a Jewish state. Desire for a Jewish nation-state only appeared recently and was controversial among Orthodox Jews. Goldman shifts between historicizing "that potent mix of culture and politics" in transnational Zionism and expressing more emotional dedication to the State of Israel (67). In Chapter Four, he describes his upbringing: "The Orthodox Judaism that my family practiced—a form of traditional Judaism that decades later would be described as 'modern Orthodoxy'—was deeply committed to a religious Zionist ideal that saw the return to the Promised Land as the fulfillment of both biblical prophecy and Jewish millennial hopes" (74). As for many in America, Israel took a larger and larger position in the center of Goldman's sense of Jewishness. He volunteered for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) following the 1967 War. His childhood experiences led him to chafe at some of the presumptions of Orthodox practices, and the opportunities for "secular" Jewishness in Israel as well as his disillusionment with anti-Arab racism in the IDF became formative. He recounts his own military experience and responses from family and Americans in Israel, but it is unclear...

Donald Trump: Anatomy of a human pseudo-event and the crisis of modern liberalism

This article applies Daniel Boorstin’s notion of the pseudo-event to the ascendency of President Donald Trump. Boorstin defines the pseudo-event as an event staged to call attention to itself, a phenomenon made possible by the graphic revolution. As early as 1961, Boorstin recognized this phenomenon in the areas of travel, news and politics. Concerning the latter, the hero, a person once recognized for his achievements, has been replaced by the celebrity, a person known for his well-knownness. While Davy Crockett was a precursor of the American celebrity politician, P. T. Barnum and Edward Bernays were practitioners of the pseudo-event par excellence. Donald Trump, however, exemplifies the human pseudo-event in a most tragic way because his persona is emblematic of what some observers now perceive as the fly-in-the-ointment of American liberal democracy – the unrestrained autonomous self, something to which our original political commitments ensure us can be liberated from nature, time and place. In our quest to realize ‘liberty’ for ourselves, older and more localized ethical restraints had to be cast aside. Ironically, the crisis of liberalism resides in its great success.

Discourses of celebrities on Instagram: digital femininity, self-representation and hate speech

ABSTRACT Social media has given way to information and prosumption-oriented discursive fields wherein individuals construct their own social identities. Although interactivity, multimodality, user-centeredness and accessibility are the unique aspects of digital media but the fact that digital media as effective spaces for representing extreme self/other representation while being anonymous and free from following social norms, can cause dysfunctional social behaviours such as cyber hate. Mirroring the normative notions of femininity, masculinity and gender stereotype allows groups and individuals to connect and express similar manifestations of hate, which, often result in the emergence of a ‘discursive spiral of hate’, misogyny and sexism. This paper draws on the important caveats discussed around Social Media-Critical Discourse Studies understanding of the contemporary digital discourses to deconstruct the complex relations between gender, hate speech and celebrities’ discourses on social media. In particular, how Lena Dunham, American celebrity, portrays herself on her Instagram page by going against the hegemonic views and how the audiences, i.e. the digital prosumers perceive that portrayal. Analysing 2000 user-generated comments deconstruct how women are required to suppress their feeling and limit their authentic online presentation to maintain the outward countenance that matches the stereotypical gender roles in audiences’ state of mind.

Echoes and Silences: #MeToo’s Reverberations

ABSTRACT This special section of Australian Feminist Studies is dedicated to examining the echoes and reverberations of #MeToo beyond its viral epicentre in American celebrity media culture. It focuses on how #MeToo has resonated within institutions, practices and discourses associated with culture, science, and law. It aims to shed light on Australia’s unique engagements with #MeToo discourse and charts how discourses of #MeToo have propelled feminist critiques and reconfigured existing hierarchies. It also investigates the possibilities for #MeToo beyond neoliberal cultural logics.

Comparison of Fatal Recreational Drug Overdoses between Celebrities and Non-Celebrities

Previous studies have examined drug overdoses among celebrities, but not in comparison to the general population. This study’s goal was to analyze whether celebrities have higher fatal overdose rates from recreational drug use than the non-celebrity population. It is often presumed that celebrities engage in more drug use to cope with their stressful and taxing lifestyles. To test this claim, we gathered a list of American celebrities that fatally overdosed on drugs from 1999 to 2017 (inclusive), as well as the number of overdoses in the general American population during this time frame. Certain drugs of interest were kept and less commonly occurring drugs that resulted in overdose were excluded, leaving us with opioids, heroin, cocaine, benzodiazepines, psychostimulants, and antidepressants. Descriptive statistics of both populations including gender and specific professions of celebrities were collected. Then, an independent samples t-test was used to discover if there was a significant difference between fatal overdoses for the celebrity versus non-celebrity population in general and for each drug listed previously from the years 1999 to 2017. Pearson’s correlation analysis was used to find if there was a difference in the yearly trend of overdoses for celebrities versus non-celebrities during the same time range. Descriptive statistics demonstrated that males comprised 62.9% of fatal overdoses for non-celebrities and 73.5% for celebrities, and musicians (24.3%), athletes (23.6%), and actors (17.6%) tend to overdose the most in terms of celebrity professions. In addition, the results from the t-test showed that non-celebrities had not fatally overdosed at significantly different rates than celebrities from 1999 to 2017. as well as overdosed at no significantly different rate for each individual drug than celebrities during this time frame. However, the exceptions were any opioids and benzodiazepines, for which the former group overdosed at a significantly higher rate. Pearson’s correlation analysis yielded an insignificant negative correlation between fatal overdoses and years passed between 1999 to 2017 for celebrities, and a significant positive correlation between fatal overdoses and years passed for non-celebrities. The judgmental heuristics may make us believe that more celebrities fatally overdose than non-celebrities, and that this presumption could potentially be problematic because celebrities have a massive influence on society, which could lead the general population to engage in these self-destructive behaviours themselves.

Gluttons for Punishment? African American Celebrities and the Dilemma of Black Leadership

We demonstrate a dilemma for African American celebrities from the policing behavior of the mass publics of both Blacks and Whites. Examination of norms suggests that the Black mass public wants its leaders to fight for racial equality, and Black celebrities are traditionally included as potential leaders. Thus, the history of Black leadership suggests that the Black mass public wants Black celebrities to contribute in some way to the goal of African American advancement. This is different from the mainstream norms: Whites are not at ease with protest or with efforts to dramatically transform the status quo in America. As such, White Americans seem to prefer that celebrities remain out of the fray also. Thus, potential punishments from Whites are in store for those Black celebrities who openly advocate for Black equality. Whether Black celebrities are actively advocating or not, the Black mass public is constantly watching and evaluating celebrities’ value to the Black community itself. Using a combination of historical examples and three surveys, we find evidence to support our claims: White audiences tend to punish African American celebrities for being “too Black” politically, while these celebrities can get punished by Black audiences for not being “Black enough” politically.

From South Africa to South Central L.A.: Transnational Black Protest, Celebrity, and the Cultural Boycott

ABSTRACT Using Los Angeles as a case study, this essay explores transnational Black protest, celebrity, and the cultural boycott. Although cultural activism was a staple of anti-apartheid activity across the world, Los Angeles was distinguished in the U.S. context by an ongoing campaign that mobilised African Americans for the purpose of confronting Black celebrities who violated the cultural boycott. Organising around the cultural boycott took place alongside novel forms of Black American celebrity whose epicentre was Los Angeles, and amidst worsening social conditions for ordinary Black Americans. In seeking to constrain the activities of Black celebrities even as they critiqued the increasing depoliticisation of African American life, Black radicals injected class politics into an anti-racist struggle while leveraging the cultural capital of Black Americans. As part of a broader effort to highlight the commonalities between social conditions in South Africa and Southern California, work around the cultural boycott invigorated a Black American critique of American social conditions while also demonstrating the value of cultural work as a strategic terrain for transnational political activity.

The Problem with Apu, Whiteness, and Racial Hierarchies in US Media Industries

The Problem with Apu, Whiteness, and Racial Hierarchies in US Media Industries Madhavi Mallapragada (bio) Hari Kondabolu's 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu (Michael Melamedoff), revolves around the Indian American writer's mission to resolve what he conceptualizes as the derogatory representation of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the Indian immigrant character on the animated Fox television comedy series, The Simpsons (1989–). The problem is threefold. Apu is a racist stereotype of South Asian Americans; despite or perhaps because of that, Apu is a beloved and iconic character in mainstream American culture; consequently, Apu's legacy is oppressive as it continues to shape US media industries' expectations of South Asian American representations, people, and culture. As Kondabolu sees it, the only way to make peace with his decades-long struggle with the Apu stereotype is to interrogate the context of its production.1 This essay focuses on Kondabolu's production-related challenges—notably his (ultimately futile) efforts to get Hank Azaria, the white voice actor playing Apu, to be a part of the documentary—as well as the post-release responses from The Simpsons' team. Drawing from them, I argue for the urgency of centering the category of race in media production studies and, relatedly, for examining how racial hierarchies are operationalized and maintained in production cultures. Kondabolu's film takes aim at the politics of a highly influential mainstream, white American television show [End Page 148] and arrives at a time when the lack of racial diversity in mainstream media industries continues to be a problem, despite the recent trend of diverse casting. Over the last decade, US media industries have attempted to reframe their investments around race. Such efforts include racial diversity initiatives in the media workplace, casting decisions that consciously avoid the perpetuation of stereotypes, and targeting the key demographic groups of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans.2 But most of all, the reframing of the industries' relation to matters pertaining to racism, erasure, underrepresentation, and misrepresentation is a strategic ideological move. Here, the rhetoric that the twenty-first-century media industries' ethos is one of inclusivity, offering correctives to existing inequities and giving historically marginalized voices a proverbial seat at the proverbial table, is employed widely and often. In turn, it generates and maintains a narrative that is focused on the industries' intentions (often for the future) and individual practices (looking at casting on one show, for example). Such rhetorical moves function to obfuscate the structural factors that maintain racial hierarchies and recuperate whiteness as an institutional norm.3 My brief study of The Problem with Apu exemplifies the challenges racial minorities, including South Asian Americans, face in their efforts to engage the industry on its diversity platform and to offer their critical perspectives on the industries' Anglocentric production culture. Kondabolu, who wrote and stars in the documentary, draws on the reception of Apu by interviewing his family members and South Asian American celebrities. He focuses mostly on actors, comics, and writers, but problematically foregrounds male perspectives. In characterizing Apu as a stereotype, Kondabolu essentially revisits a long-standing critique about the representation of Apu.4 Critics have long pointed to the considerable evidence that Apu is a stereotype. The character owns a convenience store Kwik-E-Mart; is a devout Hindu; has an arranged marriage and eight children; is a "good" immigrant who espouses the values of hard work, tolerance, and not disrupting the status quo; and utters phrases like "Thank you! Come again!" in an exaggerated "Indian" accent. Shilpa Davé's groundbreaking theoretical formulation of "brown voice" posits that the production and repetition of a distinctive "Indian" accent in US popular culture functions as a racializing trait.5 She notes that the performance of this accent, or brown voice, is entangled with the racist histories of ethnic vaudeville humor and brownface performances.6 She argues that brown voice, as exemplified by Apu's "Indian" accent, ultimately "reinforces a static position for South Asians regardless of their status or occupation in the United States."7 In the opening moments of The Problem with Apu, Kondabolu reasons that while it is necessary to talk to The Simpsons' writers and producers to understand their thinking behind creating...